Cloudburst (44 page)

“Keep an eye on the direction, Wickham. He’ll probably go north.”

“Yes, sir.”

Farther forward, two operators were sweeping the sea’s surface and the nearby air corridors for traffic. Aside from two unlucky Aeroflot jets heading north to New Orleans there was no traffic between Havana and Miami. Only flight 422 and its tail, Springer Seven-Three, were visible, moving west by southwest, twenty miles south and far below Springer Seven-Eight

“Commander, this is Radar One.”

“Go ahead.”

“Air traffic is clear, and surface traffic is moving out.”

“Good. Okay, clear Seven-Three: We’ve got the bird now. How many surface contacts?”

“Two, sir. Looks like the weather did most of the work.”

It had. An exaggerated National Weather Service forecast had sent those in the area scurrying for the shelter of the coast. The commander wondered what story the higher-ups would have concocted if Aldo hadn’t conveniently shown.

“Com, send to Snowman:
The weather is clear.
”

Almost directly below the AWACS the USS
Chandler
, a Kidd-class destroyer, was ending her own search of the area. Even with the weather churning the sea surface and playing noise games with her sonar there was no mistaking the sound of nuclear-powered steam turbines pushing two submarines out of the area at flank speed. The rush of superheated coolant through their pumps sent waves of sound through the ocean, the easily distinguishable high-frequency whirring in stark contrast to the staticky low harmonics of the surface disturbance.

Both of the subs would soon be out of the exclusion zone. One was American. The other was as yet unidentified.

Fifty miles to the east the USS
John Young
, a Spruance-class destroyer, was moving north at full speed through heavy seas, her own area now sanitized.

The stage was now clear for the players to be engaged.

Flight 422

Hours after wearing the vest, the soreness turned to a sharper pain as Hadad donned the explosive-laden garment before landing. Two wide lanes of fire ran front to back over each shoulder, exactly where the metal support straps were. Comfort hadn’t been a priority when designing the weapon, and, he reminded himself, it shouldn’t cloud his determination now.
Others have suffered much more than this minuscule discomfort
. He could see the faces of them in his mind, and every time he slept. They were the force behind the purpose.

Hadad entered the cockpit, relieving Wael once more. He, in turn, would go below and allow Abu a rest. The door clicked shut without either of the pilots turning to acknowledge or challenge their new guard. Again Hadad wriggled into the jump seat and let the Uzi lie across his lap.

Through the windshield a light glow was visible coming from below, but no discernible feature emitting it. Hadad raised himself up until he had a higher vantage than either of the pilots. There were a cluster of lights visible to the left through what must have been a cloud cover, and almost straight on, but farther off, there was a short line of parallel lights. A runway.

“How long until we land?”

Hendrickson stretched his neck and half turned. “A few minutes.”

And a few after that you’ll be Swiss cheese,
Buzz thought. The radio message hadn’t been specific, but it assured them something would be happening.

Hendrickson asked for a last check of Jose Marti’s runways. Buzz pulled the information up on the flight computer.

“That’s two-three ahead,” the co-pilot said.

“Do you think they want us to use it?” Hendrickson asked rhetorically. The Cubans—or whoever was running the show—had only one runway lit amid the blackness: number 23, identified by its compass heading in tens of degrees. “All right. I figure we’re cleared right in. How about you?”

“Maybe we should check it out with our leader here.” Buzz was trying for a little antagonism, just to keep the pirate off-balance. “How about it, Mr. Big? Have we got your permission to land, or do you want us to do a low pass just for show?”

Hadad barely heard the crack and gave it no mind. The time had passed for an iron hand. The end was almost within sight.

“Guess so.”

“Let’s set her down,” the captain said, mostly to himself, his thumb rubbing the control column tenderly. Almost a caress for the
Maiden
. “Approach checklist.”

The two officers ran through the landing checks in under a minute. They were eight minutes from touchdown. Ahead, the rows of lights were becoming more defined. Hopefully the
Maiden
would touch down dead center between them, just past the patchwork of red threshold lights. That would give her ample room to stop.

Without tower contact they had no exact word on wind conditions at ground level. Fortunately their surreptitious shadow had fed them enough information to allow for some plans for the landing.

“I show a marker,” Buzz called out. “Don’t know what kind. They don’t use the North American system, do they?”

“Good question. Did you see any others?”

“Nah. It must’ve been an outer.” Or there might have been none at all, Buzz knew. The Cubans had never faithfully bought into any of the conventions of air travel in the Western hemisphere, their main customers being carriers who didn’t fly into U.S. airports, but seemingly minor things such as airport distance markers were ultra important to 422.

“Okay.” The captain thought quickly. “Let’s ignore it just to be safe. It’s pretty damn close in for an outer. We should have passed a middle.”

“We’re doing it by dead reckoning, then.”

“Right,” Hendrickson confirmed.

Intensity of the lights grew, as did their definition into separate specks. The Cubans did have visual referencing, split-colored lights near the runway’s end to give pilots cues as to their position on the glide slope. The
Maiden
was right on.

“Ten degrees,” Hendrickson ordered. His hands were secure on the column, leaving the flap adjustment to his first officer.

‘Ten degrees …”

The bright red flashing square caught their attention more than the extra loud warning buzzer. A major system had failed. The flaps!

“Shit!” Buzz yelled. “Locked at zero degrees.” He typed a quick command one-handed for a system readout. “Pressure is at one hundred and ten percent!”

Captain Bart Hendrickson had to now think faster than he ever had in his life. The
Clipper Atlantic Maiden
was a minute from touchdown, with minimal brakes remaining, and a malfunctioning flap system.

“What is it?” Hadad asked excitedly, leaning forward.

“Shut up!”

Hydraulic pressure at 110 percent could only mean that there was some sort of system blockage at the extenders. The pumps were trying to move the big control surfaces to slow the jumbo jet before landing, but something was preventing it. They’d gone into an unplanned overdrive, pumping harder to free the stuck system, and raising the operating pressure to above max. If 110 didn’t free it, nothing would.

Hendrickson released his death grip on the twin upright column handles. He was going to be calm about this. Calm and determined. “Cut number two, all the way.”

Buzz hit the emergency engine shutoff for the inboard left-side engine, in effect cutting off fuel and oxygen flow to the turbine. That would add some drag to slow the plane.

The runway was coming up at them rapidly. Hendrickson brought the column back farther than would be normal to compensate for the reduced lift. The flaps, at this point during landing, would be providing lift and drag, keeping the aircraft in the air while the drag slowed the airspeed and thus its ability to stay airborne.

“When we hit, reverse one and four, and stand on the brakes.”

“Gotcha.” Buzz had both feet ready to stamp on the pedals as soon as the nose wheel was down; any sooner would lock the main gear and bring the aircraft’s nose down hard—maybe too hard. Nose gears had collapsed before when inexperienced pilots had hit the brakes too soon.

“And push your stick full forward. Let’s see if we can make her real heavy.” The captain wanted to use downward force, created by simulating a dive, to artificially raise the weight of the
Maiden
, creating more drag. Maybe, just maybe, everything in combination would work. But, his experience told him, probably not.

Behind the pilots Hadad could sense the trouble, though he knew little of specifics. His physical senses also told him that the plane was going very fast—faster than he had ever felt a plane go during landing. It would be a final test of the righteousness of his mission. Allah, in His great wisdom, was granting the purpose one final sanction. Hadad sat back, his eyes wide open to watch his prisoners, but his mind free and drifting.

Sitting four full stories above what would soon be the ground, the captain had to aim farther down the runway than pilots of other craft would. It was an artificial point, some fifteen hundred feet past the threshold under normal circumstances. The
Maiden
needed all the room she could get, so Hendrickson focused only a thousand feet past the beginning of pavement.

“This is too fast…” Buzz watched the speed gauge drop way too slowly. It was only down to 230 knots, and with only fifteen seconds until—impact?—it wasn’t going down much farther. “Jesus, Bart, we’re gonna hit hard.”

The forward motion was terrific, and as frightening was the stone-like rate of descent now that the
Maiden
was forcing her way to the earth. She was going to land fast, the only way under the circumstances, and she was going to come down with millions of pounds of force on the runway.

“Let’s hope they laid good concrete,” the captain blurted out just as he pulled the column into his gut to slow the
Maiden’s
descent. The big jet crossed the point where grass met the runway at 210 knots—40 knots faster than normal. Prayers, silent and personal, filled the flight deck.

With her nose ten degrees up, the
Maiden’s
multiple-carriage main landing gear screeched when the rearmost wheels caught the runway at 206 knots. Like giant shock absorbers the struts on the main carriages compressed under the massive weight, but not enough to compensate. Two tires on the right mains blew a fraction of a second after hitting, but it was barely noticeable as an occurrence, entirely because of the violent metal-scraping-stone sound that came as the contoured rear of the 747 made contact and dragged along the runway. Sparks shot sideways and backward, then the nose eased forward, setting the dual front wheels on the ground.

The jolt inside the aircraft was tremendous. Below, several passengers went frantic, a reaction unnoticed by the hijackers, who were themselves frightened by the noise and violent vibrations. Wael hadn’t settled into a seat and fell awkwardly into the aisle, forward of a group of male passengers. He recovered quickly, grabbing the arm of an empty seat and pointing the submachine gun at the startled men. One, he noticed, was smiling, an expression he could not comprehend at the moment.

Hadad, too, was surprised, even in his enforced serenity. His free hand found the fold-down armrest and dug into it instinctively.
In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful…

Instantly upon feeling the nose wheel touch, Buzz reversed the remaining two turbofans and stood on the brakes. Hendrickson also brought both his feet down on the pedals, full force. There was barely anything left of the brakes, and less than seven thousand feet of cement in front of them.

“Push the stick!”

Buzz heeded the shouted command, joining the captain in holding the control column all the way to the panel. The front end of the Maiden dropped noticeably as upward force on the rear elevators caused an opposite reaction on the nose.

It was working. Though the big Boeing was still moving down the runway way too fast, she was slowing. Whether it would be enough would become apparent very soon.

“Halfway,” Buzz called out.

Hendrickson broke protocol and took his eyes off the direction of travel, glancing at the speed gauge. “One-ten.”

“It’s too damn fast. We’re not gonna make it.” Buzz looked left. The captain was staring through the thick windshield with an icy gaze.

“Weave!”

“What? At one hundred plus? We’ll…”

“Do it, with me, or we’re going to fire-ball regardless.”

Again the pilots broke the rules. Not those of behavior or standards—though several of those were notably excepted in their unorthodox techniques—but those of mechanics and accepted physics. By all common sense and engineering logic the nose wheel, barely enabled to steer at a hundred knots, should break off when forced to turn at the high rate of speed they were traveling.

It didn’t, not even emitting a groan or squeal. The captain, backed up on the rudder pedals by Buzz’s strong pressure, played the Maiden left and right, close to one side of the runway then back to the other. He was creating all kinds of forces to slow the aircraft, and now added severe friction to the list. It was similar to a near skid, only the rear never jackknifed—thankfully.

Eighty. Seventy. Sixty.

“One quarter! She’s doing it!”

“C’mon, girl,” Hendrickson coaxed and cajoled his big baby.

Fifty. The steering was more responsive now, but the brakes were practically nonexistent. On the floor, the pedals felt like steel slabs on a weak spring.

Forty. Thirty. The runway end was upon them.

“Left! Hard!”

Buzz followed the lead, instinctively leaning toward the center console as the
Maiden
heeled over to the right, opposite the direction of her turn. The tires screeched, and for the first time the blown right-side tires were apparent as the aircraft slid slightly. They were turning hard onto the last taxiway at the end of two-three. It wasn’t even lighted. The aircraft’s own landing beams provided illumination, sweeping across the grassy edge of the strip and painting the fronts of several buildings with a passing glow. Then she slowed in mid turn onto the sweeping taxiway, her brakes letting out a final, abrupt moan as the massive discs ground metal into the contact surfaces, and finally, stopped cold.