Executive orders - Tom Clancy [395]
It was, on the whole, an impressive exercise in communications. The Airbus was still in the air, and the President of the United States knew that there was a problem-and nothing else.
Okay, keep me posted. Ryan looked down at the desk he was about to leave. Oh, shit. It was such a pleasure, the power of the presidency. Now he had virtually instant knowledge of something he could do nothing about. Were there Americans on the aircraft? What did it all mean? What was happening?
IT COULD HAVE been worse. Daryaei got back on the aircraft after having been in Baghdad for less than four hours, having dealt with the problems even more tersely than usual, and taking some satisfaction from the fear he'd struck into a few hearts for having bothered him with such trivial matters. His sour stomach contributed to an even more sour expression as he boarded and found his seat, and waved to the attendant to tell the flight crew to get moving-the sort of wrist-snapping gesture that looked like off with their heads to so many. Thirty seconds later, the stairs were up and the engines turning.
WHERE DID YOU learn this game? Adler asked.
In the Navy, Mr. Secretary, Clark answered, collecting the pot. He was ten dollars up now, and it wasn't the money. It was the principle of the thing. He'd just bluffed the Secretary of State out of two bucks. Miller Time.
I thought sailors were crummy gamblers.
That's what some people say. Clark smiled, as he piled the quarters up.
Watch his hands, Chavez advised.
I am watching his hands. The attendant came aft and poured out the rest of the wine. Not even two full glasses for the men, just enough to pass the time. Excuse me, how much longer?
Less than an hour, Monsieur Minister.
Thank you. Adler smiled at her as she moved back forward.
King bets, Mr. Secretary, Clark told him.
Chavez checked his hole card. Pair of fives. Nice start. He tossed a quarter into the center of the table after Adler's.
THE EUROPEAN-MADE Airbus 310 had lost its right-side engine to the missile, but that wasn't all. The heat-seeker had come in from the right rear and impacted on the side of the big GE turbofan, with fragments from the explosion ripping into the outboard wing panels. Some of these sliced into a fuel cell-fortunately almost empty-which trailed some burning fuel, panicking those who could look out their windows and see. But that wasn't the frightening part. Fire behind the aircraft couldn't hurt anyone, and the vented fuel tank didn't explode, as it might have done had it been hit as little as ten minutes earlier. The really bad news was the damage to the aircraft's control surfaces.
Forward, the two-man flight crew was as experienced as that of any international airline. The Airbus could fly quite well, thank you, on one engine, and the left-side engine was undamaged, and now turning at full power while the co-pilot shut down the right side of the aircraft and punched the manual controls on the elaborate fire-suppression systems. In seconds, the fire-warning alarms went silent and the co-pilot started breathing again.
Elevator damage, the pilot reported next, working the controls and finding that the Airbus wasn't responding as it should.
But the problem wasn't with the flight crew, either. The Airbus actually flew via computer software, a huge executive program that took inputs directly from the airframe as well as from the control movements of the pilots, analyzed them, and then told the control surfaces what to do next. Battle damage was not something the software engineers had anticipated in the design of the aircraft. The program noted the traumatic loss of the engine and decided it was an engine explosion, which it had been taught to think about. The onboard computers evaluated the damage to the aircraft, what control surfaces worked and how well, and adjusted itself to the situation.
Twenty miles, the co-pilot reported, as the Airbus settled in on its direct-penetration vector. The pilot adjusted his throttle, and the computers-the aircraft actually had seven of them-decided this was all right,