glide. Then a continuous horn blared—the stall warning.
He had to bring it down now.
He nursed the wheel forward by a fraction of a millimeter. The plane drifted lower, one foot at a time, slowly, gracefully. It skimmed the tips of the small swells in a veil of spray, then it touched down. The sea was pretty calm, and although the Conquest’s fuselage skittered across the white tips, it didn’t flip over or break up. The feathered props helped keep the ditching smooth, and the small aircraft kept bouncing along until the weight of the water finally overwhelmed its forward momentum and it plowed to a sudden stop in a cloud of white foam.
The deceleration was brutal, ninety knots to zero in under a second. Reilly was thrown forward against his shoulder harness, but it did its job and kept him from slamming into the controls or flying out the windshield.
Water started rushing into the cabin instantly.
Reilly knew he didn’t have long to get out. Not with the cabin doors sheared off. He yanked his harness off, got out of his seat, and scrambled out of the cockpit and through the narrow gap between the two front seats, over the dead pilot’s body. Several inches of water were already sloshing around in the cabin, with more flooding in every second. His eyes darted around, searching for a life jacket. They found something better, another bright yellow pouch, this one tucked away behind the other front club seat and smaller than the life raft’s valise. Big blue letters across it told him it was the “Emergency Grab Bag,” which sounded just right to him.
He grabbed it and bolted to the cabin door, then he stopped in his tracks and cast his eye toward the back of the cabin, to the crates that were stacked between the rear seats and the partition behind which he’d been stowed.
The texts.
The ones that had survived since the dawn of Christianity.
The two-thousand-year-old legacy that Tess had brought to light.
His chest constricted at the thought of losing them, of letting Tess down, after everything that had happened.
He had to do something.
He had to try to save them.
He stormed up to the crates, scanning the cabin around him, looking for something he could use to save them, something he could put them in that was watertight. Anything. A bag, some plastic sheeting—part of the life raft. It was there, ripped apart, big chunks of yellow plastic sloshing around in the rising water.
It would have to do.
He grabbed hold of a big chunk of it and pulled it toward him, looking for a decent piece that would be large enough to do the job. He found a section that might work, part of the tubular ring of the raft. He pulled out his knife and sawed away at it, cutting out a duffel bag-shaped section that was open at one end and sealed at the other.
The water was now at his knees and rising fast.
He stomped across to the crates, pulled the top one open, and started loading up the leather-bound codices into the nylon tube, one by one. He knew he wasn’t handling them with anything near the care they deserved, but he didn’t have a choice. He knew he wouldn’t be able to save them all, he knew that, but even saving some of them, a few of them, was still something.
The water reached his thighs.
He kept going. Popped the top off the second chest, started loading books from it too.
The water was now at his waist. Which meant the third chest was now submerged.
He had to go. He had to try to seal the top off the nylon tube and get out of there. If he didn’t move fast, he’d be trapped in the cabin.
He twisted the top of the tube around on itself, tightening it as much as he could. It wouldn’t be watertight, he knew that. But it was the best he could do. He grabbed its neck and fought the torrent of water all the way back to the cabin door.
It was like trying to climb into a storm pipe during a monsoon.
He took a deep breath, ducked under water, and pushed himself through the narrow opening, pulling the nylon tube with one hand, the grab bag with the other.
He came out on the other side with the plane partially submerged, and stepped onto the wing. He scuttled across to the port engine and sat on its cowling, which was still just above water. He rummaged through the grab bag and pulled out a life jacket, which he slipped on and inflated, and a personal locator beacon, which he clipped onto the jacket and activated.
He rode the cowling down as it slipped below the surface. The Conquest’s tail followed and went under less than a minute later, leaving him floating around with the eerily serene white silhouette of the plane disappearing into the darkness below him.
He hung on to the nylon tube, gripping its neck as tightly as he could with both hands, fighting to keep the water out of it. But he knew it was hopeless. He could see water seeping in through the folds in its neck. The nylon it was made of wasn’t designed to be easily folded. It was designed to be tough, to withstand punctures and heavy seas. And much as he tried, Reilly knew he was fighting a losing battle.
With every passing minute, more water seeped in. And the more it seeped in, the heavier the tube became. After about half an hour, having expended every last micron of energy that he possessed, Reilly couldn’t keep it afloat any longer. It was simply too heavy. He also knew it was probably pointless. The texts were soaking with water by now. They were no doubt already ruined, the trove of information in them lost forever. And if he kept hanging on to them, they’d soon take him with them.
With a long, soul-wrenching howl, he let go.
They drifted away, then went under, a yellow nylon tube of inestimable value, leaving him floating around aimlessly, one lone speck of life in an unforgiving sea.
Chapter 66
Reilly felt himself slip in and out of consciousness several times, the cool water lapping against his head and nudging him awake each time his mind and body tried to shut down.
The sea was being kind to him, with nothing more than a gentle swell that made staying awake even harder. But he knew it would get colder, and possibly rougher, as nightfall approached. The vest could keep him afloat, but it wouldn’t keep him alive if the water got choppier and his body decided to surrender to exhaustion.
He found himself thinking of Tess, thinking that she was most probably safe, which was good, but that he’d let her down in losing the trove of Nicaea, which would be a big blow. He tried focusing on that disappointment, using it to stay afloat, thinking that at least if he kept himself alive, he wouldn’t cause her another loss, and he’d be able to tell her exactly what had happened, which would at least do away with the burden of uncertainty that would otherwise gnaw away at her for the rest of her days.
After a while, he just let himself go, relying on the life jacket and its personal locator beacon to do its job. He just drifted along the deep water, drained beyond words, waiting for a rescue he hoped would eventually show up.
ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY MILES due east of his position, the air traffic controller who had been tracking the Conquest’s progress after Steyl had radioed in for permission knew something was wrong as soon as he saw the plane drop below twelve thousand feet and accelerate.
After three no-response calls and less than a minute after he’d first noticed the plane’s unusual behavior, the controller activated the emergency SAR plan. A British Royal Navy Sea King HAR3 Search-and-Rescue chopper took to the air from its base at Akrotiri in Cyprus just as Reilly’s plane was hitting the water.
The signal from Reilly’s PLB, giving his location, was forwarded to the chopper’s pilot while it was speeding to the Conquest’s last known position. And just over an hour after he’d found himself floating in the Mediterranean, a frogman was riding a harness down to pull him to safety.
HE WAS FLOWN BACK TO AKROTIRI, where he had his injuries looked at and dressed by military medical
