Relentless

14

The sky was cut down the middle in two neat halves: black storm to the west, cobalt blue clarity to the east. In the cockpit it was cold and there was no more talk, only the gutteral growl of the port engine. The Apache had no more than five hundred feet and now there was a flicker of flame on the starboard nacelle. The wind whipped it away and for the moment it was gone.

He was looking for a flat stretch clear of boulders and uncut by gullies. The sun was behind the storm and there were no clear shadows; the bad light made it hard to judge the terrain. Walker’s eyes whipped from point to point.

Flame burst from the nacelle again and Walker toggled the starboard extinguisher. He heard the hiss of foam; he didn’t waste time looking. It wouldn’t matter now anyway.

With all power concentrated on the port side the plane had a heavy tendency to yaw and tilt. The little airplane silhouette on the turn-and-bank indicator was all over the gauge. She still had a hundred and ten knots airspeed but even at that she wanted to corkscrew.

“Over there,” the Major breathed. “Flat as an ironing board.”

“Don’t kid yourself. That’s soft clay. But it’ll have to do.” He had to turn counter to the plane’s tendency to spiral right; she fought him heavily and they were all pitched violently around in the cabin.

“You’re going to overshoot,” Baraclough hissed.

“Shut up. Gear down- pull! ”

He could hardly budge the controls. His ears picked up the grind and thud of the landing gear going down. The straining port engine throbbed and chattered. “Brace,” he said.

The ground came up slowly and she was beginning to tilt, banking into the beginnings of a spiral; at seventy-five feet he shot his hand forward to the board, snapped off fuel and. ignition, punched the feathering button. Sudden silence: the rush of wind over the wings. Hit this wrong and there’ll be nothing left of us but a spot of grease.

The greasewood clumps were bigger than they had looked from the air. Silent flames began to flicker from the engine again. He shoved the nose down, dead stick, fishtailing with the rudder to reduce speed, and he thought Christ I’m coming in too fast… He had overshot the first hundred feet and there was a gully running across their path up ahead there and he shoved the nose down savagely and only yanked it up at the last instant, hauling the wheel back into the pit of his belly. If the nosewheel hit first she’d flip right over on her back and crumple them all to jelly. No sound at all now, then the cracking of twigs, the earth rushing past and under them, waiting for the ultimate sickening grab and flip… He had a vision of the gray Portland runway swooping up above his head as the old DC-6B had crashed-and he almost closed his eyes.

… She hit on her main gear: hit and bounced, nose-high, tailskid flicking off a bush. For an instant she was airborne again and then she settled in, main wheels snagging thickly into the soft clay of the earth, bringing the nosewheel down with a blow that slammed them all forward against their seatbelts. Greasewood rushed toward them and around them and against them. The starboard nacelle was fully on fire now and the wheels snagged against roots and rocks, rivets sprang loose in the airframe, a branch scratched the length of the fuselage with a wicked chatter. The gully was dead ahead and coming toward them too fast and so Walker did a groundloop by hitting the right footbrake and putting her into a spin. She whipped around in twice her own length and tried to stand up on her wingtip and there was a moment when he knew they were going over backwards… And she settled back down, right side up on her gear, with a jarring crash that crumpled the port oleo and left her sitting in her own dust cloud on one main wheel and one wingtip.

He sat suspended, breathing in and breathing out. Finally he reached for the extinguisher handle and started the pump. Foam smothered the flames on the starboard nacelle and covered the windows on that side like lather out of a pushbutton shaving-cream can.

Baraclough said hoarsely, “Holy Mother of God.”