Lassiter 07 - Flesh and Bones (46 page)

Suddenly, an explosion reverberated behind them, a booming rumble accompanied by the discordant shriek of shearing metal.

"Jesus, what was that!" Ryder shouted, instinctively looking back toward the cabin.

Kingston tightened his hands on the yoke as the airframe shuddered. "Larry, what do you see?"

The flight engineer scanned his gauges. "Pressure on engine two has gone to zero. Fuel flow is zero. Shit, we must have blown the aft engine."

"Perform engine shutdown checklist," Kingston ordered. As Ryder ran through the items, turning off the fuel to the tail engine, idling the throttle, the aircraft rolled slightly to the right. Kingston fought the yoke to level the plane. "Ailerons not responding."

Dozier checked the gauges. "Double shit! Hydraulic pressure zero. Hydraulic quantity zero."

"Can't be," Ryder said. "We've got three redundant systems. You can't lose them all just blowing one engine."

Kingston struggled with the yoke, which trembled under his hands but wouldn't turn. He locked his hands on the wheel, took a breath, and threw his shoulders into it. Nothing. The aircraft continued to tremble.

Ryder's fingers danced over half-a-dozen switches as he scanned his gauges. "Elevators, ailerons, and rudder all inoperative," he said, his voice strained.

"It can't be," Dozier repeated. "How the hell are we gonna turn? How are we gonna control our descent?"

We're not, Kingston thought, rapidly analyzing the situation. Without flight controls, it'll be virtually impossible to land. He tried to activate the speed brakes. "Spoilers not responding either," he said after a futile try. He increased thrust on the left engine and the wings leveled off, but the aircraft continued vibrating, and a few seconds later, the nose pitched up and the airframe shuddered.

"We're gonna stall!" Ryder warned, his voice breaking.

Kingston gave it more power, hitting the right engine harder. The nose came down, but the aircraft rolled slightly left.

"Miami Approach, this is Atlantica six-four-zero," Kingston said into his mike, while fighting the roll. His voice was calm, but the words were clipped with urgency. "We've lost the two engine and all three hydraulic systems. We declare an emergency six-four-zero."

The voice in his headset was equally composed. "Roger six-four-zero. We'll vector everyone else out of there. Descend to fifteen hundred. Turn left to two-seven-zero and prepare for final approach."

"That's a problem," Kingston responded. "Gonna have to use asymmetrical thrust from number one and three to try and turn."

His matter-of-fact tone masked the tension building inside him. Inconceivable as it seemed, they simply had no control over the aircraft.

"Copy that, six-four-zero. Advise when you're ready to turn into final."

"When and if," Ryder muttered.

There was a knock at the cabin door, and Larry Dozier opened it. Senior Flight Attendant Marcia Snyder, a divorcee who had just put her third child through college, rushed in and slammed the door. Her face was pale, and her words came rapidly. "I was in the aft galley. The explosion was right over my head."

"Did you see anything?" Kingston asked.

"No. At first, I thought we'd hit a small plane. There was a puff of smoke, but no fire I could see. I think part of the tail is gone."

"Prepare the passengers for emergency landing," Kingston ordered. "Short briefing procedure. We don't have much time. And get me a souls-on-board count."

"Already did," she said. "Two hundred seventy-five passengers, thirteen crew."

Kingston nodded his thanks. Marcia was already out the door, heading back into the first-class compartment, when Kingston turned to his first officer. "Jim, deploy the ADG. See if we can get some power out of it."

The copilot yanked a lever, and a small propellor-driven generator dropped a few feet out of the aircraft into the jetstream. Dozier kept his eyes on his control panels. After a moment, he said, "We're getting power. But without the hydraulics, it's not going anywhere."

"We have to do it manually," Kingston said.

"How?" his copilot asked.

Kingston didn't know. There was no procedure for this. He'd have to make it up as he went along. "Grab your yoke. We'll work them together. Larry, get up here and handle the throttles. Let's try to turn left. Ease off on number one and give some power to number three. Jim and I will pull like hell on our yokes. Let's go!"

As the pilot and copilot tried turning their two-hundred-ton aircraft with the power in their forearms and wrists, the flight engineer crouched behind them, one hand on each of the working throttles.

The aircraft yawed shakily to the left, and the right wing tilted upward. "Too much!" Kingston warned, his voice rising for the first time. Excessive roll and the plane could flip over. One thing the DC-10 was not was an acrobatic aircraft.

Dozier eased back on the right engine and gave more power to the left. The aircraft rolled in the other direction, leveling off, but the nose pitched upward.

"Miami Control, this is six-four-zero," Kingston said, forcing himself to calm down. "We can't control the aircraft. When we correct pitch, we start to roll and vice versa, and we're yawing like a son of a bitch. Don't know how we'll line it up with the runway."

"Copy that six-four-zero. Got you on radar, forty miles west of the airport. We'll have equipment waiting."

Again, the big aircraft yawed to the right, this time the left wing tilting upward.

The controller meant fire-rescue, paramedics, and enough foam to float a battleship. But without the ability to turn, without a way to control the pitching, rolling, and yawing, they would not so much land as cartwheel across the runway. In that case, the only equipment they would need would be hearses.

"We can't turn your way and we don't have any brakes," Kingston replied, "so I don't know how we'd stop this thing even if we get it there." He pictured the crammed apartment buildings and condos west of the Palmetto Expressway. "We don't want to drop it into a neighborhood." He glanced at his two crewmates and pointed down toward the ground. They both nodded. "We're going to have to ditch." He sighed audibly and signed off, "Six-four-zero."

Below them, in the darkness, was the primordial slough. Kingston hoped for a soft, level spot, not a strand of mahogany or live oak trees. It wasn't the ideal terrain for ditching but better than the side of a mountain.

Dozier was hurriedly thumbing through the flight manual. "Nothing here. Nothing for loss of all hydraulics."

"It's not supposed to happen," Kingston said softly.

# # #

He said his name was Howard Laubach. Rita Zaslavskaya said she was glad to meet him, but she wasn't glad at all. She had heard the explosion and felt the plane shudder. Now, the right wing kept dipping and the nose of the plane was sliding back and forth. She'd asked a flight attendant what happened, but the woman hurried past her and headed toward the cockpit, the color drained from her face.

"It could have been anything," Howard Laubach said, a hopeful note in his voice. "A flock of birds could have been sucked into the engine. Heck, that's brought down planes before. But the captain seems like he has this one under control."

It didn't seem under control to Rita. It seemed as if the plane would veer to one side, then overcorrect and swerve to the other side like a wobbly drunk attempting to walk a straight line. Other passengers were chattering nervously or praying or simply grasping their armrests with bloodless hands. Rita felt queasy, as if she'd eaten piroshki made with spoiled meat, and the look on the flight attendant's face had frightened her. Something was very wrong.

She turned to her seatmate. "You're pretty calm for someone who brings his own oxygen aboard." She was annoyed that the man could be so oblivious to the situation.

"It isn't oxygen," Laubach said, testily. "I'm just prepared. If there's a fire, you'd wish you were, too." He clutched his smoke hood, as if she might steal it.

"What's that noise?" Rita asked, jerking around in her seat.

"Landing gear," Laubach said. "He's setting her down."

"Where? Here?" She leaned past him and peered out into the blackness. All she could see was the startled face of an insane woman. It took her a moment to figure out that she was staring into her own reflection.

Suddenly, a horn blared on the Ground Proximity Warning System. The nose angled up again, and both pilot and copilot pushed forward on the yoke. Tony Kingston already had given the tower his count: 288 souls on board. It helped the authorities when it was time to count bodies.

"Six-four-zero, please advise," Miami Control said through the headset.

"We're about to put the world's largest tricycle down in the swamp," Kingston said.

"Roger that, six-four-zero. We've got you on radar and we're dispatching rescue vehicles."

"Tony, I can't keep the nose down," Ryder said. "I'm having a real nose-up moment here." His voice was cracking.

"More power, Larry."

Dozier pulled both throttles back. "C'mon baby," he coaxed her. "Level, level, level."

The aircraft picked up speed and the nose came down.

"You're gonna have to back off some more," Kingston said. "We're going too fast."

"Without flaps or slats, I can't slow it down without stalling," Dozier said, sounding desperate.

It's not hopeless, Kingston told himself, but he knew the odds were against them. At over two hundred knots, they'd likely break up on impact.

Dozier eased up on both throttles.

Too much.

A puff of smoke, a sputter, a cough.

"Oh, shit!" Ryder shouted. "Number one quit."

They were flying on one engine. Dozier immediately increased the power, but it was too late. The number three engine smoked, choked, and stalled. They coasted in total silence, the huge aircraft a glider.

"Okay, fellows," Tony Kingston said. "We're taking her in."

For several seconds there was nothing but the sweet, sad rush of the slipstream past the windshield. Then the left wing dipped, and the plane rolled hard, the wings virtually perpendicular to the ground. Loose papers flew across the cockpit. Without the lift from the wings, they had only a few seconds before they would plunge nose down into the ground.

Tony Kingston fought the yoke, his cramped arms futilely trying to right the plane. He heard screams from the cabin, just as in his nightmares. Next to him, his copilot whispered a prayer.

Kingston wanted to draw out the last moments, to arrange his thoughts, pull up memories from the recesses of his mind. But there was no time. He saw her then, her face flashing by, beautiful but heartbroken, and for the briefest moment, he felt a stabbing pain, knowing of her anguish when she heard the news. He said it then, knowing the cockpit voice recorder would pick it up, and she would hear him or at least read the words. He told her he loved her.

A few jumbled images raced through his senses: his father, long buried; a cold Minnesota lake where he swam as a child with his sister; and then the black-and-white grainy videotape of the two men walking along the jetty in Kuwait just before the bomb hit.

"Impact"
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ON THE NIGHT BEFORE HER INTERVIEW at the Supreme Court of the United States, Lisa Fremont did not know if she could go through with it. She wanted the job all right-what newly minted lawyer wouldn't?-but then, the thought of corrupting the position, of using it to repay an old debt, was antithetical to everything she thought she had become.

Until today, she thought she could handle it. But that was before she visited the Court to get the feel of the place. What she felt was reverence, a sense of awe, even piety.

Using his own key, Max Wanaker had breezed into her apartment just after 6 P.M. He kissed her hello, poured himself a Scotch, and made her a Gibson, heavy on the vodka, light on the vermouth. Then he loosened his tie and tossed his Armani suit coat over a chair. He kicked off his black Italian loafers, polished to a high gloss.

Lisa wore a cropped stretch lace camisole and high-cut briefs, both white with satin trim, under a soft pink chenille bathrobe that made her golden red hair glow a buttery copper under the track lighting. She had put on the robe when Max turned the air-conditioning down to sixty-five. It didn't matter if it was her apartment or his hotel suite, everything was always done to Max's specifications. Now, in early autumn in Washington, D.C., there was a manmade cold front settling into the living room.

They hadn't gone out to dinner. Too risky. Not because Max's wife, Jill, might discover them. Jill was blissfully alone in Miami, well aware of Max's long-term relationship with Lisa.

No, the risk was bigger now. There could be no connection-no nexus, to use the legal term-between Atlantica Airlines and her. If there were, and it became known, she'd be no use to Max, and his big plans would be blown.

For a moment she wondered what Tony would have done, but that was easy. Tony Kingston was the Eagle Scout, the
Top Gun
navy pilot, a yes ma'am, no ma'am, guy who didn't jaywalk, litter, or cheat on his taxes. But Tony was gone, and now the plaintiffs' lawyers said he'd been negligent. Lying bastards! Vultures picking at the flesh of the dead. A part of her wanted to help Max tank the case just to shut them up, but she realized that was irrational, and hadn't she spent all these years locking her brain into a lawyer's sense of logic and reason?