by Andy Briggs
It was an odd experience to phase through the floor, and then suddenly find it solid beneath your feet. But Jake had had a catalog of odd experiences lately, so he didn’t give it much thought. He was in what looked like a compact doctor’s exam room, with a recliner and an assortment of expensive medical equipment stowed against the wall, including what looked like an X-ray machine. If it hadn’t been for the curved wall behind him, Jake would almost have forgotten that he was in an airplane.
A clunking sound reverberated through the aircraft, and the pilot’s voice spoke calmly over the PA system.
“Connected for refueling.”
That seemed to be all the details Jake was going to get. He took stock of his situation. There was one door leading out into a corridor that ran toward the tail, past the galley and into a large conference room. That meant the wall in front of Jake should be the Presidential Suite, built into the nose of the craft, just under the cockpit. And with any luck, that’s where he’d find the president, his primary target. Not that that really mattered, since Chromosome wanted the entire aircraft. As long as the president remained inside it then Jake only had one problem to solve. That was a major challenge for even the most seasoned villain; stealing an aircraft—in-flight—from between its protective fighter escorts. Grimm had told him that an entire aircraft was too big to teleport; other wise villains would have been teleporting entire bank vaults rather than breaking into them. Instead Chromosome’s plan involved Jake persuading the pilot to turn around. If not, the autopilot would do it for him.
Once again Jake had to convince himself it was all worth it. The memory of his sister listening to Ironfist made him smile; there was hope for her yet.
The first thing Jake had to do was cut all communications from the aircraft. With over eighty telephones, radios, fax machines, and numerous computer systems it would be easy for anybody aboard the aircraft to make an emergency call. Luckily all calls were routed through a communications room situated behind the cockpit. And that should be just above Jake. He took another flying leap and phased through the ceiling.
After a second of utter blackness as he passed between floors, Jake phased into the room above and immediately knew that his information was incorrect. Tables and luxury, leather-padded revolving chairs, all bolted to the floor, filled his view and he willed himself not to re-form just yet or he would become half boy, half table. He solidified on top of the table, where three very surprised men and one woman stared at him, frozen in terror. It was some kind of planning lounge and Jake found that he was standing amid stacks of papers and maps. Two doors on either end of the room were helpfully labeled “cockpit” and “communications room.” A stairwell ran down from this room to the mid-deck.
Jake fired a small energy orb at one of the men, knocking him out of his chair and unconscious to the floor. This bought the woman enough time to dart from her seat and slide—headfirst—down the stairwell. Jake turned to intercept her, but felt something connect with the back of his head and he pitched forward. Luckily this time he had remembered to will his force field around him in case he met any more kung-fu-happy staff. But he still felt the blow and the room spun as he toppled off the table.
He looked up to see that one of the men had pistol-whipped him. Seconds later an alarm squawked through the plane; obviously the woman had raised it. It was enough of a distraction for the two men to look stupidly up at the flickering red light on the ceiling.
Jake let two radioactive streamers rip—punching both men in the stomach and slamming them into the curved bulkhead. They were knocked out, their expensive suits smoldering. Jake had no time for pity—now he was feeling angry that his plan to do this quietly had been sabotaged.
The communications room was a dark place, filled with banks of sophisticated computers lit only by the harsh LCD screens. Four operators didn’t have time to look up as the fortified door buckled when it was blown off its hinges. The door struck three of them, taking them out, before it slammed into the expensive hardware in a shower of sparks.
Jake entered looking vengeful. He had planned to deliver a small electromagnetic pulse through the aircraft’s communication systems, as Grimm had advised. That would be enough to take them off-line. But now Jake was running on adrenaline, and was doing what came naturally to him—being heavy-handed.
He unleashed a lightning bolt across the room. The crackling electricity struck every system and overloaded them in a fountain of sparks. The last conscious operator in the room couldn’t have been more than twenty. He peered at Jake through owl-like glasses.
“Don’t shoot!”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Jake snarled impulsively. A strand of lightning jumped from his finger and struck the man in the chest. He slumped to the floor in a ball.
Jake ran back into the lounge, which was now lit only by emergency lighting strips—he must have overloaded the ship’s electronics. He heard the clatter of feet on the stairs as impeccably dressed Secret Service personnel ran up, armed with automatic pistols. Jake had been told that nobody would risk firing a gun on board, as a bullet hole would depressurize the aircraft. But it looked as if nobody had bothered telling the security services that.
Jake sent another volley of lightning down the stairs. The two leading men, who were so big they barely managed to fit up the staircase, fell backward, cannoning into two more.
Jake ran for the cockpit door, and didn’t break his stride as he phased through. The cockpit was jampacked with flight instrumentation and the windows offered a view of the KC-10 refueling plane right in front of them, with the long fuel pipe trailing out toward the side of the cockpit. Jake could clearly see the shuttlecock drogue connected to the line, just outside the cockpit window. Despite the alarm that was sounding, the crew could not simply stop the refueling process. They were already running on empty tanks.
The pilot didn’t even look around as he heard a gasp from the copilot and engineer. He was too busy jiggling the controls to make sure Air Force One remained connected to the refueling pipe.
“I’m going to make this very easy for you,” Jake said in a voice that trembled from both nerves and excitement. “All you have to do is refuel and turn this plane toward Romania. All your radios are out, and in a few minutes you won’t have a fighter escort.”
“You’re hijacking us?”
Jake hesitated. That seemed too strong a word. Then again, telling the pilot that he was kidnapping them all didn’t sound any better.
“You’ll live. Unless you try something stupid.”
“Why are you doing this?” said the terrified copilot, as the cockpit door was repeatedly hammered by Secret Service guys desperate to get in.
“I’m doing this to get my family back. I wish there was another way, but—”
The copilot had been maintaining perfect eye contact, and no flicker gave away the fact that the engineer, who was positioned just to Jake’s side, had slid out a high-voltage stun gun. He fired it into Jake’s ribs.
Jake felt as though every nerve in his body was on fire as the current pulsed through him. The special-issue stun gun would have felled a bear in seconds—no normal human stood a chance.
But Jake wasn’t normal.
The current emerged from his body, amplified. Lightning bolts burst out from him in all directions, striking instruments and crew with such ferocity that Jake could smell burning clothes and hair. Jake himself dropped to the floor, momentarily weakened. When he caught his breath and looked up he saw the entire crew was unconscious and slumped over the controls, even the pilot. Worse still, the instrument panel was dead—lights out, and dials reading zero across the board. He could still hear the engines roaring, so they were still flying, but the sophisticated computer system was dead.
He’d lost the autopilot.
In fact, the roar of the engines seemed overly noisy. He stood up and gazed through the cockpit window.
And what he saw was bad.
When the pilot had slumped forwar
d, his hand had been on the throttle. It had been pushed by his body weight, and had edged the control to maximum. Air Force One had jolted forward, severing the attached fuel line. Pure aviation fuel splattered across the window like a bad rainstorm.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. Air Force One had accelerated so close to the slower KC-10 tanker that the top of the cockpit grated along the tail of the refueling tanker.
The sound of tearing metal reverberated through the Boeing. Jake watched in shock as metal-on-metal sparks kicked up—igniting the volatile jet fuel.
The blue nose of Air Force One erupted in flames as the fuel caught fire. The front of the aircraft was now an orange fireball.
The two F-22 pilots in the opposite planes had never seen anything like it, and they were powerless to help. The KC-10 tanker sharply banked aside—narrowly missing a collision with the Boeing. The trailing fuel hose still spewed liquid fire until automatic cutoff valves stemmed the flow. Air Force One’s twisted refueling probe blocked access to the aircraft’s fuel tanks, preventing the flames from reaching it and blowing the aircraft up in midair.
Jake dragged the pilot out of his seat as the Boeing climbed sharply. He’d flown flight simulators and even Basilisk’s SkyKar—but this was a different beast altogether. And there were fifty innocent people on board. He gently pushed the control stick forward and the aircraft leveled out, although all Jake could see through the window was a wall of flames.
With no way to see out, no instruments, and absolutely zero real flying experience sitting behind a jumbo jet, Jake knew he had no choice but to make an emergency landing—otherwise everybody on board would be killed.
Including him.
Splash Down
The F-22 Raptors orbited Air Force One. The entire front was aflame, and the fire threatened to reach the massive wings where the fuel was stored. Then the Boeing began to nose-dive toward the sparkling ocean below. The pilots’ repeated attempts to radio the plane met with static. A U.S. naval vessel, the USS Kitty Hawk, had already sent rescue helicopters, but they wouldn’t arrive for another hour. The situation was hopeless.
Inside, Jake wrestled with the controls. Although he couldn’t see outside and none of the instruments were working, including the gyroscopic artificial horizon, his stomach was telling him they were descending quickly. The pounding against the cockpit door had stopped; no doubt the Secret Service had been thrown around the aircraft during its midair collision. Then Jake heard the distinctive sound of gunshots slamming into the door. Someone had managed to brace themselves long enough to try to shoot his way in, a futile gesture, since the door was reinforced against exactly that kind of situation.
Jake couldn’t think of a single superpower to help him out of his predicament. He attempted to gather his jumbled thoughts. He could try to teleport the entire crew out en masse, but that would require everybody touching—and he doubted they would give him the chance to explain a plan where they all had to hold hands. He needed to try to stop the flames before they damaged the aircraft any further.
The Raptor pilots thought they were hallucinating when they saw the figure of a young boy fly through the burning cockpit and hover alongside Air Force One. Then their secret security briefing came back to mind. He was obviously a Super—and because he had come out of Air Force One, they had to assume he was not a hero but a hostile. Then again, he was too small a target to shoot at—if they did attack they risked striking Air Force One.
Jake took stock of the situation. Although it was freezing outside, the thin oxygen was feeding the flames. He needed to smother them with something. He was only half aware that one of the Raptor fighter planes was matching the speed of Air Force One, and flying a few yards above it.
Jake ignored it. He pointed at the burning nose and shot out what he hoped was the right power.
The Raptor pilot was surprised to see a thick layer of ice stream from the boy’s hands and cling to the Boeing’s fuselage like snow. The villain zoomed around the nose-diving aircraft and covered the entire front of it with thick ice that killed the flames. Seconds later the ice broke away in large fragments, revealing the black, damaged metal beneath.
It all happened as the pilot was lining up a delicate shot with his M-61 Vulcan Gatling gun. Just a few inches out and he risked blowing a hole in the president’s plane. His finger pulled the trigger—just as the shards of jagged ice broke away from Air Force One. Several smashed into his craft at high speed, breaking a hole in the canopy and forcing him to yank back the joystick.
Jake looked up to see tracer fire from the Raptor’s Gatling gun arc away from him. The fighter flipped aside, completely out of control. The pilot ejected with a bang that Jake could hear over the rushing wind, and the F-22 Raptor plummeted like a stone. Jake had no wish to tackle the remaining Raptor, so he phased back inside the cockpit.
Jake tried to ignore the ax blade sticking through the door. He had to hand it to the Secret Service, they were persistent. Jake pulled back on the controls and swung the aircraft into a climb before swerving to one side and resuming the descent. He heard thuds and muffled swearing as the Secret Service guys were thrown around.
There was no way Jake could safely land the Boeing on a runway, which was just as well, since he had no idea where the nearest strip of land was. Would ditching it in the ocean be easy? He vaguely remembered that planes were designed to float. He just hoped he wasn’t making up that particular fact.
Now the horizon appeared level through the side windows, and consumed the front windshield. The white dots that had been scattered icebergs now loomed as big as mountains. Jake judged that it was time to lift the nose and push the throttle forward to lose speed.
The looming icebergs rushed past, so close that the wing tips scraped chunks of ice. The water below was littered with fist-sized ice debris, but Jake had no time to worry about that. He managed to lift the nose with seconds to spare. As the nose rose, the tail struck the ocean. Jake had thought it would be like diving into a swimming pool.
He was completely wrong.
At these speeds hitting the water was like landing on grass. The tail section cracked and the stabilizing fins sheared away as ice smashed into them. But somehow the tail remained attached. The impact forced the front of the Boeing down against the water. …
Jake was hurled forward into the control panel. Air Force One belly flopped into the water, but was traveling so fast that it lifted out again and skimmed the ocean like a stone—just clearing a small ice floe before splashing down again.
Jake felt each crunching jar and with it the tortured whine of the engines.
Air Force One skipped for the seventh time before making full contact with the ocean and driving forward like a speedboat, cutting a massive V-shaped wake. The port wing dipped, both engines suddenly cutting into the water with a shrill gurgling scream. The submerged engines acted as a pivot and pulled the aircraft around in an arc.
There was no chance of the stress breaking the wings off. What most people don’t realize is that the wings support the entire weight of an aircraft during flight. They are the toughest part of any plane.
But when the twin portside engines decided to explode, the resulting conflagration shattered the wing in two and sent an orange mushroom cloud rocketing skyward. Luckily the ocean waves prevented the fires from damaging the body of the aircraft.
The plane skidded sideways in the water for hundreds of yards before smashing to a halt lengthways against an iceberg. Windows shattered, and chunks of ice rained down on the fuselage. The raised starboard wing smashed against the water like a giant flipper and killed the remaining engines.
For a moment there was silence.
Jake opened his eyes, amazed to discover he was alive and elated that he had managed to land, although he had no idea of the extent of the damage. Dull thuds echoed through the plane as emergency exit doors were blown open.
Jake climbed to his feet. Then he took a deep breath and dropped, phasing through
the floor.
He appeared in the empty Presidential Suite and ran through the open door. He knew the crew would be abandoning ship. He hurried down a narrow corridor and stopped at the first exit he came to, which happened to be the main entrance. The airstair, a door with built-in steps, had been lowered and already the ocean waves were rolling in. Two bright yellow life rafts bobbed on the frigid waters, crammed with crew. The nearest contained black-suited Secret Service personnel, who seemed to be waiting for Jake. As soon as he poked his head outside, automatic gunfire peppered the fuselage and the wall behind him.
Jake dived across the gap, his shield catching bullets. One eager bodyguard leaped from the raft onto the airstair. Jake saw him scrambling aboard and launched a fireball at him. The flames hit the wall just above the bodyguard’s head. The man slipped back down the stairwell and into the ocean. Jake considered sinking the life raft, but that would no doubt condemn the bodyguards to death. And since they weren’t Supers, he didn’t want to do that.
Jake ran past the galley and through a plush meeting room. He shoved through a partitioned door and into the tail section, where journalists usually traveled. The rear external door was open and a knot of Secret Service personnel were gathered around the president and the secretary of defense.
Jake opened his mouth to speak—and a hail of gunfire slammed into his head. Even though his shield was working, the accumulated bullets still felt like a fist slamming into his nose. He fell onto his back, and was surprised to find he didn’t stop sliding.
Jake looked around in panic—the aircraft was slowly seesawing as it flooded. The tail rose at an angle, scraping across the iceberg with a sound like fingernails across a chalkboard. Water flooded through the front door, and a mini-wave rolled toward him.
The president and his staff floundered as the Boeing shuddered. They were thrown away from the emergency exit as the angle of the floor increased.
