Accidental Heroes

by Danielle Steel

  “What?” She wasn’t sure what he was talking about.

  “I said all right. I love you because you’re a modern woman and that’s why I married you. I can’t punish you now for being everything I love about you. I think I forgot how brave you are as a person. You were brave yesterday too.”

  “You’re just as brave as I am,” she said and kissed him. “And when we go home, we’ll respect the traditions there,” she said softly. “Thank you,” she kissed him again. She knew that her not wearing a scarf on her head had been a shock to him. But he had taken it well. And they were both smiling when they left the hotel room hand in hand. They were going to their new life and everything they would discover. And whatever happened, they would face it together, just as they had on the plane.

  * * *

  —

  Helen was kept at the hospital overnight after her rescue from her long siege in the water. She thought she had been delirious for part of it. The water had been freezing cold. When she had finally bobbed up to the surface after, with all of her strength, she swam free of the plane underwater, the cushion had been next to her, and she had clung to it until they found her. For part of the time, she had been sure she was going to die. And then she had been pushed back into the bay by the tide, and she had heard the sound of the helicopters at twilight, and saw the harness drop down next to her in the water. It had taken everything she had in her to hang on for eight hours and not give up. And then suddenly they saw her and lifted her into the helicopter. Strong arms had caught her and laid her on the floor. She couldn’t even talk at first, until she warmed up. She had been shaking violently from the cold water and exposure. They had taken her to San Francisco General and at times before that, she was delirious, and thought she was back in Iraq in the Air Force, and asked for Jack. She hadn’t remembered at first that he was gone.

  A kind nurse stayed with her and told her what had happened.

  “Did anybody die?” Helen was finally able to say in a hoarse croak.

  “The copilot and a retired pilot, who was shot. But the rest of the crew and all the passengers got out before the plane sank. And of course they were looking for you for hours. I only know what I saw on the news, like everyone else. They said the crew was terrific, and got everyone out,” she said, and Helen lay back against her pillows. She had an IV in her arm, and her lips were cracked from the salt water, and every inch of her body ached.

  She managed to call her children in spite of it, and her father before the kids left for school that morning. They were ecstatic to hear her, and told her to hurry up and come home. She was planning to right after the press conference. Just thinking about going to it exhausted her.

  When she talked to her father again, he commented seriously on what she had been through. “That must have been an ugly scene in the cockpit,” he said, sure that there was a lot more than he’d heard on the news, and he was correct. The airline wanted to clean it up as much as possible, but there was no way to cover up the fact that a copilot had committed suicide in flight, a senior officer had been shot and killed, and an airliner had gone down in the bay, despite Helen’s heroic flying.

  “You’re a good woman,” her father said to her proudly, “and a hell of a pilot, even if you don’t know how to land. Didn’t your instructors teach you better than that?”

  “Guess not.” It was comforting to hear his voice. She had thought of him and her children the whole time she was in the water, and prayed that she would see them again. The mental strain alone had taken a toll on her, trying to control the plane in the final hour, and not get shot, and eight hours in the water. “I have to be at the press conference today at four o’clock. I’ll be home right after that. They’re bringing me home. I don’t think they trust my driving,” she said wryly. She wanted to see her father, but he wanted her to rest.

  “We’ll be waiting for you,” he said, and she could hardly wait to see them. They sounded shaken up but okay. As kids in the military, they had a lot of friends whose parents had died, mothers as well as fathers, which was why she had mustered out, and Jack had wanted to as well. They didn’t want that happening to their kids. But it had anyway, to him. And almost did to her, even as a civilian.

  “You’re a hero, Mom,” Jimmy said to her proudly when she talked to him.

  “No, I’m not, I’m just a pilot,” she corrected him. “Dad was a hero. I was just flying the plane.”

  “Yeah, but somebody got shot, and you landed under the bridge. That looked really cool!” They had seen it all on TV.

  “No, it was not cool. It was very scary.”

  “Were you swimming that whole time?” He wanted to know so he could tell his friends. Now that she was back, it seemed like an adventure. The day before it had seemed like a tragedy and almost had been for all of them.

  “I was hanging on to a seat cushion you can use as a life preserver.” But when she talked to Oliver, he was much more shaken than his younger brother, and she could hear him choke up at the sound of her voice. He was more sensitive and more aware than his brother.

  “Are you really okay, Mom?”

  “I’m fine.” She tried to sound even more so for him.

  “Thank God the crazy guy didn’t shoot you.”

  “That’s true. And I was lucky I could land the plane on the water, which gave everyone enough time to get out.” They had evacuated the plane in under four minutes, someone had estimated, which was miraculous. And landing it under the bridge without hitting it hadn’t been luck, but extraordinary skill.

  Lally wanted her to come immediately, and pick her up from school that afternoon. Her grandfather had said he would do it, and Helen hoped to be home shortly after. Hearing them reminded her how much she had at stake here. If something happened to her, there was no one to take care of them except her father, who was too old to raise kids again, although she knew he would do it if he had to. But being a pilot was all she knew.

  She got up and walked around her room and down the hall after she talked to them, and was stunned by how stiff and weak she was. She felt like she’d been beaten. But she knew she had to be coherent and in good shape for the press conference, no matter how she felt. The airline had promised to bring her a new uniform in time to dress.

  The doctors said they would have preferred to keep her for another day or two, until she was stronger and less battered by the trauma, but she insisted that she wanted to go home after the press conference. She needed to be with her children. She went back to bed then and slept for several hours.

  They delivered the uniform to her as promised, and a nurse helped Helen dress for the press conference, and by the time she was in full uniform, she felt like she had been hit by a bus and had to sit down in a chair.

  “Are you okay?” the nurse asked her. Helen had been discharged, but she was deathly pale. She pulled herself together then and stood up. The airline had a driver waiting for her, and all she could think about was going home to see her kids. The press conference was just a challenge she had to get through before she could go home and rest. The airline had told her that day that management wanted her to take a month off, with full pay, as compensation for what she’d been through. In the Air Force she got combat pay. In a way, this was no different.

  When Helen walked into the hotel reception room the airline had rented for the press conference, her uniform was impeccable, her back was straight, her head was held high. She felt shy for a minute, recognized the CEO of the airline, and went to greet him. He knew instantly who she was and thanked her for coming, and for her courage and quick reactions the day before. He attributed the survival of the passengers and crew to her. He talked about her incredible landing, since he had been a pilot himself. And as she talked to him, she heard a familiar voice behind her but couldn’t place it. She turned to see a man she didn’t recognize. He was wearing a dark suit, and was in his mid-forties. He
looked trim and had a handsome, craggy face. He looked a little bit like Dick Tracy, and then she realized who it was when he spoke again, and she smiled broadly.

  “Hello, Ben.” She knew that voice from their calls the day before. “Thanks for all your help yesterday.”

  “Thanks for not knocking the Golden Gate Bridge down. We would have looked like shit if you did,” he said so no one else could hear him, and she laughed. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

  “I feel so bad about Connor Gray. He was trying to help me.”

  “The odds were that somebody was going to get hurt, or a lot of people. I’m glad it wasn’t you,” he said sincerely. Connor Gray was in his sixties and didn’t have young children. His death was sad, but hers would have been a tragedy.

  “It shouldn’t have happened,” she said with a serious expression. She was planning to go to his memorial service, whenever they held it.

  Ben introduced her to Phil then, and Alan, the head of the San Francisco office of Homeland Security, whose agents had spoken to Jason’s ex-girlfriend and found the iPad in his apartment. They had each played an important role in figuring out who wanted to bring the plane down in a suicide mission.

  “You had us all worried yesterday when you disappeared,” Ben said to her quietly.

  “I got pulled out by the current, after the plane went down. First I was dragged under when it sank and then it just pulled me out. By the time I surfaced and realized what had happened, I was too far out to swim back or for anyone to see me. I was lucky the tide brought me back in.”

  “I don’t think I’ve had a happier moment in my career than when I saw you reach for that harness and they pulled you up.” He almost cried thinking about it again.

  “Thank you. I was pretty happy too.” She smiled at him, and he liked her eyes. They were big and blue and honest. She looked like someone who didn’t hide from the truth. And then she saw Tom Birney walk in, and went to talk to him and thank him. He looked a little rocky too, the way she’d been feeling all day. They had all been through a lot.

  “Are you supposed to be out of the hospital?” he asked her as though they were old friends and not two people who had met the day before. But wartime bred fast friendships, and this had been no different. They had been fighting a common enemy, and were the two soldiers left standing. She’d been told that he had worked tirelessly to get the passengers out, and been one of the last to leave with the crew. She owed him a great deal.

  “No,” she said in answer to his question about leaving the hospital, and then laughed about it. She was feeling better now that she was up and dressed, and the queasiness was gone. “My kids need me. I’m going home after this.” He nodded and went to speak to the head of the airline, and a few minutes later, the press conference started. The CEO made a statement about how shocked and chagrined they were that something like this had happened, that human nature was unpredictable, and it had taught them to be even more stringent in the future. They had been giving a talented young pilot a chance to develop, and they had learned the hard way that it had been a mistake. There was no way they could deny it now, and they didn’t try to. He introduced Helen and Tom Birney as the heroes of the hour, acknowledged the bravery and efficiency of the entire crew, and said that Captain Smith had managed to pull off an impossible feat, flying under the Golden Gate without destroying it, landing a plane that size on top of the water, and giving everyone enough time to get out before it sank. There was a round of applause, and Helen made a brief statement afterward that heroes were accidents of circumstances. You couldn’t train or learn to be one, or plan it. You did what you had to when the opportunity presented itself and hoped you got it right.

  Within minutes, all the members of the press who had attended were on their feet and giving her a standing ovation, and Helen blushed and looked embarrassed. Despite the medals she’d earned during her career, which attested to her skill and courage, she wasn’t used to public acclaim. Ben, Phil, and Alan all spoke briefly for Homeland Security, and took questions from the press. It took almost an hour and at the end of it, half the people in the room came to shake Helen’s hand and congratulate her. Ben smiled as he watched her. She was without a doubt the shyest person in the room, and probably the most modest.

  “Cheer up, Captain,” Ben said to her in an undervoice as she squirmed from the attention. “The next time you shake up their Bloody Marys with a little turbulence, they’ll be writing the CEO nasty letters about you.” She laughed out loud at what he said.

  “I’m not used to this. They don’t give standing ovations in the Air Force.”

  “They don’t often in civilian life either. And I hope you never have to pull off another stunt like this one.”

  “Me too.” She wasn’t even sure now how she had done it. She was just compensating for the havoc Jason had wrought and the angle he had put the plane in at low altitude, and by some miracle, it had worked.

  “Could we have dinner sometime when you’re in New York, to celebrate the fact that we got through this?” It didn’t sound like a date, just combat buddies grateful for their return from a tough mission in one piece.

  “That would be nice,” she said easily. “They just gave me a month off, so it won’t be for a while,” she added, relieved that the press conference was over.

  Reporters had directed their toughest questions at management for not realizing how mentally unstable Jason was and firing him before this. But he was smart and charming, when he wanted to be, and Helen could see how he had slipped through the cracks. Even she had just thought he was a smart-ass and a harmless, badly behaved boy, and he was a great deal worse than that. He was a murderer who wanted to take 110 people with him, and had no remorse about it whatsoever before his death. He thought the airline deserved it for depriving him of what he considered his rightful place, so killing innocent people made sense to him, and didn’t matter. But it was hard to justify to the press, and ultimately the public, that they hadn’t fired him before it got to that point. The airline had a major challenge ahead of them and they knew it. The CEO had been deeply apologetic. And they all knew there would be major lawsuits as a result.

  Helen got ready to leave then, and shook hands with Ben and Tom again, and the others, and with the CEO, who thanked her profusely. And then she left the room to meet up with the driver. Ben took off right after she did and saw her drive away in the town car. She had her uniform hat off and had removed her tie. Her shoulder-length hair was blowing in the evening breeze, and she was smiling at the prospect of seeing her children and spending a month at home with them. She owed them that after the fright they’d had the day before because of her.

  Ben waited for Phil, and they had dinner that night at a great steak house. They drank a lot of wine, and Ben was drunk when he got back to his hotel room, and he didn’t care at all. He knew he had earned it.

  * * *

  —

  When Helen turned into the driveway in the unfamiliar car, all her children looked out the window, let out a shout when they saw it was her, and ran down the front steps to throw their arms around her as she got out. They almost knocked her down, and she followed them into the house where Lisa, the babysitter, had baked a cake for her, and she had helped Lally make cupcakes for her. Lally insisted Helen eat one immediately. They were her favorites, Lally pointed out, red velvet and dark chocolate. And Oliver and Jimmy were standing by at attention, waiting to hug her again. They couldn’t get enough of her, nor she of them.

  “I thought you drowned, or a big fish ate you,” Lally said, looking worried.

  “I’m a good swimmer and I’m not going to let a fish eat me, Lally. And I have a month’s vacation.” She had been thinking about it on the drive home, and thought of taking them to Disneyland. She wanted to do something fun with them, to celebrate the fact that she was alive. Suddenly, that was all that mattered. She wanted the
ir time together to be about life, not death. They’d had too much of that in recent years.

  Her father was at the house too, waiting patiently to see her, and all five of them sat at the kitchen table and had dinner together. Tim went out and got pizzas and two roast chickens, and it felt like a feast to Helen. Life seemed suddenly normal again although two men had died in her cockpit the day before. Her father couldn’t bear the thought that it might have been her, or that the copilot could have flown them into the bridge and killed them all, as he intended. Nothing seemed safe in the world today. But destiny had protected her this time. It was all they could ask for. He hadn’t worried about her this much since she was in the military, although he tried not to show it.

  Lally slept in her mother’s bed that night. And they finished the cupcakes for breakfast the next morning. She had gotten them organized for school, and Helen smiled as she looked at her children at the kitchen table. Life was sweet. And however frightening the scene had been two days before, miraculously she had survived. It made every moment with them even sweeter.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Like the rest of the crew that had been on Helen’s flight, Nancy had been given two weeks off, and Peter traded his trips for the next week to give them time together. They spent the next day in bed, sleeping and relaxing and watching movies, and that night, she dug through her closet to find something to wear, and found a dusty-rose-colored silk suit that seemed like the right attire for a matron of honor. Joel hadn’t given her any details about the wedding, except that the ceremony was at four o’clock at city hall, and Kevin’s parents were giving them a reception afterward at the Ritz-Carlton. But she had no idea how many people would be there or how dressy it would be when she teased him into inviting her.