Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

Kisparich had flown into Dulles before, although not often. It was too busy. Green general-aviation pilots and students who wanted to practice on the wide, long airstrips were invited politely to go elsewhere. Kisparich planned one landing and one takeoff in his rented Cessna 172, confident such an intrusion would not overload the field. He needed more radio experience at large, controlled airports, and the stiff breeze would give him a chance to practice a crosswind maneuver. He looked forward to that, but approaching the airport, he began thinking he’d wished too hard. The “breeze” was clocking nineteen to twenty-one knots, and he was grateful for the big Dulles runways that would forgive the mistakes of a novice pilot.

His first mistake that morning had been the coffee: three cups to read the Washington Chronicle by, and a fourth cup while shaving. Now his kidneys and bladder were in overdrive, and the anticipation of going into Dulles was supplanted by desperation for a bathroom. There were specialized plastic bottles male pilots often kept in the cockpit for these situations, but Kisparich never had been able to envision himself taking a leak into a bottle in the cockpit of an airplane. Missing the bottle and shorting out a radio, however improbable, was something he’d never be able to explain to his flying buddies at Manassas.

“What kind of a man are you, Kisparich, you can’t piss and fly at the same time?” The sound of his own voice amused him. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you, would you soar on the wings of eagles with a pilot who can’t relieve himself in midair? Where is midair exactly? It’s between high air and low air, stupid! Would you trust your lives to a man who can’t take a bladder break without parking his airplane? No Jimmy Doolittle here, ladies and gentlemen. This man is guilty of pansy piloting in the first degree.”

The summation died abruptly as Kisparich realized he was closer than he should be to Dulles without making radio contact. He dialed up 120.45 on his radio.

“Dulles Approach, Cessna niner-seven-four-seven-Papa is with you.”

“Niner-seven-four-seven-Papa, this is Dulles Approach. Go ahead.”

“Four-seven-Papa is ten miles west, near Middleburg, at three-thousand, three-hundred, squawking one-two-zero-zero, inbound for landing.”

“Four-seven-Papa, roger. You’re cleared to the pattern. Turn right heading one-two-zero for left downwind to runway three-zero. Winds are two-three-zero at one-eight, gusting to two-one. Altimeter three-zero-niner-zero. Squawk two-niner-one-two and ident. Contact the tower on one-two-zero-point-one.”

“Four-seven-Papa, roger.”

He changed his transponder code and pushed the button that would send its signal to the radar station below.

“Niner-seven-four-seven-Papa, radar contact,” the approach controller told him.

“Four-seven-Papa, roger,” he replied.

Kisparich was elated. He wrote the information on his lap pad and performed as requested without having to ask for a repeat of the instructions. He wondered if he sounded casual and confident on the radio. He wondered if the guys in the tower noticed that four-seven-Papa had a by-God good pilot. He wondered if they cared. He wondered if they’d be good enough to look the other way when he tried his 21-knot crosswind landing.

Kisparich recalled with a twinge of resentment that at O’Hare Airport in Chicago, light aircraft whose pilots have the audacity to exercise their rights to land among the big boys are directed to a parking area marked with FLIB signs. Unless you asked, nobody would tell you that FLIB stands for Fucking Little Itinerant Bastards.

Half an hour later he rendered the verdict that it hadn’t been such a horrible landing after all. Three bounces and no scratches weren’t a bad score. The third bounce was pretty damned small, as a matter of fact. Not even a bounce, really. He decided not to count it.

As he did a 180-degree turn onto the taxiway, Kisparich stole a peek at the tower. He hoped they weren’t laughing.

“Dulles Ground Control, this is Cessna niner-seven-four-seven-Papa, clear the active. Permission to taxi to Ludlum FBO.”

“Cessna niner-seven-four-seven-Papa, hold short of Runway One-Left for traffic.”

Kisparich could see the markings at the end of 1L off his port wing. Nearly three miles to the north, at the opposite end of the same ribbon of concrete, where 1L carried the designation 19R, a broad pod with wings and two huge engines poised for flight. Kisparich couldn’t see it, of course, but he assumed there was something up there about to come roaring down the runway. Whatever it was, if it followed the centerline of 19R after takeoff, its course would intersect the taxiway he was using. Kisparich didn’t want to wind up right under a big bird, so he stopped short of the intersection and pressed his legs together against the growing urgency in his bladder.

If Howard Kisparich could have described it later, he would have marveled that he felt the vibrations of the 811’s mammoth engines even before he could hear them throttled up for takeoff. He felt the vibrations in his feet against the brake pedals. He put his hand on the throttle knob and felt them there, too, even at a distance of nearly three miles. He set his jaws together lightly, and he was certain he could feel them in his teeth. He tried to imagine himself in control of all that thrust, but the idea made his palms damp.

Although it was only 10:45, the spring sunshine had baked the Dulles runways. As the jetliner came into view, Kisparich through heat shimmers that gave it a quality of unreality. Gradually the airliner grew larger. At any moment the nose wheel would rise, and the red-and-silver bird would be airborne, any second… any second… any second!

Halfway down the runway, she was still earthbound. She must be loaded to capacity. Come on, baby, get up.

Inside the plane, in seat 33H, Harry Jacobs, the Senate aide and a veteran flier, looked up from the paperwork in his lap. He, too, had the sense the big Sexton was too long on the runway. He peered toward the front bulkhead, expecting to see it rise as the aircraft’s nose pitched up. But it wasn’t happening. He glanced at the passenger on his left, trying to gauge whether anyone shared his concern. But the young Asian in the center seat was wearing the headset of a Sony Walkman disc player and concentrated only on the heavy-metal sounds pounding his eardrums. Jacobs did catch the eye of the passenger in the aisle seat, an older Asian, dressed as a tourist, who had been focused on the vista speeding by the window at Jacobs’s right shoulder. The Senate aide thought he glimpsed a fleeting frown on the Asian’s face before his own attention was captured by an unmistakable series of tremors vibrating through the Sexton.

He turned to his window and stared at the broad expanse of the wing, its trailing edge flaps fully extended and down. He thought he saw the wing shudder, but not in a way that explained anything for him.

On the flight deck, the vibrations triggered simultaneous adrenaline rushes in Captain Jackson Peck and First Officer Jeremy Dodds. Peck’s right hand and Dodds’s left were overlapped on the double throttles, a redundancy assuring that one man would retain control should the other die suddenly. The vibrations traveled through Peck’s hand to Dodds’s. Instinctively, their heads snapped to the engine monitors.

“EPR’s nominal,” Dodds reported after looking at the engine-pressure ratios.

“It’s Number Two,” Peck said calmly. “Abort.” He keyed his mike. “Dulles tower, this is ConPac heavy—”

“Past the point,” the first officer interrupted tightly. His calculations warned him the big ship was beyond the point of no return and would overshoot the end of the runway if they tried to stop her momentum now. Peck understood instantly.