The sound of the helicopter was deadened into a dull, repetitive thump, and the surface rippled above like a moving ceiling. The enormous monster that was Air Force One listed toward us, one wing cutting down into the lake, bubbles rising around it. Its huge bulk hung above the darkness below. It looked as if all it would take was a small push and the whole plane would slide backward and disappear into the cold depths, a place that my imagination filled with terrifying tentacled creatures and monsters with grasping claws.

I tried not to think about such things as I swam hard and fast toward Air Force One.

Here and there, sections of the plane glowed in the gloom, shafts of light shimmering from the windows and diffusing into the murky water. Red and green and orange, flickering on and off, reminding me of how I had thought the president’s escape pod held an alien when I first saw it in the trees.

We passed the wing, where one engine hung useless, dangling over the abyss. The second engine was completely gone, shredded right off by the missile, leaving a tear in the underside of the wing and a black scar that reached up to the back of the plane.

There was a gaping hole in the fuselage, too, right behind the wing, so the president led me that way, past the twisted metal edges and into the plane. We surfaced immediately in a small pocket of air and I tried to stay calm, to control my breathing, but it was difficult not to be afraid. The thought of becoming trapped here and drowning in the lake kept sliding through my mind like a cold eel.

“Was it a good idea?” I asked, hoping the answer was “yes.”

“I don’t know yet. We’re in the secretarial area right now, but it should be dry in my suite and at the upper deck.” The president’s voice was deadened by the cramped breathing space.

“Can we get to it?” I battled away the creeping feeling of dread.

“Maybe, but there’s still a little way to go.”

“Will it be clear?” I didn’t want to drown down there, where no one would ever find me. Dad would never know what had happened to me, and he would be left to search the forest forever.

“I hope so. Follow me.”

“Okay,” I said, and we dived back under, forging our way deeper into the belly of the plane.

Swimming through the plane’s corridors was horrible and otherworldly. Strip lights on the floor and ceiling shone a dull red glow through the water as if it was tinged with blood. They flickered on and off, sometimes with a sudden flash of green or orange that blinked for an instant and was gone. Objects floated in slow motion, swaying in the lazy current. Bags and papers and cases drifted through Air Force One, seeming to hang in midair. A shoe. A jacket, billowing like a jellyfish. A cushion heading at me from the darkness beyond the lights and slipping past like a strange prehistoric animal. Doors swayed open and closed, giving shocking glimpses of men and women still buckled into their seats, arms drifting in the current, hair washing about like weeds. There were other shapes, too, just out of sight, bobbing around like monsters waiting in the shadows.

Coming up to breathe whenever possible, we took a few moments to suck the stale air into our lungs before diving under again and pushing on through the floating debris. We swam deeper and deeper into the plane, moving up through corridors filled with snowstorms of papers, and squeezing through doorways. The tilted and twisted position of the plane skewed everything at an awkward angle, confusing me and scrambling my sense of direction. Sometimes it was hard to know which way was up and which was down, and in places the water was so laden with floating wreckage that my bow snagged, slowing me down, so I took it from my back and swam with it gripped in one hand.

Every time I took another breath and dived down, I had the feeling it would be my last; that eventually we would come to a dead end, and everything would go black, and we would suck water into our lungs and cough out our last hope of living.

“Almost there,” the president said when we came up for breath.

I looked at him in the dim light and nodded without saying anything.

“You all right?” he asked.

I nodded again.

“Pretty scary, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s not far now. Ready?”

I took a deep breath and was about to nod again, when something brushed against my leg. Without thinking I kicked out and splashed away from it, backing into the president in my panic. A million horrible images flashed through my head, of monsters in the water, of those shadowy shapes just out of sight.

“It’s all right,” the president was saying. “It’s all right.” But I hardly heard him. Blood was thumping in my ears and I was trying to get away from whatever it was, splashing in the water, making it chop in the small breathing space.

“Get it off me,” I said as I backed into him. “Get it off!” I pressed him against the wall, fighting to escape, releasing my grip on the bow.

And then it showed its face.

The body bobbed up beside me, breaking the surface of the water with a gentle plop.

The woman’s eyes were open, staring right at me, but she was dead. There was a dark hole in her forehead, clean and without any blood, because it had washed away in the water. Her hair floated around her head like it was alive, swishing this way and that in the current.

“Don’t look at her,” the president said, taking hold of me. “Don’t look.”

I turned around to face him, unable to get the image out of my mind, knowing she was right behind me.

“Just breathe,” the president said. “Breathe and calm down. It’s not far now. The galley is along here, and there are stairs to the upper deck.”

“Do you know her?” I asked when I started to calm down. “Is she … ?”

“Her name was Patricia Young. She was on my staff. We’re in the senior staff area.”

“That hole. She was shot?”

“Yeah. I think you might be right. I guess Morris did a thorough job of covering his tracks.” The president held on to me. “You ready to go again?”

“I dropped my bow.”

“Leave it.”

“I can’t.”

“You don’t need it.”

“I have to find it.” Suddenly it was the only thing that mattered; the only thing connecting me to home and to Dad. I looked down into the dark water. “You see it?”

“Leave it, Oskari. You’ll —”

I dived down, feeling in the darkness. The dead woman washed against me, her legs brushing my body as I grasped for the bow, and I gritted my teeth. I had to find it. It was my duty to take it home.

I spun in the water, waving my hands around me, hoping beyond hope that I would find it. I grabbed at anything and everything. My fingers touched each object they encountered, checking them and discarding them until … there. At the bottom of the cabin, snagged on something.

I came up for air, disturbing the body once again, then went back down, finding the bow and working it free. One end of it was trapped under some kind of chair that must have shifted when I panicked, so I wedged my shoulders against the wall and used my feet to shove it. The chair resisted at first, then gave way, and the bow was free, floating away from me. I whipped around and grasped it tight before pushing to the surface, bursting out of the water.

“Got it.” I held the bow out for the president to see.

“You ready now?” he asked.

I moved away from him and nodded. “Let’s get this over with.”

We took a deep breath and went under again, only this time I knew what those dark shapes beyond the lights were: They were the bodies of the people who had been in the plane, and there were more of them here. Men and women drifting in a tangle, floating among the papers and pens and lost shoes.

Their arms seemed to reach out for us as we swam past.