“Yes, sir.”
“Excellent. There is a plane coming in,” he said, taking the paper with the tail number and radio frequency from his pocket and handing it to the man. “You are to make sure we are ready to receive him.”
The man pulled a pair of readers from his pocket and frowned at the paper. “No flight plan?”
“No.”
“Do you have any idea where this aircraft is coming from?”
“That is all I have.”
“Hmm,” the man frowned. “Th-this is not an easy ask, but we will do our best.”
He crossed the room, came to a halt next to the radar operator, and handed the man the paper.
“This might take some time,” Aké said.
Dábo nodded and moved to the window overlooking the runway where the APC smoldered. “Tell them I want that piece of junk off the runway, now!” he told his RTO.
“Yes, sir.”
The rush of adrenaline that had come with the assault had begun to wear off and Dábo was suddenly tired. He pulled the cigarette case from his pocket, lit up, and took a deep drag. Since getting the call from Cabot, his only focus had been taking the airfield, but it was only now that it was safely in his hands that Dábo began to consider the implications of his actions.
It was an election year, and high on President Alassane’s platform was reunification—ending the fighting that had gripped the country since the civil war.
What is he going to say when he learns what I’ve done here? he wondered.
Dábo knew the answer, but he was positive that this was one situation that his wife couldn’t get him out of.
“Sir, I have your aircraft on the scope, bearing zero-three-four degrees,” the man said.
Daniel Aké moved over to the radar station, the general tight on his heels.
“Have you tried to make contact?” Aké asked, peering at the screen.
“Yes, sir, but I’m not getting an answer.”
“Is it him?” Dábo demanded.
Both Aké and the controller ignored him.
“Sir, I think the aircraft is in trouble.”
“In trouble, what does that mean?”
“The aircraft is rapidly losing altitude, that plus the fact that we cannot get the pilot on the radio is usually an indication of a problem,” Aké said, pulling off his readers and grabbing a pair of binoculars from his desk.
“Someone turn up the power on the transmitter,” he said, moving to the window, Dábo close on his heels.
Aké lifted the binoculars to his eyes and turned to the northeast.
Dábo was already thinking about what he was going to do with the money when the speaker on the wall came to life, the voice calm despite the message.
“Mayday . . . Mayday . . . Korho . . . tower . . . this is Pilgrim three-niner x-ray. Request . . . emergency . . . landing.”
21
BOBO-DIOULASSO
Airspeed was the only thing that mattered, and Hayes forced himself to block everything else out, ignoring the flashing warning lights and the urgent TERRAIN—TERRAIN—PULL UP of the Ground Proximity Warning System alerting him to what seemed an imminent collision.
Hayes waited until the last possible second to start his climb and gently pull back on the yoke. The Provider’s nose tipped skyward, the airspeed indicator heading in the wrong direction as the altimeter ticked upward.
He begged and pleaded with the plane, but she wasn’t going to make it. As a last-ditch effort to get over the rocks, Hayes dropped the flaps—the sudden shake of the yoke indicating that he was getting dangerously close to stall speeds.
One second they were hanging in limbo, the bottom of the plane inches from the rock face, and then they were over—nothing but clear sky and flat ground as far as the eye could see.
“Hell, yeah,” Hayes yelled, slapping the yoke with his left hand and retracting the flaps with his right.
While the Provider would never win a beauty contest or a race, the old warbird could take a punch, which was the only reason Hayes had stayed with her when his gut was telling him to strap on the chute and get the hell out.
“Mayday, Mayday, this is Pilgrim,” he said over the radio.
But there was no response.
According to the GPS, he was fifty miles north of Korhogo, and the fact that he couldn’t get ahold of the tower was the least of his problems. While the Provider was currently holding steady at seven thousand feet, all it took was one look at the fuel gauge, its needle buried in the red, to know it wouldn’t last. Even with all the maneuvering over the drop zone, the Provider should have had enough fuel to make it to Korhogo. The fact that it was in the red told Hayes that there had to be a leak.
The only thing he could do was adjust the fuel mixture and throttle back, but even with the Provider running as lean as possible, he knew he was living on borrowed time.
Just hold on, girl, he begged.
Without the tower, it was up to Hayes to figure out the most fuel-efficient approach, so he activated the autopilot and grabbed the chart. According to it, the runway at Korhogo ran east to west. The last weather report had the wind coming in from the west, so Hayes plotted his approach accordingly.
He plotted and replotted his route, double- and triple-checking his math until he found the most fuel-efficient trip, turned off the autopilot, and banked the plane gently to the east, leveled out, and flew straight for ten minutes before heading south.
A final turn brought him to the west and he was ten miles out from the spot he hoped was the airfield when he saw the smoke—three charcoal pillars rising into the sky like ancient funeral pyres.
Yeah, that’s not good, he thought, beginning his descent.
According to the chart, the runway was large enough to accommodate the Provider, but at five thousand feet it looked impossibly short and barely wide enough to handle a single-engine Cessna.
Only one way to find out.
He’d centered the nose on the runway and was about to drop the gear when the radio came to life.
“Pilgrim three-niner x-ray, this is Korhogo tower, do you copy?” the calm voice asked in French.
The surprise of hearing his tail number over the radio was overshadowed by the realization that he was no longer alone, and he eagerly pressed the talk button.
“Tower, this is Pilgrim three-niner x-ray requesting an emergency landing,” he replied in French.
“Advise nature of emergency.”
“Where do you want me to start?” he asked, dropping the gear.