Until that moment he could have changed his mind. The plane would have flown on, no one knowing what he had planned. But now, whatever happened, it would all come out. He would never fly again, except maybe as a passenger: his career was over. He fought down the rage that threatened to possess him. He had to stay cool and get this job done. Then he would think about the bastards who had ruined his life.
The plane had to make an emergency splashdown now. The kidnappers would come aboard and rescue Frankie Gordino. After that anything could happen. Would Carol-Ann be safe and unhurt? Would the navy ambush the gangsters as they headed for shore? Would Eddie go to jail for his part in the whole thing? He was a prisoner of fate. But if he could just hold Carol-Ann in his arms, alive and well, nothing else would matter.
A moment after the engines cut out he heard the voice of Captain Baker in his headphones. “What the hell is going on?”
Eddie’s mouth was dry with tension and he had to swallow twice before he could speak. “I don’t know yet,” he replied; but he did. The engines had stopped because they were getting no fuel: he had cut the supply.
The Clipper had six fuel tanks. The engines were supplied by two small feeder tanks in the wings. Most of the fuel was kept in four large reserve tanks located in the hydrostabilizers, the stubby sea-wings that the passengers stepped on as they got on and off the plane.
Fuel could be dumped from the reserve tanks, but not by Eddie, because the control was at the second pilot’s station. However, Eddie could pump fuel from the reserve tanks up to the wings and back down again. Such transfers were controlled by two large handwheels to the right of the engineer’s instrument panel. The plane was now over the Bay of Fundy, about five miles from the rendezvous, and in the last few minutes he had drained both the wing tanks. The starboard tank had fuel for a few more miles. The port tank had now run dry, and the port engines had stopped.
It would be a simple matter to pump fuel back up from the reserves, of course. However, while the plane was in Shediac, Eddie had come aboard on his own and tampered with the handwheels, moving the dials so that when they said PUMP they were in fact off, and when they said OFF they were pumping. Now the dials indicated that he was trying to fill the wing tanks when in fact nothing was happening.
He had been using the pumps with the wrong settings for the first part of the flight, of course; and another engineer might have noticed that and wondered what the hell was going on. Eddie had worried every second that the off-duty assistant engineer, Mickey Finn, would come upstairs; but he stayed fast asleep in number 1 compartment, as Eddie had expected: at this stage of the long flight, off-duty crew always slept.
There had been two nasty moments in Shediac. The first had come when the police announced they had learned the name of Frankie Gordino’s accomplice aboard the plane. Eddie assumed they were talking about Luther, and for a while he thought the game was up, and racked his brains for some other way of rescuing Carol-Ann. Then they had named Harry Vandenpost, and Eddie almost jumped for joy. He had no idea why Vandenpost, who appeared to be an amiable young American from a wealthy family, should be traveling with a false passport; but he was grateful to the man for deflecting attention from Luther. The police looked no farther; Luther escaped notice and the plan could go ahead.
But all this had been too much for Captain Baker. Even while Eddie was still recovering from the scare, Baker had dropped a bombshell. The fact that there really had been an accomplice on board meant that someone was serious about rescuing Gordino, he said, and he wanted Gordino off the plane. That too would have ruined everything for Eddie.
There had been a stand-up row between Baker and Ollis Field, with the F.B.I. man threatening to have the captain charged with obstruction of justice. In the end Baker had called Pan American in New York and dumped the problem on them; and the airline had decided to let Gordino fly on; and once again Eddie was relieved.
He had got one more piece of good news in Shediac. A cryptic but unmistakable message from Steve Appleby had confirmed that a U.S. Navy cutter would be patrolling the coast where the Clipper was going to come down. It would stay out of sight until the splashdown, then intercept any vessel that made contact with the downed plane.
That made all the difference to Eddie. Knowing the gangsters would be caught afterward, he could with a clear conscience make sure the plan went off without a hitch.
Now the deed was almost done. The plane was close to the rendezvous and flying on two engines only.
Captain Baker was at Eddie’s side in a moment. Eddie said nothing to him at first. With a shaky hand he switched the engine feed so that the starboard wing tank was fueling all engines, and restarted the port engines. Then he said: “The port wing tank ran dry and I can’t fill it.”
“Why not?” the captain snapped.
Eddie pointed to the handwheels. Feeling like a traitor, he said: “I’ve switched the pumps on but nothing’s happening.”
Eddie’s instruments did not show either fuel flow or fuel pressure between the reserve tanks and the feeder tanks, but there were four glass sights at the rear of the control cabin for visual checking of the fuel in the pipes. Captain Baker looked at each in turn. “Nothing!” he said. “How much is left in the starboard wing tank?”
“It’s almost dry—a few miles.”
“How come you’ve only just noticed?” he said angrily.
“I thought we were pumping,” Eddie said feebly.
It was an inadequate answer and the captain was furious. “How could both pumps go at the same time?”
“I don’t know—but thank God we have a hand pump.” Eddie seized the handle next to his table and began to operate the hand pump. This was normally used only when the engineer was draining water from the fuel tanks in flight. He had done this immediately after leaving Shediac, and he had deliberately omitted to reset the F-valve that allowed the water to escape overboard. In consequence, his vigorous pumping action was not filling the wing tanks, but just dumping fuel overboard.
The captain did not know this, of course, and it was not likely that he would notice the setting on the F- valve; but he could see that no fuel was moving through the sight gauges. “It’s not working!” he said. “I don’t understand how all three pumps could fail at the same time!”
Eddie looked at his dials. “The starboard wing tank is almost dry,” he said. “If we don’t splash down soon we’re going to fall out of the sky.”
“Prepare for emergency splashdown, everybody,” Baker said. He pointed a finger at Eddie. “I don’t like your role in this, Deakin,” he said with ice-cold fury. “I don’t trust you.”
Eddie felt rotten. He had good reason to lie to his captain, but just the same he hated himself. All his life he had dealt honestly with people, and scorned men who used trickery and deceit. Now he was acting in a way he despised. You’ll understand in the end, Captain, he thought; but he wished he could say it aloud.
The captain turned to the navigator’s station and bent over the chart. The navigator, Jack Ashford, shot a puzzled look at Eddie, then put a finger on the chart and said to the captain: “We’re here.”
The whole plan relied on the Clipper coming down in the channel between the coast and Grand Manan Island. The gangsters were betting on that, and so was Eddie. But in emergencies people did strange things. Eddie decided that if Baker irrationally chose another location, he would speak up and point out the advantages of the channel. Baker would be suspicious, but he would have to see the logic of it; and then
However, no interference was necessary. After a moment Baker said: “Here. In this channel. That’s where we’ll come down.”
Eddie turned away so no one could see his expression of triumph. He was another step closer to Carol- Ann.
As they all went through the procedure for emergency splashdown, Eddie looked out of the window and tried to gauge what the sea was like. He saw a small white vessel like a sports fishing boat bobbing on the swell. The surface was choppy. The landing would be rough.
He heard a voice that stopped his heart. “What’s the emergency?” It was Mickey Finn coming up the stairs to investigate.
Eddie stared at him in horror. Mickey would guess in a minute that the F-valve on the hand pump had not been reset. Eddie had to get rid of him quickly.
But Captain Baker beat him to it. “Get out of here, Mickey!” he snapped. “Off-duty crew must be strapped in during an emergency splashdown, not wandering around the aircraft asking stupid questions!”
