It was the stuff of the nightmares that still plagued her. An explosion, a flash of fire, the screams of trapped victims—the horror of being in a small plane crash stalked her, but now it only occasionally surfaced in terrifying detail while she slept. She’d lived through one as a passenger. How ironic would it be if she was killed as the result of another one when she was supposedly safe on the ground? Dropping the binoculars, heart galloping with fear, Gina ducked as closely as she could against the hard plastic console that housed the wheel as the Zodiac bucked on the resultant wave. Wrapping an arm over her head, she grabbed hold of one of the webbing straps fastened to the boat’s interior sides. She cringed as more chunks of wreckage peppered the agitated gray water, sending cascades of white foam shooting skyward so that it looked like she was surrounded by a vast pod of whales surfacing to blow. Spray hit her, icy cold as it splattered across her face, pelted her coat. Waves created by the force of multiple impacts made the previously choppy surface of the bay as turbulent as the inside of a washing machine.
Gina hung on to the strap for dear life as the boat rocked and dipped precariously, praying with every breath that something wouldn’t land on her directly, or that the whole boat wouldn’t capsize with the force of the waves. She wore a flat orange life jacket zipped over her parka, but given the temperature of the water it was more of an empty gesture than a lifesaving device: she’d be unconscious within a few minutes of going in, and dead not long after that.
Thunk. Splash. Something large slammed into the stern on its way into the water, a glancing blow but still enough to send Gina catapulting with a cry into the air. Only her grip on the strap saved her from going overboard. She landed with a groan on her stomach across the hard, flat bench she’d been sitting on, and gasped for breath as the wind was knocked out of her. Lungs aching as she fought to fill them, listening to her pulse thundering in her ears, she stared wide-eyed at the objects now littering the water around her.
It took her a moment, but then she realized that the danger had passed. Or, at least, nothing else was falling from the sky.
Part of a wing surfed the whitecaps nearby, its jagged edge mute evidence of having been violently torn from the plane. A passenger seat, fortunately empty, was swallowed by the waves as her gaze touched it. An exterior door, easily identifiable by its handle, floated a few yards away, gleaming dull silver against the angry gray of the water. From its size and proximity, she guessed that it was what had struck the boat, fortunately not head-on.
With that one semidazed look around, she also spotted a partly submerged wheel and a seat back with a cracked tray table attached.
MORE OBJECTS—an iPhone, sunglasses, a coffee cup—bobbed around the boat. Sick at heart, she watched a man’s large black wing-tip dress shoe tumble past on a wave. Everywhere she looked, she could see the dark blobs of more debris. Farther out, the plane’s tail, still upright, was visible. There was no sign of the fuselage.
Bile rose in her throat at this irrefutable evidence of the utter destruction of the plane. Swallowing hard, she forced it back. Grabbing her binoculars again, she focused on the triangular blade of the tail as it rose and fell with the waves, wincing at the scorch marks on it at the same time as she once again registered the insignia: a circle above two wavy lines. The logo meant nothing to her, but the fact that the tail was able to remain upright despite the turbulence did. The tail might be still attached to the fuselage, or at least some portion of the fuselage, which was acting as a kind of anchor to keep it erect.
Lowering the binoculars, Gina took a deep, meant-to-be-steadying breath. Her nostrils wrinkled with distaste. The frigid air reeked with the acrid smell of burning combined with the strong scent of airplane fuel. She could taste the metallic tang of the fuel on her tongue, feel the burn of it in her nose. It brought the reality of the crash home to her as nothing else had done.
It brought the memory of the crash she had barely survived home to her as nothing else had done. For a moment she thought she could once again actually feel the searing heat of flames licking at her skin, hear the screams of the others as they died.
Making a small distressed sound, she shuddered.
Stop it, she ordered herself fiercely. That’s gone, over with. In the past. You weren’t on board this time.
The people who had been on board this time—what about them?