Darkness(3)

For a moment she sat there as the little boat rode the swells, breathing deeply of the cold sea air, taking in the majesty of the rugged island with its beautiful snow-covered mountains, the wintry sea, the turbulent sky that threatened more snow. Kittiwakes, petrels, pelicans, and gulls screeched and circled above her. She watched a trio of brown pelicans gliding high above the water suddenly tuck their wings and dive toward the surface like kamikaze pilots, fishing for a meal, and felt a warm glow of contentment.

It’s good to be out in the field again.

It had been a long time—too long.

That thought she’d had about freedom? She realized that it applied to herself as much as the eagles. Only her prison was grief. And guilt. For five years now she had been mired in both as helplessly as the eagle had been mired in oil.

This trip, the first research project she had undertaken in the field since she’d lost her family, was an attempt to jump-start her life.

Baby steps.

Thunder crashed loudly in the distance, echoing off the mountains and startling the wheeling birds into silence. The clouds piling up on the horizon were noticeably darker than before.

Time to go.

Reluctantly coming about, Gina juiced the throttle and raced for camp, meaning to follow the coastline around the point until she reached Massacre Bay. The small plane burst through the heavy cloud cover approximately five minutes later.

Gina had been eyeing the amassing clouds with misgiving in the wake of another earsplitting clap of thunder. Thunder snow was never a good sign, and she’d just seen an ominous flicker of lightning behind the threatening wall of weather that was now chasing her across the sea. When the plane torpedoed out of those self-same clouds, she sat up straight in surprise on the fiberglass bench seat that ran across the bow. Muffled to the eyes by a snow mask and huddled into her waterproof parka with her hood secured tightly around a face that was all blue eyes, wide mouth, high cheekbones, and pointed chin, she gripped the wheel tighter and watched in astonishment as the plane streaked across the leaden sky toward her.

It’s way too low, was her first thought, even as she registered that it wasn’t a seaplane like the orange and white Reever that had delivered four of her fellow scientists to this remote atoll in the Pacific; it was, rather, a sleek silver jet. That realization was followed by an alarmed There’s something wrong as the plane continued to descend, blasting through the snow flurries on a trajectory that would bring it down way before it reached the island’s runway, which was the only one within hundreds of miles.

You’re being paranoid, she scolded herself, which, given her personal history with small planes, was no surprise.

The thing was, though, the plane looked like it desperately needed to land. It was dropping fast, losing altitude if not speed.

It’s going to crash. As the thought crystallized into a near certainty, Gina’s heart leaped into her throat. Sucking in a lungful of the freezing, salt-laden air, she watched the plane dip low enough to disturb the flocks of birds circling the bay. Their cries, coupled with the splashing waves, the moan of the wind, and the Zodiac’s own whining motor, had masked the sound of the plane until it was nearly upon her. Now the birds wheeled wildly in the face of this violent intrusion, their alarmed screeches almost drowned by the roar of the jet engines, which was close enough and powerful enough to reverberate against her eardrums. As she watched the jet shoot across the sky, she registered the logo painted on the side and tail—a circle above two wavy lines—which probably denoted some huge multinational corporation but held no meaning for her. She also had an excellent view of its smooth silver belly. There was no sign of the wheels descending, no sign of any attempt to control its descent. It was, simply, coming down.

Bone-deep fear twisted her insides. Pull up, pull up, pull up, she silently urged the pilot. Then, Dear God, protect whoever’s on board.

Gina yanked her snow mask down.

“There’s a runway about eight miles to the east.” Her shout was drowned out by the noise of the plane, not that there was any real chance that the pilot could hear her. Still, arm waving wildly over her head in hopes that the pilot might see, she gestured in the direction of the no-longer-operational LORAN (long range navigational) Coast Guard station that was home to the only place to land on the island. It was idiotic, of course, but it was also instinctive: she couldn’t just do nothing as the plane hurtled toward the waves.

The section of cockpit windshield that was visible from her angle was black and impenetrable. It was her imagination that painted the pilot at the controls, white-faced and desperate as he fought whatever disaster that had brought the plane to this, and she knew it. She also knew that the chances that her gesture had been seen and understood were almost impossibly small.

Oomph. With her eyes on the plane rather than on where she was going, she was caught by surprise as the Zodiac hit one of the larger swells the wrong way. The impact sent her flying up off the seat and then smacked her back down onto it hard enough that her teeth snapped together. Thus reminded of where she was and the importance of keeping her mind on her business, she eased the throttle back to near-idle speed, retaining just enough forward power to keep the boat from being tossed around like flotsam by the waves. Pulse pounding, she switched her attention back to the oncoming plane.

Whether it was exhaust from the engines or actual smoke from an onboard fire she couldn’t tell, but a billowing white vapor trail now marked its descending path.