“He’s hugging the terrain, Crown, and literally flying up a glacier. We’ve launched fox one unsuccessfully and are maneuvering for another shot.”
“You WHAT? Cease fire! You were ordered to proceed without deadly force.”
There was a prolonged silence.
“Crown, we heard the order as ‘Force him to land at Elmendorf. If compliance is refused, destruction authorized.’”
“Unauthorized, dammit! The order was destruction UN-authorized.”
There was a long pause before the F-15 lead pilot pressed his transmit button again. Mac could imagine him thinking fast to use the right words.
“Sorry, Crown. We did not copy the ‘un’ part.”
Mac shook his head and sighed as he punched the transmit button. “Well, thank God you didn’t hit him, Husky.”
“Scott, this canyon has to end somewhere,” April said through gritted teeth, her eyes riveted on the unfolding chasm of ice. “Now would be a very good time to climb!”
“In a minute.”
“I don’t think we have a minute.”
“See the cloud cover ahead?”
“Yes.”
“That’s what I’m aiming for.”
“You want to go on instruments playing Star Wars down the middle of a giant crevasse? Are all Navy pilots insane and suicidal, or did I just luck out with you?”
“You’re just a lucky gal, I guess. Stand by to climb. We’ve got to get under that layer of clouds ahead.”
There was another sharp bend in the ice canyon some thirty degrees to the left and Scott guided the Widgeon around the turn as April realized that the vanishing point she was seeing ahead was actually the end of the canyon.
“CLIMB! NOW, SCOTT!”
“I see it,” he said, firewalling the throttles and pulling back sharply on the yoke, trading his small surplus of airspeed for altitude as they slid beneath the cloud cover overhead. The Widgeon popped above the top of the walls on each side and Scott guided them to the right, over the broken and deeply crevassed surface of the glacier beneath an overcast hanging no more than two hundred feet above them.
“See?” He grinned.
“See what? Aren’t there cliffs in these clouds?”
“Yeah… but there’s a little place I know over to the right…”
“Not another one?”
“Hang on.”
“I really hate it when you say that!” April replied, her hands still in a death grip on the armrests of her copilot’s seat.
The Air Force F-15 pilot pulled his ship around sharply to the right, racking up nearly eight Gs in the turn to get another look at the amphibian. His wingman was working hard against the G forces to hang in position on his left wing and barely succeeded as they rolled out of the turn together.
“You have him, Two?” Lead asked.
“Negative. I think he ducked under that cloud cover.”
“He’s crazy if he did.”
“Well, I rest my case,” the wingman said. “What now?”
“Let’s orbit and see if he comes back out,” Lead replied, his concentration still divided by the fact that they’d apparently misunderstood a rules-of-engagement order and almost succeeded in accidentally destroying a civilian aircraft. The prospect had made him queasy, something no amount of G force or maneuvering had ever done.
“I’m ten minutes to bingo fuel, Lead,” his wingman announced.
“Yeah?” Lead replied, looking at his own fuel gauges and feeling further embarrassed that his wingman had to be the one to remind him. “Roger. Crown, Husky Eighteen. Thanks to the dash in burner and the maneuvering, we’re almost at bingo fuel and we’ve lost him now beneath cloud cover over the glacier.”
The voice from the AWACS belonged to a general officer, the lead pilot knew, which made the previous mistake all the more worrisome. He could hear the general key his microphone now and give a subdued sigh before he spoke.
“Very well, Husky. Head back. We’ll try to track him from here. Where do you think he’s headed?”
“I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t crash, Crown. He’s under cloud cover over a glacier in a high mountain valley. The guy’s nuts. I’d recommend you launch a search-and-rescue op immediately. But I think you’re only going to find spare parts.”
THIRTY ONE
FRIDAY EVENING, DAY 5 ABOARD WIDGEON N8771B OVER THE GULF OF ALASKA, SOUTHEAST OF ANCHORAGE
Once again the terrain was rushing by mere feet beneath the thin metallic skin of the Widgeon’s fuselage. This time, however, a lethal mixture of ice and boulders replaced the meadow, their jagged surfaces clawing toward the small amphibian.
Scott McDermott was working to keep the aircraft just above stall speed, the engines straining at full power to keep up with the rising terrain as the ceiling above hung lower and lower toward the surface of the glacier. There had been nothing but murky gray ahead of them, but a hint of something else began to emerge where the overcast melded with the ice.
April’s knowledge as a pilot was fully engaged as she monitored Scott’s physical flying of the airplane. Airspeed, altitude, power, rate of climb, and the constant movements of the controls were familiar and almost comforting as they somehow remained airborne, but the alien landscape below them was simply too bizarre to register. She expected impact at any moment, followed by a blinding and painful plunge into snow and ice, accompanied by the sound of ripping metal.
But for some reason, in defiance of logic, it wasn’t happening. They were still aloft, still flying.
She thought several times of grabbing the controls and taking over, but they were committed. It was too late to turn back. There was no room to turn the aircraft around and no place to land safely. The only choice was continued flight over the vast upslope of a massive valley glacier to an uncertain destination.
“There!” Scott said in more of a shout than a statement.
April peered ahead, seeing nothing new.
“What?” she managed, her voice little more than a high-pitched squeak. She quickly cleared her throat and tried it again. “What do you see?”
“What I’ve been aiming for. Right where I figured. Stand by…”
There was something ahead now. She could almost make it out. It was a horizon line of some sort. Not well defined, but definitely a darker line between sky and ice than an illusion would be. They were still airborne, and Scott was actually throttling back now as the ice field below them flattened.
“There’s a lake up there,” Scott said, nodding in the direction of the nose.
The line ahead was coalescing steadily, and it became a small ridge now with a hanging mountain lake beyond, the surface of the water just a shade darker than the gray clouds almost enfolding their wings. April knew there had to be sheer rock walls of the mountain on the far side, but she couldn’t make them out. The ridge bordering the lake’s downsloped shoreline was drawing closer by the second, the lake beyond anything but a welcoming sight. It was a small body of water filled with huge chunks of floating ice, each of them jagged white ships afloat in a sea of milky blue-green water.
“You’re not planning…” she began, noticing in her peripheral vision that he was already nodding. She stole just a quick glance at him, as if her looking away would destabilize their flight path.
The sight of Scott McDermott grinning maniacally profoundly scared her.
“Stand by, April!”
“Those are icebergs!”
“Yep.”
“We can’t land in that! There’s no room!”
He chopped the power to idle just as they topped the ridge, shoving the yoke forward to drop the Widgeon toward the surface, then throttled up and flared as he walked the rudder to the right, clearing the largest ice floe and looking for enough clear water to allow a landing.