Free The Tin Man by Dale Brown Page A

of the aircraft rocked forward from the concussion, the deck jerked upward as it buckled, and a new gust of smoke forced its way into the first-class section—but again, Masters was unharmed. The entire aft two-thirds of the Boeing 727 was either in pieces or lying crumpled and twisted on the ground, but the forward third was intact. More smoke rushed into the first-class cabin. Helen noticed with horror that the large ventilators designed to keep the air clear had malfunctioned. The surge of power caused by the BERP system had shorted out the ventilators.
    “Jon! Can you hear me!” Kaddiri shouted. The airline executives were watching in horror as smoke partially obscured their view of the interior of the first-class cabin inside the test article. “The ventilators have failed! Get out! Range Safety Control, get Masters out
now!”
    Inside the test plane, Masters jumped again as a third explosion ripped into the plane. The camera shot of the cargo compartment under the first-class section disappeared in a blinding flash of yellow. This time Masters really seemed scared. They could see his eyes bugging out with the first hint of concern and worry about whether this stunt was really a good idea. The floorboards under his feet buckled, a few of the first-class seats broke free and flew through the air, they heard him scream … and then the camera went dark. The overhead shot revealed nothing—the first-class cabin appeared to be intact, but huge billows of smoke and occasional tongues of flame began pouring up from underneath the fuselage near the already ripped-up coach-class section.
    “Oh my God!” Kaddiri screamed. She picked up the direct-line telephone beside the lectern. “Jon, come in! Range Control, come in! Is someone there? Answer me, goddammit! …”
    “What happened?” Fenton shouted. “What happened? Is Masters …”
    “I’m okay, I’m okay!” they heard a moment later. The first-class section camera came on again, showing a disheveled but otherwise intact cabin, faintly obscured by a thin haze of smoke. Then Masters’s face appeared behind a firefighter’s positive-breathing face mask, almost touching the lens. There were some streaks of black under his nostrils from exhaling smoke, and his short-cropped hair appeared to be standing on end, but he looked unhurt. A range-safety fireman was trying to pull Masters to his feet. “The camera broke free of its mooring—hold on a sec.”
    “Is he
insane?”
Fenton shouted. “That plane is on fire!”
    “ ‘Hold on a sec,’ my ass!” Kaddiri shouted in the telephone. “Range Control, pull Masters out of that plane right
now!”
    Masters aligned the camera in its original place, straightened his seat, sat back down, took a deep breath from the oxygen mask, then handed it back to the fireman. He looked a bit shaky, his eyes darting around the cabin, his breathing a little rapid, but he was unhurt. “I’m all right, guys. The explosion ripped the seat rails off the deck, and all the seats went flying. Here.” Masters grabbed the camera and swung it around the cabin, focusing on the floor. “But see? The deck is still intact. It ballooned up about a half-foot but didn’t rupture.” He swung the camera aft toward the coach-class cabin. Smoke was beginning to pour through the curtain, but he lifted it so he could point the camera at the devastationbeyond. The cabin was completely destroyed, mangled and blackened. Fire-fighting foam extinguishers had already discharged to cut off the fire. “All I had was a BERP curtain between me and all that. Awesome.”
    “He’s crazy, Dr. Kaddiri,
crazy
!” Fenton shouted. As if the explosions had been set off in the conference room in Washington rather than a rocket-test site in California, the airline and government execs were scrambling for the door in shock and disgust. “This is either some kind of trick, a publicity stunt, or the work of a seriously deranged mind. In any case, I’m not going to