"Four thousand," he called as the altimeter settled.
"Good," Vasquez said. "Now slow us to one ninety, flaps fifteen when I call it, and get ready. Memphis is under that cloud, Micah. We are going to go and find it together."
Chapter 22: Too Fast
They found Memphis the way you find a shore in fog — first as a rumour of light, then as nothing again.
"Four one seven, you are eight miles from the runway," Tom Reyes said. "Cleared for the approach, one eight right. Wind one nine zero at twenty, gusts twenty-eight. Caution — wind shear reported on short final by the aircraft ahead."
Vasquez tightened her left hand on the yoke. Her face had gone very still. "Copy shear," she said. "Meridian four one seven cleared approach."
Micah stared at the instruments. Outside was rain and black cloud and a smudged amber glow that might have been the city. Inside, the numbers were honest, and the numbers were wrong.
"Elena," he said, using her first name for the first time without noticing. "Speed."
"I see it."
"One seventy-two," he read. "We should be one forty-five. We're twenty-seven knots fast."
"I see it, Micah." Her voice stayed level, but he heard the effort underneath. The thrust levers were back as far as she dared. Every time the jet slowed, a gust shoved it forward again, or the bottom fell out of the air and she had to add power to keep from sinking, and the speed crept up.
"Flaps thirty," she ordered.
"Flaps thirty, moving," Micah said, and the lever went down under his palm. The jet ballooned slightly, nose wanting to rise, and Vasquez pressed it gently back with her left hand, her jaw set, sweat standing on her forehead despite the cold air pouring from the vents.
"Gear down," she said. "Now. And read me the lights."
"Gear down." He pulled the handle the way she had shown him, heard the deep clunk and roar beneath the floor as the doors opened into the storm, felt the whole aircraft tremble with new drag. Three small lights blinked, then held. "Three greens," he said, and his relief was so sharp it almost embarrassed him. "Nose, left, right — three greens, gear down and locked."
"That part is right," Vasquez said. "Only the speed is lying to us."
On the radio, Reyes was listening to all of it the way a man listens at a door. "Four one seven, tower sees you high and fast. You are not stable. Say intentions."
The words not stable hung in the cockpit. In the simulator, Joe had frozen the screen whenever Micah tried to force a bad approach down. You land an aeroplane that is ready, he had said. If she is not ready, you take her around and earn another try. Going around is not failure. Going around is flying.
Micah looked at Vasquez. Her right wrist lay useless and swelling. Her left hand was doing the work of two hands and beginning to shake. Another approach meant ten more minutes of pain for her, and for Mercer in the aisle behind them. Everything in Micah wanted to be down, to be safe now.
"What does the book say?" he asked quietly.
Vasquez did not look away from the windscreen. "The book says unstable at one thousand feet, we go around. No discussion. No heroics."
"Then we should —" He stopped. Who was he to tell the pilot in command anything? He was fifteen. He was a pair of hands she had borrowed.
"You are my crew," she said, as if she had heard the thought. "Crew speaks. Say it plain."
"We are too fast and we are not stable," Micah said, and his voice cracked on the last word but the words themselves held. "At the Sky Lab, Joe would make me go around. He'd say the runway will still be there and we'd owe it a better approach."
For one long second the rain hammered and the wind shear warning stayed silent, as if it were waiting too.
Vasquez nodded. "Reyes is going to ask, and I am going to agree with my first officer for the night. Ready on the thrust levers — when I call go-around, you push them forward smoothly with me, all the way, and you call the flaps as I order them. Ready?"
"Ready," Micah said, and set his hand beside hers, not touching, waiting for her word so that two hands could move as one.
"Memphis Tower, Meridian four one seven is going around," Vasquez said, clear and unashamed into the microphone. "Unstable approach, too fast, wind shear on final. We will take vectors for a second approach to one eight right."
"Four one seven, roger, go around approved," Reyes answered instantly, relief audible even through the static. "Climb to three thousand, turn left heading zero nine zero. You made the right call up there. Both of you. We will bring you back around and Memphis will be waiting."