Cloudburst (28 page)

“Put the body on the wing.” Hadad left the door open. Abu and Wael lifted the body by the arms and legs. They carried it to the stairs and dropped it with a swing onto the steps, letting gravity do the work. A few seconds later screams from below could be heard on the flight deck.

The captain felt what fingernails he had dig into the sturdy padding of the armrest. Buzz simply turned away.

“Now, Cap-tan, have you learned what will happen when you defy me?” There was no answer, just a look. Hadad couldn’t tell what it meant. “Get the plane ready.”

Hendrickson and his first officer felt sick as they quietly began the preflight routine by reflex. It was instinct now, just a survival drive. Get the aircraft ready, up, and down again safely—wherever that might be. Their duties would take over their minds and put the ugly incident away. Not gone, just away.

Hadad had calculated this one perfectly. They would obey his commands, for they feared too much for their passengers. He smiled at their backs as they chattered and twisted dials and pressed buttons.
Tough old American soldiers, you forget too easily.

Fort Belvoir

The watch teams were constantly monitoring Benina, as they had since the initial catch of the aircraft. It hadn’t been difficult considering its stationary position. Mostly they were zooming in and out on the scene, and once Number 8601 had needed to be moved to avoid some thick cloud cover. The team at Belvoir knew the severity of the situation, at least the situation they were aware of. At CSOC in Colorado Springs the controllers were monitoring their own dilemma: Number 8601 was almost out of fuel. So desperate was it that the general at CSOC insisted on a direct order from the secretary before maneuvering his $1 billion bird.

On the seventy-inch monitor scenes were replayed over and over in real time. Soldiers would sit on or around a military vehicle. One would leave, then come back. Officers would occasionally walk into the frame to survey the aircraft or talk to the troops. One, a short, balding man—a captain, they thought—was a frequent visitor. Every second was recorded on disk, to be later enlarged, enhanced, and analyzed, though ‘later’ meant half an hour as opposed to a few weeks under usual circumstances.

“Gotcha,” the senior tech exclaimed. She was former Navy out only a few years.

“Recorders and VDI are nominal, Jen. What’s up?”

“Starboard wing door, foreground. That’s…what’s the number?”

The junior tech looked at his notes. “Number three door.” He entered something on the side keyboard. “Got it. Marie 1347 local, 1247 Zulu. Look there.” A light cursor in the shape of an arrow moved across to the point. “That’s a pumper; they’re gonna fuel.”

“Oh God.” Jenny’s eyes focused on the number three door.

“Shit.”

“Zoom in, Matt. Just a little.”

The image grew of a person stepping onto the wing. It was a man. He wore military clothing, but there was no weapon. It was obvious why.

He dragged the body by its feet out to a spot above the inboard engine. A second man emerged and walked out on the wing, holding two weapons while they stood next to the body. They reentered a minute later. The body lay face up with its arms outstretched and above the head, as though crucified.

“They drew first blood, Jen.”

“Yeah. You better call the super in.”

Jenny continued to watch as the supervisor was summoned. Not long after the men left the wing the pumper truck connected its hoses to the underground pipeline and to the underside of the 747’s wing. Topping off the tanks didn’t take long; little fuel was used between Athens and Benghazi. When fueling was complete a tow vehicle darted under the wing and hooked up to the nose wheel.

Moments later, with the supervisor in the watch center, the big jet was pushed back from the spot it had occupied for just over a day. All the troops were gone. Just the aircraft and the tow vehicle were in frame.

The supervisor asked for the phone. “Get me a line to the White House.” He held the phone to his ear, waiting for the connection.

“There she goes,” Matt said. The tow unhooked and moved out of frame. He increased the field of view to include the entire tarmac just as the four turbofans came to life.

Flight 422

The four engines whined at idle, not fast enough to move her but sufficient to circulate fluids within the turbines and provide power to the other systems. Hendrickson gave the instruments a final check.

“Can I contact the tower for weather and clearance?” the captain asked.

“There is no need.” The answer came from behind. “Just fly.”

In front was a shimmering road of cement—the taxiway—that ran parallel to the runway. Both pilots looked over the taxiway. It was covered with a layer of dust, with drifting swirls, reminiscent of sandbars stretching the width of the thoroughfare.

“Hand me those binocs,” the captain said. Buzz handed the glasses over, watching as Hendrickson dialed in and scanned the runway from left to right, leaning forward to his console for a better vantage. Its condition wasn’t any better than the taxiway. “That thing hasn’t been swept in days.” He realized they had landed on all the crud scattered over it. “Look.” The glasses were passed back to Buzz.

“So what do we do different?” Buzz asked from behind the binoculars.

“Besides pray? I don’t know.” The captain sat back and twisted his body into what should have been a comfortable position, but wasn’t.

“Here.” Buzz handed the performance calculations over. These were figured by a computer and took into account the aircraft’s weight and load, altitude of the airport, and weather conditions present. They were always hand-checked by the first officer, then displayed along with other information on the displays. Still, there was an element of uncertainty. “Some of it’s just a guess.”

“I know.”

“I allowed an extra five knots, just in case,” Buzz added. His tone didn’t display much confidence in his words, which got him a furrowed-brow look from the captain. “I don’t have any idea what they loaded.”

Hendrickson looked at the written figures. “Let’s try it.”

Takeoff and landing for a commercial aircraft are considered the times when the likelihood for a disastrous event is highest, necessitating procedures that assumed the worst would happen. The pilot held a firm grip on his stick, the co-pilot “backing up” the captain, ready to take over in the unlikely event that a medical problem, such as a heart attack, should strike him at a critical moment.

The worst was also planned for when considering mechanical performance. Everything assumed that the most important part of the aircraft would fail at the most crucial time during takeoff or landing. Where takeoff was concerned, the engines were the major system. Their performance, or lack of it, was the basis for calculating several variable airspeed ‘barriers’ that aided a pilot when deciding whether to go ahead with or abort a takeoff. V-l was the speed at which the decision to proceed had to be made and the last point at which a takeoff could be aborted by reversing the engines and applying full braking power. Beyond V-l an abort would surely end up in a fiery slide past the runway’s end. V-R indicated the speed at which the aircraft would be generating sufficient lift for a safe takeoff and climb-out, allowing the pilots to nose up—or rotate—the aircraft.

There was a gentle forward push on the back of the captain’s right hand as he and Buzz advanced the numbers one and four engine throttle levers. The
Maiden
lurched up and forward, coming back down on the nose gear shocks with a pronounced bounce. Turbine compression increased in the two outboards, moving the aircraft slowly onto the taxiway, where the captain turned her to the right, lining up on the yellow center line. The ground speed crawled upward.

“Jesus, Bart. We should be rolling easy at this thrust-to-weight.”

They were an eighth of the way to the threshold area, and rolling way too slowly. Captain Hendrickson moved his aircraft to the left side of the taxiway, then to the extreme right, testing the feel of the
Maiden
. She was heavy. Sluggish was a good word, but not completely descriptive. The bird was…unbalanced, almost like she wanted to do a wheel stand. He touched the throttles forward a bit, then backed off, getting the same forward rise and lurch as before. Buzz looked over to him, and they both knew. Their aircraft was too heavy, and misloaded. Her center of gravity had been altered, by how much they would find out once airborne—if they got that far.

“We’re damn heavy,” Buzz said. “I didn’t figure on this. Man, we feel real heavy.”

“I know.” The captain brought her back to center. “She’s mushy on the ground, like we’re steering with a flat nose wheel.”

Buzz checked the overhead panels for any reds: There were none. The weight of the new cargo was going to present a big enough problem without having to worry about any minor system glitches. And just what was the weight? He wanted to ask—politely deferent, if necessary—but remembered the wrath of the hijacker. Buzz would love to get a crack at him, just a chance to snap his shit-brown neck, but not at the risk of another passenger’s death. Not him. The handiwork was readily apparent on the wing, and he tried not to think about what was going to happen to the body when the aircraft accelerated down the runway.

The nose of the big Boeing came sharply left at the end of the taxiway, and a hundred yards farther came left again onto the runway. Brakes were applied and the throttles brought back to hold the
Maiden
steady. The strip before them was too short for their weight. Both pilots knew it. They would never leave pavement.

“We’re beyond spec,” Buzz pointed out, referring to the hot, thin air of the midday desert that would further complicate a liftoff. “What do you think?”

The captain analyzed the question. Conventional approaches could be cast aside for now. After all, the only certainty was that they were going to dig a long trench in the desert sand at the end of the ten-thousand-foot runway. He figured they would need at least twelve thousand feet to get enough speed up. Unless…

“Buzz, we need speed, right?”

“Yeah,” he answered quizzically

It was a radical idea for a non afterburning jet, possibly ludicrous when applied to the 747. “We’re going to roll with the flaps retracted, smooth-skinned. That’ll give us speed.”

“But lift? We can’t rotate without flaps.”

The captain pointed to the console. “Look, you call out speed, like usual. Just add ten knots to rotation. We’ll use up a hell of a lot of runway, I know, but we’ll be fast enough. At V-R you hit the flaps—ten degrees.”

“That can rip the wings off.” But it might work. Buzz smiled at the runway and sighed a dry breath. In a way the thought excited him. “Just like flying a Harrier off a jump ramp.”

They would trade assured lift for speed, and throw lift in at the last moment, a risky move that very well could bring the first officer’s worry to reality. No one knew if the wings could take the stress, or even if the flaps would extend under the force created by the forward motion. Commercial aircraft were not designed for this.

“You ready?”

Buzz nodded.

“We firewall them on my mark.”

“Okay.”

Hendrickson stretched his hand around the four levers, arching his fingers to touch each of the plastic caps. His palm tensed. “Now!”

They pushed the throttles forward as quickly as the built-in resistance would allow. The cockpit rose up as before and settled down as the aircraft began moving.

Hadad heard the words from his seat behind the pilots, but he was not concerned. Everything had been prepared for. All the calculations were long since made. The plane would fly. The added load could be handled easily by the giant jet—his knowledgeable comrades had assured him of this. It would be so.

The jet blast from the
Maiden’s
four engines sent rocks and other debris flying from the runway and its edges as the aircraft gained speed.

“Come on…” The captain watched the airspeed increase slowly—too slowly.

Buzz pushed on the captain’s hand, holding the throttles full open. The turbines were sucking fuel from the integral wing tanks in huge gulps as they approached 100 percent capacity, a measure of performance they would surpass. Operating beyond full capacity was possible, but not recommended for any period of time. “It’s gonna be close,” he said, louder than he realized. The aircraft passed the halfway point on the runway.

Those who flew did so with an instinctive ability to sense performance beyond what the mechanical indicators told them. For some it was a feeling in the gut, literally, one that told them whether the aircraft was going too slow or fast, or if some meteorological condition was affecting it. Captain Hendrickson felt the Maiden’s bulk beneath. It moved slowly, but there was increasing acceleration.

“V-one,” Buzz called out. The 747 was already beyond the halfway marker by a thousand feet.

“We go,” the captain decided, though that had been fated. He held the throttles forward.

Buzz kept his eyes on the rising speed indicator, not the ever-shortening slab of pavement which was now three quarters gone. The electronic needle crept past the first calculated V-R speed…less than ten knots to go.

*  *  *

A uneasy expression covered Michael’s face. He gripped Sandy’s arm with one hand, and the armrest with the other. Something felt wrong. The speed was too high. His stomach told him so. His hand squeezed, feeling his wife’s soft flesh.

Silently, he willed the jet to fly.

*  *  *

Captain Hendrickson was invoking the same prayer when his first officer shouted, “V-R!”

“Rotate.” Hendrickson pulled the stick back in a smooth motion while Buzz brought the flaps down.

The
Clipper Atlantic Maiden’s
nose rose in response to the downward pressure on the elevators, which were located on the trailing edge of the horizontal stabilizers at the jet’s rear. The most obvious motion, though, was the vertical jump that accompanied the lowering of the flaps. Buzz’s body bent slightly forward from the force of the upward surge.