109 – Airborne over Maryland
Air parted around Shapiro’s sleek sailplane as easily as water around a fish, causing almost no sound. The cockpit of a glider is silent. Had there been a passenger in the rear seat, rather than a thermonuclear bomb, they could have spoken in awed whispers. Awe would have been an appropriate emotion as the verdant Maryland countryside flowed beneath the thin white wings, curved gently upward at their tips from supporting the weight of the aircraft. Sunlight shining through the clear canopy warmed Shapiro’s chest.
He glanced at the GPS screen, displaying a map of the area between his present position and downtown Washington. The map was flanked with digital readouts. Distance to Waypoint was 59.4 miles. Altitude was 4,890 feet.
He glanced at the variometer, the sensitive rate-of-climb indicator that showed whether the glider was rising or falling. The horizontal needle was barely below level, indicating the aircraft was sinking as slowly as a feather fluttering in the breeze.
Shapiro had planned his flight with the glider pilot motto in mind: Get High and Stay High. At 4,000 feet altitude he’d look for some lift to boost him back up to 5,000 feet, or higher. Until he sank to 4,000 feet, he’d fly straight toward his destination. Toward what the GPS labeled as Waypoint 1. The White House.
The plane maintained level flight by itself. Shapiro pointed the nose slightly to the left of his course to make up for the wind blowing from north to south. The blinking marker on the GPS screen indicating the plane’s position moved slowly along the dark line of its route.
The sun shining through the canopy, the almost silent whistle of air flowing smoothly around the front of the plane, aided by a night without sleep performed the magic that had drawn Shapiro to gliding, momentarily removing him from a suicide mission and returning him to his personal place of comfort, calming Shapiro almost to the point of dozing. His head dropped to his chest, then jerked upward with a start.
Stop that, he scolded himself. Stay sharp, for God’s sake.
He looked at the instruments. Distance: 55.2 miles. Altitude: 4,755 feet.
Shapiro looked forward over the sailplane’s curved nose, struggling to see the nation’s capital through the haze hovering on the horizon. He could only make out farmland, crossed by roads and highways, and scattered buildings, fading into the distance.
Soon enough, he thought.
He flew onward in silence, senses heightened. Even though the air streaming by the sides of the aircraft at seventy miles an hour was nearly silent, he sensed a hissing, whooshing susurration on his skin and through his hair, making him feel as if he were straddling a bullet streaking toward its target.
The shadow separating the sun on his chest from the shade on his legs felt like a razor blade drawing a discernible line across his midsection. The air blowing across his face from the two side vents on the instrument panel was filled with the sharp clarity of air at altitude, free from the odors and pollutants of ground-hugging atmosphere.
Emanating from somewhere between his ears, rather than from outside his head, was a tick-tocking, the sound his memory played of the clock swallowed by the crocodile in Peter Pan, his favorite childhood story. He knew the bomb had no timer, actually, that the timer was electronic and so would not tick and, more to the point, that he’d set the bomb’s timer to zero, no delay, press the button and BOOM.
Nonetheless, in the depth of his stomach he felt the thud-thud-thud of the timer counting down to detonation.
THUD-THUD-THUD. TICK-TICK-TICK.
Instrument panel. Distance: 41.8 miles. Altitude: 4,022 feet.
Time to take the elevator up a few floors, he thought, looking around. A mile or so off to the right he spotted a shopping mall, a central building covered by a black, tarred roof surrounded by acres of paved parking area, partially filled with cars. Just downwind from the mall but a mile-and-a-half above it, Shapiro saw wisps of white cloud in the sky.
He smiled.
The morning sun shone on the asphalt, metal cars and tarred roof. These hot surfaces heated the air, creating huge bubbles of warm air that rose upwards through the cooler air from the surrounding fields as if the air were enclosed in a giant rubber balloon. These rising warm bubbles created invisible columns in the atmosphere, raising moist ground air high into the sky until it reached cooler high level air, where the moisture condensed out and, voila, a cloud formed. Glider pilots searched for these columns of “lift” and attempted to “center” in them, flying in tight circles with wingtips pointed almost straight down, circling within the rising air likes hawks, like eagles.
Strong lift, such as that generated by the shopping mall, could raise a lightweight sailplane faster than an elevator in a skyscraper.
Shapiro banked his plane to the right then flew directly over the shopping mall. He felt the airplane bounce, the characteristic indicator of entering lift. Suddenly the right wing rose, as if a giant crouched outside the plane with both hands lifting the wingtip. Instinctively, Shapiro threw the control stick to the right, lowering the right wing, causing the plane to turn abruptly in that direction.
He held the stick to the right, moving his feet in and out to control the rudder, maintaining a smooth circling turn.
A broad smile broke out on his face as the familiar feeling of locking his glider into the center of the column of rising air swept over him. This was the true seat-of-the-pants flying he loved so much. He felt pressure against his bottom as the plane was lifted into the sky, the rate-of-climb indicator pegged in the upward position.
After a few minutes of spiraling flight, Shapiro looked up through the canopy, straight above the aircraft, and saw the bottom of the forming cloud less than a hundred feet above him. He leveled the plane’s wings and flew out of the column of lift.
Glancing at the GPS and instrument panel, Shapiro grinned to see that he’d ridden the lift to 6,755 feet. He checked his heading and turned the plane’s nose slightly to the left. Back on course. Distance: 47.8 miles.
That’s all the height I need to get there, he thought, calculating the plane’s rate-of-sink against the distance to go. I can fly straight there and arrive with half a mile of altitude.
Piece of cake.
That realization, that all he had to do now was fly straight and level, focused his thoughts on his destination, and his conversation with Goldhersh on the drive from Maryland.
He thinks I’ll back out, Shapiro thought.
It’s not too late to do that. I could land, land just about anywhere. He looked at the ground below him, studded with farms. What appeared to be a school, with athletic fields beside it, was ahead to his left. I could land there. On the football field.
Sideslip in. Point a wingtip down the field. Drop like a stone. Piece of cake.
No. I’m on a mission, a righteous mission. There is a right thing and a wrong thing to do. This is a right thing. A horrible thing but a right thing.
He flew on, straight, level, on course.
A childhood memory returned.
Sometimes Jay Sosnick’s picnic table wasn’t a midget submarine, but a sleek fighter-bomber, two-person of course, for Jay and Ben to fly, side by side, both the pilot, neither the co-pilot. They flew low over the German countryside, buzzing roads, searching for Adolph Hitler’s huge black command limousine, red and black swastika flags flapping from its front fenders.
Just as their fuel gauge showed they were flying on fumes, not enough fuel to return to England, knowing they’d have to crash in some French farmer’s field and be hidden away by his beautiful twin daughters, they’d spot the car, belching black smoke, driving at high speed, motorcycle escorts in front and behind.
They’d lower their flight goggles, push the control sticks forward and dive toward the evil vehicle, thumbs pressing buttons on the tops of the sticks that fired round after round of machine gun bullets through the roof of the car, which instantly rolled on its back and burst into flames.
Hitler was dead. The world was saved. They were heroes.
There would be no Auschwitz, no Buchenwald. No Jay Sosnick’s sad mother who wore long sleeves all summer to hide the numbers on her left forearm.
Shapiro smiled at the memory. I wonder where Jay Sosnick is now. Last I heard he’d moved to the mid-West to teach at a law school. Washington University in ...
St. Louis.
Is Jay Sosnick in a detention camp?
Shapiro returned from his reverie, glancing at the instruments.
Distance: 28.9 miles. Altitude: 4,948 feet.
There it is. He saw highways ringing the city and clusters of buildings within the ring, the Potomac River on one side. A cloud of haze rested a thousand feet above the city. He was still too far to make out individual buildings.
Straight and level. On a mission.
An image struck him. The Flying Tzadik. That’s who I am, a Jew on a mission. A righteous mission.
The still, small voice that lurked in all but occasional silence whispered, too softly for his mind to make out the words. He listened closely, his mind wandering again.
Righteous, or self-righteous, the voice hissed, are you righteous or self-righteous?
He cupped a mental hand to his inner ear, straining to make out what the voice was saying.
Heroic or ego-driven, the voice said. Who are you to think you can change the world? You aren’t flying a picnic table any more.
Shapiro’s eyes spotted another farm field below the glider. I could put it down there, he thought. Easy. Piece of cake landing.
No. The camps. That man, Quaid, putting American Jews in goddamn concentration camps. All those people who cheered at the March. In camps.
The image of the young Israeli woman, strapped to the wooden board by duct tape, red rubber hose jammed into her nose, writhing against her bounds, came to mind. How many others are they doing that to? I can stop that from happening.
Without conscious thought, as the glider flew over the farm field, Shapiro felt the stick jerk to the right as the sailplane circled the field.
No, he said out loud, softly, no audience except himself to hear. He leveled the wings, checked the course heading and flew on. Straight and level.
Check the GPS. Distance: 19.2 miles. Altitude: 4,135 feet.
Less than twenty miles. He calculated quickly, about twelve minutes.
Twelve minutes. He felt a cold sweat on his forehead. He twisted his head to glance back at the bomb. It looked larger than before. That was impossible, he knew, but it seemed to him that the machine was aware that it was about to be called to life.
He looked forward toward the horizon and felt the same thrill at seeing Washington that he had every visit since his eighth grade field trip there. His eyes sought out the monuments. He could see the grassy mall with the Capitol dome at one end, flanked by buildings on either side. And that, that must be the White House.
His breath sucked in when he saw the stub of the Washington Monument. They removed the pieces pretty quickly, he thought.
Ten minutes to Waypoint 1.