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Tracie didn’t
hesitate. She fired, and Mitchell slumped against the B-52’s instrument panel
like a rag doll. She fired again and the second shot hit home as well. She
fired a third time, and Mitchell’s body crumpled to the floor. She kept her gun
trained on him, breathing heavily.

There was no doubt
Mitchell was dead.

It appeared
everyone was dead inside one of the most complex aircraft ever manufactured.

And she didn’t
know how to fly.

14

May 30, 1987

11:22 p.m.

Atlantic Ocean, 100 miles off
the coast of Maine

Stan Wilczynski had a headache. A
bad one. It wasn’t like waking up after having a few too many cold ones at the
OC, and it wasn’t like the dull throb at the back of the skull he was prone to
getting when overtired. It was more like someone had taken a ballpeen hammer to
the side of his head.

He groaned and
tried to roll over. Maybe if he could sleep a little longer the damned headache
would go away. But he couldn’t turn onto his side. He was stuck. Must have
gotten twisted up in the sheets. He opened his eyes reluctantly and the pain
intensified, a battering ram blasting through his head, building and building
until he was afraid his skull would explode.

He blinked hard
and his blurry vision doubled and tripled, and it occurred to him with sudden, terrifying
clarity that he was dying. He closed his eyes again, willing the pain to go
away. It lessened slightly.
Thank God for small favors.

Then he realized
someone was talking to him. It was a woman’s voice, but it was not a voice he
recognized. The voice was tense, worried, speaking to him calmly but
insistently. Even with the pain blasting through his head, Stan could sense the
intensity behind the words. He kept his eyes closed and concentrated hard.
“Stay with me,” the voice was saying. “You can do it. Stay with me and
breathe.”

And Stan
remembered.

He wasn’t in bed
at all. He was in the cockpit of a B-52. He had been flying that female CIA
agent back to Andrews Air Force Base from West Germany when Tom Mitchell had
gone stark, raving mad, murdering poor Nate Berenger and then shooting Stan. He
remembered struggling with Mitchell for his weapon. He couldn’t remember how
the struggle had ended, although it seemed suddenly clear he had lost it.

Their passenger
must have subdued Mitchell and was now trying to save his life. He didn’t want
to open his eyes, having no desire to re-experience the agony associated with
doing so a moment ago, but he knew he had to. He screwed up his courage,
praying for strength. Then he blinked his eyes open, doing his best to ignore
the accompanying flash of pain.

The CIA agent—he
tried to recall her name and couldn’t—knelt over him, holding her blood-soaked
jacket to his head. Stan knew the blood was his and tried to ignore it. He felt
light-headed, weak and disoriented. He focused on his rescuer and her stunning
red hair, and after a moment three blurry CIA agents became two, and then one.
She was still talking to him, calm and encouraging, but her ashen face gave
away her concern. “Welcome back to the land of the living,” she said tightly.

“Great to be
back,” he mumbled. “But I’m not sure how long I’ll be here.” He felt woozy and
his stomach rolled. “How bad is it?”

“I’m not going to
lie to you,” she said. “It’s bad. I’m not even sure how you’re conscious right
now. Mitchell’s second shot struck you in the head.”

“Who’s flying the
plane right now?” he asked, struggling to stay conscious.

“No one. I managed
to straighten the wings and return us more or less to a straight flight path,
but we’re slowly descending.” Her voice sounded thin and reedy and she was
clearly fighting panic.

“Have you radioed
for help?”

“Not yet. I’ve
been a little preoccupied.”

“Right. Sorry
about that.” Stan nodded and instantly regretted doing so. The pain in his
head, which had diminished slightly, returned full-force. The battering ram had
taken a break and a sledgehammer took its place. He closed his eyes and
concentrated on settling his upset stomach. He knew if he tossed his cookies,
the pain would explode and he would probably lose consciousness. If that
happened, he doubted he would ever reawaken.

Stan forced
himself to focus. The lure of sleep was almost overwhelming; he wanted nothing
more than to let go and leave this nightmare behind. But it was obvious the CIA
agent wasn’t a pilot and would never be able to land the B-52 herself. It was
impressive that she had managed to straighten the wings—the BUFF must have been
in the slightest of rolls—but after that she had clearly run out of ideas.

He opened his
eyes. The pain rolled back in like a massive tsunami but stopped just short of
unmanageable. “Let’s get this big hunk of metal on the ground, shall we?” His
vision blurred and then cleared.

She sighed, her
relief palpable. “Absolutely. What do I do first?”

“You get the hell
out of my way and let me fly.”

15

May 30, 1987

11:27 p.m.

Atlantic Ocean, 70 miles off the
coast of Maine

The badly injured pilot was out of
his seat, crumpled on the floor, and Tracie knew sliding him upright would be a
risky proposition. He had already lost a lot of blood by the time she reached
him, and she had been forced to pick one of his two bullet wounds to apply
pressure to. The choice had been easy—the head trumped every other part of the
body in terms of importance—but blood continued to ooze sluggishly from his
shoulder wound whenever he moved.

She would have to
let go of the jacket she was pressing against Wilczynski’s skull in order to
lift him. He was not a huge man, but she was much smaller, and although she had
no doubt she could lift him, she knew she could never manage it one-handed.

The same thought
seemed to occur to Wilczynski and he said, “Wait. We have a first-aid kit
aboard the aircraft. I think you should bandage my head wound before we try to do
anything else.”

Tracie felt the
steady descent of the B-52 and her panic began rising again, threatening to
overwhelm her. “How much time do we have?”

“It depends on how
much altitude we’ve lost. You’ll have to check the altimeter.”

She craned her
head but couldn’t read the instruments from her position, crouched over
Wilczynski’s seat. “You’re going to have to maintain pressure on the jacket
yourself for a second. Can you do that?”

“Yes,” Wilczynski
answered. He was clearly trying to avoid any movement of his head. He looked
pale and weak.

“Okay. I’ll go as
quickly as I can.” She waited until the injured pilot had lifted his hands,
then removed hers and helped him position his in what she hoped was the best
location. The amount of blood soaking the jacket was frightening. When he
indicated he was ready, she stood and scanned the instrument panel, amazed at
the sheer number of gauges, dials and switches.

Finally she found
the altimeter. “Twenty-three thousand, five hundred feet,” she said.

“And how long has
the plane been flying itself?”

Tracie thought
hard. It seemed like forever, but in reality was probably not long at all.
“Ninety seconds,” she guessed.

“Okay,” he
answered, then was silent for a moment, obviously trying to calculate a rate of
descent. “We have maybe five minutes before we hit the water.”

Shit.
At
the rate the color was draining out of Wilczynski’s face, Tracie wondered if he
would last five minutes. “Where’s the first-aid kit?” she asked, conscious of
the seconds ticking away.

He pointed to a
metal box clipped to the side wall behind what had been Mitchell’s seat, then
quickly returned the hand to his head. Tracie leaned over the dead bodies of
Mitchell and Berenger, unclipped the kit, and then returned to Wilczynski’s
side. She opened the metal box and rummaged inside, pulling out a roll of
gauze.

She gently removed
Wilczynski’s hands and lifted the jacket away from the head wound. Blood surged
out of a ragged, splintered hole where the side of his skull used to be. For
the second time since discovering Wilczynski alive, she wondered how in hell he
was still breathing.

She anchored one
end of the gauze on the back of his head with her left hand and began unrolling
it, wrapping it expertly around and around with her right, moving as quickly as
she dared. She finished wrapping Wilczynski’s head and secured the bandage,
then examined her handiwork quickly, anxious to move the pilot. The portion of
the gauze located directly over his injury had already begun darkening,
changing from a pristine white to a frightening maroon, but the patch job
looked secure enough, at least for now.

She nodded and
forced a smile. “There. Good as new.”

Wilczynski
grimaced and the effect was ghastly. A thick smear of blood coated the side of
his face and his teeth had been stained a blackish-red from all the blood he
had swallowed. “I appreciate the lie.” He closed his eyes and Tracie knew he
was steeling himself against the pain to come.

Finally he opened
his eyes again. “Let’s take our seats and get this thing on the ground.” Tracie
nodded and knelt over his prone body, straddling his legs. She slipped her
hands under his armpits. His flight suit was sticky with blood. She eased the
pilot’s body up and forward, until she had gotten him into a sitting position
on the floor, legs straight out in front of him, next to his seat.

He had maintained
a grim silence through all the jostling, despite the pain he must be feeling.
This
is one tough bastard,
she thought.
But things are about to get a lot
worse.
She looked him in the eyes and could see he knew.

“Are you ready?”
she asked quietly.

He nodded.

She hooked her
arms under his armpits at the elbow, locking the two of them in an awkward
embrace, then struggled to a kneeling position and began rising, her legs
screaming in protest as they took the brunt of the two-hundred-pound man’s dead
weight. When she had lifted his body to where his butt was level with the
flight seat, Tracie took a half-step left, then dropped the pilot as gently as
she could into the seat.

He groaned and his
eyes rolled up into his head and his body began sliding back toward Tracie. She
used her small body to brace his larger one in the seat and then buckled him
into his harness.

Wilczynski’s eyes
were closed and his pallor had turned a sickly grey. A thin sheen of sweat
coated his features, mixing with the drying blood and forming a hideous
Halloween mask.  His head slumped against his chest. Tracie feared he was dead.
She placed two fingers lightly against his neck, just under his right ear, and
felt for the carotid artery. The pulse was steady but faint. Wilczynski was
still alive. For now.

Stay with me,
please. I can’t fly this thing on my own.
Tracie wondered how fast they
were descending. She pictured the Atlantic Ocean, vast and empty, sliding
beneath the aircraft, waiting to swallow them whole if they didn’t begin
climbing soon. The darkness outside the wind screen was immense, the blackness
unbroken. There was no way to tell how close they were to the water; it could
be twenty feet or twenty thousand. She fought back panic.

She lifted her
head and glanced at the altimeter. Two thousand feet. And dropping. She closed
her eyes.
Take a deep breath. Steady yourself. Do what you have to do.
She
had to try to reawaken Major Wilczynski. He had been lucid prior to losing
consciousness. If she could wake him, maybe he could fly the airplane.

She hoped.

Another look at
the altimeter. Twelve hundred feet. Still dropping.

She bent and
slapped Wilczynski’s face lightly, more of a light open-palmed tap than an
actual slap. Two taps to the right cheek and then two to the left. Right, left,
one more on each side. Wilczynski stirred and muttered, but his eyes remained
closed.

Nine hundred feet.

She tried again,
this time increasing the force of the blow and speaking loudly. “Stan, wake up!
Stan, we’re dropping into the ocean. You need to wake up and fly this
airplane!” More mumbling and his eyes fluttered, but they were vacant and
unfocused.

Five hundred feet.

Last try. She
grabbed his good shoulder and shook him, not wanting to take the chance of
worsening his head injury but not knowing what else to do. “Stan, listen to me,
we’re going to crash if you don’t wake up right now! Stan!” This time his eyes fluttered
and remained open for a couple of seconds. “That’s it,” she encouraged. “Stay
with me, Stan.” Then his eyes rolled up into his head again and he was gone.

Two hundred feet.

It was too late.
They were going to drop right onto the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, where the
giant B-52 would be ripped to shreds by the resistance of the water. Tracie
cursed and leapt into the right seat, the one most recently occupied by Tom
Mitchell.

She scanned the
instruments desperately, trying to remember what she had seen pilots do in the
past. Increase power with the throttles. Raise the nose of the aircraft with
the yoke. Do something with the flaps—she couldn’t remember what. Raise them?
Lower them?
Goddammit!

Fifty feet.

Tracie reached for
the throttle with a shaking hand. She would shove the throttle forward and
raise the B-52’s nose and hope for the best. She would not go down without a
fight.

She placed her
hand on the lever and was surprised to feel not the cold metal of the throttle
but the warmth of another human hand. She turned in surprise and saw Stan
Wilczynski staring back at her, his face drawn and grey, his lips trembling
from the exertion of staying conscious, but his eyes clear and lucid.