"She's yours." Gold's acceptance came without hesitation.
"Burns?"
"Sir?"
"What in hell's gone wrong?"
"Can't tell for sure with all this smoke, Major." Burns's voice sounded hollow under the oxygen mask. "It looks like a short in the area of the radio transmitter."
"Buckley Tower, this is Vixen 03," Gold persisted. "Please come in."
"It's no use, Lieutenant," Burns gasped. "They can't hear you. No-body can hear you. The circuit breaker for the radio equipment won't stay set."
Vylander's eyes were watering so badly he could hardly see. "I'm bringing her around on a course back to Buckley," he announced calmly.
But before he could complete the hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, the C-97 started to vibrate abruptly in unison with a metallic ripping sound. The smoke disappeared as if by magic and a frigid blast of air tore into the small enclosure, assailing the men's exposed skin like a thousand wasps. The plane was shaking herself to pieces.
"Number-three engine threw a propeller blade!" Burns cried.
"Jesus Christ, it never rains . . . Shut down three!" snapped Vylander, "and feather what's left of the prop."
Gold's hands flew over the control panel, and soon the vibration ceased. His heart sinking, Vylander gingerly tested the controls.
His breath quickened and a growing dread mushroomed inside him.
"The prop blade ripped through the fuselage," Hoffman reported. There's a six-foot gash in the cargo-cabin wall. Cables and hydraulic lines are dangling all over."
"That explains where the smoke went," Gold said wryly. "It was sucked outside when we lost cabin pressure."
"It also explains why the ailerons and rudder won't respond," Vylander added. "We can go up and we can go down, but we can't turn and bank."
"Maybe we can slue her around by opening and closing the cowl flaps on engines one and four," Gold suggested. "At least enough to put us in the landing pattern at Buckley."
"We can't make Buckley," Vylander said. "Without number-three engine, we're losing altitude at the rate of nearly a hundred feet a minute. We're going to have to set her down in the Rockies."
His announcement was greeted with stunned silence. He could see the fear grow in his crew members' eyes, could almost smell it.
"My God," groaned Hoffman. "It can't be done. We'll ram the side of a mountain for sure."
"We've still got power and some measure of control," Vylander said. "And we're out of the overcast, so we can at least see
where we're going."
"Thank heaven for small favors," grunted Burns.
"What's our heading?" asked Vylander.
"Two-two-seven southwest," answered Hoffman. "We've been thrown almost eighty degrees off our plotted course."
Vylander merely nodded. There was nothing more to say. He turned all his concentration to keeping the Stratocruiser on a lateral level. But there was no stopping the rapid descent. Even with full-power settings on the remaining three engines, there was no way the heavily laden plane could maintain altitude. He and Gold could only sit by impotently as they began a long glide earthward through the valleys surrounded by the fourteen-thousand-foot peaks of the Colorado Rockies.
Soon they could make out the trees poking through the snow coating the mountains. At 11,500 feet the jagged summits began rising above their wing tips. Gold flicked on the landing lights and strained his eyes through the windshield, searching for an open piece of ground. Hoffman and Burns sat frozen, tensed for the inevitable crash.
The altimeter needle dipped below the ten-thousand-foot mark. Ten thousand feet. It was a miracle they had made it so low; a miracle a wall of rock had not risen suddenly and blocked their glide path. Then, almost directly ahead, the trees parted and the landing lights revealed a flat, snow-covered field.
"A meadow!" Gold shouted. "A gorgeous, beautiful alpine meadow five degrees to starboard."
"I see it," acknowledged Vylander. He coaxed the slight course adjustment out of the Stratocruiser by jockeying the engine-cowl flaps and throttle settings.