Yuri completed his turn and accelerated before looking at the infrared signature of the 747 rolling out ahead of him. There was a sudden flare from the middle of the tail section just as expected.
He’s starting the APU!
He brought the Gulfstream into a steady, shallow dive and locked the pipper on the APU exhaust as he pulled the throttles back to cross the runway threshold at less than two hundred knots.
The bright IR flare jogged to the right suddenly, surprising Yuri. Then it began fading. His finger felt the trigger. The 747 was turning off the runway. If he didn’t get the missile off in time, the target and the hot engine exhaust pipes for the engines on the left wing would be masked.
Yuri jammed his finger back on the trigger and felt the missile roar off the rail as he passed over the end of the runway. He could see the 747 turning rapidly to the left. He saw the missile exhaust disappear straight down the runway—and realized almost too late the height of the hill on his right.
Yuri pulled up sharply, barely clearing the top of the hill, and banked left to watch.
There was a tremendous explosion almost beneath him as the missile impacted the 747’s tail section. Flames and debris erupted in all directions, and in the glare of the light, he saw the entire tail of the jumbo twist and fall to the concrete—as the 747 continued to taxi!
“God, what now?” Robb yelled.
The explosion had shaken the entire aircraft and thrown the three people in the cockpit back and forth with a frightening vengeance.
Holland moved quickly, checking instruments and calling out to Robb.
“Dick, call the back! See if we’ve got a fire.”
Dick Robb grabbed the telephone handset and pushed the all-call button. Barb Rollins and several other flight attendants answered almost instantly.
“What’s our status back there?” Robb asked.
“There was a terrible explosion! There’s a hole in the back of the cabin. I’m not sure it didn’t get the crew rest loft! I see debris hanging down at the back. One of the number five doors is open, or gone. Do you want us to evacuate?”
“Tell her no, Dick! This is a bad spot. Unless the cabin starts filling with smoke, give me enough time to get us to that ramp!”
“Not yet!” Dick Robb said. “Any smoke in the cabin?”
“No,” Barb replied, “but I think I can see some flickers out the back area, maybe out the side windows. I don’t know. There’s no smoke, though.”
“Stand by, Barb. We’ll call you. But you call us instantly if there’s smoke!”
“Okay.” Her voice was frightened, but steady.
Holland pushed up the throttles for engines one and two to hurry the process of taxiing back to the runway.
“Do we still have hydraulics, Dick?”
Robb looked at the gauges. “One and two are still steady. The APU’s zeroed. I think he … they … someone hit our tail area, or the APU exploded.”
“It feels like we’re standing on our nose. We’re very nose-heavy,” Holland said almost to himself.
Yuri couldn’t believe the 747 was still moving on the runway. In spite of his mission, his respect for the 747’s structural toughness had increased tenfold with each failed attempt to destroy it. He couldn’t help admiring it—and the skill of its indefatigable captain.
What a magnificent airplane!
He could see fire where the tail section had exploded and literally fallen off, but the rest of the airplane was still intact.
One more chance!
Yuri pulled up and began a whifferdill, a sudden course reversal to get back to the runway—an aerobatic maneuver business jets were not supposed to use.
Yuri had a split-second decision to make. There wasn’t enough room to land in front of the intersection where the taxiway reentered the runway surface, nor was there time to steady out the Gulfstream and fire from behind. The 747 was trying to reach the intersection ahead of him.
But there was enough room to land, roll by the jumbo, then turn and shoot the last missile.
How he would get away after that was unimportant now. All his instincts from years as an operative pushed everything else from his mind. He had zeroed in on the goal, and nothing else mattered.
Yuri snapped the gear down as he ran the flaps out and slowed. The 747 was moving at probably fifteen knots back toward the runway. He should pass the jumbo’s nose just as the 747’s nosewheel entered the runway. It was going to be close!
Yuri armed the last missile on the right rack. There was no time for a checklist. The gear and flaps were down and the Gulfstream settled into a glide through the last few hundred feet. He kept the landing lights off, though at the last second he thought better of it and reached for the switches.
In the cockpit of Quantum 66, James Holland had made the decision to retake the runway and dash to a broad open ramp on the south side before ordering an evacuation. The runway was just ahead. The 747 felt very strange, as if half of it were gone.
Suddenly to his left a set of halogen landing lights blazed into view from an aircraft on short final approach.
“Someone’s landing, James!” Robb called out.
Holland pressed on the brakes and pulled the throttles back, then just as quickly released the brakes and shoved the throttles up.
“What are you doing?” Robb yelled.
“That’s the son of a bitch! He wants the runway! But he’s not going to get it!”
The 747 continued moving forward, its speed cut to ten knots. Holland reached up and snapped on every landing light he had.
Yuri saw the lights of Flight 66 come on suddenly and realized the jumbo was still moving toward the runway boundary. He understood instantly.
The Gulfstream settled through the last fifty feet and Yuri kept it flying, milking the landing and stretching the glide to pass the 747’s entry point as fast as possible.
The jumbo’s nosewheel rolled across the runway boundary just ahead. The 747’s captain was accelerating, trying to block the Gulfstream’s path. Yuri let the main landing gear touch and used the rudder to steer left. He was within two hundred yards of the 747 now, moving at a hundred twenty knots. The jumbo was a quarter of the way across the runway and showing no signs of turning or slowing.
Yuri edged farther to the left, the remaining tarmac becoming more and more constrained as the tailless 747 passed the midway point and continued toward the left boundary.
The big Boeing was in his windscreen now, just to the right, moving in on him. He had miscalculated the speed. Yuri dared not touch the brakes, but he’d have to brake hard on the other side if he made it. The Gulfstream was still traveling at more than one hundred thirty miles per hour.
The nose of the 747 was a blaze of moving lights to his right as Yuri moved the last few feet to the left on the runway, the left main gear tracking almost off the edge. There was a flash of light and motion, and for a split second he expected an impact and a spinning crash as the right wing impacted the 747’s nose gear.
But in the same instant he passed.
He jammed on the brakes then, his heart pounding as the aircraft began to slow down.
James Holland had his teeth gritted hard enough to break a tooth. He prayed for the sound of an impacting wing below as the assailant flashed past from left to right. In the same instant he realized they had missed, he had to slam on the brakes and jam the nose steering tiller to the right to keep from sailing off the left side of the runway.
A business jet!
Could it be that wasn’t the assailant? Holland fought for control as he steadied the 747 back in the middle of the runway and let it accelerate toward the decelerating biz jet.
“What the hell?” he said out loud.
Dick Robb was pointing over the glareshield.
“James! For God’s sake, he’s got a missile rack on that mother! On the right side!”
“A Gulfstream? Impossible!”
“He does!”
“Call the tower, D
ick. Do they know who he is?”
“They don’t know who we are!”
“I know, but do it.”
Robb had preselected the tower frequency hours before with no intention of using it. He turned up the volume now and transmitted.
“Ascension tower, this is the 747. Do you have an identification of the other aircraft on the runway?”
The response was shrill and instantaneous.
“Good Lord, man, he’s the bastard who just shot your tail off! We don’t know who he is. You’re on fire, if you didn’t know it!”
“Thanks!” Robb said.
The Gulfstream was braking hard ahead in the distance. Holland saw the entrance to the ramp area coming up on his left. That was the plan, to go left. But the Gulfstream …
“Dick, did he have any missiles left on that rack?”
“I … I think so. I’m guessing.”
“He’s going to fire again. He may have guns!”
Holland’s right hand shoved the remaining two throttles up almost to the firewall as an alarmed Dick Robb stared at him.
“What are you going to do?” Robb asked.
“Deny him the pleasure!” Holland said.
“James … we need to evacuate! James?” Robb’s eyes went forward. The Gulfstream was halfway around now, some two thousand feet distant and less than a thousand feet from the end of the runway, which terminated in a small cliff.
The digital readout in front of Holland registered twenty-eight knots and accelerating fast. He was having to steer hard left to keep the asymmetric thrust from driving them off the right side of the runway, but the ship continued accelerating, the lights bracketing the business jet, which had passed a thousand feet beyond the far entrance to the ramp area. There were no other taxiways or exits from the runway. He knew he was tunneled in now, but he couldn’t think about that. The Gulfstream was not going to escape.
Yuri fingered the trigger as he wheeled the Gulfstream around in a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn on the runway. The infrared signature from the front of the engines should be enough to attract the remaining missile, he thought, and in the resulting confusion, maybe he could slip away.
The lights were confusing. He expected the 747 to still be halfway down the runway, but when he completed the turn, he realized it was looming toward him in what appeared to be a takeoff roll.
What the hell is he doing? He doesn’t have a tail! He can’t fly that thing!
The answer came in a chilling revelation. The last exit from the runway was too far ahead to reach. He couldn’t take off over the 747, and he couldn’t get out of its way.
And his victim—the sitting-duck jumbo jet he couldn’t miss—was moving at high speed and accelerating, the sixteen huge tires of the four main landing gear assemblies tracking straight down the runway toward the prince’s multi-million-dollar jet.
Yuri centered the pipper, locked the radar, and pulled the trigger in one continuous sequence.
Nothing.
He glanced in confusion to the right, wondering about circuit breakers.
No, the rack was out. The other missile had fired.
He squeezed again.
Nothing!
The fighter pilot’s instinct to go to guns ran through him, but there were no guns on the prince’s jet.
Again he squeezed the trigger, and again nothing happened below.
The lights ahead were closing. The speed of the 747 had to be over eighty knots now, bearing down on him inexorably. There was nowhere he could maneuver the Gulfstream to let the jumbo pass without being run over by the landing gear on one side or the other, but if he taxied off the runway surface, the Gulfstream would be junk—unflyable.
Once again he squeezed, knowing it was too late now even if the missile fired and found its mark. The warhead below was armed. If the jumbo hit him …
The circuit diagram! Suddenly he remembered the air/ground sensor switch. It was wired to the missile firing mechanism. The airplane had to believe it was in the air to enable the pilot to fire a missile!
He reached over calmly and disarmed the missile. It was hopeless.
James Holland reached eighty knots and pulled the power back. There was too little room to decelerate on the other side if he damaged the landing gear with what he was about to do. The sleek Gulfstream was caught like a deer in his landing lights. He could see the pilot trying to push up the power. Holland knew the only choice left to the Gulfstream’s pilot was to dash for one side or the other.
Holland’s left hand gripped the steering tiller, waiting for an indication of which side it would be.
“Come on, bastard!” he muttered. “Make your move!”
Yuri had fire-walled the throttles, but this wasn’t a sports car with instant accelerator response. It seemed to take forever to begin moving as the huge apparition ahead of him closed in. Suddenly the engines boosted him forward and he cranked the steering tiller to the left, noting at the same moment that the 747 began swerving in the same direction.
He forced the tiller back to the right, deciding on a forty-five-degree angle off the runway. The engines had reached maxiumum thrust. The 747 was moving left in his windscreen, and he prayed the pilot had been too slow to react to the changed direction.
“Gotcha!” Holland muttered as he reversed the tiller to the left and aimed the wing gear as close as he dared to the edge.
“James!” Robb yelled. They could hear the roar of the biz jet’s engines from two stories below their feet as the nose of Quantum 66 passed over the Gulfstream and snagged the T-tail.
Yuri was spun to the right by the impact of his tail section with the underside of the 747’s nose. Suddenly he was accelerating not toward the runway edge but toward the rolling thunder of the main landing gear heading straight for him. He cranked the tiller frantically to the right and felt the Gulfstream claw for traction.
But it was hopeless. He was aimed right down the throat of the number two engine.
The five-hundred-thousand-pound aircraft engulfed him, the main gear rolling over and obliterating his left wing and part of the right fuselage, the number two engine nacelle taking out the rest of his airplane.
Yuri felt himself spun around amid horrible noises of ripping metal as the structure disintegrated around him and the image of his patient lover suddenly filled his mind. He gave a last cry.
“Anya!”
Holland instantly began the process of stopping the giant behemoth, jamming the brake pedals to the limit and moving the only remaining engine, number one, into reverse. The end of the runway loomed ahead, but the brakes were responding. The impact had been shattering and there had been an explosion somewhere below, but getting stopped was now the number one priority.
Slowly, agonizingly, the inexorable movement toward the red lights at the end slowed, but the brakes seemed to have given out. They were rolling at less than five knots, but they were still moving toward the cliff. The brake pedals were pushed to the floor, the emergency brake system obviously depleted. Holland pulled on the number one engine reverser even harder, feeling the entire ship shake and pivot as its compressor stalled repeatedly.
The red lights moved in slow motion under the nose and out of sight. The nose gear crept slowly, slowly to within yards of the edge, finally coming to a reluctant halt, stopping the huge ship’s forward motion at last.
Holland brought the number one thrust reverser to idle. The 747 stayed in place.
Instantly the interphone buzzed with Barb on the other end.
“We’ve got flames at the rear licking into the cabin. We hit something down below!”
“Evacuate, Barb. Evacuate now to the right side only, and the forward four doors.”
“Roger!” she said. Her voice could be heard almost instantly on the PA as Holland ordered the emergency evacuation checklist, and he and Robb began methodically running down the items.
From the viewpoint of the tower, the duel between the 747 and the Gulfstream had been somewhere beyond
incredible. They had recognized the Quantum logo immediately. The word that the U.S. military simply wanted the aircraft impounded when found had already reached them.
Not through official channels, but over CNN.
One of the tower controllers had picked up the receiver to their satellite line as the sequence began. He replaced the phone now and spoke rapidly in a shrill voice propelled by adrenaline. “They say it’s okay to talk to them and help them, but not to touch anyone without wearing gloves. They’ll be sending Air Force transports with the proper gear. London’s been notified. I’ve told the fire units.”
The evacuation slides had come out on the right side of the aircraft and people were already rocketing down them to the runway surface. The blazing remains of the Gulfstream were fifteen hundred feet east of the 747. Quantum 66 sat pointed westward less than five hundred feet from the end of the runway surface.
The fire trucks were already rolling toward the scene. The smoke pouring out of the truncated tail section of the 747 was intensifying, and one of the tower operators had already directed the firemen to forget the Gulf-stream and concentrate on the Boeing.
“Be careful! There’re people everywhere down there coming out the right side!”
James Holland made certain Rachael had gone down the slide right after Lee Lancaster, before making a quick survey of the remaining people aboard. One by one he forced his crew out, including Robb, whom he’d ordered to organize things on the ground.
He could hear the fire trucks throwing foam on the tail section, but the smoke was beginning to enter the cabin. He moved back as far as the last coach section and tried to get up to the crew rest facility, but a blast of smoke boiled down the stairs as he approached and he could feel the searing heat of the flames even around the corner of the small passageway.
If anyone was still up there, he realized, it was too late.
James Holland went down the nearest slide, got to his feet, and turned around to look in horror at the twisted metal at the aft end of the fuselage where the tail section of the 747-400 had been. There was debris trailing from all the main landing gear assemblies, including the body gear under the middle of the belly, and a sizable chunk of the Gulfstream’s mangled forward fuselage had been dragged along with the cockpit area, had split open, and was partially crushed.
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