John Nance - Lockout

“But I’d just started the turn! We were nose on to them.”

“I don’t know…”

“Couldn’t be a surface-to-air, we’d be in pieces.”

“Okay, look, we need to maintain control here.”

“I know it!”

“Is she still responding?” Dan asked

“Yes. Sluggish but responding.”

“I’m deploying the RAT. And… we’re depressurizing, Jerry. Oxygen masks on, confirm 100 percent.”

Jerry let go of the sidestick long enough to sweep on his oxygen mask, checking the 100 percent position on the selector before resuming his death grip on the stick.

“Comm check, Dan. How copy?” Jerry asked, his voice sounding strange in the oxygen mask microphone.

“Loud and clear. How me?”

“Good. Run the depress checklist, but we cannot do an emergency descent.”

“Hell, no. I got that. We don’t want to anyway. We don’t know the damage.”

“Jump seat on,” Bill Breem reported, followed by a quick confirmation from Tom Wilson.

“Obviously it punched our fuselage,” Jerry added. “Do you suppose we’ve lost anyone back there?”

The question was in cadence with the rapid fire back and forth of the previous thirty seconds but the reality of it stopped both men cold. The memory of the gaping hole that had swallowed nine of United Airlines Flight 811 passengers in 1989 replayed in their heads as clearly as if there had been an HD screen on the glareshield.

“No,” Dan answered suddenly. “No, not possible. The pressure loss was slow and steady, not explosive.”

The electrical power flickered and stabilized with a reduced number of instruments, as Dan reached up to start the auxiliary power unit.

“The APU isn’t going to do us much good without fuel, Dan,” Jerry managed, trying his best to grin at him.

“I forgot,” Dan replied, shaking his head at the oversight.

“Is there an airport we can reach?”

“Yes. Baghdad International! Eighty-five miles, heading two-eight-zero. We’re at 37,000 feet… we have enough energy to glide 120 miles, Jerry. So we can do this.”

“You think it was a sidewinder or something?”

“Yeah, a missile, I’ll bet anything. But you’re the fighter jock.”

“We’ve got to get on the ground before someone comes back to finish us off!”

“Agreed.”

“That had to be a heat seeker or we’d be toast. Had to be Iranian.”

“Probably,” Dan said, another possibility nipping at the back of his mind.

“I imagine our Israeli friends are still holding them off.”

“Let’s just concentrate on getting down, Jerry,” Dan replied, trying to force his thoughts back to the myriad of tasks at hand. “Lemme dial up Baghdad tower. I have no idea if they’re clear or socked in down there.”

“Dan?” Jerry’s voice was suddenly tentative, puzzled, almost indignant, as if the scenario was going significantly off script and there had been no approval for such a deviation.

“Yes?”

“I’m… having control problems here, Dan.”

“What do you mean, control problems?”

“I mean… she’s sluggish on roll to the left, and the vibrations… feel that?”

“Yeah. No time to go back and look, but the right wing’s probably damaged.”

“Bet it ripped open our fuel tank.”

“Not that it matters!” Dan chuckled, in spite of the all-consuming tension.

They had one shot at landing with no power, limited instruments, only the force of the slipstream turning the ram air turbine and batteries providing instrument power, and a totally unknown situation on landing gear and flaps.

“We can do this, Dan!”

“That’s what I said. Damn right! You’re in direct law. What can I do to help?”

“Make the radio calls, call my altitude, keep calculating energy status, and make sure we don’t forget any emergency checklists.”

“We’re eighty miles out.” With the iPad on his lap and Baghdad’s main airport punched up, Dan located and dialed in the tower frequency and hit the transmit button for number one radio.

“Baghdad tower, Pangia Flight 10, declaring an emergency. All engines out. Eighty miles to the east, we’ll be making a no-engine approach and landing. Please acknowledge and say current winds and… ah… ah… ceiling.”

Seconds ticked by before the very American voice of a contract controller came back to them.

“Roger, Pangia 10. Runway Three-Three-Left is the active, 13,100 feet available, current winds three-two-zero at five knots, visibility unlimited. State fuel and souls on board.”

“Fuel is zero, and we have… I don’t know… several hundred souls on board. We will need the equipment and would recommend a few ambulances… we don’t know the situation in the back.”

“Please explain, Ten.”

“We’ve been hit by an Iranian air-to-air missile. We were attacked by the Iranians.”

“Dan… Dan she’s vibrating even more. Something’s coming loose out there!”

“Can you control her?”

“I’ve gotta slow down more… Jesus, it takes full left deflection to hold her level.”

“Want me to run back and look?”

“I… think we’d better! I need to know what we’ve got.”

An interphone call chime rang, and Dan punched up the channel. .

“Cockpit!”

“This is Lucy at Four-Right. We’re on fire!” The voice was as strained and frightened as he imagined he sounded.

“What are you seeing, Lucy?”

“Outside on the right wing, we’re trailing a sheet of flame!”

“Okay. One of us is coming back,” Dan said, pushing the receiver back in its cradle, as he quickly briefed Jerry and reached for the glareshield, his hand searching for the engine fire switch and the button for the fire extinguishing bottles.

“You already fired one, right?” Jerry asked.

“Yes. The ECAM’s saying to fire the second now. I’m shooting number two.”

“Go ahead!”

Tom Wilson had thrown off his seatbelt. “I’ll go back and take a look, guys.”

“Please!” Jerry affirmed.

Inside two minutes, Tom Wilson was on the interphone.

“Okay, guys, we ARE on fire. It’s not just whatever remains of number two engine, but it looks like we’re trailing flame off the middle of the right wing. How, I don’t know, since there’s no fuel left…”

“Could it be the metal of the wing burning?”

“God I hope not! But it’s pretty intense.”

“That’s probably hydraulic fluid, too, which means we could lose all the right side controls.”

“No wonder she’s sluggish!”

“I need to dive, Dan,” Jerry was saying. “I need to blow the flames out!”

“We have some extra altitude, but if you go down too fast, we won’t make the airport!”

“And if we don’t, it could burn through the wing.”

“She may not be able to structurally handle too much speed!”

“Gotta try! Increasing speed to barber pole,” Jerry said.

Patyish 21

The major flying the lead F-15 had seen the explosion on the right wing of the lumbering Airbus just before it turned back and headed out of Iranian airspace, but the air battle was still too engaged to give chase until they confirmed the Iranians were bugging out east and the Israeli force acknowledged his “knock it off” call.

Now he ordered the remainder of his flight to reform on Patyish 22 as he plugged in afterburner and dove to the west to join up on Pangia 10.

He had not monitored the special command channel Patyish 26 had been ordered to contact, and he’d restrained himself from asking about 26’s remaining ordinance when they were “safeing up” their weapons for the return. The possibility that the explosion he’d seen came from an Israeli missile was nauseating, but at least Pangia was still in the air.