FIRE ON HIGH
“Fire On High” is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. All characters and settings © Tigermark 2003-2018 unless otherwise noted. Request permission before using them, please.
The characters of Anatol Altaisokova and Melinda Altaisokova are my names for characters © Max Blackrabbit. They appear in this story with his permission. The characters of Brandy, Maxwell, Tonya and Zig Zag are also © Max Blackrabbit and appear here with his permission. Events and information relating to Tonya, Anatol, and their family are presented here, but are not to be considered canon to those characters or any other story but this one. ZZ Studios, and all characters associated with ZZ Studios, James Sheppard, and Marvin Badger © James Bruner and appear here with his permission. Although characters from and events referring to Zig Zag the Story appear here, this story is not canon to that one, and the author will disavow any knowledge of this story. Wanda Vixen © Chris Yost and appears here with his permission. Sabrina Mustidalae © Eric W. Schwartz and appears here with his permission. This story is not canon to Sabrina Online the comic, or Sabrina Online the Story, either. Matt Barstock, Angie Rockwell, Intermountain Charter, The Bitch, and her crew, and Jerry Kitt © Silver Coyote. See their story HERE. Gail Rutherford © me and is not canon to any other story involving ZZ Studios. Gabrielle Ryder and Jean LeBrun © Aslaug, from her Transitions stories. See them at her site, The Axe Shed, available from the links page. Aramis Dagaz is© his player and appears here with his permission.
Author’s Note:
Chapter 80
Lines of Pressure
The dark-furred canid was relaxing, preparing to go out the next morning on his next “assignment.” In his profession, one rarely called whatever one did by its proper name. When the phone rang he felt mildly annoyed at being interrupted. The number on the caller ID wasn’t familiar, and no name came across with it.
“If it’s a telemarketer, I may have to do a freebie,” he groused to himself. Still, money was money, so he answered it after his customary wait of three rings.
“Diablo,” he answered, cold and deep.
“Pappy Ewe One,” said a female voice he didn’t recognize. The call sign he knew well.
“Yes sir, Pappy, what can I do for you?”
The femme continued, “You recently did a job for a certain someone from Lexington, Kentucky.”
It was said as a statement. Diablo hesitated only a couple of seconds.
“Yes. Kind of a rookie, but his money still spends, why?”
The femme’s voice was pure sweetness, and cold as ice at the same time. “There are no problems as of now, but let’s just say doing business with him and doing business with us is not compatible.”
Diablo was quiet a moment, then replied, “I see. How likely is the assignment I did for him to bite me?”
“Not very. Another agency is watching him. We kept your name out of it. Be more careful next time.”
With that, the connection closed. Diablo hung up the phone and decided that if his recent client ever called him again, he’d put a deadly certain scare into him before ignoring him.
# # #
“Memphis Approach, Seven Four Delta, I’m fifteen out. I’ll contact BWG radio and inform them, then go to Unicom. I’ll still be monitoring here for traffic advisory,” Alex called. So far everything had held together, so he was hoping for a routine landing.
“Seven Four Delta, Memphis copies you over to BWG Unicom. We’ll call you if we see any traffic conflicts, good luck.”
“Seven Four Delta,” Alex replied, and then switched over to the BWG radio frequency. Not a tower or ATC facility, this was simply the one on the radio who attended the field. After them, he’d switch over to Unicom, which was the frequency used for aircraft around Bowling Green to let each other know where they were.
“Bowling Green Radio, November Three Seven Seven Four Delta is a Cessna Skymaster, about ten out for Runway Two One with an engine out.”
The reply was surprisingly swift. “Seven Four Delta, copy you inbound. Memphis already phoned us. Do you need fire rescue equipment?”
“Not at this time, Bowling Green. I’ll call to confirm after I get my gear down.” Alex double checked his speed and moved the gear handle to the down position.
“Bowling Green, standing by.”
The gear cycled down, and Alex got a green indicator for the nose gear, but the mains remained yellow. He tried cycling them again with the same result. Finally, he lowered the gear lever and checked the manual pump. Finding it, as the checklist said, loose and usable, he manually pumped down the gear. The process took several minutes, but finally he got a green down and locked for all three landing gear.
“Bowling Green, Seven Four Delta, gear down and locked, going to Unicom.”
“Bowling Green copies, good luck and see you on the ground.”
Alex switched frequencies and called out a general information broadcast.
“Bowling Green Unicom, November Three Seven Seven Four Delta is a Cessna Skymaster, eight out inbound straight for Runway Two One with an engine out, advise location.”
“Five Five November is a Cessna One Fifty on base for two one doing touch-and-go’s. I’ll exit the pattern for you Seven Four Delta,” came an immediate response.
“Seven Four Delta, thank you.”
Alex now concentrated on picking out the runway. At five miles out, he spotted it off to the side of a busy road and a multitude of shops, restaurants, car dealerships, and a mall. He adjusted flaps and pitch according to the checklist for a front-engine only landing. The winds were light, and so far, it looked like a completely normal approach and landing. One of the advantages of the Skymaster was that losing an engine didn’t throw the aircraft out of balance like it would a conventional twin.
When he was about three miles out, the radio on Unicom suddenly crackled to life. “Cessna inbound to BWG with a dead engine, can you say type? This is Co-Mar Aviation on Unicom.”
Alex answered, concentrating more on landing than on being interrupted. “November Three Seven Seven Four Delta is a Cessna Skymaster Riley Rocket conversion. Rear engine began to run rough and lost oil pressure.”
“Copy that Seven Four Delta,” the voice from the ground said. “Taxi past the boarding canopy and park in front of the hangar. We’ll take a look.”
“Seven Four Delta.”
Alex crossed the threshold and settled, watchful in case the main gear collapsed. The landing was smooth and steady, as the loss of the engine didn’t affect handling too much in a push-pull engine configuration. He turned onto the taxiway that led to the front of the hangars and terminal and called on Unicom.
“Seven Four Delta, down safe and clear of the active.”
He taxied past the terminal building and stopped in front of a hanger just past a boarding canopy. There he shut everything down. His first act was to call Loni.
“Kentiger Executive Air, may I help you?” the lynx answered in her usual professional style.
“Hi Loni, Alex. Made it down safe. I’m having the FBO here take a look at the engine.”
There was a slight pause. When Loni responded, she sounded greatly relieved. “Thank God. I have a room for you at the Holiday Inn Express, just go on down there if you need to. I’ll let Billy know. He just stepped out for a minute. Oh, and I got all your sales calls rescheduled.”
“Okay, great. I’ll call when I find out how long I’ll be down,” Alex replied.
“Alex, take care. I’m glad you’re down in one piece. Bye.” Loni’s voice still held concern.
“Bye Loni,” he responded.
He clicked off the call and got out of the aircraft. He found a friendly-looking mixed breed felid in coveralls standing just off his wingtip.
“Hello sir. Rear engine loss, I see. You’ve got oil streaks out the bottom of the engine bay. We can put it in the hangar here and see if we can track down what’s wrong.”
Alex walked out and shook paws with the felid, who had the name Dean on his coveralls.
“Dean, thank you. The name’s Alex O’Whitt. I think I shut it down before too much could go wrong. Still no clue what happened, though. Everything looked good in preflight.”
The felid grinned. “Lots of stuff can happen that you won’t catch in preflight. Give us a couple of hours and we’ll see if we can track down where the oil came from.”
“Sounds good,” Alex replied, noting a second fur in coveralls lining up to attach a small tow unit to the aircraft to tow it inside the hangar.
“You can go right in there, Mr. O’Whitt,” Dean said, indicating a door under the canopy. “They can shuttle you wherever you want to go while you wait.”
Alex gave a smile and a nod, retrieved his briefcase and laptop, and went inside. After walking through a well-appointed lounge area, he reached a counter. A perky border collie femme waited there as he walked up.
“Hello Miss, Dean is taking my Skymaster in to check why I had an engine failure. I guess I need the shuttle van and a recommendation for a good spot for lunch.”
“Hi, and it’s Kelly. I’d recommend Rafferty’s. Let me call Joel up here and I’ll drive you,” the femme answered.
Alex, recalling the events in Barbados, quickly and carefully looked at the femme. Deciding that she was only enthusiastically doing her job, he smiled and replied, “I’m Alex O’Whitt, Kelly. Sounds good, I’ll wait for you, ah, out front?”
“Sure, that’s fine. See you in a couple of minutes,” Kelly said as she turned and walked back away from the counter, passing a young lapine buck on his way up. Alex took his things and walked out to the front entrance, away from the flight line. He then waited, not at all pleased with how the day was going.
# # #
Tia stood on the ramp, apparently lost in thought. The green and white Cessna 172 before her had brought the stark memory of what she’d seen to mind. Her lessons were going well, and she would soon solo. At least, that was the plan. The way she felt at this moment, she wasn’t sure she trusted the aircraft enough to get in.
Her reverie was interrupted by a soft voice at her shoulder.
“Something wrong? You’re usually half way through the preflight when I come out the door.”
The young tigress turned and looked at her instructor. Patty Lane was a twenty-five-year-old bobcat femme. 5’8” and rather slim, she’d worked at Nexgen Aviation as a primary flight instructor ever since she’d gotten her certification at age twenty.
Tia frowned, which surprised Patty. The young femme was usually very upbeat.
“Okay, I don’t like the look of that. What’s going on?”
Tia sighed. No use trying to dodge, the bobcat femme knew her too well by now.
“Did you hear about the crash into Lake Michigan at Milwaukee last week?”
“Had it really been a week already?” Tia thought to herself.
The bobcat femme nodded. “Yes, I heard about it, er, why?”
“I was up there to watch Uncle Alex perform at the airshow. The plane that crashed almost mid-aired with his and Billy Panelli’s Tee Thirty Eights as they came in to land. I had binoculars, watching them land, and I saw the passenger’s face. She was scared to death, and sad. They tried to talk her down, but she didn’t respond. Her husband was the pilot, and they think he passed out or died and she chose to go with him.”
Patty looked stunned for several moments, and then asked gently, “Do you want to talk, or do you want to fly?”
Tia shrugged. “That’s what I was thinking about. The plane that crashed was a One Seventy Two, about like this one, only blue and white.”
Patty paused only a second. “Then today is a talk day. If you are upset or distracted, flying is not a good idea. I know, in the military you have to go when the call comes, but this is not the military.”
Tia had given her a dubious look, but now just nodded. Patty put an arm gently around her shoulder.
“Tia, I’m sorry you had to see what you saw. It’s tough when you have to see death in someone’s face. Let’s go sit in the pilot’s lounge and talk. We’ll treat this like a bad weather day and do some hangar flying.”
Tia again just nodded, so the bobcat released her, and they walked inside and sat down in the pilot’s lounge to talk. Patty got two sodas from the vending machine on her way and gave one to Tia. After taking a first sip, Patty began the conversation.
“Okay, let’s talk about this a bit. What’s bothering you most?”
Tia had been thinking about that for a couple of days. “Well, it’s not that they died. I know everything dies. I think it just bothers me that she gave up. I know there’s nothing I could have done. She just looked sad, and hopeless. Ice said she made up her mind to let it happen, to go with her husband. I guess I’ve gotten to the point where I’m wondering if maybe the aircraft and technology let them down.”
Patty looked askance. “How so? Do you think a malfunction caused the problem?”
“No,” Tia shook her head emphatically. “They think the pilot had a medical problem, but the aircraft didn’t help, either. You see, somehow the autopilot was on, holding the wings level, and the course true, but the altitude hold hadn’t been set or disconnected. The throttle was set at less than climb, but a little more than cruise. The aircraft had gone through a couple of oscillations, climbing slowly and then descending until the airspeed increased again. Ice said they got out over the lake and then a wind gust caused a hard stall and they spun in. I kinda feel like the technology let them down, and I guess I’m a little distrustful of the aircraft now.”
Patty thought for several moments before replying. “You remember the emergency procedures you’ve been learning? They are there because technology can let you down. Yes, you can trust and depend on it most times, but sometimes something goes wrong. Just as you said, everything dies. So too, everything breaks or malfunctions, or can be misused or misprogrammed. With tech advancing as fast as it does, by the time you fly fighters in the Air Force, everything will be fly-by-wire. That’s all tech. You use it, but always, always double check it, and have a plan in mind in case it fails.”
Tia sipped her soda and was silent for a couple of minutes. Patty waited her out as she digested what had been said. Finally, she spoke again.
“So, if it can fail, why are they pushing that way with all the new aircraft? Why not make autopilots that can see if something isn’t right, correct it, and bring the plane back to land in one piece?”
“Because a live pilot almost always reacts to unusual circumstances better than a computer. You know the reason I haven’t gone after an airline job? I have the hours, plus. It’s because most airline flying these days involves taking the aircraft off, putting it on autopilot by the time you’re four hundred feet off the ground, and then taking it back just in time to flare for landing. Heck, they even have Autoland, so you just get to taxi back to the terminal gate. If I wanted to drive around on the ground with a bunch of furs behind me, I’d drive a bus.”
Patty had told Tia before that she didn’t want to pursue an airline job.
“So not much actual flying,” Tia admitted. “So why the crashes I’ve heard about? Does the technology fail that often?”
“No,” Patty replied. “But it is complex. It was designed to remove pilot error, but it is new. Interacting with it brings problems they hadn’t anticipated. You recall that famous clip of the Airbus on a demo flight coming in low down a runway and then not lifting back up before running into trees? The computer thought they were landing and didn’t respond to the throttle commands. They’ve improved since then, but I still like my stick and rudder flying.”
Tia nodded, then replied, “Okay, so a better autopilot isn’t the perfect solution. That brings us back to the Cessna. I’ve always trusted that it would work, as long as we do the preflight correctly and don’t find anything wrong. Now, I don’t trust it as much. I was standing there, thinking about all the ways it could fail.”
Patty smiled. “Good. If you think about how it could fail and check all those before you climb in and take off, it’s likely you won’t get surprised. A good pilot almost always has a “what-if?” playing in the back of their mind. That’s why we practice engine-out, and picking a good emergency landing spot, and what to do in case the radio fails, and all those other emergency procedures. The old adage of Murphy’s Law, remember it?”
Tia smiled in return. “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”
Patty continued, “At the worst possible time. And don’t forget, Murphy was an optimist.”
Tia now giggled, feeling much better about the Cessna and her ability to deal with whatever problems might come up. It was nearly time for Jenna to pick her up, so Tia finished her soda and stood up. She and Patty embraced briefly, and the bobcat turned to head back out to the ramp.
“Sounds like you’re feeling better. I’ll see you Thursday, and we’ll fly. The weather is supposed to hold, so be ready!”
“Bye Patty and thank you!” Tia waved as the bobcat winked over her shoulder on her way out.
# # #
Alex had enjoyed his lunch. The food was good, and he’d been seated at a corner table out of the traffic flow. He’d spent the time eating and fur-watching, but mostly he’d been thinking about what might have gone wrong with the turbocharged Continental on his aircraft. He thought he knew why the main gear hadn’t lowered correctly. When the rear engine quit he’d lost power to the hydraulic pack that ran the gear mechanism. There had been enough pressure in the system for the nose gear, but he’d had to pump the mains down.
It was now time to head back, so he dialed the number from the card the border collie from Co-Mar had given him.
“Co-Mar Aviation, this is Kelly, may I help you?” the border collie femme answered after one ring.
“Hi Kelly, this is Alex O’Whitt over at Rafferty’s. I’m ready to head back over.”
“Okay Mr. O’Whitt, be right there,” she responded, and then clicked off.
Alex put his phone away, gathered his things and signed the card slip for his bill. As he walked out, he thought about the young border collie. She’d chatted away as she drove him there. She was a Senior at Western Kentucky University, majoring in Marketing. Alex liked her enthusiasm. He would have a talk with Billy and Loni. Kentiger was getting big enough that they might need some help managing sales calls. That would help with the workload. Perhaps even help Billy and Corrie in their new enterprise. In any case, he knew where to find her if that came to pass.
The van pulled up and Alex got in. Kelly chatted away again on their way back about how she was looking forward to graduating and finding a good job. Lamenting her lack of a boyfriend but in the same breath saying she didn’t have time for one. She dropped Alex off at the door and drove away to park the van. Alex walked in and Joel at the counter hailed him.
“Mister O’Whitt? Dean found something with your engine. He wants to talk to you out in the hangar.”
“Thank you, Joel,” Alex replied, leaving the lapine puzzled at how Alex knew his name. The tiger walked through the door into the hangar and found Dean and a scruffy-looking fox todd standing next to his aircraft. As he walked up, Dean turned to him.
“Hello Mr. O’Whitt, this is Bob Foster, our head of maintenance.”
Alex offered his paw to the todd, who shook it with a solid, if slightly greasy grip.
“Mister O’Whitt,” Bob began in a slight German accent. “We found what happened to your engine. Who does your maintenance?”
Alex arched an eyebrow. “Bluegrass Aviation. Allaistor McCrory’s shop over in Lexington.”
The eyebrows of both maintenance furs went up. After a second, Bob spoke.
“Okay, so I doubt now even more. I know Allaistor. Where is the aircraft stored?”
“Flight-Stor, in the big hangar, why?” Alex asked, wondering what they’d found.
“This,” Bob replied, holding up a bolt with a small piece of safety wire braided to it.
“This is sabotage!”
End of Chapter 80