Pandora's Clock

by Nance, John J. ;

  “WHAT THE HELL?” came from Robb and Holland almost simultaneously.

  In the cabin below, a collective gasp could clearly be heard above the roar of the explosion as sleeping passengers came awake with a jolt of adrenaline and the reflection of fire in their peripheral vision. They gripped armrests with hearts in their throats, momentarily convinced they were crashing. They looked toward the right, spotting the dying flames and sparks from the number three engine, then realized they were still flying.

  On the flight deck James Holland grabbed the control yoke and clicked off the autopilot in one fluid motion as he looked hard toward the engine instruments. Dick Robb’s face had snapped to the right, the light partially erasing his night vision.

  “Number three is down!” Holland said.

  Robb looked back to the quadrant, fighting to see around the bright spot hovering in his visual field.

  “How the hell could that explode?” Holland asked.

  Robb’s eyes were still affected, but his mind’s eye was not. He thought of the momentary spokes on the radar minutes before.

  “Another missile, James! Our assailant is back. We’re being chased!”

  “Couldn’t be the same bastard!”

  “Airspeed!” Robb called.

  Holland nodded. He’d already boosted the two engines on the left wing, and pressed the rudder hard to compensate for the aircraft’s tendency to roll to the right.

  “How far out are we?” Holland asked.

  “Forty-five miles,” Robb answered.

  “Sonofabitch!” Holland swore as he looked left. He rolled the airplane in the same direction, into the good engines, pulling the nose up to climb at the same time.

  “What’re you doing, James?”

  “Whoever’s back there is waiting to see what happens. We have to give him—or them, if it’s a them—a show. We can’t bore straight ahead or he’ll shoot again.”

  The 747 was in a forty-five-degree left bank and climbing through eight hundred feet as Holland struggled to see anything behind them. The attacker would be able to turn with them, but …

  Holland turned to the right. “Gear down! Flaps one!”

  Robb looked momentarily shocked, but his hands were already complying.

  “Gear down, flaps one,” Robb repeated, watching the gauges for any asymmetrical movement of the leading edge devices or the trailing edge flaps. “So far they’re coming out okay.”

  Holland pulled the power back to idle and leveled the wings. He pushed the nose over and let the 747 drop back down to a hundred feet before bringing the power back in and turning gently with a shallow bank to the right, holding the turn until he was moving to the southwest and in the general direction of the island.

  Time seemed to go by with agonizing slowness. He expected another explosion at any second.

  “If …” he began, struggling to talk while concentrating on the flying, “I … can keep him confused … we might get close enough.”

  “James, we’re at a hundred feet. Don’t dig a wingtip in the water or we’re dead!”

  “Watch me like a hawk, Dick! Watch the radio altimeter! We’re gonna make it!”

  Yuri pulled up immediately after the explosion of the 747’s engine, worried about flying through the debris. He banked right and moved laterally a half mile to the west before resuming course and straining to see the jumbo out to the left.

  The radar return was still there and getting stronger as it … turned left!

  Another maneuver, eh? he thought. This time you’ve nowhere to run.

  Yuri banked the Gulfstream to the left, wondering whether the captain would fly a complete circle or settle down in some other direction. Or did he even have a plan? The explosion had not blown off the wing or taken their flight controls, as he had wished.

  Yuri leveled at one thousand on an eastbound heading as he watched the scope. The return appeared to be breaking up.

  Aha! Descending to wave level again, are we?

  Yuri dropped his altitude as well, turning to the left slightly to bring his radar squarely onto the point where the return from the jumbo had disappeared.

  He settled into three hundred feet, picking up nothing but wave clutter from up ahead. A brief target flared farther to the north, but he refused to believe it. A second target flared to the right, then broke up again.

  He looked at his infrared scope, but could make out nothing ahead.

  Maybe he went in? Yuri thought, then immediately remembered that the same mistaken conclusion had cost him dearly before.

  No, he’s still out there, and he’s too low on gas to go anywhere but Ascension. This time I know where to find him.

  The scope was still clear ahead. Yuri banked left to sweep the ocean surface in that direction, then back to the right. At the range he was searching, there was nothing but waves.

  Very clever, but I’ll get you on the approach to Ascension!.

  Yuri began climbing back in the direction of the island. He would race to the south of the approach path to the east-west runway, and then loiter there, flying a loose holding pattern as he shot his radar back toward the airport. When the 747 showed up, he would see it without question.

  There were two missiles left.

  ABOARD FLIGHT 66

  In the crew rest facility at the rear of the aircraft, Gary Strauss awoke in pain and panic as the force of the explosion amplified itself at the aft end of the 747 with a pronounced lurch to the left.

  Stefani awoke at the same moment and gripped his arm. The soft warmth of her presence had lulled him to sleep and the flight attendants had turned off the lights. Now the two of them held on to each other in pitch darkness, wondering what was coming.

  “Stefani?”

  “I’m here. What was that?”

  He shook his head before remembering the darkness. “I don’t know!”

  “Can you move over?”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because I want you to hold me. I’m very frightened.”

  He felt himself swallow hard as the jumbo lurched and Stefani rolled into the bed and molded her body to his.

  In the first class cabin, Lee Lancaster saw the orange flash of the explosion and guessed what had happened. He looked to his right at the ashen faces of Garson Wilson and his secretary—and the wide eyes of the older couple Rachael had pointed out before. He smiled at them, and they tried to smile back as the huge aircraft began a violent roll to the left—and seemed to start climbing!

  By door 2L, Barb Rollins froze a regulation smile in place and tried to dig her fingers into the cover of the jump seat without anyone’s noticing. She should be numb by now, she thought, but she was more frightened than ever. The thought of calling James flashed through her mind, but whatever had happened now was going to be keeping him very busy. She could wait. Pray and wait.

  There was nothing but blackness beyond the windscreen. Holland struggled to hold the 747 a mere hundred feet above the water, fully aware that one mistake would kill them all. The jet was bucking and only marginally cooperative. Holland and Robb both suspected extensive metal damage under the right wing, but the big Boeing was responding to all control inputs, and they still had two hydraulic systems.

  Holland knew that whoever was trying to kill them would have time to find them again, but if he could keep the plane low enough to the water, he might be able to evade the fighter’s attack radar. It was a pure gamble, but it was all he had left.

  Bringing the heading back left until the heading selector needle was sitting squarely on the island, Holland saw the distance remaining click down to forty-two miles. He pushed the remaining two engines up as far as he could and held the nose of the Boeing down as the airspeed increased to two hundred eighty knots.

  “You gonna leave the gear down?” Robb asked.

  Holland nodded. “We’ve got it out and locked. Let’s not fool with it.”

  “Roger,” Robb replied.

  There was no sign of the assailant,
but they knew he was still out there. Maybe there was more than one. And why? Why were they being attacked? That was something they didn’t have time to think about. The attacker had been like a ghost in the blackness.

  “How about sounding a Mayday?” Robb asked.

  Holland shook his head. “Won’t do any good. Any fighters on Ascension would be looking to join him in downing us.”

  “Who is he?” Rachael asked. Her voice was thick, her throat obviously dry. She had been gripping the center console and watching with wide eyes.

  James Holland shook his head. “I can’t believe it’s the same guy who attacked us before, but if it is, he’s like some sort of demon who won’t leave us alone. We don’t have a clue what kind of airplane that is. Fighters can’t fly three thousand miles without refueling.”

  “Twenty-five miles, James. We’re closing on it.”

  Dick Robb was watching the numbers click downward slowly as they raced toward Ascension at four and a half miles per minute.

  “There’s a rise to the runway,” Robb continued, glancing at the map. “The threshold sits a hundred feet off the water.”

  Holland nodded. “We’ll pop up at three miles out.”

  He glanced at the outline of the runway Dick Robb had built on the flight management computer screen. It ran about forty degrees to the left of their heading.

  “Build me an aim point on the screen three miles to the west on the approach, Dick. I’ll use that as the pop-up point.”

  Robb’s fingers typed a rapid series of keystrokes into the box and a tiny diamond-shaped point appeared at the appointed spot.

  “We’re eight miles from it,” Robb announced.

  “Make a PA, Dick. Get them ready.”

  The Gulfstream passed abeam the Ascension airport at a range of eight miles and an altitude of a thousand feet, its radar return thoroughly puzzling the island’s American contract air traffic controllers, who had been watching a strange progression of high- and then low-altitude returns from the north, all coming toward them without transponders, without clearance, and without radio contact.

  “If this were back in the Falkland war with Argentina,” one of the controllers said to his supervisor, “I’d think we were under attack.”

  The blip that had moved to the southwest of the airport now seemed to be turning back to the north. As they watched, it ran two miles north and then reversed course to the south, picking up speed and then turning and slowing to the north again, as if waiting for something.

  A streak of light was beginning to paint the eastern sky as the sunrise sequence began, but there was nothing but inky blackness in the direction of the radar returns to the west. The tower controllers strained to see something with their binoculars, but there was nothing visible.

  “A UFO, d’ya suppose?” the controller asked.

  Yuri had just turned north on his second circuit when the blip generated by the radar echo from Flight 66 flared on his attack scope. The 747 was headed almost straight for the runway, as expected.

  “Got you!” Yuri said aloud.

  He mentally plotted a course to fly past and turn quickly. The jumbo was getting too close to shallow waters and the island.

  I can’t let him reach the shoreline.

  Yuri flew within a quarter mile of the 747 before reversing course with a sixty-degree bank to the right. He could barely make out the hulking shape of the machine in the beginning glimmer of dawn. He steadied in behind the jumbo and dropped to a hundred feet above the water as he walked his pipper to the inboard left engine.

  Damn! The missile rack!

  He’d forgotten to extend it. Yuri reached over and toggled the right-side missile rack to the extend position.

  Nothing happened.

  He hit the switch again, and a second and third time.

  Oh no!

  There were rows of circuit breakers behind the empty copilot’s seat as well as his. He struggled to remember which ones had been added to control the extend/retract feature of the armaments. It was behind the copilot, he thought, about eight rows down.

  But to reach for that at a hundred feet above the water was suicidal. Yuri shoved the power up and started a climb to a thousand feet, knowing he would pop back up on the island’s radar. He snapped on the autopilot and turned on the circuit breaker panel lights as he leaned to the right, fumbling to see the breaker.

  It eluded him. He strained to see around the back of the seat, trying to read the nomenclature.

  It was indecipherable.

  Yuri looked back at the remaining distance. He was within nine miles. It was now or never.

  He strained again, his body almost horizontal across the center pedestal as the Gulfstream’s autopilot flew mindlessly toward the southeast.

  The word RACK loomed in his vision in an almost inaccessible alcove.

  There!

  The breaker was indeed out!

  He reached to touch it, but it was too far away. He strained harder, and finally, slowly, felt his fingertip move over the top of the breaker far enough to let him force it down and in with a satisfying pop.

  Yuri sat up. The sound of the breaker popping back out met his ears.

  “Nyet!”

  He was less than five miles from the end of the runway now. Flight 66 was at three, ahead and below. He was going to lose the shot.

  Yuri leaned over again and strained to reach the breaker. He shoved it in, and this time—with pain shooting through his back and side and finger—he held it in while his left hand reached for the toggle switch to extend the rack. At last his finger closed around the switch and moved it. The sound of the missile rack coming out beneath him reached his ears.

  Yuri sat up as quickly as he could and retightened his seat belt. The 747 had popped up to several hundred feet now, but it was considerably below and less than a quarter mile ahead of him. There was no way he could drop into position and fire now before the jumbo reached the runway.

  With a sinking feeling, he realized that the element of anonymity was lost. If they made it to the runway alive, he would be unable to land in the same place without being captured. There wasn’t enough fuel to go anywhere else. So he’d have to ditch at sea—and die in the process. A fleeting thought of Anya crossed his mind and was quickly suppressed.

  Yuri’s eyes flared with a sudden thought. There was a chance—a slim one, but a chance nevertheless. If he destroyed the 747 on the runway, then ditched the Gulfstream by the shoreline, maybe he’d be able to swim in and tell some contrived cover story in the tiny outpost. It was a wildly slim chance, and probably futile, but he had to try.

  Yuri banked hard to the right. He would do a three-hundred-sixty-degree turn and lock on to the 747’s tail as he rolled out. With any luck, they would start their auxiliary power unit, presenting a brand-new target to the heat-seeking missile, which would then reprogram itself to fly right up the Auxiliary Power Unit’s tailpipe. Not even a 747 could survive that.

  There’s a fuel tank in the tail tool he remembered.

  James Holland called for the last flap setting he dared use with only two engines running. He let the 747 settle down to a seven-hundred-foot-per-minute rate of descent for the last half mile. There seemed to be no activity ahead of them. No flashing lights, and no red warning flares from the control tower, wherever it was. Ascension couldn’t be aware of their presence.

  The runway lights were steady and the runway itself barely visible now in the early glow on the eastern horizon.

  “Jeez! We’ve got a flap asymmetry, James!” Robb almost yelled.

  Holland was already rolling the control yoke hard left.

  “Which … where?”

  “Left side flaps are out farther than the right ones. They’ve stopped in position. We’ve got about ten degrees of flaps on the left, seven on the right.”

  “I can feel it! She’s trying really hard to roll right, and I’m almost out of control authority! Try the alternate flaps! I can’t hold it!”

&
nbsp; Holland’s left foot was pressing the left rudder pedal as hard as he dared while his hand pushed in a slight increase of power on the left two engines. With power only under the left wing, coupled with an out-of-symmetry flap condition trying to roll them to the right, the 747 staggered the final half mile toward the runway, threatening to roll over on its side.

  Robb had already reached for the alternate flap switch. He snapped it on now and toggled the flaps back toward the up position, a click at a time, feeling the 747 respond as the undamaged left flaps moved back toward the seven-degree position and the controls brought them back to wing level.

  “That’s good! Stop it there!” Holland commanded as Robb let go of the switch.

  The threshold was disappearing beneath the cockpit.

  “Fifty feet, forty, thirty …” Robb called out the radio altimeter readings as Holland retarded the thrust levers and worked the rudders to straighten the aircraft, flaring slightly, letting the 747 settle onto the hard surface before pulling the spoilers and stepping on the brakes. He could see a huge hill looming just to the right of the runway, another to the left, but there seemed to be a turnaround taxiway leading in a loop off to the left and back on the runway at the far end. Holland let the speed drop to twenty knots and began turning left on the turnaround.

  “Thank God!” Robb said.

  “Amen,” Holland echoed. “Whoever it is won’t have much of a target with us on the ground. The engines will cool fast. There won’t be an infrared target. Let’s run the After Landing Checklist.”

  Dick Robb ran through the after-landing flow, repositioning switches according to normal procedure. In passing along the forward panel, his hand routinely placed the APU switch to the run position, and hundreds of feet to the rear in the tail cone of the 747, an electric motor began winding up the small jet engine that provided electrical power and pressurized bleed air on the ground. When it reached a certain minimum number of revolutions per minute, the engine control computer ordered the fuel valve to open and the ignitor plugs to fire, igniting the fuel—which rapidly accelerated the APU as it spewed hot gasses out its tailpipe with temperatures exceeding six hundred degrees centigrade.