Ever Hayes - Emergency Exit

Danny was back on the radio. “Mayday! We are an American plane with Americans on it.”

“Sorry, Air Force One, unless you have the president…” they replied.

“We have his daughters,” Danny cut in.

There was a pause. “What’s the code word?”

“Code word?” Danny screamed back.

“Yes, sir.”

“How the hell would I—” He paused. “Reagan, do you know a code word?” he yelled back at her. She shook her head. Lazzo punched him in the arm again and pointed at the screen. More missiles were inbound. Four this time. “Dammit,” Danny yelled. “We’re being shot at up here.”

“Sorry, sir. We can’t take the—” the voice began.

Then it occurred to Danny. “Tell the governor I need the Elephant Box.”

“The what?” the voice asked.

“Just tell him dammit!” Danny yelled back. “Elephant Box.”

Then to the rest of us he shouted, “Hold on again!”

Three of the missiles missed us, but the fourth was a direct hit to one of our left wing engines. It exploded into flames, and the plane spun through the air. Who knows how Lazzo was able to recover from that hit, but he managed to hold us marginally stable as we started to drop through the air. We were still four hundred miles from the airstrip. We’d be lucky to make it another hundred miles.

The planes were coming in again. We were a wounded duck, an easy target now. “We gotta clear out,” Danny yelled. We never heard another voice on the radio. Danny pulled everyone together and quickly paired us up. As the planes approached firing range, he sent us out the back, two by two. He threw three more of the large bags on the wall out after us, and then he grabbed Lazzo. “We can’t save this, man. We gotta go.” Lazzo stood and nodded. He turned with Danny to go, threw on his parachute, and started making his way towards the back. He was looking around for Danny but didn’t see him.

Figuring he’d already jumped, Lazzo turned around and headed back to the cockpit, apparently intent on piloting the plane away from us, and hopefully diverting the other planes. But then a solid blow to the back of his head knocked him out cold.

“Sorry, man,” Danny whispered in Lazzo’s ear. “I can’t let you do that.” Danny knew they didn’t have time to argue, and he’d considered Lazzo might try to give his life to save the rest of them. He only had one option. He knocked him out and dragged him to the back of the plane, pulling him out into the blue sky seconds before two more missiles hit the plane, and it splintered into a billion fiery pieces. Danny and Lazzo plummeted through the air. Suddenly there were four light streaks zipping towards them from Hawaii, followed by four more huge explosions around them. Danny shielded Lazzo as best he could, trying to get a grasp on what had just happened, while also aware they were closing in on the water. He grabbed Lazzo tightly and pulled his chute.

As the chute pulled them violently backwards, Danny dropped the last large bag he’d been carrying. It hit the water with a splash and burst open, converting into a raft. He and Lazzo landed shortly after it did, and Danny pulled him, still unconscious, through the water to the raft. There was debris all around them and no sign of the rest of us. Someone had fired at the remaining fighter planes from Hawaii. Whether they would fire at us as well, we weren’t yet sure. But those fighters now were gone.

Blake never saw where Isaac went. For some reason he’d never pulled his chute, or it hadn’t opened, and Blake never saw him fall or land. Blake, however, made it to Kate in plenty of time to pull her chute and then pushed off of her to try to help Mom. But by the time he made it to her and pulled her chute they were too close to the water. They hit hard.

He shook the cobwebs from his own head as best he could and checked Mom for a pulse. There was none. He pulled her to the raft nonetheless, and then swam frantically for Kate. He reached her and pulled her back to the raft as well. After a few minutes of CPR, she coughed up a gallon of salt water and slowly came back around. Blake knelt beside her, relieved he’d saved at least one life, but crushed he hadn’t been able to save Mom or find any trace of Isaac. He leaned back against the edge of the raft and pulled Kate up to a sitting position—wrapping his arms around her—tears streaming down his face. Crushed…devastated…there were no words to sum up their emotions. But the two of them were safe. For now.

The rest of us made it safely down as well, and made our way into two of the other three rafts. The third one was splintered by shrapnel from the planes and sank. We were a few miles closer to Hawaii than Blake and Kate, but had nothing to paddle with. We could see them in the distance but were helpless to do anything about it. We just had to sit and wait.

Twenty minutes later we heard another plane coming. As it approached from the direction of the mainland, we saw another streak of light zip through the sky—from Hawaii—and strike the plane. It too erupted into flame. Did that mean someone knew we were out here? Or did they just shoot anyone who got this close? We had to still be almost three hundred miles out. For the next five hours we didn’t see any other aircraft, but then, off on the horizon, we saw boats coming our way from Hawaii’s general direction. Minutes later four jet fighters flew overhead, also from Hawaii. They flew circular patterns around us for the next half hour as the two boats—Coast Guard Cutters—approached us. The Cutters pulled up alongside us, and asked each of us to identify ourselves. They looked up our information one by one on some computer, and then apparently satisfied, allowed us onto the boat. We then continued on over to pick up Blake, Kate, and Mom.

As we approached Blake, Kate, and Mom, it was clear that Mom hadn’t survived the fall. It wasn’t surprising but that didn’t make it any less shocking, or the pain any less sharp. Dad collapsed into a heap, the first time I’d seen him actually cry since Sophie’s funeral. Pulling alongside their raft, Jenna helped Dad stand to assist Blake—through a flood of tears—slowly lift Mom into the Coast Guard boat. We knew Blake had done all he could. Dad even hugged him as he climbed into the boat. I heard them both say, “I’m sorry” at the exact same time. I couldn’t imagine how hard it was for either of them, and I was standing right there.

No one else had reacted nearly as quickly or decisively as Blake had. He honestly had nothing to be sorry about. But what else could he say? It was the ultimate conflictive moment. None of us could have simultaneously felt any better or worse than we did. Mom had been so close to making it all the way.

Kate was now mostly recovered and was kneeling, with Hayley, beside Dad. Dad had developed a tight bond over the years with both of them, and no one knew more about what Mom meant to him than those two did.

The Coast Guard captain checked to make sure we were ready to go, and I looked at him like he was crazy. “No sir. We need to get the other boat.”

“Other boat?” he replied, turning to look at the radar. “There is no other boat.”

“Yes, there…” I began to object while also looking at the screen. Danny had to be out there! But he was right. There was no other boat. “Do you have any idea where the plane went down?” I asked, knowing the wreckage had long since sunk.

The captain turned to his maps and tried to determine exactly where they were in regards to where the signal had been lost by the airplane. “Has to be about ten miles that way.”

“Two hundred sixty miles from land,” another officer added.