fed in aviation kerosene. As the fuel ignited, a smoke cloud belched back and the engine took hold with a deep-throated bellow.
"Clear to start four."
Number four engine followed three. Generators on both engines charging.
The captain's voice. "Switching to generators. Disconnect ground power."
Above the power cart, electric lines came down. "Disconnected. Clear to start two."
Number two took hold. Three engines now. An encompassing roar. Snow streaming behind.
Number one fired and held.
"Disconnect air."
"Disconnected."
The umbilical air hose slipped down. The foreman drove the power cart away.
Floodlights ahead of the aircraft had been moved to one side.
Patroni exchanged headsets with the crewman near the front of the fuselage. The maintenance chief now had the telephone set, and communication with the pilots.
"This's Patroni. When you're ready up there, let's roll her out."
Ahead of the aircraft nose, the crewman with the lighted wands held them up, ready to be a guide along an elliptical path beyond the trenches, also cleared at Joe Patroni's direction. The crewman was ready to run if the 707 came out of the mud faster than expected.
Patroni crouched close to the nosewheel. If the airplane moved quickly, he, too, was vulnerable. He held a hand near the interphone plug, ready to disconnect. He watched the main landing gear intently for a sign of forward movement.
The captain's voice. "I am opening up."
The tempo of the jets increased. In a roar like sustained thunder, the airplane shook, the ground beneath it trembled. But the wheels remained still.
Patroni cupped his hands around the interphone mouthpiece. "More power! Throttles forward all the way!"
The engine noise heightened but only slightly. The wheels rose perceptibly, but still failed to move forward.
"Goddamit! All the way!"
For several seconds, the engine tempo remained as it was, then abruptly lessened. The captain's voice rattled the interphone; it had a sarcastic note. "Patroni, por favor, if I open my throttles all the way, this airplane will stand on its nose. Instead of a stranded 707, we shall both have a wrecked one."
The maintenance chief had been studying the landing gear wheels, which had now settled back, and the ground around them. "It'll come out, I tell you! All it needs is the guts to pull full power."
"Look to your own guts!" the captain snapped back. "I am shutting the engines down."
Patroni shouted into the interphone. "Keep those motors running; hold 'em at idle! I'm coming up!" Moving forward under the nose, he motioned urgently for the boarding ramp to be repositioned. But even as it was being pushed into place, all four engines quieted and died.
When he reached the cockpit, both pilots were unfastening their seat harnesses.
Patroni said accusingly, "You chickened out!"
The captain's reaction was surprisingly mild. "Es posible. Perhaps it is the only intelligent thing I have done tonight." He inquired formally, "Does your maintenance department accept this airplane?"
"Okay." Patroni nodded. "We'll take it over."
The first officer glanced at his watch and made an entry in a log.
"When you have extricated this airplane, in whatever way," the Aereo-Mexican captain stated, "no doubt your company will be in touch with my company. Meanwhile, buenas noches."
As the two pilots left, their heavy topcoats buttoned tightly at the neck, Joe Patroni made a swift, routine check of instruments and control settings. A minute or so later he followed the pilots down the outside ramp.
The Aereo-Mexican foreman, Ingram, was waiting below. He nodded in the direction of the departing pilots, now hurrying toward one of the crew buses. "That was the same thing they done to me; not pulling enough power." He motioned gloomily toward the aircraft's main landing gear. "That's why she went in deep before; now she's dug herself in deeper still."
It was what Joe Patroni had feared.
With Ingram holding an electric lantern, he ducked under the fuselage to inspect the landing gear wheels; they were back in mud and slush again, almost a foot deeper than before. Patroni took the light and shone it under the wings; all four engine nacelles were disquietingly closer to the ground.
"Nothing but a sky hook'll help her now," Ingram said.
The maintenance chief considered the situation, then shook his head. "We got one more chance. We'll dig some more, bring the trenches down to where the wheels are now, then start the engines again. Only this time I'll drive."
The wind and snow still howled around them.
Shivering, Ingram acknowledged doubtfully, "I guess you're the doctor. But better you than me."
Joe Patroni grinned. "If I don't blast her out, maybe I'll blow her apart."
Ingram headed for the remaining crew bus