[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Pete watched the airspeed and attitude gyro indicator as he dove the aircraft to the left.The desert landscape below them appeared to tilt up as they moved in a corkscrew, descending to the ground.The G-forces pushed both of them back into their seats.Thank God it was just him and Jack on this baby.A passenger flight would have had the passengers gripping their armrests and screaming in terror.Jack kept up the chatter as Pete kept the downward spiral as tight as possible, Jack’s voice sounding muffled through the oxygen mask as he read out their altitude and rate of descent.‘Ten thousand feet,’ Jack called out.‘Six thousand feet per minute down.’The land continued to spin around.Pete forced himself to scan outside and then back inside to the instruments.Ignore everything else.At four thousand feet it was time.time to descend as rapidly as possible and, then pull out at the last minute to attempt a type of landing that was so crazy they didn’t even bother to train for it in the simulators.His co-pilot said, ‘Gear’s down, flaps thirty, landing checklist complete.’Pete said, ‘Let’s do it.’He pulled the throttles to idle, lowered the nose and extended the speed brakes.The aircraft, as one of his old instructors would have said, started to come down like a ton of shit.Jack called out, ‘Three thousand feet!’‘Roger,’ Pete said, as he retracted the speed brakes and started the turn to the final approach.There you go, he thought.Below three thousand feet and somewhere in the belly of his aircraft - his responsibility! -anthrax was now spraying out.A few hours ago their original destination had been Los Angeles; he refused to think of how many would have ended up dead because of him if they hadn’t been stopped in time.The aircraft seemed to vibrate more as they quickly lost altitude.Ahead of them was the narrow runway, and at five hundred feet they were now on final approach.Pete lined up the aircraft with the fast-approaching runway and increased throttle speed, to reduce their descent speed.Jack was murmuring something, over and over, and Pete realized that the poor guy was praying.A hard shudder, a screech.Touchdown.Things moved very quickly then.As the spoilers were deployed, Pete engaged full reverse on the engines, and pushed his feet down on the brake pedals for maximum braking.These old military fields were so damn short.The plane vibrated some more as it started to roll to a halt.It was a bright, sunny day in the desert, and as they slowed and finally stopped Pete started breathing in the oxygen harder, thinking that he had never tasted anything so fine.The airstrip was deserted.Not even a single building.Well, so what? They were aliveAs the engines whined down there was a thud-roar and another thud-roar, and he looked up.Two F-15s were rolling up and out above them, after giving them a close flyby.‘What the hell was that?’ Jack asked.‘Victory roll,’ Pete said.‘Victory? Victory for what?’Pete picked up a checklist, let it fall.For later.‘Victory for not having to shoot us down,’ he said.~ * ~As they descended into their approach, Karen Hollister of AirBox 88 said to her co-pilot Mark LaMontagne, ‘We get through this, want to go to unemployment together tomorrow?’His voice sounded odd through the oxygen mask: ‘What do you mean?’She couldn’t believe that she laughed, but what else was there to do? ‘You think AirBox is going to be in business this time next week?’‘Huh?’‘Mark, old boy, a bunch of AirBox aircraft have been carrying anthrax for the past few hours.Do you think that’s a keen strategy for keeping our market share?’Mark coughed.‘Shit.Hadn’t thought about that.’‘Plenty of time to do that later.Let’s go.’And though this was going to be a landing for the record books and news magazines, it ended up being pretty routine.The touchdown was just a tad rough but when they were done, the plane at a halt, the landscape flat and pretty much abandoned, Karen sat back, breathing hard.‘Not bad, eh?’ she asked.Mark looked out the side windscreen.‘Got to hand it to you, Karen.You put us down like you’ve done this before.’‘Not hardly.Look.Company coming.’Flashing blue lights ahead of them.Getting closer.Vehicles, of course.In a couple of minutes, the lights were close enough to make them out.South Dakota Highway Patrol.Which made sense, for right now AirBox 88 was smack dab in the middle of a stretch of Interstate 90.‘Hope you got your license with you,’ she said to her co-pilot as the state troopers came up to them.‘Hate to be arrested for landing without a license.’Mark didn’t laugh - which made some sense, for the troopers below them looked odd.All of them were wearing gas masks.~ * ~Air Force Major Terrence Walker was standing out on the flight line, moving clumsily in full MOP gear, gas mask and gas suit, as he and his small staff - all of them wearing the same gear - waited near a Humvee.There was one small building next to the long runway, with satellite dishes and radio antennas on its roof.Captain Cooper leaned toward him, his voice muffled through the gas mask.‘Still can’t believe they’re ending up here,’‘Good a place as any.Look.Here they come.’Walker looked up as the aircraft - AirBox 12 - started its descent, coming down like a goddamn brick.He hoped they could pull this off because there was nothing here to help them — this small base in Colorado tested weather-monitoring equipment for the Air Force, and didn’t even have a control tower or crash equipment - but it was going to have to work.Somebody said, ‘C’mon, hoss, ease her on down,’ and so they waited.~ * ~Eugene Williams was the co-pilot of AirBox 12, and earlier he had said to his pilot, ‘Alex, I really think I should take her in.I’ve had the experience.You haven’t.’And AirBox 12’s pilot Alex Hinz had replied in his clipped, accented voice: ‘No more talk, please.Prepare for landing.’Stupid moron, Eugene thought, as he started reading out the altitude, rate of descent and airspeed of AirBox 12.He had flown F-16s before being RIFed out from the Air Force three years ago, and knew how to put an aircraft thought its paces.But Alex had flown some in the German Air Force and for Lufthansa, before ending up in the States and AirBox.He was a typical European pilot: follow all the rules and procedures, even if it meant killing you.Like the SwissAir flight that had gone down near Nova Scotia some years ago.Bastards had indication of fire somewhere in the plane, and they wasted time getting the passengers ready for landing, picking up meal trays, trying to troubleshoot the problem, following everything nice and procedure-like instead of landing the damn thing, until they—‘Alex, we’re at five hundred, sinking 1500 and 10 knots slow.’No reply.Just a grunt.‘Alex, we’re at four hundred, sinking 1500 and 15 slow!’No reply‘We need power!’ Eugene shouted.~ * ~From the Humvee, an alarm started going Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!, causing Major Cooper to jump.He shouted out, ‘What the hell is that alarm?’‘Bio alarm,’ came the voice.‘It’s detecting anthrax.’‘Shit, of course it is.We knew that.Shut the damn thing down.’And he turned back to the approaching aircraft and saw the disaster unfold [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]