Night Fall by Nelson DeMille

six-knot wind. You don’t often get conditions like that for a Sunfish to venture out onto the ocean.” He continued, “At about eight-twenty, I had navigated the inlet and was out to sea. I took a westerly heading, along the Fire Island shoreline opposite Smith Point County Park.”
    “Let me interrupt you here. Is what you’re telling me public record?”
    “It’s what I told the FBI. I don’t know if it’s public or not.”
    “Did you ever make any public statements after you spoke to the FBI?”
    “I did not.” He added, “I was told not to.”
    “By who?”
    “By the agent who first interviewed me, then by other FBI agents in subsequent interviews.”
    “I see. And who first interviewed you?”
    “Your wife.”
    She wasn’t my wife at the time, but I nodded and said, “Please continue.”
    He glanced out at the ocean again and continued, “I was sitting in the Sunfish, looking up at the luff of the sail, which is how you spend most of your time in a sailboat. It was very quiet and calm, and I was enjoying the sail. Sunset was officially eight-twenty-oneP.M., but EENT-end-of-evening nautical twilight-would be about eight-forty-fiveP.M. I glanced at my watch, which is digital, illuminated, and accurate, and saw that it was eight-thirty and fifteen seconds. I decided to come about and enter the inlet before dark.”
    Captain Spruck stopped speaking and had a thoughtful look in his eyes, then he said, “I glanced up at my sail, and something in the sky to the southwest caught my eye. It was a bright streak of light rising into the sky. The light was reddish orange and may have risen from a point beyond the horizon.”
    “Did you hear anything?”
    “I did not. The light streak was coming from out on the ocean, toward the land, and slightly toward my position. It was climbing at a steep angle, perhaps thirty-five or forty degrees, and seemed to be accelerating, although that’s a difficult call because of the angles and the lack of firm background references. But if I had to estimate the speed, I’d say about a hundred knots.”
    I asked, “You figured all this out in… how many seconds?”
    “About three seconds. You get about five seconds in the cockpit of a fighter-bomber.”
    I counted to three in my head and realized that was more time than you get to dodge a bullet.
    Captain Spruck added, “But as I told the FBI, there were too many variables and unknowns for me to be absolutely positive about any of my calculations. I didn’t know the point of origin of the object, or its exact size or distance from me, so its speed was a guess.”
    “So you’re not really sure what you saw?”
    “I know what I saw.” He looked through the window and said, “I’ve seen enough enemy surface-to-air missiles coming at me and coming at my squadron mates to get a sense of these things.” He smiled tightly and said, “When they’re coming at you, they look bigger, faster, and closer than they actually are.” He added, “You divide by two.”
    I smiled and said, “I had a little Beretta pointed at me once that I thought was a.357 Magnum.”
    He nodded.
    I asked, “But it was definitely a streak of red light that you saw?”
    “That I’m sure of. A reddish orange streak of bright light, and at the apex of this light was a white, incandescent spot, which suggested to me that I was seeing the ignition point of probably a solid fuel propellant trailed by the red-orange afterburn.”
    “No shit?”
    “No shit.”
    “But did you see the… projectile?”
    “I did not.”
    “Smoke?”
    “A plume of white smoke.”
    “Did you notice this aircraft-this 747 that subsequently crashed?”
    “I noticed it briefly before I became fixed on the streak of light. I could see the glint-the last of the sunlight off its aluminum skin, and I saw the aircraft’s lights, and four white contrails.”
    “Okay… back to the streak of light.”
    Captain Spruck continued, “I watched this red-orange streak of light