Groundspeed one-forty-five knots. No reverse thrust Three thousand feet to run!" Vance called above the din.
He could see the end of the runway. The airplane seemed to be accelerating… It was worse than making an emergency stop in a car…
The hydraulic pressure faded and he felt the brakes slacken, become spongey. They were going to plough off the end of the runway into the overrun area-at sixty knots, he was flung against his restraints as the
494 hit the end of the runway and rushed on, throwing gravel and debris against the underside of the fuselage. The mirrors filled with dust.
Thirty knots, ten Their speed died and the aircraft came to a shuddering, drunken stop. Dust boiled up around the flight deck windows, obscuring everything… Gant choked back sickness. Vance seemed to be yelling a stream of obscenities, somewhere at a great distance… Quiet. For a moment, until the noise of sirens filled it.
Gant dragged off his headset and then once more slumped gratefully, dazedly aganist the restrain of his straps.
The nose of the 494 dropped as the nose undercarriage leg slowly collapsed, as if he had ridden it like a horse to exhaustion.
The sirens began to wind down. The vehicles, like a pack of small wild dogs surrounding a wounded buffalo, appeared in front of them as the dust cleared from the windows. At once, he made out Barbara's slight form climbing out of the
4WD.
"Shit," Vance murmured, his voice thick with saliva.
"Shit- shit!"
Gant rubbed his cheeks with his hands as Vance pounded him on the shoulder. He inspected the quivering in his fingers. Remembered Hollis. He shook his head slowly, repeatedly.
Thanks," Vance murmured.
"Sure." He looked across at him. The man's features were shining with relief, with the vivacity of hope rescued from desperation.
"Sure…"
The fuel management system. The assholes they must have cut corners, shaved the costs, failed to check the circuitry… something." He loosened his restraints, almost as if he were just awakening and about to stretch luxuriously.
Gant had done enough, apparently. Survived, unlike Hollis and his crew, and thrown Vance a lifeline. He'd be on the midday news, the networks by evening There was a TV camera, perched like a black parrot on someone's shoulder, pointing at them, then panning along the fuselage. A hurriedly poised, power suited female reporter was already preparing to interview Barbara beneath the nose of the aircraft, amid the scenery of the emergency vehicles.
He turned to Vance and glowered at him. Vance shrugged and said:
"I knew you could do it, Gant I just knew it." He grinned, waggling his hand.
"I couldn't pass up the chance to make headlines. All or nothing at all—"
"You're a Class A asshole, Vance."
"Sure. Now, smile you're on Candid Camera? he pointed through the dusty windows.
"When they ask you questions, just keep it simple. A technical fault, but the airplane's fundamentally safe. OK?"
"And you get a Federal seal of approval, right? The NTSB speaks through me."
That's the way the game is played, Gant. Don't be a party-pooper. Hero saves Vance Aircraft. Don't you like the sound of tomorrow's headlines?" He waved towards the inquisitive camera, which had been joined by a second, then a third.
"Don't screw it up. I save my company, you get to be a celebrity all over again. Let's just play it as it lays, uh?" He paused, and a more vulnerable, grateful man looked out from behind the blunt planes and angles of his face.
"And, thanks. I mean it, Mitchell. Thanks."
Eventually, as his relief and anger both subsided, Gant murmured:
"Yeah. Any time…"
"Am I being stupid, Kenneth? Tell me if you think I am."
"My dear, you only ever ask that question when you're all but certain you're right."
"And you only ever employ that patrician tone with me when your curiosity has been aroused."
Marian blew cigarette smoke through the sunlight that blazed in Aubrey's drawing room. The green carpet and walls gave the room a dell-like privacy and invitation.
Mrs. Grey, who spent her time attempting to woo Kenneth from his occasional cigarettes, would disapprove of the scent of the smoke after she was gone, however privileged she was as a former don, present MP and always Giles Pyott's daughter.
Aubrey lifted his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. Their faded blue appeared childishly mischievous. He smiled at her.
"Am I curious?" he asked.
"I suspect you might be." Then, as if brushing the banter aside like the last billow of smoke with her hand, she leaned forward and said:
"You know my suspicions amount to paranoia, Kenneth. At least, I know you think so. I just can't believe he overdosed on heroin."
"Why not?" he asked, not unkindly.
"Many respectable young people do. It doesn't always happen in filthy public lavatories or on run-down housing estates."
"I grant you that but unless he had his hand in the till… Oh, I don't know! Perhaps he could afford a new apartment, a new girlfriend, a new car and a mainline habit… And perhaps I'm old-fashioned enough not to want it to be true. But it seems too coincidental to me. The very day—"
"Ah. Well, perhaps." He replaced his spectacles, which had been catching the sunlight as he waved his hand airily, the thin wrist bony and skeletal, the flesh almost transparent. The dust motes slowed as he returned his attention to the sheet of A4. These names, you say, are not unexpected?" She shook her head emphatically.
"Well, apart from Laxton."
"Laxton Not-so-Superb as he was known to Cabinet colleagues old enough to remember real apples," Aubrey reminisced drily.
"He was always a denizen of the meaner realms of the body politic, I grant you. Why should his presence surprise?"
"Urban Development his EU brief as Commissioner. He has no possible connection with Aero UK or Balzac-Stendhal. And before you ask, he is not a director nor has ever been. They were companies he must have missed out of his ample portfolio." She smiled, brushing at the stray blonde hair at her temples. Her mane was pulled back from her face and held in a slide. She was soberly dressed in a cream suit.
"And I wouldn't gauge him to possess the clout to lobby effectively either at Westminster or in Brussels. Urban Development was the booby prize or a slight to the new British Commissioner."
"Otherwise, nothing?"
"Nothing."
"Well, let me look at the photographs." He flicked through the prints she had had rush-developed.
"Mm, I would not have employed that unfortunate young man on surveillance without an extensive course in the arts of photography.
These are very poor, even allowing for the weather…" He studied the prints carefully, holding his glasses at slightly differing distances from his eyes, squinting.
"I recognise most of these faces, including dear David. But then, I presume you're not suspicious of David Winterborne in this, are you?"
"Don't be silly. Just because he was always pulling my pigtails, tying me to trees and leaving me for hours, putting frogs down my best frocks
…?" She tossed her head, laughing.
"No, I don't want to pay him back for his childhood cruelties to a mere girl five years younger than himself—"
"Who repeatedly invaded his boyish games, offered probity where there was inevitable cheating, and who accused him at every possible turn of unkindness to his younger brother, your playmate?"
There was a momentary silence as both of them remembered David Winterborne's long-dead younger brother. Then she said: