“Bang on course, one point two miles out, altitude one thousand six hundred. We’re a thousand higher than we should be.”
“Flaps straight down to fifteen!”
“Flaps? Craig, the speed brakes are out! No speed brakes with flaps, remember?”
“Can’t help it. I’ve got to slow!”
“Roger.” Alastair moved the flap handle quickly as Craig pushed forward to increase the descent rate with the flaps beginning to come out on the residual hydraulic pressure.
“Point nine from the end, way above glide slope, speed one ninety, we’re one thousand two hundred.”
“Dumping it! Flaps thirty!”
Alastair complied, his left hand moving the lever almost instantly.
“Flaps are coming through fifteen on the way to thirty. Half mile, Craig, eight hundred feet, two thousand feet per minute down and one eighty on the speed.”
“Call the glide slope when you see it! We’ll intercept it from above.”
“Sink two thousand, quarter mile out, four hundred feet, speed one seventy-five.”
“I’m gonna hold the sink rate until I see it!”
“Sink two thousand, three hundred feet, speed one seventy-five. Remember the hydraulics may die! Don’t wait too long to pull!”
A galaxy of fuzzy lights swam into view just ahead, coming up at them fast as Craig began hauling back on the yoke.
“Sink twelve hundred, two hundred feet, speed one sixty. PULL, CRAIG!”
Craig yanked the yoke almost back in his lap, feeling the nose coming up but with greater sluggishness each passing second as the airspeed slowed the turning of the engines and the hydraulic pressure bled away.
“One hundred feet! Sinking too fast!” Alastair said, the runway under them now but the sink rate still excessive.
Craig had unfolded the manual handle on the pitch trim on his side, as had Alastair, and suddenly they were both rotating the wheel backwards at a blinding rate to the nose-up position. They felt the nose respond at the last second as the 737 settled into ground effect, killing off the remainder of the sink rate as the tires kissed perfectly onto the surface with a moderate plunk.
“Reverse it! Rotate nose down!” Craig barked as Alastair complied, both of them cranking the pitch trim in the opposite direction, lowering the nosewheel to the runway.
“Brakes, Craig!” Alastair called as Craig’s right hand left the manual trim and yanked the speed brake handle back, momentarily startled to find it already deployed. He’d forgotten.
There was only emergency brake pressure now to stop them. The normal antiskid protection had died with the electrical system, leaving only the glow of the battery-powered flight instruments on Craig’s side as the runway lights flashed by. “Airspeed one hundred twenty, Craig!”
If he pressed the brake pedals too hard, he’d blow the tires and doom them to run off the far end of the runway.
There were red lights visible now through the mist marking the end of the runway several thousand feet ahead. They were coming fast. Craig metered the braking, feeling the disks grab, slowing them as he used the same rudder pedals to steer between the gradually slowing blur of runway lights.
“Ninety knots!” Alastair called out. “Eighty… seventy…”
The end-of-the-runway red lights loomed closer.
The brakes felt mushy, as if they were fading, and possibly overheating.
“Fifty knots, forty!” Alastair called as Craig pressed harder on the brakes, gambling against a blown tire.
The red lights were just ahead as Alastair called them through 20 knots. Craig jammed on the remaining brakes, feeling the 737 shudder and skid to a halt just as the red lights slowed and disappeared beneath the nose.
For perhaps thirty seconds the two pilots sat in shocked silence, barely daring to believe they were alive and intact.
Alastair reached for the transmit button, relying on the battery power for the remaining radio.
“Galway Approach, Ten-Twenty is down safely at… wherever this is. Thank you, sir.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!” the controller said, emotion overwhelming the cool professionalism that had marked his previous transmissions. “Now I can restart me heart. Well done, lads!”
Mr. Justice O’Connell had reclaimed his seat on the bench and taken the time to make several notes as he composed his response, then looked up.
“Very well. I find the videotape evidence as submitted here today to be inadmissible in the extreme due to the inability of Mr. Campbell to override the evidence that it was faked. We are essentially back precisely where we were two hours ago when this hearing began. And so, Mr. Campbell, I turn to you with one question, sir. Have you any evidence to present to this court to support the Peruvian Interpol warrant, or the application for extradition, other than the fact that it was issued by a Peruvian court of competent jurisdiction?”
Stuart Campbell got to his feet slowly and cleared his throat, his eyes on the papers before him until he looked up at the judge.
“My Lord, without the efficacy of that videotape, I possess no such supporting evidence. And, I should like to state that I anticipate I will need to take instructions from my client, and that possibly, in due course, an application may need to be made on behalf of my instructing solicitor to come off the record.”
Jay leaned forward to whisper in Michael’s ear. “What the heck does that mean?”
Michael scratched the answer on his legal pad. “It means he’s about to dump Peru as a client and get out of this.”
“I will not ask your grounds, Mr. Campbell,” O’Connell answered. “I believe they’re all too obvious. So noted. And, for want of sufficient supporting evidence to sustain this request against the challenge of the defendant, the warrant is quashed in the Republic of Ireland, and the motion to extradite is denied.”
This time the gavel came down with finality.
EPILOGUE
Jay slid the door of the Parc Aviation van open and stepped onto the ramp, preferring to wait by himself for the EuroAir 737, just now touching down.
He glanced at his watch, which was showing 3:20 P.M., and wondered how pilots achieved the level of composure necessary to survive a near-death experience, then fly the airplane back to Dublin as if nothing extraordinary had happened.
“They’ll probably strike a hero’s medal for us, and pin it on just before we’re executed,” Alastair had quipped by phone when Jay had reached them after the verdict.
A blue and white Boeing 757 from Andrews Air Force Base in Washington sat on another hard stand several hundred yards to the south. Jay glanced over his shoulder to make sure the Secretary of State and his people were still inside a waiting limousine several hundred yards away.
The 737 was coming up the taxiway toward the pre-appointed parking stand as a marshaller wearing an orange safety vest held up his arms to guide them in. Jay watched with his mind on Sherry. Her voice had been composed on the phone from Connemara, but he’d heard the residual tension as she talked and asked her about it.
“I’m okay. I mean, we knew there was something wrong when the crew told us to put on our life jackets, but it was all right.”
It was telling, Jay thought, that she responded to his news of the extraordinary events in court with a single “Good!” before returning to the subject of the pilots’ incredible performance.
“They were magnificent,” she had said.