“You have to wait for a professional.”
“But you know how, don’tcha?”
She did. All of the rounds that had been in the feed had exploded in place, shredding the mechanism designed to handle and load a hundred and twenty, foot-long, two-pound shells every minute.
The mechanism to release the feeder from the firing mechanism in case of a jam was still sufficiently intact to operate. Between them, they were able to open the breech. A round still sat in the firing chamber.
She slipped it out and showed it to Jeff.
“Oh man. Please don’t tell Dad. He’d be all angry if he knew I’d almost looked down a loaded barrel.”
“I’ll try not to.”
He looked up at her cautiously. “You’ll try? That doesn’t sound like much of a promise.”
“I sometimes say things I shouldn’t. I try to stop myself, but I’ll be too late and it just comes out.”
Jeff nodded. “I do that. Like you want to gobble up the words after they’re gone.”
Miranda liked that image, but couldn’t think how to do it. Jeff reached out a hand for the shell and she handed it to him.
“Wow! That weighs more than my rifle.”
“If you have a standard .22 rifle, it probably weighs six pounds. This is only two pounds. But its density—small size for the amount of weight—makes it feel heavier than it is.”
“You do know science stuff,” he handed the shell back.
“I do.” She set it beside the shattered loader and placed a yellow warning marker on it before taking a picture of it and the shattered mechanism.
“What else?”
Miranda looked around at the shattered remnants of an AC-130 Hercules gunship. Even the rocks showed the two-event markings: explosion, then burn. Here it had peeled all of the moss and grass off one side of the rock and only scorched what was on the back side.
They had walked less than a hundred meters from the pole.
The paint had been blasted off this side of the pole, but scorched the opposite side of the rock.
“Where was the center of the explosion?” They must have walked right through it.
Jeff looked at the pole, then he looked down at the rocks she’d just been studying. “We passed it. Or maybe circled ’round it.”
“Good observing. Now let’s go find it.” They carefully retraced their steps. Twenty meters back, she knew they’d arrived.
Debris lay in radial patterns outward, yet nothing remained on the exact spot. For at least ten meters around, the surface rock had been shattered by the impact of the plane—but not a single piece of it remained in that circle. Beyond that, a field of twisted metal, structural scraps, even the occasional airplane seat were spread far and wide. Nothing stood higher than two meters in the entire visible debris field.
She pulled out her tablet and shot a panorama from this point.
10
Additional study verified that they were indeed at the epicenter of the explosion. The shape of the impact crater on the rock, though shallow, was distinct. It was several times longer than it was wide. In its final tumble, the plane had landed lengthwise before it was blown apart.
Jeff held the tape as Miranda took measurements and noted them down on the form. She let him be in charge of winding up the tape and carrying it.
Brett’s report of actinic-white light suggested that it was the explosive shells that would have been aboard. Based on the scattering field and the location of sections of the heavier lower parts of the hull, it appeared to have landed on its side, the one away from the guns. The shells storage would have struck first, blown the fuselage upward and outward.
Then she looked at the slender pole buried into the ground that Holly had tied her rope to. It had bothered Miranda that she couldn’t define the piece as any element of the C-130 Hercules.
Now that she knew what type of plane it was, she knew what the slender pole was. It was the barrel of the M102 howitzer, driven deep into the ground. The guns must have been blown aloft, tossing the Bofors and GAU cannons aside and launching the howitzer’s barrel high enough for it to javelin back to earth. Not a part of the cargo as she’d thought.
“No assumptions,” she remonstrated herself.
“Dad always says that.”
“What?”
“No assumptions. He tells me to always kinda look at things and figure them out.”
“Mine, too.”
“Would he like my dad?”
“He’s dead.”
“Oh.” Jeff went back to inspecting the ground.
She’d said it. It wasn’t something she said very often; it hurt too much. But now, it was mostly just fact and it didn’t feel as if her world had ended all over again merely because she’d voiced the words. Just as if the day was less bright.
“How’d he die?”
“In a plane crash.”
“This one?” Jeff’s voice was so soft she could barely hear it.
“No. A long time ago.”
“Could my dad die in a plane crash?” She could barely hear the whisper over the morning breeze.
“Yes.”
Jeff grabbed her hand, squeezing it hard enough to hurt. “No! You gotta fix that! You gotta make it so that he doesn’t. Can’t you fix that, Ms. Chase? You know stuff. You gotta save my dad. Yeah? Pleasepleaseplease?” His face was screwed up in such distress. The sheer force of his will had her looking in his eyes, perhaps because it was so reminiscent of her own unforgotten pain. Just as hers had, while she’d begged Tante Daniels to take back the news of her parents’ deaths, his tears began to flow.
She squatted down in front of him and he threw his arms around her neck. Miranda could only kneel there and clutch her tablet as he clung to her.
How was she supposed to explain the devastating hole in her life and that it actually could happen to him?
“Pleasepleaseplease…” Jeff continued to almost pray through his sobs.
“Jeff,” she tried to pry him loose.
“Jeff,” she pushed harder, but he clung about her so hard that he was actually choking her.
“Jeff!” Miranda shoved him back hard enough that they flew apart and both landed on their butts on either side of the explosion’s epicenter.
The air was briefly filled with a puff of scorched carbon. She raised a hand and saw that it was well-blackened from arresting her fall.
At least the shock seemed to cut off his pleading as he looked at her with big round eyes.
Miranda had learned to fly from her father. She’d often wondered about his final thoughts as he plummeted from the sky with no way to control the plane and save himself, and especially Mom.
“Is your father a good pilot, Jeff?” Even at thirteen she’d known it was ridiculous, but that hadn’t stopped the nightmares of her father scrambling for the 747’s stairs to the cockpit and diving to the controls to save everyone—and failing. TWA 800 had been blown in two at over thirteen thousand feet. The greatest pilot in history couldn’t have saved that plane. Or her parents.
“He’s the best ever!” Jeff shouted. At her? At the world?
So was mine. But some instinct told Miranda to keep that thought to herself. “As long as he can reach the controls, then he’ll probably always be safe.”