Skyhammer Read Free

controller asked him to restate the emergency. “Say your souls on board and fuel remaining.”
    How many passengers were there? Boyd couldn’t remember. And the controller wanted fuel in hours and minutes. He stared at
     the fuel totalizer’s glowing red LED’s, frantically calculating.
    “Seventy-six on the passengers and crew,” Pate transmitted almost immediately. “Two hours on the fuel.”
    For a moment Boyd was furious with himself for not remembering the passenger count, for not realizing the controller only
     needed an estimate on the fuel. But he was even angrier at Pate for jumping in.
    “
I’ve
got the radios,” he told Pate. “You do your job and fly the plane.”
    Pate only glanced at him. The controller was on again, giving a weather update. Conditions had worsened. Visibility was down
     to three-quarters of a mile, with fog and blowing snow.
    “Runway five-right RVR is four thousand,” the controller reported. “Say your intentions please, Five-fifty-four.”
    This time Pate stayed quiet while Boyd checked the alternate airports, hoping he could find one with better conditions. But
     Akron was getting clobbered, Fort Wayne too. He called Center and told them 554 would continue to Cleveland.
    Immediately the controller put them on a new heading and cleared them down to nine thousand. Boyd peered at the deep gloom
     ahead and then stared down through his side window at the undercast, dense and dark, tops billowing up, beguiling in their
     still softness. They would be into it soon enough. But he wasn’t scared any more, he decided. The plane was made to fly through
     such stuff, even on one engine. They’d do all right. For a moment he even considered taking the yoke, simply commanding it—his
     right as captain. He could use the experience. It would be nice to say he’d been the pilot. But even during emergencies, by
     unwritten rule, you let the pilot flying continue to fly. Besides, Pate
did
have the edge on experience. And how would it look afterward if he took the plane, then screwed the first approach? No, he
     wouldn’t chance it, Boyd decided, just as Pate interrupted again, saying something.
    “What?” Boyd glared at him.
    Pate faced forward as he spoke. “I said we need to do the single-engine landing check. But I’d PA the passengers first, if
     I were you—and brief the number one.”
    Christ
! Boyd thought. He’d forgotten the passengers! Some must have heard the engine spool down, felt the plane yaw. They’d probably
     already be badgering the cabin crew. He was lucky the number-one flight attendant hadn’t called the cockpit already. Boyd
     snatched the PA phone from its holder. But not yet, he decided. Pate was no doubt feeling too smug about all this, and that
     couldn’t go unchecked.
    “Look,” Boyd said. “You just fly the plane. I’ll decide when to do what. Got that?”
    Pate said nothing. He did not turn his head or even flinch, but somehow Boyd could tell that he, too, was boiling inside.
     Good, Boyd thought. “Just do your job,” he said, wanting to say a lot more, but they were less than thirty minutes out and
     the voice recorder was taping.
    He sat back and glared at Pate, challenging him, but Pate kept quiet, staring straight ahead. Boyd waited another minute,
     collecting himself, then keyed the PA phone and announced the engine shutdown, explaining that the plane could safely fly
     on a single engine. It was important that he sound calm and confident, and he accomplished that, he felt, despite the rage
     Pate had forced him into. “This is why we carry a spare,” he concluded before summoning the number-one flight attendant. He
     told her to prepare the cabin for emergency evacuation. “For God’s sake, Julie, don’t pop the slides unless you hear from
     us or the plane goes off the runway,” he reminded her. Afterward he waited another minute, just to prove to Pate they had
     time. Then he got out the single-engine landing checklist.
    Pate