Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

“Stand by, we’ve got a problem,” Peck told departure control.

“Full power,” the captain ordered. “Pour it on!”

They tried, but the flight deck was jarred by what felt like an explosion.

“What was that?” Peck demanded, a question with no obvious answer.

“Go… go… go!” Peck yelled as he and his first officer fought desperately to haul the jumbo jet’s nose into the air. It was a losing battle.

Back in the aft cabin, Harry Jacobs was stunned by what he witnessed. The quaking became more pronounced. A large wedge of dark metal sliced upward through the surface of the wing and disappeared above his line of vision. Jacobs thought he heard himself scream “No!” as he watched liquid—fuel, he knew—stream from the enormous vent torn through the center of the wing. A fissure began to snake from the rupture toward the trailing edge. More and more fuel sprayed from the growing breach.

Eight rows behind Jacobs, Cloriss Colburn uttered a high-pitched moan that was lost in the cacophony of screams from other passengers watching the destruction of the wing and from those who couldn’t see what was happening but were no less terrified.

“Samuel, help me, please,” she begged her long-dead husband. She squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her fists so tightly her fingernails clawed blood from her palms.

Outside the Sexton, in the rented Cessna, Kisparich lurched against his restraining harness when he saw a jagged piece of metal explode from the Number Two engine pod and slice through the wing. Like a misshapen Frisbee, it cartwheeled high into the air, then nosed over and tumbled to the infield grass below. By that time, Kisparich’s attention was back on the big engine, which was vibrating hideously. It rocked in its mounting and began to yaw violently, as if trying to squirm free of some terrible agony. The huge pod ripped itself almost off its pylon, dangling by what appeared to be a single bolt connection. The force of its gyrations cracked the wing. Kisparich thought he could see jet fuel from ruptured fuel cells cascading over the broken airfoil and the mortally damaged engine. The aircraft was listing to the right and suddenly began turning in that direction. It headed straight for the puny Cessna, whose pilot had believed he’d stopped in a safe place.

The jetliner began to heel over, dragging the tip of the fractured wing along the concrete runway and creating a wake of sparks that set the leaking fuel ablaze within seconds. Before the flames obliterated his view, Kisparich saw the outboard two-thirds of the right wing tear away, taking the engine with it in a cascade of fire and smoke. The assembly catapulted into the air and bounced hard several times along the runway, shattering the wing structure and breaking the engine open. It finally came to rest, fully engulfed in flame, in the grass infield.

As the jetliner continued to roll, the stub of the right wing hit the runway so hard it was torn from the fuselage, ripping open the passenger compartment from seats 28H to 42H, the way the lid is ripped from a pop-top can. In seat 41H, Cloriss Colburn’s heart stopped, ending her terror in harsh but brief pain. In 33H, Harry Jacobs was buckled into his seat next to the gaping tear in the airliner’s skin, enduring wave after wave of fright mounting toward shock. He had a desperate urge to get up and run, although he hadn’t the faintest notion of where. Even if he could have identified a haven, he couldn’t have reached it. The tremendous wind created by the jetliner’s race down the runway pinned him to his seat and grabbed at his breath.

Somehow, the young Asian beside Harry Jacobs tore free of his seatbelt. He snatched the seat in front and pulled himself to his feet. The older Asian on the aisle grabbed the young man and tried to force him back. The older man—the father, Jacobs thought—was screaming in a tongue that sounded like Korean. The boy kept shaking his head, fighting violently to escape. He was making some progress in getting past the older man, defying the floor’s gradually increasing pitch to the right. Jacobs turned toward the boy and reached out for him. He hooked his left hand in the waistband of the boy’s blue jeans and pulled him back toward his seat. Buckled in snugly, the youth had a chance. On his feet, he probably had none at all.

In that instant Jacobs realized the flight crew had no hope of righting the Sexton. Through a window across the cabin, he saw the left wing continue to rise, and he felt himself tipping ever backward, toward the hole in the fuselage. Afraid to look over his shoulder, he concentrated on the young Asian. The boy was still trying to claw his way past his father to the aisle. Only Jacobs’s grip on his pants prevented it. The boy looked back to see who was holding him, and Jacobs saw the fear on his face turn to terror as his mind grasped that the aircraft was going over.

The youngster let go of the seat in front of him and put his hands to his head. His scream penetrated the roar of rushing air and chilled Jacobs’s blood. The pitch of the fuselage grew greater, and the boy toppled into Jacobs’s lap. He lay face down over Jacobs’s legs. The force of the wind threatened to snatch him, and Jacobs grabbed again for his clothing, clutching anything he could close a fist around. Suddenly the boy was trying to get through the hole, using a swimming action with his arms to push off from whatever he could touch. His shirt ripped out of Jacobs’s hands.

“No!” the Senate aide shouted. “Don’t!”

The boy flailed madly, seeking an escape that Jacobs recognized as certain death. His head and shoulders were through the hole. Jacobs threw his arms around the youngster’s legs, holding on desperately. The boy grabbed a jagged edge of the aircraft’s skin and tried to boost himself through. Jacobs saw the sharp metal tear the boy’s hands, and droplets, then rivulets, of blood whipped in the wind. The boy took his right hand from the metal. He looked back at Jacobs and threw his left elbow into Jacobs’s face. The blow was true. It broke Jacobs’s nose. Instinctively, the Senate aide reached for his face with his left hand. It was the chance the boy needed. He placed his palms against the outside of the airplane and pushed with the strength of madness. Feeling him start to slide through the hole, Jacobs grabbed for him again. But it was too late. The boy slipped away, the heavy material of his blue jeans tearing a fingernail from Jacobs’s right hand.

Any additional pain Jacobs might have felt was masked by terror. The plane continued to keel over. Through wind-whipped tears he could see grass beyond the runway’s edge. But as the jet rolled, the grass moved up and out of view, and there was nothing but concrete rushing up to meet him. As the right main gear collapsed in an agony of sparks and screaming metal, the airliner crashed onto its side, rendering Jacobs and eighteen other passengers nothing more than grisly smears on the runway.

At the last second, Jacobs recalled the jolt when Number Two engine started, and the last thought he ever had was overwhelming regret that he never mentioned it to anyone.

At almost the same instant, Howard Kisparich saw the aircraft explode in a fireball. It looks like that space-shuttle accident, when there was a tiny spark on the side of the rocket booster and then everything blew all to hell. It took no more than a few seconds for the flames to engulf the 811, but it seemed to Kisparich it was happening in slow motion. The first orange-and-black balloon of flame and smoke gave birth to a second, and the second to a third, and they kept building on each other like a hideous cauliflower, expanding up and out from the dying airliner. He could see red paint blister and blacken; he could see chunks of burning metal rip away and tumble off the runway, trailing comet tails of black smoke. Thank God he couldn’t see bodies, but they must be in there, strangling on the smoke or burning up. Then all he could see was the fireball, with the silver nose of the jetliner protruding, obscenely unscarred, from the front. And that was bad enough.