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explosion of igniting kerosene until his field of vision was filled with flame and fragmenting wreckage filling the night with kinetic horror mere yards in front of him along the taxiway. And at that moment, his mind simply refused to accept the impossible image. Such things were not supposed to happen.
    His world instantly in flames, Captain Pete Kaminsky was unaware that the cockpit had been neatly sheared from the disintegrating structure of the 737, nor did he realize that he and Jean had been pivoted almost exactly 180 degrees to face the raging fire that was roaring inches from their still-intact windscreen. Pete struggled to let instinct and training guide him. Emergency evacuation. He needed to evacuate his passengers. He found the engine fuel and start cutoff levers and moved them to the off position, grabbing then for the intercom receiver with his right hand at the same moment he felt cold air on the back of his neck and struggled to turn around. He was about to tell Jean to unstrap and get back to the cabin to make sure the doors were opened and emergency slides deployed when his eyes finally focused on the void behind them. There was no cabin. There was nothing there but runway lights. Jagged metal stringers and shards of aluminum plating bordered the bewildering picture, as the infrared heat from the fire in front of them burned into his neck through the glass. He unstrapped his seatbelt, not realizing until that moment that he was lying against the left windows. Jean was hanging in her seat above him. The airplane must have rolled over on its left side, he thought.
    But where was his airplane?
    Pete pulled himself out of the seat, his large hands reaching up to help Jean release her seatbelt. She dropped heavily, supported by Pete’s arms as she grabbed with her left hand for something metallic to hold on to. Pete noticed her right arm then: it was blood smeared and hanging uselessly at her side.
    With Jean’s feet now on what had been the left hand wall of the small entry alcove to the cockpit, the two pilots faced the abyss behind them.
    With the flames licking at his severed cockpit, Pete realized they would have to jump to the ground—and now. Holding his copilot tightly as she clung to him with her left arm, they launched into the void, brushing sharp metal in the process, landing unscathed at the foot of the flames. There were sounds—the sounds of fire and wind and liquids hissing on hot metal—but otherwise it was deathly quiet, as if nothing were amiss.
    Pete and Jean stumbled back, staying clear of the debris. It was then that his internal compass realigned itself. Until that moment he had not understood. The raging inferno which had appeared outside his windscreen wasn’t Dick Timson’s airplane. It was his own. It was the funeral pyre of Flight 170’s cabin, and as he looked in disbelief, Pete could see the outline of burning seats and window frames on the eastern end of the hammerhead.
    â€œNo!” It had begun as a whisper and risen to a scream in his throat as the big man started forward, searching the flames for his passengers. Where were they? He had to help. Pete Kaminsky began running around the south side of the wreckage, seeing the trail of debris, most of it on fire. There was wreckage to his right, a dark mass of twisted metal, and from that direction, over the noise of a distant siren now starting to wail, he could hear a voice. His pace quickened as he skirted the burning midsection and headed for that sound, hearing other human sounds now from the eerie scene, unidentifiable noises of pain and confusion.
    The ruined tail of the 737 was on his left, the flaming remains of the shattered cabin in between. But seats had been dragged out of the wreckage by the Airbus as it crashed through, and he thought he could see people safely standing on the far side of the tail, which was not in flames. Maybe people had survived. Maybe they all had made it. In the