whine?”
“A whine, I think.”
“Turboprop, then. What seat are you in?”
“The one on the left.”
“Pilot’s seat, excellent. Directly in front of you there should be a glass-covered dial that indicates what’s known as ‘attitude.’ ”
Finally, something PlayStation had. “Yeah. Tells you which way’s up, right?”
“Exactly. Blue’s the sky, brown’s the dirt, and the little white bars in the middle are our wings.”
“Well, if it’s working, we’re flying level now.”
“Good. Now, just to the right you should see an instrument that looks like an old-fashioned clock.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Our altimeter. I know you know what that is. Should be a window across the top half with numbers. Can you read them?”
Charlie’s stomach settled, somewhat. Alice knew what she was doing; she wasn’t just trying to calm him down. “About fifty-two hundred feet.”
“Stable?”
“I think so.”
“Great. To the left is a speed indicator. Read it to me.”
“One-ninety.” According to the gauge, it was 190 KIAS. Knots? Knots Incorporating Air Speed? No time for Q amp; A.
“We have to find out how much flying time we have. On the wall to your left, there should be two gauges on a separate panel.”
“Okay.”
“Those are the fuel gauges.”
“There’s one-twenty-five on both gauges.” Not a bad total, he thought, if this was anything like a car.
Alice was silent.
A sticky foreboding spread over Charlie.
He glanced at Drummond. Still out.
Finally, Alice spoke. “What do you see outside?”
“Not much,” Charlie said. “Just tranquil Caribbean, a couple of clouds.”
“No land?”
“No.”
“I was hoping-sometimes there are islets there that don’t make the GPS maps.”
“We’ve run into a couple. Just not lately.”
“Listen, Charlie, I’m afraid there’s no way you’re going to make land.”
“Not with two hundred and fifty gallons of fuel?”
“That’s not gallons, that’s
Charlie turned to ice. “Don’t tell me we’re going to do a water landing?”
“Fine, I won’t tell you. But I’ll bet that, afterward, you’ll say it was no big deal.”
“A bet I’d be happy to lose.”
She laughed. Briefly. “Between the two yokes, lower down, you’ll see some levers. Grab the pair on the left, the biggest ones. They’re the throttles. Pull them back halfway.”
Easy enough, he thought. The throttles gave more than he expected, though. “Shit, the nose is dropping!”
“Hold it up.”
He pulled the yoke toward him, inducing a blast of g-forces strong enough, it felt, to push him through the floor. Finally the nose evened out.
He tried to keep his voice from shaking. “Piece of cake.”
Alice added a rapid series of instructions involving altitude adjustment and controls for the tail. He tried to follow, head still aching from hypoxia. Worse was the nagging certainty that he’d forgotten at least one crucial step. In spite of a few bumps, however, the plane began a smooth descent.
“Now, take the two levers for the props and push them all the way up,” she said.
Setting the phone on his lap, Charlie scrambled, groping for the levers. When was his damned adrenaline going to kick in?
He snatched up the phone. “Done,” he said. And hoped.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah, except my stomach is so knotted up, I’ll only be eating soup from now on.”
“I know a good New England clam chowder recipe.”
He forgot about his stomach. He wanted to say he loved her.
“Now, push the nose down, not a lot,” she said. “Remember our attitude indicator: Push it down just under the line.”
“Got it.”
“What’s the airspeed now?”
“One-eighty.”
“Dandy. Pull the throttles back another quarter. We want to be going slow close to the water.”
“Airspeed’s slowing.”
“Tell me when that needle gets into the white arc; should be around one-fifty. Also you need to head into the wind, which is coming from the east, according to my phone. So where’s the sun?”
“Behind us.”
“Perfect.”
“And speed’s now one-fifty.”
“Altitude?”
“Thirty-one hundred.”
She gave him instructions for the flaps and throttles.
Easy to follow, for a change. “Flaps, check. Throttles, check. Twenty-four hundred feet.”
“Good. Where’s your dad?”
“Copilot seat.”
“Belted in?”
“No.” Drummond’s safety belt had fallen by the wayside because of Charlie’s concern over how long a person was unconscious before it was considered something worse, like a coma.
“Do it up. Yourself too. When you hit the water, you’re probably going to get thrown around a bit.”
Reaching over and pulling the straps across Drummond, Charlie considered that a cage match with a professional wrestler equated to “thrown around a bit” by Alice’s standards.
Drummond didn’t stir, not even with the loud metallic pop of the seat-belt buckle.
Even Alice heard it. “Okay, Charlie, now bring the throttles back an inch or so and keep the plane coming down. Try and settle the speed at around a hundred, otherwise the airplane will stall. You know what happens then, right?”
“No. Do I want to?”
“Probably not. Just don’t go less than ninety knots or raise the nose higher than ten degrees. I’m telling you, that chowder will make this worthwhile.”
The plane continued to descend. Easy enough, though Charlie knew full well that actually setting the thing down would be the most difficult thing that he had ever done and ever would do. If a wingtip touched the water first, the plane could turn into a skipping stone. Set the plane down in proper sequence but at the wrong angle, and the impact forces would obliterate everything.
“Eight hundred feet now, speed one-ten,” he said.
“Bring the throttles back about an inch and keep coming down.”
“Speed’s around a hundred.”
“Keep the nose down. Altitude?”
