Charon's landing

He ignored the sour look she shot at him and continued seriously. “Besides, we don’t have the time to discuss the differences between a seaplane and a regular plane. For now just consider it semantics, because there’s the Hope.”

Looking much like a yellow toy, the MV Hope sat at anchor in the middle of Valdez Bay, equidistant between the town and the sprawl of the Alyeska Marine Terminal. The mountains looming at the head of the Sound were a bleak snowcapped backdrop. Valdez was a tumbled gray blur to their left, enmeshed by a spiderweb of docks and jetties. The tired fishing and pleasure boats looked like detailed models.

“Aggie, you have to land this plane. Kerikov is on that ship, and you and I are the only ones who can stop him,” Mercer said harshly. “I’ve never given up on anything in my life, and I know you haven’t either. If you care, I mean if you really care about the environment, then don’t think about putting this plane down, just do it.”

Mercer considered having Aggie land them at the Alyeska breakwater, but he didn’t think they had the time. It would take several minutes to cross the Sound and even more time they didn’t have to reach Andy Lindstrom at the Operations Center. And even then, there was no guarantee they would be able to stop Kerikov from cycling the pumps and destroying the pipeline. His only choice was to stop the Russian from detonating the nitrogen in the first place.

Aggie didn’t speak, didn’t even take the time to look at him. Even though she was piloting a strange aircraft and forced to fly from the right-hand seat, she was quick and sure with the controls. She eased the throttles back farther, added ten degrees of flap to the wing, and edged the nose higher, the Cessna happily following her lead as if it knew that its previous pilot was a total incompetent and that it now enjoyed the ministrations of a professional.

Coming in low over the water, actually having to rock the plane around a fishing boat headed out to sea, Aggie brought the Cessna in for its landing. Without knowing the weather conditions, pressure, wind direction, or any of the myriad other pieces of information pilots used to land successfully, she relied on her own training. The altimeter read that they were still forty feet above the seas, but she knew they were no more than twenty. She recognized that Mercer had not set the altimeter when he took off. The plane was much bigger than the aircraft she had flown before, and the two pontoons under the hull acted as drag as she crabbed the plane in, her hands and feet dancing on the controls like a pianist during a concert solo.

Adding more flaps and pitching the nose even higher, Aggie realized that they were too close to the Hope to land and still have enough room for a rollout or, more accurately, floatout. The vessel was just a hundred yards away, and the floats under the Cessna were still ten feet above the Sound. She should pull up and come around again, but she continued grimly, her anger at Jan making her reckless.

Now only four feet from the water and held aloft by the ground effects of the wide wings, the Cessna was open to the variability of the winds that slued the plane hard to port. Aggie stomped on the right rudder to compensate and eased the plane down as best she could, the pontoons smashing into a wave, breaking clear through a trough, then barreling into another of the two-foot swells.

The Cessna almost flipped as if it had been plucked from the sky, the prop coming dangerously close to digging into the water. The plane fought its way through the next swell as it slowed, droplets spattering the windshield. They had landed. Aggie had done it. She heaved a sigh as the aircraft wallowed like a spindly dragonfly.

“Flying pigs be damned, I’m a pilot,” Aggie breathed.

Mercer guessed the non sequitur was some ritual.

“Yes, you are. Now, go!” he said, on the edge of an adrenaline overdose. He jammed the throttle back in just before the last of the spark in the motor died away. It bellowed at full power, and the plane began racing across the water. The Hope was twenty yards away, shimmering in the late dawn light.

“Get me alongside,” he ordered, “near her stern if you can. I’ve got an idea.”

Aggie wasn’t yet over the shock of their escape from the Omega, not to mention Mercer’s suicidal nosedive or her near fatal landing. She was too tired to argue with him, didn’t have the energy to do anything but follow his orders. She guided the plane toward the Hope, her feet playing alternately against the rudders as swells slammed into the deeply settled pontoons.

The hull of the Hope loomed quickly, too quickly, her yellow sides towering up and over the Cessna’s cockpit before Aggie realized they were that close. She desperately tried to avoid contact, but just then a heavy wave smashed the plane into the research vessel, the thin aluminum skin and support members of the port wing crumpling against the hardened steel of the ship’s hull.

“Damn it,” she cursed her own misjudgment, but no one was there to hear her epithet.

Mercer was at the rear cargo door, wrenching it open, letting in a harsh blast of frigid air to cleanse the stench of fear from the Cessna. The main deck of the Hope was twelve feet over his head, and there appeared to be no way up. He jumped down onto the pontoon and shimmied forward so he could grasp the angular strut supporting the starboard wing. The pontoon was slippery, forcing him to struggle onto the wing using his arms and shoulders, new pains tearing into the old ones.

Grunting and straining, he managed to haul himself onto the undamaged wing, then stood on the unsteady platform. Prop wash whipped at his hair and clothing like a hurricane gale. The dynamics of the tides and waves kept the Cessna hard against the side of the Hope, the plane scraping against the vessel with every surge. Even with the wing’s added height advantage, it was too far of a jump to reach the steel railing circling the vessel’s deck.

Mercer dodged to the far tip of the wing, his weight dipping that side of the plane farther into the water, and then ran to the other side, stopping just short of the damage caused by Aggie’s mistimed approach. He repeated the process, slowly building a steady rocking motion, every dash raising the damaged wing closer to the deck. At the instant he thought the plane would pitch no higher, he raced onto the wrinkled section of the wing, springing upward even as the weakened section sagged under his weight.

His leap was fouled by the wing giving way, and he had to scrabble to maintain his grip on the scaly opening of a deck scupper, the molded steel giving almost no purchase as his feet pumped against the glassy smooth hull. Hanging in space, Mercer prayed that Kerikov hadn’t posted any deck guards. The approach and subsequent crash of the Cessna had the subtlety of a slap in the face, and it would only stand to reason that someone would come out to investigate. If Mercer was discovered hanging from the side of the ship like an unwanted barnacle, he could be cleaned off with an easy shot through the top of his skull.

Mercer pulled himself upward, his feet scrabbling. The rough steel edges of the scupper tore into his hands, releasing a fresh torrent of blood from his raw palms and fingers. He ignored it and heaved himself onto the empty deck, scissoring his legs under the railing in a last desperate effort.

“Aggie,” he shouted down to the plane, his voice almost stripped away by the engine noise and still-spinning propeller.

A second later, the prop juddered to a stop, and the engine went dead. The only sound to be heard was the lap of water against the hull of the ship. Then, through the silence, Mercer heard laughter coming from within the superstructure.

“Aggie,” he called again, and her pale face appeared in the opened cargo door of the Cessna, her short hair swept across half her face. In the tricky light of the morning, her green eyes appeared luminous. “I need you up here. Otherwise this will never work.”

Mercer wanted to send her to shore so she could alert Lindstrom, but he needed her with him. Because he’d led the Coast Guard raid against the Hope, he was certain that the crew would try to stop him. But with Aggie at his side, he hoped that her presence would arouse less suspicion, freeing him to go after Kerikov.

“I can’t jump up there.” Aggie stood on the floatplane’s pontoon.

“Wait.” Mercer ducked from her view, rushing to the stern of the research vessel where a fluorescent orange life-preserving ring hung from the railing, attached to the ship by two hundred feet of heavy nylon line. He ran back to the side of the ship, casting quick glances forward, thankful that no one had investigated the Cessna.

“Grab onto this. I’ll pull you up.” He threw the ring over the side, and it landed in the narrow strip of dark water between the ship and the floatplane, the line dangling in front of Aggie’s face.

Without question, for she was well beyond that point, Aggie wound the rope around her wrists several times. She walked up the side of the PEAL ship in time with Mercer’s tugs. At the top, with one hand bracing the rope,