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“Roger. Pull the boost out handles!”
The FE leaned down and pulled the three yellow-and-black striped handles by his feet.
This left them with only manual control of the aircraft.
“What’s next, XO?” David yelled into his mic, even though he was right next to her. They’d never hear each other over the roar of the aircraft as it struggled to maintain altitude.
It was a losing battle. The altimeter showed they were dropping at an alarming rate.
One, maybe two minutes was all she had to prepare her crew.
They’d trained with the hope of three minutes.
“We’ll never make it to land, David.” She tore her gaze from the instrument panel and looked at him. His profile was set and determined, but she recognized the same fear she felt.
No one wanted to die. Not like this.
“You with me?”
He turned his stare on her and an understanding passed between them.
Whatever it takes.
Yells and shouts mixed with expletives over the ICS as the crew went through their trained-for responses.
The flight engineer pushed the button that issued the deadly warning—one long ring on the command bell. The sound she never wanted to hear while flying a P-3 reverberated through the entire aircraft.
They were going to ditch.
“Prepare to ditch!” She yelled what might be her last command—she had no choice. They’d lost two engines and were damned lucky they were still airborne.
The controlled panic of the crew aft of the flight station was palpable. Gwen heard swear words, prayers then silence as the country’s best-trained professionals prepared to fight for their lives.
Lives in her hands.
“Everyone got their LPAs on?” She referred to the survival vests that would be their only flotation device, other than the three life rafts, once they were in the harsh seas.
“Condition One set!” Lizzie, the TACCO or tactical communications officer, confirmed that everyone was prepared to ditch.
God help us all.
Ten thousand feet above the Pacific Ocean, approximately five miles off the southwest tip of the Philippines, they were about to ditch. The condition of the sea was abysmal, with waves that were ten feet and higher, And it was quarter past midnight.
Pitch blackness.
Her worst nightmare come true—a nighttime ditch in rough seas, miles from land, oceans from the nearest naval vessel.
Robert “Mac” MacCallister, the flight engineer, worked in sync with the copilot to complete the ditching checklist. It was standard procedure they’d all practiced and prayed they’d never need to use.
I’m ditching in the ocean.
She’d practiced it in the flight simulator countless times, mentally rehearsed the most undesirable event for any naval aviator.
“I’m here if you need relief, XO.” The voice of the third pilot rose above the rush of air that swept through the cabin. He clutched the back of the copilot’s seat as he shouted in her ear.
Gwen couldn’t spare him a look.
“Go back to your station and strap your ass in, Aidan!” If any of them were going to survive they had to be properly secured. She had to bring the bird onto the water safely and in one piece so they could get out before it sank.
“But ma’am, if you—”
“Take the freaking order!” Before she even finished her statement, Gwen had to grab the yoke back after it was wrenched out of her hands.
“Help me out here, David!” she shouted to her copilot.
“I’m pulling as hard as I can!”
Gwen didn’t have to see David’s face to know the young officer spoke through clenched teeth.
“Come on, gal, give us one more break!” Gwen yelled at the old bird, then groaned as she stretched her shoulder and back muscles to their limit in her effort to pull back. Losing hydraulics after two engines had been blown apart by the surface-to-air missile wasn’t just bad luck.
It was fatal.
She had to beat it.
That was her crew’s only chance.
“Five thousand feet.” Scott reported each time the altitude dropped another thousand feet. Soon it would be every hundred feet.
“Wind direction is two-four-five at 45 knots,” her navigator, Bryce Griswald, shouted from the nav station, aft of the cockpit.
“Roger, Grizzy.”
Gwen checked the compass heading and was grateful for one small miracle in this hell. She was taking the plane down at the right angle of descent to keep the waves from becoming brick walls lying in wait to destroy the aircraft.
Forgotten images of her life appeared before her in quick succession. The first time she rode her bicycle without training wheels, her dad’s smile, Mom’s hugs, Drew’s first kiss, her graduation from Annapolis.
Their wedding.
Drew.
“This plane is coming down in one piece. We’re all getting out.” It might be the last thing she ever did for them.
“Two hundred feet!” David hadn’t missed a beat.
“One hundred feet!” David’s shout reached Gwen just before she saw the last glint of white-capped waves through the night darkness.
“Hang on!” She pulled back on the yoke with all her strength.
“Fifty feet!”
David’s last report.
“Hands off power levers!” Gwen shouted the order for David to join her in letting go of the power levers and gripping the yoke. They’d lose their fingers if they didn’t release the levers.
For the length of an indrawn gasp, the world stood still as she waited for touchdown. Her mind struggled to convince her that this was like any other landing, the end of any other mission she’d be able to walk away from.
That delusion shattered when the plane hit water. What remained of the two operating engines’ combined ninety-two-hundred shaft horsepower screeched to a halt as metal propellers met the ocean surface with such a violent impact she was sure they were finished. Panic threatened to drown them before their greatest enemy did. The sea.
Not yet.
Water sprayed against the windshield and blinded her. It took all her mental discipline to ride out the ditch, hands on yoke. Each creak, groan and shudder as the aircraft broke apart echoed in her bones.
After interminable moments, the aircraft’s forward motion stopped and the race for their lives began.
“Out, out, out, let’s go!” Gwen used her deepest shout, the one that had its origins in her plebe summer at the Naval Academy, to motivate her crew. Not that they needed any motivation—their quick decisive actions flashed in front of her as if they ditched regularly.
Mac crouched next to her, shoving the copilot out the upper hatch. They were up to their chests in water and jet fuel, so every movement became slow and difficult. Her flight suit provided no protection from the ocean or the thousands of gallons of aviation fuel that had spilled from the torn wing tanks.
“Anyone else?” Mac yelled as he pointed directly above his head to the cockpit hatch.
“No, everyone else will exit the over-wing hatches.” They couldn’t go back to help anyone now, and she had to trust that the rest of the crew had survived the ditch. Her toe met a hard, unmovable steel bulkhead as she fought to hang on to the hatch rim while Mac, the flight engineer, prepared to egress.
Gwen prayed the crew who’d been strapped in back were out over the wing hatches, along with the life rafts. She wouldn’t know until she was out.
The fuselage tilted dangerously forward. They had precious minutes to get out and away from the sinking wreckage.
“Go ahead, Mac.” She gave him a shove and watched as his body disappeared up the hatch. Seconds later Mac’s hand reached down and grabbed the top of her helmet.
“Up here, ma’am! Let me pull you.”
Gwen complied and allowed him to save her life. As the plane commander, Gwen was responsible for each crew member’s life. She had to be the last one out.
She grabbed the edge of the hatch as soon as her arms were past the entrance and pushed herself up into the raging storm. The sting of salt water and the howl of the wind shocked her, and she had to take several gulps of air before she could ascertain where the life rafts were. In doing so, she breathed in the aircraft’s fuel fumes. Her eyes and throat burned and her stomach heaved. She had no choice but to vomit on the spot.
She saw David’s face, illuminated by his flashlight. The copilot was safe with the navigator and the second flight engineer. She couldn’t see any farther into the menacing darkness.
“How many?” Gwen screamed across the waves and the rapidly sinking P-3 to the first of the life rafts.
“All here, XO.”
Gwen couldn’t allow time for relief. She sought out the second and third life rafts.
“We’re missing the TACCO!” The shout from the second raft elicited immediate action from Gwen. Lizzie was still stuck in the aircraft.
Gwen had to go back in and get her.
Lizzie.
Going back the way she’d exited was risky, especially if Lizzie was unconscious. Gwen couldn’t inflate her LPA or she’d never get back in the fuselage. She made a quick guess as to where the over-wing hatch was positioned on the now-sinking aircraft.
She had seconds.
Gwen took a deep breath and dived into the thrashing sea, holding on to the aircraft as a guide. She found the over-wing hatch and went in.
Total darkness meant that feeling her way through the fuel-filled cabin was a challenge, but Gwen knew she had to get Lizzie. Get your shipmate or die with her.
She ignored her need for air and felt forward to the TACCO station. Lizzie was still strapped in her seat, only her face above the waterline.
Gwen drew in great gasps of air as she struggled to release Lizzie’s seat belts.
“C’mon, Lizzie Lady.” She used Lizzie’s call sign and grimaced with relief when her fingers managed to unbuckle Lizzie’s straps.
“You with me, Liz?”
“I’m here. Hit my head.” The whispered reply was all Gwen needed. Lizzie was still alive and had a chance if Gwen could get them out of the destroyed fuselage.
“I need you to take a deep breath. Hang on to me and I’ll do this as fast as I can.”
“I’ll try.”
“Okay. One, two, three.”
Gwen went under with her arm around Lizzie’s chest, pulling her through the totally submerged aft cabin. Their progress was excruciatingly slow and Gwen sent up a prayer that they’d make it to the over-wing hatch.
The fuselage groaned with each wave that hit the steel frame, sounding deadly, final.
Gwen’s fingers caught on the rim of the hatch and she pulled both herself and Lizzie through it. Something scraped her arm and a piece of metal clanged on the top of Gwen’s helmet.
She didn’t stop. She couldn’t, wouldn’t. She was Lizzie’s only chance.
Her own lungs burned and she was afraid that Lizzie had sucked in fuel or seawater in an effort to breathe. Gwen felt the tug of the aircraft’s drag once they were free of the fuselage. They had seconds to clear the area. She reached over to Lizzie’s LPA handle and pulled. Lizzie left Gwen’s arms as though a great arm had stretched down and pulled her up. Gwen grabbed her own beaded handle and yanked. Her LPA inflated and bolted her to surface.
The black spots that she’d tried to fight off dissipated as she gulped in the salty, wet air. She blinked. Lizzie floated a few meters away from her. She swam over and wanted to scream when she saw Lizzie’s closed eyes and blank expression.
Please let her be unconscious, not dead.
She tried to hook their LPAs together but the rough seas only allowed her to clutch Lizzie’s vest collar as they were tossed like pieces of trash.
“XO, over here!”
Gwen couldn’t tell whose voice was behind the flashlight beams as she started swimming toward them, Lizzie in tow.
Get away from the aircraft. Get away. Get away.
Hours of training in simulated ditches had drilled into her the necessity of putting as much distance as possible between her and the ditched craft. It was moments from sinking and would take down everything around it.
She pushed and kicked and hung on to Lizzie. After what seemed like hours, they arrived at the side of life raft number two. Number one was attached to the right of it. She couldn’t see the third raft.
