The Coffin Dancer

the faint band of light that was Denver—in the far distance in front of them.
    “What’s this?” Brad asked.
    “Jesus. I forgot the generators.”
    The generators are run by the engines. No engines, no electricity.
    “Drop the RAT,” she ordered.
    Brad groped in the dark for the control and found it. He pulled the lever and the ram air turbine dropped out beneath the aircraft. It was a small propeller connected to a generator. The slipstream turned the prop, which powered the generator. It provided basic power for the controls and lights. But not the flaps, gear, speed brakes.
    A moment later some of the lights returned.
    Percey was staring at the vertical speed indicator. It showed a descent rate of thirty-five hundred feet per minute. Far faster than they’d planned on. They were dropping at close to fifty miles an hour.
    Why? she wondered. Why was the calculation so far off?
    Because of the rarified air here! She was calculating sink rate based on denser atmosphere. And now that she considered this she remembered that the air around Denver would be rarified too. She’d never flown a sailplane more than a mile up.
    She pulled back on the yoke to arrest the descent. It dropped to twenty-one hundred feet per minute. But the airspeed dropped too, fast. In this thin air the stall speed was about three hundred knots. The shaker stick began to vibrate and the controls went mushy. There’d be no recovery from a powerless stall in an aircraft like this.
    The coffin corner . . .
    Forward with the yoke. They dropped faster, but the airspeed picked up. For nearly fifty miles she played this game. Air Traffic Control told them where the headwinds were strongest and Percey tried to find the perfect combination of altitude and route—winds that were powerful enough to give the Lear optimal lift but not so fast that they slowed their ground speed too much.
    Finally, Percey—her muscles aching from controlling the aircraft with brute force—wiped sweat from her face and said, “Give ’em a call, Brad.”
    “Denver Center, this is Lear Six Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo , with you out of one nine thousand feet. We are twenty-one miles from the airport. Airspeed two hundred twenty knots. We’re in a no-power situation here and requesting vectoring to longest available runway consistent with our present heading of two five zero.”
    “Roger, Foxtrot Bravo. We’ve been expecting you. Altimeter thirty point nine five. Turn left heading two four zero. We’re vectoring you to runway two eight left. You’ll have eleven thousand feet to play with.”
    “Roger, Denver Center.”
    Something was nagging at her. That ping in the gut again. Like she’d felt with the black van.
    What was it? Just superstition?
    Tragedies come in threes . . .
    Brad said, “Nineteen miles from touchdown. One six thousand feet.”
    “ Foxtrot Bravo , contact Denver Approach.” He gave them the radio frequency, then added, “They’vebeen apprised of your situation. Good luck, ma’am. We’re all thinking of you.”
    “Goodnight, Denver. Thanks.”
    Brad clicked the radio to the new frequency.
    What’s wrong? she wondered again. There’s something I haven’t thought of.
    “Denver Approach, this is Lear Six Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo. With you at one three thousand feet, thirteen miles from touchdown.”
    “We have you, Foxtrot Bravo. Come right heading two five zero. Understand you are power-free, is that correct?”
    “We’re the biggest damn glider you ever saw, Denver.”
    “You have flaps and gear?”
    “No flaps. We’ll crank the gear down manually.”
    “Roger. You want trucks?” Meaning emergency vehicles.
    “We think we’ve got a bomb on board. We want everything you’ve got.”
    “Roger that.”
    Then, with a shudder of horror, it occurred to her: the atmospheric pressure!
    “Denver Approach,” she asked, “what’s the altimeter?”
    “Uhm, we have three oh point nine six, Foxtrot Bravo.”
    It had gone up a hundredth of an inch of mercury in the last minute.
    “It’s rising?”
    “That’s affirmative, Foxtrot Bravo. Major high-pressure front moving in.”
    No! That would increase the ambient pressure around the bomb, which would shrink the balloon, as if they were lower than they actually were.
    “Shit on the street,” she muttered.
    Brad looked at her.
    She said to him, “What was the mercury at Mamaroneck?”
    He looked it up in the log. “Twenty-nine point six.”
    “Calculate five thousand feet