Chapter 6 - Eight Minutes to the Coast
Rebecca’s hand froze over the radio.
Mercer reached forward and changed frequency.
The voice followed them.
“Major Lawson.”
Someone had access to more than the normal communication network.
Rebecca felt rage rise.
“Who are you?”
“Someone offering you a way out.”
Mercer signaled for silence.
He wrote on a checklist:
KEEP HIM TALKING.
Rebecca keyed the microphone.
“What do you want?”
“Turn north.”
“To Keflavik?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You’ll land safely.”
Rebecca almost laughed.
“You sabotaged an airplane carrying three hundred people and now you care about safety?”
“Your aircraft is not intended to crash.”
“Tell that to the people smelling smoke.”
A pause.
“The smoke was not part of the plan.”
Rebecca looked at Mercer.
Interesting.
“What caused it?”
“I don’t know.”
“So you’ve lost control too.”
Silence.
Rebecca continued.
“You can’t stop Delta.”
“No.”
“You can’t stop the engine problem.”
“No response.
“And you don’t know what’s burning.”
The voice hardened.
“Turn north.”
Rebecca looked at the map.
North made no sense.
Fuel insufficient.
Engine unreliable.
Smoke.
“You want the airplane at Keflavik because someone is waiting there.”
No answer.
That was answer enough.
Mercer contacted air traffic control on a secondary radio while Rebecca held the intruder.
Controllers now knew someone was hijacking communications.
Military authorities were notified.
But none of that mattered if they could not stay airborne.
Monica updated them.
“Smoke appears to be coming from an aft galley electrical panel. Crew discharged extinguishers. It’s decreasing.”
Rebecca exhaled.
“Good.”
“Not gone.”
Mercer asked, “Cabin condition?”
“Passengers seated. Some coughing near rear rows. We’re moving them forward.”
“Lily?”
Monica understood why Rebecca could not ask herself.
“Safe.”
Rebecca closed her eyes briefly.
“Tell her I love her.”
Monica paused.
“She knows.”
Mercer looked at the island strip.
Eleven minutes away.
The abandoned military base.
Seventeen.
Shannon unavailable.
Prestwick too far if engine two failed completely.
Then engine two recovered partial thrust.
Rebecca stared.
“Why did it come back?”
Mercer checked indications.
“I don’t know.”
Shaw’s voice came through.
“I do.”
“What?”
“The attack is cycling.”
“Explain.”
“Delta creates intermittent failures to encourage wrong crew actions.”
Rebecca understood.
If an engine seemed to fail, pilots might shut it down.
Then the attacker could target the remaining engine.
“Do not shut it down unless parameters require it.”
Mercer nodded.
“Agreed.”
The hostile voice returned.
“Seven minutes until your opportunity closes.”
Rebecca keyed the microphone.
“What opportunity?”
“To save everyone.”
“You keep saying north.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“You know why.”
“No. I don’t.”
Then the voice said a name.
“Evan Cole.”
Rebecca’s breath stopped.
“You killed him.”
“He was unfortunate.”
Mercer looked at her.
Rebecca forced herself to remain calm.
“You were there.”
“I authorized the trial.”
Victor Dane.
She knew before he said another word.
“Dane.”
Silence.
Rebecca felt six years collapse into one instant.
“You blamed Evan.”
“He failed to manage the aircraft.”
“He was given corrupted controls.”
“He was a pilot. Pilots are responsible for outcomes.”
Rebecca almost screamed.
Instead her voice became very soft.
“You sound exactly the way you did at the hearing.”
Dane laughed.
“You always were emotional, Rebecca.”
Mercer wrote another note.
HE’S RECORDING HIMSELF.
Rebecca nodded.
Their cockpit voice recorder.
Air traffic frequencies.
Everything might become evidence.
She kept Dane talking.
“Why me?”
“You wouldn’t stop.”
“I resigned.”
“But you kept writing reports. You contacted Congress twice. You approached regulators. You convinced one insurer to examine Helix architecture.”
Rebecca had done all of that quietly.
None went anywhere.
“You were afraid.”
“Annoyed.”
“Afraid.”
A pause.
Then Dane said, “This demonstration solves several problems.”
Rebecca looked at Mercer.
“Including me?”
“Yes.”
“And three hundred innocent passengers?”
“They were never supposed to die.”
Rebecca’s voice hardened.
“Evan wasn’t supposed to die either, was he?”
Silence.
Then:
“No.”
There it was.
Confession.
Not complete.
Enough.
Mercer gave her a look.
Keep going.
Rebecca said, “What went wrong?”
“His control latency exceeded projections.”
“And you buried it.”
“We protected a national-security program.”
“You protected yourself.”
Dane’s calm slipped.
“You have no idea what was at stake.”
“I know exactly what was at stake. A pilot died, and you called him incompetent.”
“Turn north.”
“No.”
“Then your daughter dies with you.”
Rebecca’s hands trembled.
Mercer covered her hand briefly.
Not romantic.
Grounding.
Pilot to pilot.
Stay in the cockpit.
Stay in the problem.
Rebecca looked at the island strip.
Nine minutes.
Military field fourteen.
Smoke decreasing.
Engine two fluctuating but functioning.
“Which runway gives us better survival odds?” she asked.
Mercer calculated.
“Military field.”
“Can we reach it?”
“If engine two stays.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Maybe.”
Rebecca nodded.
“Then go.”
Dane heard.
“You’re making a mistake.”
Rebecca switched frequencies.
She was done with him.
They descended.
Clouds thickened.
Twelve thousand feet.
Ten.
Eight.
The coastline appeared intermittently.
Shaw provided technical interpretation from outside the cockpit.
Monica prepared the cabin.
Rebecca pictured Lily.
Brace position.
Teddy under one arm.
Probably trying to be brave because Rebecca had admitted she was afraid too.
The thought steadied her.
At six thousand feet, engine two failed again.
This time thrust dropped to near zero.
Mercer compensated.
“Single-engine profile.”
Rebecca verified.
“Speed stable.”
“Landing gear later than normal.”
“Agreed.”
The abandoned base lay ahead.
No tower response.
No runway lights.
No current weather.
They were going to put a wide-body passenger jet onto a runway designed decades earlier for military transports.
Rebecca scanned chart data.
“Runway length ten thousand eight hundred feet.”
“Enough if surface is usable.”
“Wind?”
“From the west. Fifteen knots.”
“Crosswind manageable.”
At four thousand feet, they broke beneath clouds.
Rebecca saw land.
Green.
Gray ocean.
Then runway.
Straight ahead.
Her heart surged.
“There.”
Mercer saw it.
“Visual.”
The runway looked intact.
Mostly.
Rebecca squinted.
“Something near midpoint.”
Mercer leaned forward.
Vehicles?
Equipment?
Impossible to tell.
They had no tower.
No ground support.
No guarantee.
“Go around?” Rebecca asked.
Mercer looked at fuel.
“No.”
One approach.
One chance.
Three thousand feet.
Rebecca ran checklist items with him.
Gear.
Flaps.
Speed.
Single-engine control.
Cabin secure.
Smoke contained but not eliminated.
Two thousand.
The airplane felt heavy.
Very heavy.
Rebecca’s fighter experience screamed at the sluggish response.
But she adapted.
This was not an F-16.
No afterburner.
No instant roll.
No aggressive corrections.
Patience.
Precision.
“One thousand.”
Runway centered.
“Stable.”
“Continue.”
Five hundred.
Rebecca saw the object at midpoint clearly.
A truck.
Old.
Abandoned.
Partially on the runway.
Her stomach dropped.
“Obstacle.”
Mercer saw it.
“Right side.”
“We need left-center touchdown.”
“Agreed.”
Three hundred.
Crosswind pushed them.
Mercer corrected.
Slightly late.
Rebecca called:
“Drifting right.”
“Correcting.”
Two hundred.
The airplane moved left.
Too much.
“Easy.”
Mercer relaxed.
One hundred.
Rebecca saw cracks in the runway.
Grass through concrete seams.
Fifty.
Forty.
Thirty.
The main gear touched.
Hard.
Tires smoked.
Reverse thrust on engine one only.
Brakes.
The 787 roared down the abandoned runway.
Rebecca watched the truck grow larger.
“We’re not stopping.”
Mercer knew.
“Left.”
He steered gently.
The airplane shifted.
The truck passed horrifyingly close to the right wing.
Passengers screamed.
Runway end approaching.
Four thousand feet.
Three.
Speed falling.
Two thousand.
Rebecca stared through the windshield.
“Come on.”
One thousand.
The airplane slowed.
Five hundred.
The pavement ended ahead.
Mercer held maximum braking.
The nose gear vibrated.
Rebecca smelled hot brakes.
Then the aircraft stopped.
Ninety feet before the end of the runway.
Nobody moved.
Rebecca stared at the ocean beyond.
They were on the ground.
Alive.
Mercer let out one breath.
Then shouted into the interphone:
“Evacuate?”
Monica replied.
“Negative active fire. Smoke cleared.”
Mercer nodded.
No evacuation unless necessary.
A chaotic evacuation on an isolated field could injure people.
Rebecca unbuckled.
Her legs barely held her.
“I’m going to Lily.”
Mercer nodded.
“You earned that.”
Rebecca opened the cockpit door.
Passengers began clapping.
She hated it.
Not because she was ungrateful.
Because this wasn’t victory yet.
She walked through the cabin.
Faces turned toward her.
Some cried.
Some reached out.
Rebecca kept moving.
Then she saw Lily.
The little girl broke free of Monica and ran.
“Mommy!”
Rebecca dropped to her knees.
Lily slammed into her arms.
Rebecca held her so tightly Lily squeaked.
“You came back.”
“I came back.”
“You flew the plane?”
Rebecca looked over Lily’s shoulder toward the cockpit.
“Captain Mercer flew it.”
“But you helped.”
“Yes.”
Lily smiled.
“I knew you could.”
Rebecca started crying then.
Quietly.
No heroic restraint left.
Just a mother with her daughter in her arms.
For nearly a minute, she believed the worst was over.
Then Martin Shaw approached.
His face was pale.
He held the black device.
“What?”
Rebecca asked.
Shaw turned the screen toward her.
A new message had appeared despite the airplane being on the ground.
TRANSFER COMPLETE.
Rebecca stared.
“Transfer of what?”
Shaw looked toward the terminal buildings of the abandoned base.
One window had just illuminated.
A vehicle engine started somewhere behind the hangars.
And Shaw whispered:
“They weren’t trying to bring the airplane here.”
Rebecca looked at him.
“What were they trying to bring?”
May you like
Shaw swallowed.
“You.”
