Free Blind Panic by Graham Masterton Page B

retrieve his bag when a distorted voice came over the radio.
    “Tower to AMA 2849! Tower to AMA 2849! Evacuate that heavy fast as you can! We have incoming, out of control!”
    Captain Sherman picked up his headset. “Say again?”
    “Get everybody out of that aircraft as quickly as possible! We have a private jet coming in from the southwest, approximately two hundred seventy knots. It’s locked on Runway 7L and it’s losing altitude fast, but we can’t raise the pilot.”
    Without hesitation Tyler took hold of the navigator’s arm and heaved him bodily out of his seat. He pushed him out of the flight cabin door, and then he grabbed the copilot.George O’Donnell and the senior flight attendant were helping Captain Sherman to unbuckle his harness.
    The first-class lounge was almost empty, except for one or two passengers who were gathering the last of their luggage together, but along the aisle from coach class there was still a line of thirty or forty passengers who were being shepherded by the flight attendants toward the emergency chute. None of them were panicking or pushing. Now that they felt they were safely on the ground, everybody was chattering and joking. “Haven’t been down a slide since I was eight years old!”
    A warm wind was blowing into the cabin from outside, tainted with the smell of aviation fuel and diesel, and the red fire truck lights were still flashing.
    Tyler shouted out, “Listen up, everybody! Listen! You need to get out of this plane real fast! There’s another plane landing on the same runway!”
    The senior flight attendant shouted out, too. “Forget about taking your shoes off! Just get out of here as quick as you can!”
    There were screams and shouts of alarm, and the passengers started to jostle one another. Tyler pulled the navigator and the copilot toward the exit.
    The navigator said, “God, don’t push me—I can’t see!” But Tyler pushed him all the same, and he somersaulted down the emergency chute, followed by a fat woman in a bright pink jumpsuit and a businessman still clutching his briefcase. Two elderly Japanese tourists tumbled down after them.
    Tyler looked back to see if Captain Sherman was close behind. The pilot was feeling his way unsteadily down the spiral staircase from first class, clinging to the handrail to prevent himself from falling. George O’Donnell was close behind him.
    Tyler was about to go to the foot of the stairs to help him when he heard a piercing whistle noise, and then a deafening explosion, which echoed from one side of the airport to theother. Somebody out on the runway was screaming, and somebody else was shouting, “ Oh my God! Oh my God! ”
    Tyler pushed his way back to the exit, where the last four or five coach-class passengers were being hurried down the emergency chute. The red-haired flight attendant who had first woken him was there, along with a young black flight attendant with cornrow hair.
    “What was that?” asked the red-haired attendant, and she was white-faced with fright. “Was that a plane? ”
    Tyler leaned outside, shielding his eyes with his hand. Less than a hundred yards away, he saw the fiery framework of a twin-engined private jet, rolling toward them on blazing tires. It had exploded on touchdown, but it was still trundling along the tarmac at sixty or seventy knots like a burning funeral wagon.
    Tyler grasped both flight attendants tightly by the hand and pitched himself out of the doorway. In a tangle of arms and legs they slithered down to the bottom of the emergency chute, and firefighters helped them onto their feet.
    “ Run! " the firefighters shouted at them, and Tyler and the girls all ran across the runway, away from the 747, as fast and as hard as they could. Even the firefighters turned and ran now.
    Captain Sherman and George O’Donnell were still standing in the 747’s open doorway when the private jet crashed into its inboard port engine. There was another thunderous bang as the first