Page 50 of Air Force One
He spared a glance at Miranda.
“As it slows, the water we were unable to evacuate will slosh toward the forward end—that would be the forward end of motion, which is the stern of the aircraft. This will cause the tail section to dig in. That would imply a different course for best action than the one you have chosen at this momen?—”
“Get to the point, woman.”
“Stop engines and reel in on your tow line as quickly as possible. Otherwise the tail will dig into the waves and the plane will likely sink, this time to the bottom of the sea.”
That felt even worse than being rammed by Air Force One.
“Winch full,” he commanded, though he wasn’t about to stop his retreat. He prayed to God that she was right. That tail section was as tall as the top of his ship’s mast. It was a damn big piece of metal to watch coming his way.
42
“Oh dear,” Miranda whispered to Andi.
“What?” The senior chief petty officer who’d been looming over her shoulder for the last hour spoke for the first time. That and his abrupt tone were such a surprise that Miranda jolted away, except there was nowhere to go. The hastily rigged panel of controls and readouts trapped her. Meg woke up and growled at the senior.
“Why’s that, Miranda?” Andi asked the same question, an unnecessary repetition but her tone was calm and curious, rather than demanding.
Miranda swallowed hard and pointed at the nightmare scene out the bridge windows. “You’ll see when Air Force One catches the next wave. Though I shouldn’t call it that as Air Force One is no longer technically Air Force One. With the successful removal of the President’s body, it is once more SAM 29000. I’m sorry for that mistake.”
That this was foolish in comparison to the error in her calculations and what happened next, didn’t make her feel any better.
Because of the initial slack that the skipper had left in his line wrapped around Air Force One’s tail section and the fast approach of the 747 itself, the winch built for power rather than speed couldn’t haul in the line fast enough to make a difference.
As she’d initially feared, the tail did indeed dig into the next wave. This caused the water remaining in the cabin to slosh toward the stern and drive it downward. The plug they had added to Allyson Liddel’s rear window functioned perfectly.
What Miranda had failed to account for was that the high pressure air that had been pumped into the fuselage would have expanded as the aircraft surfaced. Once the missing copilot’s window was clear of the mud, excess pressure wasn’t merely released. The rapid expansion of the air with the aircraft’s decreasing depth acted more like a water-driven rocket engine.
She saw her mistake by how much of the plane rose so rapidly out of the water. Her conclusion was supported by how lightly SAM 29000 was surfing across the waves.
The plane dug its tail into a big wave.
“I am sorry.”
The commander twisted in his chair to look at her. Miranda didn’t look away fast enough and saw his eyes had gone wide.
Very wide.
She tried it herself and it made her eyes hurt.
43
Air Force One’s tail plowed into the wave, which drove the tail downward. The small volume of remaining water also did indeed slosh into the tail section and pull it downward. But the weight was no longer sufficient to drag the plane once more into the depths.
Instead, it acted like a pole vaulter jamming his pole into the box. Because the plane had been skimming on the wavetops, there was little adhesion between the aircraft’s aluminum skin and the water. And the momentum of two hundred tons of airplane and water moving at thirty knots had to go somewhere.
The front of the 747 flung upward as if trying to stand on its submerged tail. It balanced there in the brilliant work lights shining from above the bridge of USCG Bear. The long white fuselage tipped with sky-blue accents towered fifty meters above the cutter. The metallic-silver wings made it look like an angel of doom as it balanced above them.
Neither the wave that slapped against the underside of the tail nor the thirty-mile-per-hour wind were enough to tip the 747 all the way over—the combination of the two was.
Though it only took three-point-four seconds, it seemed to take forever to fall, slowly gaining momentum like a mighty hammer from heaven. The people aboard the US Coast Guard Cutter Bear were helpless to do more than watch as it accelerated toward them.
Commander Randy Davidson’s order to continue reversing altered the scenario. Instead of smashing into the bridge and destroying the forward half of the ship, the nose of Air Force One merely clipped the bow of the cutter.
Now emptied of fuel, passengers, and the bulk of the water, the 747 weighed just two hundred and eighteen tons compared with the Bear’s eighteen hundred. After falling from a height over fifty meters, the nose was moving at thirty-four meters per second—a hundred and fifteen kilometers per hour.
In just clipping the bow, everything that lay forward of the Bear’s 76 mm deck gun was twisted past recognition. Despite the sudden shortening of the Bear by ten meters, the Frame Two hatches only leaked and the ones at Frame Three held strong. The worst injury was the Coast Guard machinist who had been thrown face first against the pipe rack in his shop—he would be wearing an eye patch for the rest of his life. Once over the injury, he rather liked being the Pirate King of the shop.
