She turned to her seatmate. "You're pretty calm for someone who brings his own oxygen aboard." She was annoyed that the man could be so oblivious to the situation.
"It isn't oxygen," Laubach said, testily. "I'm just prepared. If there's a fire, you'd wish you were, too." He clutched his smoke hood, as if she might steal it.
"What's that noise?" Rita asked, jerking around in her seat.
"Landing gear," Laubach said. "He's setting her down."
"Where? Here?" She leaned past him and peered out into the blackness. All she could see was the startled face of an insane woman. It took her a moment to figure out that she was staring into her own reflection.
Suddenly, a horn blared on the Ground Proximity Warning System. The nose angled up again, and both pilot and copilot pushed forward on the yoke. Tony Kingston already had given the tower his count: 288 souls on board. It helped the authorities when it was time to count bodies.
"Six-four-zero, please advise," Miami Control said through the headset.
"We're about to put the world's largest tricycle down in the swamp," Kingston said.
"Roger that, six-four-zero. We've got you on radar and we're dispatching rescue vehicles."
"Tony, I can't keep the nose down," Ryder said. "I'm having a real nose-up moment here." His voice was cracking.
"More power, Larry."
Dozier pulled both throttles back. "C'mon baby," he coaxed her. "Level, level, level."
The aircraft picked up speed and the nose came down.
"You're gonna have to back off some more," Kingston said. "We're going too fast."
"Without flaps or slats, I can't slow it down without stalling," Dozier said, sounding desperate.
It's not hopeless, Kingston told himself, but he knew the odds were against them. At over two hundred knots, they'd likely break up on impact.
Dozier eased up on both throttles.
Too much.
A puff of smoke, a sputter, a cough.
"Oh, shit!" Ryder shouted. "Number one quit."
They were flying on one engine. Dozier immediately increased the power, but it was too late. The number three engine smoked, choked, and stalled. They coasted in total silence, the huge aircraft a glider.
"Okay, fellows," Tony Kingston said. "We're taking her in."
For several seconds there was nothing but the sweet, sad rush of the slipstream past the windshield. Then the left wing dipped, and the plane rolled hard, the wings virtually perpendicular to the ground. Loose papers flew across the cockpit. Without the lift from the wings, they had only a few seconds before they would plunge nose down into the ground.
Tony Kingston fought the yoke, his cramped arms futilely trying to right the plane. He heard screams from the cabin, just as in his nightmares. Next to him, his copilot whispered a prayer.
Kingston wanted to draw out the last moments, to arrange his thoughts, pull up memories from the recesses of his mind. But there was no time. He saw her then, her face flashing by, beautiful but heartbroken, and for the briefest moment, he felt a stabbing pain, knowing of her anguish when she heard the news. He said it then, knowing the cockpit voice recorder would pick it up, and she would hear him or at least read the words. He told her he loved her.
A few jumbled images raced through his senses: his father, long buried; a cold Minnesota lake where he swam as a child with his sister; and then the black-and-white grainy videotape of the two men walking along the jetty in Kuwait just before the bomb hit.
What did they say to each other? Why didn't they run?
"Impact" and all of Paul Levine's novels are available on Amazon Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords.
CHAPTER 1
ON THE NIGHT BEFORE HER INTERVIEW at the Supreme Court of the United States, Lisa Fremont did not know if she could go through with it. She wanted the job all right-what newly minted lawyer wouldn't?-but then, the thought of corrupting the position, of using it to repay an old debt, was antithetical to everything she thought she had become.
But have I really changed? Am I Lisa Fremont, magna cum laude from Stanford Law or Angel from the Tiki Club in the Tenderloin?
Until today, she thought she could handle it. But that was before she visited the Court to get the feel of the place. What she felt was reverence, a sense of awe, even piety.
I got goose bumps for God's sake! How do I explain to someone like Max that marble statues and musty law books and the weight of history give me goose bumps? He only gets excited when the Dow Jones jumps.
Using his own key, Max Wanaker had breezed into her apartment just after 6 P.M. He kissed her hello, poured himself a Scotch, and made her a Gibson, heavy on the vodka, light on the vermouth. Then he loosened his tie and tossed his Armani suit coat over a chair. He kicked off his black Italian loafers, polished to a high gloss.
Lisa wore a cropped stretch lace camisole and high-cut briefs, both white with satin trim, under a soft pink chenille bathrobe that made her golden red hair glow a buttery copper under the track lighting. She had put on the robe when Max turned the air-conditioning down to sixty-five. It didn't matter if it was her apartment or his hotel suite, everything was always done to Max's specifications. Now, in early autumn in Washington, D.C., there was a manmade cold front settling into the living room.
In more ways than one.
They hadn't gone out to dinner. Too risky. Not because Max's wife, Jill, might discover them. Jill was blissfully alone in Miami, well aware of Max's long-term relationship with Lisa.
No, the risk was bigger now. There could be no connection-no nexus, to use the legal term-between Atlantica Airlines and her. If there were, and it became known, she'd be no use to Max, and his big plans would be blown.
If I can go through with it at all.
For a moment she wondered what Tony would have
