by Lyle Howard
Lance held out his arm to gratefully shake his rescuer’s hands. “Well, thanks anyway. It’s not often that strangers will get involved like you two did.”
One of the men couldn’t hide his enthusiasm. “Well, I don’t know about you,” he said to the other tourist, “but we don’t get this kind of excitement in Toledo.”
Lance grinned. “It’s a long story. Maybe someday we’ll all be lucky enough to run into each other again, and I’ll be able to explain it all.”
From inside the stall, Carpenter began moaning.
“You’d better get a move on, young man,” one of them warned. “Your friend sounds like he’s coming around.”
Lance waved goodbye as he walked out of the bathroom. “I’ll never forget you two!”
Once the teenager was gone, the tourists exchanged business cards and promised to keep in touch. It was curious how two total strangers could be thrown into the most unlikely of situations and come out of it as good friends. It was a story that they would have remembered to tell their grandchildren had it not been for the rest of the dreadful events that followed on that fateful winter afternoon.
Nancy was panting for every breath when she finally caught up with Lance at the departure gate. “We don’t have any time to lose,” she warned breathlessly. “We’ve got to get onboard … now hurry!” With every step, she would look over her shoulder to see if they were still being followed.
Gripping her son by the arm, she led him past the female gate attendant, barely pausing to snatch back their seat stubs.
“Who were those guys, Mom?” Lance asked, as she prodded him down the boarding ramp.
“Bad men, Lance … bad men.” Lance was being pushed so fast he had to hold onto his sunglasses to keep them from falling off his face. “Jeez Mom, I know they were bad men, but who sent them?”
Reaching the airplane, they had to wait by the forward door while the passengers ahead of them stowed their canyon items in the overhead storage compartments.
“So? Who were they?” Lance wanted to know.
Nancy politely but firmly put her hand over Lance’s mouth. “Sssh,” she cautioned. “We’ll talk once we’re in the air.”
Lance could feel his mother’s fingers trembling on his lips. He moved his head to the side, freeing his mouth so he could speak. “You’re shaking, Mom! What is going on here?”
Nancy’s whole body began to quiver as a nervous spasm of fear washed over her like a wave. She just wanted to get her son onto the damned airplane. Once they were out of this godforsaken city, they might be able to disappear again and lead some semblance of a normal life. “Come on,” she shouted to the passengers in front of her. “Can’t this line move any faster?”
There was an old couple standing in front of Lance, and they, like everyone else in the line, were upset and tired of waiting. The husband turned to Nancy and scowled. “Hey lady,” he said, “we’ve been waiting six hours for this flight. Do you really think five more minutes is going to matter?”
The old man’s wife tugged on his sleeve to make him stop. “Come on, Roland,” she pleaded. “Can’t you see that the boy’s got some sort of handicap? Leave the poor woman alone!”
Nancy’s eyes narrowed and her molars began to grind. She was about to vent her frustrations when Lance put a finger over her mouth. “Forget it, Mom,” he whispered. “I’ve heard it all before.”
Nancy started to grab for the old woman’s arm. “You might have, but I haven’t!”
Lance had to physically restrain his mother. “Come on, Mom,” he muttered forcefully under his breath, “let’s just get out of here without any more embarrassing scenes, okay?”
Nancy looked at her darkened reflection in Lance’s sunglasses and drew in a deep breath to compose herself. Her temples were throbbing like tympani drums from all the exertion and anxiety. “Okay, you’re right,” she said, running her fingers through her son’s downy blond hair. “Let’s just get the hell out of this city!”
Air Florida Flight 90 pulled away from the ramp at 3:40 P.M. with seventy-nine souls on board, but not before it had been de-iced with a glycol solution. The spraying of the control surfaces was a common and necessary procedure for any jet aircraft scheduled to take off under such adverse atmospheric conditions.
The 737 bumped along one of the many the taxiways leading out to the snow-covered runway. Trying to keep the runway unobstructed was the job of a fleet of diesel-powered snowplows that constantly patrolled the tarmac between flights. Maintaining a clear path for the aircraft in the driving snow was as great an act of futility as was trying to keep the tide from washing up onto a sandy beach. No matter how much frozen rain the big machines moved, the weather was unrelenting, blanketing the runway with yet another layer of slippery ice and blowing snow.
Inside the pressurized cabin, Nancy and Lance Cutter felt more secure knowing that they would soon be airborne. Nancy slipped one of the thin, foam rubber pillows behind her head and began going over a precautionary checklist in her head. It was safe to assume now that the military knew Lance was alive, they would be sending more of their flunkies after him. Nancy was well aware that they couldn’t spend the rest of their lives running and hiding, but a mere name change might not be enough this time. With all of the government’s sophisticated equipment and infinite access to public records, they would have no problem tracking her son down. She had to find a safe haven where she and her boy could lead a halfway normal life. She had to think … there had to be a way.
Lance was preoccupied reading the safety instructions on the card that he had lifted out of the orange and blue seatback in front of him. While a young, petite-looking stewardess instructed the passengers on the use of their seatbelts and the locations of the emergency exits, Lance studied the card. He wanted to pay attention to the stewardess’s safety lecture, but that eerie sensation of danger had suddenly overwhelmed him in its imperceptible grasp for the second time in little over an hour. He wondered if he should warn his mother, but when he glanced over at her, the look of uneasiness on her face made him decide to keep the premonition to himself.
Just north of the airport, the afternoon exodus was already underway. To the east, through the swirling curtain of snow, commuters and truckers were caught in the usual rush-hour traffic jam on the Fourteenth Street Bridge. For those weary drivers traveling into the capital city, the Jefferson Memorial stood obscured on the northern shore of the peninsula known as East Potomac Park. For those traveling west across the bridge into Arlington, Virginia, the Pentagon building, with all of its imposing stateliness, had faded into a nebulous phantom, lurking fiendishly in the hazy downpour.
Southeast of the Pentagon, the blue and white Air Florida 737 stood motionless at the end of the runway pointed due north. With its engines producing a whirlwind of shimmering waves of heated air behind them, the airliner remained poised for takeoff, awaiting clearance from the control tower.
Through his window centered over the right wing, Lance stared out at the ice floes in the Potomac River while his mother continued to plan escape strategies in her head. Like the cars on the bridges traversing it, the Potomac River was congested with slow-moving chunks of gray and white ice. Lance let his mind drift aimlessly with the floating ice, watching one large slab in particular as it bumped and pushed its way past smaller chunks. He wondered if the rest of his life would be like those meandering blocks of ice, moving haphazardly with no direction or destination, to be taken to wherever life’s river flowed. It was a bleak revelation that he didn’t much care to think about.
The captain’s voice came on over the intercom shattering Lance’s train of thought. He introduced the flight crew and apologized for the delay. “There’s nothing we can do about the weather, ladies and gentleman,” he said, “but to make your flight a more enjoyable one, Air Florida says cocktails are on the house.” A smattering of applause was evident throughout the aircraft, especially from the rear of the cabin where a group of businessmen sat. They
were already half-sloshed from spending three hours throwing back boilermakers in the terminal bar.
Nancy and Lance both looked back over their seatbacks at the raucous party and laughed at their soused condition. At least someone would be enjoying the flight, Nancy thought to herself. She looked over at her son and basked in the warm glow of his smile. It was a cheerful expression that she had seen all too seldom lately.
The senior flight attendant began patrolling the cabin, making sure that all seatbacks were upright and tray tables were securely fastened. Neither Lance nor his mother saw the stocky, bulldog-faced man shadowing the stewardess as she strolled toward them up the aisle.
Blake had made it just in time. It took a bit of fancy footwork from his superiors, but two phone calls later, he was on the flight with a first-class seat. His only purpose for entering the coach cabin was to see where they were sitting. No one had told him that he had to remain anonymous, and he took villainous satisfaction in letting the boy and his mother know that there was nowhere to hide.
The stewardess politely nodded as she walked past Lance and his mother, but Blake stopped at the end of their row. “Coffee, tea, shoulder pads?” Blake sneered, as he rubbed his aching ribs.
Nancy’s throat went dry as dirt. Lance began unbuckling his seatbelt, but Blake reached over and shoved him forcefully back into his seat. “Relax kid, you’re not going anywhere!”
Lance’s premonition had proven faithful again. When was he ever going to learn to trust his instincts? “What are you planning … ” he started to say.
The stewardess returned down the aisle and stood next to Blake. “I’m sorry, sir, but federal regulations prohibit passengers from moving about the cabin while the airplane is preparing for takeoff. You’ll have to take your seat.”
Blake winked shrewdly at Lance and his mother. There was no reason to cause a scene here; he had them trapped. “Enjoy your flight,” he said, with a twisted confidence in his voice. “We’ll talk more in a little while!”
For Nancy, there was no holding back the tears as the mighty engines of the 737 roared to life. It was so wrong coming here, she chastised herself. “I’m so sorry, baby,” she cried, grabbing onto her son’s wrist.
Lance’s vicious stare burned into Blake’s back as the stewardess escorted him through the curtains at the front of the cabin. He swore to himself that whoever was behind all of this would never lay one finger on his mother. “I love you, Mom,” Lance said, gently rubbing the back of her hand. “No matter what ever happens, we’ll still have each other.”
As the 737 lumbered down the runway, its tires strained for traction. Through a curtain of buffeting snow, the wind blowing across the tarmac suddenly and violently shifted direction.
From the Herald Wire Service…
A Thunderous Commotion followed by Frigid Silence
ARLINGTON, Va., Jan. 13 …
The plane careened into the bridge without warning. Those who were unfortunate to have witnessed the accident said there was no noise at all, as the Air Florida 737 jetliner crashed into the icy river and slowly began to sink into the silt.
On the bridge, a sixteen-wheel truck, with its top torn free, balanced precariously over the Potomac River. Nearly a dozen cars, hoodless and mangled, were scattered across the highway. Only a small portion of the plane’s tail section was visible through a gaping wound in the bridge’s protective guardrail.
There was no sound of agony or distress from below, only a macabre silence and long, thin fractures in the ice, all leading to a murky blue shadow in the water.
There was no bone-jarring blast from an explosion, no pummeling repercussion to burst anyone’s eardrums … only the terrifying screeching of metal grinding against metal. The thin-skinned fuselage split open when it collided with the bridge, finally breaking completely apart when the 737 hit the ice floes drifting aimlessly in the river. Before anyone aboard knew what was happening, a tidal wave of freezing water was surging in from every conceivable direction.
Screams of terror filled the cabin as the hand of fate tore apart the fractured airplane. The catastrophe was over in less than a minute, but for the few that survived the ordeal, the horrific memories would last a lifetime.
In what was left of the first-class cabin, Blake was drowning beneath the flood of rising water. He never got the opportunity to fasten his seatbelt, and was consequently thrown into the forward bulkhead separating the galley from the rest of the cabin. His head slammed savagely against the metal partition and he fell face down into the aisle. The extra-wide and extremely plush seat he had been assigned to at the last minute tore itself free from its restraining bolts and landed on his back, pinning his bloodied head below the freezing water. He struggled briefly to liberate himself, but the harder he fought, the more oxygen he expended. Within seconds, his dead eyes were bulging from their sockets, and his tongue was dangling lifelessly from his mouth. In his life’s final act of irony, the toppled seat floated off his distended body as the water level rose higher in the cabin. If he had held his breath just a few seconds longer, he might have been able to escape the wreckage alive.
Farther back in the coach seats, Lance was just about to say something else to reassure his mother when the sudden impact snapped them both back in their seats. Remembering the instructions on the safety card he had just read, Lance quickly bent over and placed his head between his knees. His sunglasses fell from his face and were briskly carried away by the inundation of water. Above their heads, like a canopy of vines that had suddenly found some miraculous secret of growth, the oxygen masks sprouted from the ceiling panels.
With the frailty of an eggshell, the fuselage burst open and the pungent smell of exhaust from the smoking engines filled the cabin. Anything that wasn’t held or battened down was thrown violently around the coach section.
Nancy’s seatbelt wasn’t secured as tightly as her son’s and her head and chest smashed against the seatback in front of her. From the force of the blow, something with the brittleness of fine china cracked in the base of Nancy’s neck. Suddenly she was spitting up a fountain of blood that spattered over the seat in front of her. Her ribs had splintered and like jagged knives, they skewered and ripped through her internal organs. “Lance!” she gurgled as the hot red liquid flowed freely through her lips.
The water cascaded into the cabin like it would have on a submarine equipped with a screen door. The older couple that had been so rude to Lance and his mother on the ramp only a few minutes earlier, were both dead in their seats with their skin turning sky-blue as the icy water climbed unrelentingly above their laps. Bloated bodies floated down the aisle like balloons in a Thanksgiving parade. Those who managed to loosen their harnesses were soon overcome by either the level of the water or the heart-stopping temperature of it.
Lance unbuckled his seatbelt and held his mother close to him. The water was up to their chests, and her face was quickly turning the color of the seats they were both sitting in. As Lance cradled her inanimate face in his hands, he noticed the contrast between the color of her skin and his. His hands were still pink and supple. The frigid temperature didn’t seem to be bothering him at all.
The water had risen to just below chin level and Nancy was barely breathing. “Baby?” she struggled through her purple lips.
Lance rubbed her ashen cheeks with his thumbs. With his eyes filling up like a gutter on a rainy day, he tried to smile. “I’m here with you, Momma. Everything’s gonna be all right, just like I told you.”
A bubble of blood popped between her swollen lips. “Never let them find you, baby. You can’t ever let them find you.”
Lance pulled her head to his chest and rocked her gently. “I won’t, Momma, I won’t.”
Nancy coughed twice, choking on the blood in her throat, and passed away. Her face fell forward and the blood in her mouth was washed clean by the incoming flood.
Lance gave the woman that had so unselfishly given of herself, one last kiss on the t
op of her head. He could hear screaming coming from somewhere in the distance, but the windows were completely submerged as the airplane sank slowly beneath the surface of the river. With only a few inches of fresh air left along the roof of the cabin, Lance never looked back as he drew in a deep breath, dove, and swam for the first opening in the fuselage he could find.
From the Herald Wire Service…
A Hero’s Story
WASHINGTON, JAN. 13 …
Heroism is defined as “heroic conduct or behavior,” but sometimes a simple word alone cannot do justice to the unselfish actions of a truly courageous individual.
One such person, name never to be known, stepped to the forefront, not the limelight during today’s tragic plane crash on the Potomac River. To the rescuers hovering in a helicopter over the frozen green water, he looked to be a young man, perhaps in his mid-teens.
He was clinging with at least four other passengers to the tail section of the Air Florida 737, the only part of the plane still afloat. One of the crewmen aboard the Coast Guard helicopter threw down an orange life preserver attached to a rope.
He Passed the Ring to the Others
“We could have picked him up on the first go-round,” said the winch operator. “We threw it to him, but he handed it to someone else … a man who was bleeding from a head injury.”
“We went back over and over again, and he kept passing the ring to other injured passengers, including two women who were already suffering from the effects of hypothermia,” the pilot added.
“After several trips, managing to pull everyone else from the river, we went back for the young man and he had vanished!”
The Real Meaning if Heroism
“I said a prayer when I couldn’t find him,” the pilot said. “If you were in his situation, in the middle of a frozen river, with the realization that with every minute that went by, you were that much closer to freezing to death, could you be as compassionate as he was? I don’t want to ask myself that question.”