You’re being paranoid, she scolded herself, which, given her personal history with small planes, was no surprise.
The thing was, though, the plane looked like it desperately needed to land. It was dropping fast, losing altitude if not speed.
It’s going to crash. As the thought crystallized into a near certainty, Gina’s heart leaped into her throat. Sucking in a lungful of the freezing, salt-laden air, she watched the plane dip low enough to disturb the flocks of birds circling the bay. Their cries, coupled with the splashing waves, the moan of the wind, and the Zodiac’s own whining motor, had masked the sound of the plane until it was nearly upon her. Now the birds wheeled wildly in the face of this violent intrusion, their alarmed screeches almost drowned by the roar of the jet engines, which was close enough and powerful enough to reverberate against her eardrums. As she watched the jet shoot across the sky, she registered the logo painted on the side and tail—a circle above two wavy lines—which probably denoted some huge multinational corporation but held no meaning for her. She also had an excellent view of its smooth silver belly. There was no sign of the wheels descending, no sign of any attempt to control its descent. It was, simply, coming down.
Bone-deep fear twisted her insides. Pull up, pull up, pull up, she silently urged the pilot. Then, Dear God, protect whoever’s on board.
Gina yanked her snow mask down.
“There’s a runway about eight miles to the east.” Her shout was drowned out by the noise of the plane, not that there was any real chance that the pilot could hear her. Still, arm waving wildly over her head in hopes that the pilot might see, she gestured in the direction of the no-longer-operational LORAN (long range navigational) Coast Guard station that was home to the only place to land on the island. It was idiotic, of course, but it was also instinctive: she couldn’t just do nothing as the plane hurtled toward the waves.
The section of cockpit windshield that was visible from her angle was black and impenetrable. It was her imagination that painted the pilot at the controls, white-faced and desperate as he fought whatever disaster that had brought the plane to this, and she knew it. She also knew that the chances that her gesture had been seen and understood were almost impossibly small.
Oomph. With her eyes on the plane rather than on where she was going, she was caught by surprise as the Zodiac hit one of the larger swells the wrong way. The impact sent her flying up off the seat and then smacked her back down onto it hard enough that her teeth snapped together. Thus reminded of where she was and the importance of keeping her mind on her business, she eased the throttle back to near-idle speed, retaining just enough forward power to keep the boat from being tossed around like flotsam by the waves. Pulse pounding, she switched her attention back to the oncoming plane.
Whether it was exhaust from the engines or actual smoke from an onboard fire she couldn’t tell, but a billowing white vapor trail now marked its descending path.
Gina shuddered. The memories that trailing plume brought back made her dizzy.
Get over it, she ordered herself fiercely, shaking her head to clear it. You’re not in that plane. What happened is in the past. You’re a different person now.
Now she was twenty-eight years old, a respected ornithologist whose specialty was the environmental impact of pollution on birds, and at that moment she was out alone in the frigid Bering Sea, doing her job. This plane had nothing to do with her. Whatever happened, she was present merely as a bystander, a witness. There was no reason for her heart to pound, or her stomach to twist.
Her heart pounded and her stomach twisted anyway.
Lifting her binoculars to her eyes, she tracked the plane until it plunged into the outermost edge of the deep gray blanket of clouds that formed an ominously low ceiling above her head. The clouds swallowed it completely. Only the snarl of its engines told her that it was still racing toward her through the sky.
Her concentration was so complete that when the radio clipped to her pocket crackled, it made her jump.
“Gina. Are you there?”