She opened the window, letting it hinge upward against the wing, and craned her neck out into the slipstream to look back at the tail of the plane. Even at only sixty miles per hour, the wind blast took her breath away and almost knocked the night vision goggles free. Not seeing anything else that concerned her, she pulled her head back into the cockpit and scanned the ground in front of her for a suitable landing spot.
“Not with the way she’s flying,” she said.
She felt a shudder reverberate through the plane. When she pushed the stick forward, it got worse.
Fuck. Not good.
“Okay. What do you want to do?”
She leaned back into her seat and tried to ignore the sour feeling in her stomach. “I’m setting up for an off-field landing,” she said.
It was a fancy way of saying she was going to crash.
Brian had no trouble spotting the experimental taildragger as it cruised above them heading west. He had even less trouble spotting the muzzle flashes from just below the ridgeline. He saw the gunfire, but his brain struggled to accept something like that could happen off the coast of California.
“Say again, Three November Alpha?” He banked right, tracking the airplane’s movement to the north, then switched over to the intercom. “Rose, get on the fifty. Port side.”
“I’m on it,” Rose said.
The woman pilot’s voice sounded shaken and almost incredulous. “I’m taking fire!”
“From where?” he asked, though he was almost certain he already had a bead on the point of origin. “Anything, Rose?”
The aircrewman shouted from the back to be heard over the wind noise. “Nothing yet!”
“Three November Alpha?”
“I think he got me.”
He focused all his attention on the rising terrain in front of him, keeping the Seahawk close to the ground as he tracked closer to the stricken plane. It looked like the taildragger was making a turn back to the east, but he knew there were no runways on that end of the island.
Maybe she plans on bugging out back to the mainland, he thought.
“Say your intentions,” he said.
He had always been taught to stay out of another pilot’s cockpit in an emergency unless invited in, but he needed to know what she planned on doing if he was going to give her the appropriate support. When she remained silent, he knew she had her hands full.
“Three November Alpha?”
“I’m missing about two… maybe three feet of fabric from the top of my right wing. Aileron looks to be in good shape,” she said.
“How’s it flying?”
“Tallyho!” Rose shouted from the back. “One contact on the ridgeline moving north.”
“Like a truck,” the taildragger’s pilot said. “It’s pulling hard right.”
“Copy. Can you make it to the airfield?” He switched over to the intercom. “Can you maintain a visual, Rose?”
“Negative. He’s hard to make out, and I can only see his movement.”
Brian had to make a tough decision, but that was why the skipper had entrusted him with the HAC qualification. He didn’t have time to debate the merits of his choices. If he continued shadowing the stricken plane, Rose would lose sight of the gunman. But if he turned and gave Rose a chance to engage, he wouldn’t be able to help the taildragger.
“Okay. What do you want to do?”
“I’m setting up for an off-field landing,” she said.
Brian made his choice. “Okay, fellas, we’re gonna help this lady pilot out. Rose, keep an eye on our six and let me know if you see any gunfire headed our way. Dillon, padlock that plane and make sure it looks like she’s heading for a clear piece of land. Call out any obstructions you see.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Rose said.
“Copy that,” Dillon replied. “She’s running out of room.”
“Three November Alpha, we are in trail on your right side and will meet you when you land.”
She didn’t reply, but Brian saw a pair of bright LED landing lights under the nose turn on. The taildragger was less than one hundred feet off the ground and looked to be on final approach.
40
Punky debated landing with the night vision goggles on, but she decided her lack of experience would offset any benefit she might gain from seeing more of the terrain. She knew her visual acuity would be better with traditional landing lights instead of on the goggles that hindered her depth perception, so she ripped them off her head and illuminated the ground in front of her with 175,000 candles.
“It’s getting worse,” she said.
“Copy, we’re visual,” the helicopter pilot replied. “That stab is shaking pretty bad.”
Hold together, baby…
“What do you see?”
There was a delay, and she sensed a dark shadow hovering off to her right side and resisted the temptation to look at it. The helicopter pilot’s voice was calm and reassuring. “It looks like you’re missing some rigging that connects the horizontal stabilizer to the vertical stabilizer. The whole damn thing looks like it’s trying to twist off.”
“I’m giving it almost full left rudder,” she said, as she fought to tame the bucking plane. “And the nose wants to run away on me.”
“The area in front of you looks clear. Recommend you set her down there.”
Yeah, no shit!
She depressed the push-to-talk to reply when the plane suddenly nosed over, and she felt her stomach leap into her throat.
“Watch your nose!”
She eased back on the stick and held her breath while she waited for the nose to respond.
One thousand feet per minute, she thought, reminding herself that she didn’t have that much air beneath her. She glanced at the attitude indicator on the Garmin panel and saw the nose tracking slowly upward to the horizon.
“You’ve got it?”
“I’ve got it… I’ve got it,” she said.
She strained against an increased pressure on the stick to keep her wings level, feeling beads of sweat forming on her brow. She had already fed in more rudder to keep her nose pointed straight, but the shaking tail only seemed to get worse. Without the night vision goggles, she could only see a narrow strip of ground in front of her illuminated by the twin LED landing lights, but she knew there was a pretty significant drop into the sea at the east end of the island. She couldn’t mess around much longer.
“I’m putting her down.”
“What do you need me to do?” the helicopter pilot asked.
“Nothing,” she said, then pulled power and felt the nose yaw further left.
“Watch your nose!”
She eased off the rudder pedal, and the nose straightened out.
Her legs shook from the constant tension of fighting the controls. She wiggled her fingers and toes, a forced habit that reminded her to relax as she prepared for probably the most challenging landing of her life. But then the tail began shaking violently, and she struggled to control the bobbing and weaving plane and keep it tracking straight. With each weave to the left, she countered too far right and fought it going back to the left. When the nose dipped, she responded by lifting it too far, and she feared she might stall the wings and plummet to the earth.
“I’m losing it,” she said.
“You’re running out of room.”
When the nose dropped again, she eased back on the stick and leveled off barely ten feet over the grassy butte as she waited for the violent shaking to subside. She kept her control inputs as smooth as possible, and when the shaking faded into only a mild tremor, she reached up to pull the lever and add one notch of flaps. She braced herself for the nose’s natural tendency to drop while wondering what the added stress would do to the damaged airplane. But she held together.