Primary Target (1999) (12 page)

"Son of a bitch!" Harrison said as he pulled on the control column. He could feel the severe sink rate and his heart raced like a trip-hammer. Don't give up, stay with it!

Pam's face turned pasty white.

A microsecond later the ground-proximity warning device sounded. "Whoop, whoop, pull up!"

Waiting for the expected impact with the ground, Harrison maintained the proper deck angle to fly out of a wind shear condition and continued to push on the throttles. He had practiced the same procedure many times in the flight simulator.

"Whoop, whoop, pull up!"

Pam braced for the impact.

"Don't let this happen to me," Marsha Phillips moaned aloud, and tightly gripped the armrests. She glanced up th
e
aisle and saw some of the other passengers doing the same thing. Listening to the baby cry more loudly, Marsha allowed her gaze to drift to the window, then recoiled in sheer terror. The runway was no longer under them and the shuddering airplane was only a few feet above the ground. Unable to contain her fear any longer, Marsha began praying out loud. "Dear God, please give me strength ... please don't let anything happen."

"Brace yourself!" a flight attendant ordered over the PA system. "Get your heads down! Assume the crash position now!"

Marsha winced when someone screamed. Her worst fears had suddenly materialized and she couldn't wake herself from this horribly frightening dream. She was about to die. No, no, no not me, please, God.

Both pilots slowly let their breath out when the airplane began accelerating and the shaking finally ceased. They could feel the stimulating effect of the adrenaline coursing through their veins. It would take a few minutes for their vascular systems to recover from the sudden shock.

The ride through the heavy downpour was extremely rough, but it couldn't have been sweeter to them. Little did they know that the red-hot exhaust gases from the two Pratt & Whitney engines had literally scorched the ground at the end of the runway.

The pilots busied themselves with the after-takeoff checklist while their heart rates slowly began to return to normal. Neither wanted to say anything to the other. The decision to take off into the teeth of a raging thunderstorm had been ill-advised and they both knew it.

"Just another fun day at the office," Harrison finally muttered.

"Yeah." Pam sighed and glanced at the rain streaking off the windshield. "I wonder if I could make it as a topless dancer?"

Chagrined as well as frightened, Harrison didn't respond to her comment. "We better tell the tower what happened." "As soon as I find my voice."

Allowing a thin smile, Harrison grudgingly turned his gaze toward her. "Don't ever let me do that again."

"Trust me," Pam said as her glance slid to Chuck. "I'm gonna carry a hammer from now on."

Julie Morgan could tell by her husband's sallow complexion that he, too, had been traumatized by the terrifying experience.

"I think we need a double bourbon and water," she commented in a weak voice as she tilted her head back against the headrest.

"I'll take mine straight," he said, letting out his breath, then slowly glanced at his wife. "I wonder what the hell was going on up there?"

"Who knows?" she answered with her own sigh of relief. "Just be thankful it's over and we're safely airborne."

He shook his head. "I'll feel a lot safer when we're on the ground in Washington," he replied with a hint of irritation in his voice.

"I'm sure the worst is over."

"Don't bet on it," he said sarcastically. "We aren't there yet."

Wide awake and on the verge of panic, Ed Hockaday felt beads of perspiration on his forehead. He placed his right hand over his heart. It was pounding so hard, he thought he was going to faint.

Looking around the cabin, Hockaday could see the raw fear in people's eyes. Something is wrong. Get out of the storm and land this thing!

"Regional tower," Pam said evenly, "American 1684 lost fifteen to twenty knots at rotation."

"Copy, 1684. We're shutting everything down until the storm passes. Contact departure, one three five point niner two, good day."

"Switchin' departure, American 1684."

"Flaps up," Harrison ordered.

"Flaps comin' up," Pam said, reaching for the lever. Marsha Phillips hesitantly opened her eyes and tried to slow her rate of breathing. Never again, . . . never, never, ever again. Her knees were shaking uncontrollably and her neck was as rigid as a steel post. I could drink an entire pitcher of water.

A nervous flight attendant attempted to calm the frightened passengers. "Ladies and gentlemen," she said over the PA
,
"please stay seated. Captain Harrison will turn off the "fasten seat belt" sign just as soon as he feels it's safe for you to get up and move about the cabin."

Marsha tuned out the announcement when she noticed her hands. They, too, were trembling uncontrollably. With a feeling of nausea sweeping over her, she closed her eyes and began taking deep breaths and exhaling slowly. After a few seconds she gripped the armrests to keep her hands from shaking and then slowly opened her eyes.

She glanced around the cabin and noticed the same strained looks on the faces of the other passengers, including a handsome young Navy lieutenant with gold aviator wings adorning his white uniform. He shook his head in disbelief and displayed a taut smile as he flexed his fingers. Marsha returned his smile. Even the topguns get scared. Somehow, she found that reassuring.

With their seat belts still fastened, many passengers were collecting their personal effects from the aisle. Most were grumbling to themselves and to others while they gathered their possessions.

"Regional departure," Pam said in a calm voice, "American 1684 is with you out of twelve-hundred, goin' to onezero-thousand."

"Roger American 1684, good afternoon, radar contact. Turn right, heading zero-seven-zero and maintain one-zerothousand. Expect filed altitude in eight minutes."

"Ah, zero-seven-zero on the heading, and up to one-zerothousand," Pam replied, then flinched when a blinding streak of lightning flashed in front of the windshield. "Sixteen-eighty-four can expect our filed altitude in approximately eight min--"

A deafening, blinding explosion ripped the cockpit to shreds and sent a powerful shock wave through the passenger cabin. The thunderous blast killed Harrison and mortally wounded Gibbs. The first officer remained semiconscious, but she couldn't lift her shattered arms high enough to grip the twisted control yoke.

The aircraft pitched nose up and slowly rolled to the right, rapidly bleeding off airspeed while total chaos erupted throughout the passenger cabin. Bloodcurdling screams and anguished cries of terror added to the trauma and confusion.

The intense explosion had blown the cockpit door into Julie Morgan's lap, caning her face and arms. Her heart pounded so hard that she could barely catch her breath. Hearing a strange ringing sound in his ears, Senator Morgan sat back in shock and stared wide-eyed at his bleeding wife. "Are you all right?" he uttered before realizing he could not hear the sound of his own voice. "Are you okay?" Julie mouthed what passed for a yes and then stared in disbelief at the fragmented remains of the cockpit. She could see the magnitude of destruction on the pilot's side of the mangled flight deck. Julie couldn't see the copilot, but the captain was slumped in his seat with his chin resting on his chest and his right arm dangling on the crushed throttle quadrant. There was no question in her mind that the pilot was dead.

Frozen with fear and disbelief, Ed Hockaday's legs turned into rubber and his right hand shook uncontrollably. An intelligent man, he knew he was about to die, but his mind refused to accept his fate.

The senior flight attendant in first class finally found her feet and struggled to the cockpit entrance. She gasped aloud at the condition of the pilots, then stumbled back in horror. From looking at the pilots and the twisted remains of the flight controls and throttles, the dazed woman knew they were doomed.

"Travis," Julie sobbed, and wiped the blood from her mouth. "We're not going to make it."

He held her close to him and cupped her head in the crook of his neck. "We'll always be together, I promise." For the first time in his long and distinguished political career, the senior senator was powerless to correct a problem. In one horrifying second, money and power and influence had become completely useless.

A chorus of howls and screams filled the cabin while the sleek jet--at climb power--rolled steadily to the right until it was inverted, then slowly pitched nose down to a pure vertical attitude. Full of jet fuel, the airliner was now an outof-control bomb plummeting toward the ground.

Powerless to stop the deadly plunge, Gibbs made a last survey of the shattered flight instruments. She willed her lifeless arms to grasp the bent control yoke, then felt warm tears as she slipped into unconsciousness.

Marsha Phillips screamed in desperate anguish as the airspeed rapidly increased to 330 knots.

Slumping in agony, Ed Hockaday felt like he was being suffocated. He convulsed twice, then gripped his chest and died of a massive heart attack.

Travis Morgan hugged his sobbing wife with all his strength and closed his eyes for the last time. Behind the first-class section, the piercing screech of a small child rose above the other anguished screams.

A moment later the MD-80 slammed into the ground and exploded in a mushrooming orange-and-black fireball. The kinetic energy of the impact compressed the fuselage to a length of seven feet at the bottom of a twenty-foot crater. Mercifully, no one onboard felt anything when the plane hit the ground. In less than a nanosecond everyone was gone.

Chapter
12

Dallas--Fort Worth International
.

Here you go, the friendly airline agent said as she handed Jackie and Scott their revised tickets. Your flight should be boarding in about an hour."

"Thanks," they said in unison at the same moment Jackie's sat-phone rang. She answered it while they walked to a quiet area out of the mainstream of passenger traffic.

Scott double-checked their tickets while Jackie spoke in a hushed voice, then frowned and slid the cell phone into the leg pocket of her jumpsuit.

"What now?" he asked.

"That was my office." The look on her face was dead serious. "They just received a short message from Maritza." "Is she okay?"

"Physically, she's okay for the moment, but they intend to take her to Tehran in five or six days. That was all she said before the call was terminated."

Dalton remained quiet a few seconds while he computed how soon they could launch the rescue attempt. It's going to be close.

"Well," he remarked in a flatly serious voice, "we had better redouble our efforts."

"We don't have much choice," she dryly countered. With their revised tickets in hand, Scott and Jackie wer
e
about to walk into the concourse cocktail lounge when they heard the first muted shriek of sirens. They made their way to a viewing area, then stopped to watch the twinkling lights of a fleet of emergency vehicles as they raced across the airport. Although Jackie and Scott had a good vantage point, it was difficult to see the crash trucks and other vehicles through the torrential downpour.

"I think someone ran off the runway," declared an army sergeant to his pregnant wife. "Man, they get to slippin' and slidin' in this here stuff and they're flat gone--I mean clean off in the pasture."

A hush suddenly settled over the waiting area as people rose from their seats to find a better view. A college student wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University was intently listening to his small aviation radio. His anxiety mirrored the feelings of others as he methodically scanned the radio frequencies.

Glancing at the raging storm, Scott's expression was troubled and his eyes were dark with concern. His instincts told him it was Flight 1684.

"Look," Jackie said as she pointed toward the ramp. "A few of the planes are taxiing back to the gates."

"They must have closed the airport."

Jackie studied the slowly moving jets, then noticed two American Airlines agents walking rapidly down the concourse. Their expressions were strained and one of them was nervously talking into a handheld radio.

As word of the accident swept through the crowded terminal building, the young man from Embry-Riddle finally broke his silence. 'There's been a crash," he announced in a loud voice as he continued to scan various frequencies. "American ... they're saying American sixteen-eighty-four went down--crashed just north of the airport."

"What was the flight number?" boomed another young man.

"One-six-eight-four--sixteen-eighty-four."

A murmur carried through the concourse as Jackie and Scott locked eyes. In the horror of the moment they felt stunned, saddened, and relieved to be alive. His face was close to hers, examining the deep pain in her eyes. The carin
g
JOE WEBER
a
nd concern she saw in his expression broke the paralysis of shock.

"Oh, God." She trembled uncontrollably. "Eddy was on that plane--we would've been there, too."