that Atlanta convenience store. But the dark side of him was outweighed
by the light. Though an aura of danger surrounded him, she also felt
curiously safe in his company, as if within the protective nimbus of a
guardian angel.
Through the public-address system, one of the flight attendants was
instructing them on emergency procedures. Other attendants were
positioned throughout the plane, making sure everyone was following
directions.
The DC-10 was wallowing and shimmying again. Worse, although without a
wooden timber anywhere in its structure, it was creaking like a sailing
ship on a storm-tossed sea. The sky was blue beyond the portholes, but
evidently the air was more than blustery; it was raging, tumultuous.
None of the passengers had any illusions now. They knew they were going
in for a landing under the worst conditions, and that it would be rough.
Maybe fatal. Throughout the enormous plane, people were surprisingly
quiet, as if they were in a cathedral during a solemn service. Perhaps,
in their minds’ eyes, they were experiencing their own funerals.
Jim appeared out of the first-class section and approached along the
port aisle. Holly was immensely relieved to see him. He paused only to
smile encouragingly at the Dubroveks, and to put his hand on Holly’s
shoulder and give her a gentle squeeze of reassurance. Then he settled
into the seat behind her.
The plane hit a patch of turbulence worse than anything before.
She was half convinced that they were no longer flying but sledding
across corrugated steel.
Christine took Holly’s hand and held it briefly, as if they were old
friends-which, in a curious way, they were, thanks to the imminence of
death, which had a bonding effect on people.
“Good luck, Holly.”
“You, too,” Holly said.
Beyond her mother, little Casey looked so small.
Even the flight attendants were seated now, and in the position they had
instructed the passengers to take. Finally Holly followed their example
and assumed the posture that contributed to the best chance of survival
in a crash: belted securely in the seat, bent forward, head tucked
between her knees, gripping her ankles with her hands.
The plane came out of the shattered air, slipping down glass-smooth for
a moment. But before Holly had time to feel any relief, the whole sky
seemed to be shaking as though gremlins were standing at the four
corners and snapping it like a blanket.
Overhead storage compartments popped open. Traincases, valises,
jackets, and personal items flew out and rained down on the seats.
Something struck the center of Holly’s bowed back, bouncing off her. It
was not heavy, hardly hurt at all, but she suddenly worried that a
traincase, laden with some woman’s makeup and jars of face cream, would
drop at precisely the right angle to crack her spine.
Captain Sleighton Delbaugh called out instructions to Yankowski, who
continued to kneel between the pilots, operating the throttles while
they were preoccupied with maintaining what little control they had
left. He was braced, but a hard landing was not going to be kind to
him.
They were coming out of the third and final 360-degree turn. The runway
was ahead of them, but not straight-on, just as Jim–damn, he’d never
gotten the guy’s last name-had predicted.
Also as the stranger had foreseen, they were descending through
exceptional turbulence, bucking and shuddering as if they were in a big
old bus with a couple of bent axles, thundering down a steep and rugged
mountain road. Delbaugh had never seen anything like it; even if the
plane had been intact, he’d have been concerned about landing in those
treacherous crosswinds and powerful rising thermals.
But he could not pull up and go on, hoping for better conditions at
another airport or on another pass at this one. They had kept the jumbo
jet in the air for thirty-three minutes since the tail-engine explosion.
That was a feat of which they could be proud, but skill and cleverness
and intelligence and nerve were not enough to carry them much farther.
Minute by minute, and now second by second, keeping the stricken DC-10
in the air was increasingly like trying to fly a massive rock.
They were about two thousand meters from the end of the runway and