Page 45 of Air Force One (Miranda Chase #16)

Air Force One’s tail plowed into the wave, which drove the tail downward. The small volume of remaining water also did indeed slosh into the tail section and pull it downward. But the weight was no longer sufficient to drag the plane once more into the depths.

Instead, it acted like a pole vaulter jamming his pole into the box.

Because the plane had been skimming on the wavetops, there was little adhesion between the aircraft’s aluminum skin and the water.

And the momentum of two hundred tons of airplane and water moving at thirty knots had to go somewhere.

Though it only took three-point-four seconds, it seemed to take forever to fall, slowly gaining momentum like a mighty hammer from heaven. The people aboard the US Coast Guard Cutter Bear were helpless to do more than watch as it accelerated toward them.

Commander Randy Davidson’s order to continue reversing altered the scenario. Instead of smashing into the bridge and destroying the forward half of the ship, the nose of Air Force One merely clipped the bow of the cutter.

Now emptied of fuel, passengers, and the bulk of the water, the 747 weighed just two hundred and eighteen tons compared with the Bear’s eighteen hundred. After falling from a height over fifty meters, the nose was moving at thirty-four meters per second—a hundred and fifteen kilometers per hour.

In just clipping the bow, everything that lay forward of the Bear’s 76 mm deck gun was twisted past recognition.

Despite the sudden shortening of the Bear by ten meters, the Frame Two hatches only leaked and the ones at Frame Three held strong.

The worst injury was the Coast Guard machinist who had been thrown face first against the pipe rack in his shop—he would be wearing an eye patch for the rest of his life.

Once over the injury, he rather liked being the Pirate King of the shop.

The damage to Air Force One was surprisingly minor in comparison. The stout deck gun caught on the plane’s mangled forward radar assembly and ripped it free like a surgeon’s scalpel.

The plane came to rest in the waves on its back, with its three remaining engines sticking up above the waves.

It floated nose-to-nose with the Bear. It floated high enough in the water that the damaged nose section remained clear of the waves.

Perched on the remains of the cutter’s twisted bow, in addition to the shattered radar, were the contents of the President’s private suite.

Colonel Vic Franklin and the President’s secretary Tabitha Ray were both now aboard the Bear.

No one, living or dead, remained aboard Air Force One.

Commander Randy Davidson managed his first breath since the fall of the plane began, but it was that NTSB woman, Miranda Chase, who managed the first words.

“Well, that didn’t go quite the way I anticipated.”