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than up front with him.
    As he held the Junker in a thirty-degree turn he could see much better the untouched, pure white blanket below that he undoubtedly knew covered a frozen lake beneath. It appeared to be long enough, as he leveled the wings and started to line up an approach, but it hooked slightly to the left as it tracked around the steep mountain slope. To the right and at the top of the bend was a steep, long, overhanging face of rock and ice that seem to disappear down into the bleached abyss. The cliffs presented a problem if he didn’t take the proper angle across the curve of the lake. Fortunately, the leading edge and ground leading up to the cliffs looked pretty close to water level.
    Hignite veered to the right just enough to get in position, and then he gradually put the struggling aircraft into a wide, left-hand, descending turn to take them in. Tilting his head back over his right shoulder, he yelled as loud as he could over the intensifying noise of the dive. “Hang on Rudi, I’ve got an opening, but it’s gonna be tight.”
    Gernert needed no warning. The sudden drop was enough to let him know they were going down, but without an opportunity to know where. His choices were limited to where he could seek shelter, but he had managed to rig up a couple of the loose shoulder harnesses, just a few meters behind the cockpit, that had not been covered up by the mess of tangled crates scattered about.
    Hignite had never landed on ice of any kind, so he really had no idea how the plane was going to react. His biggest fear, as he measured his final approach, was the depth of the snow over the ice. He also began to realize the closer he got, the once big swath of flat, washed-out landscape started to take on some definition on the ground. There were emerging mounds and outcroppings on what probably were the irregularities of the shoreline.
    This ought to be very interesting.
     
    Hignite leveled out and set the trim to keep more of the weight back on the tail. He knew the minute he hit the snow, it was going to be like slamming on the brakes, and the plane was going to pitch forward if it didn’t have the proper balance. He could not have been any more correct.
    As the wheels on the landing gear plowed into the foot deep snow, the resistance was too much. What little angle he managed to achieve without slamming the tail down first, was instantaneously negated and the plane balanced out for the first fifty meters and then progressively tilted forward. Hignite compensated by throwing the flaps up and throttling up the remaining two engines to try and keep her from going nose down and into a flip. The maneuver gained them a few more precious seconds of time, but cost them dearly in the end.
    The power boost, minus the starboard engine, pushed the plane and the flight path significantly to the right. Thirty meters later the right wing cruelly slammed into one of the nearly invisible, snow covered rocky protrusions jutting out from shore.
    “ Sheist! ” were the last words muttered in unison by Hignite and Gernert as the impact tore off the right wing and slingshot the rest of the plane forward and to the right, head first into the face of one of the magnificent cliffs that stood guard over the frozen lake.
     

Chapter 2  
    May 14, 2001. Louisville, Kentucky.
    Matt Ferguson sat straight up in bed, the mind and body going from deep sleep, to wide awake in a matter of seconds. He reacted immediately to the sound that had awoken him by reaching over to hit the snooze button, but the second ring of the telephone shook him into complete reality. Bypassing the clock radio, Ferguson snatched the telephone up on the third ring. “Hello!”
    “Mr. Ferguson?” the voice on the other end inquired.
    “Speaking.”
    “Mr. Ferguson, this is Nurse Tackett at Jefferson Manor.”
    “Yep, Uncle Max?”
    “I’m afraid so. He took a turn for the worse about a half hour ago.”
    “I’ll be there in about thirty