Delta Green - страница 29

Munoz spoke up on the ICS. “You just watch, amigo. In about five minutes, Big General Cartwright is goin’ to come on the air and tell us he doesn’t want any rubber strips left on his runway.”

“He’d really scream about large pieces of MakoShark, wouldn’t he?” McKenna asked.

“Let’s go back to talkin’ about smoked tires instead, Snake Eyes.”

McKenna spent the next half hour concentrating on keeping the nose high in order to bleed off speed. Munoz developed an approach pattern for them and coordinated it with the tower personnel at Wet Country.

Coming out of supersonic flight was a rattler, with the craft bobbing around her part of the sky for a few minutes. McKenna whispered nice things to her, and she finally came around and resumed her nose high attitude.

“Goin’ active, Snake Eyes.”

“Go.”

Munoz switched his radar from passive to active mode in order to check the immediate vicinity for air traffic.

“Passive,” he reported when he had switched back. “No traffic to sweat.”

They went through the turbojet start-up sequence more carefully than usual. Both engines started without problems after he put the nose down enough to get a clear airflow through the intakes.

McKenna didn’t feel any unusual tension. It would be an abnormal landing, but he had been in tighter spots.

Munoz handled the radio chores, leaving McKenna free to manipulate the throttles and concentrate on the approach to the runway.

“Wet Country, Delta Blue,” the backseater called.

“Gotcha, Blue. Give me a status.”

“We’ve got seven-zero-zero knots, angels ten, sixty miles out.”

“Squawk me once.”

Munoz turned on the modified IFF, Identify Friend or Foe, briefly to give the controller an identified blip on his radar screen.

“I see you. You’re clean straight in on ought-one. Wind is normal, meaning nothing. Barometric pressure two nine point eight.”

McKenna didn’t bother sight-seeing. He kept his eyes scanning the HUD and the instrument panel, watching for delicate imbalances that he could control with the throttles. Easing the nose up, he bled speed off by approaching stalling speed, but he didn’t want to raise the angle of attack so high that he cut into the airflow for the turbojets and stalled them out.

“Four-three-five knots,” Munoz reported. “We’re looking for about three-ten, right?”

“In that neighborhood, Tiger. Altitude?”

“On the radar altimeter, we’re showing two-five-five-zero.”

Munoz’s instrument readouts agreed with his own, which was reassuring.

The MakoShark kept lowering her tail, pancaking toward the earth at over four hundred miles per hour. The stall warning buzzer and panel light ignited once, and McKenna brought the nose down a trifle.

“Three miles, jefe.”

“Good a guess as any.”

“Hey, man! I say anythin’ about give-or-take a few feet?”

“Just checking.”

Mitchell’s numbers were just numbers. They didn’t feel right to a pilot who had learned to trust his instincts as well as his instruments. Old barnstormers never die.

“Outer marker,” Munoz reported, then told the tower the same thing.

“We’ve got visual on you,” the air controller called back.

Far ahead of Mitchell’s recommendation and two miles out, McKenna eased the left throttle into reverse thrust, beginning to counteract the rocket motor. He pulled the right throttle back to twenty per cent power, until the rudders felt balanced.

The MakoShark settled abruptly.

“Five hundred ground clearance,” Munoz said, his voice steady and firm.

McKenna nudged the nose down.

The airspeed picked up for a few seconds then began to fall off.

“Three hundred feet.”

The airspeed dropped to 320 knots. The controls felt iffy. The right wing dropped, and he brought it back up with minor pressure on the controller.

“Fifty feet, airspeed three-one-zero.”

The noise of the rocket motor all but drowned out the sound of the turbojets now. He didn’t hear the shriek of rubber when the main gear tires touched down.

McKenna had to use the brakes to bring the nose down, and it hit hard and bounced. He pulled reverse thrust into both engines, but at different rates, and the MakoShark slewed from side to side as he sought the right adjustments.