Free Parallax View by Allan Leverone Page B

grey. A thin sheen of sweat
coated his features, mixing with the drying blood and forming a hideous
Halloween mask.  His head slumped against his chest. Tracie feared he was dead.
She placed two fingers lightly against his neck, just under his right ear, and
felt for the carotid artery. The pulse was steady but faint. Wilczynski was
still alive. For now.
    Stay with me,
please. I can’t fly this thing on my own. Tracie wondered how fast they
were descending. She pictured the Atlantic Ocean, vast and empty, sliding
beneath the aircraft, waiting to swallow them whole if they didn’t begin
climbing soon. The darkness outside the wind screen was immense, the blackness
unbroken. There was no way to tell how close they were to the water; it could
be twenty feet or twenty thousand. She fought back panic.
    She lifted her
head and glanced at the altimeter. Two thousand feet. And dropping. She closed
her eyes. Take a deep breath. Steady yourself. Do what you have to do. She
had to try to reawaken Major Wilczynski. He had been lucid prior to losing
consciousness. If she could wake him, maybe he could fly the airplane.
    She hoped.
    Another look at
the altimeter. Twelve hundred feet. Still dropping.
    She bent and
slapped Wilczynski’s face lightly, more of a light open-palmed tap than an
actual slap. Two taps to the right cheek and then two to the left. Right, left,
one more on each side. Wilczynski stirred and muttered, but his eyes remained
closed.
    Nine hundred feet.
    She tried again,
this time increasing the force of the blow and speaking loudly. “Stan, wake up!
Stan, we’re dropping into the ocean. You need to wake up and fly this
airplane!” More mumbling and his eyes fluttered, but they were vacant and
unfocused.
    Five hundred feet.
    Last try. She
grabbed his good shoulder and shook him, not wanting to take the chance of
worsening his head injury but not knowing what else to do. “Stan, listen to me,
we’re going to crash if you don’t wake up right now! Stan!” This time his eyes fluttered
and remained open for a couple of seconds. “That’s it,” she encouraged. “Stay
with me, Stan.” Then his eyes rolled up into his head again and he was gone.
    Two hundred feet.
    It was too late.
They were going to drop right onto the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, where the
giant B-52 would be ripped to shreds by the resistance of the water. Tracie
cursed and leapt into the right seat, the one most recently occupied by Tom
Mitchell.
    She scanned the
instruments desperately, trying to remember what she had seen pilots do in the
past. Increase power with the throttles. Raise the nose of the aircraft with
the yoke. Do something with the flaps—she couldn’t remember what. Raise them?
Lower them? Goddammit!
    Fifty feet.
    Tracie reached for
the throttle with a shaking hand. She would shove the throttle forward and
raise the B-52’s nose and hope for the best. She would not go down without a
fight.
    She placed her
hand on the lever and was surprised to feel not the cold metal of the throttle
but the warmth of another human hand. She turned in surprise and saw Stan
Wilczynski staring back at her, his face drawn and grey, his lips trembling
from the exertion of staying conscious, but his eyes clear and lucid.
    “Get your hands
off my airplane,” he said.
     
     
    16
    May 30, 1987
    11:32 p.m.
    Atlantic Ocean, 35 miles off the
coast of Maine
    Wilczynski added power and placed
the aircraft in a shallow climb, moving slowly and deliberately. Tracie guessed
he was mentally reviewing a checklist, although she doubted his Air Force
training had ever included flying a B-52 with part of his skull blown off and
the rest of the crew lying dead in the cabin. His face was ashen and his lips
were white. She wondered how long it would take for him to pass out again; it
seemed inevitable.
    “Fifty feet,” he
said thickly. “That’s what I call cutting it close.”
    “Too close for
comfort,” Tracie said, her hands shaking.
    “I need you