by L. D Beyer
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As his vision grew darker, Richter franticly felt around for the cargo bin. He forced the cover open and thrust his hand inside. The vise around his chest continued to tighten as he searched for the mask. He began to slump and screamed at himself. Don’t quit now! Do your job! After what seemed like an eternity, he felt the cylinder, yanked the mask out and fumbled to strap it on.
____
The fog began to clear as Lewis keyed the radio again. “Mother Goose, this is Air Force One. Over.” She waited a moment. “Mother Goose, this is Air Force One. Do you read? Over.” Lewis frowned at the radio. “Mother Goose. This is Air Force One. We’ve lost cabin pressure. We are descending to twelve thousand feet. Please confirm. Over.”
The major switched frequencies and tried again. Something was wrong with the radio. She switched to the civilian frequency.
“Seattle Center. This is Air Force One. Do you copy?”
All she heard was silence.
____
When he took the first breath of oxygen, Richter felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off his chest. The darkness that had crept across his vision began to recede. After a while—no way to tell how long—he felt strong enough to stand on his own. Through the fog and howling wind, he saw President Kendall, terrified, but alive and breathing. He reached into the bin again, searching for another pair of smoke goggles.
____
In the press section, agents climbed over the bodies in their way. Several fell, succumbing to the debris—flying china, cell phones, laptops—and the lack of oxygen. Three agents made it to the door. The force of the explosion had not only blown a hole in the rear hatch but had traveled in the opposite direction, buckling the rear staircase and partially crumpling the frame around the door to the passenger compartment at the top of the steps. The first agent to reach the door cursed, finding it jammed.
____
Richter felt the airplane pitch forward and shudder. They were descending, he realized. The debris storm and the fog began to subside, but the wind continued to howl through the hold. The cargo netting and their clothes flapped like flags. Must not be anything left to get sucked out.
That’s it! He realized. There’s a hole in the plane—a door, a window, he didn’t know what—but they had suddenly lost cabin pressure. The realization hit him like a ton of bricks. There must have been some sort of explosive device, like a bomb or a missile.
His eyes shifted to the doorway and there was Stephanie, crumpled on the floor, her arms and legs tangled in the cargo nets. Her white blouse soaked in blood, red streaks trailing away along the floor. Even in the dim light, he could see that her face was grey. He gasped. Oh, God! Stephanie!
He and President Kendall had been protected from the brunt of the explosion by the bulkhead. Agent Sartori, standing just inside the bulkhead doorway at the time of the blast, had not been so lucky. As the explosion blew a hole in the door of the aircraft, thousands of pieces of shrapnel—lethal projectiles—flew down the narrow walkway through the bulkhead doors. A split second later, there was a tremendous flow in the opposite direction as the higher pressure air in the cabin began to rush towards the hole in the rear hatch. Sartori had been hit in the head and neck, her carotid artery severed.
Richter choked back a sob. Stephanie! Stephanie! He shook his head again. Stop! His brain screamed. There was nothing he could do to save her. He had to save the president.
____
In the rear of the cargo hold, McKay felt the rapid deceleration and leveling of the aircraft. Tentatively, he stood. The wind, still rushing through the hold, was less violent now. He signaled Mosby to wait as he cautiously stepped through the bulkhead. There was a basketball-sized hole in the rear hatch, where the locking mechanism used to be. Bracing himself, he kicked the door, but it opened just an inch or two, then slammed shut in the wind. The plane was still going too fast. Shit! He swore to himself. They were running out of time. He pulled the remaining Semtex from his pocket, broke it in two, shaping each piece before placing one over each of the hinges. He used the last of the fuses and multi-meters, quickly rigging the shaped charges and setting the timer to fifteen seconds. He hurried back to the other side of the bulkhead.
____
Richter’s eyes avoided Stephanie’s body as he glanced through the doorway. Twenty feet away, he saw Brad Lansing, his arms and feet also tangled in the cargo netting. Lansing’s head was tilted back at an abnormal angle, his face bloody, his eyes bulging and his tongue, swollen and black, protruded from his mouth.
____
In the White House section of the plane, the agents fought their way through the windstorm, climbing over the bodies in the aisle. As normally happened on Air Force One, passengers had been up walking or standing when the explosion occurred. Many of those who had been sitting had not bothered with their seatbelts. More than half of the passengers had been tossed to the floor. Most were hurt and bleeding, adding to the confusion. Like their fellow agents in the press section, more agents fell, victims of oxygen deprivation and flying debris, before the remaining agents thought to put on masks.
The front stairway hatch wasn’t as severely damaged, and the lead agent was able to free the stuck door after repeatedly slamming his body into it.
____
Richter turned back to the president, forcing himself to think. Okay, what do I do? Holding the president with one hand, he opened the cargo bin again and peered inside.
Without warning, he was slammed into the president again as a second explosion rocked the plane.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Deploy chaff and flares!” Zweig yelled as he wrestled with the controls. His instincts were to evade, to bank sharply, but he caught himself, knowing they couldn’t descend anymore. They were already at the minimum safe altitude, and only a few thousand feet separated them from the mountains below. There was nowhere to run.
Once again, there had been no warning.
Major Lewis yelled over the noise. “There’s no sign of fire in the engines or anywhere else on the aircraft!”
“Call it in!”
“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is Air Force One and we are declaring a Mayday!” Lewis made the call two more times before switching frequencies and trying again.
“I’m not getting anything, sir! The explosions must have knocked out the communications!”
____
McKay peered around the bulkhead and saw the large hole where the rear hatch had been. He stepped up to the door and braced himself in the opening. He glanced over his shoulder at Mosby standing right behind him, said a quick prayer, then jumped out into the airstream.
____
The agents at the top of the staircase in the front of the plane were thrown to the ground by the second blast. The passenger cabin was filled with yelling and screaming as panicked, bleeding passengers called for help or began to pray. Some of the people who had fallen unconscious earlier when the cabin decompressed at thirty-five thousand feet, began to stir.
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“We need to find the closest airfield now!”
Captain Thomas glanced at the GPS and then scanned his notes. “The closest airport that can handle us is Missoula! Runway is ninety-five hundred feet.” He glanced back at the display. “One hundred and twenty miles to the north, bearing zero-one-five.”
Zweig nodded as he banked the aircraft, slowly circling around again until they were heading northeast. “Missoula. Zero-one-five.”
____
Holding the president with one hand, Richter turned, his eyes avoiding Stephanie’s body, and cautiously peered through the bulkhead door. The hold was full of twisted metal, wires hanging from the ceiling, the cargo netting whipping in the wind. Through the debris, he saw a man wearing a parachute harness standing by the jagged hole in the fuselage at the rear of the plane. The man glanced his way before disappearing through the hole.
For a brief second, Richter thought he recognized Cal Mosby.
___
_
“Captain, what is our ETA to Missoula?”
“At this speed, twenty-eight minutes, sir.”
“Watch the radar closely. We’ll be crossing over the Bitterroot Mountains. Plot the peaks, Captain, and find us a way in. And find me some alternatives!”
Zweig turned to Lewis. “Major, prepare for an emergency landing.”
“Roger, sir. God, I hope ATC is on the ball. We’ll be coming in unannounced.”
“I know. Keep trying the radios.”
Lewis nodded. “Yes, sir. Colonel, all four engines appear to be working. Hydraulics, electronics, stabilizers…everything appears to be normal. Except for lost power to the recorders and communications systems and the cabin pressure, nothing else seems to be affected.”
“I’m worried about the structural integrity of the airframe.”
Lewis cringed. They were flying a potentially damaged aircraft at a low altitude, with precious little room to maneuver and no way to communicate. God help them, she thought.
____
The conversation moments before flashed through Richter’s mind.
“Sir, we’re going down! We need to get off the plane now!”
He opened the bin again and grabbed a parachute harness. The president nodded, seeming to understand. Richter hefted the parachute up over the president’s shoulders, and Kendall slid his arms through. Richter fastened the buckles, tightened the straps, then checked to ensure the harness was snug. Then he quickly strapped on his own harness. He steered the president over Stephanie’s and Brad’s bodies, through the maze of wreckage in the cargo hold, towards the gaping hole in the back.
They stopped when they stepped through the rear bulkhead. Stepping behind the president, Richter pulled the ball of tightly folded material—no bigger than a softball—from the main pouch on the harness. He pulled the lines over the president’s shoulder and wrapped the president’s arms around the pilot chute.
“Sir!” Richter had to yell over the noise. “You need to hold this tightly to your chest! After you jump, you need to count to three! Then throw this away from your body!”
Despite the fear in his eyes, the president nodded.
“Count to three then throw,” Richter repeated as he mimed the action.
The president nodded again.
“Okay, ready?” Then Richter, still holding the president by the shoulders, pushed him toward the large hole. Without a second thought, Richter pushed him out the door before hurling himself out into the swirling gray.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The first thing President Kendall noticed was the violent force of the wind. This was followed by sensations of extreme cold. Then, strangely, the cold gave way to a burning sensation. A million pins and needles were being stuck in his body all at once. His legs, hands, and face began to sting as the wind stripped away his body heat. He struggled to see where he was, but there was nothing but pockets of white and gray floating around him. I must be in the clouds, he thought. Oh, God, I forgot to count! How much time had passed? He pushed the pilot chute up past his face and let it go.
A second later, he felt a violent jolt as the main chute deployed. Without knowing why, he reached up and grabbed the steering toggles dangling above his head. He struggled to hear the plane, but his ears were filled with nothing but the sound of the rushing wind.
____
“Hey, Jack! You’ve got to see this!” From their perch on the plateau, Derek pointed out over a valley, towards a peak a half a mile away.
Jack peered through the swirling snow, struggling to see.
“Man! They’re crazier than you are!”
“What do you suppose they’re doing in this weather?
“Could it be a military training exercise?”
Derek squinted. “I don’t know. Even those guys aren’t that crazy.”
They watched as the two parachutes drifted down.
Suddenly there was a bright orange flash from beyond the peak, followed by a muffled boom.
“Jesus,” Derek swore. “What the hell was that?”
They watched as the parachutists, one after another, landed on the side of the mountain. A second explosion rang out, followed by a rumble that continued for twenty seconds. As the snow picked up, Derek shielded his eyes, trying to mark the location where the parachutes had landed.
“Oh God! Was that a plane crash?” Jack asked.
“Oh man! I think so! Those guys must have jumped out right before. We need to call 911. Where’s your phone?”
Jack turned awkwardly in the deep snow. “It’s in the lower right-hand pocket in my pack.”
Derek fumbled with the zipper then pulled the phone out. He turned it on and cursed as he waited for it to power up.
____
The president landed on the side of the mountain. Over two feet of fresh snow, coupled with the slope of the hill, saved him from serious injury. He slid down the hill for almost thirty yards before the deep snow brought him to a stop. Buried up to his waist, he lay back for a moment as the enormity of what had happened began to settle in. He couldn’t see and struggled with the tangle of risers and control lines that had fallen on him. He pulled off the mask and goggles and wiped his eyes. He noticed that his hands were red, covered with scrapes and cuts. Strangely, they weren’t bleeding.
His parachute had crumpled and fallen twenty feet below him. What do I do now? he wondered. He strained to see through heavy snow, trying to get his bearings. He was on the side of a mountain. But where? He suddenly felt very alone. What happened to Air Force One? He remembered an explosion. Then Richter was pulling him through the wreckage. What happened to him? Did he jump too?
The wind shifted, blowing a swirl of snow and the parachute up the side of the hill. He struggled for a minute with the tangled lines and the canopy, finally pushing them off. The wind carried the canopy up the hill.
Through the swirling snow, he heard something. The sound was muffled, faint.
“Pull your chute in! Mr. President, pull your chute in!”
He wondered if he was hallucinating. The sound came again and Kendall recognized Richter’s voice. Straining to turn his body, the snow and the parachute cords blocking his view, he finally spotted something moving farther up the slope. He raised his hand, tried to wave, before he was violently yanked out of his perch as the wind began pulling his chute, and him, across the side of the hill.
____
In the operations center of Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station, the lieutenant sipped his soda, his third can since his shift had begun four hours earlier. He glanced at the time and wondered what was on the menu in the cafeteria. He was scheduled to take a break in the next thirty minutes. He eyes shifted back to the bank of flat panel screens. Maybe he would have the soup.
His head shot back to the center display. There was something there. He studied the screen for another two seconds and then checked the screen to the right where his priority flights were listed.
“Holy shit!” He grabbed the phone and called the watch officer. “Sir! We just lost all contact with Air Force One!”
The captain hurried over. “What? Damn! Okay. Okay. Give me the details, the last known coordinates, the list of aircraft in that sector! You know the drill! Let’s go!”
____
Simultaneously, an AWACS officer on the E-3 Sentry flying over central Oregon shouted, “God damn! Colonel, we just lost radar contact with Air Force One!”
“Sir, I lost radio contact as well!” a second officer yelled out.
“They just dropped off the screen!” The first added.
“We’re not tracking any threats in the area!” another officer called.
“Holy fuck! I’m getting big-time heat blooms. What the hell is that?”
“That’s an explosion. Look at the size of that bloom. That’s got to be a crash.”
“Vampires?” the commanding officer asked.
“No, sir! No missiles detected!”
“Call it in! N
ow!”
____
Derek cursed as he stared at the phone. No signal. Either they were out of range or weather conditions were affecting reception. Regardless, the phone was useless right now.
“What’s our exact position?” he asked.
Jack pulled out his GPS unit. He waited for the system to calibrate. When the waypoint appeared on the screen, Jack locked the position in the system’s memory and then handed the unit to Derek. Derek stared at the receiver for a moment.
“I don’t know how to use this thing. How far is the trailhead? How far is the car?”
Jack punched some buttons. “A little over thirteen miles.”
Derek studied the adjacent mountain. “How far do you think it is to where those guys landed? Half a mile?”
Jack looked across the valley and then at the GPS, noting the contour lines plotted on the screen. “I’m guessing a quarter mile. They landed due east of us.”
Derek squinted through the snow. A quarter mile as the crow flies, he reasoned, but they had to descend first and then climb back up that hill. And they didn’t have the right gear.
“We can’t leave those guys there, Derek,” Jack said, as if reading his mind. “They’re probably hurt. By the time we hike back to our car and go find help, they’ll die.”
Derek knew Jack was right. The car was too far away and, in these conditions, it would take two days to reach it. Then what? Elk City was still several miles away over unplowed roads. He turned to Jack and nodded.
Jack studied the GPS, calculating the waypoint where the parachutes had landed.
“We should be able to reach them in an hour, maybe less if we hurry.”
“Okay,” Derek responded. “Let’s do it.”
____
The scramble order was relayed from NORAD, headquartered in Cheyenne Mountain, through the Western Air Defense Sector at McCord Air Force Base in Seattle, Washington, to the 142nd Oregon Air National Guard Wing, stationed in Portland, Oregon.