The ride was free, though, and complaining would accomplish nothing, so Tracie stretched out as well as she could and dozed, unable to manage a deep sleep. Something was bothering her.
The sense of unease she had felt upon meeting Major Tom Mitchell back at Ramstein had only intensified after departure. Several times during the first couple of hours of the flight, Mitchell had stepped back from the flight deck and observed her as she pretended to sleep, her eyes barely open under her thick eyelashes. In each instance he had approached stealthily and stood off to the side in an attempt to remain unobserved.
He was sizing her up, that much was obvious. The question was why?
After the first instance Tracie had debated opening her eyes and confronting him directly, but her instincts told her that would be a mistake, and she had learned years ago not to question those instincts. They were the subconscious mind’s way of protecting its owner when the conscious mind could not quite wrap itself around a problem.
Paying attention to a nagging feeling had saved her life on more than one occasion, and Tracie was no more likely to ignore her instincts than she was to jump out of this B-52 with no parachute.
Mitchell hadn’t appeared at all over the last couple of hours, though, which meant either his curiosity had been satisfied, or he was flying this leg of the trip and couldn’t leave the flight deck. She guessed it was the latter—his ongoing nervousness and desperation were clear to her. The man was clearly operating under some serious stress.
She opened her eyes a slit, observing her surroundings without revealing her wakefulness. All was quiet in the cargo area. Mitchell was still nowhere to be seen.
Tracie stretched and wondered how close the big aircraft was to the North American shoreline. She had flown from the U.S. to Europe and vice-versa many times and had developed an innate sense of the trip’s timing. They had to be getting close.
She was considering unbuckling her lap restraint and wandering up to the cockpit when a sharp popping noise erupted from the front of the aircraft. Then another. It sounded like exploding firecrackers.
Except they weren’t firecrackers.
Someone was shooting on the flight deck.
A voice shouted in surprise and alarm. The B-52 yawed violently to the left and began a steep dive. Tracie felt her body pull against the seat restraints and she fumbled with the buckle. Her fingers scrabbled for the metal release and missed.
She tried again and managed to lift the buckle but the straps would not budge.
She was trapped. Her heart was racing and she felt a rising sense of panic. She had just seconds to get to the front of the airplane or likely become a victim. She yanked on the seat belt release again as the sound of the jet engines screamed in her ears, the airplane still in a diving left turn.
Then she realized why she could not escape her seat. The tension of her body pulling against the restraint would not allow the mechanism to unlock. She reached for a handhold built into the side of the plane and pulled hard, grabbing the metal seatbelt release with her other hand and yanking upward.
It gave. She was free.
She tumbled into the aisle, sliding into the fuselage and smashing her shoulder against an aluminum duct, denting the ductwork and sending a sharp pain zinging through her neck. Then the airplane leveled off and she fell to the floor.
Tracie slipped her Beretta out of her shoulder rig and sprinted toward the cockpit as a third shot ripped through the aircraft.
The scene on the flight deck was chaotic and gruesome. Navigator Nathan Berenger lay on the floor, partially blocking the narrow entrance to the cockpit. Most of his skull had been blown off, his head barely recognizable as human. Blood had splattered everywhere, as had bits of bone matter and human tissue.
Tracie’s half-second glance at Berenger told her all she needed to know. The navigator was dead or soon would be, beyond help for certain.
At the controls, Major Stan Wilczynski was struggling with Tom Mitchell. Wilczynski had been shot at least once and was bleeding heavily from a wound in his shoulder, but he fought grimly for control of Mitchell’s gun. He had somehow managed to level off the diving B-52 while locked in a life-and-death battle with his fellow crewmember and was now screaming obscenities at him.
Tracie dropped to one knee and sighted down the barrel of the Beretta.
“Drop it!” she screamed, knowing Mitchell would never do so but hoping to at least distract the crazed officer. She didn’t dare shoot because the angle was wrong—there was every possibility the slug would strike Wilczynski and she would end up killing the man she was trying to save.
Mitchell glanced up in wild-eyed surprise at Tracie and Wilczynski took advantage of the opening, pounding a fist into the side of Mitchell’s face. Tracie heard bones crack and wondered as she waited for Mitchell to fall whether the broken bones were in Wilczynski’s hand or Mitchell’s face. Or both.
But Mitchell didn’t fall, and he didn’t drop the gun. He hung on, grappling with Wilczynski, the men jockeying for the upper hand. The B-52 again began yawing to the left as one of the fighting men jostled the yoke.
“Dammit,” she muttered under her breath, itching to put Mitchell down but still without a clear shot.
Then the situation went from desperate to out of control. Mitchell released his grip on Wilczynksi, taking another fist to the face but slugging Wilczynski in his wounded shoulder with the butt of his gun.
Wilczynksi’s eyes rolled up in his head and he slumped back, but before Tracie could squeeze off a shot, Mitchell pulled the trigger. The bullet caught Stan Wilczynski in the side of the head and knocked him sideways, blood misting.
Tracie didn’t hesitate. She fired, and Mitchell slumped against the instrument panel like a rag doll. She fired again and the second shot hit home as well. She fired a third time and Mitchell crumpled to the floor.
She kept her gun trained on him, breathing heavily, certain Mitchell was dead.
It appeared everyone else was dead inside one of the most complex aircraft ever manufactured.
And Tracie didn’t know how to fly.
14
May 30, 1987
11:22 p.m.
Atlantic Ocean, 100 miles off the coast of Maine
Stan Wilczynski had a headache. A bad one. It wasn’t like waking up after having a few too many cold ones at the OC, and it wasn’t like the dull throb at the back of the skull he was prone to getting when overtired. It was more like someone had taken a ballpeen hammer to the side of his head.
He groaned and tried to roll over. Maybe if he could sleep a little longer the damned headache would go away. But he couldn’t turn onto his side. He was stuck. Must have gotten twisted up in the sheets.
He opened his eyes reluctantly and the pain intensified, a battering ram blasting through his head, building and building until he was afraid his skull would explode.
He blinked hard and his blurry vision doubled and tripled, and it occurred to him with sudden, terrifying clarity that he was dying. He closed his eyes again, willing the pain to go away. It lessened slightly.
Thank God for small favors.
Then he realized someone was talking to him. It was a woman’s voice but it was not a voice he recognized. The voice was tense, worried, speaking to him calmly but insistently. Even with the pain ripping through his head, Stan could sense the intensity behind the words. He kept his eyes closed and concentrated hard.
“Stay with me,” the voice was saying. “You can do it. Stay with me and breathe.”
And Stan remembered.
He wasn’t in bed at all. He was in the cockpit of a B-52. He had been flying that female CIA agent back to Andrews Air Force Base from West Germany when Tom Mitchell had gone stark, raving mad, murdering poor Nate Berenger and then shooting Stan. He remembered struggling with Mitchell for his weapon. He couldn’t remember how the struggle had ended, although it seemed suddenly clear he’d lost it.
Their passenger must have subdued Mitchell and was
now trying to save his life. He didn’t want to open his eyes, having no desire to re-experience the agony associated with doing so a moment ago, but he knew he had to. He screwed up his courage, praying for strength. Then he blinked his eyes open, doing his best to ignore the accompanying flash of pain.
The CIA agent—he tried to recall her name and couldn’t—knelt over him, holding her blood-soaked jacket to his head. Stan knew the blood was his and tried to ignore it. He felt light-headed, weak and disoriented. He focused on his rescuer and her stunning red hair, and after a moment three blurry CIA agents became two and then, somewhat miraculously, one.
She was still talking to him, calm and encouraging, but her ashen face gave away her concern. “Welcome back to the land of the living,” she said tightly.
“Great to be here,” he mumbled. “But I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stay.”
He felt woozy and his stomach pitched and rolled. “How bad is it?”
“I’m not going to lie to you,” she said. “It’s bad. I’m not even sure how you’re conscious right now. Mitchell’s second shot struck you in the head.”
“Who’s flying the plane?” he asked, struggling to remain conscious.
“No one. I managed to straighten the wings and return us more or less to a straight flight path, but we’re slowly descending.” Her voice sounded thin and reedy and she was clearly fighting panic.
“Have you radioed for help?”
“Not yet. I’ve been a little preoccupied.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry about that.” Stan nodded and instantly regretted doing so. The pain in his head returned full-force. The battering ram had taken a break and a sledgehammer took its place.
He closed his eyes and concentrated on settling his upset stomach. He knew if he tossed his cookies, the pain would explode and he would probably lose consciousness again. And if that happened, he doubted he would ever reawaken.
Stan forced himself to focus. The lure of sleep was almost overwhelming. He wanted nothing more than to let go and leave this nightmare behind. But it was obvious the CIA agent wasn’t a pilot and would never be able to land the B-52 herself. It was impressive that she had managed to straighten the wings—the BUFF must have been in the slightest of rolls—but after that she had clearly run out of ideas.
He opened his eyes. The pain rolled back in like a massive tsunami but stopped just short of unmanageable.
“Let’s get this big tin can on the ground, shall we?” His vision blurred and then cleared. More or less.
She sighed, her relief palpable. “Absolutely. What do I do first?”
“You get the hell out of my way and let me fly.”
15
May 30, 1987
11:27 p.m.
Atlantic Ocean, 70 miles off the coast of Maine
The badly injured pilot was out of his seat, crumpled on the floor, and Tracie knew sliding him upright would be a risky proposition. He had already lost a lot of blood by the time she reached him, and she had been forced to pick one of his two bullet wounds to apply pressure to. The choice had been easy—the head trumped every other body part in terms of importance—but blood continued to ooze sluggishly from his shoulder wound whenever he moved.
She would have to let go of the jacket she was pressing against Wilczynski’s skull in order to lift him. He was not a huge man, but she was much smaller, and although she had no doubt she could lift him, she knew she could never manage it one-handed.
The same thought seemed to occur to Wilczynski and he said, “Wait. We have a first-aid kit aboard the aircraft. I think you should bandage my head wound before we do anything else.”
Tracie felt the steady descent of the B-52 and her panic began rising again, threatening to overwhelm her. “How much time do we have before we hit the water?”
“It depends on how much altitude we’ve lost. You’ll have to check the altimeter.”
She craned her head but couldn’t read the instruments from her position, crouched over Wilczynski’s seat. “You’re going to have to maintain pressure on the jacket yourself for a second. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” Wilczynski answered, although Tracie questioned the accuracy of his response. He was clearly trying to avoid any movement of his head and he looked pale and weak.
“Okay. I’ll go as quickly as I can.” She waited until the injured pilot had lifted his hands, then removed hers and helped him position his in what she hoped was the best location. The amount of blood soaking the jacket was frightening.
When he indicated he was ready, she stood and scanned the instruments, amazed at the sheer number of gauges, dials and switches.
Finally she found the altimeter. “Twenty-three thousand, five hundred feet,” she said.
“And how long has the plane been flying itself?”
Tracie thought hard. It seemed like forever, but in reality was probably not long at all. “Ninety seconds,” she guessed.
“Okay,” he answered and then was silent for a moment. “We have maybe five minutes before we go down.”
Shit. At the rate the color continued to drain out of Wilczynski’s face, Tracie wondered if he would last another five minutes.
“Where’s the first aid kit?” she asked, hyper-conscious of the seconds ticking away.
He pointed to a metal box clipped to the fuselage behind what had been Mitchell’s seat, then quickly returned the hand to his head. Tracie leaned over the dead bodies of Mitchell and Berenger, unclipped the kit, and then returned to Wilczynski’s side. She opened the box and rummaged inside, removing a roll of gauze.
She gently removed Wilczynski’s hands and pulled the jacket away from the head wound. Blood surged out of a ragged, splintered hole where the side of his skull used to be. For the second time since discovering Wilczynski alive, she wondered how in the hell he was still breathing.
And how long it would be before he stopped.
She anchored one end of the gauze on the back of his head with her left hand and began unrolling it, wrapping it expertly around and around with her right, moving as quickly as she dared. She finished wrapping Wilczynski’s head and secured the bandage, then examined her handiwork quickly, anxious to move the pilot. The portion of the gauze located directly over his injury had already begun darkening, changing from a pristine white to a frightening maroon, but the patch job looked secure enough, at least for now.
She nodded and forced a smile. “There. Good as new.”
Wilczynski smiled and the effect was ghastly. A thick smear of blood coated the side of his face and his teeth had been stained a blackish-red from all the blood he had swallowed.
“I appreciate the lie.” He closed his eyes and Tracie knew he was steeling himself for the pain to come.
After a moment he opened his eyes again. “Let’s take our seats and get this thing on the ground.”
Tracie nodded and knelt over his prone body, straddling his legs. She slipped her hands under his armpits. His flight suit was sticky with blood. She eased the pilot’s body up and forward, until she had gotten him into a sitting position on the floor, legs straight out in front of him, next to his seat. He had maintained a grim silence through all the jostling, despite the pain he must be feeling.
This is one tough bastard, she thought. But things are about to get a lot worse. She looked him in the eye and could see he knew.
“Are you ready?” she asked quietly.
He nodded.
She hooked her arms under his armpits at the elbow, locking the two of them in an awkward embrace. Then she struggled to a kneeling position and began rising, her legs screaming in protest as they took the brunt of the two hundred pound man’s dead weight.
When she had lifted his body to where his butt was level with the flight seat, Tracie took a half-step left and then dropped the pilot as gently as she could into the seat.
He groaned and his eyes rolled up into his head and he began sliding back toward Tracie. She used her small body to brace his larger one in t
he seat and then buckled him into his harness.
Wilczynski’s eyes were closed and his pallor had turned a sickly grey. A thin sheen of sweat coated his features, mixing with the drying blood and forming a hideous Halloween mask. His head slumped against his chest.
Tracie feared he was dead. She placed two fingers lightly against his neck, just under his right ear, and felt for the carotid artery. The pulse was steady but faint. Wilczynski was still alive.
For now.
Stay with me, please. I can’t fly this thing on my own.
Tracie wondered how fast they were descending. She pictured the Atlantic Ocean, vast and empty, sliding beneath the aircraft, waiting to swallow them whole if they didn’t begin climbing soon. The darkness outside the windscreen was immense, the blackness unbroken. There was no way to tell how close they were to the water; it could be twenty feet or twenty thousand.
She fought against the panic. Lifted her head and glanced at the altimeter. Two thousand feet. And dropping.
She closed her eyes. Take a deep breath. Steady yourself. Do what you have to do. That meant trying to reawaken Major Wilczynski. He had been lucid prior to losing consciousness. If she could rouse him, maybe he could fly the B-52.
She hoped.
Another look at the altimeter. Twelve hundred feet. Descending.
She bent and slapped Wilczynski’s face lightly, more of a light open-palmed tap than an actual slap. Two taps to the right cheek and then two to the left. Right, left, one more on each side.
Wilczynski stirred and muttered but his eyes remained closed.
Nine hundred feet.
She tried again, this time increasing the force of the blow and speaking loudly. “Stan, wake up! Stan, we’re dropping into the ocean. You need to wake up and fly this plane!”
More mumbling and his eyes fluttered, but they were vacant and unfocused.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 6