Jeffery Deaver - The Coffin Dancer

Back on the stick. The speed dropped. Stall warning. Forward on the stick.

“Two and a half miles from touchdown, altitude nineteen hundred feet.”

“Too low, Foxtrot Bravo!” the ATC controller warned again.

She looked out over the silver nose. There were all the lights – the strobes of the approach lights beckoning them forward, the blue dots of the taxiway, the orange-red of the runway… And lights that Percey’d never seen before on approach. Hundreds of flashing lights. White and red. All the emergency vehicles.

Lights everywhere.

All the stars of evening …

“Still low,” Brad called. “We’re going to impact two hundred yards short.”

Hands sweating, straining forward, Percey thought again of Lincoln Rhyme, strapped to his seat, himself leaning forward, examining something in the computer screen.

“Too low, Foxtrot Bravo ,” ATC repeated. “I’m moving emergency vehicles to the field in front of the runway.”

“Negative that,” Percey said adamantly.

Brad called, “Altitude thirteen hundred feet. One and a half miles from touchdown.”

We’ve got thirty seconds! What do I do?

Ed? Tell me? Brit? Somebody…

Come on, monkey skills… What the hell do I do?

She looked out the cockpit window. In the light of the moon she could see suburbs and towns and some farmland but also, to the left, large patches of desert.

Colorado’s a desert state… Of course!

Suddenly she banked sharply to the left.

Brad, without a clue as to what she was doing, called out, “Rate of descent thirty-two hundred, altitude one thousand feet, nine hundred feet, eight five…”

Banking a powerless aircraft sheds altitude in a hurry.

ATC called, “ Foxtrot Bravo , do not turn. Repeat, do not turn! You don’t have enough altitude as is.”

She leveled out over the patch of desert.

Brad gave a fast laugh. “Altitude steady… Altitude rising, we’re at nine hundred feet, one thousand feet, twelve hundred feet. Thirteen hundred feet… I don’t get it.”

“A thermal,” she said. “Desert soaks up heat during the day and releases it all night.”

ATC had figured it out too. “Good, Foxtrot Bravo! Good. You just bought yourself about three hundred yards. Come right two nine oh… good, now left two eight oh. Good. On course. Listen, Foxtrot Bravo , you want to take out those approach lights, you go right ahead.”

“Thanks for the offer, Denver, but I think I’ll set her down a thousand past the numbers.”

“That’s all right too, ma’am.”

They had another problem now. They could reach the runway, but the airspeed was way too high. Flaps were what decreased the stall speed of an aircraft so it could land more slowly. The Lear 35A’s normal stall speed was about 110 miles an hour. Without flaps it was closer to 180. At that speed even a two-mile-long runway vanishes in an instant.

So Percey sideslipped.

This is a simple maneuver in a private plane, used in crosswind landings. You bank to the left and hit the right rudder pedal. It slows the aircraft considerably. Percey didn’t know if anyone had ever used this technique in a seven-ton jet, but she couldn’t think of anything else to do. “Need your help here,” she called to Brad, gasping at the effort and the pain shooting through her raw hands. He gripped the yoke and shoved on the pedal too. This had the effect of slowing the aircraft, though it dropped the left wing precipitously.

She’d straighten it out just before contact with the runway.

She hoped.

“Airspeed?” she called.

“One fifty knots.”

“Looking good, Foxtrot Bravo. ”

“Two hundred yards from runway, altitude two hundred eighty feet,” Brad called. “Approach lights, twelve o’clock.”

“Sink rate?” she asked.

“Twenty-six hundred.”

Too fast. Landing at that sink rate could destroy the undercarriage. And might very well set off the bomb too.

There were the approach strobes right in front of her – guiding them forward…

Down, down, down…

Just as they hurtled toward the scaffolding of the lights, Percey shouted, “My aircraft!”

Brad released the yoke.

Percey straightened from the sideslip and brought the nose up. The plane flared beautifully and grabbed air, halting the precipitous descent right over the numbers at the end of the runway.

Grabbed air so well, in fact, that it wouldn’t land.

In the thicker air of the relatively lower atmosphere the speeding plane – lighter without fuel – refused to touch down.

She glimpsed the yellow-green of the emergency vehicles scattered along the side of the runway.

A thousand feet past the numbers, still thirty feet above the concrete.

Then two thousand feet past. Then three thousand.

Hell, fly her into the ground.

Percey eased the stick forward. The plane dipped dramatically and Percey yanked all the way back on the yoke. The silver bird shuddered then settled gently on the concrete. It was the smoothest landing she’d ever made.

“Full brakes!”

She and Brad jammed their feet down on the rudder pedals and they heard the squealing of the pads, the fierce vibrations. Smoke filled the cabin.

They’d used well over half the runway already and were still speeding at a hundred miles an hour.

Grass, she thought, I’ll veer into if I have to. Wreck the undercarriage but I’ll still save the cargo…

Seventy, sixty…

“Fire light, right wheel,” Brad called. Then: “Fire light, nosewheel.”

Fuck it, she thought, and pressed down on the brakes with all her weight.

The Lear began to skid and shudder. She compensated with the nosewheel. More smoke filling the cabin.

Sixty miles per hour, fifty, forty…

“The door,” she called to Bell.

In an instant the detective was up, pushing the door outward; it became a staircase.

The fire trucks were converging on the aircraft.

With a wild groan of the smoking brakes, Lear N695FB skidded to a stop ten feet from the end of the runway.

The first voice to fill the cabin was Bell’s. “Okay, Percey, out! Move.”

“I have to -”

“I’m taking over now!” the detective shouted. “I have to drag you outta here, I’ll do it. Now move!”

Bell hustled her and Brad out the door, then leapt to the concrete himself, led them away from the aircraft. He called to the rescue workers, who’d started shooting foam at the wheel wells, “There’s a bomb on board, could go any minute. In the engine. Don’t get close.” One of his guns was in his hand and he surveyed the crowd of rescue workers circling the plane. At one time Percey would have thought he was being paranoid. No longer.

They paused about a hundred feet from the plane. The Denver Police Bomb Squad truck pulled up. Bell waved it over.

A lanky cowboy of a cop got out of the truck and walked up to Bell. They flashed IDs at each other and Bell explained about the bomb, where they thought it was.

“So,” the Denver cop said, “you’re not sure it’s on board.”

“Nope. Not a hundred percent.”

Though as Percey happened to glance at Foxtrot Bravo – her beautiful silver skin flecked with foam and glistening under the fierce spotlights – there was a deafening bang. Everyone except Bell and Percey hit the ground fast as the rear half of the aircraft disintegrated in a huge flash of orange flame, strewing bits of metal into the air.

“Oh,” Percey gasped, her hand rising to her mouth.

There was no fuel left in the tanks, of course, but the interior of the aircraft – the seats, the wiring, the carpet, the plastic fittings, and the precious cargo-burned furiously as the fire trucks waited a prudent moment then streamed forward, pointlessly shooting more snowy foam on the ruined metallic corpse.