Kelly looked out of the window. ‘Let’s take a look at that park. It’s quite close to the tram station. Turn left.’
Ben shifted the controls correctly but the microlight soared upwards again as it caught another thermal.
When they stabilized once more, Kelly let out her breath slowly. ‘Go back down to four hundred feet and take the plane around in a big circle. Careful of your speed.’
Ben dipped one wing so that the microlight banked. He saw blue lights moving under the smoke layer, flashes of red and silver fire engines, and the shimmer of the firemen’s turnout gear reflecting in the evening sun. It was like the metallic glint of fish in murky water.
Kelly let out a loud sigh. ‘I can’t see — there’s too much smoke. We’ll have to go in closer. It’s not very safe but I’ve got to see what’s on the ground. Don’t even think of trying to land this time — this is our reconnaissance pass.’ She checked the instruments and waved a bandaged hand. ‘The turn has slowed you — I told you it would. More throttle or we’ll stall.’
Ben took the plane down to 200 feet. They flew over the park. A few bare trees reached spindly limbs up into the smoke. The grass was not visible at all.
Kelly shook her head. ‘Those trees will get in the way.’
‘Can’t we steer between them?’ said Ben.
‘We’ll be coming in at sixty knots — that’s a hundred and ten kilometres per hour. You can’t steer at that speed. If you clip a wing we’ll turn over. We’ve got to find somewhere else.’
‘What about down there?’ said Ben. He pointed down to a wide street. The smoke cleared for a moment, revealing abandoned cars and an overturned market stall. ‘Er — don’t bother to answer that,’ he added, and turned the plane away.
As he started to climb again, he spotted the perfect landing site below. It was a long dual carriageway, with three lanes on each side, leading away from the centre of town over the river Torrens.
‘There!’ he exclaimed.
‘Ben, that’s a bridge. There’s a parapet in the middle and wires on each side. That’s a crazy idea.’
‘You said you’d landed on a bridge before,’ countered Ben.
‘I’ve never done anything of the sort,’ she retorted.
‘You were telling me earlier that you landed a plane on a bridge in Seattle.’
‘I was just the passenger. I was sitting in the back, scared stiff.’
The windscreen was suddenly full of seagulls rushing towards them. Their wingspan made them look huge. Kelly ducked and shrieked and Ben pressed back in his seat.
There was a bang as something hit the wing, then a seagull thudded onto the windscreen like roadkill. As it tumbled away, it left a smear of blood.
‘We got one,’ grinned Ben, trying to act flippant to cover his shock.
The grin was soon wiped off his face. The whole cockpit began to shake, the engine vibrated and the plane was drifting. ‘Hey, Kelly …’
Kelly looked up, fury in her eyes. ‘That bird must have nicked our propeller. The engine’s pulling us to the side. Get your feet away.’
She tried the pedals but they didn’t respond, so she went for more brutal tactics. She pulled the stick hard to one side and rammed the right pedal down.
The plane swung dramatically sideways, slicing downwards through the air. They flew so close over a telegraph pole that Ben could see the grain of the wood. Then, as they tilted, he could see only sky out of the window.
‘Turn the engine off,’ shouted Kelly. ‘It’s pulling us about too much.’
Ben thought she must have gone mad. ‘What?’
Kelly shouted louder. ‘Turn the engine off!’
Ben turned the key. Red lights came on all across the instrument panel and the needle on the rev counter dropped to zero. The plane was eerily quiet. Kelly used the pedals to level the plane and he could hear the rudder move on the tail.
‘Shall I start it up?’ said Ben. After all, the time-honoured way of solving a mechanical problem was to switch a machine off and then switch it on again.
‘No, the propeller will tear off if we do that. We’ll have to come down like a glider.’
‘Come down where?’ said Ben.
Kelly’s voice was weak, as though she could scarcely believe what she was saying. ‘The bridge.’
Ben swallowed, his heart thumping.
‘Start your approach. Turn and line up with the middle lane on the left-hand side. And get it right. We don’t have an engine to get us out of trouble so there are no second chances.’
Ben took the controls gingerly. Without the engine noise he could hear every creak in the microlight’s frame. When he moved the pedals it was even worse: they made thumping noises in the floor and behind him. When he used the stick it made the whole wing move.
‘Ben,’ shouted Kelly, ‘stop being so feeble! Fly the darned thing!’
Carefully he lined up the plane on the road. The river was in the middle of his horizon — a murky ribbon growing bigger by the second. The town was beyond. A pall of wet smoke blew towards them. It was like trying to catch your breath inside a wet towel.
‘Get the nose down more,’ said Kelly. ‘Stop looking downwards — look at where you’re planning to stop.’
Their height was 70 feet and the road filled Ben’s windscreen now. His palms were slick with sweat on the controls.
Like when they had landed in the desert before, everything on the ground started getting big; everything except the bridge, which looked like a very small target indeed, a hump of tarmac with some thin white lines marking out the traffic lanes. It would be easy to misjudge it and end up in the river. And the river didn’t look like a friendly place to land. It was full of debris, some still burning, some sooty and black — all of it charging along in the current like a mad boat race.
‘Nose up,’ said Kelly. ‘Or we’ll keep gathering speed and bulldoze into the ground.’
Ben tweaked the stick back and the microlight seesawed backwards. Without the engine noise he had completely lost his feel for the craft.
Kelly growled in irritation and elbowed the stick forward. The nose pointed down again. The road surface was so close they could see dark smears of tyre rubber on the white lines.
Kelly’s face was grim with concentration. ‘Nose up slowly.’
Ben followed her instructions and there was a bump as the back wheels hit the road.
‘We’re down,’ said Kelly. ‘Stick forward. Brake on.’ Ben squeezed the brake. Lampposts and signs whizzed past at a frightening speed. Coming in at 110 kilometres per hour had been scary enough in the desert, but in a built-up area it felt positively suicidal. Ben was braking, but the road surface was slick with water and the tyres had no friction.
The bridge led into a roundabout. Ahead was a black and white chevron sign. There was no way they would stop in time. ‘Oh no!’ gasped Kelly.
‘I’ll have to steer around it!’ yelled Ben. He pulled the plane hard left.
And Kelly pumped the pedals hard right.
The microlight skidded on the wet road and slid sideways past a row of burned-out cars.
‘Don’t you know which way to go round a round-about?’ yelled Ben.
‘We don’t have roundabouts in the States,’ retorted Kelly.
Water and oil were smeared all over the road, turning it into a skating rink. The plane skidded forwards, jolting its two passengers with every bump in the road, and Ben visualized the spindly undercarriage hitting a pothole and snapping. He tried the brake but the wheels had locked. They would just have to wait until the microlight slowed down by itself.
Behind the cars was a burned-out building. Soot streaked its white façade; its windows were blackened holes and pockets of orange fire still glowed in its interior. The building next to it was still burning, pumping dark smoke into the sky