In Sheep's Clothing: An Action-Packed Political Thriller (Matthew Richter Thriller Series Book 1) (15 page)

The blinding flash rocked the airplane, and Richter reflexively shoved President Kendall up against the bulkhead, using his own body as a shield.  He shook his head, trying to clear the clouds and muffled ringing. 
What the hell?
  Wind rushed through the cargo hold, raining debris down on their heads.  Time seemed to warp, the seconds flowing like molasses.  Despite the wind, he smelled burning plastic and rubber.  Something was on fire.  He shook his head again, and somewhere deep in his foggy brain a voice—his own voice—screamed.
The president!
   He struggled to focus, and POTUS suddenly appeared.  Richter saw the blood streaking down the president’s face, on his goggles, on his mask, before being whipped away in the windstorm.  It took him some time to realize that the blood was his own.  He could see the terror in the president’s eyes as darkness crept across the edges of his own vision.  Christ!  He couldn’t breathe!   The president lunged for him, and he watched in horror as Kendall’s eyes rolled into the back of his head.  Richter reached out, frantically searching for the valve on the president’s oxygen supply. He struggled with the stuck valve for what seemed like an eternity before realizing that he was turning it the wrong way.  As his vision darkened, the president began to respond, slowly coming to.

POTUS was alive, but for how long? 

The aircraft pitched violently, and Colonel Zweig struggled to maintain control.  The cockpit instantly filled with fog as the air pressure plummeted, and Zweig batted away the cups and paper that sailed past his face. 

“Explosive decompression!” Lewis yelled as she reached for the oxygen mask. 

Fighting the debris storm, she helped Zweig pull on his mask, then reached for her own.  Captain Thomas punched a button, and a stream of chaff and flares were ejected from the wings and fuselage.  These were designed to foil radar and heat-seeking guidance systems on potential inbound missiles. 

At the same time, Zweig banked sharply to the right.  The evasive maneuver had turned the aircraft one hundred and eighty degrees, and they were now heading west.

McKay held onto the netting as the tornado rushed through the cargo hold.  He kept his head down to avoid the debris—papers, luggage, pieces of metal, and plastic—rushing at gale-force speed towards the hole in the rear door.  The plane began to buck and shake, first banking sharply to one side and then the other. 

He lifted his head and glanced through the fog at Mosby.  The man had a pained look on his face as he slapped at his ears.  McKay had been prepared and was wearing earplugs.  Even with the earplugs, the roar of the blast had been deafening.  He could only imagine what it must have been like without them.  Good.  He wanted Mosby confused and disoriented.  It would make things easier later. 

Now it was up to Colonel Zweig.  He prayed the colonel wouldn’t let him down.

On the main deck, Secret Service agents sprang into action, six agents running to the front of the plane, another six running to the back.  Both groups headed to the stairways that led to the lower deck, fighting their way through the fog, the screaming passengers, and the flying debris. 

Colonel Zweig’s evasive maneuvers sent agents and passengers tumbling into the aisles.

“Emergency descent!” Zweig yelled as he applied the speed brakes and yanked the throttle to idle. 

Even though his initial reaction had been to jink, to evade potential missiles, logic told him they were too high for a ground-based threat and, with AWACS coverage, an undetected airborne threat was impossible.  Besides, there had been no warning tone in his earphones signaling that they were being tracked.  No, the explosion had come from on board the aircraft, Zweig realized. His priority now was to get the aircraft down before the president—the only passenger that mattered—succumbed to oxygen deprivation.

As his vision grew darker, Richter franticly felt around for the cargo bin.  He forced the cover open and thrust his hand inside.  The vise around his chest continued to tighten as he searched for the mask.  He began to slump and screamed at himself. 
Don’t quit now!  Do your job! 
After what seemed like an eternity, he felt the cylinder, yanked the mask out and fumbled to strap it on. 

The fog began to clear as Lewis keyed the radio again.  “Mother Goose, this is Air Force One.  Over.”  She waited a moment.  “Mother Goose, this is Air Force One.  Do you read?  Over.”  Lewis frowned at the radio.  “Mother Goose.  This is Air Force One.  We’ve lost cabin pressure.  We are descending to twelve thousand feet.  Please confirm.  Over.”

The major switched frequencies and tried again.  Something was wrong with the radio.  She switched to the civilian frequency. 

“Seattle Center.  This is Air Force One.  Do you copy?”

All she heard was silence.

When he took the first breath of oxygen, Richter felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off his chest.  The darkness that had crept across his vision began to recede.  After a while—no way to tell how long—he felt strong enough to stand on his own.  Through the fog and howling wind, he saw President Kendall, terrified, but alive and breathing.  He reached into the bin again, searching for another pair of smoke goggles.

In the press section, agents climbed over the bodies in their way.  Several fell, succumbing to the debris—flying china, cell phones, laptops—and the lack of oxygen.  Three agents made it to the door.  The force of the explosion had not only blown a hole in the rear hatch but had traveled in the opposite direction, buckling the rear staircase and partially crumpling the frame around the door to the passenger compartment at the top of the steps.  The first agent to reach the door cursed, finding it jammed.

Richter felt the airplane pitch forward and shudder.  They were descending, he realized.  The debris storm and the fog began to subside, but the wind continued to howl through the hold.  The cargo netting and their clothes flapped like flags.  Must not be anything left to get sucked out. 

That’s it!
He realized.  There’s a hole in the plane—a door, a window, he didn’t know what—but they had suddenly lost cabin pressure.  The realization hit him like a ton of bricks.  There must have been some sort of explosive device, like a bomb or a missile. 

His eyes shifted to the doorway and there was Stephanie, crumpled on the floor, her arms and legs tangled in the cargo nets.  Her white blouse soaked in blood, red streaks trailing away along the floor. Even in the dim light, he could see that her face was grey.  He gasped. 
Oh, God!  Stephanie!
 

He and President Kendall had been protected from the brunt of the explosion by the bulkhead.  Agent Sartori, standing just inside the bulkhead doorway at the time of the blast, had not been so lucky.  As the explosion blew a hole in the door of the aircraft, thousands of pieces of shrapnel—lethal projectiles—flew down the narrow walkway through the bulkhead doors.  A split second later, there was a tremendous flow in the opposite direction as the higher pressure air in the cabin began to rush towards the hole in the rear hatch.  Sartori had been hit in the head and neck, her carotid artery severed.

Richter choked back a sob. 
Stephanie!  Stephanie!
  He shook his head again. 
Stop!
  His brain screamed.  There was nothing he could do to save her.  He had to save the president.

In the rear of the cargo hold, McKay felt the rapid deceleration and leveling of the aircraft.  Tentatively, he stood.  The wind, still rushing through the hold, was less violent now.  He signaled Mosby to wait as he cautiously stepped through the bulkhead.  There was a basketball-sized hole in the rear hatch, where the locking mechanism used to be.  Bracing himself, he kicked the door, but it opened just an inch or two, then slammed shut in the wind.  The plane was still going too fast. 
Shit!
He swore to himself.  They were running out of time.  He pulled the remaining Semtex from his pocket, broke it in two, shaping each piece before placing one over each of the hinges.  He used the last of the fuses and multi-meters, quickly rigging the shaped charges and setting the timer to fifteen seconds.  He hurried back to the other side of the bulkhead.

Richter’s eyes avoided Stephanie’s body as he glanced through the doorway.  Twenty feet away, he saw Brad Lansing, his arms and feet also tangled in the cargo netting.  Lansing’s head was tilted back at an abnormal angle, his face bloody, his eyes bulging and his tongue, swollen and black, protruded from his mouth. 

In the White House section of the plane, the agents fought their way through the windstorm, climbing over the bodies in the aisle.  As normally happened on Air Force One, passengers had been up walking or standing when the explosion occurred.  Many of those who had been sitting had not bothered with their seatbelts.  More than half of the passengers had been tossed to the floor.  Most were hurt and bleeding, adding to the confusion.  Like their fellow agents in the press section, more agents fell, victims of oxygen deprivation and flying debris, before the remaining agents thought to put on masks. 

The front stairway hatch wasn’t as severely damaged, and the lead agent was able to free the stuck door after repeatedly slamming his body into it.

Richter turned back to the president, forcing himself to think. 
Okay, what do I do?
  Holding the president with one hand, he opened the cargo bin again and peered inside. 

Without warning, he was slammed into the president again as a second explosion rocked the plane. 

“Deploy chaff and flares!”  Zweig yelled as he wrestled with the controls.  His instincts were to evade, to bank sharply, but he caught himself, knowing they couldn’t descend anymore.  They were already at the minimum safe altitude, and only a few thousand feet separated them from the mountains below.  There was nowhere to run. 

Once again, there had been no warning.

Major Lewis yelled over the noise.  “There’s no sign of fire in the engines or anywhere else on the aircraft!”  

“Call it in!”

“Mayday!  Mayday!  Mayday!  This is Air Force One and we are declaring a Mayday!”  Lewis made the call two more times before switching frequencies and trying again. 

“I’m not getting anything, sir!  The explosions must have knocked out the communications!”

McKay peered around the bulkhead and saw the large hole where the rear hatch had been.  He stepped up to the door and braced himself in the opening.  He glanced over his shoulder at Mosby standing right behind him, said a quick prayer, then jumped out into the airstream. 

The agents at the top of the staircase in the front of the plane were thrown to the ground by the second blast.  The passenger cabin was filled with yelling and screaming as panicked, bleeding passengers called for help or began to pray.  Some of the people who had fallen unconscious earlier when the cabin decompressed at thirty-five thousand feet, began to stir. 

“We need to find the closest airfield now!”

Captain Thomas glanced at the GPS and then scanned his notes.  “The closest airport that can handle us is Missoula!  Runway is ninety-five hundred feet.”  He glanced back at the display.  “One hundred and twenty miles to the north, bearing zero-one-five.” 

Zweig nodded as he banked the aircraft, slowly circling around again until they were heading northeast.  “Missoula.  Zero-one-five.”  

Holding the president with one hand, Richter turned, his eyes avoiding Stephanie’s body, and cautiously peered through the bulkhead door.  The hold was full of twisted metal, wires hanging from the ceiling, the cargo netting whipping in the wind.  Through the debris, he saw a man wearing a parachute harness standing by the jagged hole in the fuselage at the rear of the plane.  The man glanced his way before disappearing through the hole.

For a brief second, Richter thought he recognized Cal Mosby. 

“Captain, what is our ETA to Missoula?”

“At this speed, twenty-eight minutes, sir.”

“Watch the radar closely.  We’ll be crossing over the Bitterroot Mountains.  Plot the peaks, Captain, and find us a way in.  And find me some alternatives!”

Zweig turned to Lewis.  “Major, prepare for an emergency landing.”

“Roger, sir.  God, I hope ATC is on the ball.  We’ll be coming in unannounced.”

“I know.  Keep trying the radios.”

Lewis nodded.  “Yes, sir.  Colonel, all four engines appear to be working.  Hydraulics, electronics, stabilizers…everything appears to be normal.  Except for lost power to the recorders and communications systems and the cabin pressure, nothing else seems to be affected.”

“I’m worried about the structural integrity of the airframe.”

Lewis cringed.  They were flying a potentially damaged aircraft at a low altitude, with precious little room to maneuver and no way to communicate. 
God help them
, she thought.

The conversation moments before flashed through Richter’s mind. 

“Sir, we’re going down!  We need to get off the plane now!” 

He opened the bin again and grabbed a parachute harness.  The president nodded, seeming to understand.  Richter hefted the parachute up over the president’s shoulders, and Kendall slid his arms through.  Richter fastened the buckles, tightened the straps, then checked to ensure the harness was snug.  Then he quickly strapped on his own harness.  He steered the president over Stephanie’s and Brad’s bodies, through the maze of wreckage in the cargo hold, towards the gaping hole in the back.

They stopped when they stepped through the rear bulkhead.  Stepping behind the president, Richter pulled the ball of tightly folded material—no bigger than a softball—from the main pouch on the harness.  He pulled the lines over the president’s shoulder and wrapped the president’s arms around the pilot chute. 

“Sir!”  Richter had to yell over the noise.  “You need to hold this tightly to your chest!  After you jump, you need to count to three!  Then throw this away from your body!”

Despite the fear in his eyes, the president nodded.   

“Count to three then throw,” Richter repeated as he mimed the action.

The president nodded again.

“Okay, ready?”  Then Richter, still holding the president by the shoulders, pushed him toward the large hole.  Without a second thought, Richter pushed him out the door before hurling himself out into the swirling gray.