The noise inside the old war plane was incredibly loud, and several times Janet Holbrook found herself about to take her hands out of her lap and put them up against her ears. What stopped her was the need to be instantly ready to take over the copilot's controls once they were airborne, something that would occur very shortly.
Janet ran her eyes quickly across the flight panel in front of her. The instruments — the ones that were left, there were a number of dishearteningly empty holes in the panel — made sense in a vague sort of way. Once again she tried to convince herself that the B-25 was nothing more than a big and angry version of the small Pipers that she normally flew. Up until this moment, she had talked herself into it. But faced with the archaic and half-scavenged instrument panel of the old military airplane — an aircraft that was measurably older than she was — it was hard to keep even the simplest piloting principles in her mind. Don't worry about anything except the flight controls. They'll be heavy as hell, but they'll work. They'll work just the same as what you're used to. The thorough pre-flight briefing that Drew had given her had done a great deal to boost her confidence. But now, with the engines running and revved up to full power, the vibrations and noise had blown her carefully constructed shell of confidence aside as if it had been made out of nothing more than gossamer.
"Ready!" Drew O'Brien had to shout at full voice in order to be heard. He glanced to his right at the young woman who sat in the copilot's seat. She looked bewildered, even frightened. But there was something about the way she held her head, the way she continued to look around the cockpit, that told O'Brien that she would hold on. He was glad as hell that Janet had volunteered to come along with him.
"I'm ready." Janet gestured with her hand as she pointed down the Yorktown's empty flight deck. All the people from the handling crew — the men and women who had helped to get the B-25 into its takeoff position — stood to one side, safely out of the way. From that point on, the fate of everyone depended on how well Drew O'Brien could handle the old World War II bomber.
Without another word, O'Brien released the aircraft's brakes. The B-25 lurched forward, its acceleration rapid and reassuring. But the end of the short flight deck loomed not very far ahead, the sudden drop-off to the sea even more alarming because of the height that the carrier's deck rode above the waves. If the airplane didn't have sufficient takeoff speed by the time it reached the edge of the deck, it would fall off nose-first and churn itself into the water. It would then dive beneath the waves very quickly — even quicker than a submarine could. If the B-25 did fall of the edge of the deck, there would be no escaping from the cockpit. In all probability, neither of the people in the cockpit would even know what hit them.
The Yorktown's flight deck had already been two-thirds used up by the accelerating B-25 when O'Brien felt the initial beginnings of a positive response from the flight controls he held in his hands. Three-fourths of the way down the deck and he suddenly sensed that the B-25 was nearly ready to fly. With less than twenty-five feet to spare, O'Brien yanked back hard on the flight controls. The aircraft staggered off the Yorktown, the far edge of the deck sailing beneath them with just a few inches of clearance for the still-spinning wheels. "Gear up!"
"Gear coming up!" Janet yanked on the lever to retract the wheels.
"Give me a report!"
Janet turned her head sharply left and craned to watch the submarine — it was a routine they had practiced a dozen times while they sat in the hangar bay waiting to be hoisted to the flight deck. Fortunately for them, the dull gray light of predawn had given way to the first clear rays from the sun as it poked itself to within a few degrees of the horizon. "The sub is maintaining position. No sign of movement," she shouted into O'Brien's ear. As the aircraft was wheeled into a tighter turn to make its approach toward the submarine, the steep angle of bank gave Janet an even better look at the long, menacing silhouette that was their target. "No torpedo wakes!"
"Are you sure?"
"Yes!" Janet scanned the front of the submarine again, but she was certain that there was no sign of any bubbles, no visible trail of wake. According to what Drew had told her earlier, a long and frothy wake would be the indication that meant that torpedoes had been released toward the Yorktown. "No torpedoes. There are people on the sub's bridge, it looks like three of them. Wait. They're going below."
"No time left." O'Brien snapped the airplane's flight controls hard left. There was an instant response from the old B-25. As it wheeled around in a nightmarishly tight turn, the airframe began to vibrate in the beginning throes of a pre-stall buffet. Fighting his natural piloting instincts, O'Brien disregarded the signal and kept the airplane in as tight a circle as he dared. "Bomb bay open! Get ready!"
"Open!" Janet pushed down the next lever in the sequence as she had been taught. A sudden rush of noise and air added to the already high volume that filled the cockpit of the old airplane. She looked over her shoulder to verify that the big doors in the center of the belly had opened. They had. Looking past the long and bright-green body of the lone torpedo that sat in the bomb bay, Janet could see the waves and whitecaps that visibly lapped over one another only a few hundred feet below. The long white cord that trailed from the cockpit to the makeshift torpedo release clips dangled loosely. "Bomb bay open! The torpedo is ready!"
"Stand by... stand by..." O'Brien's words, still shouted, were mostly lost to the slipstream and the engine noises that nearly deafened them both. But even if he couldn't be heard, it was now more obvious what the plan was, more than obvious when the torpedo would need to be released. The submarine — sitting low but motionless in the water — began to rapidly grow in size as it framed itself, dead center, in the windshield of the B-25. The old airplane continued to dive toward the submarine. "Stand by..." O'Brien pushed farther down on the flight controls to get even closer to the top of the ocean. He picked his right hand up off the aircraft's throttles and held it conspicuously in front of Janet. "Now!" he shouted, as soon as the proper moment had arrived. His hand dropped down to confirm his verbal signal, just in case she couldn't hear his words.
But Janet had heard him clearly. She tugged hard on the long cord that, moments before, she had wrapped around her hands. The arrangement that the people from the torpedo assembly group had come up with to release the old torpedo from the bomb bay seemed a simple one — and one that everyone thought would be more dependable than the airplane's rusted-out bomb release system. But even before the cord had reached its full travel, Janet could tell from the sickening feeling in the pit of her stomach that something had gone wrong.
"What happened?" O'Brien shouted. He was unable to take his eyes off the flight instruments, unable to look away from the view out the windshield in order to turn around to look for himself. The black hull of the submarine flashed beneath the blunt nose of the B-25 as O'Brien waited to hear what Janet would tell him.
Janet looked over her shoulder. The bright-green torpedo was still in the bomb bay, although it now hung at an odd angle. The makeshift nose clip had released as it should have, but the tail cord had not. The torpedo was now stuck, half in and half out, its explosive nose section jammed hard against the forward edge of the bomb bay of the old B-25.
<>
After he had given the order, it took Jerome Zindell several seconds to realize that the torpedoes from the Trout, for some unknown reason, had failed to fire.
Edward McClure, who had positioned himself at the far edge of the submarine's bridge in order to have the best view of the sinking of the Yorktown, whirled around and faced Zindell. "What the hell have you done? Where are the goddamn torpedoes?"
"Christ Almighty." Zindell stood where he was, his gaze locked straight ahead. He ignored McClure and concentrated instead on the voice that poured into his earphones, the voice from the control room that explained that nothing at all had happened after the firing buttons had been pressed.
"Do something, hurry, quickly." Olga pointed frantically to the airplane on the Yorktown's flight deck, which had just begun its takeoff roll a few seconds before.
"He'll never get it off in time." But while McClure watched, the old B-25 managed to lift off the flight deck and begin its climb. "He's coming this way," McClure said as the three of them watched the bomber start a tight turn that would eventually bring it around and headed toward them. "Get those damn torpedoes launched. We've got to get the hell out of here!"
Zindell ripped the communications headset off his head and flung it on the deck. "I don't know what happened, it was all set up!" Without waiting for either of them to comment, he stepped into the opened hatchway in the floor of the submarine's bridge and scrambled down the ladder as rapidly as he could, his one hand lurching from rung to rung. "Batten down the hatches, we're going to dive," he called up to Olga who was the last person to leave the Trout's bridge.
"No we're not. Not until we fire those torpedoes." McClure had caught up to Zindell, and the two men stood face to face in the small conning tower above the control room.
"We can fire torpedoes after we submerge."
"You told me that it's easier to fire from the surface. I don't want to take any chances of missing."
"As long as we stay close to the Yorktown and pointed straight toward it, the torpedo shot is still relatively easy — at least it will be if we can get the goddamned torpedoes to work." Zindell, who looked perplexed, started to turn away.
McClure grabbed him by the shoulder. "Listen to me. Carefully. I don't care if we're on the surface or submerged, but if there's any goddamn way on earth you can fire those torpedoes, you sure as hell better do it. That was our deal. I hope to hell that you’re not fucking with me." McClure looked coldly at Zindell. "You'll be sorry if you don't get those torpedoes into the Yorktown, I promise you."
"But what about the airplane?" Zindell said. "What's he trying to do?" He looked up at the hatchway above his head, which Olga had already sealed shut. For all his years of submarine experience, Zindell had never been under an actual attack before, it was a new and frightening experience for him.
"Relax, it doesn't mean a thing." McClure leaned back against the periscope housing in a deliberate attempt to appear casual. "They've probably got a dozen people crammed inside that old wreck of an airplane — it wouldn't hold any more than that." An odd smirk played at the corners of McClure's mouth. "The women and children bullshit, more than likely."
"How do you know that the pilot isn't up there alone? How do you know that he doesn't intend to crash into us?"
"Don't be ridiculous." McClure waved his hand at where the hull's roofline curved above his head. "If that was his intention, we wouldn't be standing here right now. He would've accomplished his goal already." At that very moment, a low roar from the airplane came close enough to be heard, even inside the sealed submarine. The noise passed as suddenly as it had begun. "See what I mean? He's trying to scare us, that's all. There's nothing else he can do. It's a pure bluff."
"You're guessing." But Zindell had to admit that what McClure said made sense. After a few seconds he nodded reluctantly in agreement. "Okay. We'll submerge first, then I'll work on the torpedoes. We'll have Olga stay at the periscope, to keep us aligned on the target." Zindell nodded toward the woman, then turned back to McClure. "But if we haven't found the problem in the next ten minutes or so, we're going to forget the ship and the ransom money and get the hell out of here."
"Fine," McClure answered. But he knew that he had no intention of letting the Yorktown and that money go — not in ten minutes, not in ten hours. There was no need to argue that point just yet. In just a few more minutes the torpedoes from the Trout might well be headed toward the Yorktown.
"Submerge the boat," Zindell ordered as he descended the ladder that led from the conning tower to the control room below. "To periscope depth. Maintain our position and bearing on the target."
"Yessir." The men in the control room responded quickly to the order, and soon the U.S.S. Trout was on its way down to a depth of fifty feet where only its periscope would stick above the waves.
"What do you think?" McClure finally asked after he had watched Zindell hover over the master firing board for a short while. "Can you fix it?"
"I don't know yet, it seems so..." Zindell's eyes, which had roamed continuously up and down the electronic board, suddenly found the answer he was looking for. "Son-of-a-bitch!" He spun around, his face contorted with anger. "The firing board has been manually overridden!"
"What does that mean?" McClure took an involuntary step backward, away from Zindell.
"The water slug, you idiot! Didn't you and Olga reposition the override controls after you had manually fired that water slug from the forward torpedo room!"
"No... I didn't know we were supposed to."
Zindell didn't wait for the rest of McClure's explanation, he turned and began to run as fast as he could through the narrow confines of the submarine toward the forward torpedo room. I can fire the torpedoes manually. He knew now that he could get the torpedoes away by individually activating the manual firing levers on each of the tubes, that it would be faster to do it that way than to try to reconnect the master firing board and put the electronic data back into sequence.
"Wait, I'm coming!"
Zindell ignored McClure's shout, although he could hear the man's footsteps only a short distance behind him as the two of them began to sprint down the narrow corridor that led past the captain's stateroom and the wardroom. Another minute at the most, then we can get the hell out of here. Zindell didn't bother to look back over his shoulder to check if McClure was still there because he now knew that he didn't need any help from anyone. After he repositioned a few valves and levers, he would be able to manually launch the torpedoes at the Yorktown. Jerome Zindell stepped across the hatchway sill and headed straight for the torpedo tubes. Fucking McClure. He's a goddamned madman. He'll get us killed if I let him.
<>
Once he had flown over the submarine, Drew O'Brien started the B-25 into a shallow right bank. "Take the controls — I'm going back."
"What should I do?" Her request had been more a plea than a question, but Janet did not hesitate to take the controls as she had been instructed.
"They'll feel very heavy. Keep the airspeed where it is." O'Brien pointed to the appropriate gauge on the copilot's panel as he began to get up from the pilot's chair. "A shallow turn, then straight and level to give yourself some room to maneuver. Once you've gone out far enough, turn back and line up on the sub like I did before."
"Wait!" Janet wrestled with the airplane's flight controls for another few seconds before she could divide her attention enough to finish what she was about to say. "Look out the side window — the submarine is beginning to dive!"
O'Brien leaned over Janet and watched out the side window. There was no doubt about it, the long black hull was settling slowly into the water. "But there's no forward movement, see?" O’Brien said.
"What does that mean?"
"That he's staying in position. To fire torpedoes." Without waiting for her to answer, O'Brien jumped down the small step at the rear of the cockpit and moved farther back, the blast of swirling air and the roar from the incessant wind increased markedly. By the time he stood near the explosive nose cap of the bright-green torpedo, his eyes had begun to water from the bite of the cool, damp, erratic breeze that whirled around him. O'Brien turned toward the cockpit and cupped his hands around his mouth. "Head for the sub," he shouted as loud as he possibly could. "I'll push the torpedo out!"
Janet glanced over her shoulder toward him, a puzzled look on her face. She finally shook her head negatively to show that she could not hear what Drew had said, even though he was no more than fifteen feet away.
O'Brien turned toward the torpedo again. While he sat himself down on the crossbrace at the forward edge of the bomb bay, he prayed that she would figure out what he had meant. I’ll need to guess at our position, that's all I can do. O'Brien began to try to concentrate on the airplane's motions, so he'd have some idea — no matter how approximate — of when they were near enough to the submarine again to attempt to drop their torpedo. Be careful, this is our only chance.
O'Brien grabbed a metal stanchion with his left hand in order to keep himself in position, then took hold of the dangling rope from the torpedo's aft release clip with his right. He looked down at the nose cap of the torpedo. The people on the Yorktown had wired the explosives to make the weapon as foolproof as possible, so they simply mounted a firing pin into the center of the nose cap. Whenever that pin was forced inward, it would trigger a blasting cap, which in turn would set off the high explosives. O'Brien placed his feet carefully to either side of the protruding pin, in order to keep himself from inadvertently pushing against it.
Suddenly, the B-25's wings began to rock vigorously from side to side. O'Brien grabbed hold of the metal stanchion to his left even tighter, to prevent himself from being tossed out the opened bomb bay a few feet beyond where he sat on the crossbeam. What the hell is happening? He shot a quick glance over his shoulder to try to determine if the violent motions were turbulence or a control problem, but from where he sat he could not tell. The rocking motion stopped for an instant, but then began even harder the second time. Intentional. The rolling motions were too positive, deliberate and rapid to be outside a pilot's control. A signal. Janet is signaling me to release the torpedo! O'Brien responded by immediately yanking on the cord with his one hand while he pushed against the nose of the torpedo with every ounce of energy that he could force into his legs.
<>
"Let me help."
"Leave me alone, you've done enough already — you damn madman!" With his one arm, Zindell pushed McClure away. He then turned back to the number-one torpedo tube. All the other valves and levers had already been positioned, all that was necessary now was for him to press the manual firing pin.
Jerome Zindell reached up toward the last switch in the sequence needed to manually fire the number-one torpedo at the Yorktown.
<>
As she had been ordered, Olga Rodriguez had remained in the conning tower of the Trout. She had raised and focused the periscope, and had spent the first few seconds determining that the submarine's position in relation to the Yorktown had remained stable. Then she began to scan the sky for sight of the airplane that had taken off from the carrier's flight deck a few minutes before.
The first sight of the airplane came when the periscope was being swung through its port quarter. At first Olga thought that the airplane was going away from her, but within a few seconds she realized that it was growing in size — growing quickly, coming head-on, barreling down low and straight. Our periscope is sticking ten feet above the waterline. That is what they are aiming toward! The frightening sight of that warplane as it hurtled directly toward her caused Olga to freeze in position, her hands wrapped tightly in a death grip on the periscope's focus knobs, her eyes glued to the viewing lens.
<>
Under the pressure of the force being applied to it, the nose cap of the bright-green Mark 14 torpedo was finally set free from where it had been jammed against the forward crossbrace of the aircraft bomb bay. The torpedo tumbled out into the slipstream, then fell quickly into the water a few hundred feet below. The propulsion gear inside the torpedo, which had been previously adjusted to run upon release from the aircraft, began to operate on schedule. The twin tail-mounted propellers on the torpedo were already rotating when the bright-green body disappeared beneath the surface of the sea. The depth guidance system inside the Mark 14 had been set to keep the torpedo at a depth of twenty feet, but because of the torpedo's weight and its release angle from the aircraft, it had dove down too far to begin with. The Mark 14 torpedo was in the process of realigning itself toward its proper depth setting when its nose cap impacted firmly against the flat metal side of the conning tower of the U.S.S. Trout.
<>
Olga Rodriguez had not noticed the bright-green projectile as it fell from beneath the airplane and landed in the water not far from the submarine. Instead, she had kept her total attention riveted on the airplane itself. Olga yanked on the knob and rotated the lens of the periscope rapidly upward so she could visually follow the two-engine airplane as it passed harmlessly overhead. They are trying to frighten us, it is all a bluff. That was the final conscious thought that registered in Olga's mind.
The bright-green torpedo from the B-25 hit squarely against the flat side of the conning tower of the submarine, less than six feet from where Olga stood as she looked through the periscope. At impact, the high explosive in the nose cap detonated. The steel plates of the sidewall crushed inward as if they were no more than a stretched piece of thin plastic. Olga's body was pulverized into unrecognizable chunks of bloody flesh and smashed bone within an instant of the initial impact.
As the force of the sudden explosion continued and expanded, it began to act like a giant can opener. It slit the midsection of the submarine nearly in half, as if it were no more than a toy model being opened by a hacksaw. Inside the framework of the sub, every cross-member within twenty feet of the impact point snapped or buckled. What the carnage of the explosion itself did not do to the crew members and the equipment near to it, the on-rushing seawater did. As if an enormous dam had burst, a massive wall of water swept through the insides of what remained of the midsection of the submarine within a handful of seconds after the explosion. The individual crew members were battered unmercifully and then drowned, the sub's equipment torn from its mountings and swept away. The water spread quickly fore and aft into the remaining sections of the submarine that had not been initially damaged by the torpedo's explosive force. As the seawater spread through its hull, the U.S.S. Trout began to rapidly sink.
Jerome Zindell was thrown heavily to the deck when the torpedo exploded, his fingers being wrenched away from the manual firing pin of the number-one torpedo tube just before he could press it.
"What happened?!" Edward McClure picked himself off the steel floor plates where he had been thrown near to Zindell. "What happened?!" he repeated. For the first time in his life he sounded, even to himself, uncontrollably frightened.
"We must've been hit." Zindell shook his dazed head to clear it from when the impact against the floor had nearly knocked him unconscious. "We've got to get out of here." But before he could do much more than stand up, Zindell saw the forward edge of the cascading water as it churned into the companionway of the adjacent compartment and toward the forward torpedo room where they stood. "The hatchway — hurry!" Zindell stumbled forward as the submarine lurched awkwardly beneath his feet. He struggled toward the doorway, the irregular movements of the sub as it wallowed from side to side making it even harder for him to keep his balance. "Close the hatch! Help me!"
The first of the water had already splashed across the steel threshold and into the forward torpedo room by the time McClure had arrived at the hatchway. Without a word, the two of them struggled to seal the door against the increasing force of the mounting water on the other side that rose higher and higher with every passing moment. Just before it would have been physically impossible for them to do it, the two men somehow managed to get the watertight door closed and its locking lever spun shut.
"Now what do we do?" McClure's eyes were wide, his heart pounded, his face was drenched with a combination of seawater and sweat.
Zindell took one quick breath to steady himself, then stumbled to his feet. "The emergency hatch in the ceiling." He pointed toward it. "It's the only way out."
The submarine suddenly began to lurch again. A loud and horrible creaking — the noise of grinding, twisting metal — came from somewhere behind them. "Hold on!" Zindell had shouted, but mostly for his own benefit. In spite of his tightened grip on the handle of the hatchway door, he was thrown to the floor again as the random, spastic motions of the submarine increased.
"We're going down, we're sinking — I'm getting the hell out of here!" McClure had not taken more than two steps in his panicked rush toward the escape hatch at the center of the room when all the interior lights suddenly went out. "Help me, help me!" McClure continued to shout irrationally as he stumbled and fell to the floor again. The inside of the torpedo room was absolutely, impenetrably black.
Zindell ignored McClure's hysterical shouts. He groped his way forward, the familiar sections of the room falling into hand despite the nightmarish darkness that completely enveloped them. At one point he bumped into McClure's leg, but he said nothing. Nuclear submarine Thresher sinks, 129 die. As those old newspaper headlines flashed through his mind, Zindell continued to search for the ladder that would lead to the escape hatch. One hundred twenty-nine, plus my father. My father.
The noise of the first hull rivet as it exploded inward into the torpedo compartment was startlingly loud — as loud as a high-powered rifle being shot in the confines of a small room. "What was that — what's happening?" McClure was shouting again and thrashing around wildly at the aft section of the torpedo room, totally disoriented and in a full, uncontrolled panic. "Where the hell are you, goddamnit! Help me!"
But Zindell did not answer. Rivets are blowing in. We're too deep. There's no escape. He had just found the base of the ladder that led to the escape hatch, but instead of climbing upward he allowed his body to sink slowly down onto the floor. Several inches of water inside the torpedo room lapped over him as he sat stunned by what he now knew. Too deep. Almost crush depth. The escape hatch was useless because the submarine had already gone too deep, sunk too far toward the bottom of the ocean for anyone to live outside the boat for even a brief moment.
One hundred twenty-nine die as U.S.S. Thresher sinks. Zindell began to sob audibly and hysterically as more and more of the rivets from the overstressed hull continued to ricochet randomly across the insides of the doomed submarine. The rivets bounced noisily off the very steel plates that would soon collapse inward like eggshells. Zindell sat in the unnatural darkness the same way he knew that his father must have as he waited endlessly for that inescapable moment that was now nearly at hand. In a matter of another few seconds or few minutes at most, Jerome Zindell's life would be ended by the enormous pressure of the same sea that had crushed his father to death more than twenty years before.
<>
Drew O'Brien moved forward from the bomb bay area of the old B-25 and stood behind the copilot's seat. "There's no doubt that we've sunk it," O'Brien said in a moderate voice as he pointed over Janet's shoulder and toward the sections of wreckage that floated on the waves. The airplane's engine power had been pulled back far enough to a lower setting to make their cockpit conversation less of a strain. "There's an oil slick, too," O'Brien added as an expanding black smear bubbled up from the depths below. "The sub has gone down for sure."
"Thank God." Janet Holbrook banked the warplane into another circle of the area, this one wide enough to allow them to pass overhead the Yorktown. "Look — everyone's on the deck." She nodded toward the front windshield. Ahead of them, the flight deck of the huge gray aircraft carrier was lined with the hostages from Flight 255. "They're waving at us."
"Yes." O'Brien laid his hand on Janet's shoulder. "Go ahead and rock the wings again, just like you did before."
"Okay."
As she rocked the aircraft's wings vigorously from side to side in answer to the people who waved at them from below, O'Brien watched her. She's an incredible woman. We couldn't have done this without her. O'Brien opened his mouth to tell Janet how courageous and competent she had been, how indispensable. But before the first words had come out, he changed his mind and decided not to say anything, not just yet.
Janet pushed slightly forward on the control wheel and pitched the airplane even lower. She flew the old B-25 perpendicular to the broad deck of the Yorktown, no more than fifty feet above the heads of the people who owed their lives to this old relic of a warplane. Once the carrier's flight deck had flashed by beneath them, Janet glanced over her shoulder toward Drew. "Which way should we head?"
"Straight west, until we see the coast. We've got more than enough fuel to get to dry land. We should be able to find a suitable airport as soon as we get to the coast."
"What about the people on the Yorktown?"
"The Navy will pick them up. There's no doubt they've been watching every move out here, at least from a distance."
"Right." Janet lapsed into silence for a few seconds. She then looked back at the man who stood behind her. "Are you ready to do the flying?" She gestured toward the flight controls that she held in her hands.
"Absolutely not. We've seen enough of your flying skills to know that you don't need me to bail you out." O'Brien allowed his fingers to gently massage her shoulder. "I'll give you help with the landing, but other than that, this is your flight. You've certainly proven that already."
"Maybe." Janet smiled gently and sincerely, then turned back to the flight controls.
"Just hold this heading. We should be able to see the coast shortly."
"Okay."
O'Brien moved from behind Janet's seat and climbed into the pilot's chair. Once he had buckled his seat belt, he glanced toward her again. Janet Holbrook was, he was certain, the most beautiful, competent and courageous woman he had ever met. Once they were on the ground, Drew O'Brien intended to spend considerable time telling her so. When he was finished telling her that, he intended to tell her much, much more.
Thomas Block has written a number of aviation-oriented novels, many which have gone on to acquire best-seller status in numerous countries. His novel writing began with the publication of "Mayday" in 1979. That novel was rewritten with his boyhood friend, novelist Nelson DeMille in 1998 and remains on DeMille's extensive backlist. "Mayday" became a CBS Movie of the Week in October, 2005.
Several of the other novels by Block include "Orbit" (a top bestseller in Germany, among other nations), "Airship Nine", "Forced Landing" (also done as a radio serialization drama in Japan), "Skyfall", "Open Skies" and "Captain". Thomas Block is still writing both fiction and non-fiction, and has edited and updated his earlier novels into ebooks in all the major formats and also into new full-sized (trade soft cover) printed versions.
Block's magazine writing began in 1968 and over the next five decades his work has appeared in numerous publications. He worked 20 years at FLYING Magazine as Contributing Editor, and as Contributing Editor to Plane & Pilot Magazine for 11 years. Block became Editor-at-Large for Piper Flyer Magazine and Cessna Flyer Magazine in 2001. During his long career as an aviation writer he has written on a wide array of subjects that range from involvement with government officials to evaluation reports on most everything that flies.
An airline pilot for US Airways for over 36 years before his retirement in April, 2000, Captain Thomas Block has been a pilot since 1959. Since 2002, he has lived on a ranch in Florida with his wife Sharon where they board, compete and train horses. Complete information (including direct links to booksellers) is available at http://www.ThomasBlockNovels.com or through the author’s additional website at http://www.FlyingB-Ranch.com. For Facebook users, complete information about Thomas Block Novels can also be found at two interlinked Facebook sites:
http://www.Facebook.com/Captain.by.Thomas.Block
http://www.Facebook.com/ThomasBlockNovels.