But he had no choice. Petrenko would surely die in a bailout.
“We’re going to attempt a landing, with or without the computer.” Deke said to all of them. “I don’t think we have a shot at surviving a bailout and it’ll kill Micah.”
They nodded and silently moved to their various positions. No one questioned the decision.
Before Deke announced his plans to Houston, he imagined what he could say to Jessica. What he would say. Because, damn it all, he was going to land this bird and finding her would be the first thing he did when his feet hit Mother Earth.
“Houston, go ahead and get your media circus on runway thirty-three.” He smiled. She’d get that message. She’d be there. “We’re coming in.”
* * *
How long had she been hiding, Jessica wondered. Twenty minutes? An hour? She hadn’t moved, hadn’t dared give Bill any clue that she had hidden in the boat. Her fingers burned where she clutched the cushion. Slowly, she relaxed them and tried to inch the vinyl pillow to a different spot under her head. As she did, something under it clunked.
She bit her lip and froze at the sound. Then, in the moonlight, metal flashed. A key. On a floatation device. He’d hidden a key. She could motor away to safety! Bless you, Deke Stockard. He’d saved her after all.
Did she dare start the engine? In the dark, she felt under the helm for the ignition she remembered seeing when she’d been in the boat with Deke.
The lines. She had to untie the boat from the pilings of the dock. Slowly, she lifted her head like a periscope and peered over the edge of the boat toward the darkened pathway, looking for a flash of the white shirt Bill wore. Farther down, much closer to her house, she thought she saw something move in the shadows. Did he actually think she’d return while he was there, or was he just waiting for her to give away her hiding place?
She climbed out onto the dock, her quivering fingers seizing the ropes that Deke had, of course, tightened securely. She untwisted the knot, feeling the rope slide free. The stern line was tighter and sweat dripped between her shoulder blades as she struggled with it. Her nail bent backward and she gasped, then heard the creak of the gate.
The rope released and she grabbed the side of the boat and fell back toward the helm. There was a pedal and a throttle and she remembered Deke had used both to motor them around.
Holding her breath, she felt along the side near the helm for the rubber ring of the ignition. Damn, she’d been so busy watching Deke that she hadn’t paid any attention to what he’d done to start the motor. She found the circular opening and slipped the key in.
The footsteps sounded closer. Slamming her foot onto the pedal and moving the throttle stick at the same time, the diesel engine started with a cough, then died.
Oh God. She twisted the key again and stole a look at the dock. He’d found her. He was jogging toward her, the knife blade reflecting the meager moonlight.
The engine turned over and she put all her weight on the floor pedal and screeched the throttle. The boat moved away from the dock. Slowly, inching, not nearly fast enough.
She heard Bill grunt as he leaped from the dock and grabbed hold of the side of the boat.
She threw the throttle down harder and the engine sputtered as it gathered strength. She willed the boat to move.
She turned to see Bill hanging on and she reached over and banged his hands against the fiberglass as he struggled to gain a hold.
“Get off, you bastard!” she screamed and pounded as the Tailwind inched farther into the river.
She slammed his fingers and tried to bend them up, but he pulled his body up to a half stand and was about to fling himself into the boat when Jessica lifted her right leg and kicked him as hard as she could.
With a gasp, he fell into the river and the knife flew into the air, splashing at the same instant he did. The boat picked up a little speed and each second it took her farther into the channel and away from Bill, who was sputtering and flailing toward the boat.
Into the black night she motored, breathing only when she was sure he couldn’t catch her. She had no idea where she was headed, but she had to figure out how to get out of the water and up to Kennedy. If Endeavour really had started its journey home, she had to be there when he landed.
About a mile from Deke’s dock, she picked up the handset of the radio and started pressing buttons; a reassuring static told her it worked. Of course it worked. Everything worked. This was Deke’s boat. She dropped her head back and stared up at the star. Somewhere up there, she had a guardian angel. Now who was looking out for him?
* * *
Deke glanced at Kurt as they harnessed themselves in and did a verbal situation status check with the rest of the crew. Everyone was ready.
“Start deorbit burn in five seconds,” he instructed Kurt.
The pilot executed the deorbit burn sequence easily. The orbiter jerked in response and Deke could see the protective tiles on the nose in front of him beginning to glow.
Deke guided the stick to the proper nose-first attitude as they braced to hit the atmosphere. His gaze moved from screen to screen, every cell in his body concentrating on the sequence of events. The blackness of space began to lighten, shock waves of air rolled and exploded as the spacecraft vibrated and groaned.
“Deorbit burn complete, Houston,” Deke reported.
“Roger, Endeavour. You can start your S turns, Commander.”
Outside the window of the cockpit, the skin of the shuttle now burned bright red with the heat of reentry. With more effort, Deke pulled the stick and the orbiter shuddered through the first of a series of wide curves that would lower the speed. The pressure dropped, his flight suit weighing down on him, his visor vibrating on his helmet. He peered at each computer screen, willing them to function.
“Houston, our altitude is seventy-five thousand feet.” He kept his voice steady regardless of the violent shaking of the orbiter. “We’re descending at one six three per second. We are one hundred and forty-five nautical miles from Kennedy. Over.”
“Roger, Endeavour. Ground track and nav are go.”
Deke took the stick and held it as steady as he could.
Another alarm screamed. “The rudder readout is dead,” Kurt shouted over the racket. “We lost the computer.”
For the first time, Deke knew his chances of getting home were next to nothing. You can never be a hundred percent sure.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Jessica could see the lights of the Coast Guard ship coming toward her. God bless the radio. She’d finally reached someone and help was bouncing in her direction over the waves of the Banana River.
The Coast Guard speedboat zipped next to the Tailwind and an official-looking young man climbed onto her little ship.
“Did you radio for help, ma’am?” he asked.
“Yes, please. Can someone please take this boat and get it docked somewhere safe and get me to the Cape? It’s an emergency. I have to get to the space center immediately.” She heard the alarm in her own voice.
“Don’t you want to stay with your boat, ma’am? Then someone could probably get you up to Kennedy.”
“No, no. Have you heard anything about the shuttle?” she demanded, ignoring his suggestion. “Are they okay?”
The man looked at her questioningly. “They were having some trouble a few hours ago. Haven’t heard the double sonic boom. You always hear that right before it lands safely.”
“Please,” she grabbed his arm and didn’t care if she looked like a lunatic. “I need to get to the landing facility. My… my… my future husband is on that shuttle.”
He must have a soft spot for lunatics. They helped her transfer into the speedboat and cut through the waves toward a Coast Guard station. A captain hustled her into a waiting van with a driver and kindly let her use a cell phone during the half-hour trip up to the Cape.
Before she could get any information on Endeavour, she knew she had to get someone after Bill Dugan. She’d alerted
the Coast Guard and they promised to get the police to search the area around her house. She managed to reach Tony at home. This time, he didn’t defend the culprit. In fact, he admitted that he had no idea Bill had even gone to the Cape.
“Now, Jessica, about your job in Emerging—”
“I’m quitting, Tony.”
Stone silence met the announcement she hadn’t even realized she was going to make until the words were out. And, damn, they sounded good.
“Is this about Carla? Because I’m having second thoughts about her as GM and I think you’d be perfect for the job. The folks at Dash have uncovered some, let’s just call it, ‘creative’ accounting issues and—”
“I don’t care about Carla, Tony. She’s your problem. And I don’t really want to be general manager.”
“What are you going to do?”
Stay with Deke. Marry him. Have babies and laughter and love for the rest of her life. “I’m thinking about working in Public Affairs at the Cape,” she said. “I think Stuey will hire me.”
“Stuey?”
The van driver turned on the radio and she heard the only word that mattered to her.
Endeavour.
“I gotta go, Tony.”
They’d reached the guard gate at the runway field. But her heart suddenly dropped again when the driver turned and asked for her ID.
“An ID?” She gasped. “I don’t even have shoes, for crying out loud.”
“Ma’am, we can’t let you anywhere near the landing site without proper ID.”
From memory, she dialed Stuart’s cell phone.
When he answered, she thought life itself had just been given back to her.
“Stuart, where are they? What’s happening?”
“They’re coming in with no computer on a manual land.” Stuart’s usually calm voice had an eerie tone of panic in it. “You better get out here.”
“Please, Stu. I don’t have my ID. I’m at the south guard gate at the landing facility.”
“Put the guard on the phone.”
* * *
Deke refused to let imminent death cloud his thinking. He could do this. He had to do this. “Go to backup avionics,” he ordered.
“Backup is black.”
“Well, that’s a problem,” Deke said through teeth clenched so tight he could draw blood. “’Cause we’re inverted.”
“Endeavour, we see you on energy approaching KSC. You are approaching at zero seven zero niner. Fifty-five thousand feet. You need another deorbit burn to get into position for landing.”
Son of a bitch, he knew that. Sweat droplets trickled across his cheeks as Deke reached for the rudder adjustment and ordered the burn to start. He squeezed his eyes shut to visualize the right position. From the sim, he should know it. He should know it.
“Get ready to roll,” he hollered to Kurt and the crew. He felt the orbiter respond, spinning and careening through the sky.
“Hold steady at zero seven zero, Endeavour,” Mission Control announced to them. “You are in position for landing.”
Deke didn’t dare exhale over the small victory. “We must have blown some fuel cells or shorted again,” he said to Kurt as they stared at another blank screen.
They had, thank God, prepared for this. Only it was in the sim. And they damn near missed the landing.
Deke felt the steady beat of his heart and the vein in his neck that always pulsed under stress. He gently moved the stick to the left, then brought the ship back up a bit.
“Good glide, Endeavour. We can see you on approach. You are at thirty-thousand feet.”
If they were going to bail, they would have to do it now. Right now. Then the ship would crash into the ocean and they would fall to their probable deaths.
He wondered, is Jess watching somewhere? Is she watching the NASA feed and listening to him calmly making life-and-death decisions? If she was, then he could tell her now, over the microphone, what he should have told her before he left. That life without her isn’t life. He wanted to be tied to her, connected to her, married to her forever and ever. He loved her completely.
“Endeavour, you’re on glide slope and centerline. Right where you want to be, Commander.”
“Roger, Houston.” Deke pulled gently at the stick, tugging at it to get the attitude of the nose right. Easy, easy. He waited to hear the landing gear drop.
“Drop the landing gear, now, Captain,” he ordered.
“I’m working on it, Commander.”
Deke stole a look to his right. Kurt struggled with the manual controls.
“We’re starting manual lock of landing gear, Houston,” he said in his mouthpiece. As if committing to it could get it to work.
“Damn it all,” Kurt muttered.
Deke could feel the gravity pull every muscle in his body, the pressure on his chest like an anvil. He held the stick with all his strength and tried to find the land below him, despite the fact that his eyeballs vibrated in their sockets.
“Come on, man,” he demanded. “We’re too far gone to bail now.”
They burst through a cloud and the brilliant lights of Runway 33 appeared like a pinpoint beacon in the distance. He had to get home to her. He had to.
“You are at two hundred feet, Endeavour.”
He heard Kurt exhale. “Got it.”
The shuttle rocked with the force of the landing gear dropping into place. Kennedy loomed closer. Deke pushed down on the stick.
I’m coming home, sweetheart.
* * *
“I can’t go any farther, ma’am,” the van driver said apologetically. “I’m afraid you have to walk to the runway from here.”
She nodded. As if she cared at this point. “Thank you. You’ve been—” The air suddenly shook with a shotgun bang and another immediately following, jerking Jessica back against the seat. Endeavour exploded. He’s dead. “What was that?”
The driver smiled a little. “Just the sonic boom, ma’am. Shuttle broke the sound barrier. Should be here in a few minutes.”
She didn’t care that heads turned from the dark skies to stare at the wild woman in sweat pants and bare feet running toward the landing site.
Hot tears welled up and threatened to blind her.
Then she stopped. From the night sky she saw the lights, eerily silent as the magnificent machine glided in.
With perfect precision, the landing gear touched down and a parachute plumed behind it. The crowd, still a half-mile hike from where she stood, roared to a deafening crescendo.
Jessica heard her own shouts of joy, scraping her throat raw as she yelled with everyone else. Euphoria melted over her as she stared at the orbiter. She was part of it now. Space was in her blood, her heart. She cared about it and loved it. It mattered.
And so did the fact that she loved Deke Stockard with every fiber of her being.
* * *
He heard the cheers of the crowd through the headset.
“Main landing gear touchdown, Houston and… nosegear touchdown.” Deke grinned at Kurt. “Endeavour is home.”
“Roger that, Commander Stockard. Congratulations to the crew of Endeavour.”
Deke barely heard the last comment as a spontaneous shout came from the crew around him.
“Send the stretcher for Micah first,” he instructed. “We’ll be right behind him.”
He closed his eyes for a moment and dropped his head back, realizing he was still smiling. Well, of course. He was officially the happiest man on earth. As they waited for the shuttle to cool and allowed the effects of gravity to drag on their bodies, Deke had no thoughts of the debriefing and medical examination he was about to go through.
None of it mattered to him. All he wanted to do was find Jessica. In the middle of the media tent, no doubt, her beautiful hair blowing and her sexy smile blinding him. He had to get to her. First. Had to tell her. He loved her.
Finally the hatch opened and medics climbed in and gently transferred Micah to the stretcher. After they left, Deke
and his crew wobbled down the stairs to place their feet back on Earth.
He couldn’t discern the powerful pull of gravity from the sensation tugging his heart. He scanned the gathered crowd as he shook hands with the VIPs that waited to greet the returning heroes. He found the pack of press people and he peered beyond them. Where is she?
He looked into the group of Cape employees and engineers, some faces familiar and all smiling, waving, and applauding. He waved back and his skilled pilot’s eyes scoped the crowd. Where is she?
They moved to the area where families waited and again, his heart filled with hope. He saw his parents and waved, then looked around and behind them. Where the hell is she?
Someone was telling him where to go. Someone was saying he had to get to the medical examining room for a post-flight check. No, he wanted to scream. He had something he had to do first.
Then he saw a flash of mahogany. Beyond the press booth, toward the end of the runway, running. Her dark hair flying, her eyes wide. Was she barefoot? Was he dreaming? Was it some strange aftereffect of the landing? No. No. Jessie. He knew he couldn’t keep the grin off his face and sensed that the crowd was following his gaze.
* * *
Jessica ignored the faces turned toward her and scanned the crowd, her heart knocking against her ribs, her feet scraping concrete.
Her gaze moved beyond the dozens of TV cameras, which, for the first time ever, she didn’t notice or count. She searched the crowds, beyond the ropes, to where the VIP greeters stood. Had they gone? Had he gone in for a medical yet?
Then she saw him. A big carrot-colored arm waving at her. Calling to her. He was calling to her?
“Jessie!” The crowd parted to let him through. Beautiful, wonderful Deke Stockard in a blinding-orange flight suit.
She arrived under the awning precisely as he did, driven by a force she didn’t know could propel her. They stopped just short of one another, her breath coming in quick, hot spurts.
“You made it,” she whispered between panted breaths.
“You doubted I would?” His smile was sly, teasing. But his navy eyes were not.