Keith Thomson - Twice a Spy

“Not with two hundred and fifty gallons of fuel?”

“That’s not gallons, that’s pounds . Two hundred fifty pounds of fuel is around thirty-five gallons. We’ll be stretching it to fly another fifteen minutes.”

Charlie turned to ice. “Don’t tell me we’re going to do a water landing?”

“Fine, I won’t tell you. But I’ll bet that, afterward, you’ll say it was no big deal.”

“A bet I’d be happy to lose.”

She laughed. Briefly. “Between the two yokes, lower down, you’ll see some levers. Grab the pair on the left, the biggest ones. They’re the throttles. Pull them back halfway.”

Easy enough, he thought. The throttles gave more than he expected, though. “Shit, the nose is dropping!”

“Hold it up.”

He pulled the yoke toward him, inducing a blast of g-forces strong enough, it felt, to push him through the floor. Finally the nose evened out.

He tried to keep his voice from shaking. “Piece of cake.”

Alice added a rapid series of instructions involving altitude adjustment and controls for the tail. He tried to follow, head still aching from hypoxia. Worse was the nagging certainty that he’d forgotten at least one crucial step. In spite of a few bumps, however, the plane began a smooth descent.

“Now, take the two levers for the props and push them all the way up,” she said.

Setting the phone on his lap, Charlie scrambled, groping for the levers. When was his damned adrenaline going to kick in?

He snatched up the phone. “Done,” he said. And hoped.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah, except my stomach is so knotted up, I’ll only be eating soup from now on.”

“I know a good New England clam chowder recipe.”

He forgot about his stomach. He wanted to say he loved her.

“Now, push the nose down, not a lot,” she said. “Remember our attitude indicator: Push it down just under the line.”

“Got it.”

“What’s the airspeed now?”

“One-eighty.”

“Dandy. Pull the throttles back another quarter. We want to be going slow close to the water.”

“Airspeed’s slowing.”

“Tell me when that needle gets into the white arc; should be around one-fifty. Also you need to head into the wind, which is coming from the east, according to my phone. So where’s the sun?”

“Behind us.”

“Perfect.”

“And speed’s now one-fifty.”

“Altitude?”

“Thirty-one hundred.”

She gave him instructions for the flaps and throttles.

Easy to follow, for a change. “Flaps, check. Throttles, check. Twenty-four hundred feet.”

“Good. Where’s your dad?”

“Copilot seat.”

“Belted in?”

“No.” Drummond’s safety belt had fallen by the wayside because of Charlie’s concern over how long a person was unconscious before it was considered something worse, like a coma.

“Do it up. Yourself too. When you hit the water, you’re probably going to get thrown around a bit.”

Reaching over and pulling the straps across Drummond, Charlie considered that a cage match with a professional wrestler equated to “thrown around a bit” by Alice’s standards.

Drummond didn’t stir, not even with the loud metallic pop of the seat-belt buckle.

Even Alice heard it. “Okay, Charlie, now bring the throttles back an inch or so and keep the plane coming down. Try and settle the speed at around a hundred, otherwise the airplane will stall. You know what happens then, right?”

“No. Do I want to?”

“Probably not. Just don’t go less than ninety knots or raise the nose higher than ten degrees. I’m telling you, that chowder will make this worthwhile.”

The plane continued to descend. Easy enough, though Charlie knew full well that actually setting the thing down would be the most difficult thing that he had ever done and ever would do. If a wingtip touched the water first, the plane could turn into a skipping stone. Set the plane down in proper sequence but at the wrong angle, and the impact forces would obliterate everything.

“Eight hundred feet now, speed one-ten,” he said.

“Bring the throttles back about an inch and keep coming down.”

“Speed’s around a hundred.”

“Keep the nose down. Altitude?”

“Three hundred.” Although the sea was a placid blue green, he had the sensation of entering a dark alley.

“When you hit, get out, as soon as you can. Among other things, the plane might flip, it might fill with water, or it might get too dark for you to see. So just go for the cabin door. There should be a life raft and vests there. Can you see the raft?”

There was an orange pile of rubber next to the door. “Needs to be inflated.”

“On the way out of the plane, put on the vests as soon as you can. Inflate the raft after you get out or you won’t get it out.”

“And then what?”

“Category of desirable problems.”

Charlie was sorry he’d asked. “At a hundred feet now,” he said. The looming sea made him feel minuscule.

Alice maintained her calm. “Pull the throttle back just a hair, then leave it alone.”

He set it, glad to have one less item to worry about. “Seventy feet.”

“Both hands on the yoke.”

The moment that he’d continued to hope would not come: It had come. “Forty feet.”

“Slowly now, pull the yoke back. Keep the wings in the center of the circle.”

He did. His stomach contracted to the size of a Ping-Pong ball. The water flew up at him. “Fuck. Twenty feet.”

“Bring the nose slowly up ’til you hit the water.”

The water was so close that Charlie could taste the salt. He fought an impulse to close his eyes.

A perfect shadow of the plane floated on the waves ahead, slowing, as if trying to meet him. The water was serene. He made out individual, sparkling droplets in a gauzy mist lofted by the waves, when-WHACK-the tail hit water, pulverizing his muscles, joints, and tendons. His face smashed into the yoke, forcing him to release his grip. With a whine, the left propeller dug into the water, throwing a mass of spray that battered the fuselage. The nose of the plane slammed down onto a swell, sending his body in different directions at once. Water rose over the front windows.

Finally, the plane settled afloat in a gentle drift, but not for long. Seawater rushed into the cabin.

“We should get out, don’t you think?” said Drummond, unbuckling his safety belt. He appeared rested, and unperturbed by the events of the past few minutes.

Charlie popped free of his harness. “Sure, why not?”

Drummond led the way out of the cockpit, fighting the influx of water to reach the cabin door.

Tugging the life raft free of its Velcro mooring and grabbing the vests, Charlie said, “Now we just need to reach land, which was too far to fly to, using two rubber paddles.”

Drummond pointed outside at the svelte yacht heading their way. “Actually, I think that boat is going to rescue us.”

Stanley sat below deck of Corbitt’s USS Perk in a startlingly spacious living room with taxpayer-funded, rich mahogany paneling and a copper-plated bar containing a transatlantic crossing’s worth of single-malt whiskey. Every fixture or component involved either precious metal or crystal-even the Kleenex, dispensed from a crystal cube within silver latticework. There was a fireplace, too, with antique brass andirons piled with logs that required a third look before Stanley was sure they were fake. The only reminder that he was at sea rather than in an English gentlemen’s club was the set of pedestals, in place of legs, to fasten the seats to the floor-a floor swathed in antique Persian carpet.