seat with belt fastened, ass did all the passengers by the captain’s orders.
In the cockpit, First Officer Donna Wickersham glanced at the pilot and waited for orders while trying not to let the panic show in her eyes.
Sweat beaded Captain Leon Garza’s lip as he pulled on the stick with all his might. “I don’t understand!”
“What is it, sir?” Wickersham asked. “We’re still losing altitude.”
“I’m doing my best over here! No matter how far I pull back we continue to drop!”
Garza cursed. “Get on the stick with me!” he ordered.
As Wickersham moved to comply, Garza reached above his head and flipped the switches that would put the entire aircraft on manual control. He also activated the underwater beacon and the automated distress call. The emergency procedures completed, Garza put his attention back to correcting their course by mechanical means.
“There’s still no response, sir!” Wickersham said through gritted teeth.
“I shut off the autopilot!” he replied, even as he began to watch the numbers fall on the altimeter.
Alarms sounded once more, and a voice-over warned that the plane was rapidly continuing to lose altitude and had now descended below safe parameters. Wickersham called off numbers from the various gauges as her job required, but it sounded a bit futile even in her own ears. Garza undoubtedly knew just as Wickersham did that they were losing the battle, and it seemed as if she was counting down to the inevitable finale.
Finally, Garza cut her off. “Okay, we can’t gain altitude, and we can’t pull out of it. Our next best bet will be to cut our airspeed as much as possible.”
“How?”
“Kill the engines.”
“What? But, sir—”
“Don’t argue, just kill them! Hurry!”
Wickersham flipped the switches that disengaged the ignition lock, which prevented any accidental shutdown procedure. Garza could have done it without her assistance, but Wickersham realized he’d wanted to keep her in the loop on exactly what he was doing. Even as he reached for the switch that would power down the engines, Wickersham had engaged the intercom and warned their passengers.
“Attention! Please ensure your seat belts are firmly fastened and brace for impact!”
Neither noise nor panic arose from the cabin, and Wickersham felt a degree of relief. These were military personnel and courageous to a fault. They wouldn’t cry or whine or demand—they would sit calmly and extend every confidence to their crew in spirit. Besides, it was more likely at this point they were all in prayer mode.
Garza kept checking the instrumentation, kept the stick pulled back so tight the knuckles on his right hand were now white, and was flipping every switch possible to attempt to regain some control of his aircraft.
Finally, he looked Wickersham in the eye. “I’ve tried everything I know to pull us out of this. It’s no use. Even with the engines dead, we still can’t get control of the flaps. Suggestions?”
Wickersham shook her head, thinking furiously but sure of the answer. “Nothing you haven’t already tried, sir.”
“Well,” Garza said, turning to look through the cockpit that was now a solid wall of blue-green water. “It’s been a pleasure serving with you, Donna.”
“Yes, sir, Captain,” Wickersham said, extending her free left hand to grip his shoulder. “The privilege has been all mine.”
* * *
WITHIN TWO HOURS of the captain’s Mayday call to the tower at the mainland out of Marine Safety Unit Valdez, the US Coast Guard had dispatched a search-and-rescue vessel and low-alt observation aircraft per standard operating procedures for a rescue effort. Nobody at MSU Valdez wanted to speculate on the plane’s fate. Since there had been no contact after the Mayday call and nothing on the radar, it was a foregone conclusion flight 195B had gone down somewhere in the icy ocean north of the Aleutian Islands.
Petty Officer Second Class Sarah Helmut scanned the screens in front of her.The first vessel to respond to the Mayday call from the flight was the USCGC Llewellyn, a Hamilton-class cutter on training maneuvers in Bristol Bay. The ship set course for the last-known position of the aircraft, its HH-65C helicopter traversing the rescue area in advance of the vessel. The ship arrived within three hours of the call, and operations got immediately underway.
“This is USCGC Llewellyn, on scene of the target’s last-known coordinates. No wreckage has been observed yet. I am taking command of the incident,” was the captain’s report.
Helmut smiled. “MSU Valdez receives and acknowledges, Llewellyn. Begin standard search patterns and reporting protocols. Good hunting, sir.”
* * *
AS SOON AS he’d received the last communication from MSU Valdez, Commander Louis Ducati peered out the bridge of the cutter and raised binoculars to his eyes.
The sun gleamed off the whitecaps of the Bering Sea. It troubled Ducati that the crew of the military flight was unable to respond to one of the Llewellyn’s repeated hails. To not respond when capable of doing so violated protocol, and it could mean that something had knocked out their communications. They also weren’t transmitting an underwater beacon, which could mean that the plane was still airborne. Only a full, midair explosion could cause significant damage so that the UWB might not sound.
Which brought Ducati to wonder if the sudden disappearance of flight 195B was an act of terrorism. His worst fears seemed realized in the sentiments of his first officer, as the reports started coming in from the SAR team aboard the HH-65C helicopter.
“Sir,” Lieutenant Commander Gareth Keller informed him, “Halo Two is reporting no findings at or immediately below the surface. They’re not picking up any signals from the UWB, either.”
“What about ultrasonic?”
“Not even a burp, sir.”
“Okay, engage in standard search patterns.” Ducati thought a moment and then added, “Let’s also get a couple of finders in the water, see if we can run across some sort of debris.”
“Aye-aye, sir!” As Keller turned to relay the orders, Ducati turned and stepped outside the bridge to view the search area once more with his binoculars.
It didn’t make a damn bit of sense. If the plane had crashed, why didn’t the UWB sound off? If they’d exploded in midair, wouldn’t there be wreckage spread across a mile or so of water? Wouldn’t they see some indication of the plane’s destruction, something to shed light on what had happened? No, this didn’t make one damn bit of sense, and Ducati wasn’t going to leave until he had some answers.
One way or another, he would find out what the hell happened.
“Lieutenant Commander Keller, recall the chopper,” Ducati called into the bridge through the open door. “She’s got to be starting to run low on fuel, and I want her ready for phase two ops once we find something.”
Keller
