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Page 401
and a war council. Upwards of fifty people, most of them trained to respond to crises, had crowded into the enclosure to hear Major Harris, standing on a box for better visibility, tell them the facts. They were grim.
The Russian and Canadian divers had all died in the crash of the Starlifter, together with the crew. The only survivor from the plane was a badly burned woman, one of the two CCND members scheduled to observe events at Site X, both of whom had missed the press plane.
To compound the tragedy, many of the Russian and European newspeople had gathered to greet the Russian divers at the end of the steel runway, or at least so they had thought. There was no protection from the sleet and the driving wind there, and the small hut used as a control tower was only large enough for two. Anticipating that the plane would land at the opposite end of the runway, as theirs had, many in the group had sheltered from the weather under the wings of the grounded Starlifter, against the specific advice of the airmen on the scene. But the shift in wind direction had changed the landing pattern to the exact opposite of that experienced in previous flights. The onlookers were trapped, although a few tried to run. The pilot of the big plane, knowing it was too low to begin with, fighting the wind sheer, had tried desperately to skim over the sister ship, and failed. The descending Starlifter had flown into her sister ship and disintegrated into a ball of oily fire.
Some twenty media people were in the direct line of the crash, reporters, technicians, cameramen. Ten were dead at the scene, six were critical with burns and other injuries, and four were missing, either blown to bits by the explosion or unrecognizable as human remains. The ten who had not been at the runway were in the admin tent, very distraught, demanding to know what could be done about their situation.
"So now you all know what we know to date," Major Harris said somberly. "We think everyone in the Russian contingent died. We have so far counted six survivors of the press

 
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