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The yellow Piper Cub, tiny against the sprawling backdrop of the Rocky Mountains, banked into a slow rolling turn as it entered the flight pattern. Beneath it and to the left, fifteen foot high letters spelled out ‘Mountain View Airpark Tredway Colo’ across the tops of two hangars.
Flying the pattern at eight hundred feet above the airport, the plane continued downward for a minute or two, seeming to float across a cloudless blue sky. Then it started another lazy bank to the left. Now on his base leg, the pilot watched for a signal light from the tower. Almost immediately it came: green, all clear to land. It executed another left turn, this one steep. Its engine throttled back, and the Cub glided in to an effortless touch-down on the rising runway.
Inside the tower, a blond woman said, “Cub’s down, Jack. Hear any more from that mayday?”
At the control board, Jack O’Neill shook his head, and stretched his aching back. His twelve hour shift was minutes from being over. Samantha Carter, the blonde, was his relief, who’d cover the next twelve hours, when the cycle would start all over again. It was a brutal schedule, but it also meant he only worked four days a week.
It had been several minutes now since O’Neill had heard the scratchy, indistinct, ‘Mayday’ over the radio; the signal which indicated a plane in distress. He fiddled with the receiver band, then the volume control. The earphones produced less static, but no more of a signal than the loudspeaker had. Another delicate turn of the band produced nothing.
It was slow, tedious work, but the kind Jack O’Neill was made for. The kind of work that everybody else at the airport would rib him for, but appreciate his ability at nonetheless. They said worrying over details would make an old man out of him, and maybe that was true. Quite a bit of gray was flecked in his otherwise black crew-cut; too many for a guy not yet fifty. But those gray hairs and the subtle network of wrinkles around his eyes hadn’t been free. He’d earned every last one of them the hard way.
O’Neill continued to work the controls, eyes glued to the knobs and dials that were his element.
Suddenly, clearly, a voice came again: “Mayday! Help me. Please help me!”
O’Neill felt the words like a physical blow. It was a kid’s voice. Every terror a child’s mind can hold registered in his crying, panicked voice. Terror of height, of being alone, of facing the unknown, those terrors and a dozen more.
“Dad’s sick. Please… I don’t know how to fly this airplane.”
For a brief second, O’Neill sat paralyzed. He’d handled maydays before, dozens of them, but a kid… was a kid trying to fly his dad’s airplane?
O’Neill shook himself sternly, clearing the haze from his mind.
“Get Swanson,” he ordered Carter, “then call the CAA.”
She scrambled from her desk, then turned when she got to the doorway.
“You sure you want Swanson?,” she asked. “He’ll hit the panic button for sure when he hears this.”
“I don’t want him, no,” O’Neill bit back, “but he’s the acting manager.”
The frantic voice continued over the loudspeaker, sobbing, crying and shrieking, “Mayday! Please help me. Somebody help me!”
O’Neill had the microphone in his hand already.
“Aircraft in distress, this is Mountain View radio at Tredway, we read you. Repeat, this is Mountain View radio at Tredway, we read you.”
There was no acknowledgement from the airplane. When O’Neill switched his set from ‘Send’ to ‘Receive’, the voice was still there, begging for help. Then, there was nothing but sobs.
O’Neill didn’t try to send anything more; he knew there was no need. As long as he could hear the boy’s voice, he knew the other radio was set to ‘Send’. Until the boy let go of the mike switch he wouldn’t be able to hear O’Neill.
The door behind him burst open, and heavy thumping followed as a big man stalked across the room to his desk. That would be Swanson.
Swanson, the majority stakeholder in the airpark. Swanson, who didn’t know jack about airplanes or flying, but knew that fueling and hangaring them was good business, and had enough clout to get himself named acting manager of the small airfield while the boss was away. He looked more blubbery, sweaty, and scared than usual.
“What’s this about a kid in an airplane?,” he bellowed. “You can’t bring a kid to this airport. He’ll crash, you fool!”
At that instant the loudspeaker went silent. Ignoring Swanson, O’Neill grabbed for the mike.
“Aircraft in distress, this is Tredway. Can you hear me? Can you hear me?”
From his earphones and the speaker came the tiny voice again, still scared, but a shade less hysterical.
“I can hear you… Can you help me?”
It was a start. O’Neill toggled the mike. They had to get something straightened out from the get-go.
“Hello. This is Tredway again. Listen, I can’t talk to you when you push the button on your mike. You’ve got to release it when you’re not talking. Otherwise, you won’t be able to hear me. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” came the shaky reply. “Dad told me that before he… before he passed out. I just remembered.”
“Who are you?,” O’Neill probed. “Do you know where you are?”
“I don’t know where I am. I’m lost.”
Swanson gripped O’Neill’s shoulder with a panicked grasp.
“Don’t bring him here,” he ordered. “We don’t want kids cracking up on this field. Did you hear me, O’Neill? Don’t bring him here!”
O’Neill felt his stomach knot with fear. Not fear like Swanson’s or even like the kid’s. Theirs was a fear of the unknown. His was the fear of the airman who knew and respected the element of the pilot. Wondering if it was too early in the day to start drinking, he reached for the mike again.
“Is there anyone in the plane with you besides your dad?,” he radioed.
“No,” said the boy. A few seconds of silence followed. “Dad was flying. He said he was going to be sick, so he set the plane to fly by itself and showed me how to work the radio.”
O’Neill looked at the other two in the tower. Swanson looked like he was about to pass out. Carter’s face reflected her disbelief.
They’re scared, he thought. They’re scared and they’ve never even been through this before. What if they were like me? How much worse would that be.
His mind flashed unbidden to the memory of a mass of twisted, flaming wreckage. It had been right there, not fifty yards away from where he sat. He hadn’t been able to watch as they’d pulled Heggen’s mangled body from the conflagration.
I couldn’t even talk Heggen in. And he was a pilot.
“Can you help us, mister?,” the voice from the speaker jarred him back to reality.
“Sure we can, son,” he replied, forcing a calm assurance he didn’t feel into his voice. His throat had suddenly gone dry. “My name is Jack. What’s yours? And where were you headed?”
The boy’s name was Frankie Morgan. He and his father had left Stafford Field in Kansas at seven that morning. About twenty minutes ago, the elder Morgan had complained of sudden and terrible pains. Those listening in the tower knew the rest.
“Where were you headed, Frankie?,” O’Neill asked.
“”Tredway,” said the sobbing boy, “in Colorado.”
At the mention of Tredway, Swanson bolted to his feet. Before he could say a word, O’Neill turned to him.
“Get on the phone downstairs and call Peterson. See if they have any planes flying in this area. We’ve got to locate that kid.”
“The Air Force! Of course!,” Swanson chirped. “I’ll call them now. They’ll know what to do. They’re used to dealing with these things.”
“Nobody's used to these things,” O’Neill said to his departing back. “Sam, get on the air. Use every frequency you’ve got but this one. Clear all air traffic in the grid. Nobody comes within seventy five miles of Tredway, from zero to ninety degrees.”
“Can’t you find him with radar?,” Carter asked as she moved to comply. It was funny how no one thought to question O’Neill’s orders. Twenty years as an Air Force officer had some benefit after all, and not just as a 25% discount at the cafe.
“Too much ground clutter,” he answered. “There’s no way he’s much above a thousand feet. We’d never be able to pick him out amongst all the sensor ghosts.”
He heard Carter’s voice, droning out its emergency warning to anyone listening.
Why try?, he asked in spite of himself. A man who knows nothing can’t fly a plane. What chance does a scared kid have?
Shut up. Maybe the kid does know something. Maybe you should quit being a gloomy ass and find out.
“Frankie,” he radioed. “You’re still with me, aren’t you?”
“I hear you, Mr. Jack.”
The voice wasn’t steady, not by a long shot, but it was a good deal steadier than it had been.
The kid’s got guts, he thought.
“How old are you, Frankie?,” he asked.
“Eleven.”
O’Neill stared at the mike in his hand.
Eleven.
Sweet Jesus, WHY?
Eleven.
He’d figured, or at least hoped, the kid might be fourteen or fifteen. But eleven…?
“Frankie, have you flown much with your dad?,” he asked.
“This is only my second time,” the boy answered. “Dad hasn’t had the plane long. He only got his license last week.”
O’Neill started to speak, hesitated, and then decided to plunge ahead. The kid deserved to know what he was up against.
“Frankie, I’m going to level with you. You and your dad are in a tight spot. I can’t fly your airplane from here. You’re the only person who can fly it. So you’re going to have to learn how, and it’s not going to be easy. You can do it, Frankie. It won’t be easy, but I can tell you how.”
The response came fast. Every time the boy spoke, he seemed just a little more confident, just a little more assured.
“I think I can do it, Mr. Jack. You tell me how, and I think I can fly this plane.”
No one but a kid would have looked at it that way- an eleven year old kid at that. Any younger, and the boy would have been too young to learn and too small to manage the controls. Any older and he’d have realized just what he was up against. Maybe eleven wasn’t such a bad age after all. Maybe eleven was just about right.
Swanson burst back into the tower, almost giddy with his news.
“Peterson has three jets in the area. They’re fanning out from here toward Stafford. They’re also sending a rescue chopper in case the kid goes down. They can take care of the situation now. Uh, Jack, you just tell the kid to switch over to the Air Force frequency and sign off. You’re done. Your shift was over ten minutes ago.”
O’Neill stared at him in disbelief. He’d known such men existed, but had never met one personally before. Just then, Carter’s voice broke in.
“I’ve got the first jet on my set now. He’s spotted an aircraft inbound for Tredway. It’s an Ercoupe. Ask Frankie if that’s him.”
“Ercoupe? Christ Almighty, did his dad rob a museum?,” O’Neill muttered under his breath.
“Frankie, this is Jack again. Do you know what kind of plane you’re flying in? Is it an Ercoupe?”
“It sure is, Mr. Jack,” the boy answered proudly.
“Roger!,” called Carter. “Number two jet is flying just over his nose at twelve o’clock.”
“Is an airplane flying straight at you, Frankie?,” O’Neill asked.
“I see a plane coming. Now it's turning.”
“That’s our boy, all right,” Carter said. “Pilot says the Ercoupe’s headed dead-on for Tredway, fifty miles out. We’ll get him here yet, Jack.”
O’Neill felt a strange sensation every time Carter called him by name. Nothing he could put a finger on, but strange nonetheless.
“What good will that do?,” Swanson screeched, eyes glazing with fear. “He’ll crash. And unless we turn it over to the military, they’ll blame us. Tell the Air Force to figure something out. They’ve got to take over.”
O’Neill started to swear. The veins in his neck and hands stood out, pulsating with the intense desire to throttle Swanson. Suddenly, he turned again to the mike.
“Good news, Frankie,” he radioed, mentally switching gears and remembering to put on his ‘happy’ voice. “You’re headed straight for us. All you’ve got to do is keep coming the way you’re coming.”
“But what if the plane starts to turn? How will I know to turn it back?,” Frankie began to panic again.
“I’ll tell you about all that pretty soon,” O’Neill soothed. “Just hold on. In the meantime, I have to look up a few things about your dad’s plane, so I’m going to let you talk to my partner, Sam. She needs you to read some of the gauges and dials for her.”
“Mr. Jack, did you say Sam was a girl?”
O’Neill gave Carter a sidelong glance.
“Yes, Frankie, Sam is definitely a girl. Now you be a good fella and help her out.”
“O.k., Mr. Jack.”
O’Neill turned to Swanson. This was going to be the toughest sales pitch of his life.
“Okay, Swanson, we know when he left Stafford- roughly two and a half hours ago- and we know where he’s headed. Right here at Tredway. If he’s fifty miles out, that leaves him about thirty minutes of flying time before he gets here.”
“So?,” Swanson asked belligerently.
“So,” O’Neill went on, “most Ercoupes carry about six hours of fuel in their tanks, but we need to make sure. And we’ll want to make sure he was full up on gas when he left Stafford. Why don’t you get back on the phone and call Stafford Field? If you can find out, then we’ll know he has about three hours of fuel when he gets here.”
“I’ll check,” Swanson acquiesced gruffly, “but I don’t know what good it’ll do. What’s the difference if he has three hours or three minutes when he gets here?”
O’Neill closed his eyes as Swanson barged out the door, then slowly reopened them.
“I wish I knew, jackass. I really wish I knew.”
He waited a minute while Carter finished running down a checklist with the boy, then toggled the mike again.
“All right, Frankie, I’m back.”
“Mr. Jack?,’ the boy asked.
“What’s on your mind, young man?,” O’Neill said with a levity he didn’t really feel.
“Is Miss Sam pretty? Because she sure sounds pretty.”
Carter flushed bright pink, and O’Neill snorted in laughter, reminding himself that this was an eleven year old boy he was talking to.
“Yes, Frankie, I’d say Miss Sam is very pretty,” he said, giving Carter a sidelong glance. She was still bright pink. “Ready for your first flying lesson?,” he asked, trying to get things back on track. “Still think you can do it?”
“I’ll… I’ll sure try, Mr. Jack.”
“Good boy. Now, do you know if your airplane has what’s called an automatic pilot? You said that before your dad passed out, he set the plane to fly itself.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Jack. Dad just kept adjusting a little knob.”
“Look at the knob, Frankie. Tell me if it has any writing on it,” Carter interjected.
“It’s got stuff on it, Miss Sam. There’s an arrow and the words ‘Nose Up’ and another arrow and the words ‘Nose Down’.”
“Trim tab,” Carter said. “I didn’t think a plane that small would have an auto pilot. It’s just trimmed out. This is not good.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” O’Neill affirmed. “Tell those jets to advise us the second he goes off the straight and level. And Sam… better call the hospital, too. We’re gonna need an ambulance for the dad. Assuming they make it down in one piece.”
Carter started to go, then thought better of it and sat back down.
“Level with me, Jack. What are his chances?”
O’Neill looked at her for a moment.
They hadn’t been around each other much. Aside from momentary status updates in passing, and the occasional “Hey, how ya doin’?’ they barely knew each other. He had no idea how much of his background she knew, and all he knew of hers was that she’d been booted out of the Air Force Academy after a series of epic pranks went wrong.
He'd heard idle talk that her father was some bigwig Air Force brass, but if he was, he apparently didn't have enough pull to keep her out of trouble. Given his own inglorious exit from the Air Force, he could sympathize. O’Neill tried to weigh out how much he owed her the truth against her possibly panicking like Swanson. He realized she was still looking at him expectantly.
"Not good," he growled, erring on the side of truthfulness . "But he's got a better chance with us than those monkeys at Peterson. Those guys are all about jets; they know beans about prop aircraft."
She nodded in frank acceptance, then hurried off to start working the phones. This was going to require a lot of coordination.
O’Neill waited a few seconds before picking up the mike again. Now it would begin- talking the kid in and down. He shuddered as he remembered the one other time he’d had to do it. Heggen’s plane. He remembered Heggen’s twisted, mutilated body, blown thirty feet from the wreckage, covered in blazing aviation fuel. He closed his eyes. This wasn’t helping.
“Okay, Frankie, here we go on lesson one. Do you know what your control wheel is? Maybe your dad calls it a stick.”
“Sure,” replied the boy. “Dad always calls it the stick.”
“Well, Frankie, we’re going to use your stick to turn the plane.”
Thus started the toughest teaching job in Jack O’Neill’s career. And so, too, started the race- against time, against distance, against fear. The one saving grace was that the Ercoupe, although an almost sixty year old airframe, was the safest private aircraft design ever created. A number of standard controls were combined together in innovative ways that made the aircraft much simpler to fly. The rudder pedals, for example, which were tricky to get the hang of operating, were integrated into the aileron control linkage, so the boy would only have two things to operate: the stick, and the throttle. For the first time, O’Neill began to feel a tiny sliver of hope.
“Now listen to this, Frankie,” he radioed. “Let’s play like we want to turn right. All you have to do is turn the control wheel a little to the right, and the plane will bank in that direction. Got that?”
“Sure, Mr. Jack.”
“Okay, but to stop the plane from turning, you’ve got to do more than just move the wheel back to where it was. You turn it to the left just a little bit. Then you turn it back to where it was.”
Even to O’Neill’s own ears, it sounded confusing, but turn and banks were the easiest to learn.
Should he teach the kid compass or navigation? No, because the jets were shadowing him. Throttle? He’d have to know that. Carburetor control? Oil gauge? RPM’s? No. Too confusing for an eleven year-old mind. Air speed indicator? Yes, he’d have to know that.
The minutes passed swiftly, too swiftly, while the instruction went painfully slow. If O’Neill could have only shown him, stead of just telling him. And the talking had to sound so understanding, so casual when the kid didn’t grasp a point. Otherwise, the panic would start again.
The panic came again anyway, even after the boy had seemed to catch on so well. Banking had been easy, almost too easy. Use of the throttle didn’t seem to be too hard for him, all his climbs and glides had been satisfactory. But when O’Neill tried to combine the operations, the boy lost his nerve.
“I’ll crash… I’ll crash. I can’t do it. I can’t turn the wheel and push the throttle, too. Help me. Please help me, Mr. Jack.”
“You can’t blame him, Jack,” Carter whispered. “My God, he’s only eleven.”
O’Neill didn’t blame him, but he didn’t have time to sympathize with him, either, not with the lower peaks of the Rocky Mountain range just a few short miles ahead. He toggled the mike switch.
“Listen to me, Frankie, and get this straight! Quit bawling. Your dad’s in there, too. Are you going to keep crying and crash, or are you going to man up and bring your dad to the hospital?”
Although not naturally a religious man, he breathed a silent prayer. Yelling at the kid wasn’t something he enjoyed, but he’d have to do whatever it took.
“OK, Mr. Jack,” a quiet voice answered meekly. “I’ll try again.”
Suddenly Swanson burst back into the room, more nervous than O’Neill had ever seen him before.
“He’s out of gas!,” he bellowed. “He’s out of gas!”
“What? Who’s out of gas?,’ snarled O’Neill, irritated at the interruption. “What are you talking about?”
“He didn’t have your six hours’ worth of fuel to start with- not when he left Stafford, anyway. The plane fueled in Kansas City this morning at four o’clock. The boy started out at Stafford all right, but his dad just picked him up there.. He’d been visiting his grandparents.”
It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t reasonable. O’Neill grabbed the mike.
“Frankie, I’ve got a question for you. Did you and your dad stop for gas anywhere after you let Stafford this morning?”
“No, sir, we didn’t land at all.”
“Do you remember if your dad said anything about stopping before he got to Stafford?”
“Sure, Mr. Jack,” he answered. “Grandpa asked him if he’d flown straight there from home, and dad said yes.”
“Okay, Frankie, that’s all I want to know.”
He laid the mike aside in frustration and turned to Swanson.
“I don’t understand why in the hell they didn’t gas up at Stafford.”
“Because the pumps weren’t open then,” Swanson answered, pacing the room nervously. “They didn’t open until nine o’clock.” Swanson started blubbering in fear. “It’s all over… all over.”
“Swanson,” O’Neill growled, “get out of here!”
“I’ve got him on radar,” Carter said. “He’s coming in pretty close, about fifteen miles out. Are you going to bring him straight in for a landing?”
O’Neill peered over Carter’s shoulder at the telltale blip on the scope, and couldn’t help catching a slight whiff of scent from her. He couldn’t tell if it was shampoo or soap or what, but it was alluring nonetheless. He forced himself to focus, and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“He’d crash for sure,” he finally grated. “He’s still so clumsy with the controls. I’ll have him circle the field once. That’ll give him practice at four more turns. Maybe that’ll be enough.”
You’re teaching a man how to fly, and he’s sharp, but not quite sharp enough. So, you give him more practice. A dozen or four dozen turns under close supervision before you teach him how to land. So now you’re teaching this kid, and you give him four practice turns before bringing him in for his first solo landing. It wasn’t fair, but it was the hand they’d been dealt.
“Stay on the line with him, Sam. I’ve gotta hit the head before he gets here. Twelve hours’ worth of coffee is knocking to get out. I’ll be back in a sec.”
Swanson, veins popping out of his neck, shouted at O’Neill.
“You got a man killed with one of these landings already, and now you’re going to bring a kid in here to crash? You’re fired, O’Neill! Get out of this tower!”
O’Neill gave him a steady, level glare.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” he said finally. “When I get back, you’d better be somewhere else, Swanson.”
He trotted down the tower stairs two at a time, not bothering to look back.
Realizing he was short on time, he quickly conducted his business in the lavatory, then stopped at the sink to splash cold water on his face. He made the mistake of looking at his reflection in the mirror.
What the hell are you doing?, he asked the other him. Swanson’s right. You got Heggen killed. And he’s not the only one. He’s just the only one they know about. Kawalsky. Noyes. Hell, you couldn’t even save Charlie.
Charlie.
Dear God Almighty, now is not the time for that. Not with a kid at the stick,.
Jack O’Neill didn’t have any mirrors at home for a damned good reason.
He was met at the foot of the tower stairs by the sole security guard at Tredway field.
“I can’t let you go back up, Jack,” he said regretfully. “Swanson’s orders. You’re to be escorted off premises immediately.”
It was exactly the kind of dick move he should have been expecting from Swanson; he should have just pissed in the corner instead. On second thought, he wasn’t sure he could have done that in front of Sam. He wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t relish the thought of having to be an ass in front of her. It was troublesome in a way, because he’d long considered himself to be past that kind of twitterpated behavior.
“Joe,” he said quietly, “I’m very sorry to put you in this position, but this is gonna go down one of two ways. You’re gonna let me go back up those stairs and have it out with Swanson mano a mano, or I’m going to lock you in the broom closet and then go upstairs and have it out with Swanson. Your choice.”
They looked at each other evenly. Joe had retired from the Denver police after thirty years as a street cop; the security gig was to fight off boredom and fill the few gaps his pension didn’t cover. There were lots of things about O’Neill he didn’t know, but he'd glimpsed the cover letter on O'Neill's personnel file, and there were lots of things he suspected. He’d observed the Purple Heart license plate on the big black pickup, and the Air Force Special Operations Command tattoo on O’Neill’s right tricep. He might have just been an overly-enthusiastic fan boy, but most of those went with the SEAL team trident, instead of some obscure tactical group no one had heard of. Balanced against that was the smooth, easy economy of his stride, and the calm, assured manner of his bearing. Joe knew the magnum revolver he carried on his hip didn’t intimidate O’Neill in the slightest, and that may have been the deciding factor. He quietly stepped aside.
“Thanks, Joe,” he said quietly as he started up the stairs.
“Bring him down, Colonel,” Joe called after him.
“That’s ‘COL (Ret.)’,” O’Neill corrected without breaking stride.
As he pounded up the stairs, he could hear Swanson’s angry voice echoing out of the control room, answered by Carter’s irritated tones. He’d never realized how nasty she could sound when she wanted to.
“Jack says we can do it,” she was saying.
“I don’t care what O’Neill thinks,” Swanson snarled. “He’s not in charge here, I AM. I just fired him. You get on the radio and tell that kid to switch to the Air Force frequency, or I’ll fire you, too! He’s not coming in here, and that’s final!”
It was tempting to hang back a second and listen to see if she diced him up into mincemeat, but O’Neill charged ahead anyway, and stood in the doorway, glowering at Swanson. The Acting Manager’s back was to him, but Carter was facing the doorway, and her already insolent grin got wider as he came into view.
“What are you smiling about?,’ Swanson snapped, then noticed Carter wasn’t looking at him, but behind him. He slowly pivoted, and the second he caught sight of O’Neill, scurried past him and down the stairs, hiccoughing in fear.
“That was something,” O’Neill observed dryly, sliding into his seat. Carter’s mouth crinkled in disgust.
“Thought he was a tiger, turns out he was a pussycat,” she agreed. “You didn’t hurt Joe, did you?’
It may have been his imagination, but there was an undercurrent of threat in her voice. Who knew? Maybe seventy-year-old retirees were her type.
"He's fine," O'Neill soothed. "What's radar look like?"
"Radar looks like…," she trailed off into silence, then she turned a startled gaze outside. “Shit, I’ve got visual,” Carter growled, stabbing a finger at the sky. O’Neill stared at the growing speck, wondering how much valuable time had been eaten up by jackassery. He grabbed the mike, hoping the kid hadn’t started panicking again while all of Swanson’s foolishness had been going on.
“Okay Frankie,” he radioed. “I can see you. Are you still ok?”
“I’m still here, Mr. Jack,” he answered.
“We’re ready for you to circle the field. Remember, every time you bank, you’ll have to increase the throttle, just like before. Otherwise you’ll stall out.”
“I’ll… I’ll remember, Mr. Jack,” came the shaky reply.
“You’re still a long way from the field, Frankie, so we’ll make the first turn nice and gentle. This first one won’t even be a ninety-degree turn. Just half a turn, so you’ll be parallel to the runway. Now, give your plane extra power, and bank a little to the right.”
He watched breathlessly as the boy followed his directions, turned a halting forty five degrees, then leveled off and flew straight again.
“Next time give your throttle a little more power,” he instructed. “Now here’s the deal. You’re flying south right now. We’ll make four more turns and you’ll be flying south again. Then you’ll land. But I want to warn you about something. If you have any engine trouble, or run out of gas, don’t worry. You don’t have to land on a runway, and I can tell you how to get down safely. Now make your first turn.”
The plane made a hesitating bank to the right.
“Do you think I’ll run out of gas, Mr. Jack?”
“Of course not, but I don’t want you being scared in case you run into any trouble. Make your second turn. This leg will be longer than the first, so we can get you back down to the right spot for runway approach.”
He smiled as the boy nosed into his second turn. It was up to acceptable standards in any pilot’s log book.
“You’re looking good, Frankie. Two more like that, and you’ll be ready to land.”
The wait while the small Ercoupe flew past the length of the runway was interminable. Within five minutes, this would be settled one way or the other, but waiting was the worst part; acting was easy.
“Christ,” O’Neill breathed. Almost imploringly, he looked at Carter.
“Sam,” he asked, “am I doing the right thing?”
Carter uncharacteristically wouldn’t look him in the eye.
“I… I don’t know,” she stumbled. “All I know is that, since I’ve worked with you, you’ve never done the wrong thing.”
“I did the wrong thing once,” O’Neill muttered. “At least most people think I did.”
Heggen in the snow-blinded plane, flying with windows frosted and ice on the wings. O’Neill talking him in by radio. Heggen should never have been flying that day, but he was. And he trusted his friend and instructor to bring him in safely.
Again, he felt the explosion. Sleeping and waking, he’d felt it for six years.
O’Neill gulped a deep breath, and the hand that held the mike trembled a little bit.
“Another turn to your right, Frankie. This is your next to last turn.”
Again, a flawless bank- no. He hadn’t added enough power. The plane lost altitude. If the boy had been too near the ground…
“Drop your nose, add power!,” O’Neill barked, not caring for niceties.
A split second later, the turn was done, and he heaved a deep sigh of relief.
He walked to the window and looked, for the first time, at the crowd that was starting to gather below. Pilots, passengers, and a few other random passers-by were milling around. No announcement had been made, but there was an undercurrent of tension in the air everybody felt. They all knew something was up.
He knew what he could expect from them all if the boy crashed.
“Mr. Jack, isn’t it time for me to turn?”
He didn’t care what the crowds thought, he didn’t give a flying fig about his permanent record, he only had one thought: get that kid down in one piece.
“Yeah, Frankie,” he radioed. “Last turn, make it the best one.”
And it was, by far, the best turn of the day. Everything was perfect. Like so many kids, this one was a natural flyer. If he’d only had another hour or two…
Carter’s voice echoed over the loudspeaker outside.
“Attention! Attention! This is an emergency. Repeat, emergency. Scramble crash trucks and fire crews. Clear all runways and taxi strips. All non-crash personnel stand clear of the runway and flight line. THIS IS NOT A DRILL!”
Below, the airport became a madhouse. Plane owners ran to their aircraft on the flight line. A couple were already taxiing back to their hangars. Mechanics ran to board crash trucks. Two ambulances already sat at the ramp, poised and waiting.
The plane, about three quarters of a mile out, was headed straight down the runway.
“Okay, Frankie,” O’Neill said. We’re going down. We’re going to lose altitude just a little at a time. Cut back on your throttle, and pull back on your stick a little until the indicator says ninety.”
The seconds dragged agonizingly by.
“It does, Mr. Jack. It says ninety.”
“Now lower your nose until it says a hundred.”
“It does, it says a hundred.”
O’Neill studied the angle of descent. Not steep enough. The plane, which he’d kept high for turning practice, was too high for a normal glide path. He’d overshoot the runway.
“Pull back on your throttle more, all the way if you have to. Pull back on the stick, too. Until the indicator says eighty-five.”
The glide looked better now, with the engine throttled all the way back, but eighty-five was just a shade too slow. Ninety was just right for an Ercoupe. He’d have the boy hold it here for a bit before increasing speed.
“It’s hard to hold the stick back, Mr. Jack. It keeps pulling forward.”
“Hold it back anyway, Frankie,” O’Neill instructed. “You’re doing great.”
He remembered his own first landings. With the throttle back and the nose trying to drop, it had been hard to hold the stick back. It had seemed to be drawn to the firewall by a powerful magnet. This was why eleven was perfect. Any younger and he’d never have been able to hold back the stick.
More seconds passed. The plane was at four hundred feet elevation, an eighth of a mile from the runway’s end.
“What’s your speed, Frankie?”
“Eighty-five.”
“Okay, hold it there.”
It wasn’t hard to imagine what the boy was going through. Up high, at three thousand feet, maneuvers had seemed slow, lazy. Everything was leisurely. At four hundred feet, everything would be a blur. The ground would be whizzing by at an impossible speed. Houses, streets, telephone poles would be a blur.
“Don’t look straight down, Frankie,” O’Neill advised. “If you have to look, look out from your plane, a little to one side.”
“I can’t, Mr. Jack… I can’t do this.”
“Yes, you can,” O’Neill replied firmly. “You’ve already done it. The hard part is over. Lower your nose just a little. Until the indicator says ninety.”
Whatever doubts the boy was having, he complied. Lower and lower the plane came. It looked smooth. It looked professional. It looked like any routine landing at any small airport. But O’Neill knew differently. He knew the pilot was only eleven… and scared.
Three hundred feet. Then two hundred. The plane passed the boundary markers. He was over the apron at the end of the runway proper.
One hundred feet.
He could hear the engine now. Even throttled back, the prop gave the craft a small share of lift, and insurance. If anything went wrong, they could increase the throttle, fly off and try again.
Then he heard and saw it at the same instant. The cough. The sputter. The invisible prop blades windmilling into visibility as they slowed. Out of gas!
“Help me, Mr. Jack! It stopped!”
“Hold, on, Frankie!,” O’Neill shouted.
The boy held on. He cried, he screamed, but he held on.
Seventy-five feet.
Fifty feet.
“You’re doing great, kid. Don’t talk, just keep it up.”
Thirty feet.
Twenty feet.
Now was the time that made all the difference. Now was the time an approach becomes a landing; a dead stick landing at that.
“Pull back on your stick a little more, Frankie… a little more… a little more.”
Fifteen feet, then lower still.
“Keep pulling back. A little more. More.”
The plane’s nose lifted, gliding it parallel to the ground, yet slowly descending to it. The Ercoupe was in a perfect attitude.
“Now!,” O’Neill shouted. “All the way back! Pull it all the way back! Pull the stick back as far as it will go!”
Five feet.
Three.
Almost there…
“He’s down!,” Carter shouted in exultation. “He made it! My God, but he made it!”
“Let go of the stick, Frankie,” O’Neill instructed. “Let go of it completely. The plane will take care of itself now. Congratulations, son. You made it.”
The aircraft headed down the runway, losing speed rapidly. Then it coasted to a stop. Before the little person inside had a chance to open the cover, the airplane was swarmed with crash crews, firemen and paramedics. Swanson was there too, of course. Getting in the way and generally causing havoc.
O’Neill took off his headphones and slumped in his seat, exhausted. He rubbed his eyes. Unexpectedly, he felt hands on his shoulders from behind and something warm and moist was pressed to his cheek.
“You were magnificent, Mr. Jack,” Carter whispered in his ear. He looked up in surprise as she straightened and left the tower. He could hear her light tread ringing in the stairwell.
Looking around, still slightly flustered, he noticed the Ercoupe was sitting abandoned on the runway. Business was business. He called maintenance to dispatch a tractor to pick it up, but no one answered. Grumbling under his breath, he got up to do it himself.
Downstairs, in the lobby area, nearly a dozen people were milling around, making the jam-packed room impossible to traverse.
He caught random snatches of conversation as he wormed around bodies.
“... I think the matter stream got redirected…”
“...no giggling now…”
“...don’t know why it won’t work...”
“...ice as far as the eye can see...”
O’Neill threaded his way through the crowd and outside, where there was a group that had to be almost fifty strong. He wondered where in the world they had all come from. Shivering against the unexpected cold, he wished he’d worn his coat. Edging around a knot of bodies he heard someone say, “The guy’s going to be alright. EMTs said it was an appendix, but he got here in time.”
It was really, insanely cold out all of a sudden. There was no wind, but it felt like an Arctic front on the back of his neck.
Then suddenly, someone shouted, “There he is!,” and all eyes turned towards O’Neill.. They were silent for a moment, then a cheer went up, almost deafening in its volume.
Then, just as suddenly,it died away to silence. Carter elbowed her way through the crowd, leading a boy, who was towheaded and wide-eyed. The boy looked up at O’Neill, still fifteen feet away.
“Mr…. Mr. Jack?,” he asked quietly.
O’Neill felt unaccountably misty-eyed. He could only nod and smile.
Then the boy came running to him, and O’neill took a step forward to meet him. He didn’t see a small patch of ice on the walk. His right foot flew out from under him dumping him unceremoniously on his backside and his vision went dark.
His leg throbbed horribly. With every breath something stabbed painfully in his side. He fought an unbelievable battle to force his gummy eyes open. His eyesight wasn’t cooperating too well. All he could see was a dark gray-blue blur.
The cold was intolerable. He tried to move, to sit up, to do anything, but his body refused to obey. He couldn’t even scratch his nose. His mind wandered. Where was Carter? She had to be somewhere nearby. He tried to call her name, but could barely manage a croak that was barely audible to his own ears.
He tried to draw a shuddering breath, but again, the horrific pain came in his side.
He tried to force himself to think, but his brain refused to cooperate. He was too cold for words and couldn’t move. He wanted something, anything that was warm. Soups, coffees, hot tea, marshmallow s’mores all danced before his eyes mocking his plight.
Where was he ?
He couldn’t remember.
It really didn’t matter.
This was going to be the end of the road for ol’ Jack O’Neill. It didn’t take a brain scientist to figure out he was in bad shape. He’d been in dire straits before, but this was new. Always before he’d been able to make it home and get patched up for another round.
Another round of… what?
And patched up by who?
Was there someone waiting for him?
He seemed to remember tearful, sad eyes. They made him feel… something. He wasn’t sure what, but stirred something deep inside him.
There was a name attached to those eyes, if he could only remember. If only his addled brain would do what it was supposed to. He could almost remember it. It was on the tip of his tongue. It was shameful that he couldn't remember. It was an ‘S’- word. He remembered that much.
“Sara,” he breathed.
Yes, that was the name. Sara.
“I’m here, Jack,” a woman’s voice whispered, full of care and worry.
He wasn’t sure if he heard it or imagined it, but either way, it was comforting. Being in the dark was one thing; being alone in the dark was entirely different.
“Cold… so cold,” he could barely get the words out.
“I know,” the voice sounded in his ear, much closer now. He remembered that he trusted her.
“It's all right… you can sleep now.”
He felt a hand on his chest, holding him close. That was reassuring. He didn’t feel up to being in charge right now. As a matter of fact, he was about to pass out. Being told to do what he was about to do anyway was every airman’s dream. As he slid into blessed unconsciousness, she spoke again.
“It was an honor serving with you, too, Colonel.”