Kedar Khazari had thirty hours in his logbook but he knew he would never get his pilot’s license. At the conclusion of this flight, his first—and his last—solo cross-country, he would meet his mother in heaven. He had joined the Guards last year, before his fifteenth birthday. Would anyone miss him? Not his foster mother; she had been glad to see him go.
Kedar pushed himself up high enough to look out over the cowling. He wondered how tall he would have been. Below him the landscape was as harsh as the sunny side of the moon. He shuddered, thinking about landing down there in the rocks and snakes. Except for a dirt road, the desert gave no clues to his location. His captain wouldn’t know that he had been off course, as long as Kedar found his target.
He had the moving-map for navigation. The flight path on the blue moving-map pointed to the Daggett airport, the arrow piercing a small dot labeled DAG, the shaft crossing a military restricted area and higher terrain. Unlike his computer-based flight simulator game, the on-board GPS had no keyboard or mouse. Without the right knob twists, the machine wouldn’t return to the assigned flight plan. The student pilot pushed the yoke slightly to level off at 9500 feet over a highway heading south.
When the map showed a path to Daggett clear of Edwards Air Force Base, he turned east; he could reorient himself over Daggett. He thought he recognized I-15, the interstate to Las Vegas. The aircraft cabin was cozy and he felt sleepy; last night instead of sleeping, he had looked forward to this flight: the captain had said that it would be his first solo cross-country, but he hadn’t told Kedar about the explosives and the secret mission until just before take-off. Kedar drank some water but he really wanted coffee and a sweet roll. He stuffed his sweatshirt under his butt to raise himself in the seat enough to look outside without straining his neck. Then he saw clouds.
Dark clouds. How close? Some mist around his plane’s wings. Thick cumulus hovered over half the sky, blocking his path. He had to alter course to avoid them—he would be unable to see. The Cessna had plenty of fuel. He turned south, away from the clouds, away from the restricted area, away from Daggett.
The aircraft engine ran with a strange sluggishness. Was something wrong? The tachometer showed 2200 RPMs; he had set it higher than that. The mags—no, it would lurch and stutter. Temperature: okay; oil pressure: okay. No problem, then: the altitude must affect the RPMs some way. Kedar glanced below a knob on the instrument panel where he had suspended his wristwatch. Airborne four hours, he wanted to pee.
The airspeed had decreased to 85 knots. The tach showed lower RPMs: only 1800. He pushed in the throttle and leaned the fuel-air mixture exactly as the captain had directed. He had never landed this particular Cessna 172, different from his familiar Cessna 152 trainer. Would it land the same way?
“I am a soldier in a holy war, proud to be a Guard.” Cadet Khazari chanted the mantra the captain had taught him: “Focus your mind on the mission, always the mission first . . . Chant ‘I am a soldier in a holy war’ . . .” The mantra didn’t focus his mind. Kedar stared at the gray plastic barrel—explosives—on the seat beside him. He couldn’t land at Daggett and he couldn’t land in the rocks.
The engine knocked and vibrated. The RPMs had dropped to 1100. He pushed in the throttle as far as it would go. No change. He pushed the red mixture knob all the way in. The engine coughed twice and shuddered. Then silence, except for the thump-thump, his heart pounding.
Kedar scanned the horizon, turning his head right, then left. The clouds were still there, but he could make Daggett. The captain had told him not to land for fuel, not with the explosives onboard. He pressed the alternator button and then pushed and pulled the primer. The engine was dead. The RPM needle had dropped quickly to the bottom of the dial. He felt the Cessna descending, a dropping sensation under his seat. He couldn’t turn the ignition key to engage the starter—no key—because the captain had hot-wired it.
The wind screamed and whistled over the aircraft cabin—unnerving, unnatural—a sound like nothing he knew. The aircraft creaked and whined. Faster and faster, going down. Where to land? His eyes darted across the terrain. Mountains. Rocks.
“I am a soldier . . . ” The mantra taught to him by the captain was useless. He needed someone here, with him. He needed his flight instructor John. John would tell him what to do: Fly the airplane, all the way to the ground.
Lifting the nose gently and pulling the trim wheel, an adjustment that helped to stabilize the glide attitude and speed, Kedar brought the airspeed into the middle of the white arc that indicated a glide speed for emergencies that John had told him about. If he slowed the descent, he could glide a long way, but how far was that? Without engine power, if Kedar pulled back too strongly on the yoke, the wings would no longer keep the aircraft flying. The plane would tumble to earth—nose first, even spinning.
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