“Dan?” Jerry’s voice was suddenly tentative, puzzled, almost indignant, as if the scenario was going significantly off script and there had been no approval for such a deviation.
“Yes?”
“I’m… having control problems here, Dan.”
“What do you mean, control problems?”
“I mean… she’s sluggish on roll to the left, and the vibrations… feel that?”
“Yeah. No time to go back and look, but the right wing’s probably damaged.”
“Bet it ripped open our fuel tank.”
“Not that it matters!” Dan chuckled, in spite of the all-consuming tension.
They had one shot at landing with no power, limited instruments, only the force of the slipstream turning the ram air turbine and batteries providing instrument power, and a totally unknown situation on landing gear and flaps.
“We can do this, Dan!”
“That’s what I said. Damn right! You’re in direct law. What can I do to help?”
“Make the radio calls, call my altitude, keep calculating energy status, and make sure we don’t forget any emergency checklists.”
“We’re eighty miles out.” With the iPad on his lap and Baghdad’s main airport punched up, Dan located and dialed in the tower frequency and hit the transmit button for number one radio.
“Baghdad tower, Pangia Flight 10, declaring an emergency. All engines out. Eighty miles to the east, we’ll be making a no-engine approach and landing. Please acknowledge and say current winds and… ah… ah… ceiling.”
Seconds ticked by before the very American voice of a contract controller came back to them.
“Roger, Pangia 10. Runway Three-Three-Left is the active, 13,100 feet available, current winds three-two-zero at five knots, visibility unlimited. State fuel and souls on board.”
“Fuel is zero, and we have… I don’t know… several hundred souls on board. We will need the equipment and would recommend a few ambulances… we don’t know the situation in the back.”
“Please explain, Ten.”
“We’ve been hit by an Iranian air-to-air missile. We were attacked by the Iranians.”
“Dan… Dan she’s vibrating even more. Something’s coming loose out there!”
“Can you control her?”
“I’ve gotta slow down more… Jesus, it takes full left deflection to hold her level.”
“Want me to run back and look?”
“I… think we’d better! I need to know what we’ve got.”
An interphone call chime rang, and Dan punched up the channel. .
“Cockpit!”
“This is Lucy at Four-Right. We’re on fire!” The voice was as strained and frightened as he imagined he sounded.
“What are you seeing, Lucy?”
“Outside on the right wing, we’re trailing a sheet of flame!”
“Okay. One of us is coming back,” Dan said, pushing the receiver back in its cradle, as he quickly briefed Jerry and reached for the glareshield, his hand searching for the engine fire switch and the button for the fire extinguishing bottles.
“You already fired one, right?” Jerry asked.
“Yes. The ECAM’s saying to fire the second now. I’m shooting number two.”
“Go ahead!”
Tom Wilson had thrown off his seatbelt. “I’ll go back and take a look, guys.”
“Please!” Jerry affirmed.
Inside two minutes, Tom Wilson was on the interphone.
“Okay, guys, we ARE on fire. It’s not just whatever remains of number two engine, but it looks like we’re trailing flame off the middle of the right wing. How, I don’t know, since there’s no fuel left…”
“Could it be the metal of the wing burning?”
“God I hope not! But it’s pretty intense.”
“That’s probably hydraulic fluid, too, which means we could lose all the right side controls.”
“No wonder she’s sluggish!”
“I need to dive, Dan,” Jerry was saying. “I need to blow the flames out!”
“We have some extra altitude, but if you go down too fast, we won’t make the airport!”
“And if we don’t, it could burn through the wing.”
“She may not be able to structurally handle too much speed!”
“Gotta try! Increasing speed to barber pole,” Jerry said.
Patyish 21
The major flying the lead F-15 had seen the explosion on the right wing of the lumbering Airbus just before it turned back and headed out of Iranian airspace, but the air battle was still too engaged to give chase until they confirmed the Iranians were bugging out east and the Israeli force acknowledged his “knock it off” call.
Now he ordered the remainder of his flight to reform on Patyish 22 as he plugged in afterburner and dove to the west to join up on Pangia 10.
He had not monitored the special command channel Patyish 26 had been ordered to contact, and he’d restrained himself from asking about 26’s remaining ordinance when they were “safeing up” their weapons for the return. The possibility that the explosion he’d seen came from an Israeli missile was nauseating, but at least Pangia was still in the air.
The target of the huge Airbus flared clearly ahead of him as he pushed past Mach 1.8 in chase, closing the fifteen-mile gap easily before coming out of burner and timing his arrival alongside the stricken commercial liner.
Aboard Pangia 10
Carol had reached forward to grab the PA handset and both pilots registered the fact that she was making the announcement they wished they had time to give.
“Everyone check your seatbelts tightly fastened and keep your oxygen masks on! Stay down, lean as far forward as you can. We’re making an emergency descent and will be making a no engine emergency landing in Baghdad.”
“I’ll keep calculating the lowest altitude you can descend to and still make Baghdad, Jerry.”
“How far out are we?”
“Sixty-two miles on the GPS. That means no diving lower than 24,000.”
“And we’re still at 31,000.”
“She’s shaking pretty badly, Jerry!”
“I know it!”
“I didn’t see any obvious damage to the cabin, but somehow we’ve got a hole in us. You’re coming through 30,000 now.”
“That’s as fast as I dare.”
“Agreed. Twenty-nine, five… twenty-nine… twenty-eight, five…”
“Is someone watching back there?”
“Yes.”
“Wish we could talk to the passengers, too, but no time.”
“Twenty-eight, now Jerry, twenty-seven, five… this shaking is really worrying me!”
“Distance to Baghdad?”
“Fifty-four miles. We need 21,000, we’re descending through twenty-seven.”
“Call her, Dan!”
“Got it,” he replied, yanking the handset back out of its cradle and punching the button for 4R.
“Tom… status?”
He hunched over the phone, nodding and acknowledging before hanging up and turning back to the captain.
“He says the flames are less now, but it’s still burning, and every few seconds something else seems to fall off and blow away.”
“Like… parts of the wing?”
“Jerry, he said each piece is glowing hot or flaming when it falls away! We gotta get down man… we’re coming apart.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Situation Room, The White House (1:47 a.m. EST / 0547 Zulu)
“Who fired that missile?”
The president had reappeared in the Situation Room without warning and was standing at the far end of the table, waiting for a response.
The air force colonel who had been handling the real-time connections with Tel Aviv realized no one else was going to reply. “We’re not sure, Mr. President. They apparently took an air-to-air missile up the tailpipe of their right engine just before they regained control and began to turn around.”