He seemed to have the same thought. “We gotta get this thing down, now,” he said, and pushed forward on the yoke, pulling back on the power, forcing the bird’s nose toward the ground. The engines quieted and Tracie could hear the wind screaming around the air frame. She realized she was holding her breath and her hands gripped the sides of her seat so tightly she wondered how her fingers remained unbroken.
The ground rushed up at the B-52, rising impossibly fast. The lights of the tiny city of Bangor and its sister city, Brewer, shone in the distance, straddling the Penobscot River a short distance from the airport. Centuries-old evergreens, tightly-packed and massive, filled the wind screen, growing larger and larger until Tracie was sure the plane would fly straight into the forest.
At what seemed like the last possible moment, Wilczynski eased back on the yoke, lowering the landing gear and the flaps, and the plane leveled off and slowed like someone had stood on a set of brakes. The runway appeared again in the wind screen as if by magic. Tracie marveled at the skill of the B-52’s only living crew member, badly injured, maybe fatally injured, but still handling the gigantic craft like the professional he was.
The trees flashed past under the wings as the B-52 descended steadily. They were maybe three miles from the approach end when Wilczynski turned to Tracie and smiled. His lips were white and so was his face, and blood flowed steadily down his left cheek as if the gauze bandage had never been applied. He looked like death warmed over but incredibly he was smiling.
“I’ve got it slowed as much as I dare. We’re going to make it,” he said, and then without warning his eyes rolled up into his head and he slumped forward. His safety harness kept him in his seat, but the force of the movement pushed the yoke forward and the B-52 dropped like a rock. Tracie grabbed for the yoke instinctively and missed, and the plane descended into the forest.
The wings sheared off trees. The interior rocked and bucked and the only sound Tracie could hear over her own screams was sheet metal shrieking as the wings tore completely clear of the fuselage. The cabin bounced hard, ricocheting off a treetop and coming down onto another and then what was left of the plane rolled and tumbled and dropped to the forest floor.
And something struck Tracie in the head and the world went black.
17
Shane Rowley’s Volkswagen Beetle bounced along the deserted country road toward Bangor International Airport. Bob Seger’s amplified voice filled the car’s interior, drowning out the eggbeater sound of the engine as it strained to keep up with Shane’s lead foot. Seger was bragging about getting lucky in “Night Moves,” one of Shane’s favorite songs, and singing along with the lyrics almost made Shane forget, if only for a few minutes, the paralyzing fear and bitter disappointment he had felt this afternoon.
It had been a long day at Northern Maine Medical Center, yet another in an endless string of appointments with specialists to determine the cause of the debilitating headaches he had been experiencing over the last few months.
Today had been the worst. “A brain tumor,” this specialist had said after examining X-rays and CAT scans and the results of numerous tests. “I’m very sorry, but there’s nothing we can do. The tumor is advanced and growing rapidly. We can make you comfortable as the end draws near,” the man had said, and Shane had barely heard him. He felt outside himself, like he was watching a bad TV movie of his life.
Shane had feared the worst almost since the nasty headaches had begun. “How long do I have?” he asked numbly, and the specialist, an older, officious-looking man, said, “Hard to tell,” as if he were analyzing a theoretical concept instead of the end of another human being’s life. “Anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months. Probably no longer than that.”
And Shane had thanked the man. He still didn’t know why, it just seemed like the thing to do. Then he had stumbled out of the office and gone home, driving all the way on auto-pilot, unable to remember a thing about the trip when he nosed into the parking spot outside his apartment.
He had so much to think about, but he needed to sleep. As an air traffic controller at Bangor International Airport, he was accustomed to working shifts at all hours of the night and day, and tonight he was scheduled to work midnight to eight in what he knew would be one of his final shifts ever. Once the FAA flight surgeon learned of his diagnosis, Shane would be medically disqualified from working traffic, and that would be the beginning of the end. He knew he should have informed his superiors already of his medical issues, but had not been able to bring himself to do so.
One more shift, he had told himself, for old time’s sake, and then had tumbled into bed for a few fitful hours of sleep. In the morning, at the end of his shift, he would advise Air Traffic Manager Marty Hall of the tumor. Then he would turn in his headset and go home to die.
Shane crested a hill, the Beetle’s engine wailing. He was lost in Seger’s voice, trying not to think about the cancer growing in his head, when a gigantic airplane whooshed overhead. “Holy shit!” he blurted to no one, and ducked instinctively. The plane’s strobes filled the interior of the car with a pulsing light, and Shane wrestled the steering wheel, fighting to keep the Beetle on the road as the huge aircraft roared seemingly inches above the treetops.
Shane’s heart thumped madly. The plane — it was too dark for Shane to identify the aircraft type, but the thing was enormous — rocked left and right, barely under control, and Shane knew instantly it would never make the airport. He knew it would never make another hundred feet unless it climbed immediately, and he was right. The hulking jet no sooner cleared his car than it veered right and descended straight into the forest.
Shane slammed on the brakes. The Beetle screeched to a halt in a spray of gravel and dust. The airplane had disappeared from sight, but moments later a deafening crash shook the ground, then a muffled Boom rolled through the night.
The guys working up in the control tower would even now be alerting the airport rescue vehicles to the accident. Shane knew that like he knew the back of his hand. He even knew who was working up there — it was the crew he was on his way to relieve on the midnight shift. But although the crash scene was probably no more than two or three miles from the airport, finding the downed aircraft in the dense forest would be no easy task.
Rescuers would likely be forced to locate the crash site by helicopter, a process which would take a considerable amount of time. Shane knew there were probably no survivors, but in the unlikely event anyone had survived, they would need help immediately. Help no one else was around to give.
He shut down the Beetle and rummaged around in the glove box for a flashlight. He flicked it on and grimaced at the weak yellow beam. He tried to recall the last time he had replaced the batteries in the damned thing and couldn’t remember ever having done it.
Shane leaped out of the car and plunged into the nearly pitch-black woods. The moon was full and the skies were clear, and there was a fair amount of ambient light out in the open, but by the time he had traveled ten feet into the dense forest, it was as if the moon had gone into hiding. He reluctantly flicked on the light, wondering how long it would take for the batteries to die, and began picking his way deeper into the woods.