Relentless

13

“You’re out of your mind!”

“Major, it’s not as if we had any choice.”

“You’re panicking. Any twin plane will fly on one engine-every schoolboy knows that.”

“And every schoolboy knows what happens when you run high-octane vapor over a hot exhaust pipe in low-pressure air that’s charged full of storm electricity. If we can get on the ground before that wing catches fire we’ll be lucky.”

And because it would have been anticlimactic he didn’t add that the fuel remaining in the port wing tank would be hardly enough to carry them fifty miles single-engine.

The earth tilted away beneath the wing and then rose again, swooping, making Hanratty cry out. The ground was all buckled up-foothills. Walker made a tight economical turn to starboard without adding any unnecessary power and headed for the flats. Behind him Baraclough said, “What about that highway?”

“Too far. We must be forty miles north of it.”

“No highway,” the Major snapped. “Use your head.”

He had about two thousand feet and the Apache was noseup to the horizon, struggling, beating a jagged track through the turbulence; the stall-warning light was flickering a wicked red. He had to shove things forward to pick up a little airspeed. Flaps down full. “See those handles?”

The Major followed his pointing finger. Walker said through his teeth, “When I tell you, pull.”

“What is it?”

“Landing gear. I’m going to have my hands full.”

The hills were flattening out underneath. Nothing in sight but scrub. Cutbank gullies ran out onto the flats from groined foothill canyons and there were house-sized boulders scattered around like Easter Island statues.

Little shocks ran through the wings and the plane lurched: they were crossing the leading edge of the storm front again. Walker had one eye on the starboard wing: no sign of flames yet. “If anybody knows how to pray this might be a good time for it.”

Baraclough said, “If you’re half the pilot you think you are you’ll get us down in one piece.”