Word: sand
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Without exception, the stories in this collection unspool into a world of loneliness, yearning and blood. Auto crashes seem to be fatefully programmed into the character of the victims. A girl imagines the Southwest as an optical illusion of sunshine and sand divided by highways. The designs of small animals are mashed into the hot roadway, "run over again and again by big trucks and retired people seeing America...
...Pacific, the tormented and by then tainted American hero Charles A. Lindbergh sighted a lone figure on the beach below. "At 1,000 yards, my .50-calibers are deadly . . . I cannot miss . . . My finger tightens on the trigger. A touch, and he will crumple on the coral sand." But there is something about the potential victim's bearing, stride and dignity "that has formed a bond between us . . . I realize that the life of this unknown stranger-probably an enemy-is worth a thousand times more to me than his death. I should never quite have forgiven myself...
...Pentagon "tank," where the Chiefs meet, explained his colleagues' attitude: "They stood 100% behind a rescue of American people. But if that operation turned into support for Hussein, they were saying, 'Look, we have been burned on Viet Nam, and before we get out there on the sand we want a much more detailed foreign policy scenario than we have got now.' " The real question, said another general, was: "How could we have got out of there in any possible way with any good...
...drums strung out in a line. The British had never used Dawson's strip to land a plane that weighed more than a fraction of the 707's 180,000 Ibs. Ever so lightly, Wood brought the 707 down, down, until its huge wheels skimmed along the packed sand and began to turn. Then he eased the wheel forward and set the plane down on the baked desert crust. It held. Gaza One had safely landed at "Revolution Airstrip...
Forty minutes later, Haifa One started its descent into the darkness. As soon as his DC-8 touched down, Swissair Captain Fritz Schreiber hit the brakes and applied full reverse thrust on the four engines, raising a cloud of desert dust and sand, which was sucked into the ventilation system. "The cabin was filling up with cloudy stuff that smelted like smoke," recalled Cecily Simmon of Utica, N.Y. "You could hardly breathe." Many passengers leaped through emergency doors before it became evident that there was no fire. When the dust settled, the Swissair passengers saw the reason for the fast...