Where were the bloody Japs? He felt nervous now, as if he would forget all his carefully rehearsed arguments, the brochure-like confidence he must bring to the meeting. Come on, I'm drowning, not waving… And behind everything, there was Vance. Come on, Alan, save my neck Ahead and to port of the airplane, the Theodore Roosevelt Lake gleamed, as if flashing him a signal, one that was unable to distract him from the barrier of the Superstition Mountains directly ahead. Twenty miles to run, barely six minutes before he attempted to put the airplane down on the runway at Vance Aircraft.
Airspeed one-ninety knots, altitude sixteen thousand feet and falling but only slowly, deceptively, as if the airframe would stay in the air for hours yet.
Instability tremored through the plane like the first symptoms of a return of malarial fever. Gant's hands and wrists, his forearms and shoulders, ached with the effort of keeping the unpowered airliner on course, in the glide.
The engine noise was missing. Air-driven pumps were maintaining hydraulic pressure in the flying control circuits. Once more, he nudged the nose up to maintain his airspeed for as long as possible. When he and Vance had made it, it had been a simple calculation. Altitude equals distance in a glide. They had enough altitude to make the runway at Vance Aircraft, more than enough
… But he could not restart the engines in order to make the slightest adjustment in speed, height, direction. He and Vance had switched off all the non-essential electrics, to the point where they were wearing their headsets with one ear uncovered, so that they could hear one another. The fuel had been stop cocked Cutting off all fuel flow had stabilised the airframe in its slow glide. The slightest alteration of course might unbalance the plane. He did not even know how much fuel if any was sloshing around in the tanks.
'494 this is Vance Centre." It was Ron Blakey on the horn, his tension palpable.
"QDM one-eight-six. You need to turn left five degrees to position for a straight-in.
Inform us when you have the runway in visual range."
The channel remained open for a second or two, as if they expected him to reply.
Barbara was there somewhere. He sensed her presence concerned more for her father and the future of the company than for him. The pettiness of the thought made him wince. It revealed the strained, worn state of his nerves. It wasn't the slim, tiny form of a jet fighter behind his seat, it was the huge bulk of a long-haul airliner. He almost felt its great weight, its sluggish, resistant inertia through his hands and feet.
The runway at Vance was more than long enough, he reminded himself, unable even to glance across at Alan in the copilot's seat. It had to be, in case they lost the brakes. There would be no deceleration available from reverse thrust from the dead, unusable engines. It would be all brake work His body tensed, as if the struggle with the aircraft's bulk had already begun. His forehead was sheened with sweat. The electrics for the air-conditioning had been switched off.
Phoenix's sprawling conurbation lay like a sand-coloured lizard, curled on the desert, surrounded by its silver reservoirs. The airflow seemed louder, poised to buffet at the plane in its helpless glide. He was flying on the trims alone, nudging the aircraft constantly to maintain its course, and saving the hydraulic power to the control column until he had to use the column to maintain the 494 on the narrow strip of the runway, which would blur beneath the rush of the airliner which wouldn't slow enough in tim eStop… Ten miles out, altitude nine thousand feet. His hands shivered at the impression of them dropping like a stone towards the mountains. He still couldn't see the runway at Vance Aircraft, even though the city was bigger, its glass towers winking in the morning sun. Phoenix seemed to be rushing towards them, its ring of mountains suddenly like a huge, opening mouth that of a shark.
Ron Blakey again. Gant was grateful that Vance maintained his grim silence beside him.
'494 — Vance Centre. Turn on to runway heading now." A pause, then, almost apologetically: "Emergency services are on full alert and standing by. Wind light and variable, QFE two-niner-niner-four. Call when visual with the field."
The technical instructions were added in a rush of words, as if Blakey had become conscious that he had revealed his own fearful doubt and now wished to mask it.
"Vance Centre 494. The field is not yet—" A dusty strip, thin as a pencil line in the desert, the tiny boxes of buildings nearby. His relief was huge.
"Correction, we have the field in visual. Two-niner niner-four it is."
Six miles out. A line narrower than the highways he could make out linking the suburbs of Phoenix. He looked at the altimeter. They were too high. He'd trimmed too safely, too well.
"Dump the gear!" he shouted at Vance, who was startled by his tone and urgency.
"Gear down?"
"Gear down?
Two muffled thumps as the undercarriage entered the streaming airflow.
The aircraft wobbled, tilted as if about to plummet, and he fought it back to level flight.
A third, softer noise, less disturbance to the airframe. The lights confirmed all three sets of wheels were down and locked. The sudden extra drag pushed the plane's nose down and he struggled to trim again as the speed dropped. He had nudged the 494 on to the runway heading.
Mountains seemed to brush like claws at the plane's belly, just hundreds of feet below them. The buildings of Vance Aircraft were thrown-away toys in the desert, shining in the sun amid hard, grey mountains. The runway was no more than a sliver of plastic placed on the desert floor, narrow and short as a slide rule.
Dragged back by the undercarriage, the plane wobbled in the airflow.
He eased up the nose, further cutting the speed. Hollis' voice, which had followed him through the flight like someone saying the Kaddish, had vanished in the back of his mind.
Two miles out, he judged. Vance's hands reached for the copilot's column, in anticipation. Gant shook his head angrily.
"On my order!"
He dropped the leading edge slats and the main flaps. The 494 seemed to rear back from the approaching runway like a terrified horse. The hydraulic pressure reading dropped. Would the air-driven pumps replenish it before he needed to use the brakes?
The threshold lights flashed beneath the belly of the aircraft. The mountains reared up around them, the great mouth they had seemed to form reaching to enclose them. The six-thousand-yard markers were beneath them in another second, the impression of the plane's speed numbing Gant, overriding every other sensation.
He saw the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles as they raced along either edge of the runway, throwing up dust in clouds. The runway rushed at them.
Gant hauled back on the column, wrists bulging with the effort, as if he were dragging it out of concrete.
"Now-!" he shouted, but Vance was already heaving on the copilot's column, his face squeezed and reddened with the strain.
No reverse thrust, no reverse- Brace, brace, brace- Get out of my head, Hollis He continued to heave at the control column and it began to creep back towards him. Vance's eyes were bulging with fear and effort, his teeth set in a grimace. The runway was a blur beneath the nose, so close beneath only the brakes-Wheels touched concrete. The airliner bounced back into the air. Then the main undercarriage touched a second time and the nose butted down like the head of a charging ram and the nose-wheels thudded on to the runway.
"Feet clear of the brakes!" Gant ordered Vance as the airliner raced to overtake the nearest of the emergency vehicles, its flashing lights and red flank lost in a moment.
He couldn't burst any of the tyres and he needed maximum braking. No reverse thrust. The tyres howled on the concrete, the rushing air seemed to deafen. He hit the toe brakes. The nose of the aircraft shuddered as the nose wheels shimmied on the concrete. The landscape shivered like something reflected in a mirror the moment it was shattered.