Charon's landing m-2

by Jack Du Brul

  Amazingly, when he pushed a little harder on the maxed-out throttle, the engine beat picked up just that tiny bit more. He looked back to see Aggie still asleep in the cargo hold.

  If only he could be certain they were headed in the right direction. While there were some charts in the plane, Mercer wasn’t familiar enough with the region or with navigation techniques to use them. They lay folded in a vinyl pouch on the floor below the copilot’s seat.

  “God is my copilot and hope is my navigator,” he breathed between tight lips.

  Up ahead, he spotted a long, narrow island sitting a couple miles off the north coast of the Sound. He watched it for a moment and then reached over to dig out the maps. Maybe he could use them after all; the island was so symmetrical that recognizing it on the charts would be relatively easy. When he straightened back, he saw the long trail of white water backing against the island and realized it was no landmass at all but a supertanker heading south from Valdez. Even from three thousand feet the vessel’s size was staggering. Looking around at the insectlike Cessna, it was hard to imagine that both craft came from the mind of the same species, for surely the tanker was proportioned for the gods.

  While he admired the ship, he also realized that it had just saved him from making a disastrous error. Mercer was on a too easterly course; they would have flown beyond the entrance to Valdez without ever realizing it. Quickly adjusting their route to follow the wake of the ponderous tanker, Mercer took a second to check his watch again. Not enough time, but still he had to try.

  One of the first things an instructor teaches a student pilot is that the use of the elevators must correspond with the throttle in order to avoid stalling or power diving. Usually after the verbal lesson, the instructor will demonstrate this fundamental by heeling the plane over at full throttle and scaring the student half to death in a dive-bomber stoop that quite often spills the student’s lunch.

  Mercer had never been a student pilot, and the throttle was at the gate when he pushed the yoke away from his chest. The Cessna responded like a horse given free rein, dropping out of control, Prince William Sound filling the view from the windshield, and every second brought the sight into sharper focus. The engine screamed, and the plane began to buffet as its wings reached, then passed, their structural tolerance point. They were traveling straight down at one hundred forty-five miles per hour.

  His stomach, already turbulent from the ride in the escape pod, went into full revolt, liquid acids rearing into his mouth, gagging him with their foul taste. Knowing he’d just committed a critical error, Mercer pulled back on the yoke, but the pressure of the wind against the control surfaces was too strong for him to fight. His greatest effort only managed to stretch the control cables running from the stick to the elevators, suddenly making the yoke feel mushy in his hands. The plane was going down, and no matter how hard he strained, he couldn’t stop it. The altimeter spun backward in a solid blur, unwinding their altitude faster than the barometrically controlled needle could accurately follow.

  He never considered the throttle until an elegant hand reached for it and gently backed it off, the engine calming immediately. Without saying a word, Aggie Johnston wedged herself into the copilot’s seat, fighting against the force of the plane’s severe pitch. She added her strength to Mercer’s, and with the aid of a slowing engine, they managed to pull the plane’s nose upward, slowly at first and then as the wings felt lift, quicker and more smoothly, the airframe stopping its mad shudder as the craft came level only eighty feet above the choppy waters.

  “The last thing I remember, we were about to drown, and now we’re about to crash,” she said so calmly that Mercer could not believe her quietude. “What is it, can’t decide how you want to die?”

  “Of course I can.” He matched her nonchalance, relieved at her obvious flying skills. “I see myself killed by a ricochet while passing a kidney stone. How about you?”

  “Let’s put it this way, I don’t want to be killed by another of your idiotic ideas.” Aggie had the plane in trim now, gaining altitude steadily as she followed the course Mercer had set. “It’s clear you don’t know how to fly a plane, so do you mind telling me what’s going on?”

  “We escaped the Petromax Omega about ten seconds before it capsized.” She looked at him sharply. “I know what you’re thinking — any fuel that she spilled was burned up in a fire that would have inspired Dante. We made it to shore a couple hours later, where I found this plane and decided that stealing it was a much better option than being recaptured by Kerikov’s goons. I never intended to take off, but, well, you know how these things sort of happen. While I thought out the beginning of our escape, I don’t mind the fact that you’re stepping in to finish it. You do know how to land this thing, don’t you?”

  “Two hundred and fifty-seven hours in my log. Where’s the closest runway?”

  “Ah.” Mercer tried a charming smile to cover his trepidation. “This is a seaplane, and we’re only about five miles from the Hope. But you can land a seaplane, right?”

  “Oh, shit.” The color that had returned to Aggie’s face drained once again. Her hands tightened on the spongy yoke of the unfamiliar Cessna. “I’ve never been in a floatplane before.”

  “Sure you have,” Mercer quipped. “We’ve been airborne for a while.”

  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, Mercer leaned over the side, grasped Aggie by the loose waist of her coveralls, and hauled her over the rail. She fell in a heap at his feet, cursing at him for scraping her chest against the railing.

  “Okay, now what?” she breathed, looking at him critically.

  “We find Kerikov and kill him,” Mercer replied, his eyes fixed in a deadly stare. “After the crew sees we’re together, I want you to get to the radio room, contact the Marine Terminal, and tell the manager there, a man named Lindstrom, to stop their computer technician. Mossey is his name. Tell Lindstrom that Mossey was responsible for locking out the computers and he’s planted a new operating system that is keyed into the nitrogen detonators.”

  He saw that Aggie didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about. There wasn’t enough time to explain further, so he changed plans. “The hell with it. Stick with me and just make sure none of your PEAL buddies think I’m the enemy.”

  They ran to the superstructure, tossing open one of the heavy doors, and dashed down a deserted hallway, the ship’s heaters feeling like a steam room compared to the cold air on the open deck. Most of the cabin doors they passed were open, the rooms empty. The sounds of the party grew steadily as they tracked its source.

  “That better not mean we’re too late,” Mercer said tightly, his fists bunched at his sides as he dodged through several hatchways, Aggie at his side.

  Bursting into the main dining room, Mercer and Aggie were stopped short by the sight of the ebullient crowd. The celebration was in full swing, and the transition from the horrors of the past hours to this took them both aback. A roar went up as the environmentalists recognized Aggie, some with delight, others with surprise.

  They took scant notice of Mercer, obviously not equating him with the man who’d arrested several of their comrades during the FBI raid. In an instant, he and Aggie were enveloped, people jostling to get close, plying them with glasses of champagne. Mercer felt so
out of place, it was as if he’d just broken in on his own funeral.

  “Has it happened yet?” he shouted over the festive din, and from somewhere a voice responded that it would in a couple more minutes. They were ready for the final countdown.

  Aggie looked at Mercer fearfully. Her eyes were huge. It was obvious that no one knew the full effects of what was about to take place. “Where’s Jan?” she asked a PEAL activist standing next to her in the mass of drunken revelers.

  “On the bridge, I think,” came the response, and Mercer was carving a swath through the crowd, pushing aside those who got in his way as he lunged for the door.

  IVAN Kerikov was posed before the bridge windows when Jan Voerhoven found him. His hands were behind his back, his thick chest puffed up, his chin thrusting boldly at the wild land beyond the thick armored glass. His flint-hard hair was silvered in the dawn, like the fur of a winter fox. There were fewer than fifteen years between their ages, but Jan felt like a callow youth in the Russian’s presence. He stood silently for several seconds, fearing to disturb Kerikov’s repose.

  “The time has come for you to take your place as the spark that begins the third great revolution of modern times.” Kerikov turned the full brunt of his mesmerizing eyes on Voerhoven.

  Jan thought that those must have been the eyes that Rasputin had, not in color but in intensity. “The third?”

  “Of course, the Russian Revolution of nineteen seventeen, the Fascist Revolution that swept in Hitler, Tito, and Mussolini, and now the Green Revolution,” Kerikov replied, giving an answer that would soothe the agitated environmentalist. Kerikov kept to himself that the third revolution would actually be the unifying of the Middle East under joint Iraqi and Iranian control. “You have the detonator?”