secondary.
Have you got that?”
There was no answer.
“Goddamnit, ace, I asked, did you get that?”
“Stand by.”
McGarvey sat back in the seat for a long moment, closing his eyes and trying to let his mind go blank. He wanted to crawl away and curl up in some dark corner somewhere, to lick his wounds-both mental and physical. But it was not possible now, nor had it ever really been possible ever since his parents had been killed in Kansas … a century ago? Ten lifetimes?
And, as before, the death and carnage that always seemed to surround him solved nothing, offered no satisfaction. Even the woman’s death, for what she had done to Elizabeth, had been empty. Liz’s life would not be changed for the better because of it. Nor would his. The deaths were nothing more than another chapter in his continuing nightmare.
Minutes later the F/A-18s showed up just off both sides of the 747.
“Mr. McGarvey, you still with us?” Dimaggio radioed. McGarvey could read the pilot’s name and rank stenciled on the Hornet’s fuselage beneath the canopy.
“That’s a famous name you got there, Dimaggio. Any relation?”
“I wish,” Dimaggio said. “You’re it aboard?”
McGarvey was looking directly at the young man. “Except two female flight attendents,”
he said. “That’s the good news. The bad is that the biggest plane I’ve ever flown was a V-tail Bonanza, and that was fifteen years ago. I never did get my license.”
“Did you land it?”
“Badly.”
“But you walked away from the landing,” Dimaggio said. “So things aren’t as bad as we thought they might be. Now listen up, Mr. M, this is what we’re trying to work out for you.”
Twenty-three U.S. Navy and Marine Sea Stallion helicopters out of Pearl and off the CVN Nimitz
showed up almost simultaneously along the west coast of Niihau, the most isolated island in the Hawaiian chain, and immediately began announcing the evacuation of all residents.
Eighteen miles long and five miles wide the island was home to less than two hundred people who spoke only Hawaiian, though they understood English, who did not use electricity, plumbing or telephones, and who got around by bicycles and horses.
During the Second World War an airstrip had been laid down on the island’s arid interior, and although it had been lengthened to take jets almost twenty years ago, it had never been used except in emergencies.
Even before the evacuation had begun, a C-130 Hercules was touching down on the strip with fire fighting and medical units out of Pearl, while another C-130 circled overhead, ready to lay down a thick blanket of foam along the entire runway and surrounding area the moment the supplies and personnel were secured and the first C-130 took off.
Also among the personnel were two Air Force nuclear weapons specialists on loan to the Navy at Pearl. Everything humanly possible to secure the bomb aboard the 747
when the jetliner landed was being done. McGarvey’s survival was secondary, even though it was up to him to bring the big jet in.
“Ten to one he doesn’t make it,” one of the technicians aboard the circling AWACS
commented. “But the device should survive a controlled crash landing with no real problem.”
The 747’s controls were surprisingly light, the jetliner even easier to fly, in some ways, than the small four- place Beech Bonanza.
Ted Kinstry, a veteran 747 pilot for United Airlines, had been brought out from Honolulu aboard the AWACS to talk McGarvey in, and although he figured the chances of pulling off a survivable crash landing were far less than ten to one, he instantly established a rapport with McGarvey and talked him through the motions, step by step.
“I have the island and the runway in sight now,” McGarvey radioed. On instructions he had dumped most of the 747’s fuel out over the ocean before changing course for the nearly five hundred mile straight-in approach.
While still well away from any land, Kinstry had McGarvey make two simulated landings, using an altitude of twenty thousand feet as the imaginary ground level. On the first landing, McGarvey managed to pull up and level off at eighteen thousand five hundred feet; the second time at nineteen thousand seven hundred.
“You crashed and burned both times,” Kinstry had told him. “But there was an improvement.”
“Let’s try it again,” McGarvey suggested.
“No time or fuel. Sorry, Mac, but the next time is the big one.”
Which was now.
“We’re going to start using flaps now,” Kinstry’s voice came into McGarvey’s headphones.
“Why so soon?” McGarvey asked.
“Because we need to slow you down sooner. This time we’re not using landing gear.
You’re going to belly her in. It’ll tear hell out of the aircraft, but the landing will be easier.”
“You’re the boss,” McGarvey said, trying to blink away the double vision that was coming in and out now, at times so badly he could barely read the instruments. He hadn’t told that to Kinstry. It wouldn’t have helped.
“You don’t have to reply from now on unless you have a question,” Kinstry said calmly.
“Reduce throttles to the second mark.”
McGarvey pulled back on the big handles on the center console, and the aircraft’s nose immediately became impossible to hold.
“Don’t forget to adjust your trim each time you change a throttle or flap setting,”
Kinstry cautioned, and McGarvey did as he was told, the jetliner’s nose immediately coming up, the pressures on the control column easing.
“Now we’re going to five degrees of flaps. Again, watch your trim.”
McGarvey lowered the flaps which acted as huge air brakes, slowing the plane even more, the roar of the wind over the added wing surface suddenly loud.
Ahead, the runway seemed impossibly narrow and much too short.
“I have you in sight. Come right slightly to line up with the runway.”
McGarvey turned the wheel very slightly to the right as he applied a little pressure to the right rudder pedal. The big jet ponderously swung on line, then passed to the right. He had to compensate left, then right before settling in.
“You’re at eight thousand feet, glide path a little high. Reduce throttles to the third mark, and flaps to ten degrees.”
McGarvey did both, remembering to adjust the trim each time, and the plane slowed even further, the roar now very loud.
“Looking good,” Kinstry said. “Reduce throttles to the fourth position, and increase flaps to twenty degrees-maximum.”
The big jetliner was no longer so easy to handle even with the trim tabs properly adjusted. The controls seemed sluggish and unresponsive, and McGarvey got the unsettling impression that the jetliner was hanging in the air by the very narrowest of speed margins just above a stall.
“Your glide path is a little low, pull up the nose.”
McGarvey eased the wheel back, and the stall horn began 368
beeping shrilly, a red stall-indicator lighting on the panel flashing brightly.
“I’m getting a stall warning,” McGarvey radioed.
“Don’t worry about it. Your glide path is looking good, bring it right a little more.
From now on you’ll probably have to hold a little right rudder, looks as if you have a slight crosswind.”
The plane came right and lined up perfectly this time. The stall warning continued to buzz.
“At one thousand feet, glide path is a little low, pull up,” Kinstry said.
The stall warning continued to buzz, and now the runway was definitely too small by at least a factor of ten, maybe more.
“At eight hundred feet, glide path still a little low, pull up.”
