Santa Fe Rules Read Free

never been blockbusters—not so far, anyway. They were shot on tight budgets, with big-name stars who were happy to play parts for small money just to get into a Tinney film.
    All this had earned Wolf a house in Bel Air, another in Santa Fe, a nice little airplane, and the assorted cars, boats, pools, and tennis courts that went with a seven-figure income. He earned, in fact, even more than he spent, and he had even managed to put away something for his old age, which wasn’t as far away as it used to be.
    Wolf was brought abruptly back to the present by a red light on the instrument panel before him. Red lights were not good. This one said LOW BUS VOLTAGE . He started looking at gauges. Alternator failure. He switched on the backup generator. Nothing happened. Backup generator failure. He started turning off electrical gear and consultedhis chart. He’d never make it to L.A. on battery power, and he didn’t want to fly in L.A. airspace without radios. Grand Canyon Airport looked good for repairs.
    Wolf switched off the autopilot and began hand-flying the airplane.

CHAPTER

2
    T he eastern end of the Grand Canyon was in sight when the instrument panel went dark.
    “Shit!” Wolf yelled. He tried switching things on and off, but nothing worked; the battery was too low to operate anything. He had a hand-held radio somewhere in the airplane; he didn’t use it often. He began rummaging through the pile of charts, manuals, and other debris behind the passenger seat, while trying to hold the airplane straight and level with his free hand. He unearthed the small radio, found the adapter wires that allowed him to plug his headset into it, turned it on, and tuned to the Grand Canyon control tower frequency.
    “Grand Canyon, November one, two, three, tango foxtrot.”
    “Aircraft calling Grand Canyon, please say again. Your transmission is weak.”
    Shit again; his hand-held’s batteries were nearly dead, too.

    “Grand Canyon,” he said, enunciating carefully, “November one, two, three, tango foxtrot. I am a Bonanza B-36, estimate fifteen miles east of the airport. I have electrical failure and am using a hand-held radio.”
    “Roger, November one, two, three, tango foxtrot; runway two-six is active; wind is two-seven-zero at eight. You’re number two behind a Grand Canyon Airways twin now on final.”
    “Tango foxtrot.” He rested the small radio on top of the instrument panel. What now? Get the landing gear down. He hoped to hell there was enough battery power left for that. He pulled out the gear lever and pushed it down. The red IN TRANSIT light came on and drag on the airplane was noticeably increased. Was it down? Two miles out he called in again. “Grand Canyon, I will fly down the runway at one hundred feet. Please tell me if my gear is locked down.”
    “Roger, tango foxtrot.”
    Wolf tried the flaps; they didn’t work, either. He reduced power slowly and got the airplane down to 120 knots for his low pass down the runway.
    “Tango foxtrot, Grand Canyon. Your landing gear appears to be partly down, but not locked. What are your intentions?”
    “Goddamn it!” Wolf screamed, but not on the radio. “Grand Canyon, I’ll try to crank it down.” He had never done this before, although he had been trained to do it. The hand crank was behind the passenger seat where all his junk was. He began throwing stuff indiscriminately into the backseat. Finally the small crank was exposed. He began cranking. How many turns? Seemed he had been told fifty. On the twentieth turn, the gear-down lightscame on: all three wheels down and locked. Wolf heaved a sigh of relief; he was sweating heavily from the tension and the effort of cranking the gear down. “Grand Canyon, gear down and locked,” he said into the radio.
    “One, two, three, tango foxtrot, cleared to land, runway two-six.”
    With no flaps to slow him, Wolf had to make a fast approach, but there was plenty of runway length, and he got the airplane down