How many people noticed? The Afghan vet beside Bryce muttered “Fuck” under his breath, so he did. Some passengers still had no clue about how bad things were liable to be. A middle-aged woman-Bryce thought she was the gal who’d miss dinner with Uncle Louie-was indignantly complaining that an attendant had no right to keep her from getting up and going to the bathroom.
“I haven’t got time to argue with you,” the frazzled attendant snapped. “But if you even touch your goddamn seat belt, I’m gonna crown you with my solid-steel coffeepot. You hear me? You better, ’cause I mean it.”
“I’ll get you fired for this!” the passenger said shrilly.
“Now ask me if I care,” the stewardess answered, and hurried to her own seat.
“This is the captain one more time.” The drawl came out of the PA again. “I suggest you take a brace against your seat backs. We have some turbulence coming up behind us, and it may get kind of severe. Once the wind event is past, we’ll take a look around and see where we’re at then. Hang on, folks.”
See where we’re at then could only mean see if we’re still flying. The veteran said “Fuck” again, more sincerely this time. It might have been a prayer. Across the aisle, a Hispanic woman was telling her rosary beads. Bryce Miller, a secular, bacon-scarfing Jew, wondered if she had some consolation he didn’t. Too late for him to start praying now. He knew more about the dead religions of ancient Greece than about the one he’d been born into.
Then something gave the plane a kick in the ass. Bryce said “Fuck!” himself, very loudly. He couldn’t even hear the obscenity through everybody else’s chorus of screams and curses and prayers. He waited for the wings to come off or the skin to peel away from the fuselage. The only thing he hoped for in that moment was that it would all get over with in a hurry.
But the plane didn’t come to pieces, though booms and crashes said carts were going cattywumpus no matter how well they’d been stowed. Oxygen masks deployed from the panels he’d never seen open before. Half the overhead luggage compartments flew open, too. They were stuffed so tight, though, that surprisingly few pieces flew out and clobbered people. It was the first advantage he’d ever found to charging for checked bags.
Someone in the cabin had thrown up and missed the airsick bag. Someone else-maybe more than one someone else-had shit him- or herself. Bryce hadn’t, though he didn’t know why not. In ultimate emergencies, human beings turned back into the animals they were beneath civilizonsolationand intelligence.
It wasn’t quite so bad after the first big boot. The plane kept shaking, but on a lesser level. Watch out for that first step, Bryce thought dazedly. It’s a doozy. In fact, as the screams eased off, it was as quiet as he’d ever known it to be inside a plane in flight.
Then he realized why. All the engines were out.
Which meant this wasn’t an airliner any more. It was the world’s most expensive glider. The most expensive, not the best. It was way too heavy to be the best. Someone had once said the space shuttle glided like an aerodynamic brick. The airliner would do better than that. How much better? Bryce didn’t know, but he was about to find out. The hard way.
“This is the captain.” The man still sounded absurdly calm. Maybe that was attitude, maybe training. Whatever it was, Bryce admired it. Still easily, the pilot went on, “Some of you will have noticed our descent is now powerless. The turbulent airflow snuffed out our engines. We have not been able to get a restart. I’m sorry to tell you that we won’t make it to Lincoln.”
He paused. Perhaps he was human after all. “That means I am going to have to find a place to put this aircraft down. The best place we’ve got is dead ahead, a reservoir called Branch Oak Lake. I am going to try and pull a Sully. As he had, I’ve practiced this on the simulator many times. Now I get to do it for real, just like he did.”
Another pause. “All I can do is give it my best shot. If you all stay as calm as you’re able to, it’ll help. I have radioed ahead to Lincoln. They will help us as quick as they can, and so will the folks around the reservoir. We’ll be going in in about a minute and a half. You folks in the exit rows, you’ll have a job to do. Listen to the flight attendants. Good luck to everybody, and God bless you all.”
Seat cushion may be used for flotation, it said on the back of the seat in front of Bryce’s-and on all the others. At least it didn’t say floatation, the way it did on some airlines. For some idiot reason, the idea of going into the drink with a misspelled safety device weirded Bryce out.
He was four rows behind the exit. I’ve got a chance, he thought-if the plane didn’t smash itself to smithereens hitting the water, if it didn’t sink like a chunk of concrete, if, if, if…
“One more thing,” the captain added from the speakers. “If anybody goes for anything in the overhead bins, clobber the jerk and then step on him. This isn’t the time to worry about your stuff. You’ve got enough other things to worry about, right?”
Both Bryce and the veteran beside him nodded. He looked out the window again. Here came the lake or reservoir or whatever the hell it was. It was mostly quiet in the cabin now. People had gone through panic and, with luck, come out the other side. The plane flashed past a bird, almost as a car might have on the 405. One more look… They were over water, closer by the second.
“Here we go,” the captain said. “Take your brace again.”
The airliner’s belly smacked the smooth surface of Branch Oak Lake. The plane skipped like a stone, then almost instantly smacked again. This time, it stayed on the surface. The splash made Bryce’s window useless. He didn’t care. At least he hadn’t got smashed to strawberry jam right away.
“Open the exit doors!” the boss flight attendant shouted, and then, “Passengers, remember your flotation devices! p anyone near you who is injured!” One more afterthought, reminiscent of recess at elementary schooclass="underline" “Take turns!”
And damned if they didn’t. A mad rush would have hopelessly clogged the exits. But the passengers moved toward them in an orderly hurry. Bryce paused at the edge of the aisle to let a woman go up ahead of him. “Thank you,” she said.
“You’re welcome,” Bryce answered. He supposed there’d been scenes of such civility aboard the Titanic, too. The chilly water streaming in through the exit doors made the comparison much too apt. But it wasn’t even up over his shoetops yet. He had no trouble moving against it.
When he got to the open door, a flight attendant and one of the big men from the exit row were standing on the wing helping people come out. “You all right?” the attendant asked.
“Shit, I’m alive,” Bryce blurted.
She smiled. “There you go. Now off the wing and into the water. Get as far from the plane as you can.”
He put his arms through the straps on the seat cushion and went into the lake. It didn’t feel too cold once he got used to it. He’d been in pools that were worse. What it would feel like come February was bound to be a different question, but it wasn’t February, thank God.
Kicking was awkward in his Adidases. He pulled them off. The plane settled behind him as he moved away from it. He hoped the captain would get out. Damned if the guy hadn’t pulled a Sully. If the passengers had anything to say about it, he wouldn’t be short of drinks or anything else he happened to want for the rest of his days.
“Some fun, huh?” The Afghan vet bobbed in the water a few feet away.
“I’ve had rides I liked better,” Bryce replied. The other guy laughed.
The sky looked a million miles away from down here, even though Bryce had been flying a few minutes before. The ugly black cloud rearing over the western horizon had to be the same thing he’d seen up there.
Buzzing noises swelled from distant mosquitoes to up-close Harleys in a matter of minutes. Everybody who had a boat by Branch Oak Lake must have put it in the water. Corn-fed Corn-huskers started hauling people out of the drink. Bryce waved to make sure they saw him. When a guy in a baseball cap in one of the boats waved back and gave him a thumbs-up, he knew rescue was only a matter of time.