His thoughts were cut short as an explosion rocked the plane. They had lost another engine.
“That’s not good,” Faraday muttered into the quiet. He could hear the wind beating at the metal skin of the plane, a noise that was usually hidden by the roar of the engines.
“Hold on tight, boys,” announced the pilot, the shrill tone of his voice showing that he was trying to hide his own fear. What scared Faraday even more than the shudder of the plane was the alarmed tone of the pilot’s voice. Normally there wasn’t much that rattled the pilot. “We’re going down!”
“Brace for crash landing!” Faraday shouted into the intercom as the pilot struggled with the controls. He grabbed at his seat belt and made sure it was as tight as possible, then braced himself. They had practiced crash procedures what seemed like a million times, so he did this automatically. But somehow it still didn’t feel real.
Their only bit of luck was that Okie had spotted land. Without a chart in front of them, it was hard to say where the land was, but any version of terra firma was better than the ocean, where they might drift for days in a tiny rubber life raft. While the plane still had some power, Okie got Blind Date pointed toward the mottled green and brown far below.
Faraday felt his heart racing as the plane began to descend rapidly. His ears ached painfully with the sudden change in pressure, and he swallowed to “pop” them, but he could barely keep up, because the plane was losing huge amounts of altitude by the second.
He looked out of the window and could see the ground approaching fast. He closed his eyes, bracing for impact. This was it. Faraday figured that he was about to die, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. He would just have to ride it down.
Next to him, he could hear Okie coaxing the plane. “C’mon, now, you can do it. That’s it, here we go—”
Each final second of his life dragged out like an eternity. What did a man think of when he was about to die? He thought of home and family. For a moment he saw his mother’s smiling face. Behind her his brothers and sisters were gathered around the kitchen table, eating pancakes.
Next came a fragment of a happy memory with his father, just the two of them fishing for bluegills in a farm pond, using bits of hot dog for bait. The memory was so strong that Faraday wrinkled his nose as he caught a whiff of those hot dogs mixed with the odor of fish.
Now why the hell couldn’t I smell those pancakes instead?
He glimpsed the fresh-washed face of his high school girlfriend, smiling up at him as they kissed after a dance. He still carried a letter from her in his pocket, a little piece of home that had kept him company as Blind Date crisscrossed the vast skies.
Faraday was snapped out of his reverie as treetops swatted at the plane, tearing chunks from the fuselage. First one wing was ripped away, then another. The nose of the plane dipped lower and cracked off a tree trunk whose jagged point ripped down the length of the plane like a butcher’s knife gutting a pig. Through the intercom, he heard screaming.
Roiling greenery filled the view out the cockpit windows. It was a sensation not unlike sinking into the sea. All that Faraday could do was close his eyes and hang on.
After what felt like an eternity, the plane gave one final jolt and then came to a stop.
He opened his eyes and looked around. The plane had crashed into a forest. The trees had simultaneously broken their fall and also made it worse by battering the plane to bits.
The sudden stillness of the plane after their bumpy ride down felt strange. Miraculously, he had survived. He quickly checked his arms, legs, and torso. Not so much as a scrape, although he was sure there would be some bruises.
His next worry was fire. It was hard to say how much fuel they still had on board. But again, Liberators were infamous for their fumes. He glanced behind him and saw the shower of sparks from the fried electrical system. Not good. He tried the intercom, but it was dead.
“We need to get out of here,” he said for Okie’s benefit. Faraday started unbuckling his harness.
When there was no response from Okie, he looked over at the pilot. Okie sat slumped in his seat, eyes wide, hands still gripping the controls. But it was a true death grip. The eyes stared sightlessly.
“Okie?”
But there was never going to be a response, not anymore. A broken tree limb had speared Okie in the chest, piercing his body and even running clear through the back of the pilot’s seat. The gory, jagged point of the spear was clearly visible.
The shock of the last few minutes meant that Faraday didn’t even know how to react. He only registered that Okie Clarkson, his big brother, was dead. He finished unbuckling himself from the seat as more sparks popped behind him and filled the cockpit with their ozone stink. He could also smell fumes.
Dear God, don’t let me burn to death.
But before he could abandon the aircraft, he had to check on the rest of the crew. Leaning into the dark fuselage behind him, he called, “Hello? Can anybody hear me?” There was no answer. He thought about entering the fuselage to search for any survivors, but the creaking and groaning of the airplane made him decide against it. He fled out a hole in the plane and climbed down.
Safely on the ground, looking directly above him, he could see that the plane remained suspended in the trees. Overhead, the groaning and shifting of the plane grew louder. Faraday quickly got out from underneath the wreckage — not a moment too soon. What was left of the bomber hit the jungle floor with a resounding boom.
“Hello?” he called. “Anybody?”
Nothing but silence. It was beginning to look as if he might have been the only one who made it out. Much of the fuselage — in fact, most of the rest of the plane — had been pulled apart and scattered through the trees, the crew along with it. Nonetheless, he probed through the wreckage, calling out as he did so.
Much to his surprise and relief, he heard an answering shout. Moments later, he saw a figure limping toward him through the trees and brush. It was Ron “Lucky” Mason, who had also somehow survived the crash landing.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” Faraday said, hurrying toward his fellow survivor. He could hear the emotion in his own voice, relief mixed with sadness for all the rest who apparently hadn’t made it, although he still held out hope that some of the others might have survived.
“Hey, they don’t call me Lucky for nothing.”
“You OK?”
“I’ll live.”
Faraday looked Lucky up and down. The young man had a bad gash in his forehead, but otherwise seemed intact. He was swaying a little, however.
“Let’s get you to sit down before you fall down,” Faraday said.
“I won’t argue. Got any water?”
“I’m afraid not. Maybe we can find some in the plane later.”
Lucky looked back at the wreckage. It was none too promising. “Maybe.”
They camped nearby that night, even lighting a small fire, hoping against hope that if there had been any other survivors scattered through the jungle, they would find their way back to the plane’s wreckage.
He wasn’t sure what to do about Okie’s body, still pinned in the pilot’s seat. He doubted that he could face the sight of his dead “big brother” once again. At some point, he and Lucky would have to try to find supplies in the wreckage. He’d also lost his sidearm somewhere, but he wasn’t about to go back to the cockpit to look for it just yet.
Blind Date had carried a crew of eight young men. As the night wore on, it became increasingly evident that he and Lucky were the only survivors. As for their location, he could only guess that they were somewhere in the Philippines, but all that he really knew for certain was that they hadn’t crashed into the sea. As bad as the landing had been, he knew that the bomber would have fared even worse had they taken a swim in the Pacific.