Medusa's Child

THIRTY

"He's pulled her back in!" Vivian reported.

Doc jerked his head around to look at her incredulously. "They're both okay?"

She nodded, too stunned to add anything to the gesture.

Doc began a gentle climb. He reminded himself that the F-15 was still visible in the left window, just as the fighter pilot called.

"ScotAir, can you answer now?"

Doc stabbed the transmit button.

"Yeah, I'm here," he said.

"I need to know, sir, whether you dumped the weapon yet?" the pilot asked.

Doc looked back at Vivian, who was moving back toward the cockpit door.

"Yes, we have," he replied, as the voice of the lead F-15 pilot cut in.

"ScotAir, this is Wolf lead. Be advised you've got a fuel leak, sir. Left wing, about one third out from the wing root. It looks like a puncture in the forward underside. There's a steady stream."

"Oh Jesus," Doc said to himself as he looked around sharply to his right, trying to see Jerry's fuel panel. He couldn't quite read the needles.

He turned back forward and punched the transmit button.

"How bad is it, Wolf?"

"Seems to be coming out at an unhealthy rate, sir."

Doc heard the pilot pause, then address his wingman.

"Wolf Two, Wolf lead. Rejoin my left wing."

"Roger, Two," the wingman responded.

Myriad thoughts shot through Doc's mind. He really needed to see Scott walk through the door in person. They had dumped the weapon and it hadn't exploded on impact. That was good. That was great! That meant they had a chance.

Doc began a turn back toward the west. With two engines and the remaining fuel, he'd originally calculated they could make the South Carolina coast. But with fuel leaking from the number one tank, they would flameout somewhere over water.

We'll be left to ditch a nonpressurized, crippled airplane in a hurricane with no life rafts aboard. Wonderful! Doc thought. The last pallet must have snagged the wing.

"ScotAir, what are your intentions?" Wolf lead asked.

"Wolf lead, we're not going to be able to make it all the way if we're losing fuel. I'm heading toward the coast. I… think we're committed to a ditching."

"Understood, ScotAir. We'll stay with you as long as we can."

Doc realized he could save some of the leaking fuel by transferring it into another tank. He snapped on the autopilot and unstrapped long enough to lean up and over the back of his seat and operate the crossfeed valves on Jerry's panel to feed the remaining two engines from the leaking tank.

It was too late. The tank was almost dry.

He paused to study Jerry's face before getting back in the seat.

"How're you doing?"

Jerry's eyes had been closed. They fluttered open at the sound of Doc's voice.

"I'm… ah… hurting less because of that injection, but I'm still… hurting, Doc."

"Hang in there!" Doc plopped back in the right seat and fastened the belt, his mind racing over a hundred thoughts at once. If they ditched, how high would the waves be? Could they ditch near a ship? How did one go about finding a ship?

He looked over at the F-15 and realized he was ignoring a resource.

"Wolf lead, ScotAir. I need your help on something."

"Go ahead, ScotAir."

"Can you help us find a ship to ditch alongside?"

News that Hurricane Sigrid had blown a passenger train off the tracks near Washington, D.C.'s, Union Station reached Air Force One a minute before word arrived that two F-15's had found ScotAir 50.

The President stood on the Air Force One side of the Starsuite and waved away further information on the Amtrak wreck after he heard that casualties appeared to be light.

"Are they talking to ScotAir? Were they able to punch in that code?" the President demanded.

The Air Force general on the Pentagon side of the screen shook his head as he consulted a single sheet of paper.

"Sir, they were jettisoning the Medusa Weapon just as our two-ship pulled up to them, before radio contact was established. It's in the water now."

"And no explosion?" the President asked.

The general shook his head no. "Not yet, at least. Remember, it could have survived the impact and still be ticking down there. It could still go off on schedule."

"How the hell could they get that out of a 727?" the President asked.

"Apparently they jettisoned the cargo door and lost an engine in the process."

"You say it could still go off," the President began. "How? What altitude was that thing dropped from? I mean, I've done airdrops back when I flew C-141's and if a parachute didn't open on a cargo pallet, it was destroyed on impact."

The general shrugged slightly and raised his hands. "We're just guessing, sir. They said the casing was steel. It's not impossible that it could have survived. If the impact did nothing more than destroy its power source, we think that alone would deactivate it and we'd be out of the woods."

"And then you'd want the Navy to go get it, right?"

The general looked up and studied the President's expression. There was a knowing look on the Chief Executive's face.

"Yes, sir, I suppose we would."

"How much time till we know?"

"Nine minutes, Mr. President."

Scott and Vivian carefully guided a shaken Linda McCoy around Jerry Christian's prone form to the larger observer's seat. Scott strapped her in and draped a coat around her shoulders before slipping into the captain's position. The noise level in the cockpit was horrendous, the temperature was uncomfortably cold, and there was no way to close the cockpit door with Jerry's injured legs sticking out.

Vivian checked the jury-rigged belt holding Jerry to the floor of the cockpit, then sat sideways in the second observer's seat, just as a young male voice cut through the overhead speakers: "ScotAir Fifty, I say again, ScotAir Fifty, this is the USS Eisenhower. Do you copy, over?" The voice was tinged with urgency.

Doc looked down at the UHF radio before looking back up at Scott with raised eyebrows. "He's on UHF guard, the emergency frequency. I just turned that on a minute ago!"

"I wonder how long he's been calling?" Scott asked.

Doc gestured to the left, where the two F-15's could still be seen holding in formation. "Scott, I asked our friends out there to help us find a ship to ditch beside. Maybe they did."

Scott put the microphone to his mouth to reply, then stopped and looked at the copilot.

"What did you say? What do you mean, 'ditch,' Doc?"

"We don't have a choice, Scott."

"Why? Of course we do!" Scott sounded frantic. "We can't ditch! Hell, we don't have life rafts, we've got a hole in the side the size of Cleveland, we've…"

"Scott!" Doc arched a thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of the left wing. "We've got a problem we didn't expect. We don't have enough fuel now to make it back." Scott's eyes were wide with alarm as Doc filled in the details of the leak in the number one tank caused by the cargo jettisoning process.

"I don't know which one got us. I never felt an impact."

Scott dropped his eyes and shook his head. "I guess I remember feeling that impact, but I was pretty busy at the time." He looked back at Doc, his voice constrained. "You know, we'll never survive a ditching."

Doc could see Scott breathing hard as his eyes focused again on the forward gauges. Suddenly he whirled to the right to study the fuel readouts on the engineer's panel and do some mental math. Finally he sat back with a long sigh and looked over at Doc again with a haunted expression.

"I… see what you mean. Not enough fuel, however we cut it."

"We can't get closer than fifty miles from the coast, and that's optimistic."

The voice from the Eisenhower returned, causing Scott to jump slightly.

"ScotAir Fifty, I say again, ScotAir Fifty, this is the USS Eisenhower. Do you copy, over?"

Scott hurriedly selected his microphone panel to the UHF radio and looked back at Doc. "You recognize the name?"

Doc Hazzard shook his head no.

"My old home. That's a flattop, Doc. That's the nuclear aircraft carrier I served on until last year. She's got rescue equipment, helicopters, and even a hospital aboard."

Scott keyed the microphone. "USS Eisenhower, this is ScotAir Fifty on 343.0. I hear you five-by."

"Yeah, but where is she?" Doc asked.

"That's exactly what we're going to find out," Scott said as he held the microphone and waited.

The voice came back tinged with excitement. "Roger, ScotAir, we have you five-by as well! We have an urgent message for you. Go immediately to the Medusa Weapon, enter the number '1' on your keyboard, and punch 'enter.' That should deactivate the weapon. Then report back to us on what happens. It is critical that you do this immediately. Message is from the Pentagon. We'll stand by."

Doc saw Scott's face go chalky white as he looked at the right seat and then straight ahead.

"What's that about, Scott?" Doc prompted.

Scott was shaking his head very slowly. His eyes snapped around to Doc's. "I was thinking of that, Doc. A minute before we dumped it. We could have just turned it off. But I didn't know the code."

"ScotAir, did you copy the instructions?" the Navy operator asked.

"The weapon is gone," Scott told the operator. "We dumped it almost ten minutes ago."

The voice of the F-15 lead pilot came on the frequency.

"Ah, ScotAir, that was the message we were sent to deliver, but you jettisoned before I could talk to you. We're monitoring the Eisenhower, by the way."

There was a long delay before the frequency came alive again.

"ScotAir, this is the Eisenhower. We understand the weapon is gone. Can we be of any assistance?"

Scott snorted, glanced at Doc, and rolled his eyes as he punched the button.

"You bet you can! Tell me precisely where you are, Eisenhower, in terms of latitude and longitude. We may need to put this aircraft in the water alongside you if you're close enough, and if we do that, we're going to need your rescue help."

Another voice—undoubtedly one of the watch officers, Scott concluded—came on the frequency.

"ScotAir? Eisenhower here. Say again."

Scott repeated the request.

There was another short delay.

"Ah, ScotAir, why don't you transmit your coordinates first, along with your speed, altitude, and heading?"

Doc shook his head in anger; but Scott raised his right hand to silence the protest as he looked closely at the global positioning satellite navigation readout and keyed the transmitter. "We're currently showing thirty-three degrees, forty-five-point-eight-five minutes north, seventy-three degrees, forty-one-point-five-zero minutes west. We're at twelve thousand feet, heading two-six-zero degrees magnetic, at a speed of two hundred ten knots. Now. How do we find you guys?"

Scott let up on the transmit button and glanced at Doc. "They'll need the captain's clearance to pass their position. They may just give us vectors."

"Security thing?" Doc asked.

Scott nodded.

There was silence for nearly thirty seconds before the Eisenhower came back.

"Okay, ScotAir, fly heading one-eight-five degrees and maintain your altitude."

Scott dialed in the new course and nodded at Doc's immediate turn to the south, then punched the transmit button again. "Okay, relay to the airboss I intend to ditch alongside the ship, and we'll need immediate rescue assistance. We have five souls on board, and one is badly injured—orthopedic injuries—another needs cardiac attention and monitoring."

"ScotAir, we're bucking seventy-knot winds down here and thirty-foot seas. Airboss is asleep. The flight deck's closed. Nothing's flying off this deck, including our helos."

Scott closed his eyes and thought a few seconds before replying.

"Okay, Eisenhower, here's the deal. Is this the watch officer?"

"Affirmative."

"We're crippled. We've got a cargo door missing and damage to our tail, and one engine physically off the airplane. We have a total of zero life rafts. Did you get that? Zero. We do have life jackets for all five of us, but one is injured too badly to swim, even with the jacket. If the seas are running thirty feet, we don't stand a very good chance of hitting the water without digging a wing and cartwheeling, and with this huge opening in the side, the bird will sink instantly, even if she doesn't break up. We're a Boeing 727 as you probably know. Translation? Without helos to pick us up quickly, we're dead. Would you please pass all that to the captain?"

"Roger, ScotAir."

"Is the captain still the same one as a year ago?"

"Affirmative."

"Then tell him Lieutenant Commander Scott McKay is urgently requesting his help."

There was a long pause. "You're Navy, Commander?"

"Recently deactivated. VF-142. Tigger was my call sign."

"Roger, Tigger. I'll relay."

Doc's expression was one of arched eyebrows and mock surprise, and Scott turned to meet it.

"What?"

"Tigger?" Doc asked, chuckling. "Tigger?"

"Yeah, Tigger. I tended to bounce a lot of landings in pilot training. They named me Tigger, you know, spring in my tail? You have a problem with that?" Scott asked. He tried to fake a scowl, but his heart wasn't in it.

"No!" Doc replied, holding his hands up to dismiss the idea while trying to keep from laughing. "Not at all."

There was silence between them for a few seconds.

"But?" Scott asked.

"But what?"

"You were going to add a 'but.' "

"No, not really. Just something about understanding your landing techniques better now."

Scott shook his head and smiled thinly before retreating into silence and his own thoughts. Doc watched him out of the corner of his eye as he fussed with the course and the engine instruments and tried to suppress the growing fear that was gnawing at him.

A brief hint of wet hair brushed the back of Scott's neck as Linda's voice found his ear. She was still clearing her throat, the trauma of exposure weighing heavily on her.

"Can we survive a ditching at sea, Scott?" she asked softly.

He turned and tried to smile. "We… have a chance. If we could land straight-ahead in the water, our biggest problem would be to get out of the belts and out of the airplane before it sinks."

"But it could cartwheel?" she asked.

Scott searched her eyes for a few seconds, then looked down and nodded his head without answering. Linda put her hand on his shoulder.

"It's too bad…" She paused to cough and clear her throat again. "It's too bad we can't just land on the carrier itself."

Scott shook his head vigorously. "Our wingspan's far too great for a carrier. We'd take out the ship's superstructure—the island—with our right wing if we tried it, even if they could clear the flight deck aft of the island in time. We'd end up whirling off the deck in flames."

The voice of the duty officer cut through the cockpit noise again.

"ScotAir, this is the Eisenhower. The captain says to tell you he's going to turn the ship downwind to enable a helo launch. We're working out a splashdown plan for you right now, Tigger. We recommend you go ahead and descend now to five thousand feet, present heading."

"Roger. Thanks a million! We're out of twelve thousand for five thousand feet."

Doc began the descent as he peered at the radarscope and brought their course to the left a bit to avoid another red splotch of vicious weather.

Vivian Henry had been following the exchange. She leaned forward now and tapped Scott on the side of his arm. "Scott?"

"Yes?" He leaned to the right to hear her.

"How much time is left on the countdown?"

"Ah, Doc's been keeping that."

Doc glanced at his watch. "Just under two minutes, Vivian, if that thing's still intact."

Linda motioned toward the copilot's window. "Are we… far enough away?"

Doc shrugged. "I don't know. We're close to sixty miles distant by now. But it's quite possible it just fragmented on impact with the water."

Linda could see Vivian quietly shaking her head, "You disagree, then?" Linda asked.

"Rogers didn't expect this prototype to be dropped from an airplane, but the original design was supposed to be hardened enough to survive almost anything. If he built it to those standards, it's still intact."

Doc sighed. "I don't know, Vivian. I figure it would have hit the water with a terminal velocity somewhere above three hundred fifty miles per hour."

"The only question I have, Doc," Vivian continued, "is whether you fellows can fly this jet without electronics."