Eight feet separated Robert from Britta, most of it fairly clear of deep underbrush. He looked carefully at one of the cans hanging in front. There was something—perhaps a shadow—at the bottom. As he looked, the picture coalesced.
Oh, God, the bottom is protruding! The retention line at the bottom of the can must be gone. That one could drop at any second.
He ran his eyes over the other cans he could see. On all the others, a small-gauge piece of fishing line was still in place, giving each grenade something to rest on, but each line was now taut and running off into the underbrush, waiting to be yanked away. If he so much as touched one the wrong way …
“All right, Britta, I need for you to actually hold one of those things in its can. Now, very carefully and very slowly, move your right hand up an inch at a time until you’re touching the bottom of the can that’s hanging on your stomach. Cup your hand around the bottom and make sure the grenade stays in.”
“Okay,” Britta said, trying to stay in control. Slowly, gingerly, she did as directed until her shaking hand had secured the errant grenade.
“Well done, Britta! That’s one down. When I get to you, I’ll get the others.”
There was more chattering from the left as a small race broke out among the three monkeys. They dashed along the pathway left to right in front of Britta and clambered up an adjacent tree.
“Damn things!” Dan said. “They taste terrible, too.”
“I don’t really want to know,” Britta said. “I’ve sort of lost my appetite.”
The distant sound of a helicopter reached their ears, the chillingly familiar whump-whump sound rising slowly in volume.
“Ignore that chopper, Britta,” Robert ordered. He stopped, his foot in midair, feeling an obstruction. He looked closely, seeing only a vine, and pushed his foot past it to the ground. “Just a little bit more, Britta,” he said as confidently as he could manage. “And then I can start pulling them away.”
As Robert continued to move in slow motion toward her, Britta’s eyes fixed on Dan. Dallas had come up quietly behind him.
“Dallas?” Britta said. “Are you there?”
“I sure am, Britta,” she replied, causing Dan to jump slightly.
“I thought I told you to stay back?” Dan hissed at her.
“Sh-h-h!” Dallas told him.
“Dallas, would you do something for me?” Britta asked.
“Sure will, Honey.”
“If … something happens, could you take a message to my daughter, Carly?”
“Of course I will, Britta, but you’re gonna be able to do it yourself.”
Britta’s face was glistening with tears. She bit her lip. “I hope so! But … I’ve got these things all over me. Down my back, between my breasts, on my shoulder … there’s even one between my legs. Oh, God!” Her body was shaking visibly.
“Britta!” Robert said. “Calm down! You’re going to be fine. No defeatist thinking, okay? But you’ve got to be still.”
“I don’t want to die this way,” Britta said in a small, strained voice. “But I think you’d better get back, Robert. I’m too tangled up.”
“Bull! I’m getting you out of there. We’ve just got to do it methodically.”
Robert worked on planning his next step forward as Britta shut her eyes, holding still for a few moments until a sudden gasp racked her body.
“Dallas … if I’m … gone, tell Carly … her mother loved her endlessly.”
“Britta—” Dallas began, but Britta stopped her. “No!” she said, her voice tremulous but insistent. “Tell—tell her I love her, and … I’m proud of the strong young woman she’s become … and …” There was a choked sob and a shudder through her body that alarmed Robert.
“Britta! Please stay still! Please!”
“And tell her I’m so … very sorry”—she was trying to keep from moving but the sobs were racking her body—“we had so little time. That was always my fault.”
Dallas had to fight back a growing lump in her throat to answer. “Britta, it’s gonna work, Honey. Hang in there. Robert’s gonna get you out.”
Britta was shaking her head slightly. “No. No, he’s not. Robert, get out of here. I feel one slipping down my back. Please! Go.”
“Britta, stop that!” Robert ordered.
“This isn’t going to work, Robert, and I don’t want to take any of you with me. I can feel it slipping.”
“If one slips out, I can throw it far enough away. Calm down.”
A sudden round of chattering and screeching broke out from the three monkeys on the right, sending chills down Robert’s back. He struggled to ignore the primates as they jumped back to the floor of the trail without warning and scampered off into the brush at high speed, one of them running headlong into a thirty-year old cord now stretched taut across the trail from Britta’s collision with the daisy chain.
Robert glanced to the right, sensing the sudden motion. He was helpless to stop the movement as the monkey’s impact yanked the aging release lines from the bottom of each can, leaving the six heavy objects inside free to thud onto the trail at Britta’s feet.
There was an endless second of stunned silence before Britta’s voice cut through the moment, surprisingly strong. “Run, Robert! Don’t argue. Run!”
“Hell NO!” he replied. Time seemed to dilate as his mind raced through the possibilities. He could dive for the grenades and scoop up a few, but how many? Four? Five? Could he find them all in time? Could he heave six away in time? No! Get her out! If he could yank her away from the cords …
“BRITTA!” Dallas yelled. “PULL YOURSELF LOOSE AND RUN THIS WAY!”
Robert crouched to spring toward Britta, but Dallas had already leaped across the path and grabbed his collar with surprising force, yanking him backward. Britta shook off her stupor and started fighting to disentangle herself, thrashing and pulling against the cords. She lunged almost two feet away, but one of the lines around her waist was anchored to a tree. She turned to wrench it loose without success, acutely aware that the seconds were passing.
“NO!” Robert yelled helplessly as he fell backward in Dallas’s grip, furiously trying to break away from her as she dragged him over the top of a large log and fought his efforts to break away. Robert could still see Britta across the path. She was giving up! Turning and shaking her head and mouthing the word “go” at him.
One more time she tried to pull loose, tears streaming down her face. He saw her shake her head finally and stand, her shoulders slumping. She turned toward them and calmly closed her eyes, taking a deep breath before lowering her head.
“KEEP TRYING, BRITTA! TRY!” Dallas’s voice was a shriek in his ear, but it was too late.
“LET GO OF ME!” Robert yelled.
“DOWN, DAMN YOU!” Dallas snarled, jerking him behind the log into the moist dirt and falling on top of him at the very moment the first trigger completed its deadly work.
The thunderous impact of six simultaneous explosions fifteen feet away rocked the jungle as it sprayed shrapnel and vegetation and Britta just inches over their heads, the blast dissipating before reaching the others.
Robert angrily shoved Dallas off him and scrambled to his feet, tears in his eyes, his mind disoriented as he stumbled toward the scorched spot where Britta had stood. He couldn’t believe she was really dead, but everywhere he looked, his eyes confirmed it in gruesome detail.
“GOD DAMN YOU, DALLAS!” His voice, a guttural cry through gritted teeth, partially covered the sounds of someone running through the brush.
Steve skidded to a halt by Dallas, his eyes looking at the torn and ravaged portion of the trail where Britta had been. “Oh God! Where is she?” he asked, his voice shaking.
“Steve,” Dallas said, trying to put her arm around him. Steve pushed her away and stepped forward, his eyes scanning frantically to the right and left, trying to find an explanation for the explosion that would still leave her alive. Instead, his eyes fell to the spot where she
had stood and slowly focused on the shredded pieces of flesh and bone, and one identifiable portion of a foot.
Steve leaned past Dallas and began throwing up violently. Dallas held him, tears coursing down her cheeks as she tried to comfort both of them.
“It’s okay, Honey. It’s okay. It’s okay.”
chapter 24
MERIDIAN 5 CRASH SITE,
12 MILES NORTHWEST OF DA NANG, VIETNAM
NOVEMBER 13—DAY TWO
3:30 P.M. LOCAL/0830 ZULU
It was too much to absorb in a single pass.
Kat Bronsky rubbed her eyes and asked the helicopter pilot to circle the perimeter of the wreckage a second time. What had appeared at first as a dark gash in the midst of a verdant jungle had grown rapidly as they approached, becoming an ugly expanse of blackened vegetation, coalescing into a gut-wrenching killing field of twisted aluminum, shredded seats, and human bodies.
The Vietnamese Air Force major nodded and banked the craft to one side.
“My God!” Kat said to herself, the contrast of clear blue skies overhead and total destruction below an upheaval in her mind. She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to find the government interpreter she’d been assigned leaning in her direction.
“I’m sorry, Agent Bronsky. I did not hear you.”
What was his name? Kat asked herself, remembering at the same moment. Phu Minh. That’s right. And his western name is Pete.
She shook her head. “I was just talking to myself, Pete.” She looked back at the wreckage and gestured toward it. “I just can’t believe this.” Her stomach was hovering on the edge of nausea.
The helicopter flew slowly over the narrow point of first impact and the broad swath of destruction plowed by the disintegrating jumbo jet to the final resting place of the upper deck and cockpit area. It was twisted and shattered but recognizable, as it sat in a natural clearing over a mile distant from the point where the jungle first snagged the wings of the huge Boeing.
She snapped several pictures, knowing they could never transmit the full effect of the horror laid out before her in three dimensions. Once again she tried to put out of her mind the prospect of seeing Robert MacCabe’s body.
“Again?” the pilot asked in English.
Kat shook her head no and motioned toward the area around the forward section of the jumbo where a small group of men was waiting. She watched the pilot set the Huey on the ground with effortless precision, remembering the two hours of dual instruction she’d had in a much smaller helicopter back home. The memory was a momentary escape from the carnage spread out before her.
The on-scene commander was a Vietnamese colonel with an ashen face who met her at the door of the Huey.
Kat greeted him and stepped out, gesturing to the wreckage. “Did … did anyone survive?”
She felt herself go cold when he shook his head no.
“No one alive here,” he said. “I am waiting for our aviation ministry from Hanoi. I understand you are from the American accident agency?”
She nodded. “Technically, Colonel, I’m a special agent with the FBI, but I’m here to take a first look while all the other investigators are on the way.”
“You will not … disturb anything?”
“Of course not.”
“Please tell me if we can help.”
“Just let me walk around and get a feel for this accident,” Kat said.
The colonel nodded and turned away.
Kat walked quickly toward the main wreckage of the 747’s upper deck, the only large part still discernible. She climbed carefully over the sharp, ragged sides and stepped into the main aisle of the first-class upper-deck cabin. She felt suddenly light-headed as she spotted her seat.
She moved carefully toward it, then stopped in shock. The window seat where MacCabe had been sitting was completely intact and devoid of blood stains. The aisle seat where she would have been sitting was a different story. The seat itself was intact, but a jagged piece of aluminum had been propelled through the seat back. It would have passed through her chest.
My God! Kat said to herself. There’s no question. I would be dead now.
She shook herself back to the present and looked around. MacCabe’s body was nowhere to be seen.
So where is he?
The break in the cabin was behind the fourth row of seats, and Kat searched carefully both inside and behind the wreckage. Anyone back there would be gone, but anyone strapped in up here might have survived. The impact forces were obviously low.
There was a torn sheet of black plastic draped over one side of the wreckage where the left side windows had been. Kat moved carefully toward it. All her work as a police intern during college years had left her hardened to the ravaged bodies accidents could produce. She braced for the worst, her memory replaying some of the more gruesome things she had seen: indelible images of small aircraft victims, auto accident victims, suicides involving twelve-gauge shotguns, and one woman who chose to dive through a ten-story window, reducing herself to a mound of drained, gelatinous flesh on the concrete below.
Kat pulled the plastic back, somehow expecting to find Robert MacCabe, but there was no body beneath it. Instead, copious amounts of blood and some human tissue were embedded in the razor-sharp metal. They must have already started removing the bodies. That’s the only reasonable explanation.
Professionally, the thought was worrisome. The NTSB couldn’t control an investigation of a crash in a foreign nation, but they could provide expert professional advice, including the universal recommendation that bodies and wreckage be left wholly untouched until a preliminary examination had been completed. Nations unsophisticated in accident investigation often let bodies and wreckage be moved far too early, obscuring major clues, and sometimes hiding the true causes of the crash.
She replaced the plastic sheet and began moving carefully around the tortured floor of the upper deck, looking for clues. There was a general lack of blood on all but one of the passenger seats. Even in the cockpit, the only sign of severe body impact was around the forward windscreen, and that victim—a man in civilian clothes—was still draped over the center throttle console, his neck obviously snapped. The copilot’s body, however, was nowhere to be found.
Wait a minute. A blinded copilot would have had others in this cockpit, not just the one guy on the glareshield. So where are the rest of them? There was no blood on either of the pilot seats or the two observer seats, even though all of them had been partially dislodged from the buckled cockpit floor.
Kat snapped a series of pictures before finding the small sleeping compartment behind the cockpit. The captain’s body was crammed against the forward bulkhead of the compartment, but without major wounds. She reached past the buckled wall and turned him over. He appeared uninjured, though as she looked more closely at his face, there was something about his eyes—his pupils—that looked very odd. It was as if he had cataracts in each eye. Probably related to the explosion, Kat thought. It must have been terribly intense. We desperately need an ophthalmologist on the autopsy. She took note of the torn uniform shirt and several marks on his chest. CPR, I’ll bet.
Kat emerged from the cockpit and moved back through the truncated upper deck before climbing down. She glanced at the ground she had stepped on, noticing the unusual number of footprints emanating from the wreckage of the upper deck where stepping to the ground was the easiest. The ground was muddy, and many of the footprints were deep. A few led back toward the main debris field, but several people had moved around to the west and the north, heading into the jungle.
Kat knelt to read the prints more closely. Two were clearly women’s pumps, the small heel unmistakable confirmation that a woman had stepped from the wreckage. And a third, even smaller woman’s heel led off in a different direction.
Kat walked to the Vietnamese commander as her interpreter rushed over. “Colonel, have there been any other women up here on the rescue force?”
The colonel frowned and shook h
is head. “Only men.”
“One more question, please,” Kat replied. “Have any bodies been removed from the forward section?”
“No. None. May I ask why?”
Kat pursed her lips and nodded. “I’m wondering where the rest of the flight crew and the passengers in the upper deck are.”
The colonel frowned again. “I do not know. This is how we found it several hours ago.”
Kat returned rapidly to the same spot, making mental note of the number of different shoes impressed into the muddy soil along with several sets of men’s footprints moving toward the west, one of them walking backward, the prints deep enough to indicate something heavy was being carried.
She spotted something else in a small puddle alongside the prints and knelt down with a stick, poking at the substance.
Blood! Lots of it. Someone was carrying a body, and it was bleeding out.
Kat reentered the wreckage of the upper deck and sat in one of the intact passenger seats.
Okay, what went on here? There should have been survivors up here. Were there? Did Robert make it?
She remembered her question to Jake about the Global Express. The Company had said nothing about NROs seeing evidence that the Global Express was shadowing the 747, but had they been? Could they have reached the crash site first?
The footprints told a tale. At least three females must have survived, and several males. But where were they?
Kat got to her feet and looked back to the east, toward Da Nang. If I found myself alive and knew there was a city back there, would I walk out?
Kat moved to the black plastic sheet and looked underneath. Someone impacted this spot at substantial speed. She could read the bent metal now: The crushed beams held a completely different damage pattern than the rest of the wreckage. Is there a way a body could have catapulted here in the crash?
Something shiny was visible at the corner of one piece of bent aluminum. Kat had to crawl up to get to it, reaching carefully into the tangle and moving aside a piece of human tissue to retrieve it. She stood up again and looked at what was unmistakably a woman’s pierced earring.
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