A shaft of pain ruptured Irene’s gut. She had a vision of Jordan pinwheeling in the air, falling from forty-thousand feet to be dashed upon the rocks. How long would it take to fall forty-thousand feet? How many minutes did Jordan have to contemplate the approach of her own violent and bloody death?
“Get everyone strapped in,” Irene said. “And Brad. Get on the radio for fuck-sake.”
“Radio? We’re a thousand miles from anywhere.”
“Get on the radio, damn you.”
Brad flipped the switch. “Mayday. Mayday. Any station. Please respond. Mayday…”
The plane made another gut wrenching drop. “Strap in,” Irene screamed at Alex.
Irene visualized what had happened. The left engine, mounted on the side of the aircraft, had been torn away in a savage explosion and smashed into the tail section before tumbling to earth. The impact had damaged the elevator on the left side making it next to impossible for her to gain altitude. They were at six-thousand feet and still dropping. She thought of Hanz mulling around the plane that day and Irene had to wonder if he got to the turbofan when Toby wasn’t around to stop him.
“Christ. I’m never flying with you again,” Brad muttered, having given up with the radio. “You’re jinxed.”
It was true. Irene had lived through what few pilots had ever experienced. Now, here she was a second time, about to crash-land her disabled aircraft in the mountains.
“Brad. I’ve got to put it down. Do you see a road, a field, a clearing, a lake for christ-sake. Anywhere I can land this thing.”
Brad looked out the side window. “All I see are trees and fucking rocks.”
The plane lurched and made another sickening slide downward. “Keep looking,” Irene shot back. “There has to be someplace.”
“Look!” Brad came up as far as the restraints would allow. “I thought I saw something.”
“Where?”
“There. Between the trees. Eleven-o’clock!” Brad threw up a hand. “That’s water!”
“I still don’t see it.” Irene struggled, looking out her side window.
“That valley, between the mountains. Must be a river.”
Irene worked the rudder and the plane slew to the left.
“That’s it, straight ahead. It’s gone now but I’m sure I saw something,” Brad shouted. “There!”
Finally, Irene saw it too. The light shimmering in the trees. It had to be a river following the course of the valley’s floor. If she could find a long straight section of water, she might have a chance. Irene moved the throttle lever forward and the remaining engine spooled up increasing the air speed. The descent slowed. The longer Irene could keep the jet in the air, the better her chances of finding a suitable place to set down.
“We’ll follow it,” Irene pulled off her oxygen mask. “When we find a spot, we’ll turn around and land.”
“Better hurry,” Brad shot back, looking at the altimeter. “Two-thousand feet and dropping fast.”
They were startled by the screech of grinding metal, followed by an incessant banging. “Now what,” Brad turned and looked back. There was a jerk as if some giant hand had plucked the tail of the plane and another feeling of weightlessness as the plane dropped. The noise stopped. “Christ. I just saw something fly off the end of the fuselage.” Brad said.
“Probably what was left of the elevator.” Irene wrestled with the yoke, trying to bring the plane’s nose back up.
“You still got steerage?” Brad twisted his eyes back.
“Sluggish,” Irene shouted. “How much altitude did we lose?”
Brad checked the altimeter. “We’re down to a thousand-feet.”
Irene swore under her breath. The ground was closing fast and she saw her hopes of finding a suitable place to land begin to fade.
“It’s a river.” Brad pointed.
As the plane dipped again, Irene saw a band of gray water dividing the trees; saw that it trended away upstream to her right. “A small one,” Irene countered, working the rudder controls. The right wing dipped and she altered her flight direction to follow the water coarse.
“Wheels?” Brad asked.
“Doubt they’ll be of much use to us.”
“God. It’s too narrow,” Brad said. “Five-hundred feet.”
“Get Alex on. Tell her we’re going down.”
“Christ.” And Brad lifted the hand-set.
Irene studied the narrow slice between the trees. Brad was right. It was too narrow to accommodate the wings of the DC-9. But she had little choice. Her options had dissolved along with her optimism and all she could do now, was try.
Thwap!
Brad swung around in his seat. “What the hell was that?”
“I hit a tree.”
“Oh Christ.” Brad buried his face in his hands.
Thwap! Thwap! Thwap!
Irene did her best to steady the plane as she flew through the treetops with tall pines batting away at the bottom of the fuselage. She looked ahead, judging the spot where the DC-9 would meet its final resting place. Her eyes widened. “I have to make it, I just have to,” she said under her breath.
Beyond a turn in the river Irene had spotted a cascade of boulders, some as large as houses. A natural land formation maybe, or the result of a massive rock-slide. Either way, if her aircraft slammed into that obstruction, a fiery death was a certainty for all onboard. But the rocks were holding back the river, like a natural dam, and there was a wide stretch of clear water on the far side.
Irene jammed the throttle lever all the way forward. “I just have to make it!”
The single turbo screamed an outrage but the nose agonizingly lifted. Irene felt she was heaving the plane up and over on her own shoulders. A wing tip clipped a boulder sending up a shower of sparks, but she was over the rocks, clearing certain death by mere inches. Irene hammered the emergency fuel cut-off and at the same time dropped the flaps.
The engine died immediately leaving only an eerie silence, only the whistle of the wind as the plane skimmed above the surface. Irene flipped the main breaker then hit the air brakes. The plane shuddered and fell.
With crew and passengers, the DC-9 weighed close to fifty tons and water, being non-compressible, did nothing to cushion the impact. Irene might as well have been belly-landing on solid concrete.
It was violent!
Bone jarring!
Destructive!
And the sounds were thunderous: Tortured metal heaving and tearing. Overhead panels were smashed to the floor. Locker doors were ripped from their hinges spilling out glassware, dishes and stainless steel utensils. The bulkhead behind Irene buckled, splintering the cabin door into jagged pieces and whipping a dagger-like shard of wood against her bare arm. And above all else, there was the cacophonic screams of her passengers.
A sheet of solid water was thrown up, drenching the windscreen and obscuring Irene’s view of what lay ahead, but what did it matter? There was nothing she could do to influence the death of her aircraft. She had done everything in her power to save her plane and the forty souls onboard and now she was just another passenger; holding on and skidding helplessly toward her fate. The only means left to her command were hopes and prayers.
The deceleration was vicious. The water sucking at the belly of the plane threw Irene forward, lifting her from the seat. Every muscle and joint was wrenched beneath the biting seat restraints. Her eyeballs bulged from the force, she felt her eyelids lift and her hair was thrown forward about her face as if caught in a violent cyclone.
But her aircraft slowed and Irene strained to see past the windscreen. It was like being in a damned car-wash until the plane sprang like a skipping stone and the water momentarily sheeted away from the glass. To Irene’s horror, she saw rocks.
Her luck had run out. There was no more water. The nose hit the shore with enough force to pulverize boulders. Her aircraft careened up a low embankment and was suddenly airborne once more. Free from the earth, the plane accelerated, blasting into the treetops, uprooting and splintering trunks as the fuselage shot forward. The plane smashed down again with a resounding crash, the nose throwing up dirt and debris and tearing a deep trench into the forest’s floor. It plowed forward, tearing up smaller trees by the roots and tossing them high into the air. Larger trees were not as forgiving and the plane jostled violently back and forth between the trunks. In the lurching cockpit, Irene felt like a pinball. And just when she thought the toboggan ride might never end, she saw the outcropping of rocks.
“Oh God!” she screamed, and managed to throw up her hands to protect her face. The nose of the plane smashed into the craggy cliff and Irene felt the floor buckle beneath her feet. There was the sound of shattering glass and the smell of burning electrical wires. Her seat heaved under her, was torn from its rails and she was thrown bodily against the console then bowled over onto the floor. Something dropped onto her chest and she found herself struggling to breathe. The sound of buzzing insects rose up in her ears just before a white flash of light slowly faded and the darkness drifted in. And just before sliding into the blessed relief of oblivion, the last thing Irene heard, was Brad, crying like a baby.
She was underwater, suspended under the inky surface and gazing upward. But her eyes were filled with darkness. Was this death? No. Irene felt pain and with death, they had promised her, came freedom from pain. And she was aware of her own heart beating and the sound of air moving in her lungs.
Consciousness slowly returned. Irene lay in the darkness and analyzed the weight and sensations. Her ribs hurt; the collision with the console. Her right arm stung; the shard of wood still embedded in her flesh. It all came back: The wild dance across the water; the rocket-ride through the treetops; the catastrophic collision with the rocks.
She felt the panic once more and threw up her arms. Brad’s jacket flew from her face and dazzling light blinded her. Irene was still sprawled on the floor, staring beyond a shattered windscreen to where trees swayed gently to the wind against a blue, blue sky. She was alive.
Irene struggled under the weight of an electrical panel that had once been mounted above her seat. It had been torn from its mounts and it, along with a trailing mound of electrical wiring, was just about smothering her. With a heave, she managed to flop it to one side and felt about for the seat-belt release. Irene was on her back, still strapped into her overturned control seat. The catch popped, rolling her onto the floor and with a hand against the crumpled bulkhead, Irene stood on shaken knees.
There wasn’t much left of her cockpit. Brad’s side was gone; just a gaping hole. “Brad?” Irene called but was only answered by the wind moving in the pine-boughs. Had he left her behind? Given her up for dead?
I need to get out of here, she thought and started to step toward the shattered door, but catching sight of her bare legs, she suddenly felt ridiculous in her swimsuit and reached down for Brad’s jacket. It fit surprisingly well.