most difficult pilot approaches in the world. With notorious crosswinds and the waters of Guanabara Bay off each end of the runway, there’s no margin for error.
Autumn pressed her intercom button. “Buckle up, guys. Guess who’s taking the Shenandoah into Rio?”
“Oh, shiiiiiit,” someone’s voice came over the intercom from the back of the plane.
“You got your ‘chute on, Andy?” said another voice.
“I do now.”
“Matthew, whar y’all put my dang jug of Jim Beam?”
“Cute,” she said and clicked off the intercom as she scanned the horizon for other traffic and banked the old bomber into the downwind leg of the landing pattern.
Aerovias 856 was now on his final approach and would soon touch down on runway two-eight.
Autumn saw the cargo jet crabbing to his left. She felt a bead of sweat collect on her right temple and run down her cheek. She checked the airspeed indicator and altimeter, then pulled all four throttles back a fraction. She eased the wheel forward.
“Ten percent flaps.”
“Ten percent flaps.” Her grandfather adjusted the flaps.
“Carburetor heat half.”
He pushed the four carburetor heat knobs forward. “Carburetor heat half.”
She wanted desperately to see his expression but knew she’d read nothing there, even if he was terrified. Outside the cockpit, he always joked, treating her like one of the boys, and he never missed a chance to brag about his granddaughter being a graduate student, studying micromechanics at MIT. But inside the cockpit, he was a serious, no-nonsense pilot all the time.
Grandfather Baylor Willow, two years older than the Shenandoah, was born in 1941. By the end of World War II, the old aircraft had flown forty-six missions over Germany, while he still played with his alphabet blocks. He saved her from the scrap heap in 1964, and now she was one of only eleven left in the world. Of the twelve thousand built during the war, all the others had either been destroyed in battle or scrapped later.
The beautiful vintage plane drew a large crowd everywhere she went, and Autumn couldn’t be prouder than to be at the controls as they flew into the Rio airport.
“Landing gear down,” she said.
Her grandfather flipped the switches to lower the main gear.
She heard the hydraulics squeal to life and, ten seconds later, the solid thump of one of the wheels locking into place. She waited for the second one, but it didn’t happen. Another five seconds, and still no thump. She looked at her grandfather.
His only reaction was to lift a shoulder. You’re in command, Clicker.
She knew that was his silent response. He always called her by her nickname when they were alone. On her eleventh birthday, he’d given her an old telegraph hand key and wired it into her CD player’s speakers so she could learn Morse Code. Autumn thought it was the grandest present she’d ever received and was soon clicking out simple messages for him. She spent so much time on the key, he soon began calling her ‘Clicker.’ The nickname stuck, but it was their private nickname; everyone else called her ‘Autumn.’
Grandfather Baylor was the only father she’d ever known. Her first and second sets of parents were nothing more than blank spaces at the beginning of her life.
She received her first flying lesson from him when she was tall enough to reach the plane’s pedals. That was his present to her on her ninth birthday, just ten days after her grandparents had adopted her—her second adoption. Now she had almost three thousand hours in the air; twenty-four hundred in her grandfather’s Cessna 150, two hundred in a Link trainer, and the rest in multi-engine aircraft, including two hundred hours at the controls of the B-17. However, she’d never landed the four-engine antique aircraft at a busy major airport.
Autumn flipped her intercom button. “Anderson. Drop into the ball turret, and check the landing gear.”
“Roger, Captain.”
“Ready on the hand-crank, Williams,” she said.
“I’m on it.”
“Right gear down and locked,” Anderson reported from the ball turret. “Left gear froze halfway.”
“Crank it down, Williams.”
“Roger that.”
“Anderson?” she asked.
“Not moving yet.”
“Thirty percent flaps,” she said.
Her grandfather increased the flaps and looked out his left window to see that the flaps responded. “Thirty percent flaps.”
“The wheel moved down about three inches,” Anderson said over the intercom.
“Rio tower to B-17. We thinking you have only one wheel sticking out.”
“Roger, tower. We’re working on it.” She switched to the intercom. “Come on, Williams,” Autumn said. “We got two minutes to touchdown.”
“You might…” Williams paused to take a quick breath as he worked the manual crank, leaving on his microphone, “have to do a one…wheelie.”
“Yeah, right,” Autumn said. “If you make me go around for a second try, I’m gonna be really pissed. They’re already stacking airliners over our head.”
“I like it better…when Grandpa flies. He’s not so–”
“Crabby?” Anderson cut in.
“Mean?” someone else chimed in.
“Bitchy…is what I was…”
“Ten degrees to go,” Anderson said. “You can line up on final, Ms. Captain.”
“Yeah, when I hear a clunk, I’ll line up on final.”
“Clunk.”
“Shut up, Matthew,” she said.
“Five more degrees,” Anderson said.
Autumn turned into her final approach to the runway. “If I hit the throttles, give me full carb heat and no flaps.”
“Roger that,” her grandfather said, resting his fingertips on the flap control lever.
Autumn heard a satisfying thump from the left landing gear locking into place, and she began to breathe again. She then flexed her knees to get the circulation going in her lower legs.
“Thirty seconds to touchdown,” she said into the intercom and knew the guys would keep quiet now and get into their seats as she concentrated on the landing.
Suddenly, she heard a new sound; something above her head clinked three times and rattled, like a small metal shaft breaking apart. Then came the decreasing whine of a motor winding down. She looked out her right window at the two starboard engines; they looked fine. She leaned forward to see past her grandfather
