CHAPTER 15 – A RUINED VACATION
16:10 (New York Time)
Saturday, February 4, 1996 ‘C’
Terminal Number Three (Pan Am Worldport)
J.F.K. International Airport, New York City
New York, U.S.A.
‘’AND DON’T DO ANYTHING I WOULDN’T DO, GUYS!’’
Nancy, about to pass through the passenger security check point with Lucy and Leonardo, waved back at Ingrid while grinning to her from a distance.
‘’WE WILL DO WORST THAN THAT: WE WILL DO EVERYTHING YOU WOULD DO!’’
On that last crack, Nancy walked through the metal detector gate of the check point and, being cleared by the security agent, recuperated her things that had gone through an X-ray machine and joined back with her adopted siblings. All three had a last look at Ingrid, who was now walking away in order to return to the Pentagon and her command office.
‘’Poor Ingrid: she works too much! She should have come with us on vacation in Italy for this school Spring break.’’ said Lucy, prompting a reply from Leonardo.
‘’Yes, she could have used a vacation but, unfortunately, the bad guys of this World don’t take vacations, at least not all at the same time. Let’s get to our departure lounge.’’
Carrying their cabin bags by their straps, the trio of teenagers walked to the departure lounge assigned to their flight, Pan Am 110, due to leave for Rome in some ninety minutes. However, having still plenty of time before boarding, they decided of a common accord to tour the duty-free gift shops available inside the checked departure zone. While they didn’t buy any souvenir or bottle of alcohol, they did buy a collection of magazines in order to have something of interest to read during their flight. Not surprisingly for Lucy or Nancy, Leonardo grabbed a sports car magazine, while Lucy bought a fashion magazine. As for Nancy, she also bought a fashion magazine, having developed an interest for female fashion in the last few years, then grabbed as well the latest number of the TIME Magazine, which contained an article about the Caucasus War, which had cooled down somewhat but was not finished yet by any measure. Returning to their gate lounge, they sat down and started reading their magazines. Another half hour and the start of boarding was announced for their flight.
Their plane was a Boeing 717-400, the most recent variant of a basic design conceived under Ingrid’s direction in the 1950s, when she had directed the development and production of a whole range of new military jet aircraft as the National Director of Aerospace Programs. The Boeing C-200 military passenger transport of the time had then been quickly produced in civilian version, the Boeing 717, which had then revolutionized commercial air travel all around the World. It had also caused many big British aircraft manufacturers and commercial airlines to go bankrupt, British aircraft designers proving incapable of putting in service an aircraft that could even merely approach the Boeing 717 in terms of speed, efficiency and commercial rentability. Since the three of them still had comfortably padded bank accounts, thanks to their share of Sir Francis Drake’s hidden treasure, Nancy, Lucy and Leonardo had bought first-class tickets to Rome, not because they felt entitled but simply because they didn’t like being squeezed in tourist-class seats. So, the trio went down to the first-class lounge, situated below the main cabin and forward of the cargo holds, close to the nose of the aircraft, where a smiling Pan Am stewardess showed them their seats. Leonardo was grinning with anticipation as he buckled his seat belt.
‘’I can’t wait to show you the things worth seeing in Italy. Just exploring properly Rome would take a couple of weeks, at the least, and that would still leave all the other great places, like Florence, Venice, Milan, Naples and so many other jewels in Italy. And the food…’’
‘’No need to wet our appetite, Leo.’’ replied Lucy, amused by his enthusiasm. ‘’We are already sold on this Italian vacation. As for Italian food, me and Nancy already love it. By the way, which place in Italy makes the best pastas, in your opinion?’’
‘’Are you nuts?’’ shot back Leonardo, a horrified look on his face. ‘’You could start a knife fight by asking that question around Italy! Let’s simply say that every region of Italy makes great pastas. Each of them simply does them differently.’’
‘’Now, that is what I call a diplomatic answer.’’ said Nancy in an approving tone.
Another twelve minutes later their aircraft started pulling back from its gate, then rolled down a taxiway towards one of the runways. After a brief stop at one end of the runway it was about to take off from, the pilots gunned down the four jet engines of the Boeing 717-400, making it accelerate quickly down the runway. Leonardo yelled in delight as their plane’s nose rose and the aircraft lifted off.
‘’Yay! Italy, here we come!’’
On her part, Nancy stayed much more restrained than Leonardo, partly because she had already traveled frequently by air before since a young age, while traveling with Ingrid to many places. Hell, she had been born in a spaceship while midway between Jupiter and Saturn! So, going to Italy, while a nice thing, was not exactly sensational news for her. There was also the fact that she was only half human: the other half was celestial and much more able to keep in any excess enthusiasm.
As their plane was still climbing towards its cruising altitude, Leonardo felt a buzz and some pressure inside his ears, so he pinched his nose and blew hard in order to equilibrate the pressure inside his ears with that of the aircraft’s cabin pressure. Ingrid had explained that to him many years ago, telling him that commercial aircraft cabins were pressurized to levels lower than atmospheric ground pressure. Typically, a commercial airliner’s pressurization system would sustain a cabin pressure equivalent to an altitude between 2,000 and 2,400 meters, thus the need for many passengers to blow their nose during the ascent to altitude. Feeling better now, Leonardo sat back in his seat, waiting for the signal that would tell the passengers that they could take off their seat belts. What he got instead some one minute later was a brutal shock accompanied by a loud, somewhat muffled detonation. Then, complete mayhem broke out. What felt like a hurricane swept through the first-class section, sucking out everything not tied down or fixed. That hurricane turned nearly instantly into a glacial wind that was clearly coming from the outside. The emergency oxygen masks stored in the overhead bins then dropped out of their compartments, ending up dangling down in front of the confused and terrified passengers. At the same time, the part of the plane which contained the first-class lounge started a wild carrousel, rotating around in two axes while tumbling down. Herself quite terrified at first by all this, Nancy managed to regain some composure within seconds, then put on her own mask over her face and took a few deep breaths. Looking around her, she was alarmed to see that most of the other passengers in the lounge were too terrified to think about putting on their oxygen masks. With the violent, glacial wind sweeping around making herself being heard nearly impossible, Nancy instead concentrated and sent out around her a powerful telepathic message.
‘PUT YOUR OXYGEN MASKS ON, NOW!’
Looking to her left and right, Nancy was relieved to see that both Lucy and Leonardo had already put on their own masks. The young stewardess sitting in the lounge had also put on her mask, while most of the other passengers were now reacting properly and were grabbing and putting on their masks. The others who didn’t or reacted too slowly soon lost consciousness and became in danger of dying from hypoxia. Looking through the nearest window, Nancy saw that their plane, or rather their part of the plane, was tumbling down towards the sea, which was still about 2,000 meters below but was approaching quickly. At the speed they were falling, the impact with the sea would certainly kill everybody on board. Looking backward over her shoulder, Nancy was stunned to see that the aft bulkhead of the lounge, which separated it from the forward baggage hold, was mostly gone, ripped open! That allowed her to see with a pang of her heart that the nose section of the aircraft, in which she was, had broken off from the rest of the aircraft and was now tumbling down by itself, nose tip first. Taking a quick decision on what to do, she looked at Leonardo, who was sitting in the inner seat of their row, and sent him a telepathic message.
‘I am going to try to slow down the fall of our aircraft section before it impacts on the surface of the sea below. Stay sitting with your seat belt on and let me do what needs to be done.’
Not waiting for a reply from him, Nancy then unbuckled her seat belt, then grabbed the tops of her seat and of the seat forward from her in order to control her movements while levitating out of her seat. The stewardess and a few passengers looked at her with incomprehension as she made her way towards the ripped aft bulkhead. From what she could understand out of her observations so far, their free-falling nose section was now roughly shaped like a badminton birdie. That actually was helping them, as that shape was gradually stabilizing the nose section in its fall and diminishing its tumbling movements. However, the speed of their fall was still too high and would kill everybody on impact with the sea. Conscious that she now had only seconds to succeed in her efforts, Nancy arrived at a vertical spar of the aft bulkhead which still appeared to be holding solidly enough for her to use. Bracing her back against that spar while holding on to it with both hands, Nancy then concentrated her levitation power, which allowed her to fly, into pushing back hard on the spar by doing as if she wanted to fly up, while fervently hoping that this would slow down the fall of the nose section. Anyone watching her now would probably compare what she was trying to do to a scene typical of a movie about the fictional hero ‘Superman’. Nancy felt hope grow as she felt that the speed of fall of the nose section, which had to weigh at least a dozen tons, started to slow down at once. Hoping that the spar she was using as a sort of lever would continue to hold, she increased further her mental effort at levitation while also using her power of telekinesis to further keep a hold on the nose structure. Now watched by most of the fearful and stunned passengers and by the Pan Am stewardess, Nancy gave it her maximum, unconsciously starting to glow from the inside as she used all her powers of half-celestial to save the occupants of the nose section. While she did that, she also sent out another powerful telepathic message around her.
‘WE ARE GOING TO IMPACT THE SURFACE OF THE SEA. PUT ON YOUR INFLATABLE LIFE VESTS BUT DON’T INFLATE THEM YET! WAIT FOR THE WORD OF OUR STEWARDESS BEFORE INFLATING YOUR VESTS!’
To her relief, the other passengers, including Lucy and Leonardo, obeyed her and, taking their individual life vests stored in pockets attached to the seat in front of their own seats, started putting them on, encouraged verbally by the stewardess. By now, with their section fully depressurized and with their speed of fall diminishing constantly thanks to Nancy’s efforts, it was now possible to be heard if one shouted out loud. However, the temperature inside the first-class lounge was still frigid and Nancy could well imagine how cold the waters of the Atlantic would be at this time of the year. Even if they survived the impact with the ocean, they were still at great risk of dying from hypothermia once in the water.
‘One thing at the time, Nancy. One thing at a time.’
In the control tower of J.F.K. Airport, the air controller watching the radar scope on which the Pan Am B-717 appeared suddenly saw its blip break up in multiple smaller blips before it disappeared completely from his radar. Not believing his eyes at first and checking out his radar settings, he soon had to accept what it was telling him and shouted an urgent warning to his shift supervisor.
‘’PAN AM 110 JUST DISAPPEARED FROM MY RADAR SCOPE!’’
That brought his supervisor, a very experienced man, to his station at a near run.
‘’Tell me what you saw, Ted!’’
‘’I had Pan Am 110 here, climbing to its cruising altitude, when its blip suddenly fractured into at least four smaller blips at an altitude of about 6,000 feet. It was then over the ocean, some 26 miles to the East-southeast of us. Those blips then disappeared completely from my radar. I heard no calls or warning from Pan Am 110 before that happened.’’
‘’Try calling them now!’’
The air controller did so, calling and repeating his message five times before his supervisor picked up a nearby telephone.
‘’Keep trying, Ted! I am going to call for a search of that area.’’
Back in the falling nose section of the broken-up B-717, Leonardo suddenly shouted a warning to Nancy, who was still glowing and doing her best to slow down their fall.
‘’WE ARE GOING TO IMPACT THE SEA IN A FEW SECONDS. YOU BETTER BRACE FOR IMPACT, PEOPLE!’’
On hearing that, Nancy switched position at once, turning around the spar she was holding and going outside of the broken nose section, where she ended lying on her belly on top of the spar. That gave her the double advantage of being able to see clearly outside and to protect her from crashing down inside the nose section on impact. With an ultimate mental effort, she managed to lower the impact speed with the ocean’s surface to a very manageable three meters per second, allowing the nose cone section to stay intact and avoid creating water leaks inside it. However, they were not out of trouble yet and Nancy kept pulling up on it, in order to keep it to the vertical and avoid waves to fill it. At the same time, she started towing it towards the nearest shore she could see, some two kilometers away. Thankfully, the strong wind coming from the East helped her by pushing the nose cone towards land.
Nine minutes later, a completely exhausted Nancy arrived with her aircraft nose section on a section of sandy beach, where she gently let it lay down well away from the surf before landing herself on her feet. Walking to a nearby large rock, she wearily sat on it and wrapped her arms around her torso to stop her shivering. The external temperature was close to freezing and the sea spray had thoroughly soaked her, making her freeze during her supreme effort to bring the nose section to safety. She was still sitting on that rock, her head low and eyes closed, trying to recuperate from her effort, when someone gently touched her shoulder. Opening her eyes, she saw that it was Lucy, smiling at her.
‘’Nancy, you were extraordinary, truly! Without you, all of us would be dead.’’
‘’But all these other people in the main cabin: they are now dead. This is still an immense tragedy.’’
‘’Nancy, you did all that you could. Thank you, in the name of all the other passengers you saved.’’
‘’Thanks!’’ replied Nancy, shivering from the cold wind. ‘’Can you see some houses nearby where we could find shelter and warm up?’’
‘’There is what appears to be either a hotel or a residential tower some 300 meters away.’’
‘’Then, let’s go there!’’
Nancy just had time to get up from her rock before the pilot of their aircraft came to see her, a grave expression on his face.
‘’Miss, my stewardess just told me what you did and I must thank you most profusely for saving us all. May I ask how you did what you did, miss?’’
Nancy nodded her head wearily: it was not as if this would be the first time that she would become the subject of breaking news on television or in the newspapers.
‘’In Washington, I earned the nickname of ‘Supergirl’ at a young age due to my supernatural powers. My name is Nancy Dows and I am basically half-human, half-celestial.’’
‘’Half celestial?’’
‘’Or half angel if you prefer. Right now, I think that we should concentrate on getting to a warm place where we could call for assistance. We can always talk further about this later on, once we are all safe.’’
The pilot stared at her for a moment, then nodded his head once.
‘’You are right, miss. Do you need my help to walk? You look exhausted.’’
‘’I am, but I can walk by myself, thank you. There are old people with us who need help more than I do.’’
The pilot nodded again, then returned to his copilot, flight engineer and stewardess, discussing briefly with them before telling the survivors to follow him. As for Nancy, she accepted Leonardo’s help, who lent her his arm to help steady her tired pace. She was pained to see that, out of the more than 400 people who had been on the Pan Am flight, only a grand total of 35 people, including herself, had survived. But survived what? She was still thinking about that when a police patrol car and a fire engine truck stopped near her group as they were walking along it towards the tall building Lucy had seen. From then on, things went fairly fast, with a number of ambulances and emergency vehicles arriving and helping the survivors.
In the control tower of J.F.K. Airport, the news of survivors being found on the shore near Freeport brought some relief from the catastrophe atmosphere in the control room. However, that relief was all but forgotten when an air controller watching his radar scope shouted in alarm.
‘’HEY, TWA 124 JUST DISAPPEARED FROM MY SCREEN!’’
‘’Not another one?’’ exclaimed the shift supervisor while walking quickly to that station. Looking at it and asking questions to the air controller, the supervisor banged furiously one fist on his desk.
‘’TWO PLANES DISAPPEARING FROM RADAR WITHIN ONE HOUR OF EACH OTHER, AFTER EACH OF THEM LEFT FROM THIS AIRPORT? THAT CAN’T BE A SIMPLE COINCIDENCE! THAT’S IT! GROUND ALL THE FLIGHTS AND CANCEL ALL TAKEOFFS UNTIL WE CAN UNDERSTAND BETTER WHAT IS HAPPENING. LET ONLY INCOMING FLIGHTS LAND BUT, ONCE LANDED, THEY WILL STAY DOWN. I AM CALLING THE NTSB{30} RIGHT AWAY ABOUT THIS.’’
22:53 (New York Time)
Air control tower, J.F.K. International Airport
The control tower’s evening shift supervisor was on edge and tired when he was told that a group of NTSB investigators wanted to talk with him. Putting down his telephone handset, he made a forced smile to the two men and one woman wearing suits who came to him and shook hands with him, with one of the two men presenting himself.
‘’Hi! My name is Jeff Zelanik and I am a senior investigator at the NTSB. My assistants are Robert McClelland and Sylvia Krystal. We just arrived by aircar from Washington. Another team is also on its way to where the wreckage from the Pan Am 110 flight washed ashore, to study it.’’
‘’And I am Dennis Brockovich, evening shift supervisor in this control tower. I was on duty when both airliners disappeared from our radars after taking off from this airport. Uh, about that Pan Am wreckage, it didn’t exactly wash ashore.’’
Brockovich then took a couple of minutes to explain to the NTSB team what had transpired to date concerning the Pan Am flight, leaving the investigators to look at him with bulging eyes and dropping jaws.
‘’You, you can’t be serious, mister!’’ protested Zelanik, making Brockovich insist.
‘’Yes, I am! That girl has already made the media headlines a number of times in the past and her nickname at school is ‘Supergirl’. You will be able to interview her soon anyway: she and the other survivors from Pan Am 110 are presently in a private airport lounge, waiting for you. There is however another thing that you should know right now: both Pan Am 110 and TWA 124 disappeared from our radars when they reached an altitude of 6,000 feet and while still climbing towards their cruising altitude. Associated with the fact that the Pan Am survivors said to the Port Authority Police that they heard and felt an explosion aboard their plane just before their plane broke up in pieces, this raised heavy suspicions in me about the possibility of bombs put aboard those two planes. Captain Anthony Fraticelli, our head of Port Authority Police, agrees with me and has ordered all cargo and luggage already loaded on planes to be returned to the terminals, where they and the luggage still awaiting to be loaded are to be closely inspected, using sniffing dogs.’’
‘’That certainly sounds like a good precautionary measure to take, Mister Brockovich.’’ agreed Zelanik. ‘’Before going to interview those Pan Am survivors, we would like to quickly interview the air controllers who were directing the two missing flights.’’
‘’Of course! Both of them are here. Follow me!’’
After leading the NTSB investigators to his two air traffic controllers, Brockovich returned to his duty desk but barely had time to sit down before four men in business suits showed up and flashed badges at him.
‘’FBI! We came to investigate reports of a possible dual case of bombs aboard airliners. The New York Port Authorities contacted us to ask for our assistance.’’
‘’I see! A team from the NTSB just arrived as well, so you may want to liaise with them and coordinate both of your investigations.’’
‘’That certainly sounds like a good idea, mister. Where is that team right now?’’
‘’Follow me: I will lead you to them.’’
Getting up from his chair again, Brockovich led the FBI agents to the NTSB investigators, who had already started to ask questions to his air traffic controllers. The two teams were still exchanging handshakes when yet another visitor showed up in the control tower. That one however made everybody pause and stare: it was a very young and beautiful woman with reddish-brown hair and blue eyes who wore the uniform of a five-star general.
‘My god! Her! Who else is going to show up next? The President?’ thought to himself Brockovich before greeting Ingrid Dows.
‘’Good evening, General Dows! What can we do for you?’’
Ingrid kept a sober expression while answering him.
‘’Well, I mostly came by aircar from the Pentagon in order to check on my three teenage children, who were traveling on Pan Am 110, but I also came to bring the assistance of the Pentagon in this sad affair. I was told already by my children what they saw and heard on their flight and there is definitely something very suspicious about this double ‘accident’. The one thing that I can tell to both the NTSB and to the FBI is that both planes were not shot down by missiles. My operations center reported no hostile warship in this area of the Atlantic and no missiles were detected on military radars.’’
‘’That is certainly one good thing to know, General.’’ Said Max Sellers, the senior agent from the FBI. ‘’Do you want to be present when we will interview your three children?’’
‘’I certainly do, mister! While they certainly have nothing to hide, I would like to help in particular my daughter Nancy to manage the information about her special nature.’’
‘’Uh, does that mean that you are also a half-angel, General?’’ asked Jeff Zelanik, making Ingrid grin in amusement.’’
‘’Me? No! I am only a Chosen of The One: my powers don’t come close to those of my daughter.’’
Zelanik exchanged glances with both Sellers and Brockovich before asking her another question.
‘’You are known to have helped design the Boeing 717 decades ago, General. Do you have a theory of your own to explain what could have happened to both Pan Am 110 and TWA 124?’’
‘’I do!’’ replied at once Ingrid, making everybody listen carefully to her words. ‘’I don’t believe much in coincidences or in strings of bad luck. From what I heard up to now, I would bet that both aircraft were destroyed by bombs planted aboard, probably in some piece of luggage, and detonated via barometric initiators. To have one aircraft breaking up while climbing is one thing. To have a second do the same, and at the same altitude, is another and is a sign of a deliberate act.’’
The three men facing her again exchanged glances, with Senior Agent Sellers about to ask her a question when an air traffic controller shouted from his watch station while holding up a telephone handset.
‘’BOSS, IT’S CAPTAIN FRATICELLI ON THE LINE: THEY JUST FOUND A BOMB IN ONE PIECE OF LUGGAGE THAT HAD BEEN DISEMBARKED FROM A DELTA AIRLINES BOEING 717.’’
‘’CHRIST!’’ swore Brockovich while hurrying to take the call. ‘’ARE WE FACING A COORDINATED MASS TERRORIST ATTACK AGAINST OUR AIRLINES?’’
23:40 (New York Time)
Baggage handling area of Terminal # 3
J.F.K. International Airport
‘’The bomb is now fully defused, sir. It is safe to approach it.’’
Ingrid, the FBI agents and the NTSB investigators left the cover of a nearby concrete passage and approached the bomb, now lying on top of a table, alongside the suitcase in which it had been found. Max Sellers threw a dirty look at the bomb before looking at the bomb disposal expert who had defused it.
‘’What can you tell us right now about this bomb, Officer Jones?’’
‘’Actually, I was surprised by the lack of measures taken to camouflage its origin, sir. The detonating mechanism is definitely of the barometric type and was set up to explode the bomb when it registered an altitude above sea level of 6,000 feet. It was also a very powerful bomb for its size, as it packed a total of nearly seven pounds of Semtex plastic explosives. No wonder those two airliners broke up in flight.’’
‘’Seven pounds of Semtex?’’ exclaimed Sellers. ‘’Whoever did this sure wanted to be certain that its target would not survive its blast. What else can you tell us, Officer Jones?’’
The bomb expert answered him without hesitation.
‘’I can tell you that this bomb is ‘Made in Russia’, sir. The detonator and other non-explosive parts of this bomb all bear markings and serial numbers in Cyrillic and none in English. The mechanism is also quite sophisticated and of military grade quality. This is no amateur job, sir. I will probably be able to tell you more after we will analyze this bomb in a lab.’’
‘’And to whom belonged the suitcase into which this bomb was found, Officer Jones?’’ asked Jeff Zelanik of the NTSB. An airport baggage handling manager answered his question, a weird look on his face.
‘’Actually, I doubt very much that the owner of this suitcase is guilty of anything in this case, Mister Zelanik: she is a 73-year-old nun who was going to the Vatican for a special religious ceremony. Furthermore, there was no lock or other safety mechanism on that suitcase, so anyone handling it could have opened it, slipped the bomb in it and close it back before putting the suitcase back into the loading line.’’
‘’But,’’ objected FBI Special Agent Chris Woutten, ‘’the bomber could not know in advance which suitcase would not be locked or secured. He had to put his bombs in the bags he could open, which meant that his targets would have been picked totally at random.’’
‘’Which means in turn that the bomber was not targeting a specific aircraft or passenger and was instead meaning only to kill American and other citizens who were using American airliners.’’ said Ingrid, a hard expression on her face. ‘’That means for me that the ones who ordered these bombings to be done have a serious grudge against the United States but don’t want to attack us directly, in the open. Does this sound familiar to you, people?’’
‘’The Russians!’’ spat Sellers. ‘’They tried recently to attract one of our carriers into a submarine ambush mounted by three Caucasian submarines. But why be so clumsy with this lack of covering their tracks with those bombs, General?’’
‘’Maybe they were so sure that all the evidence would disappear when those planes broke up over the ocean that they deemed unnecessary to hide the origin of their bombs. Or…’’
‘’Or someone else is trying to make the Russians wear the hat for those terrorist attacks.’’
‘’But who would want to do that, General?’’ asked Agent Gary Pleasance, a bit flustered by now. Ingrid looked negligently at her fingernails while answering him.
‘’Oh, I don’t know! Maybe the Chinese, who could thus get rid of its two biggest rivals in the World without getting directly involved in a war. Maybe some Islamic terrorist organization who would love to see us and Russia mutually blow the shit out of us. Maybe even the British.’’
‘’The British!? Why?’’
‘’Remember a certain Falklands War, in which Great Britain suffered one of its worst naval defeat in history, a war in which we logistically supported their opponent, Argentina, after finding out that the British were trying to convince Chile to enter the war at their side, something that positively enraged President Reagan? Believe me, mister: there is no shortage of duplicity and backstabbing in World geopolitics. I thus believe that we will have to catch the person who put these bombs in unsecured suitcases before speculating further.’’
So
