The exposed metal cargo floor was slippery with rain and spray and Jerry slipped several times as he moved aft, each time feeling a precautionary tug as Linda and Scott prepared to yank him back.
Jerry anchored his left hand on part of the overhead structure at the lip of the door and began swinging the ax at the door hinge. Each impact was a muffled crunch of metal against metal with sparks flying, but slowly he made headway.
Another rain shower passed the door, some of it spraying Jerry as he worked. The 727 bucked upward momentarily, causing him to swing wildly and impact the wrong point. He steadied himself and started again. Scott could see he was getting tired, the job of keeping his footing against the constant turbulent movements of the aircraft a trial. The swings were getting wilder and less effective.
It was time to switch places with Jerry, Scott decided, as he glanced at his watch.
No, on second thought, there was no time left. He gave a few light tugs on the strap and Jerry stopped and looked in their direction with a questioning expression.
Scott waved him forward and Jerry pointed to the ceiling, as if to say he was getting close. Scott gestured to his watch, and Jerry, understanding, let go of the overhead door lip and tried to take a step toward him, just as the aircraft lurched to the left.
The ax slipped from Jerry’s hand and hung almost suspended in midair as he grabbed for it, but the sudden movement of his body shifted his center of gravity and his hand failed to close around it as he lost his balance.
In a split second he was toppling toward the abyss of the open door, powerless to stop.
Twenty-five feet away, Linda and Scott saw Jerry’s lanky torso falling dangerously toward the door. Simultaneously, they gave a mighty pull on the strap, unceremoniously yanking Jerry off his feet and propelling him forward to crash face-first on the slick floor in front of them, safe but shaken.
Jerry got to his feet with Linda’s help and brushed himself off. He looked at Linda and then at Scott and managed a little grin. Linda could see his hands shaking.
“THANKS!” he yelled over the noise outside. “THAT WAS TOO CLOSE.”
Scott motioned them all back into the cockpit and closed the door against the worst of the noise.
“Doc, let’s neutralize the rudder trim and see if you can maneuver us back and forth and make that door come off.”
“Wait,” Jerry cautioned. “Doc, pull both engines to idle before you do, just in case anything heads for the engine opening.”
“Understood. You’d better strap in,” Doc told them.
Scott was shaking his head as he reached for the top of the engineer’s panel to steady himself. “There’s no time, Doc. Go ahead and start the maneuver. We’ll watch the cargo door from here.”
“Hang on, then.”
Jerry cracked open the cockpit door and partially wedged his tall frame between the last observer’s seat and the bulkhead. Scott turned and held on to the flight engineer’s panel with his left hand and encircled Linda’s waist with his right arm as she held on to him and one of the seats. She glanced at Vivian, who appeared calm, though very pale. Her eyes were fastened on Doc.
Doc held his left foot hard against the left rudder pedal.
“Here goes!” he bellowed over his shoulder.
In a rapid stroke he let up on the left rudder and pressed the right rudder. The 727 moved in a sickening sideways motion from a right skid to a left, and the sound of the cargo door section flopping open again was immediate.
This time, however, there was no right roll.
“It’s off! It’s gone!” Jerry yelled.
“Yes!” Linda echoed as Scott nodded and grinned. He looked at his watch again and felt his heart skip a beat.
“We’ve got to move fast.” Scott let go of Linda and leaned forward toward Doc.
“Keep her steady, Doc, with just a little bit of a right slip with right wing down. We almost dumped Jerry overboard back there before.”
“I’ll do my best, but for God’s sake be careful.”
“I’ll relay word to you when we’re ready to release the pallets.”
Doc nodded as he readjusted the throttles, and Scott turned to Jerry and Linda.
“Okay, here’s the plan. We all put on cargo straps. We’ve got very little time left. The first pallet can just be shoved straight out sideways. Jerry, you unlock it while we hold your strap. Then all three of us will start pushing it out. It’s almost unloaded, so it’s likely to flip off its rollers before it gets to the opening. Linda, just help us get it started, then hold back. We’ll push it the rest of the way.”
“Okay.”
“We should have Doc bank left about fifteen degrees when we’re ready. It should go out on its own then,” Jerry said.
Scott agreed. “Excellent.” He returned forward and briefed Doc on the additional procedure.
“Just let me know when. I’ll need positive communication, Scott, not just a vague voice in the wind.”
Scott nodded, his eyes falling on Vivian, who had been following every word with wide eyes.
She saw his look and nodded immediately. “I’ll stand in the door, Scott, and relay information to Doc.”
“That’ll work.”
Vivian unstrapped and took her position in the cockpit door after the three others had moved out and begun tying themselves into the cargo straps Jerry had prepared. Each strap was tethered to a cleat in the forward cargo floor.
Unlocking the first pallet was simple. Choreographing how to get it moving sideways to the left and out the side-opening cargo door was more complicated. Jerry directed Scott and Linda from the forward end, and together they moved it sideways on the dual-direction floor rollers until the pallet was partially out the door.
“READY?” Scott yelled.
Linda and Jerry positioned themselves on the right side of the pallet with Scott. They all crouched, preparing to shove it sideways. Scott looked forward at Vivian and nodded.
“NOW, VIVIAN! BANK LEFT!”
She nodded and disappeared into the cockpit, returning almost immediately.
They felt the floor cant to the left and the engines go to idle as Doc banked the 727, and then, while holding the left bank, he kicked in right rudder to slip the aircraft through the air slightly and cause gravity to pull the pallet through the open door.
“NOW!” Jerry bellowed, and they all three heaved at the pallet with such combined force it seemed to shoot out of their hands and completely clear of the door.
Linda fell forward on the floor as both Scott and Jerry stumbled and caught themselves.
For a second it had seemed to hang outside the door like a separate aircraft now given its own wings, and then the forward edge canted up slightly and it rose and was gone.
Scott braced for an impact with the tail or the engines, but there was nothing. He looked back to the doorway and flashed a thumbs-up sign at Vivian, which she immediately relayed to Doc.
The engines rose in pitch again and the aircraft steadied.
Scott helped Linda to her feet and the two of them moved to keep up with Jerry, who was already unlatching the second pallet.
With some difficulty, they wedged themselves behind the second pallet from Antarctica—still piled high with boxes and canisters and restrained with a plastic-covered cargo net—and began pushing it forward into jettison position.
It barely moved.
They tried again, all three of them straining as hard as possible.
Again it crept forward barely an inch.
Scott shook his head. “We’ve got to get the airplane into a nose-down deck angle. Hang on.”
He moved out of the small space between the pallets and made his way along the right sidewall of the aircraft—opposite the open cargo door—to the cockpit to relate the problem to Doc.
Doc looked over his shoulder at Scott. “We’ll have to get the flaps out, and I’ll have to lose some altitude if we want a nose-down angle.”
“Then let’s do i
t,” Scott told him.
“But, Scott, if the flaps are extended while we dump the pallets, they could slam into the flaps on the left side and make it impossible to get them retracted again. You know the results of that: We’d be unable to fly fast, we’d be using far more fuel, and we wouldn’t have the range to make it back to the mainland. We’d have to ditch in the Atlantic in a hurricane with no life rafts.”
Scott clenched his jaw and thought for a second.
“Okay, instead of using the flaps and slowing down, how about pitching the aircraft forward, nose-down, just for a short duration? When I relay the signal, push the nose over and hold us nose-down until you hear a big thud and Vivian tells you the pallet has hit the forward stops and we’ve blocked it from rolling backward.”
Doc was nodding. “That’ll do it. I’ll hold it just long enough for you to get the thing moving forward, then I’ll climb back to ten thousand before we do the next one.”
Scott briefed Vivian on what to do and then returned to the back, trailing his safety strap.
With all three in place again, safety straps secure, Scott leaned into view of Vivian and gave her the prearranged sign.
Within seconds the engines had been pulled to idle and the 727 was nosing down, giving the cargo floor a downward tilt. One small shove from all three of them and the pallet rolled forward smartly until it banged to a halt against the forward stops.
As with the first, they prepared to shove the pallet sideways out the door. With a steady shove, it began rolling in the direction of the opening with very little effort.
All three watched the heavy pallet slide sideways into the darkening clouds and watched as the pallet seemed to hover for a heartbeat. Then, like the first one, the cargo pallet tipped up and rose out of sight, clearing the leading edge of the wing.
Another successful jettison! Scott thought with relief.
He looked at his watch as a shuddering impact threw all three of them forward, facedown on the floor.
Oh God, Scott thought. The pallet hit the tail!
The 727 pitched up at a frightening rate until the sound of yet another loud metallic bang echoed through the cargo cabin. Suddenly they were weightless as the jet pitched nose-down. Then, just as suddenly, they were thrown to the floor as the jet pitched back up, each oscillation preceded by a bang.
Scott’s heart sank. The pallet had hit the T-tail and had possibly taken it out.
No, he thought, if it was gone, we’d already be screaming toward the water. There’s some control left!
The G-forces increased on the next up-cycle. Scott crawled on hands and knees toward Vivian, who was hanging onto the door frame for dear life with huge, wide eyes. Scott looked back at Jerry and Linda, both of whom were trying to make their way in the same direction. He reached the door and grabbed their safety straps and began hauling on both of them as the next nose-down excursion began.
Both Jerry and Linda this time rose weightless from the floor and began floating toward the ceiling. Scott hauled even harder on the lines, knowing what would happen when Doc once again pulled the 727 nose-up, leaving Jerry and Linda to smash to the floor. Like a scene from some orbiting spacecraft, the two came swimming through the air toward him with terror-filled eyes and outstretched hands. He caught both of them just before the next up excursion began, and they all scrambled into the cockpit.
Scott pulled himself up to Doc’s shoulder, aware the senior pilot was pushing hard on the control yoke.
“WHAT HAPPENED?”
Doc rapidly glanced left before returning his eyes to the panel. The horizontal control surface on the aft end of the T-tail called the elevator, which controlled the nose-up, nose-down pitch of the 727, was giving him fits.
“Something’s binding the elevator!” Doc said.
Linda, Jerry, and Vivian strapped themselves into their seats as Scott pulled himself into the left seat, fumbling for the seat belt as another thud and a sudden weightlessness floated them upward.
“It’s either nose-up or nose-down. I can’t get anything in between!” Doc cried out.
“Let me feel it.” Scott pulled on the yoke and felt the same resistance. As the elevator suddenly reversed with the now-familiar bang, he reached up and pointed to the switches controlling the multiple hydraulic systems that powered the elevator surface up or down.
“Doc, should we try to isolate? This could be a hydraulic problem.”
Doc shrugged. “I thought it was mechanical, but … maybe …”
“I’ll turn off one of the hydraulic systems, the A system.”
Scott flipped the switches—and suddenly everything returned to normal.
“Saints preserve us,” Doc exclaimed in an aped Irish accent. “I’ve got full control again!” He glanced admiringly at Scott. “Brilliant move, Captain Kirk.” He grinned.
“Procedural shot in the dark.”
“Why didn’t I think of that?”
“Teamwork, remember?” Scott grabbed for the seat belt release. “If you’ll run the emergency checklist for hydraulic failure and see if we’ve forgotten anything, I’m going to go back there and jettison the bomb before it vaporizes us.”
Doc swallowed hard. “Scott, please. No more impacts between cargo and airplane. The airplane may survive it, but my heart won’t.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
AIR FORCE COMMAND POST, THE PENTAGON—7:37 P.M. EDT
General Ralph Kinney, the commander of what used to be called the Tactical Air Command, now known as the Air Combat Command, had taken responsibility for coordinating the last-ditch efforts to contact ScotAir 50 some thirty minutes earlier—and it was clear he had failed. The general scanned the multitude of television and computer monitors in the command post, closed a classified folder, and stood up with a weary sigh as he mentally reviewed what he was about to tell the President of the United States.
“General?”
A major had materialized at the general’s elbow holding a telephone receiver. The general hadn’t even heard the major approach.
“Yes?”
The major put his other hand over the mouthpiece. “I’ve got the commander of the 495th fighter wing at Seymour-Johnson on the line, sir, with a question we don’t understand.”
“Which is?”
“He says their two-ship flight of F-15’s has gone feet wet at Mach one-point-six, requesting instructions for the rendezvous.”
The general stared at the major for a few seconds. “What two-ship is he talking about?”
“I don’t know, sir. I made sure his ‘feet wet’ statement meant they’re over the water now, and he confirmed that. Two F-15’s, but I wasn’t aware we scrambled any.”
The general took the receiver with a scowl and identified himself.
“This is Ralph Kinney. What’re you talking about down there, Colonel?”
A chief master sergeant appeared from the direction of the Starsuite and waited quietly, listening as discreetly as possible to the commander of the Air Combat Command’s side of the conversation.
“Where are these guys, and what were they ordered to do?”
Several other men and women in the command post had stopped what they were doing and focused on the general’s expression, which had gone from a scowl to raised eyebrows to complete disbelief.
“Chasing … you mean ScotAir?”
The general turned and motioned his aide over, then turned his eyes to the floor as he concentrated on what the colonel on the other end was saying.
“Do they have a track on him? … How far out? … And Mach one-six, you said? They can’t sustain that for long.”
The general looked up to verify his aide’s presence and quickly covered the mouthpiece on his end. “Get on an extension and take notes on this.”
“Yes, sir,” the aide responded, diving immediately for the phone on the command console.
The general looked down again as one hand climbed to his hip and the other pressed the receiver in tightly to his ear.
/> “No, hell no, they don’t need to be armed. That’s passed. What we need now is communication.” He checked his watch and turned to the major, then to the chief master sergeant. “How much time left?”
“Twenty-four minutes to stated detonation time, sir,” the chief master sergeant replied instantly.
The general nodded and returned to the conversation, his speech clipped and urgent. “What’s their range? Do they have enough gas? Okay … okay … flash them to press on at full speed and try to join up for a visual, ah, referral, ah … the damn words are escaping me, but they need to pull alongside that civil cockpit and get those suckers to turn on their goddamned radios. We’ve tried every frequency known to man and they haven’t replied. Do your guys know the message to pass?”
The chief master sergeant flashed a note in front of the general, who waved at him to wait. The message said: THE PRESIDENT IS READY, SIR.
“Okay, Colonel, now here’s the big question. Why didn’t we know about your boys? … Well, somebody sure as hell didn’t keep us informed about that … What order?”
The general listened for a few more seconds, then covered the mouthpiece and bellowed at the major, “FIND OUT WHO THE HELL ORDERED THESE F-15’S AND FAILED TO TELL THE REST OF US!”
He removed his hand from his waist and turned away from the group of officers watching him. “Okay, Colonel, relax. If you’ve got it in writing, we dropped the ball here. It won’t be the first damn time today. We just … we didn’t know there was any chance, and it’s damn slim as it is.”
He nodded a few more times before looking around the room. “Yes, they’re in grave danger, and we may not get them back if that thing goes off. It’s a risk we’ve considered, but, because we’re just now figuring this out and because the command structure is involved, I want you to hang on while I get a final directly from the President. I’ll be right back.”
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