David Gilman - The Devil's breath

Wake up! the voice in his head shouted. The hum of the engine, the whirring propeller and the exhaustion that was quickly claiming him had eased him into that strange dream state where he thought he was awake but wasn’t. His eyes didn’t want to stay open. He needed air. He wedged the side window open and felt the freezing-cold air prickle his skin.

“OK! I’m awake! I am awake!” he shouted to the sky. And then he heard van Reenen’s concerned, insistent voice. Max answered, assuring him that he was OK, but he was frightened that he had not heard Kallie’s dad calling him.

Van Reenen’s voice kept up a steady stream of instructions, mostly to keep him edging on course and telling him that Kallie was going to fly alongside him. Could he see her? Coming from starboard. Keep your eyes open. Stay on course. Stay level. Keep looking. Keep looking .

And then, like an ageing, overworked angel, the battered Cessna flew into view. A streak of sunshine escaped through the leaden sky, painting her wings a shiny gold. Max had never been so happy to see anybody in his life. Except his dad, that is. He waved. She smiled and waved back. Her plane was flying level, not twenty meters away.

“Kallie! Amazing! What do I do? Can you hear me?” he shouted into the handset.

“Loud and clear,” she replied. “I’m going to fly slightly ahead of you and a little higher. In a few minutes you’ll see what looks like a riverbed, but it’s a crack in the ground, then a couple of lumpy hills and, past that, there’s the runway.”

“Understood.” The tone of her voice meant there was no time to talk. She turned, he followed. He was surprised how easy it was to miss landmarks, the whole perspective when flying altered his awareness. He concentrated madly, trying to see where they were going, but the barren land yielded no sign of an airstrip.

“To your right, towards the horizon. You see the airfield?” Kallie said after about twenty minutes. He looked hard, his eyes scanning the ground.

“No!” he said, feeling the edge of panic in his voice. “I just can’t see it.”

“OK, relax, just follow me,” she reassured him, remembering her first solo flight. She’d thought she’d never find the airfield again-and that was down in Windhoek, which was big enough to be seen from space. She knew the difficulties Max was experiencing. “Look below my aircraft, let your eyes go to the horizon and then look left. There’s a plateau that looks like an upside-down iron….”

“Got that!”

“Look to the point of the iron, there’s a couple of buildings.”

Yes! The corrugated roofs made a wave of shadows as the light changed. “I can see it, Kallie. I can see the buildings and the strip. I’ve got it.” Relief flooded through him and he relaxed his hands, which had been gripping the controls too tightly.

“OK, Max. Fuel?”

He looked at the fuel gauge needles. They’d dropped to the bottom of the dial. “They’re in the red.”

She didn’t answer. And he realized this was it. One chance at getting the plane down in one piece.

“OK. You don’t have to spell it out, Kallie.”

“Excellent. So, normally we’d take a pass over the airfield, check the windsock and get the wind direction, but we don’t have time for that. And I know where the wind’s blowing from. Trust me?”

He thought she was amazingly calm and promised himself he’d try to control the anxiety in his voice from now on.

“Trust a girl? I’d have to think about that-if I had the time.”

“Ready?”

“Let’s do it.”

The moment he heard the words come out of his mouth, a strange calmness settled over him. The rocking of the aircraft, the uncertain picture through the windscreen-none of it mattered. He was going in for a landing, and when something this big stared you in the face, when there was absolutely no choice left, you faced it with as much calm as you could. Like a man about to be executed.

Kallie’s voice sounded gentle but firm, as if she was holding his hand. “You’re nicely established on the downwind, keep it going until I ask you to turn to the left. OK, time to do a couple of prelanding checks. Don’t waste time responding unless you can’t do any of them.”

She didn’t need to ask him to check that the fuel selector was on the Both tanks setting. It was now or never.

“Check the mixture is on Rich.” She paused, giving him time. “Check the magnetos are on the Both mark.” She could see his head dipping as his fingers traced her instructions. “OK, Max. Good. You’re doing really well. Now, reduce your power to a steady ninety knots.” She had already cut back her own speed and watched as Max’s plane slowed. The boy was getting it right. He was listening and doing what was being asked of him. Maybe they were in with a chance after all. “Max, find the lever and lower the flaps to ten degrees.”

The trailing edge of the wing showed the gap when the flaps lowered.

“How you doing, Max? Have you done everything?”

“Yeah. Everything. All the checks.”

“Here we go. We’re going to make a crosswind turn ninety degrees to the runway.”

Max followed her, and the runway lay to his left. Now he could see everything. The strip was flanked by a couple of buildings: one of them looked like a workshop area, the other was just a tin-roofed shack. There were men standing at the door, one of them wearing a lurid yellow T-shirt and red baseball cap.

In the center of the field a civilian jet was parked next to a smaller plane with twin propellers. Near the white-painted jet half a dozen men, bare-headed and dressed in black, were gazing up at him. Everyone was looking up at him. He was the center of attention. All eyes on him. He hoped he wouldn’t make a mess of it. He’d never live it down.

If he lived.

Outside the bar, Tobias’s can of beer hovered between his chin and his lips. Van Reenen chewed an unlit cigarette and Mike Kapuo’s unblinking eyes were locked on to the two aircraft, now only a few hundred meters away. The one below the other seemed to be wobbling.

“The landing gear on those Cessnas is made from spring steel,” van Reenen said, to no one in particular.

Kapuo and Tobias dared a glance away from the unfolding drama.

“What does that mean?” Tobias asked.

“Anything other than just about a perfect touchdown, and he’ll be bouncing from here to kingdom come,” he said. “That might just finish off that kid with a fractured skull. And he’s too low. I hope she can see it. Come on, Kallie, tell him. Tell him,” he muttered to himself.

Pilots talk in feet, Max thought in meters, but his eyes told him he needed to be higher. Should he pull up? The wind was being difficult, a rush across the ground, a swirl at rooftop height. Whatever happened, Max did not have the skill to start side-slipping the plane. He had to come in dead straight.

“You’re getting a little low, Max, apply a touch more power. Keep her level, a little more power, come on.”

That was how you did it. Don’t pull up, just “a touch more power.” That was it.

Max didn’t take his eyes away from the ground as he reached out, pushed the throttle in, heard the engine pick up and then her voice telling him that was better, and that he could slowly reduce power again.

Couldn’t she make her mind up?

“You’re about thirty feet off the ground, Max. Twenty-five. Remember after touchdown to keep the plane straight.

Use your rudder, do not touch the brakes until you’ve lost speed and the tail wheel is on the ground. OK, good, twenty feet, lower thirty degrees of flap and try and keep the speed at sixty knots with the throttle.”

Her voice was now a continuous assurance. Calm, even, steady. Almost tender. “Ten feet above the runway, start reducing power and be sure not to let the nose drop.”