panel and glanced out over the nose at the runway that seemed to grow larger by the second.
I’m coming in too fast.
On her second scan of the instruments, she saw it: the number two fuel pressure gauge needle touched the zero, bounced a little, and fell to the peg. The other three gauges all hovered around eighty psi.
“Port engine, inboard,” she said. “Fuel pressure dropped to zero.”
Her grandfather jerked around his head to check the engine. “Still running, but not for long.”
“I’m feathering port inboard. Airspeed?”
She knew she could land on two engines if she had to, but she wanted three. From here on in, she’d concentrate only on the runway. Touchdown was less than fifteen seconds away.
“Airspeed one-eighty,” her grandfather said.
She eased back the throttles. “Eighty percent flaps.”
“Eighty percent flaps.”
Autumn felt the increased lift right away and wiggled the pedals to feel the rudder. She watched the nose move back and forth in reaction to the rudder, then eased down the left pedal while applying right pressure to the wheel.
Ten seconds to go.
She had the nose into the crosswind, about five degrees to the left of their forward motion. The instant the two main gears touched the concrete, she’d have to correct the attitude of the plane immediately and align the nose with the yellow center stripe of the runway; otherwise, she risked losing control and running off the runway–or worse, flipping the aircraft over.
Three seconds to go. Two seconds.
Autumn heard the screech of rubber against the rough cement as both main wheels touched down together. Using the pedals and wheel in coordination, she lined up the nose on the center stripe.
“Full flaps,” she said.
“Full flaps.”
She pulled the three throttles all the way back and eased the wheel toward her stomach to settle the tail wheel down to the runway.
“Speed?” she asked as she concentrated on controlling the roll out.
“One hundred and ten.”
She couldn’t apply the brakes until they slowed to seventy miles per hour. If she hit the brakes now, she risked burning out the brake linings and possibly starting a fire in the main landing gear. She had plenty of runway ahead of her, so she let the fifteen-ton aircraft slow itself.
“Rio tower to B-17. Please receive taxiway 14-R, at ahead on your right hand.”
“Roger, tower.”
The problem with a B-17 on the ground is, the pilot can’t see directly ahead because the tail is on the cement and nose is raised high in the air—a normal situation for any tail-dragger.
Autumn used the pedals to fishtail a little to see forward. “There’s 14-R, two hundred yards.”
“Speed ninety,” her grandfather said.
The plane slowed quickly now. When the speed fell below seventy, she tilted the pedals forward, applying the brakes, decreasing to fifty miles an hour. When she was within forty yards of 14-R, she braked more and took the turn to her right, revving the outboard port engine to help pull her around and off the runway.
Autumn turned to her right window to see the American Airlines Boeing 777 touch down on the far end of the runway.
“Wow,” she whispered, looking back at the taxiway. “He sure had confidence in me.”
Her grandfather slid open his window for some fresh air and reached to pat her shoulder. “So did I, Clicker. So did I.”
She glanced at him and saw the gray Oxford shirt she’d bought for him in Buenos Aires was soaked with sweat.
Chapter Two
On that same day, on 9th Avenue in New York City, Rigger Entime left an office building and tried to remember where he had parked his car.
He was ten paces beyond the little girl before the image of her eyes registered on his foggy perception of that cold December afternoon—the end of his longest day. His doctor had put him through the stress and strain of a raw recruit. He was exhausted, and he wanted it finished; all of it.
When he turned back toward the girl, an enormous baldheaded man with a cane in one hand and the Wall Street Journal tucked under his arm, bumped into him. Rigger stumbled but kept his grip on the gray slips of paper in his hand.
“Drunken fool,” mumbled the bald man as he straightened his overcoat and trudged on.
From a distance, the girl’s eyes looked both melancholy and almost gleeful. It seemed to Rigger her sadness was a tender veil, a valiant attempt to disguise her urge to play with the Barbie doll tucked in the crook of her arm.
Her fingers toyed with a bare plastic foot as she stared at Rigger. The doll’s other foot was stockinged in faded blue and covered by a tiny black slipper, with the strap swinging loose.
A cardboard sign hung around the little girl’s neck, lettered in childish crayon, “Wil work 4 food.” Some imprinted words were torn in half along the bottom edge of the cardboard, “It’s the real thing.”
Past, present, and future fused into a frozen tide of emotion. The Earth lumbered on toward the winter solstice, and compassion warmed his aching heart. Rigger stuffed the five slips of paper into his coat pocket and knelt before her on one knee, feeling the icy cement through his tweed.
“What kind of work do you do, sweetheart?” He guessed she was about four years old.
The woman standing next to the girl spoke a daggered, “God bless you” to the back of a departing pedestrian who’d dropped two coins into her outstretched hand. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and slipped her hands into the pockets of a dark Navy pea-jacket, the type one might buy for two dollars at a military surplus store. The outline of a torn-off chevron marked the shoulder of the jacket’s right arm. Her legs were bare below a short skirt. Thin socks and castoff Nikes rounded out her collection of old clothes. She stared up the street, over Rigger’s head, where a lady dressed in sable left a jewelry shop and came their way. Slick crimson nails tucked a fur collar tight over a harness of jewels.
A hand slipped from the pea-jacket pocket.
Rigger carefully fastened the strap on Barbie’s shoe as he watched the child’s face. He knew it would take only a wisp of a breeze to topple her into his arms, where he could hold her close until she was warm and cozy.
“Can you drink hot chocolate with little marshmallows?” He smiled, trying to soften his expression.
He saw her face start to brighten, but then she caught herself and looked up at the woman. Rigger looked up, too. The woman ignored them as her eyes followed the sable. The eyes of the sable focused on some distant point where parallel lines came together. She elevated her nose and quickened her step.
An empty hand returned to the pea-jacket pocket.
The
