Maggie had gone to the University of Bristol in Clifton and received her Bachelor’s of Education with an interest in childhood studies, and was hoping to go back sometime for her Master’s in Education. He had gone to Ohio University and gotten a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Business Administration.
They both liked classical music and American bluegrass; she liked British pop and he liked Dixieland jazz. Maggie mentioned her brother Charles, about four years older, married with a boy and two girls. Matt told her about his sister Martha, a few years younger, with six children and fifteen grandchildren.
During this time, a ding sounded, indicating they were below ten thousand feet. Followed by the inevitable directive to turn off the electronics listed on page fifty-seven of the flight magazine.
20
As soon as it had become obvious that AW94 was being jammed, JC Smalley had addressed the group again. “JC here. Is one of us in touch with Boston Tower? We’re getting their audio, but contact with them might be helpful for their radar feeds and any other actions they are aware of. Also, when does the previous flight arrive at Heathrow, the flight the Russians actually boarded? Should they be alerted?”
Silence. Then Dusty Mae Watt, Chicago special agent in charge, spoke up. “We’ll handle that here in Chicago. We’ll also have them contact the other flight if they haven’t landed yet, and they’ll be able to tell us about that flight.”
“Thanks. If AW94 meets up with the carrier, will we need the Air Force sorties?”
Captain Palova answered, “The F-18s are armed, whereas the carrier aircraft are strictly in training mode. It would take them too long to switch to combat mode, and the escort to London would take them away from their current mission. They would do the escort, though, if the F-18s didn’t show. As of right now, we don’t know if any protection will be needed.”
He did not seem too eager to commit military assets, JC thought.
Everyone in the VTC was transfixed by the events unfolding. Only three had military experience, and only one had seen combat. The actual dangers to the flight were unknown, although the jamming of their radio transmissions seemed to signal hostile intent. To those there, the dangers were very real and the suspense excruciating.
Bob McGee, Central Intelligence Agency and the newest member in the VTC, took the time to introduce himself while flight AW94 was performing its descent. “You may be wondering what department I’m representing. Just let it be CIA at present. Based on the little I heard from Phil, we may have some pertinent information for you, and as I listen to this meeting, I will know which folks to task. At any rate, I will be getting a brief together to share what we have.”
21
Time 16:40:19Z. Source AWA94. “JC, we’re at five thousand feet. No evidence of a carrier. Ask the Navy if it could be still in the water.”
Where else would it be, JC wondered.
Captain Palova, hearing the audio, answered before JC had a chance to respond. “Tell him it is probably moving so slowly you won’t see a wake until you’re closer. It needs a little movement for stability, so it is probably not still. The ship knows they’re coming and when it finds them on radar, it will contact them directly. What is their current location?”
It scrolled on his monitor as JC passed the information and request to Joel.
Time 16:42:04Z. Source AWA94. “Thirty five point three zero north, fifty two point four five west. No sight of other aircraft.”
Something didn’t look right to Captain Palova. With an urgency in his voice, he said, “JC, please scroll up to the coordinates you gave the aircraft.”
Jackie scrolled up.
Time 16:20:30Z. Source JC Smalley. “Matter of fact, the office just got a call on the location of the aircraft carrier. Hold on a sec. How close are you to, it looks like, thirty five point three north and fifty two point four west?”
Everyone could see on his monitor that Captain Palova blanched. “That’s what I gave you. That’s what I was given. I just called the ship to verify, and evidently, the numbers are backwards. The carrier is at 52.4 North and 35.3 West. That’s almost fourteen hundred miles away. I’m sorry.”
Jackie pressed the End button and the latest audio appeared.
Time 16:43:53Z. Source AWA94. “Below two thousand feet. All quiet.”
Time 16:44:07Z. Source JC Smalley. “Chuck, Joel, we were given the wrong coordinates for the carrier. It is not close to you.”
Time 16:44:33Z. Source AWA94. “Affirmative. We’ll cope. The Air Force will be along in what, ten minutes? Do they have our frequency?”
Time 16:45:02Z. Source JC Smalley. “Wait.”
“Captain Palova?”
“Hold on. I’m talking to STRATCOM direct. … Yes, have them use this.” He gave JC the frequency, which JC recognized as the standard for Air Force combat emergencies.
JC passed the information to Joel.
22
Time 16:45:58Z. Source AWA94. “Chuck the migs are back. Nine o’clock. Two.”
Time 16:46:07Z. Source AWA94. “Boston Tower, Air World flight ninety four.”
There was no response.
Time 16:46:21Z. Source AWA94. “Boston Tower, Air World flight ninety four. In the blind. Two migs, nine o’clock, two or three kilometers, closing fast.”
Time 16:46:35Z. Source AWA94. “JC, they’re splitting up. Odd underbellies. Can’t tell. Chuck is telling the passengers to brace.”
23
“That reminds me,” Maggie said, “you never told me about what happened to your son …”
“Todd. Todd and Gretchen. They were both thirty-seven. Rachel was five. She was named after her aunt, my daughter. The twins, Timmy and Ryan, were three.”
The intercom came back on. “We are about to experience major turbulence. The ride might get extremely rough, but please stay relaxed. Flight attendants, do a walk-through check and assume in-flight precaution positions. This shouldn’t last more than about five minutes.”
Matt guessed “in-flight precaution” was code for something much more serious.
“I’ll finish the story later. Do you think you could make a run for your seat up front?”
Maggie was scared. “No, I’d like to stay back here with you.”
Matt nodded. “Okay. Here, give me your hand.”
He took her free hand in his left and laid his right hand on Jenny’s head. Then he asked God to protect the crew and passengers, and especially Maggie, Jenny, and himself.
The pilot was right. It didn’t last more than five minutes. But everyone who heard him would have wished that it had.
24
Time 16:46:43Z. Source AWA94. “We are about to experience major turbulence. The ride might get extremely rough, but please stay relaxed. Flight attendants, do a walk through check and assume in flight precaution positions. This shouldn’t last more than about five minutes.”
Time 16:48:00Z. Source AWA94. Joel, let’s hope this is merely harassment.”
There was a thundering noise in the audio not captured by the scrolling text. The scrolling text also could not capture the excited alarm in Chuck’s voice.
Time 16:48:14Z. Source AWA94. “That’s not a six thirty, that’s a gah–.”
The audio stopped and the red light went out on JC’s radio at the same time.
It didn’t take JC two seconds to understand what just occurred. “Gentlemen, we have lost contact with Air World flight 94. Ladies, too—sorry. I’m afraid if we want more information, we will have to find the black box.”
25
Matt looked around, but couldn’t see more than a few faces. Those he saw showed concern and a little fear, but no panic. The flight attendants had disappeared out of his field of view. His seatmate in 21H was asleep. He checked the man’s seat belt; his seatmate was a good traveler and was still wearing it. The traveler in 21A pressed the button to lighten her window, affording a view of the outside world. Sunshine, blue sky, and a slight haze was all that was visible above them. Only 21
A was able to see what was below them, and she promptly fainted.
Matt turned to Maggie and offered the most comforting words he could think of. “Remember God’s promises, to you and to me.”
Suddenly they heard a high-pitched b-r-r-r-r-pt coming from outside the plane. Before their brains could interpret the sounds as a rapid-fire machine gun, the front of the aircraft was rocked by a series of loud explosions. More explosions seemed to be coming from underneath and behind them. 21H woke up, and three quarters of economy went into panic mode. The entertainment systems all went dark. Adela grabbed the intercom mic from her seat in the front of economy, but the whole communication system was dead. The machine-gun sounds stopped; they had lasted only about ten seconds.
The on-board air sensor system immediately dropped down the oxygen tubes and masks to each seat. Most of the passengers grabbed the masks as lifelines, and a few managed to don them properly. Maggie’s hands were occupied holding Jenny, so Matt made sure hers was on securely, then took his own and put it over Jenny’s face.
“Switch places with me,” he shouted over the screaming of the passengers. “I’ll go find one in another seat.”
They undid their seat belts, and Matt got into the aisle and started toward the front. The plane was dipping slightly to the right. Maggie had moved into 21E, but changed her mind, thinking she’d probably have more freedom of movement in the aisle seat, especially holding an infant. She glanced out the window as she started to sit, and saw flames and billowing black smoke blowing past. It’s the engine, she thought.
The plane abruptly lurched hard as the right wing dipped into the water, then leveled off as it lost much of its speed. Matt was thrown face down onto the floor. Maggie, still holding Jenny, was pitched out of the seat into the aisle. She too was heading to the floor face first, but caught an armrest on the way down. She ended up on her back with Jenny on her belly.
The explosions started happening again. Matt managed to turn himself around with his head facing toward the rear. He turned to look toward the front, and saw daylight in front of the business class section. He guessed the entire front of the plane was missing. A fire had broken out in business class; plastic was burning, especially near the oxygen masks. The passengers were mostly motionless, as if the air rushing in from the front had incapacitated them. Matt could see blood, and the back of an unoccupied seat had been blown off. He could tell that many in the first five or six rows were already dead from the shrapnel and debris.
Maggie had her arms around Jenny, who was crying loudly. She heard and felt the explosions happening in the cargo hold. It seemed there were a lot of explosions in the rear of the plane. Smoke was blowing strongly past her.
Suddenly the plane bounced, with a rapid deceleration. The front section of the plane had been torn loose by the explosions. It was still connected, but only at the bottom. The metal and cabling acted like a hinge; the whole nose was simply hanging down. The cargo section underneath was shredded. There were big gaping holes in the front, and the metal skin covering the rear half of the underbelly was completely gone. When the nose section made contact with the water, it jerked the whole plane and broke off.
Inside the plane, everyone still seat-belted snapped forward, either breaking their necks or knocking them out on the seatback in front of them or on the bulkheads. Matt felt his knees buckle against the bulkhead in the front of economy, and Maggie, with her legs caught in the aisle between the 20C and 20D seat supports, was held fast.
The bounce caused the rear end of the plane to flip into the air. The tail flaps forced the plane back into a level attitude, but it over-rotated, slapped the water, and bounced again. It soared straight up into the air, nosed over, and came crashing straight down into the water.
On the second bounce, Matt and Maggie were tossed into the air like rag dolls. As the Boeing Dreamliner dove down into the ocean, the water came hurtling through the cabin with the force of a firehose. It blew past Maggie, carrying her with it out through the missing tail section. The water drove through faster than the plane sank. It shot her into the air and she landed in the ocean. It all happened so fast she didn’t lose consciousness.
The water was cold, but the bigger shock was that she noticed her arms were empty. Where is Jenny? She screamed, and in a panic, started thrashing the water with her hands and arms. “Jenny! JENNY!” With much effort, she swiveled completely around. There was a small fire on the water a short distance away where the plane had gone in, and aside from some debris which looked like it was about to sink, Maggie was all alone.
26
There was a stunned silence as the rest of the VTC struggled to make sense of JC Smalley’s pronouncement. Only a few knew what had just happened. Kirby Drinkard, DHS, was not one of them. The last text from AW94 was frozen on the screen. “What do you mean? What was their last statement, about six-thirty? Was that a time?” she asked.
JC hesitated, then spoke carefully. “A combat-loaded MiG-23 or MiG-27 could have, as standard armament, a flex-mounted six-barrel thirty-millimeter machine gun known as a six-thirty. Did you hear the thunder in the background right at the end? The six-thirty could make that sound. It can fire up to one hundred rounds per second. But Chuck thought it was something different. It could have been an air-to-air missile or a different machine gun or something else. Evidently, he recognized it, but the radio was killed before he got the words out. Hopefully, the cable leading back to the black box was intact long enough.”
There were questions and exclamations from all the other monitors at once, then a pause, allowing Dusty Mae an opportunity to report her contact with Boston Tower. “Radar shows nothing in the area where they were reported to be, meaning any activity there had to happen within about five hundred feet of the surface. They showed AW94 suddenly disappearing a few minutes ago as it descended below radar detection. The only other aircraft they show are the two Air Force planes coming in from the northwest.”
Phil broke in, “Can we get a video and/or audio feed from these planes? Can we talk to them directly? Do they have the radio system JC is using?”
Captain Palova responded, “The military planes don’t have the same secure system. I can get a radio here to talk to them, so that should provide the audio feed. I’ll see if we can patch them in to the VTC. At worst, you’ll hear their transmissions through my monitor, and I might have to forward any of your questions to them, since continuous radio traffic with the VTC would keep them from other channels.”
The meeting had come to a standstill. No one had anything appropriate to contribute, and no one wanted to leave, to miss anything. A sense of morbid curiosity pervaded the assembly, like they were watching a boat going over Niagara Falls.
27
The water bypassed Matt at first, but coming around the bulkhead to the right, it pushed him into the stream behind Maggie and out through the tail section. As he was passing from the darkness of the cabin into the light of day, he became aware of an unnaturally dark purple strip preceding him through the hole. Extremely bright flashes on this strip resolved themselves into letters, then into words. Four words. He found himself in the ocean, about four feet underwater, before he figured out which way was up. By the time he broke the surface, the plane was gone.
Matt didn’t have any trouble finding Maggie; her voice gave away her location. “Jenny! JENNY! Where are you?! God, you should have taken me and not her! Jenny! I’ll find you! Come back!” Screaming, panic stricken, unable to keep her head completely out of the water, she was swallowing too much salty brine, and coughing.
Matt swam to her quickly. “It’s Matt!” he shouted. He could tell she was nearly exhausted. The salt water was providing some extra buoyancy, but not enough for the condition she was in. “Maggie! I’m with you! Give me your hand!”
“Matt!” she screamed, “I can’t swim! I lost Jenny! I was holding her and all of a sudden she was gone! I can’t find her!”
Treading water, he reached out his hand. She grabbe
d his right arm with her left, then grabbed his shoulder with her free hand and tried to climb up on top of him to get a better look. They both went under. Maggie instinctively let go. Matt turned her around and grabbed the collar of her vest. He brought them both up to the surface, but Maggie, still in a panic and suddenly feeling her movements restricted, broke free by swinging her arms wildly. He grabbed her collar again and she was quiet for a moment, breathing heavily.
A sudden frenzy in the water below got their attention. A large silvery object was hurtling upwards toward them. Shark!
She screamed again and tried to get out of its path. Before she could move, it broke the surface about six feet away.
It was the tail cone section. Because of its aerodynamic shape, it was being driven upwards with great speed by a large bubble of air below it. It exited the water and flipped over. They could see it was about four feet in diameter and about two feet of its height was above the surface of the water. The metal rim of the tail cone, where it had been ripped from the plane, had sharp, jagged edges interspersed with holes from the exploding bullets. The end of the cone, which was submerged, had a hole in it which was causing the cone to fill with water.
In her panic, Maggie looked at the object as a platform to get a better look at her surroundings. “Let me go! I want to climb on that to see if I can see Jenny.”
“No! It’s very sharp and it’s sinking! You’ll cut your hand to shreds and it will suck you under when it goes down!”
She fought him, but he held on. The tail cone was very close to them. Suddenly, just for an instant, Maggie felt a calm and a peace that all would be well. Then panic took over again and she broke free of Matt, to try to climb on the tail cone. Instead, she sank again, swallowing more water and choking. The tail cone section sank with her. Matt pulled her up again by the collar of her vest.
The Wreck Emerged Page 6
