Twice a Spy_ A Novel - Keith Thomson [78]
“Maybe one-two-one-point-five?”
Charlie clicked the knob to 121.5. “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!”
Only static back.
“Mayday!”
Drummond said, “It’s often out in places like—” He fell backward, out cold before the back of his skull struck the headrest.
“Dad?”
Something beneath Drummond began buzzing. An egg timer, it sounded like.
Wedging his hand between his father’s left leg and the seat cushion, Charlie plucked out Bream’s satphone. Forgotten in haste. Or had the twisted fuck left it behind so he could call and deliver a parting shot?
Charlie thrust the phone to his ear. “Cockpit.”
“Listen, J. T. Bream,” came a voice through the earpiece, “I know where you are, and I’m going to come and kill you if—”
Charlie couldn’t believe his ears. “Alice?”
“Chuckles?” She remained the pro, avoiding using a real name, and, at the same time, employing her safety code.
“Yeah,” he said, adding a safety code of his own: “It’s a laugh a minute here.”
“Did you get away from Bream?”
“We’re away from him, put it that way.”
“Your dad?”
“He got knocked out when Bream bailed, but I think he’ll be okay, if, to make a long story short, you can help me land a plane.”
“Maybe,” she said. Charlie assumed she hadn’t blinked. “Do you know what kind of plane it is?”
“Propeller …”
“Start reading off the labels on the instruments.”
“There are labels on most of them—”
“Read whatever you see.” She was as cool as a call center operator, which had the effect of dissipating enough of Charlie’s panic so that he could focus. “Maybe a model name?”
He found one on the yoke. “Beechcraft.”
“Good. How many propellers are there?”
He checked the side windows. “One on each wing.”
“Okay. How about this? When you got going, did the engines make a noise like a car starting, or did they whine?”
“A whine, I think.”
“Turboprop, then. What seat are you in?”
“The one on the left.”
“Pilot’s seat, excellent. Directly in front of you there should be a glass-covered dial that indicates what’s known as ‘attitude.’ ”
Finally, something PlayStation had. “Yeah. Tells you which way’s up, right?”
“Exactly. Blue’s the sky, brown’s the dirt, and the little white bars in the middle are our wings.”
“Well, if it’s working, we’re flying level now.”
“Good. Now, just to the right you should see an instrument that looks like an old-fashioned clock.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Our altimeter. I know you know what that is. Should be a window across the top half with numbers. Can you read them?”
Charlie’s stomach settled, somewhat. Alice knew what she was doing; she wasn’t just trying to calm him down. “About fifty-two hundred feet.”
“Stable?”
“I think so.”
“Great. To the left is a speed indicator. Read it to me.”
“One-ninety.” According to the gauge, it was 190 KIAS. Knots? Knots Incorporating Air Speed? No time for Q & A.
“We have to find out how much flying time we have. On the wall to your left, there should be two gauges on a separate panel.”
“Okay.”
“Those are the fuel gauges.”
“There’s one-twenty-five on both gauges.” Not a bad total, he thought, if this was anything like a car.
Alice was silent.
A sticky foreboding spread over Charlie.
He glanced at Drummond. Still out.
Finally, Alice spoke. “What do you see outside?”
“Not much,” Charlie said. “Just tranquil Caribbean, a couple of clouds.”
“No land?”
“No.”
“I was hoping—sometimes there are islets there that don’t make the GPS maps.”
“We’ve run into a couple. Just not lately.”
“Listen, Charlie, I’m afraid there’s no way you’re going to make land.”
“Not with two hundred and fifty gallons of fuel?”
“That’s not gallons, that’s pounds. Two hundred fifty pounds of fuel is around thirty-five gallons. We’ll be stretching it to fly another fifteen minutes.”
Charlie turned to ice. “Don’t tell me we’re going to do a water landing?”
“Fine, I won’t tell you. But I’ll bet that, afterward, you’ll say it was no big deal.”
“A bet I’d be happy to lose.”
She laughed. Briefly. “Between the two yokes, lower down, you’ll see some levers. Grab the pair on the left, the biggest ones. They’re the throttles. Pull