Chapter 3 - The 30,000-Foot Dogfight
The heavy wide-body jet shuddered violently as the wings approached their critical angle of attack.
In the passenger cabin behind them, screams erupted as three hundred people were pressed hard into their seats by the sudden spike in g-forces. Overhead bins rattled, and loose luggage shifted with thunderous thuds.
“Airspeed two-twenty!” Hayes yelled, panic rising in his throat as the aircraft began to buffeting, the giant twin engines groaning under asymmetric load. “We’re losing lift! The yoke isn't responding!”
“Throttle back to idle!” Laura ordered calmly, her military training taking total command of her nervous system.
“Idle?! We’ll stall faster!”
“Do it now, Marcus!” Laura roared, her voice booming like thunder in the cramped flight deck. “An F-16 in an uncommanded pitch-up requires nose-down momentum through thrust reduction! Cut the throttles and deploy the flight spoilers to thirty percent!”
Hayes jammed the twin thrust levers back to idle.
The roar of the massive turbofans died down. Without the engine thrust pushing against the upward-angled elevators, the heavy nose of the 777 paused at thirty-two degrees pitch, hung in the thin Atlantic air for one terrifying second, and then sliced downward, the horizon rushing up through the windshield in a sickening blur of dark clouds and black ocean.
TERRAIN! TERRAIN! PULL UP! the ground proximity system screamed.
Passengers wailed in absolute terror as the sensation of zero-gravity lifted them against their lap belts.
Laura didn't panic. She watched the airspeed indicator climb back through the green arc: 280... 320... 350 knots.
“Bring engines to seventy percent!” Laura called out. “Spoilers down! Rudder trim right four degrees!”
She pulled back on the yoke with smooth, calculated pressure. The aircraft groaned, the wings flexing under the heavy load as the descent leveled off at flight level one-eight-zero, cutting through the dense, rain-soaked cloud deck into smooth, freezing Atlantic air.
The stall horn cut off.
The cabin fell into a stunned, sobbing silence, broken only by the whimpers of frightened children.
First Officer Hayes slumped against his armrest, gasping for breath, looking at Laura as if she were an angel carved out of titanium. “How... how did you know that would work?”
“I’ve pulled an F-16 out of a flat spin over the Mojave Desert with half an engine missing, Marcus,” Laura said, adjusting her headset with a steady hand. “This airplane has plenty of wing left. But Victor Sterling is still on his laptop in First Class. He knows the first stall attempt failed. He’s going to command a full rudder hard-over next.”
Laura unlatched her five-point harness and stood up.
“You have the flight controls, Marcus,” she said. “Keep her at flight level one-eight-zero. Keep manual pitch trim locked with the physical mechanical wheels between the seats. Do not let the digital autopilot engage under any circumstance.”
“Where are you going?” Hayes asked, terror flashing in his eyes.
“To seat 2B,” Laura said, her eyes cold as ice. “To collect our bypass code.”
Laura stepped out of the cockpit, pulling the green sleeves of her sweater up to her forearms.
As she walked into the first-class cabin, the passengers were huddled under blankets, several weeping quietly.
Sitting in seat 2B was a man in his late fifties, wearing a sharp gray suit, gold-rimmed spectacles, and noise-canceling headphones. On his tray table sat an open, military-grade ruggedized laptop connected to a high-gain satellite antenna module.
On the screen was a real-time digital telemetry feed of Flight 412’s flight management system.
Victor Sterling’s fingers were flying across the keyboard, typing lines of hex code, preparing to send a secondary command to lock the aircraft’s horizontal stabilizers into a full downward dive.
Laura didn't announce herself.
She closed the distance in two silent strides.
Before Victor could glance up from his screen, Laura’s right hand shot out like an iron piston, clamping around his throat, slamming his head back against the leather headrest with a sickening thud.
Her left hand snatched the laptop from his tray, snapping the satellite antenna clean off its hinges.
May you like
Victor’s eyes bulged in shock. He clawed at her fingers, gasping for air, staring into the face of the woman he thought he had erased from aviation twelve years ago.
“Hello, Victor,” Laura whispered, her voice colder than the clouds outside the window. “Recognize me? Or did you think Major Laura Vance died in Nevada too?”
