The captain looks out his window, and makes a sharp, "Oh, my God." Not what he's supposed to say under the circumstances.
At this altitude, the tower normally calls and hands us off to departure. Instead we get the worst call I have ever heard.
"Mountain 4-6-1, your entire left wing is engulfed in flame, repeat, left wing on fire." He then starts calmly telling other birds to hold where they are, or clear off the runways.
The captain is supposed to be starting on the emergency checklist, or taking the controls and having me do it, but he's still staring out the window.
"Captain." I try to stay calm, the plane requiring my full attention to stay level. No response, except another "My God."
"Captain!" Nothing.
"
Captain!"
I take my left hand off the yoke, and do something definitely not on the checklist, I turn on the computer and let it fly the plane.
The captain is staring ahead, seemingly looking for something. I'm thinking it's his brain and he's not going to find it. We are headed straight out over the ocean, level at 3,000 feet, going 180 degrees the wrong way, burning.
I reach down into the console and shut off the fuel to engine number one, then up into the overhead to cut the fuel pumps on that side. There is a brightly flashing red handle back down in the console, the fire control for engine number one. I yank it hard straight up, and turn it to the left, praying.
The tower is talking to us again, but the captain isn't responding. I don't have time to yet either. I give the captain a quick shake while I wait to see if the fire is out, and all that does is get another religious reference out of him.
The fire signal stays on, for a wing with 25,000 pounds of highly explosive jet fuel in it. I flip the fire switch to the right, firing off the second, and last, fire bottle, but I already know we're screwed.
And, suddenly, I know what's up. Crash my plane in the ocean. Dead Simon. Never find the body. No connection to the MFM. Fuck the Fog Bastards, I'm getting us home.
A lot more warnings are going off. The generator in the engine is gone, one of our three hydraulic systems is gone. Mr. Boeing builds a lot of redundancy into his aircraft, and I am going to test it all.
We're 10 miles off shore, adding almost four miles every minute. I shut down the computer, and gently, really gently, try to turn us to the right. There are four runways at LAX, two south of the terminal, two north. If I can turn us around, we should be headed more or less toward the northern ones, having taken off from the southern ones.
All the thrust, and most of the lift, are on the right wing, making control an exciting proposition. My feet are already tired from mashing the rudder pedals. It takes a couple minutes for me to get my bronco bucking back toward the coast, dropping a thousand feet or so in the process.
I pull back a little on the throttles, trying to slow us down toward a landing speed, and test the flaps. Right side goes down, left side doesn't. Almost flips us over, given that we already were imbalanced, I catch it just at the edge and pull it down.
Fuck me. Burning. Tail wind, which makes the wings less effective just when I need them the most. Got to land going too fast with minimum flaps. Betting the thrust reversers won't work either. Weigh more than the landing gear are designed to handle, should circle and dump fuel, but that would be death. I push the button on my yoke, calling the tower to lament my fate.
"Tower, Mountain 4-6-1, landing runway seven left, need everything."
"Mountain 4-6-1," he's amazingly calm, though it probably helps that he's not the one on fire. "Cleared to land any runway, emergency equipment rolling. Remain on runway after landing."
He's both optimistic and stating the obvious. I evaluate myself and discover I am mad at Fog Dude, but not at all afraid. I am getting my 193 passengers and colleagues home, no matter what.
No time to talk to the passengers or flight attendants, but they probably have a better idea of what's going on than I do. I have no idea how slowly I can fly and stay in the air, so I am keeping above our takeoff speed. Means if the brakes don't work, we will end up on Century Boulevard.
That thought reminds me to set the auto brake system to MAX, instead of the take off setting it's on. Would be nice if the man sitting next to me would actually do his job.
The left wing keeps trying to drop, I keep having to catch it. Every time it drops, it takes us a little left of our path, and a little closer to the ocean. We finished our turn too far north, forcing me to bring the nose around, about five degrees at a time. The airplane keeps trying to hit undo.
There are landing aids out here, but I don't have time to set them up, and the captain is worse than useless, so I'm flying what we in pilot talk call a visual approach, eyeballing it in over the water, praying we stay in the air for another couple minutes.
I start coming down purposefully, slowly, more or less straight in to the runway furthest from the terminal on the north end, usually much longer than we need, but not today.
The captain is semi-coherent all of a sudden and starts calling altitude for me.
"500. Gear down" We're a mile or so out. I have to pull the handle, but at least the gear works. Another miracle.
"100." We're over the beach. Normally the plane would count, but we didn't have time to ask it to. Instead, it starts yelling at us that we are flying into terrain. The captain actually shuts it off.
"40. 30. 20." We wiggle, the left wing trying desperately to touch the ground first, I try just as desperately to prevent it. If the wing wins, we flip and we die. The tires touch first, the brakes slam on by themselves, the air brake pops up on the right wing but not the left because I am a dumbass and forgot to turn it off. The captain cancels it while I fight to stay on the runway. The nose wheel breaks the warning stripe before I get us back around, and headed east again, 20 feet off of center. The captain does not complain.
For a mile and a half of asphalt, I stare helplessly at the airspeed indicator, cheering it on.
We're more than half way down the runway, the brakes starting to overheat, slowed to 100 knots, me just beginning to think we might make it when we get a rumble, a huge bang, and are slammed right. I pull hard to the left, but we're off the runway and into the grass before I can begin to do anything about it. A bounce, another, the sound of twisting aluminum, the nose wheel buries itself, and we come to a stop, way too fast, probably have a nice set of bruises where my harness caught me. I slam my hand into the evacuation button, which tells the passengers to go (kinda stupid I know), and turns on the evac lights.
The captain is up, unlocks the door, and is gone without even a "nice landing." The plane is still on fire. I spend a couple minutes shutting down everything I can think of, unhook myself, grab my tablet from my suitcase then leave the flight deck not sure I did everything on the checklist for what to shut off, but it's not a one man job.
There is fire in the cabin, black smoke, certainly poisonous, impossible to see beyond first class, hopefully a result of the off runway detour, not the original fire. The last flight attendant is gliding down the exit slide, and I follow. You're supposed to take your shoes off, and not have anything in your hands, but I figure I've earned the right to ignore whatever rules I want.
Fire folk are waiting at the bottom and help us away, me confirming that I didn't see anyone else, the chief flight attendant certain that she got everyone off before she left.
They are dumping chemicals on my bird, but the left wing and left side of the aircraft are gone, the tail is still back over the runway, the nose buried in dirt. It's gonna be a tax write off. Dad is not going to be happy with me.
A few minutes later, find out I'm wrong about that. The flight attendants and I have been standing there watching it burn, exchanging what information we have on what happened, when somebody grabs me in a bear hug from behind. It's dad, with Captain Amos not far behind. I didn't hear exactly what he said, but I know it wasn't something bad.
He lets me loose long enough for Captain Amos to try knocking me over with a heavy slap on the back.
"I landed it in the grass."
"And no one was seriously hurt." Dad's hand is on my shoulder.
"It's burning."
"They'll put it out."
Captain Amos, who is the chief pilot, drags me off to tell him the details. I try not to be mean to Don, but I don't credit him with doing anything he didn't. When I finish, Amos slaps me again (on the back), and takes off (that's walk quickly away, he can't fly without a plane).
I walk back over to dad, just in time to hear him tell the airline's public relations staff not to release the crew's names. Good. Last thing I need is a bunch of press.
That's when it hits me that my phone is in the cockpit, which means I need a replacement. No way to call Perez.
Stand there for another half hour or so doing the father/son bonding thing, watching the plane smolder, talking about how it handled, and talking about the business end. Boeing doesn't make these birds anymore, the worst business decision of all time, and we will either have to buy one from someone else, or start thinking about transitioning to another type. Not something I have to worry about, but dad will have to choose.
An airport authority car and a big black van come rolling down the taxiway, both with their lights on, showing off. No traffic out to speak of, they would have been just as quick if they were discrete.
The driver stays in the car, three suits exit. A half dozen folk exit the van. Frak me. Bright blue jackets with FBI written in big yellow letters across the back. The three suits head my way, one an airport bigwig, the other two wearing well tailored dark blue suits, short well trimmed hair, airs of confidence. Obviously feds. They look a little familiar.
Mr. Airport Man takes dad, probably to talk to him about the cleaning bill for his runway. One blue suit walks over, his right hand out.
"Special Agent Machado. My partner, Special Agent Roberts. Our boss has asked us to come get you, and transport to headquarters. We've cleared it with the NTSB." That's the National Transportation Safety Board, the folks who will be here later to investigate.
I give him my best what the frak look.
"Officer Kiana Perez was shot this morning." Before I can choke him to death, he puts up his arm. "She's fine. And, at headquarters."
I start running to the car, they catch up.
"Sniper. Armor piercing rounds, military grade. Easily penetrated her car. Would have gone through the wing and engine housing of your airplane just as easily."
I stop and look at him. Eye contact. Agreement. They think someone tried to shoot down my plane to kill me. I wonder if he was blond or foggy. Seems like an awful lot of trouble just for one dumbass.
I ride shotgun, making the feds squeeze into the back. We zip, lights flashing, to the parking lot, then shift to a blue sedan, possibly the one that was parked outside my apartment. I think these two spent some time there.
No lights or sirens, but still not a long drive up to Wilshire, they make me go through security protocol when we get to the building as if I haven't already been there. Finally, we get in the elevator and arrive at our floor. Once I know we're headed for the conference room, I flash there, not worrying about my air of confidence.
Perez is sitting at the table, her left arm in a sling, small cuts on her neck and face, as well as on the arm. She's taken her hair down, and once again looks fetching aside from the wounds I probably caused. She and Agent Flaherty are locked in conversation, but they stop when I walk in.
"How was your flight?" Perez's attempt at humor. I don't respond, try to hug her without hurting her. Don't think I manage it, she twitches and I back off, kneeling in front of her chair, holding her hand. I don't know what to say, she does.
"I'm fine, only a graze and some flying glass from the window. Saw your airplane on the news. You missed the runway."
"Very funny. You really think someone shot me down?"
Flaherty leans in. "What did they tell you?"
"Nothing, armor piercing shells."
"We won't know for sure until tomorrow when we get to your aircraft with the NTSB, but I think we already know. They don't just want to kill you two, they want to make a statement doing it. The parking lot of the FBI building. A jet aircraft crash."
I sit down in the nice leather chair next to Perez and try to look expectant.
"We don't know anything else. We have a team going roof to roof based on the trajectory of the shells in Kiana's car, and another on the south side of LAX. Whoever did this is a great shot, it limits the possibilities. We're doing a computer search as well."
"A great shot?"
"Hit your plane moving at a couple hundred miles an hour, and Kiana driving through the parking lot almost that fast. The ammunition is not available commercially either, if we find the shell casings, that will help substantially."
