Fly by Night

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

The director of security watched the chaos. He’d been getting regular updates over his radio, and had heard the Air Force commander’s assuring confirmation that everything was indeed under control. Yet he could see the fighters off to the south. They were high, flying in circles, and the small black speck beneath them was getting larger, not careening to the ground in a ball of flames as it should.

“What are they doing?” he murmured under his breath.

On the stage, the president of Algeria was wrapping up his keynote speech, and behind him, oblivious to the madness, twenty leaders of the Arab world were listening respectfully. The journalists were focused entirely on the podium, feeding the event across the world and unaware of the aerial bedlam a few miles to their left. Suddenly, the director saw a fourth airplane in the distance coming into view from one side. It was big and slow, and looked like it was heading straight for the black dot.

More radio chatter — confusion and accusations. Whatever was happening in the sky, the consequences were no more than a minute away if nothing changed. And nothing was changing. He could take no more. The director keyed his microphone and gave the command. He hit the panic button.

Seconds later, fifty armed men rushed the stage to form a perimeter. The principles were shoved unceremoniously toward exits. People fell and chairs went flying. One of the security men on stage pointed toward the southern sky, and a sea of heads followed the gesture, including many of those in the media section. In the next moments, no fewer than a hundred cameras were redirected.

All fell squarely on Jammer Davis.

In the art of aerial combat there are three geometries to intercept a target. Lag pursuit puts you behind another aircraft. Pure pursuit is a constant turn in which the nose is kept fixed on a target moving in your windscreen. Davis was flying the third version — lead pursuit. He was aiming for a point in front of Blackstar, keeping the drone stationary in his windscreen. Watching as it got bigger and bigger.

He looked over his shoulder and saw the pyramids only a few miles away. He was close enough to see people scrambling in all directions. Davis estimated he was no more than a mile from Blackstar, and closing fast. The DC-3’s big radials were straining, every needle on the engine gauges up against a red line. Some beyond. The F-16s were still up high — watching, thinking. Not getting the job done. Davis would only have time for one pass. He glanced at the gas gauges and saw them still bouncing. Then he glanced at his copilot.

“Shoulder straps!” he ordered, then started working his own into place. “Get strapped in, pull everything as tight as you can!”

Antonelli fumbled, not knowing how the harness arrangement worked. He reached over and helped her, pulling nylon straps with one hand and flying with the other. Half a mile to go.

“Fold your hands over your chest!” he ordered.

Antonelli did her best to curl protectively in the old seat.

Four hundred yards. He had nearly two hundred knots of closure and a high angle. Davis went into a zone.

Just like in the heat of an aerial dogfight, he threw out the rest of the world. Closed all unnecessary sensory inputs. There were only two things in his universe. Two airplanes — the one he was connected to, and the one he was aiming at. Davis didn’t consider how to do it because there was really only one way. One way that he could ram Blackstar and come out alive. His airplane was bigger and, he hoped, sturdier. Use a wingtip, then hope to hell Boudreau was right. They don’t make ’em like this anymore. At that moment it occurred to Davis that Blackstar was probably packed with high explosives. One more thing to worry about if he had the time.

In the final seconds, Davis’ hands eased on the control wheel, not so much moving as caressing the airplane. The strike had to be perfect. Too close and the DC-3 would cartwheel down and make a smoking hole in the desert. Not close enough and he would miss Blackstar completely.

One hundred yards.

What had been a black dot now filled his windscreen. Davis was using only his fingertips on the controls. Coaxing. The windshield went completely black and Blackstar flashed by his left side.

Impact.

There was an incredible bang as the aircraft met, and the old DC-3 shuddered. Davis’ grip on the wheel hardened — any more and he’d pull it right out of the mount. He was ready to react, but nothing happened for a moment. Davis had four or five heartbeats to be happy. Happy that he hadn’t misjudged by a fraction and guided the cockpit straight into twenty thousand pounds of opposite-direction steel. Happy he wasn’t falling to the ground in a propagating fireball. Jammer Davis thought he might damn well have done it. He looked over his shoulder for Blackstar.

He didn’t see the drone. He also didn’t see the outboard ten feet of his left wing.

The nose of the DC-3 began to fall, rolling uncontrollably to the left. Davis countered on the controls. Nothing happened because the aileron, at least the one on the left, was a mile behind them and free-falling to the Sahara Desert. The airplane was out of control, rolling and nearly upside down. Davis heard a scream from his right. He tuned it out. He pushed forward on the controls and found that the elevator still worked.

I still have a tail, he thought.

Davis stepped on the rudder, and the airplane stopped rolling. They were upside down, falling closer to the desert, but Davis had marginal control. He tried to roll level with the rudder, but the rate was too slow — the airplane would hit the ground before he could get right-side up and pull. There was only one thing left. Davis pushed the control wheel forward.

Everything that had been on the floor went to the ceiling — dirt and charts and a long-lost pencil. At negative one G they were flying inverted. Davis was hanging in his harness, glad he’d strapped in tight. The airplane was no longer descending, but skimming three hundred feet above the flat desert — crooked, uncoordinated flight with a broken wing and big control inputs to the tail that were all cancelling out. The old boat was hanging on a knife’s edge of aerodynamic equilibrium.

Then the port engine began to sputter.

Davis checked the instruments, and saw both motors spiking and bouncing in alternating death throes. For the last thirty seconds he hadn’t even been sure they were running, hadn’t had time to check. He might already have been flying a glider for all he knew. But upside down, any remaining fuel had gone to the top of the tanks. Since the fuel pumps were at the bottom, starvation was a given. Nothing he could do. But they were still flying, and that was all that mattered. He just had to put the airplane down right now. Right here.

Davis looked out the front windscreen, and right away wished he hadn’t. It was filling fast with a massive image that took his breath away. The giant Pyramid of Giza loomed like a mountain hanging from an upside down sky. Davis was close enough to see the massive blocks of earthen stone and the thick joints, see the pointed tip that was situated squarely in their path. He tried to roll again, but when he did the nose fell and the pyramid got bigger. He only had seconds. An engine stopped dead. He sensed drag on the left side as the dead propeller caught the airstream like a barn door catching a hurricane. Davis rolled toward the drag with rudder, and the crippled beast responded.

With the tip of the pyramid directly in front of them, Davis mashed his foot all the way to the floor hoping for a vector that would take them over it. The pointed crest seemed inches from his head as they flew by sideways, the stunted left wing pointed at the ground.

This time, no impact.

The nose began to fall and Davis looked out ahead. They were going down now. The question was where. He saw open desert to his left and with the airplane right-side up, Davis began pushing and pulling, willing the machine in that direction. A busy road skimmed underneath their windshield, close enough that he could see the wide eyes of a taxi driver. Past the road, a boy and his herd of goats were running for their lives. The airplane glided over them, and from that point there was nothing but sand.

The airplane hit hard, making contact on the belly because there hadn’t been time for anything fancy like landing gear. Davis heard another scream before he was thrown violently against the straps, twisting and shaking for what seemed an eternity. The noise was incredible, a metallic crunch like two train cars crashing at speed. It kept going and going, aluminum tearing and glass shattering. The world disappeared in a cloud of dust.

His head hit something. Everything went deathly still.