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"Damn; it's hard to explain....," I said. In a way I was glad she had come up. I had totally forgotten about the passengers. They had a right to know. Some, no doubt, lived in Seattle or in the neighboring targeted areas. But how could I hope to tell them if I didn't even know how to tell Rosalinde?
"The violinist will not play in Seattle tonight, or at any other night, because there will not be a concert, an audience, or anything but a two hundred foot deep hole of burning ashes. In less than ten minutes a nuclear bomb will explode. The whole damn city will be erased..." I had to stop, I felt like throwing up. I switched the intercom on and looked up at Rosalinde. She had grown pale. Tears hung in her eyes. I noticed a man standing beside her, his hands covering his face. "Did you know that Harry has family in Seattle?" I asked Rosalinde.
She nodded. "I know his family. I love them. Who doesn't?"
I pressed the switch to the intercom to make it audible on the cockpit, with Rosalinde still standing beside me. I needed her support. "Ladies and gentlemen," I said, "this is your captain speaking. We have been informed that a missile has been accidentally launched against the United States of America. The missile carries sixteen nuclear warheads, targeted at Seattle, Bellevue, Tacoma, Everett, Olympia, Aberdeen, Montesano, Oak Harbor, Bellingham, the Bangor submarine base, the Hanford works at Pasco..."
I had to be brief. Each word defined a world. I could sense the people's pain reflected in their outcries. Never had I felt so consciously that those behind us in the plane were honest-to-goodness real people, not just passengers. I couldn't say anymore. I excused myself and simply connected the PA system to the emergency broadcast. I put my head down and wished to God this broadcast would never end.
The mountains passing beneath us gave the feeling that at least we, in this plane, had a chance. Minutes later while I was still holding Rosalinde's hand, Ken let out a shout, pointing at the ridge ahead. "There it is!"
Behind the ridge, a carpet of clouds came into view over the sea, reaching far into the distance. I had hoped for a massive front, but these seemed to do.
Under normal conditions a power dive into low-lying clouds would have been criminal. This time the situation was reversed. So, tensions rose once again as the giant aircraft, like a World War II dive-bomber, raced nearer and nearer to the ground. I leveled off, just as we entered the clouds, as if we would land on them, and slowly eased ourselves into the gray mist. I felt reasonably safe at this point, while the monotone voice of the broadcast continued.
This broadcast was our only link to the world of an impending tragedy. As long as the broadcast continued Seattle, where it originated, was still alive.
It could have been two or ten minutes later when it stopped in the middle of a word as if someone had switched the transmitter off. At this instant the clouds lit up. It felt as if a thousand lightening bolts surrounded us. We were flying through the very presence of light itself. This brightness stayed with us for almost ten seconds. But there was no blast yet. I knew Aberdeen was over fifty miles to the south of us. Sound travels slowly. A deep eerie silence followed the light. Only the noise of the wind, the engines, and some outcries from the cabin could be heard. After apparently ages had past a loud noise shook the plane, followed by a roar of ten thousand lions. Then there was silence again.
"Was this all?" I thought. The shock felt no worse than a really bad thunderstorm. I scanned the instruments on the cockpit. We had sustained no damage. Rosalinde was still standing beside me. Everything was exactly as it had been. The amber glow of the instrumentation hadn't changed. The indicators hadn't moved. The controls still responded. We had a fully functional airplane and were still safely enveloped in clouds, eight hundred feet above the ocean, flying at a steady five hundred and forty-three miles an hour. Hurrah, the end of the world had come and passed us by!
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Stories about
Love
from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche
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