Darkness (2 page)

Thunder crashed loudly in the distance, echoing off the mountains and startling the wheeling birds into silence. The clouds piling up on the horizon were noticeably darker than before.

Time to go
.

Reluctantly coming about, Gina juiced the throttle and raced for camp, meaning to follow the coastline around the point until she reached Massacre Bay. The small plane burst through the heavy cloud cover approximately five minutes later.

Gina had been eyeing the amassing clouds with misgiving in the wake of another earsplitting clap of thunder. Thunder snow was never a good sign, and she’d just seen an ominous flicker of lightning behind the threatening wall of weather that was now chasing her across the sea. When the plane torpedoed out of those self-same clouds, she sat up straight in surprise on the fiberglass bench seat that ran across the bow. Muffled to the eyes by a snow mask and huddled into her waterproof parka with her hood secured tightly around a face that was all blue eyes, wide mouth, high cheekbones, and pointed chin, she gripped the wheel tighter and watched in astonishment as the plane streaked across the leaden sky toward her.

It’s way too low
, was her first thought, even as she registered that it wasn’t a seaplane like the orange and white Reever that had delivered four of her fellow scientists to this remote atoll in the Pacific; it was, rather, a sleek silver jet. That realization was followed by an alarmed
There’s something wrong
as the plane continued to descend, blasting through the snow flurries on a trajectory that would bring it down way before it reached the island’s runway, which was the only one within hundreds of miles.

You’re being paranoid
, she scolded herself, which, given her personal history with small planes, was no surprise.

The thing was, though, the plane looked like it desperately needed to land. It was dropping fast, losing altitude if not speed.

It’s going to crash
. As the thought crystallized into a near certainty, Gina’s heart leaped into her throat. Sucking in a lungful of the freezing, salt-laden air, she watched the plane dip low enough to disturb the flocks of birds circling the bay. Their cries, coupled with the splashing waves, the moan of the wind, and the Zodiac’s own whining motor, had masked the sound of the plane until it was nearly upon her. Now the birds wheeled wildly in the face of this violent intrusion, their alarmed screeches almost drowned by the roar of the jet engines, which was close enough and powerful enough to reverberate against her eardrums. As she watched the jet shoot across the sky, she registered the logo painted on the side and tail—a circle above two wavy lines—which probably denoted some huge multinational corporation but held no meaning for her. She also had an excellent view of its smooth silver belly. There was no sign of the wheels descending, no sign of any attempt to control its descent. It was, simply, coming down.

Bone-deep fear twisted her insides.
Pull up, pull up, pull up
, she silently urged the pilot. Then,
Dear God, protect whoever’s on board
.

Gina yanked her snow mask down.

“There’s a runway about eight miles to the east.” Her shout was drowned out by the noise of the plane, not that there was any real chance that the pilot could hear her. Still, arm waving wildly over her head in hopes that the pilot might see, she gestured in the direction of the no-longer-operational LORAN (long range navigational) Coast Guard station that was home to the only place to land on the island. It was idiotic, of course, but it was also instinctive: she couldn’t just do
nothing
as the plane hurtled toward the waves.

The section of cockpit windshield that was visible from her angle was black and impenetrable. It was her imagination that painted the pilot at the controls, white-faced and desperate as he fought whatever disaster that had brought the plane to this, and she knew it. She also knew that the chances that her gesture had been seen and understood were almost impossibly small.

Oomph
. With her eyes on the plane rather than on where she was going, she was caught by surprise as the Zodiac hit one of the larger swells the wrong way. The impact sent her flying up off the seat and then smacked her back down onto it hard enough that her teeth snapped together. Thus reminded of where she was and the importance of keeping her mind on her business, she eased the throttle back to near-idle speed, retaining just enough forward power to keep the boat from being tossed around like flotsam by the waves. Pulse pounding, she switched her attention back to the oncoming plane.

Whether it was exhaust from the engines or actual smoke from an onboard fire she couldn’t tell, but a billowing white vapor trail now marked its descending path.

Gina shuddered. The memories that trailing plume brought back made her dizzy.

Get over it
, she ordered herself fiercely, shaking her head to clear it.
You’re not in that plane. What happened is in the past. You’re a different person now
.

Now she was twenty-eight years old, a respected ornithologist whose specialty was the environmental impact of pollution on birds, and at that moment she was out alone in the frigid Bering Sea, doing her job. This plane had nothing to do with her. Whatever happened, she was present merely as a bystander, a witness. There was no reason for her heart to pound, or her stomach to twist.

Her heart pounded and her stomach twisted anyway.

Lifting her binoculars to her eyes, she tracked the plane until it plunged into the outermost edge of the deep gray blanket of clouds that formed an ominously low ceiling above her head. The clouds swallowed it completely. Only the snarl of its engines told her that it was still racing toward her through the sky.

Her concentration was so complete that when the radio clipped to her pocket crackled, it made her jump.

“Gina. Are you there?”

The voice belonged to Arvid Kleir, a fellow scientist. The faint Swedish accent he retained even after years in the States was unmistakable. Along with the rest of the twelve-strong party culled from various top universities, he had chosen to forgo his Thanksgiving break to join the expedition. They had all arrived on Attu two days prior, eight of them, including Gina, dropped off by a chartered boat that would return for them in a week and the rest delivered by the aforementioned Reever. Their purpose was to observe and record the hazards posed by the island’s unique pollution to resident and migratory bird species. Arvid came from Yale. Gina herself was an assistant professor of environmental studies at Stanford.

Yesterday afternoon, having been alerted that something was amiss by the abnormal signals emitted by the female eagle’s microchip, she and Arvid had set out from camp in the Zodiac, located the bird, and rescued it from the pool of degrading oil in which it had become trapped. Attu was littered with a ton of debris from World War II, and the intermittent leakage of decades-old oil, the source of the pool, was a serious problem. Partly full oil and fuel drums, forgotten weapons, unexploded artillery, heavy equipment left to rust on hillsides and in the ocean, overturned shipping containers, and crumbling small structures abandoned by the military were everywhere. As the site of the only World War II battle on American soil, the place once had been home to more than fifteen thousand American troops as well as, on the opposite end of the island, two thousand enemy Japanese. When the war had ended, everything had been left right where it stood. Now the place was both a birder’s paradise and an ecological nightmare. She and Arvid had set up a temporary camp, then spent last night and this morning painstakingly cleaning up the bedraggled eagle and making sure it was fit enough to be returned to the wild. At about one in the afternoon they’d released the bird. Arvid had then headed back to the party’s main camp at the erstwhile Coast Guard station on foot while she’d followed the bird in the Zodiac.

Snatching up the radio, Gina pressed the reply button even as she craned her neck in a useless effort to locate the plane through her binoculars.

“I’m here,” she said urgently into the radio. “Arvid, listen. There’s a plane out here that looks like it’s about to crash into the sea. You need to call the Coast Guard right now.”

Gina and her eleven compatriots were the only people on the island. With cell signals nonexistent, their only means of communication with the outside world was the satellite phone they’d brought with them, which was back at the main camp.

Letting go of the button, she listened in growing dismay as Arvid responded. “. . . understand me? Gina? Are you there?”

It was clear from his tone that he hadn’t heard her transmission. Interference from the oncoming storm, probably. Gina let the binoculars drop to concentrate on the radio.

“Arvid? Call the Coast Guard.” Gina only realized that she was shouting into the radio when her voice echoed back at her.

Static crackled through Arvid’s next words. “. . . back to camp. This storm’s a doozy. You—”

Gina stared down at the radio as his voice was swallowed up by more static. Clearly, her message was not getting through. A rattling roar almost directly overhead had her thrusting the radio between her knees for safekeeping, then snatching up the binoculars and searching the churning gray ceiling for some sign of the plane.

The clouds were too thick. She couldn’t see it.

Tilting her head back to the point where her neck hurt, bracing her feet against the rocking deck for balance, she was gazing almost directly up when she saw a bright flash that looked like a horizontal lightning bolt light up the sky through the obscuring clouds. Then a deafening
boom
hit her, along with an invisible tsunami of a force field fronted by heat. A strange, high-pitched whistling sound split the air.

Oh, my God, the plane’s blown up
.

Her heart lurched. She was still staring up desperately as chunks of metal and other debris started pouring out of the sky like deadly rain.

Practically immobilized by shock, all she could do was lower the binoculars and watch wide-eyed as objects started splashing into the water around her with the fast rat-a-tat of machine-gun fire:
splat splat splat splat splat
.

A large chunk of metal slammed into the water inches from the starboard prow. The breeze of its passage fanned her cheeks. A shower of droplets splattered across her waterproof pants and boots. That’s what it took to make her suddenly, acutely aware of the danger she was in.

Gina’s throat tightened in horror as she watched the geyserlike column of water shoot skyward from where the object had hit. She was struck by an instant, appalled thought:
Looks like I just might be going to die in a plane crash after all
.

Chapter Three

I
t 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.