Somewhere over Texas
October 3
0112 hrs CST
The scary part was the landing. In all his experience flying airplanes, first from a carrier in the Arabian Sea with gut-wrenching night landings in bad weather, and then more recently while flying unproven test aircraft, he always felt that if he were going to eat it, it would happen on the landing. Not that Commander Tyson had any bad feelings or premonitions that the landing was going to be anything less than perfect tonight. The weather was flawless, a night bucketwashed in moonlight with infinite visibility. Every element of good flying was aligned as beautifully as an equation: an excellent pilot, a monster aircraft, and every atmospheric advantage.
After this test flight, he was going home to Virginia to be with his wife, Ellen, and his five year old daughter, Amy. Ellen was pregnant and having trouble after the move, with furniture placed haphazardly in the house, moving boxes still stacked in the rooms. He had four weeks of vacation and he was going to spend it settling into the new house before Amy started elementary school. He was eager to be at home.
Tyson keyed his mic. “CONFEDERATE, this is Sojourner Two-One requesting final range clearance.”
“Standby Two-One,” A female voice replied, that of the air traffic controller at Caplan Air Force Base.
A scant moment later she came back over his headset. “Sojourner, this is CONFEDERATE, you are cleared to enter Quebec November Hotel three-seven-six-five at thirty-nine thousand then re-clear. Remain this frequency. Acknowledge.”
Tyson radioed back: “Sojourner acknowledges clear to enter, descend thirty-nine thousand…Uh…How is thirty-five thousand? Can I …?”
“Negative sir, I’ve got you right where I want you. Re-clear at thirty-nine and we’ll deal with a closure rate at that time. Don’t be so impatient, James.”
He smiled at the violation of protocol. “Roger, copy that.”
“Hurry home, Sojourner.”
Though he had been flying experimental military aircraft for over a dozen years, he was still taken aback by the numbers they were throwing around. Time just collapsed up here; the speeds at times had gone upwards of Mach 6. Forty minutes ago he was soaring over the Atlantic Ocean and now he was over the deserts of Southwestern Texas. That thrill of getting in at the vanishing point between theory and achievable science was what it was all about. Even after so many years, the thrill was strong as ever.
Tyson’s resume, from the time he was twenty and graduated from Officer Candidate School, was classified. The seventeen years of his flying career was a series of precarious experiments, far-flung ideas, and improbable successes. His latest miracle was piloting Sojourner. The X-21 was a supersonic reconnaissance aircraft utilizing advanced stealth technology, an experimental model built to be fast to arrive in enemy territory, fast to suck up enormous amounts of intelligence, and then fast to get home. Invisibly.
But invisibility was not the subject of tonight’s flight. The physics behind the aerodynamics of the aircraft were still unproven and this evening they were testing the enormous “air-breathing” Payne-Whitney turbines at eighty-five thousand feet. It was mundane, as tests go, despite the extraordinary altitude and speed. A cakewalk.
He checked his heading once again and before he could begin the descent, a sudden, subtle shift in the attitude of the plane jarred his attention. Before he could figure out what was happening, the engines spooled out in a long, high whine and the RPMs decreased dramatically. The nose dipped below the horizon and the aircraft began to descend unpredictably, at the wrong angle.
“Sojourner, from CONFEDERATE, say altitude and airspeed.”
His radarscope was reading Sojourner at 33,500. He keyed the mic and said, “Thirty three five, CONFEDERATE. I’ve got a problem here-“
He grabbed the stick and pulled back, attempting to stabilize the aircraft. One engine sounded very loud, whining, like something was stuck, and he realized with a kind of calm composure borne of shock that the engine was gone. He yanked the stick hard against his thigh, realizing that hydraulic power must be gone, because there was no effect at all. Outside his left canopy window, the bat wing, so named because it was mounted to the aircraft “backwards” and gave a strangely Chiropteran silhouette, moonlight carved a white light over some of the ridges of the mountains and canyons. Still, it was impossible to recognize any landmarks on the ground.
“SOJOURNER, please say altitude and airspeed.”
“I’ve… the plane is falling, I’m diving here….” He loathed the fear that began to creep into his voice.
The aircraft was essentially flown by three supercomputers that continuously collected information from the pilot’s actions, the atmosphere, and the flight center in Edwards Air Force Base in California. If one of the computers failed, the other two computers would cancel out the input from that computer and would continue to operate. So why the hell weren’t the brilliant computers recognizing that the airplane wasn’t supposed to be flying directly toward the hardpan dirt of the Texas desert?
“SOJOURNER, please say altitude and airspeed.”
Tyson keyed the mic. “CONFEDERATE, Thirty three five and …”
“Sojourner, do you copy me?”
“Confederate, I copy. I’ve got a problem.”
“Sojourner do you copy me? Please check in. This is Caplan Center, do you copy me?”
“Confederate…”
“Sojourner, this is Caplan Center, do you copy me? Sojourner two one, Sojourner two one. Do you copy me?”
The fear finally took hold, compressing his chest. Fighting the cold sweat that was breaking out over his body, he shifted the full force of his attention to the airplane. He pulled the yoke to turn the aircraft in a southerly direction to try and shed some speed, but nothing responded. Jesus! Was anything working? Tyson pulled back the throttle to decrease speed but nothing happened. He reached to the lever between the seats near the throttle, and pulled it up to deploy the landing gear, but was met with only a dull grinding sound.
“Sojourner, Confederate does not read you. In the blind, you will pass Caplan Center in two minutes. We have turned on the lights, I repeat: runway lights are on.”
“Confederate, I copy you. Do you read me?” His voice was rushed and reedy; he sounded scared, even to his own ears.
Sheer teethbusting terror when there was no confirmation.
The aircraft was listing to its left side. Tyson could see a smattering of lights on the ground, little white lights, then farther in the horizon he saw the Caplan runway lit up like a baseball field. The Department of Defense required these test flights to operate in blackout conditions. That girl in the tower had some audacity to defy the rules. He liked her, whoever she was.
Tyson gripped the yoke and yanked it back, trying desperately to slow the inevitable, to allow the wings to fill with air and slow down. But the airplane was still not responding, sliding downward, and the sickening realization that there was nothing, nothing he could do gripped him by the throat. Back in flight school, one of the first things he had been told by his instructor was, “Fly the plane till the last part stops moving.” Oddly, that was the only thing that came back to him now.
He went through the systems one by one, school method, and his horror grew. No engines to power the plane. No ailerons to bank it, no rudder, no elevators to control the pitch, no leading-edge flaps or slats to slow the airplane down, no trailing-edge flaps for landing, no spoilers on the wing to help slow him down once he was on the ground. And on the ground, he had no steering, nose wheel or tail, and no brakes.
Control. He fought for control of his voice, even if he could control nothing else.
“Confederate, this is Sojourner.” It was useless, but he tried anyway.
“Sojourner, this is Confederate.”
“Confederate, I copy you,” he said, knowing she couldn’t hear him but oddly compelled to respond anyway. The speed of the descent was ferociously testing the skeletal structure of the aircraft; he could hear the wind roaring over the canopy. The structure was shaking violently, and the desert was approaching so fast, so very fast. Illuminated in the moonlight, a collection of small houses with tiny lights stood in the distance. The altimeter indicated he was just under two thousand feet. Time to go. Ejection was the last resort, always, and especially at low altitudes, because it was so dangerous. But not as dangerous as pancaking into the Texas dust at 600 MPH. His Catholic school training told him he should say a prayer, but all that came to his mind was a simple “I love you, Amy.” The most profound prayer of all, in a way. There was no time to try anything else, no pleas for pity, or grip on the seat to slow the moment. He pulled the handle, and was assaulted by two tremendous jolts, one upwards, the next by a slipstream more powerful than a steel ram.