Headwind

by John J. Nance

  “Okay,” she said and was gone.

  “EuroAir Ten-Twenty, contact Galway Approach now, one twenty two point four. He understands your fuel emergency.”

  “Roger Shanwick Control. Thank you.”

  “Good luck, sir.”

  Alastair switched the frequency and punched the transmit rocker switch.

  “Galway Approach, EuroAir Ten-Twenty, level flight level three one zero. We have ATIS information Bravo.”

  “Roger, Ten-Twenty, radar contact one hundred twenty-six miles from Galway Airport. I’ll provide you with radar vectors to the ILS approach runway zero nine at Galway.”

  “Roger.”

  Craig was looking up at the fuel gauges again.

  “What?” Alastair said.

  Craig diverted his gaze back to the forward instrument panel. “You don’t want to know. Just do a little praying, please.”

  “Roger.”

  Alastair passed the request to remain at altitude until fifty miles out to the controller.

  “How far?” Craig asked.

  “One hundred and five miles,” Alastair said, at the exact moment the gauges for engine number two on the right wing began winding back toward zero thrust and temperature.

  “All right, we’ve lost number two,” Alastair said in a matter-of-fact voice.

  “And there goes one,” Craig replied.

  “Try a restart?” Alastair asked.

  “With what? We’re out of gas.”

  “I’ll get the APU . . . damn, no gas for the aux power unit either.”

  “We’ll keep the speed up enough for windmilling hydraulics but . . .”

  The electrical power died at the same moment.

  “Damn!” Craig threw the appropriate switches on the overhead panel. “Okay, I’ve got my side powered from the battery.”

  “I’ve got emergency lights and my battery GPS over here. No instruments,” Alastair said.

  “We’ll have to make a no-flap approach,” Craig added. “Hydraulics should last, and we should have standby rudder. VHF radio number one and VHF navigation radio number one and the transponder should work, but the computer’s gone.”

  Alastair was already reaching for the transmit switch. “Galway Approach, EuroAir Ten Twenty has a dual engine flameout. No possibility of restart. We’ll need sharp vectoring right onto the localizer.”

  The controller’s voice came back on a wave of audible alarm. “Ah . . . roger, ah, Ten Twenty . . . you’re one hundred nautical miles from the end of the runway. Can . . . you make it?”

  Craig was running a high-speed calculation in his head, factoring in the winds as he slowed the jet to its most efficient no-flap airspeed.

  Alastair watched his lips move, and his head begin to move side to side.

  “No.”

  “No?” Alastair asked.

  “Ask him if there’s a closer field. We can’t make Galway.”

  The Four Courts, Dublin, Ireland

  Mr. Justice O’Connell sat in thought for several minutes before looking up suddenly. “Very well. We’re back on the record, and I am ready to rule on Mr. Garrity’s motion.”

  “Justice O’Connell?”

  The judge sighed loudly but without sarcasm as he picked up his gavel. “Are you attempting to address this court again, Mr. Reinhart? Are you unaware that I’m provisionally ruling in your client’s favor?”

  “Yes, sir, but in one respect your ruling will still deny him justice.”

  O’Connell replaced the gavel on the bench and swallowed.

  “Explain yourself, sir.”

  “There is more evidence on that tape, Judge. Please wait, and let me instruct Mr. Garrity.”

  Jay turned to Michael, but O’Connell’s voice cut through the attempt.

  “I’ll hear you very briefly, Mr. Reinhart. To save time. Tell me directly.”

  Jay got to his feet and looked at Stuart Campbell. “Mr. Campbell, would you please rewind that tape in your camera to the end of the original section, where Reynolds leaves the Oval Office?”

  Campbell nodded and moved to the camera, deftly manipulating the controls before turning to Jay.

  “What would you like to see?” Campbell asked.

  Jay came around the table. “May I?”

  “By all means,” Campbell said as he backed away from the screen.

  Jay pushed the “play” button and let the picture continue until the last few frames of the alcove and the hallway outside the west door came into view.

  He pushed “pause,” then leaned in close to the picture to verify what he thought he’d seen.

  “What are we looking at, Mr. Reinhart?” O’Connell asked.

  Jay sighed as he turned toward the bench. “Judge O’Connell, it is very important to my client that the world not erroneously believe the implications of this tape. I firmly believed as I came into this court this morning that John Harris was innocent, and that this tape had been tampered with, and that the conversation Mr. Campbell presented was false. I believe we successfully demonstrated how that could be done. But there was something bothering me when I first saw this, and I now know what it is. I wasn’t sure until Mr. Campbell played it a second time. Then I remembered a small, inconsequential item from a recent article in the American press.”

  “Mr. Reinhart, get to the point. What do you see on this screen that I do not?”

  Jay pointed to the hallway visible through the western wall door of the Oval Office.

  “This video clearly shows a long hallway that extends at a ninety-degree angle to the western wall of the office. But in the real White House, there is no such hallway. Merely a small alcove. I can testify to this directly since I’ve been in the office and out that door. Can you see this, Judge?”

  O’Connell left the bench and descended the steps to look closely at the screen.

  “I do see a hallway, yes. But how am I to know your memory is correct? How long ago were you there, Mr. Reinhart?”

  Jay hesitated. “Over ten years ago, I’ll admit. But one does not forget that office.”

  The judge walked back around and regained his bench as Jay decided to chance a direct request.

  “Your Honor, if I may have a ten-minute recess, the Secretary of State of the United States is on his way here. He is in the Oval Office on a weekly basis and can testify firsthand as to whether this hallway really exists or not.”

  The judge sat down, saying nothing. He scratched his face and glanced at Stuart Campbell, who was silent, then leaned forward.

  “Ten-minute recess it shall be, Mr. Reinhart.”

  Joe Byer took the stand when Mr. Justice O’Connell reconvened the court, making fast work of the confirmation that the hallway shown in the video did not exist in the real White House.

  “Thank you Mr. Byer, you may step down,” the judge said, focusing on Jay. “Mr. Reinhart, if not the White House . . . and I am satisfied about that . . . then what are we looking at?”

  Jay got to his feet. “There are, Judge, a total of five different fully furnished mockups of the Oval Office available for the rental of film makers in the U.S. One of them is a permanent set used in the production of a popular television series about the White House. Others have been used constantly in a long procession of feature films or made-for-TV films. These sets can be shipped by truck anywhere in North America and set up in less than a week, and the interiors are essentially indistinguishable from the real office. What we see on this video are pictures made on an artificial set, a mock-up of the Oval Office.”

  The judge looked at Stuart Campbell, who shook his head and raised the palm of one hand to indicate he had nothing to add or object to.

  Jay had moved closer to the video screen and toggled the video forward and backward, seemingly absorbed in the picture.

  “Mr. Reinhart, if you’re through, sir . . .”

  Jay’s eyes had grown wider as he held an index finger in the air. “Wait . . . wait just a second, Your Honor . . .”

 
“Mr. Reinhart . . .”

  Jay turned to the bench. “Judge O’Connell, would you consider coming down here again? There’s something else I’ve just found that absolutely proves my point.”

  Mr. Justice O’Connell shook his head as he got to his feet and moved around to the screen once again.

  “Here, sir. On that angled wall, you see that mirror, on the side of the alleged hallway just outside the door?”

  “Yes?”

  “Look in the mirror.”

  “I see some vertical lines, not quite vertical,” he said. “What are they?”

  “Those, Judge, are some of the two-by-fours holding up the backside of the set.”

  EuroAir 1020, in Flight

  “Ten Twenty, turn right now to a heading of zero nine five degrees. I’m taking you to a closer airport at Connemara. Twenty-one miles closer. There’s one runway, runway two seven, and there’s an ILS for that one. It’s twenty-two hundred meters . . . ah, over sixty five hundred feet in length.”

  “What’s the designator?” Alastair asked quickly, receiving the four-letter code and punching it rapidly into his handheld GPS. “I show sixty-two miles, Galway.”

  “Roger. Sixty-one miles now,” the controller said.

  “Tell him we can do that, Alastair, but we’ll have only one chance at it. How’s the weather there? If it’s good enough, maybe we can land straight in to the east.”

  Alastair passed the question.

  “I have the weather for Connemara Regional,” the controller said. “The ceiling is indefinite at one hundred fifty feet, visibility a half mile and fog, winds are two seven zero at twelve knots. The ILS is up for runway two seven. Just tell me what you want.”

  Alastair turned to Craig, who was licking his lips and mentally racing through more calculations.

  “I think,” Craig said, without turning his head, “that we have no choice but to fly the instrument approach to runway two seven, even though that means we have to fly past the airport and turn around. We’ve got enough altitude to pass the runway a mile and a half to the south as we’re going eastbound, then make a tight left one-hundred-eighty-degree turn back west on instruments and find the localizer for runway two seven, and just . . . come down to the glide slope.”

  “Fly by the airport? Hell, Craig, he can vector us right to it!”

  Craig looked at Alastair with a rapid glance. “But we can’t see it! What if we’re displaced a quarter mile to one side of the runway when we break out? We’ll sit down on a building or worse with no chance of going around.”

  “We have no go-around potential if we fly by and turn, either!”

  “Alastair, we’ve flamed out both engines. We have no go-around capability period! But, if we keep the speed up, we’ll still have the hydraulics for the flight controls and landing gear and maybe flap extension, and we’ll have the ILS on my side to get down the centerline. All we need is enough altitude. Get your flashlight out, just in case.”

  “I have it.” Alastair scanned the situation again on his GPS and on the captain’s panel to his left. Fifty miles from Connemara, speed two hundred ten knots, altitude twenty-one thousand feet and descending steadily with the headwind gone and a tailwind beginning to improve their chances of reaching the airport with enough altitude left to maneuver for landing. As long as they kept the airspeed high enough, the wind flowing through the unpowered jet engines would keep them rotating fast enough to keep pumping hydraulic pressure into the aircraft systems. The battery would be good for thirty minutes, and they’d be on the ground long before that. As soon as they slowed under a hundred eighty knots, however, the hydraulic power would die and the only flight controls left would be the standby rudder system, manual pitch trim, and a hard-to-handle system called “manual reversion” for keeping the wings level.

  “Okay,” Alastair said. “The way I see it, we’ll pass south of the runway at . . . about three thousand feet. A tight left turn at, ah . . . fifteen-hundred, no, twelve-hundred-feet-per-minute descent rate should put us on final approach at six hundred feet above the ground with a little energy to spare.”

  “Tight, but okay. Alastair, tell the controller that, and also tell him we need to begin our turn not an inch farther than one mile east of the approach end of the runway, displaced exactly one and a half miles south.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Check me, Alastair, but I think that’ll give us wiggle room. I can always slip it to a landing as long as we have some hydraulics left, which means I’ve got to keep the speed up, which means I’ll have to dive it down final.”

  “How about the gear?”

  “We’ll put the gear down as I start the turn to final. Use it as a speed brake. Be ready to yank the manual releases if we don’t have enough hydraulic pressure. And . . . keep your left leg clear, but on short final, pull out the manual crank on the pitch trim wheel and stand by to help me flare.”

  “Roger.”

  “I’m gonna hold two hundred knots until we’re lined up fat on final, and I may try to extend some flaps at that point to slow us down. If we touch down at two hundred, we’ll never get her stopped.”

  “Got it. We’re thirty-nine miles out.”

  Alastair relayed the plan carefully to the controller, watching the unfolding flight path on the flight computer and the horizontal situation indicator in front of him to verify they were being aimed ever so slightly to the south of the airport.

  “They know we’re coming?” Alastair asked the controller.

  “Yes, sir. Crash equipment is standing by. You’re cleared to land. Verify you’ve got no engine power?”

  “We’re flamed out. No fuel.”

  “Roger.”

  “Twenty-eight miles to go, Craig,” Alastair said, yanking his flight manual out of his flight bag and wildly leafing through to check the speed figures for final approach at their weight.

  “Since we’re so light, she’s going to want to float when you flare, and we won’t have speed brakes, and of course, there are no reversers without . . . you know . . .”

  “Engines running,” Craig finished.

  “Yeah.”

  “Got it.”

  “Twenty miles,” Alastair said.

  “Okay . . . look . . . get me set up now for the ILS, double check I have the right frequency in the radio, and make sure we’ve got the right inbound course set in . . . that’s a heading of two seven zero.”

  “Already done.”

  “When . . . when we break out, we take whatever we’ve got. I’m going to have to plunk it down and get on the brakes to get stopped.”

  “Understood, Craig. You won’t have antiskid, you know, and if you blow the tires . . .”

  “I know . . . we’ll never stop. I’ll be careful.”

  “Twelve miles.”

  “Roger. Altitude?”

  “We’re good. Coming through six thousand feet. I wish we could see something besides gray out there.”

  “We will. Lock your shoulder harness.”

  “Okay.”

  “Get on the PA. Tell them in the back to get in a brace position.”

  “I can’t. No electrical.”

  “Roger,” Craig said.

  “I show your heading dead-on to pass one and a half miles south. Weather information remains the same. The tower reports the ceiling is a bit better than the hundred fifty feet, and all approach lights are on.”

  “Roger,” Craig said.

  “We’re four miles from the airport, Craig, heading zero nine zero degrees, one point five miles south.”

  “Okay. Call me perfectly abeam the end of the runway, then give me mileage increments east of that point.”

  “Will do.”

  “Altitude’s . . . three thousand five hundred,” Craig said to himself, pushing the jet’s nose down slightly to reach three thousand as they passed abeam the end of the runway.

  “Abeam, Craig. Speed two hundred twenty. Zero visibility.”

  “Roger.”
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br />   The controller repeated the same information.

  “Stand by, now, sir,” Alastair said. “No more transmissions while we’re working this.” He glanced at the left seat. “Okay, Craig, we’re one half mile east, twenty-eight hundred feet above the ground, speed two hundred knots.”

  “Roger.”

  “Coming up on one mile east, speed two hundred, altitude twenty-six hundred.”

  “Keep calling it. Not turning yet.”

  “One point one miles, one point two, one point three . . .”

  “Okay!” Craig said. “Now. Landing gear down!” He rolled the 737 into a forty-five-degree left bank, beginning the turn back to the runway.

  “Gear down,” Alastair repeated, working the handle and checking the gear as it fell into place and rewarded him with three green lights.

  “Gear down and locked, Craig, coming through heading of north, forty-degree bank, speed two hundred, altitude two thousand one hundred, and we’re one point nine miles from the end of the runway. We’re high and fast. I see no lights out there, no glow through the fog, nothing.”

  “Okay. Have faith.”

  “Localizer alive, Craig. Coming fast.”

  “Steepening . . . the . . . bank!” Craig said, rolling the 737 into a nearly fifty degree left bank angle to catch the ILS inbound course. He rolled out of the turn precisely on course and perfectly aligned with the unseen runway ahead and reached for the speed brake handle, pulling it to the deployed position. The windmilling hydraulic pressure dutifully raised the speed brake panels on both wings, steepening the descent and slowing them.

  “Bang on course, one point two miles out, altitude one thousand six hundred. We’re a thousand higher than we should be.”

  “Flaps straight down to fifteen!”

  “Flaps? Craig, the speed brakes are out! No speed brakes with flaps, remember?”

  “Can’t help it. I’ve got to slow!”

  “Roger.” Alastair moved the flap handle quickly as Craig pushed forward to increase the descent rate with the flaps beginning to come out on the residual hydraulic pressure.