traffic away from the unidentified airplane. “No answer, Ted,” the controller told his supervisor. “He’s going to bust right through the Class C.”
“Everyone out of his way?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think he’ll do?”
“He’s got to be NORDO or a pinch hitter,” the controller replied. NORDO meant “no radio,” meaning the pilot was unable to talk to anyone on the radios; a “pinch hitter” was someone other than a pilot at the controls. “I’m betting he’ll see the runways Reno or Stead and try to make a landing, or just circle and decide what to do.”
“This is not good,” the supervisor said. “He could close us down for hours.” He punched a button on the console: “Tower, TF, we’ve got a NORDO inbound, about eleven miles to the southeast.”
“We’ve got him on the scope,” the Reno Tower controller responded. “He’s at seven thousand eight hundred and level, just southeast of Dayton Valley.”
“We’ve got him at two-fifty knots airspeed now.”
“Same up here.”
“Okay, I’ve got the Southwest flight set up to orbit over Mustang, and I’ll keep all of the other inbounds outside of the Class C until this guy either calls or zooms through,” the approach controller said. “I’m hoping he’ll see a runway and go for it.”
“I’ll activate the crash net here and at Stead, just in case,” the tower controller said. “This could be a mess.”
Carl was relying on the King Air’s autopilot and his extensive rehearsals for the last few minutes of this mission, because his vision was all but gone and the cramps in his stomach and back were making it impossible to concentrate on flying. He had flown this route a hundred times in the past couple months, using desktop-PC flight simulators and Google Earth to study the terrain and obstructions.
Once clear of the mountains around Virginia City southeast of Reno, Carl started a slow descent to 4,600 feet, just a hundred feet above the Truckee Meadows. Letting the autopilot handle the flying tasks for now, he used the socket wrench to start loosening the bolts atop the large canister in the aisle beside him. The ground crew must have already loosened the bolts, because they were easier to turn than he anticipated, especially in his weakened state. There were a dozen bolts securing the top; he managed to remove half of them before he had to turn his full attention to flying.
Only seconds to go now…
Once he was past the control tower, the Grand Sierra Resort, and the Peppermill Casino, there were no other tall buildings or obstacles around him until reaching his objective. The lid was loosened as much as he could loosen it on the canister, and he could feel something that felt like an exposed lightbulb being held close to the right side of his face.
The mission could not have gone better. All of his preflight preparation, study, and careful consideration of every possible problem ensured success. After the series of bad thunderstorms threatened to cancel the mission, the weather cooperated. Even the old autopilot on this bird worked. The Lord was indeed guiding him, endorsing this mission with great weather and working components, and allowing him to live long enough to see the mission’s end.
The target was in sight. It was the first high-rise structure he would encounter on this heading in the downtown Reno area, so he wouldn’t have to weave around other buildings, and its distinctive curved shape made it easy to spot. The coordinates he had programmed into the GPS — refined, remeasured, and triple-checked several times over the past few months — were dead on, but he still put his hands on the control yoke, not to correct for any errors but so he could feel the autopilot’s servos making tiny corrections in the plane’s heading…
… and then Carl noticed through his cataract-infested eyes the blinking yellow “AP” light on the instrument panel and realized that
It was as if God Himself were steering his weapon of war, he decided. This truly was a message that his was indeed a blessed mission, ordained by God. The war was on, and God was indeed on their side.
One last task. He switched to the Reno control tower frequency, pressed the “XMIT” button, and spoke: “Live free or die. The Lord has spoken.”
They had walked another two hundred yards or so in the new direction without any more signs. “Whaddaya say, Marky?” Ron Spivey shouted. “We got nothing. We should’ve stayed on that original track. Now we need to start over.”
Brad looked at Ralph Markham. “Sergeant?”
Ralph appeared indecisive, but only for a few moments: “Another hundred yards,” he said. Ron groaned. Ralph made some quick calculations in his head. “Then we’ll turn right to three-four-zero, go for… for forty paces, turn back to one-seven-zero, and search back toward the crash site.”
“Where in heck did you come up with all that, Marky?” Ron asked. “Why do we have to do all that?”
“He’s putting us back on the reciprocal of the original search bearing,” Brad explained with a smile. “The one-in-sixty rule. We go out six hundred feet and change heading ten degrees, so we’ve offset ourselves one hundred feet, or about forty paces. Ralph’s plan should put us right back to where we found the sneaker, on the original search bearing.”
“So why don’t we just do that now?” Ron asked.
“Because I want to search another hundred yards on this bearing,” Ralph said. “Line up and let’s go.”
Ron rolled his eyes in exasperation but did as he was told.
Brad was starting to get a little tired slogging through the damp, uneven ground, and he could feel the sunburn building on the back of his unprotected neck. The terrain was getting a bit more rolling, and now they came across a wide wash that had a thin rivulet of water flowing through it from the recent thunderstorms. This last hundred yards was going to be tougher than the previous two hundred.
“I say we jog now, before we have to cross this wash,” Ron said.
“It’s not so bad,” Ralph said. “Just sixty more yards.”
Ron said something under his breath but pushed on.
Every now and then Brad would glance up at the search plane overhead. He was so close to becoming a senior member and flying that plane, he could almost taste it. Ground-team work was okay, but where he really belonged was…
Just as he descended from the wash’s embankment and started to look for the best place to cross the water, something made Brad turn around… and there, half buried in the embankment, covered in dust, mud, and insects, was a young boy!
“We are at the scene of a horrible airplane crash here at the Bruce R. Thompson United States Courthouse and Federal Building in downtown Reno,” the female reporter began. “The crash happened about fifteen minutes ago and is the worst air accident in Reno’s history. My cameraman Jerry Fleck is with me and he’ll be providing you
