Wu flew the aircraft alone for a few minutes, having the rare opportunity to just fly without being told what to do, or assigned to do maneuvers off a test card. He was just about in the Gobi Desert, and on the border where the green vegetation blended with the brown sand down below. Wu had the chance to just enjoy the flight, the clear, blue sky, and look down at the terrain below. He glanced out his window on the left, and saw a peculiar stand-alone tree in the middle of an open field, catching his eye. Huh… that tree is all by itself, losing its leaves. Dying. Alone.
Liu pursed his lips while in the far rear of the cockpit, and looked away for a moment. He ran through the gear system in his head, and was pleased that it was down. Was the gear down and in the locked position? Could they land, and have it collapse? He came back and strapped in, getting his helmet back on. Moving the mic close to his lips, Liu explained the situation and what he saw.
Wu thought for a second, then spoke. “Thanks, Liu. So, gear is down. Potential issue. We may lose the gear upon landing, and skid down the runway. Or, the light bulb may be burned out and we have no in-flight emergency. It’d be a lot easier if we could just test the damn bulb from here on in the cockpit, versus maintenance getting it from behind the cockpit panel,” Wu asked out loud, not really looking for an answer. Will make a note for maintenance, he’d thought.
Wu considering what he would do if he were just flying a regular mission, but this was no regular mission. He was the aircraft commander in a secret jet that has not been unveiled to the world, than can fly anywhere China wants, without a soul seeing them. Worse yet, he had a grand stand full of the nation’s leaders, including a three-star General boss that he despised.
“Okay, final decision. We are bringing her in,” announced Wu, “we’re landing.” This time, Wu transmitted outside the cockpit by accident.
“Roger, landing checklists complete. Landing speed 142 knots. Runway is 3,000 meters, err, 9,843 feet. Clear,” as Liu looked outside the cockpit window, straight ahead. Again, the transmission was outside the cockpit on the UHF radio frequency.
Neither Wu nor Liu could possibly know that this simple mistake of keying the mic the incorrect way to transmit outside of the aircraft could have huge consequences. This was at least the third time. Strict procedures in the testing phase of this aircraft prevented any transmissions for reasons of security, and here in one flight they broke the procedure three times in a row. The magnitude of the emergency negated this small fact, but it nagged at the back of Wu's conscience during this ordeal because of its potential consequences. But there were bigger fish to fry at the moment, like landing the airplane safely in front of the Chinese brass.
Off the runway centerline, the stands were very visible due to their size. This airport, chosen for its far off distance from most things in Asia, sat on the Gobi Desert border. To Wu and Liu, the stands were a beacon, a waypoint of sorts from the air. They could see one parked passenger jet sitting on a far off taxiway from Tianjin Airlines, a white Embraer 190 with its red tail and yellow logo, but it was not a flight issue for them today.
Wu slowed the aircraft down so his airspeed indicator was in the green zone for gear speeds still, looking at the runway numbers painted on the beginning of the pavement and distance markings, then scanned the horizon. He checked his landing speeds, then outside again. Wu repeated the pattern, as Liu read off the altitude from the radar altimeter.
“Looking good, keep her coming down, Wu.”
Their jet passed the 500 foot altitude marker previously set from inside the cockpit. A tone was heard in their helmets, notifying them of the descent.
“Runway in-sight. Land,” announced Liu, as he called out the altitudes. The weather was clear and visibility unlimited.
“Seventy-five feet.”
They continued the approach.
“Fifty-feet.”
Devil Dragon seemed to coast forever at fifty feet down the runway, but Wu was holding the nose up a bit to bleed off just a few excess knots of airspeed.
“Twenty-five feet.”
This was the moment of truth. In seconds, the pride of China would either land safely, roll down the runway and park to applause, or, burn up in a fiery ball of titanium in the middle of China.
“Flaring!” announced Wu.
“TEN FEET!”
One of the younger female analysts in the auditorium sat in silence in the front row, her body language displaying that she was downright aggravated about something. Both of her arms were folded across her chest, her legs crossed, and she shifted her body weight in the seat. Crossing and uncrossing her legs a few times, she sat with a scowl that displayed someone who was just not happy. From a glance, it seems like she was fuming with anger and annoyance.
Her name was Ms. Michelle Boyd, a foreign missile analyst with brown hair and a marathon runner’s body. Michelle had been moving around the world for DIA for the last eight years, and enjoyed the job, along with most of the people she worked with. She was thinking this special Buckley case would be a solid stepping stone for her to get the GS-11 promotion she was shooting for. Educated by an information technology scholarship at the University of Scranton, and born and raised in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, her combined college education and current government job was her ticket out of the economically depressed area of Central Pennsylvania, hoping to never return. Her high school friends were still living there and would never understand the ‘secret’ career path she took, nor the ways of the big city, and were happy marrying their local sweethearts and working in places like the Susquehanna Valley Mall in nearby Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. Michelle was always known at home as ‘the friend who left us’ and ‘she’s the one with the big, secret job in Washington.’ Comments like these bothered her a tremendous amount, because all she wanted to accomplish in life was to do better than her unemployed boozed up mom, angry alcoholic father, and part-time power plant employee brother.
Michelle had a chip on her shoulder, though, coming from a backwoods Victorian home on Pennsylvania’s Route 15 built in the early 1900’s, complete with chipped dirty white paint, a potholed loose gravel driveway, her brother’s abandoned cars on blocks, all located near miles of empty retail stores. Her somewhat negative attitude and short temper was derived from the so-called ‘rich kids’ that attended nearby Bucknell University, where the students coming from the wealthy areas of Philadelphia, Northern New Jersey, and Long Island, made fun of the local town people, or ‘townies’, as she grew up.
Sometimes the poking of fun at the locals was through the drunk fighting in the downtown section of bars and restaurants, where liquored up students full of beer muscles thought they were better than the townies. It was also easily overheard on the sidewalks, or walking through the mall on a Saturday afternoon. Other times it was the straight out rude laughing and pointing of the rich kids at her local friends because of their clothes, their 1980’s make-up, or outdated hairstyle. Michelle was indeed a townie at heart, and by blood, only differentiating herself by education to get out of the area. When she detected that someone with a pedigree degree was pompous, or if someone flaunted their money, or if some stuck-up bitch with a European automobile was showing off thinking that they were better than her, Michelle took it to heart. Deep inside, she was self-conscious, always thinking it was personal because she was from ‘in the middle of nowhere’ Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. So, when someone like Mark Savona comes into her life, and Michelle feels like she is being talked down to, it drives her crazy insane with fury. There was no way she was going to except anything from this city slicker.