Liu turned his head to the right, looking away from inside the cockpit as he did just a few minutes prior. This is it, now or never. It was at this precise moment that Wu slid his right hand slowly off the throttles and down to below the throttle quadrant to the four fuel control switches for the engines. They were hidden from the normal scan of the cockpit, and Wu was near certain that Liu did not even know they existed. Blocked by human factor design during the construction of the jet to prevent an inadvertent touch, he counted by feel for the four switches, from left to right.
Silently, Wu counted, “One. Two. Three. Four.” Wu doubled back and found the second switch, second from the left, for engine number two. He cycled it OFF, quickly, then ON again. This small, half a second movement of the toggle switch, would force the landing he wanted. Wu knew that even with the full 29-step air start process, it would be a bear of a task to relight in the air at any altitude. The electrical fuel pump shut down immediately, as did the fuel control valve that meters fuel to the engine, cutting off all fuel to the number two engine.
WHOOP. WHOOP. WHOOP. PING. PING. PING. WHOOP. WHOOP. WHOOP….
“Engine number two flameout. Engine number two flameout,” a female computer voice came over their helmets.
A multitude of red and yellow lights illuminated on their warning panel, with a bright sequence of flashing lights all over the dashboard. The oil pressure needles dropped into the red. Fuel pressure dropped into the red. The jet yawed to the left slightly, an aerodynamic phenomenon that is felt when thrust is lost on one side of an aircraft and not the symmetrical other side. They were losing some airspeed.
“What happened? What is it?” asked Liu, excitedly.
“We lost engine number two. Get in the checklists.” Wu ordered. “Aviate-navigate-communicate. Looks like that damn engine number two again. Instead of a fire this time, she flamed out.”
“Holy shit. Guess maintenance didn’t fix it after all,” Liu wondered out loud, as he buried in the checklist for a re-light. Wu was pleased that Liu was thinking like that because it took the responsibility off him at first. “Okay, I’m in the checklist for an engine restart. Step one throttles back…”
The lights were still flashing, too many to count, and seemed chaotic. Wu pressed the WARNING light to stop the flashing, and all the lights that once flashed remained illuminated. It reduced some of the overwhelming sensation that something catastrophic was about to happen.
“Hold it. Hold it. Hold on a second on the air start. Look, Liu… I am really uncomfortable now. This jet was supposed to be fixed and it’s not. Two major issues in two flights. Engine two is a lemon. We’ve had a fire, and now complete flameout,” Wu let it sink in. “We’re landing. I’m not going all the way back to Gansu either. We’re landing as soon as possible.”
“What? No, no. Are you sure? Won’t General Chen be mad?” Liu asked.
“I’m sure he will be mad. At this point, it’s not about emotion, it’s about facts. We need to save the jet. For the love of our Air Force, we must save the jet. Landing someplace, then calling maintenance to have us fixed, is the best move. The safest move,” Wu announced, glancing at the moving map has he lined them up for Tianjin Airport covertly.
Liu let out a sigh. “Okay, okay, I’m in agreement. Have to use the bathroom desperately, so it does help me. I’m ready to go in my flight suit.”
“Don’t do that. We’ll land shortly. I’m looking over there to the south. Look at the map. Southeast of us, beyond Beijing, is Tianjin. The Airport,” Wu pointed out the area with his finger at the screen. Liu nodded. “We’ll do a penetration descent, an unannounced arrival, and land next to the active on the dark, parallel runway. Lights out. I’ve been there before, so I know the airport, and we’ll park… at, ahh… at the southwest side of the field. The firehouse. No passengers, no lights. We can sit until the maintenance jet arrives.”
“No coms with center? Or approach, or even tower?’
“Nope. Unannounced. Liu, come on. You think we should broadcast to the world the Devil Dragon exists? We are low paint scheme, flat black, no visible lights. No flight plan. No squawk on the transponder. Tower may see us coming in, but if we time it correctly, we can fit right in between the commercials. Maybe even use their unlit runway.”
“Okay, Wu… your call.”
“Yes. Prepare for high speed penetration,” Wu announced, then yanked the throttles back to idle and nosed over the jet. Their altitude was rapidly unwinding on the altimeter and the airspeed was climbing. Their vertical speed indicator was pegged and unreadable, as they dropped through the atmosphere like a rocket ship. Wu’s ears were playing games with the popping, as were Liu’s, shaking their heads and opening and closing their mouths. Sonic booms were transmitted though the atmosphere, and they rode her down as they zoomed through the sky.
“Descent checklist,” ordered Wu. Wu wasn’t sure if Liu was nervous about the strange landing site, his bowels, or what Chen would say, but Wu was picking up his vibe. A flameout was enough to throw off the best of pilots, and if you flew your entire life in a single seat, single engine aircraft, a flameout without an immediate engine start meant only one of three things: crash, eject, or land immediately.
“Let me check my smart phone to ensure the jet is talking to the app correctly. Want to make sure maintenance can troubleshoot this for fixing. You have the controls.”
“I have the controls,” Liu said.
Wu took out his smart phone and simulated that he was using it as he told Liu. He typed in a text message to Ford and hit send:
Ford: JOJO RISING, 4 minutes.
“I’ve got the controls. We are good on the engine app, all data transferring ops normal,” Wu said, then taking a look at the digital moving map. “Okay, Liu, get me to 50 miles west of Tianjin, 20,000 feet. Currently passing 41,500 feet and still in the descent. Work up the waypoints. I’d like to land from the north to the south, squeeze between Beijing.”
The aircraft was still groaning from the loss of the engine, despite Wu muting the warning lights. Every so often, another warning light could come on again, and Wu would silence it with his hand. Losing an engine was no small issue, and it was only Liu’s second time. Liu was also suffering with his bowel issue, and shifted in his seat uncomfortably. He needed to hit the bathroom in what seemed like hours ago. He had to go, and go now.
“Wu, I can get you a waypoint closer. I need to land. Can I program you a waypoint closer to fly, and you can burn off the airspeed in some tight turns?” Liu offered. Liu knew that airplanes can reduce their airspeed by turning tightly, and the Devil Dragon was capable of doing that. Normal aircraft flying in Class A airspace above 18,000 feet were not regulated to a speed in knots, but as they got closer to their airport, a speed restriction was required. Because the Devil Dragon was not seen by radar, and no one knew it existed, there were no limits, and therefore, the pilots had a license to steal. Since they did not have to follow the lower altitude, Class C airspace rules, they could easily exceed the 200 knot speed restriction.
It was completely dark now, and Wu was speeding along as he rapidly continued the descent, now at 9,000 feet at 12 miles, 580 knots. He made some turns to bleed off the energy, and was tempted to drop the gear, but at these speeds, the gear doors would rip off. He wanted to wait until the last possible moment because with the gear hanging, acting like a hard point weapon system, something would return on the radar echo with controllers watching. It wouldn’t cause that much of an issue, but a few swings of the radar would detect something was there and alert the radar controllers. He was also aware of the thunder they must be producing, echoing across the city suburbs rapidly.