“We just lost starboard engine,” I said, leaning back on the yoke and slamming the rudder hard to hold our position. “Evie, tell me what’s wrong? What happened to that engine?”
Evie scanned the gauges. “Fuel pressure is at zero. There’s nothing mechanically wrong. I think they’re trying to scare you.”
“That’s right, don’t fight it and no one gets hurt. You want to fly, don’t you? I’ll show you real flying.”
Our altitude was dropping. We weren’t in a dive anymore, but we didn’t have the thrust to stay airborne. I firewalled the throttle, but I couldn’t get the power to climb. We were still fifty miles from Wright Field.
Damned fly boys, always think they know best. “We fly on my terms, buster.” Fly—or not. “We’re going to have to land now. We’re going to have to put down in a field somewhere.”
“There’s no way,” Cook said, a waver in his voice. “Not with this plane, not at this speed. The best pilot in the Army couldn’t do it, and, well, you’re just—”
“We’re just what?” I said, murder in my voice. He didn’t have to say it, I heard it every time I showed up on an air field in my flight suit. “Can you fly this thing?” I shoved a roll of charts at him. “Here, look at these and tell me there’s a field we can put down in.” He disappeared down the hatch.
I didn’t lower the landing gear; it would be better to belly in on soft earth. I prayed there was an open field with good, soft earth.
Desperately, Evie pleaded, “Just let me talk to them, it’ll be okay if you’ll just let me—”
“Evie, this plane is trying to kill us! Now help me land!”
“They’re not trying to kill us. They just want to fly and you don’t understand.”
She put one hand on the yoke and reached the other toward the pool of light. It stretched to meet her, engulfing her arm in its radiance. The light poured into one hand, through her whole body, then out the other hand and into the yoke, completing the circuit. Her face glowed rose. She closed her eyes, and the plane steadied. The intense pressure eased off the yoke.
Holding the plane level had taken all my strength. I’d been shaking with the effort. But Evie held it with the touch of one hand.
Cook was wrong, trying to quantify the characteristics of the typical pilot so the Army could make a checklist and screen its candidates more efficiently. Good eyesight and a sense of daring, that was all a person really needed to be a pilot. To be a good pilot? A lot of us did a good job just by following the rules and using common sense. But to be a great pilot? Some pilots knew their plane’s condition without looking at the instruments. They could sense a change in the weather the moment before it happened, they could react before the plane itself did. I’d heard of guys coaxing their fighters out of flat spins just by talking to them, treating the planes like the sexy ladies they painted on the noses. It was instinct, a sixth sense that let a pilot be a part of his plane. You either had it or you didn’t.
Evie could fly a rock, if she put her mind to it.
“Evie? Evie, what’s happening?”
“Don’t worry,” she said, looked at me, and smiled. “We’ll make it.”
“There’s two hundred acres of empty farmland within range, heading north.” Cook climbed back through the hatch, a chart rolled up and tucked under his arm. “We can still bail out,” he added hopefully.
“I’m not leaving,” Evie said.
“I’m not leaving Evie,” I said.
“Aw, Jesus,” Cook said, sitting heavily.
Evie turned the wheel. The plane banked and hiccupped, dropping ten feet in a second as the remaining engine whined. I braced. Cook grabbed the back of my seat. Evie didn’t flinch. She murmured, words I couldn’t hear.
They were the most agonizing ten minutes I’d ever spent in a cockpit. I watched the altimeter—it was all I could do. Two thousand. Fifteen hundred. One thousand.
The glow filled the cockpit, but around Cook and me, it formed a bubble of dark, isolating us. Evie was fading. I could see through her to the side of the cockpit. I could see the instrument panel and the padding of the wheel through her hand. I wanted to stop her. I didn’t want her to go. I was afraid to touch her. She was flying.
A winter-razed cornfield, covered in the dry stubble of last year’s crop, loomed ahead. It stretched, warping with the oddness of our perspective. I glanced at the airspeed indicator. We were only going a hundred and ten. If we didn’t land going at least a hundred and thirty, we’d stall. One of the quirks of the Army’s most advanced and sensitive bomber.
“Evie, we’re too slow. We can’t land at that speed.”
“We only have one engine, Jane.”
“We’ll stall out.”
“We’ll be fine.”
Five hundred feet. Four hundred.