Parallax View by Allan Leverone

to
call air traffic control and let them know we’re in trouble.” Wilczynski lifted
the radio mike off a metal stand and handed it to her.
    “Who will I be
talking to?”
    “Everybody.” The
pilot tuned the radio to UHF frequency 243.0. “This is the emergency frequency.
Every ATC facility monitors it. Everyone within range of our transmission will
hear it. In a few seconds we’ll have more help than we know what to do with.
Just make a Mayday transmission. Identify us to the controllers as Bulldog 14.”
Wilczynski closed his eyes and slumped in his seat and Tracie feared he had
lost consciousness again, but a moment later he reopened them and began
adjusting power settings.
    Tracie keyed the
mike. “Mayday. Mayday. This is Bulldog 14 with an emergency situation.”
    The response was
immediate. The radio crackled to life. “Bulldog 14, this is Boston Center,
we’ve been looking for you. You missed checking in at a compulsory reporting
point. What’s the nature of your emergency?”
    Tracie looked at
Major Wilczynski. “What do I tell them?”
    “Tell them the
rest of the crew is incapacitated and we need a vector direct to Bangor
International Airport. It was a SAC base in World War II and it’s the closest
airport with a runway big enough to land this beast on.”
    Tracie relayed the
message and the controller said, “Roger that, Bulldog 14. Radar contact
seven-zero miles northeast of the Bangor Airport. Cleared to Bangor via radar
vectors. Fly heading two-five-zero, climb and maintain one-six thousand. Bangor
altimeter two-nine-eight-seven.”
    “You get all
that?” she asked Wilczynski. He nodded.
    “Roger,” she said
into the mike.
    “What assistance
will you need when you land?” the controller asked, and Wilczynski said, “Tell
them we’ll need ambulances and the crash crew standing by. We’ll need
everything they’ve got.”
    Tracie relayed the
message and as the B-52 gained altitude, climbing steadily and reassuringly,
she said, “Bangor? As in Maine? Isn’t that city tiny?”
    “The city is
small, yes, but the airport is huge. It’s the former Dow Air Force Base, and
although they only have one runway, it’s mammoth. Eleven thousand feet, with a
one thousand foot overrun at each end. That’s almost two-and-a-half miles of
pavement for us to land on, and the way I feel right now, we’ll probably need
every last inch of it.”
    Tracie fingered
the letter to President Reagan. She had removed it from her jacket and placed
it in the back pocket of her trousers before using the jacket to stanch the
blood flowing from Wilczynski’s head wound. The envelope was flecked with
spatters of blood but otherwise appeared undamaged. The aircraft—and thus the
letter—seemed to be out of danger, at least for the moment, but Tracie knew the
odds against Major Mitchell’s sudden deadly rampage being unrelated to the
secret communique from Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev were astronomical. Those
kinds of coincidences just didn’t happen.
    “Uh, isn’t there a
military base we could divert to? Wouldn’t that be more secure?” She recognized
the lack of logic inherent in the question—after all, this flight had
originated from a United States military base and had been manned entirely by
U.S. military personnel, and they had still nearly ended up in the Atlantic
Ocean after a bloodbath inside the plane. If the attack was the result of
someone trying to prevent delivery of that communique, that someone’s influence
was obviously far-reaching. And deadly.
    Tracie knew all
that, and she knew landing at a military base might not make any difference.
She didn’t care. It had to be safer than landing unprotected at a civilian
airport.
    Her question
became moot, though, with Wilczynski’s answer. “Well, there is Loring Air Force
Base, in northern Maine. It’s a SAC base and it’s got plenty of runway. Problem
is it’s in the wrong direction if you’re trying to get to Andrews, and