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“Three, battery.”
“On.”
“Starting number two,” Torine said, which was not the next step on the checklist. Castillo looked over at Torine.
There was a whining sound as the Pratt & Whitney JT8D-9 turbofan in the vertical stabilizer came to life.
“You’re going to have to go back and close the stair door, Charley,” Torine said. “That’s supposed to be done before you start the checklist.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The control’s on the left bulkhead.”
“Yes, sir,” Castillo said and hurriedly got out of his harness and went through the cabin. He had to step over all four bodies again to reach the stair door control panel; his foot slipped in a pool of blood. When he looked down—he had not intended to—the sightless eyes of the man whose death he had ordered looked back at him.
He opened the control panel door, found the RAISE STAIR switch, threw it, and waited until a green light came on. He felt the vibration as Torine started the other two engines.
He started back to the cockpit and found himself looking again at the sightless eyes.
He took another step forward, then stopped. The Whiz Bangs had displaced four or five flower boxes; one of them was ripped open. Castillo scooped out its contents, turned, and laid them, not very gently, on the dead man’s face. Then he went as quickly as he could back to the flight deck.
“Pick the checklist up at ‘taxi,’ Charley,” Torine ordered.
“Yes, sir.”
The 727 was moving. Charley wondered if you were supposed to move before you started the taxi portion of the checklist.
“One, flaps and runway,” he read.
“Flaps, check,” Colonel Torine responded. “Runway? That one.” He pointed out the window.
Castillo saw a wind cone indicating that Torine was headed in the right direction to make a right turn onto the runway into the prevailing wind.
He also saw the Tomas Guardia International Airport fire department fighting, without any apparent success, the fire on the blazing fuel truck.
And he saw a Little Bird, six Gray Fox operators hanging on to it, fly right on the deck over the runway threshold and then drop out of sight. He looked around and saw no others.
“Two,” he read from the checklist, “Takeoff data.”
“In a manner of speaking,” Torine said, “I already did the max takeoff gross weight figuring on this”—he motioned to his pocket computer and Charley remembered him furiously tapping its keys with his stylus in the hangar at Pope Air Force Base, figuring how far the stolen aircraft could fly— “so all we have to do is line it up with the runway and go.”
“Yes, sir.”
The 727 reached the threshold. His hand on the throttles and his feet never touching the brakes, Torine lined the 727 up with the centerline of the runway with a steady roll.
“Call out our airspeed, please,” Torine said as he moved the throttles forward.
“Seventy,” Castillo called when the airspeed indicator came to life.
“Eighty, ninety, one hundred, one twenty, one thir . . .”
“Rotating,” Torine said.
The 727 put its nose into the air. A moment later, the rumbling of the landing gear on the runway died.
“Gear up,” Torine ordered.
Charley found the switch and worked it.
