Phoenix Rising

by Nance, John J. ;

  Jim Aaron had to fight to keep an even expression. He saw his engineer flick some switches on the far end of his panel, unstrap, pull off his oxygen mask, and disappear through the cockpit door to check on the cabin. He could feel himself physically struggling to keep the ship flying in a modified straight line, and he could see Judy working at high speed. But his mind was threatening to go off-line, a protective measure all pilots learn to suppress.

  He pulled himself back to reality as fast as he had drifted and turned back to the forward panel.

  Patrick was back within a minute, resuming his place at the engineer’s panel. “No holes in the cabin, Jim. Everything looks normal down there.”

  Jim nodded a thank-you.

  Okay, we’re through sixteen thousand now, headed back east, he thought as he began to shallow the descent and level the huge aircraft. He pushed the power up on the three remaining engines, startled to feel heavy yawing to the right all over again as the engines on the left wing out-thrusted number-four engine on the right.

  This damn thing flies like I’ve got two engines out on one wing! The thought triggered the need to verify something, but the sight of Judy pulling her oxygen mask off distracted him. Right. We’re low enough now, he thought.

  Jim Aaron pulled his mask off as well, and turned toward Patrick.

  “Everybody can come off oxygen now. Patrick, tell the cabin.”

  The flight engineer nodded and reached for the PA, as Jim rolled in still more aileron to the left, shaken at how much it was taking to keep the wings even close to level.

  The airspeed caught his eye. It was too low!

  Something’s wrong!

  The readings were confusing. Something else he hadn’t yet figured out was happening.

  Jim Aaron pushed the throttles up as far as he dared, not wanting to over-boost the remaining engines, but the yaw worsened instantly, and the airspeed kept dropping as he held the altitude constant at fourteen thousand feet.

  “Judy”—he spoke without looking at her, his eyes riveted on the airspeed, his voice an anxious appeal of worry and urgency—“it feels like she’s refusing to fly level at this altitude on three engines. I don’t understand this. What’s going on here?”

  There was no way he should be having airspeed problems with three engines at full power!

  Engines! Do I really have three? Is something else wrong?

  His eyes snapped to the center engine instrument panel once more and bored in on the readings for engines three and four. Three, of course, was zeroed.

  But so was four!

  “What the hell?” Jim’s words caused Judy to look to her left and follow his gaze to the panel.

  “What?” she said.

  “Number three and four … look like … I mean, they’re both zero. Did we lose both?” Jim Aaron’s face wore an incredulous expression as his eyes darted around the engine instruments searching for some mistake, some salvation from the nightmare of a two-engine loss.

  There was none. Both engines on the right wing were useless.

  Judy’s head snapped to the right for a quick look at the wing, then back in the captain’s direction.

  “What’s … what’s out there?” Jim asked.

  The back of Judy’s head filled the copilot’s window as she strained to see the engines. For several moments she tried to make sense of the flames now roaring around the right outboard engine.

  “I think it’s number four that’s burning!” she said. “But we never got a fire warning!”

  “We’re out of fire bottles … we fired both of them on the right wing into number three.” The voice was Patrick’s.

  “Patrick … go back again, and this time take a look out there at the right engines. See what we’ve got,” Jim ordered.

  The flight engineer took a large flashlight from his brain bag and rushed from the cockpit. He returned in two minutes.

  “Boss, number three must have exploded! The engine looks to be gone and … and number four is burning, but it’s going straight back from the engine. I don’t think it’s going to get the wing.” Patrick reached up as he spoke, and pulled the engine-fire switch for number four without asking, an act that for a split second shocked and irritated Jim Aaron. He would deal with it later.

  “Are we … together, otherwise?” Jim hated the tightness in his throat, but he could do nothing about it. He was scared, plain and simple.

  “No damage I can see, but it sounds like … beneath the floor, you know … it sounds like something’s punched a hole in us, and that’s probably what dumped the cabin pressure. But everyone’s still aboard and the cabin’s intact.”

  “We didn’t lose the cargo door?” He knew his voice sounded incredulous. He had convinced himself that was the problem.

  “I don’t think so,” the engineer replied. He, too, was straining to see out the copilot’s window now, his head and Judy’s side by side.

  Jim glanced back at the flight instruments, horrified to see the speed decaying through 180 knots and just above a stall. Engines one and two, the two powerplants on the left wing, were already just a hair below maximum power, yet he couldn’t hold a safe flying speed and stay level at fourteen thousand feet. There was no choice but to keep on descending. With rising fear, he pushed the yoke forward.

  Immediately the 747 picked up a healthy rate of descent as the wings resumed flying and the speed increased again, but the realization on Jim Aaron’s part was now unavoidable: We’re too heavy to fly level with only two engines and whatever damage is out there. But … if we can’t maintain fourteen thousand, what can we maintain? How low do I have to get this tub before we can level off?

  Patrick’s warning about having too much fuel coalesced at last. They had enough fuel to get to Japan, and it was dragging them into the water.

  Captain Jim Aaron turned to his flight engineer and fairly barked.

  “Start dumping!”

  Patrick’s eyes met his, and his answer was instantaneous. “I am dumping. You were distracted, so I started before I went downstairs.”

  Jim nodded in appreciation as Patrick furiously worked at pumping fuel from the right-wing tanks to the left-wing dump nozzle. He had made a terrible error in using the right-wing dump nozzle, however briefly. If that stream had caught fire from the burning engine …

  “Jim?” Patrick’s voice was strong but strained.

  Jim Aaron had turned back to the instrument panel in front of him, but he looked back now at Patrick. “Yeah?”

  “We can only dump out of the left wing. I can’t use the right dump mast with number-four engine burning right next to it. That means … ah … our dump rate’s one-half of normal. We’re at six hundred eighty thousand pounds weight now and coming down, but I … I don’t know about … altitude.”

  “Okay.”

  Jim turned back to the panel.

  If we didn’t have the damned overcast down there, I could see the coastline by now.

  He dearly wanted to see something solidly connected with the ground. The thought of having this happen a thousand miles from the nearest land was terrifying.

  As it was, only blackness filled the windscreen.

  “We’re through eight thousand,” Judy intoned.

  Jim knew the descent rate was slowing. They both did. But he still couldn’t fly level.

  “How … ah … how far out are we?” Jim asked.

  Judy had been calling the controller without success.

  “Fifty-two miles from Neah Bay,” she replied. “But we’ve lost contact with Seattle Center. We’re too low.” Judy was responding automatically. Her eyes had been drawn again to the engine instruments. There had been a needle movement she had tried to ignore. Yet she thought it was starting again. Like a moviegoer who covers her eyes in a horror film, then peeks between her fingers, she had to face it.

  There it was again! A flicker in the exhaust-gas temperature of number-two engine, the inboard engine on the left wing! She was already scared, and the thou
ght of losing a third engine was simply unacceptable. Judy willed the gauge to return to normal and looked away, concluding that she had probably misread it anyway.

  Jim Aaron let himself take a deep breath and straighten himself in the command chair. They were descending now through seven thousand feet and under control, but he wasn’t doing it right. There were checklists to run and a thousand duties to perform, including speaking to the passengers, and here he was trying to play the game singlehandedly—the brave captain flying the airplane and giving the orders. Judy and Patrick had already saved his bacon several times over in the previous five minutes. Now it was time to act like a crew commander, not a self-sufficient fighter jock.

  “Judy, it’s stupid for me to try flying and thinking too. You take the airplane and keep us in the air while I work on the problems, okay?”

  Her reply was instantaneous. “Roger, I’ve got it.”

  Judy took the yoke, astounded at the control pressures necessary to keep them going straight. Jim watched her for only a second, then turned to the flight engineer.

  “Ah, okay, give me a reading, an assessment of what we’ve got.”

  Patrick pointed to the right side of the jumbo. “Apparently number-three engine exploded on us. Why, God only knows. Anyway, I’m sure it threw debris everywhere, and it probably peppered number four with shrapnel and threw pieces in the front of the engine as well. Number four just took a few more minutes to go, for some reason. I … my panel was confusing back here. Still is. It looks like we’ve got power from number three, and it’s not even hanging on the engine strut anymore. I mean that sucker is gone, Jim.”

  “Why are we depressurized?”

  “Well, I heard roaring below, as I told you. Number three … ah … probably machine-gunned turbine blades into our belly, you know, the air-conditioning systems, and maybe even the landing gear. We could have blown tires and brakes too. Somehow it breached the pressure vessel and blew our cork, but I don’t think we’re gonna come apart or anything.”

  “Air conditioning? But that’s under the belly!”

  “Yeah, well, boss, with that size explosion on number three, no telling where all the pieces went, or which engines ate parts.”

  The mere use of a plural sent a chill down Jim’s back.

  “God, are you saying it could have hurt the left engines too?”

  Patrick heard the strain in Jim Aaron’s voice. He could feel the fear. They might make it on two engines, but they would have to ditch if they went down to one. A nighttime ditching in a 747 would probably turn out to be unsurvivable.

  Jim’s head was throbbing with tension.

  Jesus Christ, how’d this happen?

  The feeling of being cornered pressed in on him.

  We’d need exposure suits to ditch. We’d need three hundred exposure suits! No one can survive more than thirty minutes in waters as cold as these!

  But there were no survival suits aboard.

  Patrick interrupted the nightmare.

  “Jim, about the hydraulics? You wanted to know what we had left?”

  The captain nodded, and Patrick ran down the list.

  We’re hanging by number-one hydraulic system. That’s all that’s keeping us alive!

  A mental diagram of number-one system’s tubing played in his head, but an awful truth was coursing through all their conscious thoughts: even if he could keep them airborne, if they lost the last system, there would be virtually no way to control the ship.

  In Sioux City, Al Haynes at least had an engine on each wing, Jim thought. I don’t even have that.

  Jim turned to the other two.

  “Okay, we’re already too low to fly over the Olympic Mountains. We’re gonna have to follow the Strait of Juan de Fuca back in toward Seattle to keep clear of all terrain. I’ll get the radar tuned up to follow the channel, ’cause with the undercast, we won’t be able to see …”

  Judy had been staring at the forward panel while the captain talked. Suddenly her voice rang through his words.

  “Jim?” Her tone was a rising alarm.

  “Yeah?”

  “Jim, we’re losing number two!” Her left index finger was nervously tapping a small round gauge on the center panel, on which a tiny indicator needle was climbing into unacceptable temperature ranges.

  “How in the hell …” Jim caught himself before going further.

  Raging at it won’t help us! Think, dammit, think!

  The needle was definitely climbing. There was something wrong with the hot section of number-two engine as well. Perhaps if he pulled the power back, they could keep it running at part power. Anything was better than the alternative.

  He pulled the throttle for number two back about halfway.

  “How much do we weigh now?”

  The response was immediate. Patrick was monitoring the dump rate like a computer. “Six hundred forty-two thousand. I’ve checked the charts. With two engines and max power and a full dump rate, we should have been able to level at eight thousand. With one engine and half a dump rate, I … don’t think we can stay in the air long enough to dump down … to … ah, flying weight, because …”

  It was not necessary to finish the sentence. Jim Aaron and Judy Griffin understood perfectly. They were flying toward the intersection of two curves on an imaginary graph. One represented their diminishing gross weight as they dumped fuel overboard as fast as possible; the other was the rising curve representing the altitude the aircraft could maintain with the power they would have from one engine. Where those two lines intersected was where Clipper Ten could level off.

  The fact that the point of intersection was still below sea level grew like a malignancy in his thoughts.

  Jim Aaron straightened himself once again in the left seat and looked at his two companions. “Okay, we’re not licked yet. If nothing else, we’ll fly this ship like a ship in ground effect until we get rid of enough fuel to climb again.”

  Patrick was stunned. “We’ll do what?”

  “Ground effect! I’ve seen it done before over water.”

  Jim knew an airplane otherwise incapable of flight could hang above the surface at an altitude of up to half its wingspan on the very cushion of air it was compressing by the act of flying by.

  “I’m guessing, but I think we have enough power. We’re only sinking at three hundred feet per minute right now, and you’re still dumping, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay. Provided number-one hydraulic system holds, and engines one and two continue to run, and provided the fire on the right side doesn’t get bigger and threaten the wing, and there aren’t any large freighters in the way, I think we can get as far as Whidbey.”

  Jim Aaron had never landed at Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, but from ex-Navy friends he knew it was the only major Puget Sound airfield with a runway on the water. It was their only chance. Seattle was too far away, and every other airport within range was too high above sea level.

  Patrick was leaning forward, holding the back of Jim Aaron’s seat with his left hand and wearing an ashen expression.

  “What if we get all the way down to the surface, intending to fly in ground effect, and she won’t?” Patrick asked quietly.

  Jim turned to Patrick and tried to smile, an effort that looked more like a wince and betrayed the fact that he was shaking inside.

  “Then we ditch her, right then and there,” Jim said. “That’s the plan. We try to stay airborne, but if we have to ditch, so be it.”

  Patrick nodded solemnly.

  “Not much of a plan, I’ll admit,” Jim said, “but it’s all we’ve got at the moment.” And I’m not going to give up yet!

  5

  Wednesday, March 8, 9:10 P.M.

  Seattle Center, Federal Aviation Administration Air Route Traffic

  Control Center, Auburn, Washington

  The rhythms of the room had shifted, though to the eyes and ears of an uninitiated visitor, the subdued lights and quiet background noise
s that filled the cavernous interior of the Air Route Traffic Control Center were unaltered. The long rows of radar display screens mounted vertically on lengthwise consoles divided a work area occupied by a host of men and women wearing headsets and speaking quietly by radio to airborne pilots scattered all over the skies of the Pacific Northwest. The continuity seemed soothing and endless, promising to look exactly the same twenty-four hours a day.

  But to the senses of a veteran air traffic controller, the atmosphere filling Seattle Center had suddenly become electric.

  In a far corner, a small, solemn gathering could be seen standing behind the sector controller in charge of the airspace just west of the Olympic Peninsula—the northwestern corner of the continental United States. The man was punching his transmit button repeatedly, trying once again to raise Pan Am Flight 10, whose call sign was Clipper Ten Heavy.

  Three minutes had elapsed since the last transmission from the Pan Am jumbo, though the radar signal and the aircraft’s transponder were still strong. Five sets of highly trained eyes tracked the computer-generated radar return as it crawled across the screen eastbound toward the coastline of Washington State, but there was no answer from the occupants of the distant cockpit.

  The controller’s stomach was in a knot behind his polished mask of detachment. He knew there were several hundred people aboard that phosphorescent blip, all of them now dependent on the skill of the pilots he ached to contact once again—but couldn’t. What in hell was happening out there? There had been clear tension in the voice of the pilot working the radio as the flight descended and turned back, and he could hear the sounds of a voice laboring to talk around the constraints of an oxygen mask.

  But it was a helpless and cold feeling to sit in a windowless room a hundred miles distant, devoid of radio contact, watching a sterile version of the drama unfold as the Boeing 747’s transponder dutifully reported their sinking altitude back to the FAA computers in Auburn.

  The controller glanced quickly at his shift supervisor, who had materialized by his side just after the Pan Am pilots had set their transponder to the emergency code of 7700—an act that set off an insistent alarm in the normally hushed warrens of Seattle Center.