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

The main landing gear hit the Icelandic runway with a bone-shattering, metallic crash.

BAM!

The impact reverberated through the airframe like an artillery shell detonating against the floorboards. The overhead bins in first class flew open, spilling coats and bags into the aisle. The right wing dipped violently as a sudden sixty-knot gust caught the underside of the broad airfoil, trying to flip the three-hundred-ton machine onto its back like a turtle.

"Not today!" I roared, standing on the left rudder pedal with both feet braced against the floorboard.

I pulled the reverse thrust levers upward with everything I had.

The left engine roared into full reverse with a deafening, terrifying scream, spewing a massive cloud of vapor and slush forward past the cockpit windows. But the right engine—the damaged engine—refused to reverse. Its thrust reverser buckets remained stubbornly locked in the forward flight position.

The asymmetric braking force threw the aircraft into a violent, sideways skid.

The heavy tires screeched against the slush-coated concrete, smoking and shredding as the anti-skid system cycled frantically. We were drifting sideways at one hundred and thirty miles per hour toward a twenty-foot snowbank lining the edge of runway two-eight.

Inside the cabin, the screams were deafening.

In row eight, Arthur Vance didn't scream. He threw his entire upper body across Theo, using his own back and shoulders as a shield between the small boy and the shuddering cabin wall. Martha held Vance’s arm with one hand and her prayer beads with the other, her knuckles white.

"Hold on, Theo!" Vance shouted over the screeching metal. "She's got us! She's got us!"

Up front, my world had narrowed to three visual references: the center line of the runway, the edge of the snowbank rushing toward my right window, and the airspeed needle dying through ninety knots.

I couldn't use the wheel brakes; the aircraft was hydroplaning on a sheet of black ice. If I clamped down on the pedal brakes, the tires would lock completely and send us into an uncontrollable ground loop.

I had to use aerodynamic steering.

I shoved the control wheel fully forward, planting the nose gear firmly into the slush to gain directional traction, and kicked the left rudder with rhythmic, pumping pulses—just like steering a skidding transport jet on an icy tarmac in Alaska.

The nose gear bit through the slush.

The tires found grooved concrete.

With a sickening, violent shudder that rattled every tooth in my skull, the aircraft whipped back toward the center line, throwing up twin fifty-foot plumes of spray and snow on either side of the fuselage.

Eighty knots.

Sixty knots.

Forty knots.

The wild, roaring scream of the jet engines slowly subsided into a low, exhausted whine.

Twenty knots.

Ten.

The airplane rolled to a gentle, quiet stop on the taxiway, directly between two lines of flashing emergency trucks whose high-powered water cannons immediately began dousing the steaming, scorched belly of our aircraft with thick, protective foam.

Silence descended upon the cockpit.

The only sound left was the steady, rhythmic clicking of the cooling turbine blades and the mechanical whir of the standby gyros winding down.

I sat there, frozen in the four-point harness, my hands still locked around the control wheel. My green sweater was soaked through with sweat. My arms were trembling so violently I couldn't unlatch my fingers.

The radio crackled.

"Atlantic 442... Keflavik tower," the controller's voice was thick, choking back tears of pure relief. "Airport is closed. All three hundred and twelve souls accounted for on the runway. Ma'am... Major Braddock... welcome to Iceland. That was the most magnificent piece of flying this airfield has ever seen."

I reached up with a shaking hand, clicked the microphone switch one last time, and let out a long, shuddering breath.