The Coffin Dancer
Page 31
Bell asked, "Rhyme wants to know about heat. Wouldn't it blow the bomb?"
"Some parts are hot, some aren't. It's not that hot by the cartridge."
Bell told this to Rhyme, then he said, "He's going to call you directly."
A moment later, through the radio, Percey heard the patch of a unicom call.
It was Lincoln Rhyme.
"Percey, can you hear me?"
"Loud and clear. That prick pulled a fast one, hm?"
"Looks like it. How much flying time do you have?"
"Hour forty-five minutes. About."
"Okay, okay," the criminalist said. A pause. "All right . . . Can you get to the engine from the inside?"
"No."
Another pause. "Could you somehow disconnect the whole engine? Unbolt it or something? Let it drop off?"
"Not from the inside."
"Is there any way you could refuel in midair?"
"Refuel? Not with this plane."
Rhyme asked, "Could you fly high enough to freeze the bomb mechanism?"
She was amazed at how fast his mind worked. These were things that wouldn't have occurred to her. "Maybe. But even at emergency descent rate--I'm talking nosedive--it'd still take eight, nine minutes to get down. I don't think any bomb parts'd stay very frozen for that long. And the Mach buffet would probably tear us apart."
Rhyme continued, "Okay, what about getting a plane in front of you and tethering some parachutes back?"
Her initial thought was that she would never abandon her aircraft. But the realistic answer--the one she gave him--was that given the stall speed of a Lear 35A and the configuration of door, wings, and engines, it was unlikely that anyone could leap from the aircraft without being killed.
Rhyme was again silent for a moment. Brad swallowed and wiped his hands on his razor-creased slacks. "Brother."
Roland Bell rocked back and forth.
Hopeless, she thought, staring down at the murky blue dusk.
"Lincoln?" Percey asked. "Are you there?"
She heard his voice. He was calling to someone in his lab--or bedroom. In a testy tone he was demanding, "Not that map. You know which one I mean. Well, why would I want that one? No, no . . . "
Silence.
Oh, Ed, Percey thought. Our lives have always followed parallel paths. Maybe our deaths will too. She was most upset about Roland Bell, though. The thought of leaving his children orphans was unbearable.
Then she heard Rhyme asking, "On the fuel you've got left, how far can you fly?"
"At the most efficient power settings . . . " She looked at Brad, who was punching in the figures.
He said, "If we got some altitude, say, eight hundred miles."
"Got an idea," Rhyme said. "Can you make it to Denver?"
. . . Chapter Thirty-three
Hour 36 of 45
"Airport elevation's fifty-one eighty feet," Brad said, reviewing the Airman's Guide of Denver International. "We were about that outside of Chicago and the thing didn't blow."
"How far?" Percey asked.
"From present location, nine oh two miles."
Percey debated for no more than a few seconds, nodded. "We go for it. Give me a dead-reckoning heading, just something to play with till we get VORs." Then into the radio: "We're going to try it, Lincoln. The gas'll be real close. We've got a lot to do. I'll get back to you."
"We'll be here."
Brad eyeballed the map and referred to the flight log. "Turn left heading two six six."
"Two six six," she repeated, then called ATC. "Chicago Center, Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo. We're heading for Denver International. Apparently it's a . . . we've got an altitude-sensitive bomb on board. We need to get on the ground at five thousand feet or higher. Request immediate VORs for vectoring to Denver."
"Roger, Foxtrot Bravo. We'll have those in a minute."
Brad asked, "Please advise the weather en route, Chicago Center."
"High pressure front moving through Denver right now. Headwinds vary from fifteen to forty at ten thousand, increasing to sixty, seventy knots at twenty-five."
"Ouch," Brad muttered then returned to his calculations. After a moment he said, "Fuel depletion about fifty-five miles short of Denver."
Bell asked, "Can you set down on the highway?"
"In a big ball of flames we can," Percey said.
ATC asked, "Foxtrot Bravo, ready to copy VOR frequencies?"
While Brad took down the information, Percey stretched, pressed her head into the back of her seat. The gesture seemed familiar and she remembered she'd seen Lincoln Rhyme do the same in his elaborate bed. She thought about her little speech to him. She'd meant it, of course, but hadn't realized how true the words were. How dependent they were on fragile bits of metal and plastic.
And maybe about to die because of them.
Fate is the hunter . . .
Fifty-five miles short. What could they do?
Why wasn't her mind as far-ranging as Rhyme's? Wasn't there anything she could think of to conserve fuel?
Flying higher was more fuel efficient.
Flying lighter was too. Could they throw anything out of the aircraft?
The cargo? The U.S. Medical shipment weighed exactly 478 pounds. That would buy them some miles.
But even as she considered this, she knew she'd never do it. If there was any chance she could salvage the flight, salvage the Company, she would.
Come on, Lincoln Rhyme, she thought, give me an idea. Give me . . . Picturing his room, picturing sitting beside him, she remembered the tiercel--the male falcon--lording about on the window ledge.
"Brad," she asked abruptly, "what's our glide ratio?"
"A Lear thirty-five A? No idea."
Percey had flown a Schweizer 2-32 sailplane. The first prototype was built in 1962 and it had set the standard for glider performance ever since. Its sink rate was a miraculous 120 feet per minute. It weighed about thirteen hundred pounds. The Lear she was flying was fourteen thousand pounds. Still, aircraft will glide, any aircraft. She remembered the incident of the Air Canada 767 a few years ago--pilots still talked about it. The jumbo jet ran out of fuel due to a combination of computer and human error. Both engines flamed out at forty-one thousand feet and the aircraft became a 143-ton glider. It crash-landed without a single death.
"Well, let's think. What'd the sink rate be at idle?"
"We could keep it at twenty-three hundred, I think."
Which meant a vertical drop of about thirty miles per hour.
"Now. Calculate if we burned fuel to take us to fifty-five thousand feet, when would we deplete?"
"Fifty-five?" Brad asked with some surprise.
"Roger."
He punched in numbers. "Maximum climb is forty-three hundred fpm; we'd burn a lot down here, but after thirty-five thousand the efficiency goes way up. We could power back . . . "
"Go to one engine?"
"Sure. We could do that."
He tapped in more numbers. "That scenario, we'd deplete about eighty-three miles short. But, of course, then we'd have altitude."
Percey Clay, who got A's in math and physics and could dead reckon without a calculator, saw the numbers stream past in her head. Flame out at fifty-five thousand, sink rate of twenty-three . . . They could cover a little over eighty miles before they touched down. Maybe more if the headwinds were kind.
Brad, with the help of a calculator and fast fingers, came up with the same conclusion. "Be close, though."
God don't give out certain.
She said, "Chicago Center. Lear Foxtrot Bravo requesting immediate clearance to five five thousand feet."
Sometimes you play the odds.
"Uh, say again, Foxtrot Bravo."
"We need to go high. Five five thousand feet."
The ATC controller's voice intruded: "Foxtrot Bravo, you're a Lear three five, is that correct?"
"Roger."
"Maximum operating ceiling is forty-five thousand feet."
"That'
s affirmative, but we need to go higher."
"Your seals've been checked lately?"
Pressure seals. Doors and windows. What kept the aircraft from exploding.
"They're fine," she said, neglecting to mention that Foxtrot Bravo had been shot full of holes and jerry-rigged back together just that afternoon.
ATC answered, "Roger, you're cleared to five five thousand feet, Foxtrot Bravo."
And Percey said something that few, if any, Lear pilots had ever said, "Roger, out of ten for fifty-five thousand."
Percey commanded, "Power to eighty-eight percent. Call out rate of climb and altitude at forty, fifty, and fifty-five thousand."
"Roger," Brad said placidly.
She rotated the plane and it began to rise.
They sailed upward.
All the stars of evening . . .
Ten minutes later Brad called out, "Five five thousand."
They leveled off. It seemed to Percey that she could actually hear the groaning of the aircraft's seams. She recalled her high-altitude physiology. If the window Ron had replaced were to blow out or any pressure seal burst--if it didn't tear the aircraft apart--hypoxia would knock them out in about five seconds. Even if they were wearing masks, the pressure difference would make their blood boil.
"Go to oxygen. Increase cabin pressure to ten thousand feet."
"Pressure to ten thousand," he said. This at least would relieve some of the terrible pressure on the fragile hull.
"Good idea," Brad said. "How'd you think of that?"
Monkey skills . . .
"Dunno," she responded. "Let's cut power in number two. Throttle closed, autothrottle disengaged."
"Closed, disengaged," Brad echoed.
"Fuel pumps off, ignition off."
"Pumps off, ignition off."
She felt the slight swerve as their left side thrust vanished. Percey compensated for the yaw with a slight adjustment to the rudder trim tabs. It didn't take much. Because the jets were mounted on the rear of the fuselage and not on the wings, losing one power plant didn't affect the stability of the aircraft much.
Brad asked, "What do we do now?"
"I'm having a cup of coffee," Percey said, climbing out of her seat like a tomboy jumping from a tree house. "Hey, Roland, how d'you like yours again?"
For a torturous forty minutes there was silence in Rhyme's room. No one's phone rang. No faxes came in. No computer voices reported, "You've got mail."
Then, at last, Dellray's phone brayed. He nodded as he spoke, but Rhyme could see the news wasn't good. He clicked the phone off.
"Cumberland?"
Dellray nodded. "But it's a bust. Kall hasn't been there for years. Oh, the locals're still talking about the time the boy tied his stepdaddy up 'n' let the worms get him. Sorta a legend. But no family left in the area. And nobody knows nuthin'. Or's willing to say."
It was then that Sellitto's phone chirped. The detective unfolded it and said, "Yeah?"
A lead, Rhyme prayed, please let it be a lead. He looked at the cop's doughy, stoic face. He flipped the phone closed.
"That was Roland Bell," he said. "He just wanted us to know. They're outa gas."
. . . Chapter Thirty-four
Hour 38 of 45
Three different warning buzzers went off simultaneously.
Low fuel, low oil pressure, low engine temperature.
Percey tried adjusting the attitude of the aircraft slightly to see if she could trick some fuel into the lines, but the tanks were bone dry.
With a faint clatter, number one engine quit coughing and went silent.
And the cockpit went completely dark. Black as a closet.
Oh, no . . .
She couldn't see a single instrument, a single control lever or knob. The only thing that kept her from slipping into blind-flight vertigo was the faint band of light that was Denver--in the far distance in front of them.
"What's this?" Brad asked.
"Jesus. I forgot the generators."
The generators are run by the engines. No engines, no electricity.
"Drop the RAT," she ordered.
Brad groped in the dark for the control and found it. He pulled the lever and the ram air turbine dropped out beneath the aircraft. It was a small propeller connected to a generator. The slipstream turned the prop, which powered the generator. It provided basic power for the controls and lights. But not the flaps, gear, speed brakes.
A moment later some of the lights returned.
Percey was staring at the vertical speed indicator. It showed a descent rate of thirty-five hundred feet per minute. Far faster than they'd planned on. They were dropping at close to fifty miles an hour.
Why? she wondered. Why was the calculation so far off?
Because of the rarified air here! She was calculating sink rate based on denser atmosphere. And now that she considered this she remembered that the air around Denver would be rarified too. She'd never flown a sailplane more than a mile up.
She pulled back on the yoke to arrest the descent. It dropped to twenty-one hundred feet per minute. But the airspeed dropped too, fast. In this thin air the stall speed was about three hundred knots. The shaker stick began to vibrate and the controls went mushy. There'd be no recovery from a powerless stall in an aircraft like this.
The coffin corner . . .
Forward with the yoke. They dropped faster, but the airspeed picked up. For nearly fifty miles she played this game. Air Traffic Control told them where the headwinds were strongest and Percey tried to find the perfect combination of altitude and route--winds that were powerful enough to give the Lear optimal lift but not so fast that they slowed their ground speed too much.
Finally, Percey--her muscles aching from controlling the aircraft with brute force--wiped sweat from her face and said, "Give 'em a call, Brad."
"Denver Center, this is Lear Six Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo, with you out of one nine thousand feet. We are twenty-one miles from the airport. Airspeed two hundred twenty knots. We're in a no-power situation here and requesting vectoring to longest available runway consistent with our present heading of two five zero."
"Roger, Foxtrot Bravo. We've been expecting you. Altimeter thirty point nine five. Turn left heading two four zero. We're vectoring you to runway two eight left. You'll have eleven thousand feet to play with."
"Roger, Denver Center."
Something was nagging at her. That ping in the gut again. Like she'd felt with the black van.
What was it? Just superstition?
Tragedies come in threes . . .
Brad said, "Nineteen miles from touchdown. One six thousand feet."
"Foxtrot Bravo, contact Denver Approach." He gave them the radio frequency, then added, "They've been apprised of your situation. Good luck, ma'am. We're all thinking of you."
"Goodnight, Denver. Thanks."
Brad clicked the radio to the new frequency.
What's wrong? she wondered again. There's something I haven't thought of.
"Denver Approach, this is Lear Six Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo. With you at one three thousand feet, thirteen miles from touchdown."
"We have you, Foxtrot Bravo. Come right heading two five zero. Understand you are power-free, is that correct?"
"We're the biggest damn glider you ever saw, Denver."
"You have flaps and gear?"
"No flaps. We'll crank the gear down manually."
"Roger. You want trucks?" Meaning emergency vehicles.
"We think we've got a bomb on board. We want everything you've got."
"Roger that."
Then, with a shudder of horror, it occurred to her: the atmospheric pressure!
"Denver Approach," she asked, "what's the altimeter?"
"Uhm, we have three oh point nine six, Foxtrot Bravo."
It had gone up a hundredth of an inch of mercury in the last minute.
"It's rising?"
"That's affirmative, Foxtrot Bravo. Major high-pressure front moving in."
"Shit on the street," she muttered.
Brad looked at her.
She said to him, "What was the mercury at Mamaroneck?"
He looked it up in the log. "Twenty-nine point six."
"Calculate five thousand feet altitude at that pressure reading compared with thirty-one point oh."
"Thirty-one? That's awful high."
"That's what we're moving into."
He stared at her. "But the bomb . . . "
Percey nodded. "Calculate it."
The young man punched numbers with a steady hand.
He sighed, his first visible display of emotion. "Five thousand feet at Mamaroneck translates to forty-eight five here."
She called Bell forward again. "Here's the situation. There's a pressure front coming in. By the time we get to the runway, the bomb may be reading the atmosphere as below five thousand feet. It may blow when we're fifty to a hundred feet above the ground."
"Okay." He nodded calmly. "Okay."
"We don't have flaps, so we're going to be landing fast, close to two hundred miles an hour. If it blows we'll lose control and crash. There won't be much fire 'cause the tanks are dry. And depending on what's in front of us, if we're low enough we may skid a ways before we start tumbling. There's nothing to do but keep the seat belts tight and keep your head down."
"All right," he said, nodding, looking out the window.
She glanced at his face. "Can I ask you something, Roland?"
"You bet."
"This isn't your first airplane flight, is it?"
He sighed. "You know, you live mosta your born days in North Carolina, you just don't have much of a chance to travel. And coming to New York, well, those Amtraks're nice and comfy." He paused. "Fact is, I've never been higher than an elevator'll take me."
"They're not all like this," she said.
He squeezed her on the shoulder, whispered, "Don't drop your candy." He returned to his seat.
"Okay," Percey said, looking over the Airman's Guide information on Denver International. "Brad, this'll be a nighttime visual approach to runway two eight left. I'll have command of the aircraft. You'll lower the gear manually and call out rate of descent, distance to runway, and altitude--give me true altitude above ground, not sea level--and airspeed." She tried to think of something else. No power, no flaps, no speed brakes. There was nothing else to say; it was the shortest pre-landing briefing in the history of her flying career. She added, "One last thing. When we stop, just get the fuck out as fast as you can."