The Coffin Dancer

ATC controller warned again.
    She looked out over the silver nose. There were all the lights—the strobes of the approach lights beckoning them forward, the blue dots of the taxiway, the orange-red of the runway . . . And lights that Percey’d never seen before on approach. Hundreds of flashing lights. White and red. All the emergency vehicles.
    Lights everywhere.
    All the stars of evening . . .
    “Still low,” Brad called. “We’re going to impact two hundred yards short.”
    Hands sweating, straining forward, Percey thought again of Lincoln Rhyme, strapped to his seat, himself leaning forward, examining something in the computer screen.
    “Too low, Foxtrot Bravo,” ATC repeated. “I’mmoving emergency vehicles to the field in front of the runway.”
    “Negative that,” Percey said adamantly.
    Brad called, “Altitude thirteen hundred feet. One and a half miles from touchdown.”
    We’ve got thirty seconds! What do I do?
    Ed? Tell me? Brit? Somebody . . .
    Come on, monkey skills . . . What the hell do I do?
    She looked out the cockpit window. In the light of the moon she could see suburbs and towns and some farmland but also, to the left, large patches of desert.
    Colorado’s a desert state . . . Of course!
    Suddenly she banked sharply to the left.
    Brad, without a clue as to what she was doing, called out, “Rate of descent thirty-two hundred, altitude one thousand feet, nine hundred feet, eight five . . . ”
    Banking a powerless aircraft sheds altitude in a hurry.
    ATC called, “ Foxtrot Bravo , do not turn. Repeat, do not turn! You don’t have enough altitude as is.”
    She leveled out over the patch of desert.
    Brad gave a fast laugh. “Altitude steady . . . Altitude rising, we’re at nine hundred feet, one thousand feet, twelve hundred feet. Thirteen hundred feet . . . I don’t get it.”
    “A thermal,” she said. “Desert soaks up heat during the day and releases it all night.”
    ATC had figured it out too. “Good, Foxtrot Bravo! Good. You just bought yourself about three hundred yards. Come right two nine oh . . . good, now left two eight oh. Good. On course. Listen, Foxtrot Bravo , you want to take out those approach lights, you go right ahead.”
    “Thanks for the offer, Denver, but I think I’ll set her down a thousand past the numbers.”
    “That’s all right too, ma’am.”
    They had another problem now. They could reach the runway, but the airspeed was way too high. Flaps were what decreased the stall speed of an aircraft so it could land more slowly. The Lear 35A’s normal stall speed was about 110 miles an hour. Without flaps it was closer to 180. At that speed even a two-mile-long runway vanishes in an instant.
    So Percey sideslipped.
    This is a simple maneuver in a private plane, used in crosswind landings. You bank to the left and hit the right rudder pedal. It slows the aircraft considerably. Percey didn’t know if anyone had ever used this technique in a seven-ton jet, but she couldn’t think of anything else to do. “Need your help here,” she called to Brad, gasping at the effort and the pain shooting through her raw hands. He gripped the yoke and shoved on the pedal too. This had the effect of slowing the aircraft, though it dropped the left wing precipitously.
    She’d straighten it out just before contact with the runway.
    She hoped.
    “Airspeed?” she called.
    “One fifty knots.”
    “Looking good, Foxtrot Bravo.”
    “Two hundred yards from runway, altitude two hundred eighty feet,” Brad called. “Approach lights, twelve o’clock.”
    “Sink rate?” she asked.
    “Twenty-six hundred.”
    Too fast. Landing at that sink rate could destroy the undercarriage. And might very well set off the bomb too.
    There were the approach strobes right in front of her—guiding them forward . . .
    Down, down, down . . .
    Just as they hurtled toward the scaffolding of the lights, Percey shouted, “My aircraft!”
    Brad released the yoke.
    Percey straightened from the sideslip and brought the nose up. The plane flared beautifully and grabbed air, halting the precipitous descent right over the numbers at the end of the runway.
    Grabbed air so well, in fact, that it wouldn’t land.
    In the thicker air of the relatively lower atmosphere the speeding plane—lighter without fuel—refused to touch down.
    She glimpsed the yellow-green of the emergency vehicles scattered along the side of the runway.
    A thousand feet past the