Flash Fiction Challenge: Bird in the Water

My next submission is at Indies Unlimited.

The beginning of the story was provided by the administrator of the website:

The XD 880 was to be the first stealth passenger airliner. The idea was to make it harder for hostiles to use surface-to-air missiles to bring down civilian flights.

The technology was there. On some level, I suppose it only made sense.

After all, air control would still be able to track the plane locations from the transmitter beacon, right? They would have, as long as the transmitter beacon didn’t malfunction. But of course it did.

The rescue teams set out with only a general idea of the crash site from eyewitness reports. We were three days into the effort when team 12 found the first piece of flotsam. That was when the mystery began to unravel. Nothing was what it seemed

Below is the entry that I submitted:

“Roger that. Team 12 has located debris field. Over.”  The marine radio crackled.

The first piece of wreckage was very odd.  It was a dark gray tail panel with half of a white star barely legible on the rusted material.  It seemed to be from an older plane, nothing like the lightweight tail panels of the XD 880.

Team 12 continued their slow trolling towards more debris which bobbed aimlessly in the waters ahead of them.  Several other panels, similar to the first one were located just a few hundred yards from their bow. 

“Team 12 to base, we have a strange find here. Five tail panels found. No XD 880 debris. Over.”

“Roger, Team 12, proceed with caution.  Over.”

Team 12 wearily motored forward to an unusual spot in the water. 

The waves began to crash in a circular motion and pulled team 12’s rescue boat inward toward the center of the whirlpool.  The engine strained under the load, then could no longer power against the gravitational pull of the vortex. The boat became hopelessly caught in a downward spiral.

The next day, the news reported that rescue efforts for the XD 880 had been called off.  No survivors or wreckage were found after an exhaustive four day search. 

The news neglected to disclose that the debris from Flight 19 (the “Lost Patrol” from 1945) had been found in the same vicinity of the last known coordinates of the XD 880 – in the center of the Bermuda Triangle.

The Vote:


And the winner is .... Yours Truly:

http://www.indiesunlimited.com/2013/08/23/this-weeks-flash-fiction-star-sherry-molteni/

Thanks to everyone who voted for my little story.  It will be published in an anthology of other short stories in e-book format in the first part of 2014.