Chương 4
Parker checked the weather display.
“Top around fourteen thousand.”
We were descending through fifteen.
“Can we stay above it?” Reed asked.
“No,” I said.
“Not if we want the runway.”
Visibility mattered.
So did stability.
Entering cloud meant losing the horizon that had helped us judge the airplane’s slow reactions.
Reed’s mouth tightened.
“You’ve done thrust-only flight in instruments?”
“No.”
His eyes moved to me.
“That would have been useful information earlier.”
“I was busy keeping us upright.”
Parker adjusted her headset.
“Center, Southwest 2891, we need vectors with minimal heading changes through the cloud layer.”
The controller replied almost immediately.
“Southwest 2891, present heading will take you within six miles of final for runway three-two right.”
“Can you clear everything underneath us?”
“Already done.”
I looked out the windshield as the first wisps of cloud crossed the glass.
The world outside vanished within seconds.
Gray swallowed the mountains.
Gray swallowed the horizon.
Gray swallowed every visual cue human beings had used for thousands of years to know which way was up.
Reed’s breathing changed.
“Artificial horizon only,” I said.
“I know.”
“Say the numbers.”
“What?”
“Say them.”
“Bank three degrees right.”
“Pitch minus two.”
“Airspeed two-forty.”
“Vertical speed minus eighteen hundred.”
The cockpit became a ritual.
Reed called.
Parker verified.
I watched the trend.
Tiny engine changes became our substitute for hands and feet.
“Bank five right.”
“Reduce right one percent.”
“Pitch minus three.”
“Both forward one.”
“Vertical speed increasing.”
“Wait.”
“Bank two.”
“Equalize.”
The airplane wandered through the clouds like a drunk trying to walk a painted line.
At twelve thousand feet, turbulence hit.
The right wing dropped seven degrees.
Reed reacted instantly and shoved the right throttle forward.
Too much.
“Back!” I shouted.
He pulled it.
The right wing continued down.
“Forward again.”
“You just said back.”
“I know what I said.”
“You’re chasing it.”
“No, you started chasing it.”
“Bank twelve degrees.”
Parker’s voice cut through us.
“Fourteen.”
I grabbed the right throttle and advanced it carefully.
Reed slapped my hand away.
“I have it.”
“Then have it.”
“Sixteen degrees.”
The aircraft rolled farther.
My mouth went dry.
Something was wrong.
The right engine was responding.
The airplane was not.
“More right power,” Reed said.
“No.”
“We’re still banking.”
“Look at N1.”
The right engine was already producing significantly more thrust.
Parker saw it.
“That should be turning us left.”
“But it isn’t,” Reed said.
The bank reached eighteen degrees.
I looked at the engine instruments, then at airspeed, then at the yaw indication.
A possibility formed that I did not want.
“Reduce left engine.”
Reed stared at me.
“That’ll increase the asymmetry.”
“Exactly.”
He pulled the left throttle toward idle.
The airplane shuddered.
For three awful seconds, the bank continued.
Then the nose yawed left.
The right wing began rising.
Parker whispered, “Come on.”
Fifteen degrees.
Ten.
Seven.
We leveled again.
Reed’s face had gone gray.
“What the hell was that?”
I did not answer immediately.
Because I was listening.
Under the engine noise, deep in the airframe, there was another vibration.
Faint.
Uneven.
Repeating.
I had heard something like it once before.
Not on the Wraith.
On an older test aircraft with structural damage in the tail.
“Jennifer,” I said, “do we have any indication of a flight-control surface out of position?”
“No hydraulic data worth trusting.”
“Any yaw damper status?”
“Failed with the hydraulics.”
“Could the rudder be displaced?”
Reed looked at me.
“With no pressure?”
“It could be mechanically jammed.”
Parker’s face changed.
“If the rudder is stuck right—”
“Then equal thrust will keep feeding the turn.”
“And differential thrust has been fighting both the bank and the rudder.”
Reed stared at the instruments.
“That’s why our corrections are inconsistent.”
I nodded.
The problem had just become worse.
We were not steering a powerless airplane anymore.
We were steering an airplane whose tail might be trying to kill us.
The clouds began thinning below ten thousand feet.
Light appeared ahead.
Then earth.
Brown fields.
Roads.
A silver ribbon of water.
And, far in the distance, the pale geometry of Grant County International.
Parker saw it first.
“There.”
Reed leaned toward the windshield.
Runway three-two right was visible as a narrow gray line.
It should have felt like salvation.
Instead, I saw our position.
We were high.
We were fast.
And we were approaching from the wrong side of the centerline.
“How far?”
Parker checked.
“Twenty-six miles.”
“Airspeed?”
“Two-fifty-two.”
Reed looked at me.
“We need to get down.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
I studied the runway, the engine gauges, and the ground moving steadily beneath us.
Without elevators, spoilers, or normal trim, descent control was going to be crude.
Without flaps, our landing speed would be vicious.
Without reliable directional response, lining up might be harder than surviving the descent.
I touched the throttles.
“We stop trying to fly like a passenger jet.”
Parker looked at me.
“What do we fly like?”
I watched the runway ahead grow almost imperceptibly larger.
“Something already broken.”
The door opened, and cold evening air rushed into the cockpit.
A firefighter leaned in first.
His eyes moved from Captain Reed to First Officer Parker, then finally stopped on me.
For a moment, he looked confused.
That reaction followed me everywhere.
People expected heroes to look like heroes.
They expected uniforms.
They expected medals.
They expected someone who belonged in the center of a crisis.
They did not expect a sixty-year-old woman wearing faded jeans and work boots with scars across both hands.
“Everyone alive?” the firefighter asked.
Reed looked at him.
“Yes.”
The firefighter nodded slowly.
Then he looked back at me.
“Who are you?”
Nobody answered.
Because nobody had decided yet.
I stepped away from the cockpit controls and felt the weight of my body for the first time in an hour.
During the emergency, my body had been a tool.
A calculation.
A reaction.
Now it was just an old body shaking from exhaustion.
The firefighter extended his hand.
May you like
I did not take it.
Not because I was rude.
