Replica (2 page)

"Jesus, what the fuck happened?" the first sailor asked, his face pale as a sheet.

Below deck, bodies were haphazardly stacked up three-high.
All of them had been torn to shreds.

Irwin steeled himself and slowly descended the stairs. Fighting back bile, he sucked in shallow breaths through his handkerchief. When he reached the bottom, he saw one of the dead men wore a captain's uniform, his face frozen, contorted in a howl of terror. Maggots and flies congregated in his eye sockets. With his foot, Irwin nudged the body over.

The back of his head was gone!

All at once, a powerful blow struck them from above. Black claws, the length of carving knives, ripped one of the sailors in two. The second ensign raised his gun to fire but before he could, the terrible stench of carrion breath filled his nostrils. Then it didn't, as the man's head flew off his shoulders, its arc carrying it overboard.

Irwin screamed as he suddenly found himself upside down. A terrible fire crossed his legs, just below the knees. A sound like twigs snapping sent his brain reeling. He felt himself being flung through the air, then the rush of saltwater as he sank in the ocean.

A long moment later, the captain bobbed to the surface, thrashing and choking, spitting seaweed and grit from his mouth. He spotted his boat and swam toward it, churning the water like a piston.

Suddenly, his forward motion stopped and he felt a grip on his leg like none he had ever known. Irwin curled around to look, but wished he hadn't. A horrendous silhouette of matted fur and death slashed out at him, and the pain shot through him as he saw his legs sheared off.
Why don't I pass out?
He thought as he watched the gray water turn crimson.

The reeking fury rose up in front of him. The next slash cut him in two pieces.

And he became one with the sea.

T
HE FIRST SIGN OF SOMETHING
amiss occurred shortly after 13:40 GMT (20:40 Jakarta time) above the Indian Ocean, south of Java. Senior First Officer Larry Towson and Senior Engineering Officer Roger Sippolt, at the 747's controls, witnessed an effect on the windscreen similar to St. Elmo's fire, as if it were being hit by tracer bullets. The phenomenon persisted, so Officer Towson requested Captain Eric Hammond to return from the galley. Hammond immediately took control, checking the readings on the instruments. Despite seeing no indication of bad weather on the radar, he switched on engine anti-icing as a precaution. The Seat Belt Warning signs lit in the cabin.

* * *

In the passenger cabin, Jack Baker was half-asleep when the plane began to tremble. Growing irritated, he glanced out the window to see that the aircraft had entered a cloud. The air was nearly opaque, though he could make out the dark contour of the nearest engine. He pressed his fingers with his fingers when he heard another passenger comment that the engines seemed unusually bright. Jack looked again to see the engines appeared to have headlights in them shining forward through the fan blades producing a stroboscopic effect.

That doesn't seem right.

Then the trembling intensified from a heavy vibration to a bone-jarring shudder. Baker pulled his seatbelt tighter and gripped the sides of the seat.

Something was definitely wrong!

* * *

At approximately 13:45 GMT (20:45 Jakarta time), an alarm pierced the cockpit. Engine four surged and flamed out. The First Officer and the Flight Engineer immediately performed the engine shutdown drill, cutting off the fuel supply and arming the fire extinguishers. Captain Hammond pushed hard on the yoke, adding some rudder to counter the uneven thrust.

The passengers could now see long glowing yellow streaks coming from the remaining engines. The atmosphere in the cabin was tense, bordering on panic. Everyone was looking for their faith, either in their god or their pilot.

Less than a minute after the first engine failed, engine two surged and also flamed out. Before the flight crew could react to that failure, engines one shut down. The plane dipped severely and, convulsing as though the hand of God was shaking it, the final engine flared its death knell. The panicked voices from the cabin could now be heard by the pilots, rivaling the screaming alarms in the cockpit.

"I don't believe it," the flight engineer said, "all four engines have failed!"

Hammond reached over and shut off the alarms before looking at his co-pilot. Their eyes met with horrific understanding.
The 747 had now become a glider.

A 747 airliner can glide 15 kilometers for every kilometer it loses in height. Captain Hammond calculated that, from its flight level of about 11,280 meters (37,000 ft.), Flight 924 would be able to glide for 23 minutes and cover 261 kilometers.
Maximum
.

At 13:47 GMT, Hammond leaned back to Towson. "Declare an emergency to the local air traffic control authority; tell them all four engines have shut down."

It took the First Officer a moment to find his voice. He radioed a distress call and waited for response.
And waited.

Despite the squeeze on time, Captain Hammond grabbed the cabin microphone and announced what he knew was a masterpiece of understatement.

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. As you may be aware, we are experiencing a few problems. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress."

* * *

The jet yawed to the west, shivering violently. The structural welds and joints started to moan as the steel cage bounced with the failing momentum. The loss of power and control was immediately obvious to Jack Baker, and he watched the other passengers as they reacted to it, each in their own way. Some became silently resigned to their fate, some prayed and counted rosary beads. More than a few were clutching, and using, the sick bags tucked in with the Sky Mall magazines in the seatbacks. In the stale, thickening air, it was obvious some weren't bothering to use the bag.

Some just sat back and shut their eyes, their lips moving silently, while others hastily wrote notes to their loved ones, expressing love and final thoughts.
Plane going down. Do your best for the boys. I've had a good life. We love you.
For all the different personalities on the doomed airship, the messages were eerily similar. Jack thought about writing a note, but he just didn't know
who
to write it to.

Some passengers cried out in dread and fear, convinced they were going to die. The few brave passengers attempted to calm the more panicky ones.

Moments later, the cabin turned as dark as the sky. Carry-on bins rattled open, and the overhead lights occasionally flickered back to life:
No smoking! Fasten seat belts! This is it!

The plane was losing altitude fast, dropping like the 800,000 lb. rock it had become. It plunged, and wobbled, fighting the turbulent air around it, as the passenger cabin grew dense with the smell of vomit. People were sobbing on both sides of the aisle, while a man in the rear of the plane was on his knees praying.

Then came the announcement by the stewards: "Ladies and gentlemen, please assume crash positions.
We are all going to die now!"

At least that was the way Jack Baker heard it.

* * *

The crew on the flight deck attempted to contact Jakarta for assistance, but could not be seen by Jakarta radar, despite their transponder being set to 7700, the international "general emergency" code.

Captain Hammond knew from experience that, due to the high Indonesian mountains, an altitude of at least 11,500 ft was required to cross the coast safely. He decided that if the aircraft were unable to clear it by the time they fell to 12,000 ft, he'd have no choice; he would turn back out to sea and attempt to ditch. The crew continued the engine restart drills, despite being well above the recommended maximum engine in-flight start envelope altitude of 28,000 ft. They were having no success.

At 13,500 ft, as Hammond looked at the photo of his wife he had taped to the dash, he attempted one last engine restart procedure.

Damn you, jet.

Hammond turned for the ocean and dumped the remaining fuel. He would have to ditch.

No one had ever tried an ocean landing in a 747. Not successfully, anyway.

As the aircraft made an approach in the general direction of the Australian coast, Captain Hammond lowered the flaps, trying to slow the descent. It was too little, and much too late. And he knew it.

I'm sorry, Ellen.

Seconds later, the huge plane hit the water with unimaginable force. The last thing Hammond saw was a torrent of ocean entering the cockpit.

The hull of the jumbo-liner skipped across the waves like a child's stone across a pond. With a thunderous roar, the cabin of the 747 ripped into three pieces as though it were made of tissue. More debris was created and scattered when it came to rest on a most-inhospitable rocky outcropping.

* * *

At 13:47 GMT, Buck Johnston of the Australian Search and Rescue Service received a terse phone call from Darwin Air Traffic Control.

"AusSAR, Buck Johnston," he answered, using the acronym for his branch of the Australian Rescue Coordination Centre, itself a division of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority. After all, this was a service that appreciated brevity. Behind his desk hung a sign that read:

SECONDS COUNT

He believed that, based on his years of experience.

"Buck, this is Tim Reid over at Darwin."

"We just got a brief distress call from a seven-four-seven, just south of here."

Johnston's chest tightened. "And?"

"We only had the signal for a moment, then we lost contact. This one feels bad, Buck."

"Do they ever feel good, Tim? Give me the details."

"British Airways flight niner out of Heathrow. The distress call went out about five minutes ago at latitude 9deg40 S, longitude 124deg51 E."

"Jesus, that's a hell of a place to go down. I'll scramble a C-24 over there." Johnston tapped a few keys on his laptop and looked at the screen. "There's a frigate in that general area now. I'll alert them, too."

J
ACK
B
AKER MUST HAVE BLACKED
out on impact because he couldn't recall how long or how far it took the plane to stop upon hitting the water. He thought he could still hear the faint whine of a jet turbine somewhere in the distance. Or maybe it was just a ringing in his ears. He looked around. He could see water through the open end of the decimated rear fuselage, sloshing against the ragged metal edges and up onto the cabin floor. Half in, half out of the opening, a man floated face down, his body rising and falling with the tide. The passenger next to Jack, who he'd been talking to a few minutes earlier, was still strapped into his seat; head gone, just a splinter of spinal column protruded from the wet stump that was his neck. A moan sputtered from within the mangled fuselage. Across the aisle, a woman wailed away her final breaths. She tried to move, but the seat in front of her had catapulted against her on impact, crushing her legs like an accordion. She kept crying, "My legs... my legs." Jack wanted to help her, but for the first time in his life, he was too paralyzed with fear.

* * *

Captain Eric Hammond lay motionless, taking stock of his internal signals. He was bruised and battered, but as far as he could tell, nothing was broken. Opening his eyes, his thoughts were slow to focus. Everything seemed softer here... quieter. For a split second, he thought he saw a dog running into a thicket of bamboo. Hammond found a small bottle of vodka in his uniform pocket, unscrewed the top and gulped the contents in one swallow, savoring the analgesic effect on his already numb senses. He had little doubt that he was a lucky man. The reinforced cockpit had saved him any substantial trauma.

Focusing, Hammond saw the area was beach and jungle. He looked around for signs of civilization, or a rescue party. The twisted pieces of debris scattered all around him was all he saw. No buildings, no rescue party.

Not yet. Soon, probably.

Now, raising his head, Hammond could hear the sounds of the ocean. Painfully, he tried to stand up, but his legs felt feeble. He grabbed a tree branch and heaved. After the earth steadied itself beneath his feet, the pilot staggered through the surf, slowly at first, then crashing through the waves, his mind coming alive with the realization of what had actually occurred.

I lost my plane.

And, to top it all off, he couldn't remember them making radio contact with anyone before the crash. He wasn't sure, but he doubted it.

They may have no idea that the jet crashed.
Eventually, they would realize the plane was missing. But would they know where to look? He had no idea where he was. He could only hope that the transponder was still able to send a signal.

He turned back to the shoreline and surveyed the wreckage. The small hope he had for the transponder dissipated with the spray of the wave that crashed over him. As he was pulled under the surface, he felt the urge to just go with it.
Just open my mouth and let the salty brine fill my lungs.

* * *

Jack unbuckled himself and managed to climb out of the twisted plane. The miracle of his survival became more apparent when he got out and surveyed the broken hull.

The pilots had managed to ditch the plane in the ocean, keeping the front fuselage more-or-less intact until they ran out of luck and water, hitting a rocky outcropping a hundred yards shy of the beach. The plane then cart-wheeled before breaking into three pieces. The middle section sank, the rear section landed in the surf, and the cockpit and first class section catapulted onto the island.

A deep gash at the water's edge marked this point. Further up the beach, the twisted remains of the front landing gear were half-buried, torn off when the remainder of the front fuselage began its breakup.