“It’s called FamTo. Family together. You create a circle, your family joins, and as long as their phone is charged, you can see where they are. My mom, husband, sisters, brother … daughter,” her voice cracked. “She just got her first phone. She’s ten. My son doesn’t have one yet.”
“Why … I mean, I’m sorry, I just don’t understand why?”
She shrugged. “It started as a joke and we all just kept it. I’d know when my husband was on his way home. When I worked nights, he’d know I arrived safe at work. It was helpful. We’d tease each other about where we were.”
“Your entire family tracked each other?” Tom asked.
“Yeah, we’re close. People didn’t understand it,” Delaney said. “It was our thing. Strange, I know. One of the funny things we talked about was how they were gonna track me and Jen in Vegas. My sister. She is getting married. It was her bachelorette party I was flying to. My husband joked he would know what bars and casinos we went to.” She sniffed, and then her voice cracked again.
Tom knew she had started crying.
“I forgot about this damn thing,” Delaney cried. “I forgot. How often we used it and I forgot. I wish I didn’t remember.” She leaned to him showing him the phone. “Vegas.”
Tom looked at the screen, the word Las Vegas was on there and a tiny circle with a picture of a woman along with the name Jen.
“She’s at her hotel,” Delaney said. “When I touch her picture.” Delaney touched it and a new screen popped up. “It tells me where she’s been. She went back to her hotel at two AM, see …” She scrolled the screen. “ … and she hasn’t moved since.”
“That doesn’t mean …”
“Yes, it does. She hasn’t moved. Her phone is fully charged, which means it’s plugged it. She hasn’t moved.”
“Delaney, those hotels are huge. Maybe she’s somewhere in there moving about.”
Delaney shook her head. “It tracked her from the casino floor to the Sixteenth floor. Which is off because she actually sent me a text that our room was on the fifteenth floor. She hasn’t moved in sixteen hours … no one …” she sobbed once. “Has moved. Not my husband, my daughter or my other sister. Nobody. My brother in Tennessee, his phone is dead, but he’s probably just like them.”
“You can’t think this way.”
“How would you think, Tom?” Delaney asked. “My babies. I keep wondering, did it happen in school? Did Dan decide to keep them home from school? Oh God, I hope he did.” Delaney broke down.
“Come here.” Tom lifted the arm rests, scooted over a seat and reached out to her, pulling her close.
She fell against him and cried.
He didn’t know what to say, what to do for her. There was absolutely nothing that could come from his mouth that would make any difference at all.
She probably was the only one on the entire plane that confirmed her worst fears.
He held her for a few minutes before he heard Owen’s voice.
“Gary!” Owen called strongly for him. “Gary, come quick.”
Both Tom and Delaney looked up.
“Lance,” Delaney said.
It had to be. The moment Tom stood, he saw Gary at the front of the plane, reaching into that first row.
He allowed Delaney to get ahead of him and she rushed forward with Tom behind her, moving slowly.
Someone reached up to Tom as he passed them, grabbing his arm.
“What’s going on?” a woman asked him.
“I don’t know,” Tom answered. But he did.
Owen backed up, standing by the bathroom, arms folded.
Delaney had reached the front, dropped to the floor and pulled the red case.
He could hear Delaney and Gary’s voices, they were saying something, but Tom couldn’t make it out.
As he neared, Tom made eye contact with Owen.
Owen just shook his head.
When he got to the first row, Delaney was handing Gary a syringe.
Gary injected it into the IV line they had running into Lance, he then proceeded to do CPR.
Tom knew it was useless.
He watched in just that few seconds as Lance’s color seemed to wash away.
Despite the fact Gary worked diligently to bring him back, Lance was gone. Another person on that flight died, joining the countless millions below. Tom knew if they didn’t land soon, and somewhere safe, like Gary’s efforts to revive Lance, everything they did to stay alive in the air, would be for not.
<><><><>
Naval Operations Support Center - Billings, MT
He could stop anytime, Gene kept thinking in regards to Wiley. He was a nice guy, young, and Gene knew it was some sort of thinking routine he did. Tap his pen from tip to end, then write something down, click a few keys, stare at the screen, repeat the pen thing.
Perhaps Gene was more on edge because he was hungry, tired and had spent the last hour looking at images some college kid in Gainesville had sent him from a weather satellite.
“Can anything else happen?” Gene spoke softly. He took notes on where he knew the storm surges would hit.
“Are you running worst case scenario in the simulator?” Wiley asked.
“No.”
“Run worse case. You have to. We have to plan on that.”
“How?” Gene asked. “Plan, how? Who do we warn, how do we warn them?”
“Well, we let those we’ve been in contact with know. Water is coming. I bet Gainesville is already on that. I bet they ran worst case scenario.”
“You’re probably right.” Gene pulled up the simulator, really hating to think about putting in ‘worst case’. He knew what that would be. If the rest of the ice somehow melted from the heat of the blasts, if the oceanic temperatures battled
