A RUDE PASSENGER MOCKED HER JUICE-STAINED SWEATER—UNTIL BOTH PILOTS COLLAPSED OVER THE ATLANTIC AND THE CABIN HEARD WHO SHE REALLY WAS!

Back on the flight deck, the temperature was dropping rapidly.

"Keflavik approach, Atlantic 442, heavy," I called out, shivering beneath my green sweater as frost began to spiderweb across the extreme lower corners of the windshield. "We have lost windshield heat on the copilot side. Requesting descent clearance to flight level one-zero-zero to clear icing conditions."

"Atlantic 442, negative, negative on flight level one-zero-zero," Keflavik’s approach controller replied, his voice tense with urgency. "We have a severe squall line pushing across the southwestern peninsula. Ceiling at Keflavik is currently two hundred feet obscured, visibility one-quarter mile in freezing rain and heavy fog. Surface winds two-nine-zero at four-five knots, gusting five-eight."

I stared at the standby airspeed indicator. "Fifty-eight knots of crosswind?"

"That is affirmative, 442. Runway two-eight is currently experiencing severe wind shear. We have snowplows clearing the active, but braking action is reported as poor to nil."

I closed my eyes for two seconds, letting my mind calculate the physics.

A four-hundred-thousand-pound airliner with half-functioning hydraulics, no autoland capability, degraded primary flight displays, attempting to touch down in a sixty-knot freezing crosswind with zero braking action. If I touched down with even five degrees of crab, the side-load forces would shear the weakened right landing gear clean off the wing. We would cartwheel down the runway at one hundred and forty knots, turning into an expanding fireball of Jet-A fuel.

"Keflavik, say alternate options," I demanded.

"Reykjavik city airport runway is too short for your weight class," the controller answered. "Shannon, Ireland is eight hundred miles behind your starboard quarter. Gander is out of range against the prevailing headwinds. Quinn... Keflavik is your only runway."

Beside me, the captain stirred. A low, agonizing groan escaped his lips. His left eyelid fluttered open, milky and unfocused.

I reached over and touched his shoulder. "Captain. Stay still. You've had a stroke. I have the airplane."

His left hand moved an inch, his fingers curling weakly against his uniform trousers. His lips moved, fighting against the facial paralysis that had dragged down the left side of his jaw.

"Th... throttles..." he whispered, the sound barely louder than the hum of the cooling fans.

"What about them, Captain?" I leaned in close, keeping my right hand pinned to the control wheel.

"Manual... cable... disconnect," he slurred painfully. "F-Fire in bay... burned through... digital linkage. Throttles aren't... communicating true... to engine computers. Watch... the N1 needles... they lie..."

Then his head dropped back, and he fell unconscious once more.

Cold dread cascaded down my spine.

I looked down at the twin engine thrust levers. In modern fly-by-wire airliners, moving the throttle sends an electronic signal to a computer, which then meters the fuel into the combustion chambers. But if the digital bus had burned through during the halon discharge, the engines were operating on default fallback parameters.

I gently eased the right throttle back half an inch.

Nothing happened.

The digital engine readout showed the right engine still turning at eighty-eight percent thrust. Two seconds later, the left engine suddenly surged to ninety-four percent on its own, yawing the heavy jet violently to the right.

The aircraft shuddered as the asymmetric thrust twisted the fuselage.

"Hydraulic pressure dropping to 1,500 PSI!" I yelled into the empty cockpit.

The controls went rock-hard. The yoke felt as if it had been encased in solid concrete. The horizon on the tiny standby display began to tilt—ten degrees right, twenty degrees, thirty degrees.