Code Black

by Donlay, Philip S.

  “What’s the passenger’s name?” Tucker asked.

  “Donovan Nash,” Lauren replied, relieved that perhaps she was going to be taken seriously. “He boarded a flight in Dulles to come here.”

  Tucker nodded at the agent to go check it out. She hurried across the terminal to the main Wayfarer ticket counter and began typing at a vacant station.

  “Here you are Dr. McKenna.” The cop held out her I.D. badge. “Now, will you please explain to me exactly what’s going on here?”

  As calmly as she could, Lauren recounted the conversation she’d had with Donovan. Just as she was finishing, the agent came running back toward them and handed a computer printout to Captain Tucker.

  “I’m telling you the truth,” Lauren said as she waited for Tucker to find Donovan’s name on the manifest.

  “He’s listed,” Tucker said as he looked up from the sheet.

  “Dr. McKenna.” The cop held up a finger for everyone to wait while he listened to a transmission through his earpiece. He acknowledged, and then continued. “We just ran a check. It confirmed you’re DIA. As far as I’m concerned you don’t pose a threat to security. You’re free to go. But if you create another disturbance on airport property—I will arrest you and put you in jail. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to check this out at our end,” Tucker said. “Can you help me get her through Security? I think she needs to tell her story to someone besides myself. Just to be on the safe side.”

  “Makes sense. Follow me,” the cop said.

  Lauren followed Tucker and the cop as they made a beeline toward a security checkpoint. They went directly to the front of the line where a short conversation between Tucker, the cop and the TSA took place. Once cleared, she and Tucker breezed through the metal detector.

  “I just want to say—” Lauren said to Tucker, as they walked away from Security.

  Tucker cut her off mid-sentence. “If you turn out to be some crazy woman, I’ll see to it you’re right back in the hands of the cops—I doubt they’ll be so accommodating the second time around. I don’t want to hear another word from you until we get to Operations.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Like a giant 500 mph scythe, the wing of the military plane cut through the thin skin of the 737 just above the cockpit. Aluminum ribs and stringers snapped as the wing dug further aft. Debris was ripped out into the frigid atmosphere, rupturing the Boeing’s fuselage. Instantly, the aircraft depressurized. A cloud of water vapor filled the cabin as the air condensed in the explosive decompression. In a fraction of a second, luggage, purses, blankets and magazines were sucked out of the forward section of the airplane. Large metal pieces from both aircraft gave way, tumbling back and tearing violently into the 737’s tail.

  The airliner reeled under the impact from the tanker. Donovan kept his grip on Audrey as they were both thrown into the seats in front of them. Donovan twisted sideways as the airplane lurched beneath him.

  Razor-sharp pieces of aluminum shot through 880’s passenger cabin. Plastic overhead compartments exploded, then splintered into a maelstrom of deadly airborne daggers. Glass from the shattered fluorescent lights flew into terrified eyes.

  The carnage was far worse in the front of the plane. Those passengers seated in the forward section bore the brunt of the flying debris—their momentary screams absorbed by the roar of the slipstream pouring into the cabin.

  Donovan tried to protect both himself and Audrey from the shower of fragments. The sting of objects peppered the exposed skin on his hands, while the pull of a powerful suction lifted Audrey off the seat. Donovan was sucked forward, his full weight pressed against his seatbelt. He braced himself with his feet as wrapped his arms around Audrey, keeping her in place. The roar penetrated to his bones, the freezing cold air shocked Donovan’s lungs as he fought to breathe. He winced at the pain in his ears, he had to swallow hard, twice, to eliminate the pressure and relieve the agony.

  Donovan raised his head and risked opening his eyes. He watched helplessly as rows of people in the forward cabin, still strapped in their seats, were sucked out of the gaping hole that had been ripped in the roof. With slow-motion clarity, he could see flailing bodies pummeled and slashed by the jagged metal before disappearing from sight.

  As quickly as it appeared, the suction from the decompression vanished. Donovan knew the pressure differential had equalized and the threat of being sucked out of the plane had passed. He pulled himself up. Fighting the horror he had witnessed and his own rising fear, he looked into Audrey’s frightened and confused face. At least she was still alive.

  “The masks!” he yelled above the rush of air. They were dangling from the overhead compartment just above them. He hoped she understood they needed oxygen. It was now freezing cold, and his mind became cloudy and uncertain. A vague notion crossed his mind—their efforts were probably ridiculous and short-lived. They would be dead in seconds. There was no way they could remain flying after being in a midair collision.

  Donovan pulled one of the oxygen masks to his face, tugged the lanyard to start the flow, then held out a second mask for Audrey. He breathed deeply into the yellow plastic cup, drawing the oxygen into his lungs.

  Audrey squeezed his hand fiercely and Donovan looked into her widening eyes, then turned to the ghostly scene in the cabin. It took him a moment to comprehend that many of the oxygen masks had failed to drop. Those that had were being fought over by panicked, hysterical passengers. Some were up out of their seats, trying violently to yank the masks off the people who had them, but their struggles only reduced their time of useful consciousness. People dropped in the aisle and some thrashed in their seats before their oxygen-starved brains caused them to black out.

  In the middle of the chaos, Donovan saw someone with a portable oxygen bottle. It was one of the young flight attendants, her long blonde hair whipped by the wind. She moved into the fray, trying to help. As she neared some of the panicked passengers, she was knocked off her feet, her shoulder slamming sharply into the seat frame. Her mask was ripped from her face. Two men then proceeded to battle for her oxygen bottle. She screamed in pain and collapsed helplessly into the aisle.

  “Stay here!” Donovan yelled to Audrey. He felt light-headed, but steadied himself on the seat in front of him. The cabin was a whirlwind of blowing insulation and debris from the ruptured fuselage. He waited a moment, trying to calculate his movements.

  Donovan forced himself forward, his walk unsteady. He made his way to an overhead bin marked “OXYGEN” and opened it. He could tell he was already suffering from the effects of hypoxia as a detached sense of euphoria fell over him. He strained to discern the simple commands on the oxygen tank. He had experienced this once before while training in an altitude chamber. If he was going to save himself and the young flight attendant still lying in the aisle, he needed to hurry. He pulled the green cylinder down and fumbled with the valve, his fingers numb from the cold. His vision began to fade, the blackness beginning at his periphery and moving inward. He tried to work faster, but the apparatus perplexed him. Somewhere in his befuddled mind he knew he had only seconds before he, too, would black out. His actions bordered on frantic, yet he was strangely calm. With a final twist he opened the valve and pressed the mask to his face.

  Donovan felt the cobwebs evaporating as he drew deeply on the 100% oxygen. His strength and clarity returning, Donovan knelt and picked up the mask the two men had been fighting over. Neither had won the battle. He slid the mask over the flight attendant’s face, her lips already a faint blue. He removed another portable bottle from the overhead bin and headed back to where Audrey sat. He repeated the process of opening the valve to start the flow of oxygen, then secured the mask around her face.

  Surveying the destroyed cabin, Donovan tried to make sense out of what had happened. A torrent of frigid air hit him with the force of a hurricane. The temperature neared 40 below. Tears froze to his cheeks and his exposed skin had become almos
t completely numb.

  To his right he caught a flurry of activity. A young woman in a window seat was fending off an assault from another passenger. Donovan instantly moved to help. Her mask had dropped and she’d secured it around her mouth and nose, but a man in the aisle seat, whose mask hadn’t dropped, was attempting to rip it from her face. In one quick motion, Donovan restrained the man and pointed across the aisle to a vacant seat with a mask dangling from the overhead panel. But instead of understanding, the crazed passenger reached out and began to wrestle the oxygen bottle from Donovan’s hands. It was a losing battle as the man’s efforts finally caused him to black out and slump into his seat. The woman seemed to thank Donovan with her eyes as she leaned back and gripped the armrest.

  The plane lurched and pushed Donovan hard against the row of seats. He turned his face from the icy blast and looked out the window. He was momentarily relieved to see clouds far below. They were somehow still at high altitude, not seconds away from the ground as he had feared. Donovan fought to orient himself, to understand what the airplane was doing. Everything felt wrong. It took him a moment, but he finally realized the 737 was in a steep turn to the right, heading back toward the severe weather they’d just flown over.

  “What’s happening?” Audrey shouted above the slipstream. Her hair and clothes whipped in the tempest.

  “I don’t know! We should be descending but we’re not!” Donovan yelled in return. He pushed his mask back on, taking two short breaths. “I need to get to the cockpit.”

  “Go!” She urged.

  Around him were the wide eyes of passengers who had survived the impact, yellow masks secured to their terrified faces. He saw others who had masks, but appeared to be unconscious. The panic and chaos that had filled the cabin only moments earlier had vanished. As they’d blacked out, people had dropped in the aisle and between the seats, their bodies twisted and contorted. Donovan wondered if those without masks were already dead.

  He pulled his way forward, fighting the river of freezing air racing in from the massive rip in the roof. In row after row, he saw mutilated passengers. Shards of metal and plastic debris pierced their blood-soaked bodies. The gore-splattered seats and walls of the airplane gave grisly testament to the force of the impact. He saw a woman he’d spoken to briefly as they boarded. Her vacant eyes seemed to be looking in dismay at her blood covered hands.

  The sight forced Donovan to move faster. As he pulled himself forward, the airplane lurched and he almost lost his balance. With careful steps he reached the forward section of the 737. All that remained were empty seat tracks. Everyone was gone. He thought of his own seat assignment in 2B, and understood that if he’d been sitting there he’d have been sucked out of the plane with the others.

  Another shudder from the 737 threw Donovan into the bulkhead. He hit his head sharply and the pain brought him back to the present. He sensed the last jolt had been from turbulence. He pictured the thunderstorms, and with his head lowered, forced himself toward the cockpit

  Bending down to escape the worst of the slipstream, Donovan reached the door to the cockpit. He tried to straighten up but couldn’t; the roof above him was partly caved in, bundles of wires whipped viciously in the wind. The door was closed and no doubt locked from the inside. The reinforced Kevlar would be virtually impossible to penetrate. Donovan gripped the heavy oxygen bottle and brought the butt end down heavily onto the latch mechanism of the door. To his complete surprise the door flung open and slammed heavily inward. Without hesitation, Donovan guided his precious oxygen bottle through the opening, and found himself standing in the cockpit.

  Oh no. Donovan tried to blink away his disbelief. He wanted to reject what he was seeing. The instrument panel was dark. Tubes that should have been burning brightly, giving precise information on the airplane’s condition, were black. As his practiced eye quickly darted from one part of the cockpit to the next, he found nothing was working. No radios, no navigation, no engine gauges. Everything on the flight deck was dead. The captain sat slumped back in his seat, unconscious or worse. The copilot didn’t have his shoulder harness fastened, his forehead rested against the control column. Donovan grabbed his shoulders and pulled the copilot’s torso off the controls; the young man’s head dangled loosely from his broken neck. In one swift motion, Donovan unfastened the copilot’s harness and clutched the dead man under the arms. With all of his strength, Donovan eased him out of the seat and laid him on the floor. He took the oxygen mask from his own face and secured it around that of the captain.

  Moving quickly, Donovan slid behind the controls and searched for the pressure mask. Pilots had masks vastly superior to the one he’d been using. He found it and looped the straps over his head. The seal bit hard and the pressurized 100% oxygen streamed into his lungs. He took wild gulps of the precious air as he looked out the windshield. The line of storms loomed large.

  In nearly 10,000 hours of flying, Donovan had never seen such a completely useless instrument panel. He searched quickly for the two instruments that didn’t need any power. All airliners had a small backup airspeed indicator and emergency altimeter. He found them; both appeared to be functioning.

  Down, we have to get down, Donovan urged himself. Not knowing what to expect, he put one hand on the controls and with the other, reached for the two throttles and pulled them back. The thunderstorms were dead ahead and he was running out of time. Churning upward toward the heavens, the hard-edged cumulonimbus clouds seemed to reach out for the 737—a lightning-lit wall of angry weather directly in their path.

  Donovan’s mouth felt as if it were filled with cotton as he eased the nose down and tried to turn the airliner. Instantly, the damaged airplane picked up speed. The controls buffeted in his hands. He corrected the pitch and eased off on the power. The pilot in him kept searching in vain for critical flight information on the panel. Only his raw instincts could now tell him what the unfamiliar aircraft would do next. He had to tighten the turn, he knew, to get around the storm. But if he allowed the 737 to get too slow, they would go into a spin and surely crash. If he penetrated the weather they could be ripped apart. A vivid burst of lightning lit up the thunderstorms—white-hot tentacles spreading out into the sky below them. “Come on baby, turn. Just turn and stay together.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Lauren stayed close to David Tucker as she was ushered through a heavy steel door into what she was sure must be Wayfarer Operations. There was a small lounge area. Pilots in uniform were standing in small groups talking or reviewing their paperwork. Beyond, Lauren saw a large, high-ceilinged room full of computers. One wall supported several oversized monitors, another was covered with what appeared to be a flow chart of some sort, Lauren thought it was most likely the Wayfarer schedule. Next to it was a screen that depicted the entire area of North America, it was awash with green blips that Lauren recognized as airplanes. The place seemed chaotic, and Lauren stayed close to Tucker as he made his way across the room.

  “Glen! Have you seen Henry Parrish?” Tucker called out as they neared a long counter.

  “I just talked to him. He’s on his way in.” Glen Connaghan, a heavy-set, florid-faced Irishman, glanced up from the small group of people he’d been conferring with. He spotted Lauren and immediately tucked in the front of his wrinkled white shirt that had been pulled out by his ample stomach. “Why? What’s up?

  “Not here,” Tucker answered, nodding toward Lauren. “Someplace private.”

  “I don’t have the time right now.” Glen shot a thumb over his shoulder toward one of the monitors that showed the listing of cancelled flights. “This blizzard is killing me.”

  Tucker looked around to make sure he wasn’t being overheard then motioned for Glen to step closer. “This is Dr. Lauren McKenna. She was talking with someone aboard flight 880 out of Dulles. She thinks we might have a problem.”

  Glen snapped his head from Tucker to Lauren. “What exactly did you hear?”

  “Are you talking to them?�
� Lauren gripped the edge of the counter, her fingers beginning to turn white. “Are they okay?”

  “We don’t know where they are.” Glen replied softly as he shook his head. “We can track every flight we have in the air—but we’ve lost contact with 880. Can you tell me what you heard?”

  Lauren released her death-grip on the counter and pushed at her temples, trying to maintain control. This couldn’t be happening. She refused to believe that Donovan might be dead, he was easily the bravest and most resilient man she’d ever known. She thought about the man Donovan used to be, and how the world believed he’d perished in a plane crash. The horrible irony was almost more than she could fathom.

  “Dr. McKenna?” Glen urged. “Any information you have might be helpful.”

  “I’m sorry.” Lauren shook away her thoughts as she collected herself. “As I told Captain Tucker, my fiancé is aboard flight 880. He called me on the airborne phone and we were having a conversation. Then, in the background, I heard screaming and all he told me was that there was another airplane. He said they were going to hit.”

  “He’s also a professional pilot,” Tucker said, adding the small detail to Lauren’s story.

  “How long ago was this phone call?” Glen turned toward a bank of clocks that lined one wall.

  “Fifteen minutes ago, maybe a little more,” Lauren replied, as a commotion sounded behind her. She turned and saw a determined-looking man sweep into the room. He was Lauren’s height, no more than five-foot-nine, and looked to be in his mid-fifties. He possessed dark, serious eyes that were locked into a piercing glare. His square jaw was even more prominent due to his closely cropped hair. The man was four steps in front of a long-haired teenager in a baggy coat over a gray uniform of some kind. The young man wore a backwards ball-cap and sported an earring. Though a study in contrasts, Lauren knew from their similar facial features they were father and son.