Read Online Night Fall by Nelson DeMille - Free Book Online Page B

heading and by the fact that his eyewitness account was dismissed, so he went public.”
    “What’s this guy’s name?”
    “Your wife can tell you. Or you can look it up.”
    “Right.”
    Captain Spruck informed me, “I didn’t need this. There was nothing in this for me to say anything about that streak of light. I could have just called the Coast Guard to report what I thought was an air crash and given them the location-which was the first thing I did. But then I described the streak of light, and the duty officer started getting a little strange on me. I gave him my name, address, and phone numbers. He thanked me and hung up. At noon, the next day, your wife showed up at my door.” He editorialized, “She’s very nice, by the way. You’re a lucky man.”
    “Oh, I thank God every day.”
    “You should.”
    “Right. Okay, so you have some issues here about how your eyewitness account was not taken as gospel in the final report. You feel you were not believed, or that the FBI concluded that you were mistaken or confused about what you saw.”
    He replied,
“They
were confused. What I saw, Mr. Corey, to get right down to it, was a surface-to-air missile that apparently destroyed its target-a commercial Boeing 747-and nothing that’s happened since then can shake my account of what I saw or cause me to regret coming forward.”
    “You must have some regrets. You just said, ‘I didn’t need this.’”
    “I… this has been very difficult… I did my duty and continue to do it, whenever asked.” He looked at me and asked, “If this case is closed, why are you here?”
    “I’m just trying to make the wife happy on my day off.” Of course, by now, I realized that Mr. John Corey himself was not happy with the official version of events, thanks to Ms. Mayfield and Captain Spruck.
    Captain Spruck informed me, “The other people I had been sailing with went back to the yacht club for the barbeque-about fifteen of them, joined by spouses and family. About twelve of these people, out on the back lawn of the club or sitting on the veranda, all saw this streak of light simultaneously. This was not a mass hallucination.”
    “You know, Captain, I don’t think anyone doubts that the two hundred people who saw that streak of light actually saw it. The question is, What was it? And did it have anything to do with the explosion and crash of the 747?”
    “I told you what it was.”
    I said to him, “Okay, then, back to the streak of light. The last time we saw it, it had momentarily disappeared. Correct?”
    “That’s correct. And that’s consistent with a missile in close proximity to a target if the target is between the observer and the missile. Follow?”
    “Yeah. The plane was in front of the missile.”
    “Correct. Or the propellant was expended and the missile was now ballistic. But to back up a few seconds, before I saw the missile change course, and before it disappeared, I again noticed the 747.” He continued, “My instincts… my training and my experience told me that this missile was on a course that would bring it into contact with the aircraft.” He took a deep breath and said, “To be honest with you, my blood ran cold, and my heart skipped a beat.”
    “And you were back over North Vietnam.”
    He nodded and said, “But just for a moment… then, I refocused on the aircraft and divided my attention between the aircraft and the streak of light. The light disappeared, as I said, then two seconds later, I saw a flash of light coming from the aircraft, around the midsection, somewhere near the wings, then a second later, I saw a very large explosion that separated the aircraft into at least two parts.”
    “How would you explain that sequence of events?”
    He replied, “Well, if the sequence of events began with a center fuel tank explosion, then the first explosion would have been the missile strike that detonated the fuel vapors in the center fuel tank, and that explosion then ignited