Paul Levine - Solomon and Lord Drop Anchor

He pulled the mask down over his face, tested his breathing, then slid it onto his forehead, as if he were about to explore some exotic tropical reef. “Some people might regard my safety consciousness as…”

Meshugeh, she thought. Crazy.

“Excessive,” he said, placing a pillow between his bulging belly and the seat belt, then cinching the buckle hard. “Do you know the correct bracing position in the event of a crash landing?”

Before she could answer, the man bowed forward, as if in prayer.

Tony Kingston guided the aircraft on the downwind leg, occasionally looking out the windshield at the pitch black Everglades, a prehistoric creeping river of sawgrass, alligators, and marshy hammocks. Thethree men in the cockpit reviewed the landing checklist and waited for instructions to turn left and begin looping back to the airport.

Suddenly, an explosion reverberated behind them, a booming rumble accompanied by the discordant shriek of shearing metal.

“Jesus, what was that!” Ryder shouted, instinctively looking back toward the cabin.

Kingston tightened his hands on the yoke as the airframe shuddered. “Larry, what do you see?”

The flight engineer scanned his gauges. “Pressure on engine two has gone to zero. Fuel flow is zero. Shit, we must have blown the aft engine.”

“Perform engine shutdown checklist,” Kingston ordered. As Ryder ran through the items, turning off the fuel to the tail engine, idling the throttle, the aircraft rolled slightly to the right. Kingston fought the yoke to level the plane. “Ailerons not responding.”

Dozier checked the gauges. “Double shit! Hydraulic pressure zero. Hydraulic quantity zero.”

“Can’t be,” Ryder said. “We’ve got three redundant systems. You can’t lose them all just blowing one engine.”

Kingston struggled with the yoke, which trembled under his hands but wouldn’t turn. He locked his hands on the wheel, took a breath, and threw his shoulders into it. Nothing. The aircraft continued to tremble.

Ryder’s fingers danced over half-a-dozen switches as he scanned his gauges. “Elevators, ailerons, and rudder all inoperative,” he said, his voice strained.

“It can’t be,” Dozier repeated. “How the hell are we gonna turn? How are we gonna control our descent?”

We’re not, Kingston thought, rapidly analyzing the situation. Without flight controls, it’ll be virtually impossible to land. He tried to activate the speed brakes. “Spoilers not responding either,” he said after a futile try. He increased thrust on the left engine and the wings leveled off, but the aircraft continued vibrating, and a few seconds later, the nose pitched up and the airframe shuddered.

“We’re gonna stall!” Ryder warned, his voice breaking.

Kingston gave it more power, hitting the right engine harder. The nose came down, but the aircraft rolled slightly left.

“Miami Approach, this is Atlantica six-four-zero,” Kingston said into his mike, while fighting the roll. His voice was calm, but the words were clipped with urgency. “We’ve lost the two engine and all three hydraulic systems. We declare an emergency six-four-zero.”

The voice in his headset was equally composed. “Roger six-four-zero. We’ll vector everyone else out of there. Descend to fifteen hundred. Turn left to two-seven-zero and prepare for final approach.”

“That’s a problem,” Kingston responded. “Gonna have to use asymmetrical thrust from number one and three to try and turn.”

His matter-of-fact tone masked the tension building inside him. Inconceivable as it seemed, they simply had no control over the aircraft.

How the hell are we going to land this big fat bus?

“Copy that, six-four-zero. Advise when you’re ready to turn into final.”

“When and if,” Ryder muttered.

There was a knock at the cabin door, and Larry Dozier opened it. Senior Flight Attendant Marcia Snyder, a divorcee who had just put her third child through college, rushed in and slammed the door. Her face was pale, and her words came rapidly. “I was in the aft galley. The explosion was right over my head.”

“Did you see anything?” Kingston asked.

“No. At first, I thought we’d hit a small plane. There was a puff of smoke, but no fire I could see. I think part of the tail is gone.”

“Prepare the passengers for emergency landing,” Kingston ordered. “Short briefing procedure. We don’t have much time. And get me a souls-on-board count.”

“Already did,” she said. “Two hundred seventy-five passengers, thirteen crew.”

Kingston nodded his thanks. Marcia was already out the door, heading back into the first-class compartment, when Kingston turned to his first officer. “Jim, deploy the ADG. See if we can get some power out of it.”

The copilot yanked a lever, and a small propellor-driven generator dropped a few feet out of the aircraft into the jetstream. Dozier kept his eyes on his control panels. After a moment, he said, “We’re getting power. But without the hydraulics, it’s not going anywhere.”

“We have to do it manually,” Kingston said.

“How?” his copilot asked.

Kingston didn’t know. There was no procedure for this. He’d have to make it up as he went along. “Grab your yoke. We’ll work them together. Larry, get up here and handle the throttles. Let’s try to turn left. Ease off on number one and give some power to number three. Jim and I will pull like hell on our yokes. Let’s go!”

As the pilot and copilot tried turning their two-hundred-ton aircraft with the power in their forearms and wrists, the flight engineer crouched behind them, one hand on each of the working throttles.

The aircraft yawed shakily to the left, and the right wing tilted upward. “Too much!” Kingston warned, his voice rising for the first time. Excessive roll and the plane could flip over. One thing the DC-10 was not was an acrobatic aircraft.

Dozier eased back on the right engine and gave more power to the left. The aircraft rolled in the other direction, leveling off, but the nose pitched upward.

“Miami Control, this is six-four-zero,” Kingston said, forcing himself to calm down. “We can’t control the aircraft. When we correct pitch, we start to roll and vice versa, and we’re yawing like a son of a bitch. Don’t know how we’ll line it up with the runway.”

“Copy that six-four-zero. Got you on radar, forty miles west of the airport. We’ll have equipment waiting.”

Again, the big aircraft yawed to the right, this time the left wing tilting upward.

Equipment.

The controller meant fire-rescue, paramedics, and enough foam to float a battleship. But without the ability to turn, without a way to control the pitching, rolling, and yawing, they would not so much land as cartwheel across the runway. In that case, the only equipment they would need would be hearses.

“We can’t turn your way and we don’t have any brakes,” Kingston replied, “so I don’t know how we’d stop this thing even if we get it there.” He pictured the crammed apartment buildings and condos west of the Palmetto Expressway. “We don’t want to drop it into a neighborhood.” He glanced at his two crewmates and pointed down toward the ground. They both nodded. “We’re going to have to ditch.” He sighed audibly and signed off, “Six-four-zero.”

Below them, in the darkness, was the primordial slough. Kingston hoped for a soft, level spot, not a strand of mahogany or live oak trees. It wasn’t the ideal terrain for ditching but better than the side of a mountain.

Dozier was hurriedly thumbing through the flight manual. “Nothing here. Nothing for loss of all hydraulics.”

“It’s not supposed to happen,” Kingston said softly.