“Speed’s one hundred knots.”
Delaney’s concentration was total. This was nothing like the countless flights he’d done for the Berlin Air-lift, where planes were stacked up four and five high waiting for landing instructions. This was a one-time thing: land her safely or crash. There was no third option.
In the clear air, the ground came up deceptively fast. He held her aloft for a moment longer, then felt pressure against the yoke as though a weight had been forced against Winger’s column. He turned and saw his copilot slumped forward in his seat, his stiffened arms pushing on his wheel. Winger spasmed, throwing himself back again. Droplets of blood from his nose and eyes splattered the inside of the cockpit. A scream came out as a gurgling cry. More blood fountained from his lips. Delaney guessed that it was the effects of the smoke inhalation. Fortunately he hadn’t gotten it as strongly as his two crewmen.
There was no time to help. Delaney focused his vision on the landing just as the fully loaded plane hit the ice. With a rending scrape, her belly smashed into the ground. Delaney was instantly blinded by a fury of ice particles and snow. He felt the props on the two working engines tear into the surface and then shatter, the huge blades breaking off, one sounding like it had scythed through the aluminum skin of the payload area.
The engine drone was replaced by the sound of the plane being ripped apart by the ice. Every jarring crash into a ridge slammed Delaney against his seat restraints until his shoulders felt broken. It went on and on. The airspeed indicator had barely dipped below one hundred knots. It wasn’t possible, Delaney thought. They should have been slowing.
His view was completely whited out. He had no references, nothing to judge their position or progress. But it seemed that the plane was turning to the right, toward the mountains. The shaking vibrations continued unabated, the airframe shuddering. Delaney’s head pounded with the strain of trying to see what was happening. He kept his hands away from the control yoke, but his feet remained on the rudder pedals. Now he was sure the plane was turning to the right, so he applied left rudder, hoping to straighten them out to avoid the rocky projections that fronted the mountains. When he felt he had corrected the skid, he released the rudder and prayed he was right.
Blinded by the maelstrom of snow blowing around the hurtling aircraft, Delaney couldn’t have known how wrong his perception had been. The plane had been following a straight line until he hit the rudder pedal. The pilot’s actions turned the Stratofreighter, and now she was traveling toward a gentle hill that rose out of the ice. The plane hit it and climbed up to its crest. The low friction between aircraft and ice had not reduced her speed enough and for a moment they became airborne again.
Lifting off the surface, the plane flew out of the snow it had kicked up. Delaney screamed, seeing they were headed for the rocks. The C-97 hit the ground a second time, more violently than the first. The ice here wasn’t level. It sloped down toward the mountains, riding up and over hills that aeons of glaciation had worn down. Incredibly, the plane picked up speed like a toboggan. Delaney’s vision was obscured once again, and for this, he was thankful. There was nothing he could do.
The aircraft hit an outcrop of rock. The crash twisted it on its axis so that the port wing led its headlong rush. Momentum tilted the plane until the wing hit the ice and gouged a furrow into it, throwing off tons of material like a snowplow. This was the drag the plane needed to slow, and when the wing finally snapped near its tip, it was moving at no more than thirty knots. Another impact with a rock scrubbed off more speed and Delaney felt that they would make it.
Several windows had shattered and snow blew into the cockpit on a shrieking wind. Delaney’s face was scoured as though hit by a sandblaster. Even numbed, he knew he was bleeding. The C-97 stopped suddenly when her nose dug into a snowbank on the leeward edge of a foothill. Avalanches of snow poured through the broken windows, piling into the cockpit until Delaney’s legs were buried. But he was alive.
At first everything felt silent and still. He sat there, his labored breathing producing billows of condensation like cigarette smoke. But he could not hear it or feel it. Everything just felt calm as his terror subsided into immeasurable relief. And with relief came pride. Not one in twenty pilots could have pulled that off. Not one in fifty.
Only then did he become aware of the wind howling outside and the volleys of ice that raked the fuselage like machine gun fire. He wiped his cheeks, and his hands came away covered with blood. He felt no pain — he was too numb for that — but it reminded him of Winger. In his seat, the copilot was dead, his eyes wide and sightless. The blood on his face had turned into a frozen mask.
“Tom?” Delaney called to the navigator behind him. “Tom, are you okay?”
There was no response. His crew was dead. The veteran pilot couldn’t allow himself grief just yet. He knew that if he didn’t act soon, he’d be joining his men. First, he had to dig himself out of the cockpit. So much snow had blown through the windows that he couldn’t move his legs more than a fraction of an inch, and even that took all his strength. He felt weak, weaker than he should have. Delaney wanted to close his eyes and rest for just a minute.
A particularly loud fusillade of ice pummeling the aircraft roused him even as his eyelids drooped. Once he was free of the flight deck, Delaney was sure he’d be all right. Loaded onto the Stratofreighter were thirty tons of supplies destined for Thule, including fuel, food, survival clothing, and other Arctic gear — everything he would need to survive on the ice until rescue came.
Of that he was supremely confident. They would be searching for him within hours of his overdue arrival at the base. He could use the plane as a base until then, warm and with his belly full. It was only a matter of time, a few days, maybe a week at the most. But they would find him.
If only his head didn’t ache so much. If only he could stop the nosebleed that continued to pour coppery fluid into his mouth…
VIENNA, AUSTRIA THE PRESENT
When the weather was nice, the old man and his little dachshund were a fixture along Karntnerstrasse. The trendy shopping street that passed next to the inner city’s celebrated Opera House was regularly jammed with gaping tourists and hustling locals, yet many of the shop owners recognized the shuffling man and his sausage-shaped dog. He had walked this route for years. Many called him Herr Doktor, though no one knew he truly deserved such a title. It did fit him, however. His eyes were bright despite his years and his voice was captivating and learned.
It was late July, and the air was warm and filled with the smells of pastry and traffic. The Doktor was affected by the pains of age, so he wore a thin jacket over his buttoned shirt and cardigan and a homburg on his head. In winter, Handel, his dachshund, sported a tartan sweater that made her look like a small piece of luggage, but today her sleek black fur glistened like anthracite.
He strode with a special purpose this morning and many who recognized him were surprised to see him walking so early. Usually he wouldn’t pass the wedding cake-like Baroque Staatsoper until ten or ten thirty. Handel seemed to sense his urgency and she trotted at his side obediently. Beyond the looming Finance Ministry building, the 444-foot spire of Stephansdom Cathedral shot into the air. The massive Gothic church with its mosaic-tiled roof was the symbol for Vienna the way Paris was defined by the Eiffel Tower.
Before reaching Johannesgasse, the old man guided his dog to the right, waiting at the curb for several red trams and a string of cars and trucks to thunder past. The exhaust of so many vehicles had darkened the lower floors of many of the buildings so that architectural details were lost under countless years of grime. In the warren of small streets near St. Anne’s Church, Handel began to get excited. She knew they were approaching their destination.