Tracie keyed the mike. “Mayday. Mayday. This is Bulldog 14 with an emergency situation.”
The response was immediate. The radio crackled to life. “Bulldog 14, this is Boston Center, we’ve been looking for you. You missed checking in at a compulsory reporting point. What’s the nature of your emergency?”
Tracie looked at Major Wilczynski. “What do I tell them?”
“Tell them the rest of the crew is incapacitated and we need a vector direct to Bangor International Airport. It was a SAC base in World War II and it’s the closest airport with a runway big enough to land this beast on.”
Tracie relayed the message and the controller said, “Roger that, Bulldog 14. Radar contact seven-zero miles northeast of the Bangor Airport. Cleared to Bangor via radar vectors. Fly heading two-five-zero, climb and maintain one-six thousand. Bangor altimeter two-nine-eight-seven.”
“You get all that?” she asked Wilczynski. He nodded.
“Roger,” she said into the mike.
“What assistance will you need when you land?” the controller asked, and Wilczynski said, “Tell them we’ll need ambulances and the crash crew standing by. We’ll need everything they’ve got.”
Tracie relayed the message and as the B-52 gained altitude, climbing steadily and reassuringly, she said, “Bangor? As in Maine? Isn’t that city tiny?”
“The city is small, yes, but the airport is huge. It’s the former Dow Air Force Base, and although they only have one runway, it’s mammoth. Eleven thousand feet, with a one thousand foot overrun at each end. That’s almost two-and-a-half miles of pavement for us to land on, and the way I feel right now, we’ll probably need every last inch of it.”
Tracie fingered the letter to President Reagan. She had removed it from her jacket and placed it in the back pocket of her trousers before using the jacket to stanch the blood flowing from Wilczynski’s head wound. The envelope was flecked with spatters of blood but otherwise appeared undamaged. The aircraft—and thus the letter—seemed to be out of danger, at least for the moment, but Tracie knew the odds against Major Mitchell’s sudden deadly rampage being unrelated to the secret communique from Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev were astronomical. Those kinds of coincidences just didn’t happen.
“Uh, isn’t there a military base we could divert to? Wouldn’t that be more secure?” She recognized the lack of logic inherent in the question—after all, this flight had originated from a United States military base and had been manned entirely by U.S. military personnel, and they had still nearly ended up in the Atlantic Ocean after a bloodbath inside the plane. If the attack was the result of someone trying to prevent delivery of that communique, that someone’s influence was obviously far-reaching. And deadly.
Tracie knew all that, and she knew landing at a military base might not make any difference. She didn’t care. It had to be safer than landing unprotected at a civilian airport.
Her question became moot, though, with Wilczynski’s answer. “Well, there is Loring Air Force Base, in northern Maine. It’s a SAC base and it’s got plenty of runway. Problem is it’s in the wrong direction if you’re trying to get to Andrews, and it’s farther away from our current position than Bangor. And that’s why I don’t want to land there: I don’t know how much longer I can stay conscious. The way I feel right now, our best bet is to get this Big Ugly Fat Fucker on the ground ASAP.”
Tracie knew the flight commander was right. She had no way of ascertaining the extent of his injuries, but having seen the gaping head wound, with the splintered skull bones and massive blood loss, she realized his actions were nothing short of heroic.
“Bangor it is, then,” she said.
***
May 30, 1987
11:49 p.m.
Bangor, Maine
Runway 17 at Bangor International Airport stretched out in front of the B-52 like a ribbon, visible to Tracie on this moonlit night even from probably twenty miles away. The weather was clear, but the controllers at Bangor Tower had lit the airport up like a Christmas tree. The approach lights glowed and the sequenced flashers stabbed through the night, an insistent finger of light pointing toward the approach end of the runway.
In the few minutes since Major Wilczynski had regained control of the aircraft, the flight had proceeded smoothly but his condition seemed to deteriorate steadily. Blood continued to soak the bandage wrapped around his head and now it seeped through the gauze and ran slowly down the side of his face, disappearing under the collar of his jumpsuit. He had stopped talking and seemed to be focusing all his energy on landing the plane.
He moaned softly and his head bobbed onto his chest before bouncing back up sluggishly. He wavered in his seat.
“Hang in there, Stan,” Tracie said. She squeezed his hand and he nodded weakly.
The B-52 turned onto a long final approach, wobbling unsteadily as Wilczynski struggled to maintain control. He had asked for at least a fifteen mile straight-in, explaining to Tracie that although the goal was to get on the ground as quickly as possible, he didn’t trust his ability to get the aircraft stabilized if they turned any closer than that. Through the wind screen she could see flashing emergency lights lining the runway on the side closest the control tower. At least one rescue vehicle had been placed at each runway intersection, Tracie assumed, to provide for the quickest response no matter where along the two-mile stretch of pavement they landed.
Or where they crashed.
The wings rocked and the aircraft shuddered, the runway sliding from left to right and then back again as Tracie watched anxiously. Wilczynski was struggling to keep the B-52 lined up with the runway centerline. He shook his head and cursed and grabbed the microphone. “Wind check,” he demanded, and the controller’s response was almost instantaneous.
“Wind two-zero-zero at eight, cleared to land.”
The B-52 dipped suddenly, the left wing dropped like an elevator until pointed almost directly at the ground. “Goddammit,” Wilczynski muttered and added power, wrestling with the yoke and somehow straightening the big aircraft out again.
Against all odds, they were still lined up with the runway, but Tracie knew now they were too high. The thirteen-thousand-foot-long expanse of pavement stretched out in front of them, promising safety, but it seemed far below. It looked to Tracie like they would have to drop almost straight down to avoid overshooting the runway, and she wondered whether the injured pilot had enough left to make a second try if they ended up too high and had to go around.
He seemed to have the same thought. “We gotta get this thing down, now,” he said, and pushed forward on the yoke, pulling back on the power, forcing the bird’s nose toward the ground. The engines quieted and Tracie could hear the wind screaming around the air frame. She realized she was holding her breath and her hands gripped the sides of her seat so tightly she wondered how her fingers remained unbroken.
The ground rushed up at the B-52, rising impossibly fast. The lights of the tiny city of Bangor and its sister city, Brewer, shone in the distance, straddling the Penobscot River a short distance from the airport. Centuries-old evergreens, tightly-packed and massive, filled the wind screen, growing larger and larger until Tracie was sure the plane would fly straight into the forest.
At what seemed like the last possible moment, Wilczynski eased back on the yoke, lowering the landing gear and the flaps, and the plane leveled off and slowed like someone had stood on a set of brakes. The runway appeared again in the wind screen as if by magic. Tracie marveled at the skill of the B-52’s only living crew member, badly injured, maybe fatally injured, but still handling the gigantic craft like the professional he was.
The trees flashed past under the wings as the B-52 descended steadily. They were maybe three miles from the approach end when Wilczynski turned to Tracie and smiled. His lips were white and so was his face, and blood flowed steadily down his left cheek as if the gauze bandage had never been applied. He looked like death warmed over but incredibly he was smiling.
&
nbsp; “I’ve got it slowed as much as I dare. We’re going to make it,” he said, and then without warning his eyes rolled up into his head and he slumped forward. His safety harness kept him in his seat, but the force of the movement pushed the yoke forward and the B-52 dropped like a rock. Tracie grabbed for the yoke instinctively and missed, and the plane descended into the forest.
The wings sheared off trees. The interior rocked and bucked and the only sound Tracie could hear over her own screams was sheet metal shrieking as the wings tore completely clear of the fuselage. The cabin bounced hard, ricocheting off a treetop and coming down onto another and then what was left of the plane rolled and tumbled and dropped to the forest floor.
And something struck Tracie in the head and the world went black.
17
May 30, 1987
11:49 p.m.
Bangor, Maine
Shane Rowley’s Volkswagen Beetle bounced along the deserted country road toward Bangor International Airport. Bob Seger’s amplified voice filled the car’s interior, drowning out the eggbeater sound of the engine as it strained to keep up with Shane’s lead foot. Seger was bragging about getting lucky in “Night Moves,” one of Shane’s favorite songs, and singing along with the lyrics almost made Shane forget, if only for a few minutes, the paralyzing fear and bitter disappointment he had felt this afternoon.
It had been a long day at Northern Maine Medical Center, yet another in an endless string of appointments with specialists to determine the cause of the debilitating headaches he had been experiencing over the last few months.
Today had been the worst. “A brain tumor,” this specialist had said after examining X-rays and CAT scans and the results of numerous tests. “I’m very sorry, but there’s nothing we can do. The tumor is advanced and growing rapidly. We can make you comfortable as the end draws near,” the man had said, and Shane had barely heard him. He felt outside himself, like he was watching a bad TV movie of his life.
Shane had feared the worst almost since the nasty headaches had begun. “How long do I have?” he asked numbly, and the specialist, an older, officious-looking man, said, “Hard to tell,” as if he were analyzing a theoretical concept instead of the end of another human being’s life. “Anywhere from a few weeks to a couple of months. Probably no longer than that.”
And Shane had thanked the man. He still didn’t know why, it just seemed like the thing to do. Then he had stumbled out of the office and gone home, driving all the way on auto-pilot, unable to remember a thing about the trip when he nosed into the parking spot outside his apartment.
He had so much to think about, but he needed to sleep. As an air traffic controller at Bangor International Airport, he was accustomed to working shifts at all hours of the night and day, and tonight he was scheduled to work midnight to eight in what he knew would be one of his final shifts ever. Once the FAA flight surgeon learned of his diagnosis, Shane would be medically disqualified from working traffic, and that would be the beginning of the end. He knew he should have informed his superiors already of his medical issues, but had not been able to bring himself to do so.
One more shift, he had told himself, for old time’s sake, and then had tumbled into bed for a few fitful hours of sleep. In the morning, at the end of his shift, he would advise Air Traffic Manager Marty Hall of the tumor. Then he would turn in his headset and go home to die.
Shane crested a hill, the Beetle’s engine wailing. He was lost in Seger’s voice, trying not to think about the cancer growing in his head, when a gigantic airplane whooshed overhead. “Holy shit!” he blurted to no one, and ducked instinctively. The plane’s strobes filled the interior of the car with a pulsing light, and Shane wrestled the steering wheel, fighting to keep the Beetle on the road as the huge aircraft roared seemingly inches above the treetops.
Shane’s heart thumped madly. The plane—it was too dark for Shane to identify the aircraft type, but the thing was enormous—rocked left and right, barely under control, and Shane knew instantly it would never make the airport. He knew it would never make another hundred feet unless it climbed immediately, and he was right. The hulking jet no sooner cleared his car than it veered right and descended straight into the forest.
Shane slammed on the brakes. The Beetle screeched to a halt in a spray of gravel and dust. The airplane had disappeared from sight, but moments later a deafening crash shook the ground, then a muffled Boom rolled through the night.
The guys working up in the control tower would even now be alerting the airport rescue vehicles to the accident. Shane knew that like he knew the back of his hand. He even knew who was working up there—it was the crew he was on his way to relieve on the midnight shift. But although the crash scene was probably no more than two or three miles from the airport, finding the downed aircraft in the dense forest would be no easy task.
Rescuers would likely be forced to locate the crash site by helicopter, a process which would take a considerable amount of time. Shane knew there were probably no survivors, but in the unlikely event anyone had survived, they would need help immediately. Help no one else was around to give.
He shut down the Beetle and rummaged around in the glove box for a flashlight. He flicked it on and grimaced at the weak yellow beam. He tried to recall the last time he had replaced the batteries in the damned thing and couldn’t remember ever having done it.
Shane leaped out of the car and plunged into the nearly pitch-black woods. The moon was full and the skies were clear, and there was a fair amount of ambient light out in the open, but by the time he had traveled ten feet into the dense forest, it was as if the moon had gone into hiding. He reluctantly flicked on the light, wondering how long it would take for the batteries to die, and began picking his way deeper into the woods.
The going was slow and Shane had no idea whether he was even traveling in the right direction. Getting lost in the woods would be easy to do, especially at night. If he wasn’t careful he could find himself wandering in a big circle and missing the crash site entirely, or walking off in the wrong direction and not being able to find his way back to the road. He picked his way around boulders and over downed trees, moving slowly toward where he guessed the plane had gone down.
Ten minutes later, sweat covering his body despite the chilly nighttime Maine temperatures, a hint of a glow suffused the darkness and Shane knew he was getting close. Then he heard the sound of fire crackling and smelled the oily stench of burning fuel and something else, thick and metallic. He picked up his pace and burst into a small clearing created by the downed aircraft.
The wrecked fuselage lay in a heap, charred metal twisted almost beyond recognition. The nose of the aircraft was canted to one side, half-buried in the forest floor. Long slabs of sheet metal, probably parts of the wings, littered the wreckage, some hanging from neighboring trees, some slashed into the forest like knife-blades.
A fire had begun burning in the middle of the fuselage and was rapidly spreading along the airframe in both directions, sending noxious black smoke skyward. The heat from the blaze was unrelenting. Shane shaded his eyes with a hand and peered into the artificial brightness. After the near-complete blackness of the forest, the sudden intense light was unnerving.
He scanned the length of the wreckage quickly. If any passengers had been sitting in the middle portion of the plane, they were by now dead, consumed by fire even in the unlikely event they had survived the impact.
The tail section had not yet begun to burn, but accessing that area due would be impossible due to the intense heat of the fire. He had emerged from the woods directly in front of the nose, and reaching the rear of the aircraft would take too long at the rate the fire was progressing. Any survivors back there faced a hideous death. Shane hoped if anyone had been seated in the rear, they had died instantly in the crash.
An image rose in his head of innocent people choking and suffocating on that thick black smoke before being burned alive, and he forced it away, focusing his attention on the
front of the aircraft. The flames had not quite reached it, although that they would soon. The windshield was gone, and all that remained were jagged shards of glass thrusting haphazardly out of the frame.
He moved forward, stepping around razor-sharp pieces of torn sheet metal, some tiny and others as big as his VW Beetle. Wreckage littered the landscape. It was hard to believe all of it had come from the massive hulk now burning out of control in front of him. The closer he came to the plane, the more the heat threatened to overwhelm him. He shrugged out of his jacket and held it between the flames and his face in an effort to gain a bit of relief from the searing heat.
At last he reached the twisted metal of the cabin. The crackling of the fire had become more pronounced, roaring and wheezing like a living being as it raced along the plane’s airframe. Shane knew he was running out of time. The temperature was becoming unbearable and the entire aircraft would soon be engulfed by flames.
As he scrambled up an unidentifiable piece of equipment torn clear of the fuselage, he could feel the heat radiating through the soles of his sneakers. He wrapped his jacket around his right arm and hand, hoping it would provide protection against the shards of glass and ripped sheet metal. He grabbed the windshield frame for support and hoisted himself up, then peered through the smashed windshield into the face of death and destruction.
Victims littered the cockpit, none of them moving. Two men wearing United States Air Force flight suits had been tossed around the interior of the craft during the crash. Their bodies were smashed and broken. One of the men was missing most of an arm, the bloody stump extruding from his uniform. The other had been wedged into a tiny opening along the side of the cockpit, bent awkwardly backward, his spine clearly broken.
Two other people—one man and one woman—remained strapped into their seats. The man also wore a flight suit. His head was wrapped in a bloody gauze bandage, as if he had been attempting to fly the plane while badly injured.
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