Page 5 of Air Force One (Miranda Chase #16)
They were a very convivial group in the President’s onboard office, helped along by mimosas and generous bowls of hothouse strawberries, pre-cut and doused in clover honey. Roy sat behind his desk. Drake sat in the seat across from him and Rose upon the curved couch that faced her husband.
Drake had never trusted Rose’s first husband, Senator Hunter Ramson, though Drake had spoken many times before the Senate Armed Services Committee that the man had chaired before his fiery and—in his and the FBI’s opinions—fully deserved demise.
But it was impossible not to like his widow, Rose.
She’d long been dubbed the First Lady of DC for her keystone position in the social set.
Over the last year as the President’s girlfriend and then wife, she’d proven herself to be a major asset both socially and personally.
“Pity that we’ll be losing you as First Lady in three weeks.
Of course, then the country would have to keep putting up with Roy here.
Nobody’s ready for that. I’d have suggested that you run for his office, but there’s no way I’m going to stick around for another four years, even for you, Rose.
” Drake’s mandatory retirement after thirty-five years of service had already been extended twice by President Cole—he was done.
“You will not escape that role so easily, Ranger,” Roy grinned at him. That too was new; a lighter spirit that Rose had brought to the main man. “Not with your wife bringing home the worries of the office.”
“And what is a former Green Beret going to do with his retirement…golf?”
Roy made a disparaging sound; neither of them had played a round of golf in their lives. “I’m sure that my lovely wife will have a brilliant idea or two.”
“Make him Sarah’s ambassador to the UN.” Drake turned his attention to Rose.
“Oh, you must think me very cruel,” she managed with a bright laugh.
“No, I—” That’s when Drake noticed the shifting sunlight through the plane’s windows.
The oval blotch of brightness moved across the dark mahogany of the President’s desk and highlighted the President himself.
They were barely thirty minutes into the flight.
The first turn shouldn’t be for another five hours.
Drake picked up the phone without asking and punched through to the flight deck. The copilot answered.
“Report.”
“We had a failure in Engine Four and have been unable to restart it. We’re turning back for the US coast to—” Then Colonel Sandra Ames cursed in a very unladylike but very military manner. “Sorry, sir.”
Drake didn’t have to ask. Despite the heavy sound insulation of the President’s onboard office, he could hear the strange cascading scale of another engine winding down. He hadn’t heard the first one go.
“I won’t keep bothering you, but keep the line open.” Drake switched to speakerphone and tapped the mute button so that they could listen without being heard.
“Roger that.”
He and Roy exchanged a glance, and Rose didn’t miss it.
“Should I be worried?”
“She’ll fly comfortably on two engines. Tricky to control, as both failures are on the same side, but—” He kept listening to the pilot chatter in the background.
They spoke few words, and those were in some sort of pilot code. He wished Miranda was here to translate as he and Roy had only ever been ground pounders. But he’d picked up enough of the lingo from her to know that things were not going well.
“Negative restart on Three and Four.”
That part he understood.
“Calculate best glide settings.”
Glide? As in powerless glide? He’d always assumed that a 747 was more in the flying-brick category. Or was that the space shuttle? This bird had big wings; she must have some ability to glide.
“There goes Number Two.”
Sure enough, the descending note of another engine fading in a long glissade sounded from the other side of the plane. He knew that a 747 couldn’t maintain altitude on a single engine, but would it be enough to reach land?
Roy Cole moved out of his seat behind the desk and buckled in on the couch beside his wife.
That left Drake alone by the desk with the President’s phone.
He unmuted it as the last engine began its decline.
The plane became eerily quiet with only the roar of the wind over the smooth lines of the fuselage.
They still had power, so the auxiliary power unit must be running, but it was no more than a generator somewhere in the plane’s tail.
“Report.”
“Four-engine failure.” This time it was General Owen who replied. “It may be possible to restart them once we descend into thicker atmosphere below fifteen thousand feet, but I don’t want to sacrifice any altitude to test that sooner rather than later.”
“Cause of failure?”
“Unknown. It doesn’t make any sense. They simply shut down. We still have over fifty-percent fuel load, and I can verify that by the gauges as well as the feel of the aircraft.”
“How about dumping fuel? Will that get us back to land?”
“Slower but not farther. Glide rate remains constant. Nice try, General, but unless we can get a restart, she’s going to come down where she’s going to come down. Sandra is talking to the ground for troubleshooting.”
“If you can’t restart?”
“We technically have the glide slope to reach the Delaware shore with some leeway.”
Drake could hear the however and waited for Owen to continue.
“But the jet stream is driving hard today. It was giving us a hundred-and-thirty-kilometer-per-hour advantage. That is now a disadvantage. She’s not as good a glider as the new birds.”
“The ones that are five years behind schedule.”
“Right. We will descend out of the jet stream effect closer to land, but the tradeoff of dropping altitude now versus distance…”
He left it hanging, and Drake didn’t push him.
“Do your best, General Owen.”
“Roger that, General Nason.” It was far too much like saying goodbye. Owen must have thought the same as he didn’t leave the call connected.
General Owen’s open announcement five minutes later over the PA echoed down the length of the massive jet. Though Air Force One was full of civilians, it was a military jet. He did nothing to sugarcoat his words—or their chances.
It confirmed that today the general’s best wasn’t going to be good enough.