Air Force One.

       It was co-pilot Frank Oddo's turn to land the bird. Aside from a bit of bumpiness an hour back, the flight had been CAVU in pilot jargon—ceiling and visibility unlimited—and still was. He set their rate of descent at the gentlest glide allowed: 500 feet per minute at 170 knots for the whole final approach, with the AOA up a degree or two.
       The landing gear locked into place just after crossing the outer marker, seven miles from the runway, at which point he dropped the speed back to 160, increased flaps a notch and backed the engine power down a bit at a time, watching his airspeed and trimming the nose down slightly. A little more power and she was back to 170 knots again. As they approached the MM, or decision point beacon, he went to full flaps, spooled up the engines to keep her at the right glide slope and again trimmed the nose down. The huge flaps rumbled and shook the plane a bit, but the glide slope was just about perfect.
       "Feeling fine," he told pilot John Summers as the plane passed the airport fence. Summers didn't acknowledge; he was busy with his own end of things. There never was that much conversation during a landing, arguably the most dangerous segment of any flight.
       Oddo began his flare and held the pitch angle when the plane was thirty feet off the deck. The mains touched so gently the plane barely shuddered. When they were totally down, all that remained was to lower the nose gear and steer.
       Summers shook his head. "I hate it when you do that. What grease are you using?"
       Oddo grinned without turning. That kind of landing happened once in a hundred flights. The next one might be a nightmare, just to balance things off. He raised the spoilers, selected full reverse and waited for the reversers to kick in. Once the plane slowed to 80 knots, he'd hold the manual brakes in and kill the reversers as soon as speed slowed to sixty. No need to slow further until the last few hundred feet of runway, since they were heading for the far end at least a mile ahead. Sixty knots, for a plane almost a football field in length, was about the same as fast forward for a turtle.
       But Oddo's grin vanished just as the nose wheel touched. All four engines labored down, groaned and quit in unison as if they'd run into pancake batter, while all hell broke loose in the cockpit. Computer whiz kids had never counted on all four engines quitting simultaneously during this phase of landing, with no other warning signs in advance. Things like that just didn't happen in the "war rooms" of places like Boeing. Even if there'd been some huge flock of birds suddenly blanketing the whole runway, engines would never quit simultaneously. The plane suddenly put out its own hooks, acting as if it had just landed in a flooded rice paddy.
       "Engines out!"
       Frank barked the useless words, reaching for the manual brakes even as he realized their rate of slowing was greater than anything the reversers could have delivered. Summers was already on the pipe reporting an emergency situation to Munich's tower, while three audio and visual alarms heightened the shock of finding they were in trouble, big time. One of the flashing red visuals indicated that they'd lost engine power. Duh! Then, only a few seconds later, deceleration pressures eased and they both reeled back in their seats. The plane seemed to be rolling normally.
       "Frank, what in hell did we hit?" Summers growled. "What could've killed the engines?" He quickly shot down two of the audio alarms.
       "Brakes on. I'll drive." The words were more a gasp.
       "Roger that. Brakes on hard, but I'm getting no response. We're not slowing." He pointed at the ground speed indicator in disbelief. It was holding at 70 knots.
       "What the hell is—hey, we're coming off the ground." Oddo's voice rose in pitch. "We're climbing!" He watched the pointer on the backup mechanical altimeter. One turn around the dial was a hundred feet in altitude, and the pointer was moving fast… up.
       "No way." Summers reached over and tapped the dial face.
       "It's barometric, John, it cannot lie. It's… look, up twenty feet since… jeez. Thirty! Now forty—"
       "Where was it when it started?" Summers eyed the pitch indicator, squinting.
       "Who watches? Munich's strip is flat, John. We've both been here before, and cripe, we're still doing 70 knots." The remaining audio alert kept right on sounding. Beep… beep… beep… beep. "Something has to be pushing us… pitch indicator shows a definite nose up, but all wheels are down and the radar altimeter's zeroed out."
       "Look outside. We must be up a couple hundred feet, but radar alt still says we're at zero. That means there's something under us. We're up on it. We're slowing. Forty knots. Twenty."
       "Get serious. The runway was clear all the way. What could be?…"
       The plane shuddered to a halt. It had all taken place too quickly for reality to catch up, but at least they'd stopped a good half-mile short of the runway's end, so at least that danger was past.
       "Well, whatever just happened, it… yikes!" Summers feet were suddenly bracing against the instrument panel as the plane tipped forward. They were both abruptly sitting the wrong way on the end of a see-saw, staring down at the concrete with oblivion a mere two hundred feet below. Someone had stopped the film right there.
       Beep… beep… beep… beep.
       Summers recovered his voice ahead of his partner. "My God, Frank, the president!"

***

       Mike had spent too many hours piloting shot-up aircraft and landing in muddy fields to miss nuances like the change in engine pitch two seconds before they all quit.
       "TROUBLE! " he snapped, just before being thrown hard against his seat belt by deceleration far too severe for brakes alone. His single-word reaction was involuntary. Nobody else uttered a word. There was nothing to do but ride out whatever it was. He analyzed even as he braced for impact. All engines quit together. Slowing too fast for brakes alone. Something else slowing us. Fifteen seconds since touchdown. Eighty knots when engines quit, severe deceleration for a dozen seconds, normal feel—until now. What's this? We're rotating? Impossible. There's no way to get this bird off the… oh, no. Something must be on the runway… they're trying to hop it. Wait a minute. We're stopping.        But before he could give voice to his thoughts, the plane began to tilt forward. Was the nose gear buckling? There'd been no impact, nothing to damage the gear, so how could there be no noise or jarring, no metal against metal? The barely perceptible initial tilt became more severe by the second, as if the plane were rolling off a cliff. Screams echoed down the plane's long corridor—the tail was rising faster than the nose dropped—but then the tilt stopped. The angle had to be at least twenty degrees, judging by runway lights outside, and they were well off the ground. That sensation of climbing up on something had been valid after all, but what the hell could have been put in their path and why did the engines all quit? For a long minute there was no sound save for someone still screaming in the plane's stern area.
       Gordy was the first to speak. "Mr. President, I remember hearing you say you'd enjoy meeting Jim Foster, or did I imagine you said that?"
       Brewster was still pitched forward with his hand clutching his forehead. His head came up. "No, I said it. Why bring that up now?"
       "I think you may get your wish. He's here."

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