She rotated the plane and it began to rise.

They sailed upward.

All the stars of evening…

Ten minutes later Brad called out, “Five five thousand.”

They leveled off. It seemed to Percey that she could actually hear the groaning of the aircraft’s seams. She recalled her high-altitude physiology. If the window Ron had replaced were to blow out or any pressure seal burst – if it didn’t tear the aircraft apart – hypoxia would knock them out in about five seconds. Even if they were wearing masks, the pressure difference would make their blood boil.

“Go to oxygen. Increase cabin pressure to ten thousand feet.”

“Pressure to ten thousand,” he said. This at least would relieve some of the terrible pressure on the fragile hull.

“Good idea,” Brad said. “How’d you think of that?”

Monkey skills…

“Dunno,” she responded. “Let’s cut power in number two. Throttle closed, autothrottle disengaged.”

“Closed, disengaged,” Brad echoed.

“Fuel pumps off, ignition off.”

“Pumps off, ignition off.”

She felt the slight swerve as their left side thrust vanished. Percey compensated for the yaw with a slight adjustment to the rudder trim tabs. It didn’t take much. Because the jets were mounted on the rear of the fuselage and not on the wings, losing one power plant didn’t affect the stability of the aircraft much.

Brad asked, “What do we do now?”

“I’m having a cup of coffee,” Percey said, climbing out of her seat like a tomboy jumping from a tree house. “Hey, Roland, how d’you like yours again?”

For a torturous forty minutes there was silence in Rhyme’s room. No one’s phone rang. No faxes came in. No computer voices reported, “You’ve got mail.”

Then, at last, Dellray’s phone brayed. He nodded as he spoke, but Rhyme could see the news wasn’t good. He clicked the phone off.

“Cumberland?”

Dellray nodded. “But it’s a bust. Kall hasn’t been there for years. Oh, the locals’re still talking about the time the boy tied his stepdaddy up ’n’ let the worms get him. Sorta a legend. But no family left in the area. And nobody knows nuthin’. Or’s willing to say.”

It was then that Sellitto’s phone chirped. The detective unfolded it and said, “Yeah?”

A lead, Rhyme prayed, please let it be a lead. He looked at the cop’s doughy, stoic face. He flipped the phone closed.

“That was Roland Bell,” he said. “He just wanted us to know. They’re outa gas.”

Hour 38 of 45

THREE DIFFERENT WARNING BUZZERS went off simultaneously.

Low fuel, low oil pressure, low engine temperature.

Percey tried adjusting the attitude of the aircraft slightly to see if she could trick some fuel into the lines, but the tanks were bone dry.

With a faint clatter, number one engine quit coughing and went silent.

And the cockpit went completely dark. Black as a closet.

Oh, no…

She couldn’t see a single instrument, a single control lever or knob. The only thing that kept her from slipping into blind-flight vertigo was the faint band of light that was Denver – in the far distance in front of them.

“What’s this?” Brad asked.

“Jesus. I forgot the generators.”

The generators are run by the engines. No engines, no electricity.

“Drop the RAT,” she ordered.

Brad groped in the dark for the control and found it. He pulled the lever and the ram air turbine dropped out beneath the aircraft. It was a small propeller connected to a generator. The slipstream turned the prop, which powered the generator. It provided basic power for the controls and lights. But not the flaps, gear, speed brakes.

A moment later some of the lights returned.

Percey was staring at the vertical speed indicator. It showed a descent rate of thirty-five hundred feet per minute. Far faster than they’d planned on. They were dropping at close to fifty miles an hour.

Why? she wondered. Why was the calculation so far off?

Because of the rarified air here! She was calculating sink rate based on denser atmosphere. And now that she considered this she remembered that the air around Denver would be rarified too. She’d never flown a sailplane more than a mile up.

She pulled back on the yoke to arrest the descent. It dropped to twenty-one hundred feet per minute. But the airspeed dropped too, fast. In this thin air the stall speed was about three hundred knots. The shaker stick began to vibrate and the controls went mushy. There’d be no recovery from a powerless stall in an aircraft like this.

The coffin corner…

Forward with the yoke. They dropped faster, but the airspeed picked up. For nearly fifty miles she played this game. Air Traffic Control told them where the headwinds were strongest and Percey tried to find the perfect combination of altitude and route – winds that were powerful enough to give the Lear optimal lift but not so fast that they slowed their ground speed too much.

Finally, Percey – her muscles aching from controlling the aircraft with brute force – wiped sweat from her face and said, “Give ’em a call, Brad.”

“Denver Center, this is Lear Six Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo, with you out of one nine thousand feet. We are twenty-one miles from the airport. Airspeed two hundred twenty knots. We’re in a no-power situation here and requesting vectoring to longest available runway consistent with our present heading of two five zero.”

“Roger, Foxtrot Bravo. We’ve been expecting you. Altimeter thirty point nine five. Turn left heading two four zero. We’re vectoring you to runway two eight left. You’ll have eleven thousand feet to play with.”

“Roger, Denver Center.”

Something was nagging at her. That ping in the gut again. Like she’d felt with the black van.

What was it? Just superstition?

Tragedies come in threes…

Brad said, “Nineteen miles from touchdown. One six thousand feet.”

“Foxtrot Bravo, contact Denver Approach.” He gave them the radio frequency, then added, “They’ve been apprised of your situation. Good luck, ma’am. We’re all thinking of you.”

“Goodnight, Denver. Thanks.”

Brad clicked the radio to the new frequency.

What’s wrong? she wondered again. There’s something I haven’t thought of.

“Denver Approach, this is Lear Six Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo. With you at one three thousand feet, thirteen miles from touchdown.”

“We have you, Foxtrot Bravo. Come right heading two five zero. Understand you are power-free, is that correct?”

“We’re the biggest damn glider you ever saw, Denver.”

“You have flaps and gear?”

“No flaps. We’ll crank the gear down manually.”

“Roger. You want trucks?” Meaning emergency vehicles.

“We think we’ve got a bomb on board. We want everything you’ve got.”

“Roger that.”

Then, with a shudder of horror, it occurred to her: the atmospheric pressure!

“Denver Approach,” she asked, “what’s the altimeter?”

“Uhm, we have three oh point nine six, Foxtrot Bravo.”

It had gone up a hundredth of an inch of mercury in the last minute.

“It’s rising?”

“That’s affirmative, Foxtrot Bravo, Major high-pressure front moving in.”

No! That would increase the ambient pressure around the bomb, which would shrink the balloon, as if they were lower than they actually were.

“Shit on the street,” she muttered.

Brad looked at her.

She said to him, “What was the mercury at Mamaroneck?”

He looked it up in the log. “Twenty-nine point six.”

“Calculate five thousand feet altitude at that pressure reading compared with thirty-one point oh.”

“Thirty-one? That’s awful high.”

“That’s what we’re moving into.”

He stared at her. “But the bomb…”