Day Zero

by Marc Cameron

  The plane shuddered again, as if to punctuate his fears. McBott’s voice came across the intercom.

  “We just lost number four,” he said.

  “Dammit!” Szymanski felt the airplane slow noticeably at the sudden loss of power. “Restart procedures,” he said.

  “Roger that,” McBott said. “Doing it now.” His voice was strained as if he were keeping the plane in the air by sheer force of will.

  The captain pulled back on the controls to raise the nose slightly. Satisfied he’d slowed their descent rate enough to keep from ripping the wings off, he flipped the switch from intercom to radio.

  “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday,” he said, issuing his first emergency message roughly fifty seconds after the explosion. “Global 105 heavy—”

  A second bang rattled the airplane, interrupting his transmission. A horrific clattering noise on the port side followed immediately on its heels.

  “We’ve lost number three as well,” McBott said, already running through the restart procedure.

  The Airbus yawed dramatically to the left as the working engines on the right wing shoved her around. It took a moment for the computers to catch up and adjust the rudder and ailerons to compensate for the asymmetrical thrust. Szymanski checked his descent, leveling off at fifteen thousand feet, knowing he might need the extra altitude to make it to a runway now that he was crabbing along on two engines. It wasn’t pretty, but they were still flying—for the moment.

  Where there should have been the quiet roar of two powerful Rolls-Royce engines, there was only an eerie silence out the left side of the airplane. The smell of jet fuel permeated the cabin air, along with another odor that sent sweat running down Szymanski’s back and caused him to gag in his oxygen mask. It was the smell of burning flesh.

  “Okay,” the captain said. “I have the airplane. Get on the horn and see if you can get anyone from the crew to give us a report.”

  Juanita’s voice came across the interphone. She had to yell to be heard over the roar of wind. There was an incessant rattle in the background and Szymanski found himself wondering just how much of his airplane was falling off.

  “The bomb took a twelve-foot section of the fuselage from front bulkhead on the upper deck to about row 10,” she yelled. “A beverage cart and part of the floor went with it. I can see down to the main deck, but I’m strapped in so I’m not sure what the condition is.”

  “Injuries?” McBott said, looking across at the captain as they processed the idea that there was a gaping hole in the side of the plane.

  “Five passengers on the upper deck went out when the bomb went off. I’m not sure about the main deck. Andre was standing in the aisle . . .” As strong and businesslike as Juanita was, her voice faltered when she spoke of the death of one of her crew. “Captain, I think he got sucked into one of the engines.”

  The term was FOD. Foreign Object Debris—like birds or a human body—entering a jet engine could trash the heavy blades, rendering them instantaneously useless. But it was the beverage cart that frightened Szymanski the most. The heavy chunk of metal and cans of soda could do a number on the skin of his airplane. He couldn’t tell if the rip in its skin was making the plane shake so badly, or if it was something worse.

  “Juanita,” Szymanski said. “I need you to get where you can look out at the left wing and tell me what you see.”

  “Okay . . .”

  There was an unearthly silence on the interphone as Juanita went to do as he asked. For a time Szymanski was worried that she had been sucked out of the plane as well.

  “Captain.” She came back on when he’d just about given up hope. “I’m not sure, but I think I’m seeing some pretty significant cracks in the wings.”

  Szymanski fought the urge to punch something. “Take the pistol,” he said to McBott. “And go back and look for yourself. I hate to put this on you, but we’ve got a decision to make and we have to make it pretty damned fast. Do we keep flying until the wing falls off and have a hundred percent chance of killing every soul on board . . .”

  McBott nodded, finishing his sentence. “Or risk a water landing while we still have a wing.”

  “There’s no such thing as a water landing, son,” the captain said. “Only crashing into the ocean. The odds are better than crashing with one wing, but not by much.”

  Chapter 65

  Quinn stood with his hand on the back of an empty seat at mid cabin, panting, terrified that he couldn’t locate Mattie. Carly replaced the interphone at the bulkhead and gave Quinn a breathless nod. “She’s safe on the upper deck on the other side of the plane, buckled in with the air marshal across from the rear starboard exit. Natalie thought it best to get her out of the tail section.”

  “Thank you,” Quinn groaned. He’d gone to find Mattie as soon as they were at a low enough altitude to breathe without oxygen. Frantic when he’d not been able to find her, he circled back up the other aisle, making it all the way back to where he’d started.

  Nearer the water now, they were experiencing severe updrafts that tossed the plane around like a rag doll. Carly convinced Quinn to buckle up beside her for a moment in the aft-facing seat along the mid-cabin bulkhead, reminding him that he would be of no help to Mattie if he was injured trying to get back to her.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain.” Szymanski’s voice came across the loudspeaker, incredibly calm under the circumstances. “We’re about sixty miles from St. Paul Island, but as you know, we’ve lost both of the engines on our left side. Everyone put on your life vests, but do not inflate them. I repeat, do not inflate them. If we do experience a water landing, an inflated vest will make it difficult to exit the aircraft.... Take a moment to look over your safety cards. Find your exits and review the brace position. If we have to exit the aircraft, remember the slides are also rafts. Your crew are all professionals. Follow their lead. Remember to assist your neighbor. I’ll do my best to get us down safely. And finally, if you are the praying sort, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings if you prayed us to St. Paul Island.”

  Quinn ignored the bumps and sprang to his feet. He would get to Mattie if he had to crawl.

  Carly seemed to understand. She nodded as she took the handset off the wall and interpreted the captain’s message in Russian. Another crew member did the same in Mandarin as Quinn hurried toward the stairs.

  Even amid the rattling bumps, a silent calm spread over the airplane as people contemplated their last few minutes of life. Some chatted with their seatmates; some held hands with people they’d only met a few hours before. Quinn passed a man who was scratching out a hasty note to his family. Others were doing the same up and down the rows.

  The tail section took the worst of the bumping and threw Quinn around like he was on a carnival ride. He grabbed the handrail to steady himself as he bounded up the stairs, past the lifeless body of Professor Foulger.

  The shaking on the upper deck seemed worse than below and Quinn staggered like a drunken man as he worked his way forward. He could see Mattie sitting beside Madonna Foss in the rear-facing crew seats at mid cabin. Farther forward, just past the bulkhead, and less than ten feet from Mattie, another man was on his feet and moving down the aisle. Quinn recognized him immediately as being with the woman Mattie had befriended—probably her husband, and part of the bombing plot. Quinn picked up his pace, screaming a warning to the air marshal.

  Before she could react, the captain’s voice blared across the speaker.

  “Brace for impact. . . .”

  A crew member shoved the Chinese man into an empty row, out of sight behind the bulkhead. Still a third of the plane away, Quinn knew he’d never make it to Mattie before they hit the Bering. He could see water out the window, blue-green and endless. Wearing a bright yellow life vest, Mattie bent forward at the waist, head down. She wasn’t crying, but intently focused on doing everything by the book, as if she were in the middle of a drill. Quinn wondered if she knew he was near. Beside her, Natalie, the flight atten
dant and grandmother, shouted to those around her, “Get down and stay down!”

  The turbulence stopped and the plane seemed to slow, floating like a kite before Captain Szymanski’s voice came on again, still calm as if he was welcoming them on board for the first time.

  “Brace, brace, brace . . .”

  Chapter 66

  Two minutes earlier

  Rob Szymanski took a deep breath and told himself to keep flying the airplane, no matter how terrified he was. A large crack had formed in the left wing. There was no way they were making it to St. Paul Island. If there’d been rough seas, he would have chanced it, but the great air traffic controller in the sky had seen to calm this little stretch of the Bering Sea to little more than a chop with long rollers that he hoped were spaced far enough apart that they didn’t cartwheel the airplane. If Szymanski timed things correctly, he might be able to slow down enough to save a passenger or two.

  Mick Bott covered his set of controls as a safety measure, but left the flying to the captain.

  Szymanski eased back on the throttle, keeping the nose up as he neared the water. “You ever hear that death was nature’s way of telling you to watch your airspeed ?”

  “I have heard that,” McBott said. “Looking good, Captain.” The first officer’s voice was hushed, almost reverent. If he was afraid of dying, he didn’t show it. “Airspeed is at one-eight-zero knots.”

  Szymanski kept the plane above the waves, taking advantage of ground-effect as he reduced the power a fraction at a time. Green water stretched out in front of him as far as he could see.

  “There are three rules to a water landing,” he said, dropping the tail. “Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”

  Twenty feet off the deck, Szymanski gave the command to brace.

  Chapter 67

  Maryland

  Emiko Miyagi walked up to stand beside Garcia, giving Bowen a slight bow of her head. “Hello, deputy,” she said before looking at the others. “Are we ready?”

  Bowen could see the hilt of a short sword hanging upside down under her left arm, hidden by the white leather jacket. He’d seen some strange things, but a sword in suburban Maryland—Bowen shook his head in disbelief.

  “Garcia told me you’d been killed in Pakistan,” he said.

  “That is not the case,” Miyagi said. She tilted her head so the hair fell away from her neck. It was shorter than he remembered it from when he’d met her in Japan, barely covering what looked like a bad sunburn that ran from her right ear to disappear below the collar of her polo shirt. “I was able to jump into a well only moments before the missile’s impact. Thankfully, all the brave men from the village ran for the hills at the first sign of attack. I remained underwater long enough for the drones that targeted me to move on, and then slipped away into the mountains before the men returned. Most people believe I am dead.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re not.” Thibodaux shrugged big shoulders.

  Miyagi’s lips perked into the slightest of smiles. “We will see about that, Jacques san,” she said.

  Bowen’s phone began to buzz. It was Joey Benavides.

  “Showtime,” Bowen said. “Joey’s not on board any of the vehicles.”

  “That’s a damn shame,” Thibodaux said, starting the truck.

  The assault worked as smoothly as Jacques had predicted. Staff Sergeant Guttman guided in his Camcopter drone from the tree line, using both LMMs to reduce the lead and follow SUVs to molten metal. North and southbound traffic along the Rockville Pike was effectively blocked by the two walls of fire, allowing Jacques to plow into the front fender of the Suburban carrying Ross and drive it into the curb.

  The two ID agents that bailed out of the passenger side of the vehicle were met by a very angry Japanese woman with a flashing blade. She cut them down before they could bring their own weapons to bear. Guttman sent the Camcopter diving toward the driver’s head, giving Thibodaux time to jump out of the concrete truck and finish him off with the short shotgun.

  Bowen brought the Charger to a screeching stop between the two boiling fires. Garcia had the back door of the Suburban open a moment later. She dragged an unconscious Ross, dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, back into his vehicle almost before he could throw it in park.

  She beat her hand on his headrest before the door was even shut.

  “Go, go, go!”

  Bowen put the Charger in reverse, backing off Rockville Pike onto the residential street to the west, before whipping the wheel into a quick “bootlegger’s” turn so he was facing the other direction.

  “Maldita sea!” Garcia spat in the backseat. “I was sure hoping Walter would be in that Suburban.”

  The entire grab had taken less than forty seconds.

  Chapter 68

  Flight 105

  Quinn made it to an empty seat, halfway to Mattie before the captain’s command to brace. His lap belt clicked into place a fraction of a second before the Airbus’s tail touched the water. A frail-looking woman beside him leaned against the seat in front of her. A quiet prayer in Russian buzzed against her crossed arms.

  A collective groan rose up from the plane and the passengers as spray flew past the windows. The aircraft wallowed in the water, nose still up, metal screaming as the icy waters of the Bering Sea tried their best to rip her apart. The captain did an incredible job of keeping the huge Rolls-Royce engines that dangled from each wing up and out of the water until the last possible second. Even so, they were sliding through the water at nearly a hundred miles an hour when the plane seemed to slump. Thankfully, Szymanski had continued to work the controls, even after he’d hit the water, and the engines on both sides impacted at roughly the same time, ripping them off, but keeping the plane from flipping one way or the other.

  Quinn felt as if his head and shoulders were being ripped from his body. A giant fist punched him in the belly as he was thrown against the lap belt with more force than he’d ever thought possible. He thought of Mattie and said a quick prayer of thanks that she was in one of the crew seats, and facing aft, her back to the bulkhead. He didn’t think her little body could stand being thrown against the belt like that.

  The plane continued to shudder and groan as it bled off speed, turning now as the left wing dug into the water and yanked them sideways.

  The impact had damaged the support structure of the second deck and it now canted sideways, threatening to fall and crush the passengers below. Cries rose up from the main deck as the plane slowed and settled into the water, wallowing with the waves. The smell of burning electronics and urine drifted through the air.

  Quinn looked up to see Mattie slouching forward against her belt. At first, Quinn thought she was unconscious. He nearly wept when he saw her lift her head. Screams and the sound of rushing water from below filled his ears.

  Amazingly, the intercom still functioned and the captain’s voice came across, shaken but still in control, giving the order to evacuate at all available exits.

  Quinn was up and running before most passengers had even raised their heads. The Chinese man was up as well, and stepped around the bulkhead to pick up a shaken Mattie.

  In the confusion of an evacuation, Natalie focused on opening the emergency door and deploying the inflatable stairs that would act as a life raft.

  Foss saw the threat and grabbed for the man as he went by, but her shoulder had been knocked out of its socket in the crash. Along with her broken arm, it was impossible to defend herself against the man’s elbow to her nose as he plowed toward the now open exit with Mattie in his arms.

  Whatever the man’s reasoning, he appeared intent on taking Mattie out of the plane with him. Others might think he was trying to help her evacuate, but Quinn could see the hate boiling in the man’s eyes. Over his shoulder like a duffel bag, Mattie kicked and screamed to get away. Her eyes caught Quinn’s as the man shoved his way past the other passengers gathering to evacuate and prepared to jump with the little girl in his arms.

 
Quinn slammed into him as he hit the slide, wrapping his legs around the man’s waist and grabbing his head like a basketball as they all three bounced and tumbled down the slide toward the water. Whatever the man’s intentions, he was no match for a father with Jericho’s skill set, determined to save the little girl he’d abandoned one too many times. Half falling, half bouncing, Quinn sank both his thumbs into the man’s eyes, ripping and tearing until he scraped bone.

  The man screamed in agony, trying desperately to use Mattie as a shield as they hit the raft at the bottom of the slide and plowed over the side, still in a clinch, into the freezing water of the Bering Sea.

  Shocked by the sudden onslaught of cold, the Chinese man tried to get away, but Quinn held fast, trapping Mattie between their two bodies. He took a deep breath an instant before they sank beneath the surface. Surrounded by green water, Quinn felt Mattie squirm in his arms. Fearful she’d taken a lungful of water, he pushed away with both thumbs, tearing her from the man’s weakening grasp. Heart in his throat, he kicked toward the surface.

  Madonna Foss was leaning over the raft when he came up, her nose dripping blood, but reaching for Mattie with her good arm. Her fingers wrapped around Mattie’s shirt collar and she fell backwards, sloshing into the raft and the other passengers.

  Quinn turned immediately, unsure if he’d see another attack. It was pointless. Lin’s husband had surely sucked in a lungful of water when they’d hit the surface.

  “He never came up,” Foss shouted, extending her hand again.

  “Mattie?” Quinn shouted, feeling his muscles begin to seize from shock and the chill.

  “She swallowed some seawater,” Foss said, “but she’ll be fine when we get her warm.” She reached for Quinn, assisted by a large man with the fierce eyebrows of a Cossack.