Chapter 8 - THE WIDOWMAKER APPROACH
In the cockpit, Marcus had one hand on the left thrust lever and his other hand wrapped around the manual landing gear extension handle between the seats.
“Davies!” Marcus yelled. “Pull the alternate gear release! Free-fall extension now!”
Davies grabbed the red handle and hauled it upward with both hands.
Beneath the floorboards, three heavy mechanical latches released with a concussive CLUNK. The main landing gear doors fell open into the three-hundred-mile-per-hour wind. The sheer weight of the massive sixteen-wheel main gear bogies dragged them down into the airstream until they locked into position with a shudder that vibrated through the airframe.
Three green lights flickered on the landing gear panel.
“Gear down and locked!” Davies shouted. “Nose gear is indicating unsafe! The nose strut didn't lock over-center!”
“Forget the nose gear!” Marcus shouted back. “We’re touching down on the mains and holding the nose off as long as we can! Airspeed?!”
“Two hundred and fifteen knots! We’re coming in sixty knots too fast!”
The ground was a blur of yellow weeds, rusted chain-link fence, and flashing emergency lights. The Boeing 777 was barreling down the final approach corridor like a runaway freight train on a downhill grade.
Without flaps to cup the air and provide low-speed lift, the wings had to remain at an unnaturally flat angle to avoid stalling. Marcus was working the single left engine like a blacksmith hammering hot iron—tapping the throttle forward to arrest the sink rate, pulling it back three millimeters to keep the nose from pitching up.
“ONE HUNDRED,” the radio altimeter chimed.
“FIFTY.”
“FORTY.”
“THIRTY.”
A gust of freezing mountain wind sheared off the nearby silos, catching the giant vertical stabilizer and throwing the tail forty feet to the right. The left wing dipped violently toward the asphalt.
“We’re rolling!” Davies screamed, throwing his arms over his face.
Marcus didn't blink. With an animalistic roar, he shoved the left throttle forward to absolute mechanical over-boost. The remaining engine shrieked, spitting a plume of yellow flame from its exhaust cone. The sudden wash of air over the left wing snapped the plane back to level just as the eight massive tires of the left main landing gear slammed into the concrete of Runway 8-Left.
The impact was catastrophic.
The sound was like an artillery shell detonating directly beneath the cockpit. The two-thousand-pound nitrogen-filled tires exploded instantly under the immense kinetic shock of the two-hundred-knot touchdown, their shredded steel belts whipping through the wheel well like chainsaws.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
A blinding shower of white-hot titanium sparks erupted behind the left wing, lighting up the gray winter sky for half a mile.
Marcus immediately pulled the left throttle to fuel cutoff.
The engine died. Flight 1442 was now a three-hundred-ton glider made of screaming aluminum, sliding down the center of the runway at two hundred miles an hour on bare metal rims.
“Brakes!” Davies yelled.
“Hold the pedals!” Marcus commanded, his teeth bared in a feral grin as he fought the drifting nose with the natural aerodynamic drag of the rudder. “Not until we drop below one-forty, or the accumulators will blow the hydraulic lines!”
The end of the concrete was rushing toward them with horrifying speed. Five thousand feet of runway remained. Four thousand. Three thousand.
The concrete was burning. The friction of the shredded gear struts grinding against the grooved runway had turned the steel into molten red slag. Long plumes of black rubber smoke were billowing past the cockpit windows, choking the air intakes of the environmental control systems.
“Now!” Marcus roared. “Stand on the brakes!”
Both men jammed their combat boots and dress shoes into the tops of the rudder pedals, pushing with all the weight of their bodies against the emergency pneumatic brake valves.
The remaining right gear tires locked. They didn't roll; they flat-spotted instantly, shrieking in agony before disintegrating in twin blasts of flame. The metal struts dug directly into the concrete, gouging two-foot-deep trenches into the Cold War-era runway.
The deceleration was violent enough to snap the safety belts against their collarbones.
“TWO THOUSAND FEET REMAINING,” the GPS warned.
The aircraft was still doing one hundred and ten knots.
Up ahead, the gray concrete abruptly ended, replaced by an ocean of frozen brown dirt, snowdrifts, and tumbleweeds.
“Brace!” Marcus yelled.
The nose gear—its locking pin cracked—finally gave way under the forward momentum. The front strut collapsed backward into the fuselage with a deafening, tearing crunch of structural ribs.
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The nose of the Boeing 777 slammed flat onto the runway at eighty miles an hour.
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