Hadad entered the cockpit, relieving Wael once more. He, in turn, would go below and allow Abu a rest. The door clicked shut without either of the pilots turning to acknowledge or challenge their new guard. Again Hadad wriggled into the jump seat and let the Uzi lie across his lap.
Through the windshield a light glow was visible coming from below, but no discernible feature emitting it. Hadad raised himself up until he had a higher vantage than either of the pilots. There were a cluster of lights visible to the left through what must have been a cloud cover, and almost straight on, but farther off, there was a short line of parallel lights. A runway.
“How long until we land?”
Hendrickson stretched his neck and half turned. “A few minutes.”
And a few after that you’ll be Swiss cheese, Buzz thought. The radio message hadn’t been specific, but it assured them something would be happening.
Hendrickson asked for a last check of Jose Marti’s runways. Buzz pulled the information up on the flight computer.
“That’s two-three ahead,” the co-pilot said.
“Do you think they want us to use it?” Hendrickson asked rhetorically. The Cubans — or whoever was running the show — had only one runway lit amid the blackness: number 23, identified by its compass heading in tens of degrees. “All right. I figure we’re cleared right in. How about you?”
“Maybe we should check it out with our leader here.” Buzz was trying for a little antagonism, just to keep the pirate off-balance. “How about it, Mr. Big? Have we got your permission to land, or do you want us to do a low pass just for show?”
Hadad barely heard the crack and gave it no mind. The time had passed for an iron hand. The end was almost within sight.
“Guess so.”
“Let’s set her down,” the captain said, mostly to himself, his thumb rubbing the control column tenderly. Almost a caress for the Maiden. “Approach checklist.”
The two officers ran through the landing checks in under a minute. They were eight minutes from touchdown. Ahead, the rows of lights were becoming more defined. Hopefully the Maiden would touch down dead center between them, just past the patchwork of red threshold lights. That would give her ample room to stop.
Without tower contact they had no exact word on wind conditions at ground level. Fortunately their surreptitious shadow had fed them enough information to allow for some plans for the landing.
“I show a marker,” Buzz called out. “Don’t know what kind. They don’t use the North American system, do they?”
“Good question. Did you see any others?”
“Nah. It must’ve been an outer.” Or there might have been none at all, Buzz knew. The Cubans had never faithfully bought into any of the conventions of air travel in the Western hemisphere, their main customers being carriers who didn’t fly into U.S. airports, but seemingly minor things such as airport distance markers were ultra important to 422.
“Okay.” The captain thought quickly. “Let’s ignore it just to be safe. It’s pretty damn close in for an outer. We should have passed a middle.”
“We’re doing it by dead reckoning, then.”
“Right,” Hendrickson confirmed.
Intensity of the lights grew, as did their definition into separate specks. The Cubans did have visual referencing, split-colored lights near the runway’s end to give pilots cues as to their position on the glide slope. The Maiden was right on.
“Ten degrees,” Hendrickson ordered. His hands were secure on the column, leaving the flap adjustment to his first officer.
‘Ten degrees…”
The bright red flashing square caught their attention more than the extra loud warning buzzer. A major system had failed. The flaps!
“Shit!” Buzz yelled. “Locked at zero degrees.” He typed a quick command one-handed for a system readout. “Pressure is at one hundred and ten percent!”
Captain Bart Hendrickson had to now think faster than he ever had in his life. The Clipper Atlantic Maiden was a minute from touchdown, with minimal brakes remaining, and a malfunctioning flap system.
“What is it?” Hadad asked excitedly, leaning forward.
“Shut up!”
Hydraulic pressure at 110 percent could only mean that there was some sort of system blockage at the extenders. The pumps were trying to move the big control surfaces to slow the jumbo jet before landing, but something was preventing it. They’d gone into an unplanned overdrive, pumping harder to free the stuck system, and raising the operating pressure to above max. If 110 didn’t free it, nothing would.
Hendrickson released his death grip on the twin upright column handles. He was going to be calm about this. Calm and determined. “Cut number two, all the way.”
Buzz hit the emergency engine shutoff for the inboard left-side engine, in effect cutting off fuel and oxygen flow to the turbine. That would add some drag to slow the plane.
The runway was coming up at them rapidly. Hendrickson brought the column back farther than would be normal to compensate for the reduced lift. The flaps, at this point during landing, would be providing lift and drag, keeping the aircraft in the air while the drag slowed the airspeed and thus its ability to stay airborne.
“When we hit, reverse one and four, and stand on the brakes.”
“Gotcha.” Buzz had both feet ready to stamp on the pedals as soon as the nose wheel was down; any sooner would lock the main gear and bring the aircraft’s nose down hard — maybe too hard. Nose gears had collapsed before when inexperienced pilots had hit the brakes too soon.
“And push your stick full forward. Let’s see if we can make her real heavy.” The captain wanted to use downward force, created by simulating a dive, to artificially raise the weight of the Maiden, creating more drag. Maybe, just maybe, everything in combination would work. But, his experience told him, probably not.
Behind the pilots Hadad could sense the trouble, though he knew little of specifics. His physical senses also told him that the plane was going very fast — faster than he had ever felt a plane go during landing. It would be a final test of the righteousness of his mission. Allah, in His great wisdom, was granting the purpose one final sanction. Hadad sat back, his eyes wide open to watch his prisoners, but his mind free and drifting.
Sitting four full stories above what would soon be the ground, the captain had to aim farther down the runway than pilots of other craft would. It was an artificial point, some fifteen hundred feet past the threshold under normal circumstances. The Maiden needed all the room she could get, so Hendrickson focused only a thousand feet past the beginning of pavement.
“This is too fast…” Buzz watched the speed gauge drop way too slowly. It was only down to 230 knots, and with only fifteen seconds until — impact? — it wasn’t going down much farther. “Jesus, Bart, we’re gonna hit hard.”
The forward motion was terrific, and as frightening was the stone-like rate of descent now that the Maiden was forcing her way to the earth. She was going to land fast, the only way under the circumstances, and she was going to come down with millions of pounds of force on the runway.
“Let’s hope they laid good concrete,” the captain blurted out just as he pulled the column into his gut to slow the Maiden’s descent. The big jet crossed the point where grass met the runway at 210 knots—40 knots faster than normal. Prayers, silent and personal, filled the flight deck.