“Oh, shit,” Jesse muttered to himself.
“What did you say?”
“I said, we’re going to Las Vegas,” he said, reducing rpm’s by a couple of hundred. He watched the fuel computer recalculate: they now had two hours and twenty minutes of flying time.
“Is everything all right?” Jenny asked.
“Everything’s fine,” Jesse lied. On their present heading they would cross one of the emptiest deserts in the United States, and Jesse didn’t want to think about being on foot out there. He switched the GPS to its calculator mode; there was some sort of wind speed function in there somewhere; he was sure he had read about it. He found what he thought was the right function; he entered his true airspeed and heading, and the computer showed the winds to be twenty-three knots from 300 degrees. If the wind stayed where it was, they would run out of fuel eleven minutes from the airport; if the wind moved toward the west, ahead of them, they would run out of fuel over an empty desert; if the wind moved to the north, behind them, they might make the airport. Jesse decided to gamble.
He searched his memory for discussions with his first flying instructor about airplanes. What sort of range did a Piper Commanche have? As much as a Cessna 182? More? Less? Jesse prayed that it had less range.
As he thought about this, he looked out the right side of the airplane. There, a mile or so away and slightly behind them, sat the red Piper. Jesse pored over the chart again. There was an airport called Morman Mesa, fifty or seventy-five miles northeast of Las Vegas. If, when he reached Morman Mesa, the fuel computer and the GPS told him he still didn’t have enough fuel for Las Vegas, he could land there.
But it was a small place, and it could be a dead end for him. He leafed through the airport directory until he found Morman Mesa: there was a two-thousand foot dirt strip there, with fuel by prior arrangement, whatever that meant. Probably, you had to have an appointment with somebody. No rental cars. He did not want to land at Morman Mesa.
Jesse got the aircraft operator’s manual out and read about fuel. The wings held thirty-eight gallons of usable fuel each, for a total of seventy-six. Usable fuel. There were another two gallons on each side that the FAA considered unusable, because it could not be depended upon, especially if the aircraft was maneuvering, as in a landing.
An hour and quarter passed. The red Piper remained a mile off their right wing. Slowly, tentatively, the wind swung to the north. Jesse recalculated the windspeed every five minutes. The Cessna’s ground speed inched up six knots. A comparison of the GPS and the fuel computer showed forty-four minutes of flying time left and forty-two minutes of fuel. Morman Mesa was looming ahead, and if Jesse was going to land there he had to make the decision now. He looked over at the Piper. “You first,” he said.
As if the pilot had heard him, the red airplane began a descent. Jesse laughed aloud. “He doesn’t have the fuel for Las Vegas,” he said to Jenny. “He has to land at a jerkwater airport and try to find somebody to sell him fuel. Once we’re in Vegas, he’d need an army of cops to find us.”
Jesse consulted the GPS and the fuel computer again. Either of them could be wrong, he knew; his first instructor had told him often enough never to rely entirely on electronic equipment. He had made his decision. Sky Harbor, Las Vegas, even if it had to be on unusable fuel.
With thirty minutes of flying time showing on the fuel computer a light began to flash. “Low fuel,” it said, over and over. Jesse couldn’t find a way to turn the thing off.
Chapter 62
Fifty miles out of Las Vegas, Jesse tuned in the unicom frequency for the airport. “Sky Harbor Unicom,” he said, “This is November one, two, three Tango Foxtrot. Do you read?” Nothing. He repeated the transmission until, twenty miles out, he got an answer.
“Aircraft calling Sky Harbor,” a voice with a thick foreign accent said.
“Sky Harbor, this is November one, two, three Tango Foxtrot. My name is Smith; I’m landing in fifteen minutes; can you arrange a rent-a-car for me?”
“Sure thing, Mr. Smith,” the voice said. “The active runway is three-six.”
Jenny had not noticed the blinking “low fuel” light, and Jesse saw no need to mention it to her. He began to get ready for his landing. He had descended to thirty-five hundred feet and reduced power when he spotted the airport at twelve o’clock. His instruments said he had four minutes to the airport and three minutes of fuel. He was approaching from the north, so in order to land on runway three-six he would have to fly around the airport and turn back to the north. The hell with runway three-six, he thought. I’m approaching from the north, and I’m going straight in to one-eight. He got on the radio. “Sky Harbor traffic, Sky Harbor traffic, this is November one, two, three, Tango Foxtrot. I am short of fuel, and I am straight in for runway one-eight.”
A voice came back, “Tango Foxtrot, this is Whiskey Romeo; the active runway is three-six, and I’m already on base.”
Jesse had the runway in sight now. “Whiskey Romeo and all Sky Harbor traffic, Tango Foxtrot is on a three-mile final for three-six and short of fuel. I say again, short of fuel. I’m landing on one-eight, so get the hell out of my way.”
There was a brief silence. “This is Whiskey Romeo; one-eight is all yours.”
Over the runway numbers, Jesse began to breathe normally again. He taxied toward a row of tied-down airplanes and spotted a space between two other Cessnas. Camouflage, he thought. He turned into the space and stopped. As he reached for the mixture control to stop the engine, it stopped itself. The airplane was out of fuel.
“Okay, everybody, out of the airplane!” he cried.
Jenny woke the girls and, carrying their luggage, they walked to the terminal. Jesse kept a particularly tight grip on the plastic bag.
He persuaded the man at the counter to accept a five hundred-dollar cash deposit in lieu of a credit card, and a hundred-dollar bill for himself, in lieu of a driver’s license. Jesse explained that he had left his wallet at home.
The car was filthy; it appeared never to have been washed, the ashtrays were full and it had eighty thousand miles on the speedometer, but Jesse loved it. No one would give it a second glance. On the drive into town, a happy thought occurred to him: they were in the one city in the United States where no one would bat an eye at the sight of large numbers of one-hundred-dollar bills.
They drove down the main drag, blinking in the desert sunlight and agog at all the neon. Jesse picked the biggest, gaudiest hotel he could see and pulled into the driveway.
“Checking in, sir?” a doorman asked.
“You bet.” Jesse handed him the keys. “Take everything in the trunk, please.” The man began removing their bags. “I’ll carry this one,” Jesse said, taking the plastic bag from him. As they were about to enter the hotel, there was a huge roar behind them. They turned and stood, transfixed, as a man-made volcano erupted before their eyes. “Only in America,” Jesse said to the sleepy girls.
Jesse presented himself at the front desk. “I’d like a two-bedroom suite, something very nice,” he said to the desk clerk.
The young man typed a few strokes on his computer keyboard. “I’m afraid we don’t have anything at all, sir,” he said, eyeing the rough-looking man in the sheepskin coat with the hillbilly accent.
Jesse placed the plastic bag on the counter, counted out ten banded stacks of hundred-dollar bills and stacked them on the counter. “And I’d like a hundred one-thousand-dollar chips,” he said.
A sharp-eyed older man in an expensive suit practically elbowed the clerk out of the way. “Good morning, Mr... ?”