“She’s sluggish,” the captain said, “but still responding. I’m taking her on down to one zero thousand.”
His Air Force flight instructors had drilled into him the three most useless things to a pilot: altitude above you, the runway behind you, and fuel that was still on the ground. All of that was well and good until you were hurtling through the air in an aluminum tube with a hole in it — and that altitude was trying to kill everyone on board. Ten thousand feet would give him a couple of miles over the ocean to play with, but make the ride a hair less deadly.
“Flight level one zero thousand,” McBott repeated, his voice muffled by the oxygen mask. He shot a sideways glance at Szymanski. “St. Paul Island is still 141 miles off the nose,” he said.
“One-four-one,” the captain repeated. “Roger that.” Both men dispensed with any of their usual banter, not wanting to clutter up what they had to do with unnecessary words. And, Szymanski thought, depending on the size of the hole in his airplane, the odds were pretty high that their entire conversation would be played back off the flight data recorder after divers recovered it from the bottom of the ocean.
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.