Grant Blackwood - Dead or Alive

The North Atlantic winds had been far stiffer than predicted. Most of the night traffic was eastbound this time of day, and those aircraft carried a lot more fuel than a Dassault Falcon 9000. Twenty minutes’ more fuel. Ten minutes more than they needed. Their indicated air speed was just over five hundred knots, altitude twenty-five thousand feet and falling.

“Gander Approach,” he said into his radio microphone, “this is Hotel zero-niner-seven Mike Foxtrot, inbound for gas, over.”

“Mike Foxtrot,” came the reply, “this is Gander. Winds are calm. Recommend runway two-niner for a normal approach.”

“Calm winds?” the copilot observed. “Damn.” They’d just come through more than a hundred knots of jet stream right on the nose for three hours of minor buffeting, not too bad at forty-one thousand feet, but still noticeable. “This is about as long a hop over water as I like.”

“Especially with winds like this,” the pilot replied. “I hope the engines work on fumes.”

“We set with customs?”

“Should be. We’ve done the CANPASS, and we’re cleared into Moose Jaw. Do immigration there?”

“Yeah, right.” Both knew better. This flight would be a little on the unusual side from Gander on in to their final destination. But they were being paid for it. And the euro-dollar exchange rate would be working in their favor. Especially Canadian dollars.

“Got the lights. Five minutes out,” the copilot said.

“Roger, runway in view,” the pilot said. “Flaps.”

“Flaps coming down to ten.” The copilot worked the controls, and they could hear the whine of the electric motors extending the flaps. “Wake up the passengers?”

“No. Why bother?” the pilot decided. If he did this right, they wouldn’t notice a thing until the acceleration for the next takeoff. Having earned his spurs and twenty thousand hours with Swissair, he’d retired and bought his own used Dassault Falcon to charter millionaires and billionaires across Europe and around the globe. Half the people who could afford his services ended up going to the same places-Monaco, Harbor Island in the Bahamas, Saint-Tropez, Aspen. The fact that his current passenger was going none of those places was a curiosity, but as long as he paid, the destination was none of his business.

They passed downward through ten thousand feet. The runway lights were easy to see, a straight lane in the darkness that had once accommodated a wing of United States Air Force F-84 interceptors.

Five thousand feet and descending. “Flaps to twenty.”

“Roger flaps twenty,” the pilot acknowledged.

“Gear,” he commanded next, and the copilot reached for the levers. The sound of rushing air entered the cabin as the landing-gear doors opened and the struts came down. Three hundred feet.

“Down and locked,” the copilot replied.

“One hundred feet,” the computer voice said.

The pilot tensed his arms, then relaxed them, easing the aircraft down, gently, gently, picking the proper spot to touch down. Only his skilled senses could tell when the Falcon touched down on the ten-meter concrete squares. He activated the thrustreversers, and the Dassault slowed. A truck with blinking lights showed him where to go and whom to follow as he headed off to where the fuel truck would be waiting.

They were on the ground for a total of twenty minutes. An immigration officer queried them over the radio and determined that there were no changes from the CANPASS data. Outside, the fuel truck’s driver disconnected his hose and secured the fuel valve.

Okay. That’s done, the pilot thought. Now for the second segment of the three-part flight.

The Falcon taxied back out to the north end of the runway, going through the pre-liftoff checklist, as he always did, after waiting at the end of the runway. The acceleration went smoothly; then the wheels came up, then the flaps, followed by the climb-out. Ten more minutes and they were at thirty-seven thousand, their initial assigned altitude from Toronto Center.

They cruised west at Mach 0.81-about 520 knots, or 600 miles per hour true air speed-with their passengers asleep aft while the engines gobbled fuel at a fixed rate of 3,400 pounds per hour. The aircraft transponder broadcast their speed and altitude to the air-traffic-control radars, and aside from that there was no need for radio traffic of any sort. In rough weather they might have requested a different, probably higher, altitude for more comfortable cruising, but Gander tower had been correct. Having passed through the cold front that had opposed their flight into Newfoundland, they might not have been moving at all, except for the muted roar of the jet engines hanging on the tail. Pilot and copilot didn’t even speak very much. They’d flown together enough that they knew all the same jokes, and on such an uneventful flight there was no need to swap information. Everything had been planned, down to the proverbial gnat’s ass. Both wondered what Hawaii might be like. They could look forward to a pair of suites at the Royal Hawaiian, and a long sleep to ward off the inevitable jet lag, sure to accompany the ten hours of additional day they were going to experience. Well, both liked a nap on a sunny beach, and the weather in Hawaii was forecast to be as monotonously perfect as it usually was. They planned a two-day layover before proceeding back east to their home field outside of Geneva, with no scheduled passengers on that leg.

“Moose Jaw in forty minutes,” the copilot observed.

“Time to get back to work, I guess.”

The plan was simple. The pilot got on the HF radio-a hold-over from World War Two-and called Moose Jaw, announcing his approach and his early descent, plus estimated time of arrival. Moose Jaw’s approach control took the information from the area control systems and spotted the transponder alphanumerics on its scopes.

The Dassault began bleeding altitude on a completely normal approach, which was duly noted by Toronto Center. The local time was 0304, or Zulu -4:00, keeping homage to Greenwich Mean/Universal time, four hours to the east.

“There it is,” the copilot announced. The approach lights for Moose Jaw showed up on the black countryside. “Altitude twelve thousand, descending one thousand per minute.”

“Stand by the transponder,” the pilot ordered.

“Roger,” the copilot replied. The transponder was a custom installation, done by the flight crew themselves.

“Six thousand feet. Flaps?”

“Leave ’em,” the pilot commanded.

“Roger. Runway in view.” The sky was clear, and the Moose Jaw approach lights strobed in the cloudless air.

“Moose Jaw, this is Mike Foxtrot, over.”

“Mike Foxtrot, Moose Jaw, over.”

“Moose Jaw, our gear doesn’t want to come down. Please stand by. Over.” That notification woke people up.

“Roger. Are you declaring an emergency, over?” the approach radio inquired at once.

“Negative, Moose Jaw. We’re checking the electrics. Stand by.”

“Roger, standing by.” Just a hint of concern in the voice.

“Okay,” the pilot said to his copilot, “we’ll drop off their scope at one thousand feet.” They’d been through all this, of course. “Altitude three thousand and descending.”

The pilot eased right. This was to show a course change on the Moose Jaw approach radar, nothing serious but a change nonetheless. With altitude dropping it might look interesting on the radar tapes if anyone cared to look, which was doubtful. Another blip lost in the airspace.

Two thousand,” the copilot said. The air was a little bumpier at the lower altitude but not as bumpy as it was going to get. “Fifteen hundred. Might want to adjust the descent rate.”