by Susan Grant
“I can’t turn away,” the captain yelled, banking the airplane hard to the left. Several blinding flashes of light filled the cockpit. “Here we go.”
No! The primal urge to survive exploded inside Jordan. She didn’t think. She reacted. Her hands shot out. Her boots hit the rudder pedals. But she barely had time to brace herself before the shadow engulfed the airplane and swallowed it whole.
Chapter Two
“Terrain, terrain!” the 747’s ground-proximity warning system protested loudly. “Pull up—whoop whoop—pull up!” urged the computerized voice.
Convulsively, Brian’s hand shoved the throttles forward, as he was trained to do. Jordan’s gaze jerked to the radar altimeter. God. The computer was right: they were only a few feet above the ground—and getting lower. Impossible. Just seconds ago, they were at 33,000 feet!
But they were alive, still alive.
“Max power,” she shouted, backing up her captain. Her hand pressed against his, pushing the throttles as far as they would go.
Think. Think. She swerved her attention to the two main altimeters that read pressure altitude, not absolute altitude like the radar altimeter. She’d hoped to gain insight as to what was happening to their aircraft. No dice. The altimeters were headed in opposite directions.
One hundred thousand feet and climbing, read one. The other was on its way down to sea level. Damn it. The airplane was as confused as its pilots.
The 747’s computer announced a set of altitude call-outs in feet issued only when the aircraft was landing: “Fifty . . . thirty . . . ten.” There was a grating noise. Then a sharp deceleration threw Jordan forward against her shoulder straps.
The engines stopped running. The silence was thick. Suffocating. Impossible.
Her breaths hissed in and out. Jordan peered around the dim cockpit, tried to find something that made sense. Without engine generators to make electricity, standby power had taken over, powered by the aircraft’s battery. All but the most essential electrical equipment was dead. The silence magnified the thunder of something huge slamming behind them.
The booming thud reverberated through her teeth and jaw. Was it a bomb?
Chimes from the cabin began ringing; every flight attendant on board the jet must be calling to see what had happened—or was happening.
“Tell them to remain in their seats,” the captain said hoarsely.
Jordan reached for the phone with one shaky hand. But before she could lift the receiver to her ear, the entire aircraft plunged into darkness. Not even starlight seeped into the now oppressively black cockpit. The battery, their last remaining power source, had been snuffed out, too.
The glow-in-the-dark face of Brian’s watch blazed like a full moon. Fixating on the light, she listened to the muffled sounds of passengers screaming from beyond the closed cockpit door.
It was dark. Silent. The people were terrified. Understandably. But without electricity, she had no PA, and no way to communicate with them from the cockpit.
Jordan and Captain Wendt dug their flashlights out of their flight bags that they kept next to their seats. Without the engines running, the airplane should have been plunging toward the ocean, losing air pressure at a rapid, eardrum-wrenching rate. But it wasn’t. In fact, the airplane was so motionless that it felt like it was parked at a gate.
Jordan glanced around uneasily, trying to work moisture into her mouth. “It feels like we landed.”
“Where?” the captain snapped. “The Pacific? We’re not a hundred percent airtight. Where’s the water?”
“Okay. No water. But we’re not flying, either. Or at least I don’t think we are. And if we’re not flying, then where are we?”
Jordan and the captain swerved their flashlights out the forward window. Brian’s indrawn breath echoed hers as the faint glow from their flashlights illuminated the area in front of them. But it wasn’t the ocean. Or the nighttime sky. What surrounded the 747 looked like a ribbed, concave . . . wall.
Jordan’s pulse surged. Her mouth went dry. The sight was so far removed from anything she expected to find that at first she was unable to comprehend, let alone accept, what was plainly before her. “We’re inside something.”
The captain made a sudden, strangled noise. His shaking hand flew to his neck and he fumbled with his tie.
“Brian! What’s wrong?”
He tried to talk. Couldn’t. His flushed face deepened in color. Then the hand at his collar became a twitching claw as his entire body stiffened. Was he convulsing?
Jordan threw off her shoulder harnesses and jumped out of her seat. With her fingers, she pressed firmly against the captain’s neck. No pulse.
The thunder of what had to be multiple fists pounded on the cockpit door. Darkness prevented Jordan from seeing out the peephole. And the newly installed external video monitors were as dead as the engines. Outside the door might be hijackers who would hurt or kill the incapacitated captain.
What’s closer—the stun gun or the ax?
The ax was within arm’s reach, but Jordan was trained in firing the Taser, a super-powered stun gun capable of delivering a 50,000-volt blast from twenty feet away. Whipping the gun from its holster on the cockpit sidewall, she disarmed the safety switch. “Who’s there!” she shouted, the weapon clutched in her sweaty hand.
“It’s me, Ben. And Ann and Natalie!” the chief purser yelled.
Jordan lifted the heavy metal bar blocking the door. Then she pulled open the door, stepped back, and took aim. Three flight attendants lurched into the cockpit.
“It’s just us,” Ben gasped, his dark eyes slewing from the red laser on the stun gun to the slumped-over captain.
“He has no pulse—we need the defibrillator!” she told him.
“Natalie—go.” The purser dispatched one of the women to get the emergency medical kit. The Automated External Defibrillator, or AED, could restart a heart, even after sudden death from a heart attack.
Jordan shoved the Taser into its holster. “Help me get him out of here.” She raised the armrest on the captain’s seat and shifted the man’s legs away from her and the center of the cockpit. Then she lifted a lever, sending the seat as far back as it would go. Ben pulled Brian free of the seat and dragged the unconscious man out of the cockpit, where there was little room on the floor, through the open cockpit door, and into upper-deck business class.
In the dark, Ben laid him in the center of the carpeted aisle. The passengers fell silent at the sight of their captain illuminated by the beams of several flashlights, lying prone and blue-lipped on the floor. As they edged closer, Jordan saw the terror etched on their shadowy faces.
“Stand back!” ordered Ann, the other flight attendant who had come upstairs with Ben. She was short and somewhat plump, with a round, sweet face and Asian features—Korean, she’d told Jordan—but she could bark orders like a drill sergeant. “We need room! Stand back!”
There were thirty or so passengers on the upper deck. Jordan asked, “Is anyone here a medical doctor or nurse?”
The replies were all negative. Ann met Jordan’s gaze. Her eyes broadcasted fear, but her voice was steady and calm. Like Jordan, she was calling on her extensive training to keep cool in the midst of chaos. “I’ll go downstairs and find one,” she said.
“Good. Are there enough seats down there to reseat these passengers?”
“I think so.”
“Then take them with you.”
Ann nodded. Jordan addressed the onlookers. “Go downstairs with Ann. You’ll be in a better position to stay updated if we need to make announcements to the whole group.”
As Ann herded her charges down the staircase to the main cabin, Jordan crouched by the captain’s side. Ben had already started CPR.
Natalie returned to the upper deck. Like a salmon trying to swim upstream, Natalie pushed her way up the aisle past the passengers. In her arms was a case containing the defibrillator.
Urgently Jordan told her, “He’s still not breat
hing.”
Ben tore open Brian’s shirt and yanked the man’s under-shirt over his head. Natalie readied the defibrillator. The AED led the flight attendant through the series of verbal prompts, telling her what to do. They gave the captain one shock. His body arched; spittle leaked from the corner of his mouth.
“Come on, come on, Brian. Fight!” Jordan clenched her teeth. Brian’s heart didn’t restart. Natalie raised the paddles.
“The unit says we can try again.”
“Do it!” They were running out of time. Jordan’s stomach clenched. Sweat trickled down her temple. Every second that ticked by stole precious oxygen from the captain’s brain and increased the risk that he’d be permanently damaged by the attack, if not killed outright.
Natalie placed the paddles against Brian’s chest. Her long, curved, red fingernails glittered in the beam of Jordan’s flashlight. Again a shock blew through the captain’s chest. Come on, come on, Jordan prayed silently.
Ann herded a man and woman down the aisle. “We’ve got doctors!” she shouted. “Two of them!”
Breathlessly the two doctors introduced themselves: an internist and a pediatrician. Specialists to cover all the bases, Jordan thought. They dropped to their knees and dug through the emergency medical kit supplied by the airline, while Ben and Natalie told them what they had done to try to resuscitate the captain.
Jordan stood, wiping her arm across her forehead. She couldn’t let the captain’s condition distract her from the safety of the rest of the crew and the passengers. The leadership role wasn’t one she desired, or felt comfortable in, but here she was, in charge of almost three hundred passengers plus a crew of eighteen flight attendants.
Courage is accepting the challenge though it’s easier to give up, her father would have told her.
Easier said than done? She’d find out.
Jordan strode back to the cockpit, where she could be of most use. Outside the forward windows, there were no stars, no sea. Where was the airplane? Weariness and fear clutched at her.
Think. Think.
She aimed her flashlight at the instrument panel. What good was high tech without power? Satellite navigation . . . radios . . . emergency signals—all were worthless.
She rubbed her temples. She was in a nearly one-million-pound 747 that had just been swallowed up by something even larger. But what was it? For years now, the fight against terrorism had been ongoing—and mostly successful—since the day of horror when four hijacked airliners were used as weapons against U.S. targets. Was this a hijacking, too? Had United 58 been snatched out of the sky? How had it been done? And who had the technology to pull it off?
Her skin crawled as she pondered the idea of aircraft swallowing other aircraft. She didn’t think anyone had the know-how or equipment to do such a thing. But then back in 2001, on a sunny September morning, no one had thought anyone would use airliners filled with innocents as missiles, either.
A dull throb began behind her eyes. Stress? Or her body’s first reaction to poison seeping into the aircraft, put there by those who’d captured them?
She shook off the thought. Paranoia never did anyone any good. It was time for her to take charge, whether or not she thought herself up to the task. If those who had “taken” them wanted to hurt them or use them in some horrific way, then she had to prevent it somehow, both to save those for whom she was now responsible and to make sure she got back home to her little girl. Her chest thickened, a wrenching of her heart. But she steeled herself against those softer feelings—they’d only weaken her when she needed to be tough, and weakness would sabotage her chance to bring this nightmare to a safe conclusion.
She rummaged through her backpack until she found a photo of Roberta and slipped it into her chest pocket. “Don’t you worry; I’m coming home, kiddo,” she whispered, pressing her hand over her pocket.
Grabbing her hat, flashlight, and the stun gun, she strode through the open cockpit door. As nonlethal weapons went, the Taser packed a punch. But to Jordan it seemed a flimsy weapon against such a monumental dilemma. It was like using a flintlock rifle to shoot a grizzly bear. According to other pilots she’d talked to the gun gave you two shots, but you’d be lucky to have time to load the second after firing off the first. She’d give her eyeteeth to have an air marshal onboard. Unfortunately, assignment of the marshals was random, and this flight had drawn the short straw.
Real short.
She took three steps and stopped. In the middle of the upper-deck aisle, the knot of people hunched over the captain had lost the intensity that usually characterized those trying to save someone’s life. Jordan’s stomach turned cold. “How is he?”
In answer, Ann drew a blanket over the captain’s inert form.
Jordan crossed herself and hugged her arms to her ribs.
Ben made eye contact with her. “Now what, Captain?”
Captain, he’d called her. Ben’s use of the title drove home the fact that she was now the commander of this ship. So did the shrouded shape on the floor. Grief for the loss of her flying partner mixed with an odd, loathsome, and entirely too familiar feeling. She’d tried, but she couldn’t save him. Damn you, Brian, she cursed the now dead man. You abandoned me. Left me alone, feet to the fire.
Grimacing, she pushed her fears into the recesses of her mind and focused on her promise to get herself and everyone else out of this alive. She dropped her arms and squared her shoulders. “Ann, Natalie, Ben—let’s talk.”
They moved away from the two physicians filling out paperwork relating to their treatment of Brian. A futile, time-wasting activity, Jordan thought, considering everything else that was going on, but it would keep the physicians busy for a moment; any semblance of normalcy would go a long way toward maintaining calm among the passengers—for as long as it was possible.
“Okay,” she began in a confidential tone. “We need to get going on some kind of plan. Then, Ben, I’ll need you to pass on the information to the rest of the flight attendants. And keep the passengers calm and in their seats.”
The shadow of Ben’s beard stubble stood out starkly on his pale skin. “Right now they’re too scared to do anything else but sit.”
“That’s going to change shortly, and that’s why I need to speak to them. But not until we put a plan in action.” Jordan took a breath. “We have to assume we were taken—kidnapped. Hijacked.”
“Do we know that for sure—that we were hijacked?” Ann asked. All eyes swerved in her direction. “Well, we don’t really know what happened, do we?” she insisted somewhat defensively.
Jordan directed a scowl toward the dark windows on the right hand side of the airplane. “No. We don’t. But then, where are we? Inside something, is my guess. I saw it; there was a door, or hatch. It opened and we flew inside. Can I explain it? No, I can’t. But it wasn’t voluntary, us coming here. Wherever we are.”
Ann cast a thoughtful and worried glance outside. “I’ve never heard of an aircraft this big being swallowed by something. Our training doesn’t address this.”
“Exactly,” Natalie put in. “That’s why I’m with you,” she told Jordan. “We have to assume the worst.”
Jordan folded her arms over her chest. “And that’s what I’m doing; until we have proof otherwise. Our power is gone. Our communications, our radios, don’t work. That doesn’t sound friendly to me no matter how you cut it.” She met Ann’s eyes. “But I appreciate the input. Don’t stop feeding me information, gut feelings, anything. Please.” Jordan needed them. More than they knew. “If we’re going to get through this, it’s going to be together.”
Ann’s lips compressed. “I have no argument with that.” The others nodded gravely.
Jordan continued. “It seems to me that our efforts should focus on keeping our captors from boarding the airplane—maybe barricading ourselves inside somehow, until someone decides it’s time to negotiate with us. If they plan to negotiate with us. Of course, I’m making the assumption that no one already onboar
d was involved with what happened.”
Ben nodded. “They’d have acted already, made themselves known.”
“Still, we’d better not take any chances,” Natalie put in.
“Agreed,” Jordan said. Silent, they listened to the sounds floating up the stairs from the main cabin below. The voices were agitated, frightened. But those of the flight crew rang loudly, reassuring everyone as well as calling out orders. She needed to get down there. What she’d say, she could only imagine.
She wrapped up her briefing of the flight attendants. “So. Our goal is to keep us in and whoever took us out.”
“We can start by keeping the doors armed,” Ben said.
“Good. Phase one—doors as defense.” Armed doors meant that inflatable escape slides were deployed the instant the hatches were opened. The slides weighed hundreds of pounds and inflated in seconds.
“Ooh, yeah,” Natalie said, her dark eyes glinting. “If anyone comes knocking, we’re going to smash them like a bug.”
“You got that right,” Jordan agreed. “Now, get me an accounting of what weapons we have onboard. Ask around; add everything you find to the arsenal.” Security measures or no, it was likely that someone had sneaked a usable weapon aboard, even it if was only a nail file.
Ben turned to Natalie and Ann. “Have everyone tie up loose ends, put the carts away, lock up the liquor.”
“Shouldn’t we have the passengers don their life jackets, too?” Ann asked.
Jordan nodded. “There’s still a chance that we might end up in the drink.”
Collectively, they glanced out the dark windows. “When I’m done talking to the passengers,” Jordan continued, “and you’re done with phase one, I want one flight attendant representative from each area of the plane and any military folks onboard to meet in the cockpit to discuss phase two. We have a plane to defend, and we need to figure out exactly how we’re going to do it.”
They regarded each other in silence, crew members tasked with saving aircraft from a situation none of them could grasp.
