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“We should stay in Hawaii for a few days before going back,” Spectre said, leaning over to Decker. She was reading work reports on her government laptop as Spectre had been intently watching the fighter escorts air refuel. “A few days on the beach would be good for us.”
Decker winced as she looked up from her computer. “Yeah,” she mumbled.
“You ok?” Spectre asked, watching the discomfort appear on her face. Decker put the laptop aside and rubbed her temples.
“Yeah,” Decker said. “I just have the worst headache all of the sudden.”
Spectre felt his ears suddenly pop as he unbuckled his seat belt to get closer to Decker. He looked out the small window, wondering if the aircraft were suddenly climbing or descending, but found that they were still straight and level with the fighters rejoining on either wing after refueling with the tanker.
“I just don’t feel right,” Decker added. “Maybe I’m just tired.”
As Spectre dropped to a knee to tend to Decker, he suddenly felt lightheaded. He leaned on the arm of Decker’s chair for support as he tried to gather himself. His fingers and toes were tingling. He suddenly had a feeling of euphoria as his vision blurred. He recognized the symptoms almost immediately as he looked around the cabin to see the other reporters and media personnel struggling with similar effects. One reporter even appeared to be talking to herself in delirium.
As an Air Force pilot, he had received training in aerospace physiology regularly. After his initial hypobaric chamber training in pilot training, Spectre had gone through recurrent chamber training every four years until leaving the Air Force, and again when he first joined Project Archangel.
During the training, aviators were placed in a hypobaric chamber to simulate the effects of high-altitude hypoxia. As part of the training, they were taken to pressure altitudes exceeding eighteen thousand feet. Since each person’s hypoxia symptoms were different, they were taught the wide range of possibilities each person could experience. Once in the chamber, they were told to put on their masks and select one hundred percent oxygen once they recognized any of the symptoms. Spectre noticed that each time he went through the training, he felt a sense of euphoria with tingling in his fingers and toes.
Recognizing that the aircraft was undergoing some form of slow decompression, Spectre decided to go against his own training and the safety briefing they had received upon boarding. As Decker began to fade in and out of consciousness, Spectre opted to help her first. Reaching under her seat, he found the plastic mask and pulled it out. He placed the elastic strap around her head. Once the mask was secure around her face, he reached back down and pulled the red tab, starting the flow of oxygen from her personal oxygen bottle.
When he was sure Decker was ok, Spectre stumbled back to his seat. He nearly fell over as he reached underneath to find the mask and unraveled it from the clear plastic oxygen line. He felt sleepy as he tried to maintain consciousness. He managed to pull the red tab before pulling the mask to his face.
Within seconds of pulling the red tab, his vision was suddenly clear again. He breathed in deeply as the pure oxygen hit his lungs. As the tingling went away, he secured the mask around his face and slowed his breathing as the plastic bag beneath the mask inflated and deflated.
“What’s going on?” Decker asked, yelling through the mask.
“Hypoxia!” Spectre yelled. He looked back at the reporters around them. Some had already succumbed to the hypoxia and had lost consciousness. Others were rapidly approaching the same fate. Spectre tried to wave at them to get their attention and get them to follow suit to no avail.
“Put your oxygen masks on!” Spectre yelled, pulling off his mask so everyone could hear him. One of the older reporters slowly turned to look at Spectre. Spectre gestured to his mask. She tried reaching beneath the seat to find it, but fell over as she lost consciousness.
Spectre looked out the window as he calculated his next move. The aircraft was still flying straight and level. There had been no announcement from the cockpit for passengers to don their oxygen masks, and the displays that the Air Force flight attendants had briefed would be illuminated in the event of a loss of cabin pressure were still unlit. It was a very bad sign.
Every aircraft he had ever flown had essentially the same procedure in the event of a loss of cabin pressure – get on oxygen and get to a lower altitude. The pilots of Air Force One appeared to be ignoring the latter, which made Spectre wonder if they were still conscious themselves. Spectre had heard of a similar story many times before.
Since the tragic crash of golfer Payne Stewart’s Learjet in 1999, incapacitation of aircrew due to hypoxia had been an emphasis item in training. People watched in horror as the golfer’s aircraft flew for nearly four hours after experiencing a decompression as it climbed from twenty-three thousand feet to thirty-nine thousand feet. The aircraft was intercepted by Air Force fighters who could do very little but watch it crash as the engines flamed out from fuel starvation.
More recently, in 2005, a Helios Airways Boeing 737-300 crashed twenty-five miles from Athens after its crew became incapacitated due to an unrecognized drop in cabin pressure caused by an improper pressurization setting and misrecognized cockpit warnings by the pilots. A flight attendant attempted to fly the aircraft using a bottled oxygen supply, but was unsuccessful as the aircraft ran out of fuel and crashed in the mountains.
And in 2014, aircrew incapacitation due to hypoxia had also been suspected in the mysterious disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 out of Kuala Lampur in which the aircraft signed off and made an unplanned turn before vanishing from the radar. The aircraft wreckage was never recovered, prompting hundreds of conspiracy theories as to the fate of that flight.
While the examples that made the news were enough for Spectre to be concerned, less than six months earlier, an event had hit even closer to home. Oil tycoon Tom Jane, who had helped Spectre and members of Project Archangel board the oil platform known as Jupiter Rising to find and kill Chinese intelligence operative Jun Zhang, had lost his life in a similar crash. Although official NTSB reports listed it as a crash due to incapacitation as a result of hypoxia, Spectre always suspected foul play. Tom Jane knew about the skeletons in Vice President Kerry Johnson’s closet. Spectre was almost sure the aircraft had been tampered with.
But this was different. They were flying on Air Force One with the most powerful and influential leader in the world. Spectre refused to believe that hand selected pilots chosen to fly the President around would succumb to a similar fate and it was almost impossible to get to and tamper with Air Force One’s systems. Almost.
“Where are you going?” Decker shouted through her mask as Spectre stood and took off his.
Without saying a word, Spectre pointed to the younger woman on the ground. He knew he had to act quickly. He guessed they were cruising somewhere above thirty thousand feet, which he remembered from training meant that their time of useful consciousness would be less than a minute. Moving and doing work would only shorten that time, but Spectre was worried about the passengers. For now, they were just unconscious, but prolonged exposure to hypoxic conditions would eventually kill everyone on board.
“Cal!” Decker yelled.
Spectre quickly approached the lady and grabbed the mask from underneath her seat. He pulled the red tab and placed the mask against his own face, taking a hit of the oxygen before securing it around the woman’s face. He then moved on to the man seated next to the woman as he repeated the process.
After watching Spectre help the first woman, Decker removed her mask and went to work on the next nearest person. She mimicked Spectre’s procedure, taking in oxygen first before putting the mask on the young female reporter next to her. As they finished helping the people in the media cabin, the two returned to their seats.
“We need to get to the cockpit,” Spectre said, pulling off the mask so Decker could hear him.
“The President’s compartment is between us and the cockpit, and I’m almost positive that will be locked down,” Decker said.
“Then we’ll break it down,” Spectre replied after taking another hit of oxygen. “We have the rest of our lives to figure this out.”
“Let’s figure it out before then,” Decker said. “I like your beach idea.”
As Spectre stood to start moving toward the front of the aircraft, his head nearly hit the ceiling. Spectre grabbed the nearest piece of furniture and held on. He had suddenly been subjected to weightlessness as the aircraft nosed over.
“It may be too late,” Spectre said as he looked out to see the aircraft in a steep dive and the fighter escorts struggling to stay in formation.
As Spectre regained his seat, the cabin’s intercom system suddenly crackled to life. “Ladies and Gentlemen, from the flight deck, we’ve entered an emergency descent and will be making an emergency landing. Please stay seated with your seat belts securely fastened. Thank you,” the male voice said.
Spectre reached under Decker’s seat, pulled out the yellow emergency life preserver, and handed it to her. “Put this on,” he said as he handed it to her.
“Why?” Decker asked.
“Because something is very wrong here and I don’t like it,” Spectre said before returning to his oxygen mask.