Danielle Steel - Wings

She staggered out to the beach and fell down several times, and she was too weak to go up to the rocks and get water. She didn't care anymore. It was too much trouble to stay alive. And there were so many people talking to her now. She saw the sun come out, and she heard them, and as she stood up again, she saw a ship on the horizon. It was a very big ship, and it was coming closer. But it didn't matter, because they would never see her.

The USS Lexington was in the area on maneuvers. It passed through these islands regularly, but it hadn't been there in a while, it had been assigned to other positions. But Cassie didn't bother with it, she went back into her cave and lay down. It was too cold outside… too cold… and there were too many voices…

The Lexington continued to cruise by, and there were two smaller ships with it. It was the lookout on the smaller one who spotted the burned hull of the North Star bobbing in the water half a mile off the island.

“What is that, sir?” he asked an officer next to him, who smiled. “It looks like a scarecrow,” It did, from that angle, in the distance. Part of it had gone down, but there was so little left that the skeleton managed to stay afloat, and with another look, the officer gave a series of rapid orders.

“Could it be the plane that O'Malley and Nolan were flying, sir?” the junior officer asked excitedly.

“I don't think so. They went down about five hundred miles from here, give or take a few miles. I don't know what that thing is. Let's take a closer look.”

They advanced slowly on it, and several more of the men focused binoculars on it, but when they got there, the skeleton eluded them, and dipped in and out of the water. But it was obvious now that it was part of a plane. Half the cockpit was still there, and one of the wings had been blown off. The other had burned down to the frame and melted.

“What does it say?” one of the men was shouting to the other.

“Get some men in the water now,” an officer commanded. “I want that brought aboard.” And half an hour later, they had the remains of Cassie's plane spread out on the deck around them. There wasn't much left, but there was one piece that told it all. They had found it. It was painted bright green and yellow. Those had been her colors, they all knew, and the script read

“Star.” They called the captain down to examine what they'd found, and there was no question in his mind. They had found what was left of the North Star . It had been burned to a crisp, and it had obviously suffered a severe explosion. But there was no sign of life on it anywhere, or of human remains. They checked carefully. There was no sign of Cassie or Billy.

They radioed their companion ships, and still others in the vicinity, which by late afternoon were scouring the waters for bodies in life vests. They had radioed to shore as well, and there was a news bulletin in LA, which Desmond heard before anyone called him. Pieces of the plane had been found, but there was no sign of life anywhere. They had been lost for seven weeks now. It was unlikely they were alive, but not impossible. The search for O'Malley and Nolan had been reopened.

Landing parties were organized to search all the surrounding islands. There were three of them, two of them fairly good-sized, and one of them so small as to be unlikely. There wasn't enough vegetation to keep anyone alive for a week, let alone a month, they decided. But the officer in charge told them to search it anyway. There was nothing though. No sign of life, no scraps of clothing, or utensils.

And as Cassie listened, she heard noises again, and then more voices. She wondered if Billy had heard all the same things before he died. She had forgotten to ask him. There were whistles and bells and people calling, and then she realized she was about to die, when a bright light shone in her face. There were voices and people calling again, and that light right in her eyes. She drifted off to sleep again as she looked at it. It was just too much trouble to listen to them anymore. And then she felt them moving her. She was being carried somewhere, just as she had carried Billy…

“Sir! Sir!” The whistle shrilled sharply three times signaling for assistance, and four more men came running in the direction of the whistle. There was a small cave, and one of the men was standing there with tears streaming down his face.

“I found her, sir!… I found her…” She was barely conscious and babbling incoherently, and she kept calling Billy's name over and over. She was railthin, and desperately pale, but they all recognized the red hair and the flight suit.

“Oh, my God,” one of the officers said. She was filthy and smelled terrible, and she was obviously deathly ill, but she was alive, although barely. Her pulse was thready, her breathing was shallow, and he wasn't sure she was going to make it. He told the young ensign to signal for help. They put her in the boat quickly, and left three of the men to continue searching the island. They wanted to get her back to the ship as quickly as possible.

They were calling and shouting orders, and she was loaded onto the ship in a sling, and they signaled to the medical personnel on the Lexington to assist them. She wore an ID tag around her neck, which identified her correctly as Cassie O'Malley Williams. And within minutes, the Pentagon had the news, she'd been found, barely alive, but there was no sign of Billy Nolan.

But the search party left on the island took less than half an hour to find him. They took him back to the ship, and by then Cassie was already on the Lexington , though she was unaware of it. A team of two doctors and three medics were doing what they could to revive her. She was dehydrated and delirious and had an uncontrollable fever.

“How is she?” the captain asked the medical personnel that night.

“Nothing's sure yet “ the doctor said quietly, “but nothing's lost yet either.”

Her parents had just been called by the Department of the Navy. And Desmond was called shortly after that. It went out over the wire services that night. It was a miracle. The nation's prayers had been answered. Cassie O'Malley had been found, in a cave on an island in the Pacific, in critical condition. It wasn't known yet if she would survive. But it was already known that Billy Nolan hadn't. His father had already been called in San Francisco, and he was crushed to hear the news. Billy was a hero at twenty-six, but he was gone. He had died only a day or two before they found him, they believed, though Miss O'Malley had been unable to tell them anything yet. She was unconscious.

In the O'Malley house everything was still, as Oona and Fat sat staring at each other, unable to believe what they'd been told. Cassie was alive. And the Lexington was steaming toward Hawaii with her at that moment.

“Oh, Pat… It's like another chance,” Oona said breathlessly, “like a miracle…” She smiled through her tears, praying for Cassie silently, her rosary beads in her hand, and her husband patted her hand gently.

“Don't get your hopes up. We already lost her once. She may not make it, Oonie. She's been out there for a long time, and you don't know what kind of shape she was in when they crashed. She may have been pretty banged up then, and that was more than a month ago.” She'd been on the ground for seven weeks since they went down. It was a long time to live on rainwater and berries.

They had none of the details yet, and even Desmond had had a hard time prying anything out of them at the Pentagon. They just didn't know enough yet to reassure him.

But the news the next morning from the Lexington wasn't very hopeful. She was still unconscious, her fever hadn't gone down, and there were complications.