Free Fall. Rick Mofina

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СКАЧАТЬ don’t know.” The man shook his head. “Five, maybe eight minutes.”

      Kate glanced around and was relieved to see Stan Strobic, a Newslead photographer, had joined the group.

      “When it was over,” the woman said, “and they got things under control, it got quiet, except for the moans and sobs. People were trying to comfort those who were hurt. I think one lady was a nurse. But the pilot never came on and said what happened. Nobody has told us anything.”

      As the interview wound down, the couple—Connie and Carmine Delvecchio—spelled their names for the reporters. They ran a family towing business on Staten Island. Kate passed them her card.

      Then she saw a woman across the baggage-claim area. She was near the baggage carousels, sitting alone on a bench, her back to the wall, her head raised with her eyes closed in anguish.

      Kate nodded to Strobic to hang back as she approached her alone.

      “Excuse me.”

      The woman looked to be in her mid-thirties. She had a pretty, fresh-scrubbed face and was gripping her phone in her lap with both hands.

      “Yes?”

      “I’m Kate Page. I’m a reporter with Newslead. Were you on EastCloud Forty-nine Ninety?”

      The woman nodded.

      “Can I get your name?”

      “Diane Wilson.”

      “Would you talk to me for a story about what happened on the flight?”

      The woman was trembling as she adjusted her hold on her phone. She swallowed hard.

      “It was the worst thing you could imagine,” she said.

      Kate sat next to her. “Tell me about it.”

      “I was certain we were going to crash and I was going to die.”

      Kate took notes. “And at that moment, what went through your mind?”

      “All I could think about was my family, that I’d never see them again, so I said goodbye.”

      Kate took a quick look around. “Your family was on the plane with you?”

      “No. I was alone. I used my phone to make my last message to my children and my husband.”

      Diane lifted the phone slightly and lovingly from her lap.

      “You texted them?”

      “I made a video.”

      “Did you send it to them?”

      “No.”

      “Has anyone seen it?”

      “No.”

      “Would you let me see it?”

      Diane considered Kate’s request.

      “I’m not sure. It’s private and my family’s coming to get me.”

      “I know, but it might help me to really understand what you and the other passengers went through. It would help readers appreciate your ordeal.”

      Diane lowered her head to her phone, caught her bottom lip between her teeth and her face crumpled. She fought tears as she stared at her phone for a moment, then her fingers began working.

      “You can look at it but I can’t give it to you.”

      The screen came to life with Diane’s face, a mask of fear. Through her tears she struggled to smile as her voice quivered in the cabin.

      “It doesn’t look good. The plane’s in trouble and I don’t think we’re going to make it. No matter what happens, you know that Mommy absolutely loves you. Brandon, honey, take care of Melissa. Melissa, you help your brother take care of Daddy. Del, sweetheart, you’re the love of my life. Be good to each other and remember how much I love you.”

      Kate caught her breath.

      For a second the footage exploded in chaos as the jet tilted at a ninety-degree angle, the image froze before the screen went black.

      Five

      Manhattan, New York

      Passengers and crew were tossed “like rag dolls” in the cabin of the EastCloud Airlines flight when it encountered severe turbulence, sources told Newslead.

      What the—? That’s not what I wrote and that’s not what happened!

      Kate had just returned to the Newslead building from LaGuardia and was in the elevator when her phone alerted her to Newslead’s first full story on Flight 4990. She was incredulous as she read. Ninety percent of the item was her work but the story was topped with a single byline:

      Sloane F. Parkman.

      She was credited at the bottom in smaller font.

      With files from Kate Page.

      She cursed. And as the elevator rose, she seethed.

      Calm down and think this through.

      Biting back her anger she checked her phone for responses to the repeated calls she’d put in to the official agencies. Not much had come back to her, except a text from LaGuardia Operations, with a short general timeline from when Flight 4990 first reported a problem to its emergency landing.

      The doors opened to Newslead’s fortieth-floor offices.

      Kate swiped her ID at the security lock and swept through reception, with its wall of enlarged Newslead photos of pivotal points in history—immigrants gazing at the Statue of Liberty in 1901, a child in Africa comforted by an aid worker, a soldier weeping in Vietnam, and Martin Luther King at the Lincoln Memorial.

      In the newsroom she saw no sign of Penny, the news assistant. But when Kate passed by the glass walls of the editors’ offices, she noticed Reeka Beck’s jacket and bag on her desk.

      Reeka was not in her office as Kate went by.

      But Sloane F. Parkman was in the scanner room, on the phone, working at the computer with the door closed. He was hanging up as Kate pulled it open to the onslaught of the radios.

      “Hi, Kate. I’ve just confirmed that they took the injured passengers to hospitals in the area—Sinai, NYP/Queens and Forest Hills. We’re pretty sure they’re all minor injuries, one little boy with a concussion and broken arm, so no big deal on this incident. By the way, thank you for your help on my story. It wasn’t necessary but nice work, much appreciated.”

      “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Sloane?”

      “Excuse me?”

      “You know what I’m talking about. What’s СКАЧАТЬ