Turbulence

by Nance, John J. ;

  He let out a ragged breath and leaned over to read the airport name from the captain’s flight computer. “Katsina, Nigeria.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Phil, let’s go on to Abuja in Nigeria. That’s the new capital. It’s a big airport, and it’s only a few hundred miles south.”

  “We’ve got an engine on fire. We’re using Katsina. That’s final.”

  Garth hesitated, his mind ranging furiously over the options again, but finding only the same answer. “All right,” he said at last. “Let me declare an emergency while I try to find the approach plates.” Garth keyed the radio and began a Mayday call. The Nigerian controller came back almost immediately asking the nature of the emergency.

  “We have an engine shut down and an indication that it’s still on fire. We’ll need emergency equipment standing. We’re doing an emergency descent and need clearance immediately to Katsina airport for landing.”

  “Ah … roger, Flight Six. Steer heading one-two-zero degrees now and descend to five thousand feet. And are you aware there is no emergency equipment at Katsina?”

  Garth’s stomach was already the size of a pea, but he felt it tighten anyway. “Negative. We didn’t know. Is there a control tower?”

  “Oh, yes. But they are having some problems now. We cannot talk to them. You will have to talk on the radio to them.”

  “Roger.”

  “Two-one-zero and five thousand feet,” Phil was repeating as he dialed in the altitude and heading on the forward glare-shield panel.

  Garth pulled the brown leather Jeppesen approach book containing the African plates from his flight bag and was trying to rifle through it for the Katsina plates, if they existed. His hands were shaking slightly, and he wondered why the captain seemed steady by contrast.

  “You got the plates?” Phil snapped.

  “I’m … looking. I don’t know if they even have an approach there.”

  “I think I see the airport ahead.”

  “It’s in the middle of a jungle, Phil, if I recall correctly.”

  “You’ve been there?” Knight asked, a hopeful note in his voice.

  “No, I’ve flown over it. Here!” Garth liberated the instrument approach plate and handed it to Phil. “There’s … only a nondirection beacon approach.”

  “You mean an NDB approach?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then call it an NDB approach.”

  Garth ignored the verbal backhand. “There’s that, and the field has only one runway, and it’s six thousand feet long.”

  “We can make it.”

  Garth took a deep breath and turned to the captain. “Phil? Listen to me. What I’m going to say is going to be on the voice recorder, so the company and the whole world will know if anything goes wrong. This is a mistake. You hear me? This is a big, potentially disastrous mistake. We’re a huge 747. If you’re going to land, let’s go to Abuja, the capital, where they can handle a 747 and there are facilities. I do NOT want to do this!”

  “ENOUGH!” Phil yelled, his eyebrows raised, his expression maniacal. “YOU UNDERSTAND ME? I’M …” He lowered his volume, but his voice was still quavering with fury. “I’m the damn captain. Whatever I decide, you always want to do just the opposite to counter me. That stops now.”

  “Phil, that’s not true, I …” Garth stopped in mid-sentence, his eyes fixated on Phil Knight’s right index finger, which was pointed at him over the center console and shaking slightly as its owner spat out the words like a cobra spewing venom at its victim’s eyes.

  “PJEAD … THE GODDAMNED CHECKLIST … OR GET OUT OF MY COCKPIT!”

  Garth stared at the man in the left seat for an eternity of seconds, his outrage at the man’s endless procession of stupid decisions muted by one, irrefutable truth: It was up to him now to keep the passengers safe, and having a physical fight in the cockpit didn’t serve that goal.

  “Okay, Phil,” Garth said, quietly. “Okay. Calm down.” He pulled out the checklist and settled on a plan. First he’d do the descent and approach checks. Then he’d make a PA announcement to the passengers, whether Knight liked it or not.

  Then he’d do his best to keep them from crashing.

  The massive, shuddering compressor stalls from number-four engine had shaken more than the airplane. The effect on the passengers had been somewhere beyond sobering. Suddenly all conversation had ceased, and even when the banging of the engine had ended, there were no voices to be heard in the cabin as the occupants gripped their respective armrests and wondered just how much trouble they were in. The background sounds began changing without explanation, the engine whine decreasing, the nose lowering, the aircraft banking first left, then right. The passengers could tell they were descending, and most knew they were somewhere over central Africa with nightfall approaching. Yet there was still no word from the pilots, and as the minutes passed in silence, wide-eyed looks of deep concern began to metastasize into mutters of anger and insurrection. Those who had been angry before when Garth Abbott appeared in the cabin now began attacking their flight attendant call buttons, and several men got to their feet to bellow for the crew to respond, their outrage reinforcing the dark feeling that there was a battle in progress aboard Meridian Six, and it came down to a simple equation: It was the crew versus the passengers.

  In first class, Robert MacNaughton toggled on the moving map display on the small LCD screen at his seat. He knew this part of Africa all too well, having served during the sixties as a petroleum foot soldier in the escalating campaign to ferret out the obscure places nature had hidden the crude oil to which civilized humanity was hopelessly addicted. The southern area of Niger, Robert knew, was not as dangerous as the countries of Equatorial Africa, but this was no place to be landing an airliner if you could avoid it.

  MacNaughton glanced to his left, unintentionally catching Brian Logan’s eye for a second. The physician shook his head and pointed to the ceiling, toward the cockpit.

  “If that clown doesn’t come on the PA in thirty seconds and tell us what he’s doing,” Logan said, “I’m going up there.”

  Almost immediately the strained voice of the first officer filled the cabin.

  Ah … folks, this is the cockpit. We’ve … had to shut down our right outboard engine as a precaution because of those loud compressor stalls you heard earlier, and we’re diverting to an airport in Nigeria to check it out. Please make sure your seat belts are fastened. Flight attendants, prepare the cabin for landing.

  In coach, Jimmy Roberts motioned incredulously at the overhead speakers and looked at his wife, and then at the couple behind them.

  “That’s it? That’s all that old boy’s gonna tell us?”

  “What’s a compressor … whatever?” Brenda asked, her eyes inordinately wide.

  “Technical words, I guess. Probably means backfire. That sure sounded like a big bunch of backfires,” Jimmy said, fighting to hide a growing nervousness.

  “But why don’t he tell us …?” Brenda began.

  “Why doesn’t he tell us,” he corrected her before thinking. He knew better. She was acutely aware of her inadequate grammar and painfully ashamed of it. She could take correction from her husband, but it had to be done gently.

  “There you go jumping on me again, Jimmy Ray,” she replied, the hurt audible in her voice.

  “I’m sorry, hon.”

  “I’m just a country girl. I don’t talk fancy.”

  “Neither do I, honey. I’m sorry.”

  She looked up at him, the hint of a tear in her eye. “I am tryin’ to get that kinda stuff right. I really am. Doesn’t, not don’t. Dragged, not drug. He and I, not him and her. I am tryin’, Jimmy.”

  “I know you are, baby.”

  She leaned against him and tried to smile. “Dress me up but can’t take me anywhere, huh?”

  “You know I don’t feel like that.”

  “Doesn’t feel like that,” she teased, and he laughed in response as he found her hands and squeeze
d them.

  “So, Jimmy, why doesn’t that pilot tell us what’s really going on?” she asked.

  “Because, darlin’, he thinks we’re all too stupid to understand.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  KATSINA AIRPORT,

  NIGERIA, AFRICA

  8:05 P.M. Local

  There it was again. The high-pitched whine of turbine engines.

  Jean Onitsa signaled his men to stop firing and waited for the crack and chatter of small-arms fire to slack off in response. The remaining government forces across the airport were panicked and reacting wildly to any incoming fire.

  Jean cocked his head and tried to find the sound again. Slowly his ears registered the jet whine once more from off to the northeast.

  “What is it?” one of his men asked in their native tongue.

  Onitsa put his finger to his lips and shook his head for silence, but the rattle of automatic-weapons fire resumed suddenly from across the runway, bringing his full attention back to the tactical situation. It was just as well. No one in his right mind would try to land a civilian aircraft at Katsina in the midst of a rebel firefight. The lone occupant of the government control tower a mile to the east had to be hunkered down now on the floor with his microphone frantically warning away all traffic.

  “Government plane?” Onitsa’s lieutenant asked.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head as he gave a hand signal to deploy the right flank a hundred yards more to the west to reinforce the men he’d already positioned there. The lieutenant scrambled into motion, relaying the command and keeping low as he and fifteen other well-trained men moved with lightning speed into the underbrush, holding their guns precisely as Jean had taught them.

  Jean nodded to himself and smiled, aware of how incongruous his life had become. It was a personal joke that all the years of classical education in Britain to become a physician had mixed with his noble determination to return to Africa to contribute to his people, a desire that incongruously ended up making him a feared commander of rebel forces. He was known for his sense of humor and his steadiness—and his calm ruthlessness—and he enjoyed that reputation. A calm, jovial enemy displaying serene confidence always unnerved the opposition.

  But a Marxist? He chuckled at the thought that the Nigerian government was attempting to rally the people against him based on that charge. The last thing on earth he could ever be was a Marxist.

  More frantic, undisciplined firing broke out from the pinned-down government troops, who were essentially being led by a teenager. It was almost too easy moving the pieces on the chessboard of the battlefield against such poorly trained thinking. Mix the formal logic of warfare as taught by Karl von Clausewitz with the brilliant iconoclastic thinking of Sun-Tzu, then meld the tactical discipline of the British Army with the cleverness of American-style employment of technology, and the opposition hadn’t a chance.

  The jet sounds wafted over him again. It was becoming irritating, and he lifted his big head just far enough to scan for the source. There was always the remote possibility that the Nigerian Air Force, such as it was, would somehow lapse into momentary competence and arrive ahead of schedule, but with his well-paid spies in the south and at Air Force headquarters, being surprised by a warplane was even more unlikely than being outflanked by an intelligent response from the government troops.

  He looked at his gold Rolex President, an indulgence from his last trip to London. Twenty minutes more and his men should be able to finish the job, kill whoever surrendered, and purposefully mutilate the bodies in the creative and terrifying ways he knew would psychologically torture the army. Then he’d take the tower, proclaim the airport hostage, and open the negotiations with Abuja by satellite phone while safely withdrawing before the government reinforcements to the north arrived.

  Jean knew the routine. It would take the army two days to realize they’d surrounded a nonexistent rebel force. In the meantime, he could wrest more concessions from Nigeria’s government.

  “Sir! Sir, look!” One of his men had scrambled to his side and was pointing to the east where a large aircraft had appeared, flying directly for the runway.

  “What is it?” the man asked.

  Jean peered carefully through his favorite set of field glasses, calmly analyzed the shape, then dropped the glasses.

  “Calm down,” he ordered. “It is a civilian airliner. American, I think.”

  “What do we do?”

  Jean turned to the young man and smiled. “Why, we treat it as an amazing opportunity, of course.”

  Captain Phil Knight ordered the 747’s flaps to the forty-degree position and throttled back, letting the giant airliner settle into the computed approach speed of one hundred forty knots as he aimed for the end of the runway.

  “Forty feet,” Garth called out, reading the radio altimeter. “Thirty, twenty, ten …”

  Phil pulled the throttles to idle and flared the big ship, breaking the descent rate until the sixteen wheels of the main landing gear thudded and screeched onto the poorly maintained concrete. Phil’s right hand shot out to gather the speed brake lever and pull it to the deployed position a split second before the automatic system did the same thing. He applied reverse thrust as he began pushing hard on the brake pedals. The 747, still weighing over six hundred thousand pounds, shuddered and slowed, the antiskid system working hard to prevent any tire blowouts as Phil stood on the brakes, finally bringing them to a halt at the western end of the runway with five hundred feet left to spare.

  “Now what?” Garth asked, trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “I never got a response from the tower.”

  There were small flashes of light from a line of trees to the right, and Garth let the fact register without examination as he waited for Phil’s next move.

  “There was a ramp back there,” the captain said. “I guess we’ll do a one-eighty on the runway here.” He pulled the nosewheel steering tiller toward him, pivoting the nosewheel sharply to the left, and began turning the huge jet as Garth yelped. There were more flashes on the right along with what sounded like firecrackers. The sharp cracking sound reverberated through the interior of the 747, despite the heavy insulation.

  “Oh, my God, that’s gunfire!” Garth said.

  The aircraft was just beginning to pivot to the left as several figures materialized from the tall grass and ran across the field in front of them. Garth leaned forward, his eyes large as he tracked the men and realized with a vascular cascade of adrenaline what he was seeing.

  “Oh shit, Phil! We’ve got soldiers out there with guns telling us to stop.”

  “Where?”

  “Just to the left!”

  “Omigod!” Judy yelped. “They are shooting out there.”

  A group of six armed men had appeared to the left of the cockpit’s viewpoint, one of them making a cut sign across his throat. On the right, eight men in army-style fatigues were dropping to the ground and pointing their weapons off to the north. Garth could see the muzzle flashes from their weapons. The 747 was less then fifteen degrees into its turn as Phil braked to a halt. The men were clearly visible now out Garth’s window as one of the men on the right side stood to run, then stopped. Garth watched his body crumple, a diffused red mass where his head had been moments before.

  “JESUS, PHIL! There’s a war going on out here!”

  “What?”

  “I … I just saw one of those guys get killed! Forget their orders. Turn around. Take off. Let’s get out of here.”

  Phil began moving the throttles on the right wing forward as the big Boeing began swiveling left once again.

  “Go, go, go, GO, GO, GO!” Garth was saying, his eyes back over his right shoulder trying to track the small group that had left their fallen comrade and scampered away, still firing. Garth could hear the reports of the automatic weapons clearly now, his brain refining the muffled sounds into a clear and present danger.

  “Please get us out of here!” Judy pleaded from the jum
p seat.

  “What the hell is this?” Garth heard the captain say as he braked to a halt again. Garth looked left and realized with a flash of cold fear that they were trapped.

  The aircraft was halfway through its turn and pointing south, perpendicular to the runway, but to the left, men in fatigues were scrambling out of vehicles that were blocking their path. The men were pointing their weapons at the cockpit as they fanned out and waited for a smaller jeep-like command vehicle to pull right in front of the 747 at the runway’s edge. Garth watched a barrel-chested man in the passenger seat stand up, then step onto the hood of the machine, slowly, deliberately, making a “cut” sign across his throat with his right hand. The man smiled, a huge, toothy smile that seemed to bisect his face.

  “He … he wants us to shut down, Phil,” Garth managed.

  “Okay,” was the only response. “Engine shutdown checklist.”

  Garth fumbled with the laminated list and ran through the items, expecting the windshield to shatter in a hail of bullets at any moment. He could feel himself literally shaking inside, knowing a little of the brutal politics of central Africa and the high mortality rate for Westerners caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  The engines began winding down as Phil brought the fuel and start ignition switches to the stop position one at a time. “I suppose,” the captain began, “these people can help us get a mechanic out here.”

  “What?” Garth asked absently, his eyes riveted on the apparent commander standing in front of them.

  “I said, maybe we can get these guys on the interphone and see if they can get us a mechanic to take a look at that engine.”

  Garth turned and looked at Phil Knight as if he’d spotted an extraterrestrial life form in the left seat, his mouth gaping open. “WHAT?”

  Phil repeated the statement a third time, as if dealing with an idiot, as he reached for the satellite phone to call Denver.