To the Death

Having already been hauled off the bottom, this time it came away easily, moved slowly up through the water, and swung onto the second barge. The tailplane was easiest of all, comparatively light and manageable. The crane lowered it onto the stern part of the deck, and immediately the engineers set about cutting off the jutting, perpendicular part. They used oxyacetylene cutters and sledgehammers. The exercise took almost an hour. Finally the second barge was ready, its load covered, unobtrusive.

In company with Grabber, it turned south, back along the Potomac. Every last piece of the aircraft, every piece that could be located, had been gathered up and brought to the surface. No one would ever know her fate. A subsequent search, out in the deep Atlantic, of course, yielded nothing. Flight 62 was officially deemed “lost over the ocean, no trace, no evidence.”

Her passengers and crew would never be found. Only the barest details of their existence were discovered when the Navy searched the bodies before placing them in coffins. Passports yielded names, but the fire on board in the moments before the crash had incinerated all paperwork in the forward section before the waters of the Potomac extinguished it. Only fifteen coffins were required. No one else was left; the swift-running tidal waters through the aircraft had carried the ashes away.

They had not, however, carried away the big metal boxes in the hold which contained a quarter of a ton of TNT, hidden under papers and books. The explosive was wired but not activated. Detonation devices were identifiable in the forward section where the fire had obviously been most ferocious.

The Navy investigators came to the conclusion that the Sidewinders had hit with such sudden and devastating force that the terrorists on board were taken entirely by surprise. And all of them were in the forward section. There had been no time to arm their somewhat crude bomb to explode on impact.

Had they done so, however, and managed to hit the Capitol as planned, that much high explosive coming in from the southwest would have blown the Capitol building straight into the Reflecting Pool, and with it all the hundreds of government workers who served there. In his tenure as President of the United States, this was most certainly Paul Bedford’s finest hour. And no one would ever know. Well, not many people.

All fifteen of the recovered bodies carried Canadian passports. None of them had Middle Eastern names, and all of them were from either Montreal or Toronto. It was plain that the terrorists had effectively been cremated during Flight 62’s long, burning fall from five thousand feet. They left no trace behind.

Inquiries made at Palm Beach airport yielded little. Yes, the 737 had requested a refueling stop, and yes, permission had been granted. Further inquiries in Barbados revealed that no, the airport had not run out of fuel, and Flight 62 had taken delivery of all the jet fuel it required.

This particular piece of information caused Lt. Commander Jimmy Ramshawe almost to have a seizure. And his thoughts were clear:

This means there’s some kind of terrorist agent operating right there in Palm Beach airport. They did not have to stop there; they chose to. And if they don’t discover that the explosive was loaded right there in Palm Beach, I’m a fucking wallaby. GET ME ADMIRAL MORGAN RIGHT NOW.

1630 Tuesday 18 January 15,000 Feet above West Virginia

Meanwhile, there was the somewhat vexing problem of getting rid of the fifteen Canadian bodies. Thus it was that a three-engined Sikorsky Super Stallion helicopter was making its way across the Allegheny Mountains on a 700-mile journey to the enormous military base of Fort Campbell, which lies fifty miles northwest of Nashville, right on the Tennessee-Kentucky border.

They were flying through the last of the light, even at this height. In place of the standard cargo of fifty combat Marines, the Super Stallion now carried fifteen coffins.

In a remote corner of the military base, down to the southwest, near the banks of the wide Cumberland River, there was a small graveyard, unused for decades. Tonight it would be used for a mass burial, the grave would be unmarked, and the huge mechanical diggers, already waiting, would accomplish their task very quickly.

The country around the little graveyard was soft, picturesque, and wooded. It was a fitting place, perhaps, for those who had died violently, unknowing victims of Muslim terror, and silent guardians of a very deadly secret.

The big Navy helo would be refueled and back in Norfolk before midnight. Less than a dozen people would ever know the purpose of its mission.