Chapter 2 - Terror in the Cockpit
The cockpit was an absolute nightmare of flashing warning lights, shrill mechanical sirens, and suffocating tension. The primary flight display showed our altitude unspooling with horrifying speed: thirty-three thousand feet, thirty-one thousand feet, twenty-eight thousand feet. The nose of the heavy passenger jet was pitched down twelve degrees, and the airframe groaned in agony as the airspeed indicator crept into the red barbershop stripe.
"Help me get him out of the harness!" I shouted over the blaring terrain pull-up alerts, barking orders with the instinctive authority of a combat squadron commander.
Jillian sprang forward, her hands trembling as we released Captain Henderson's four-point shoulder harness. The captain was entirely unresponsive, his breathing shallow and his lips tinged with an ominous blue hue. Together, we dragged his limp frame out of the left seat and laid him flat on the cockpit entryway floor.
"Get the emergency medical kit from the forward galley," I commanded, sliding into the captain’s seat without hesitation. "Administer pure high-flow oxygen to his mask and find anyone on board with basic nursing training. Move!"
She bolted out the door. The heavy cockpit door clicked shut, leaving me alone with the machine.
It had been nine years since I strapped myself into the cockpit of an F/A-18 Hornet, nine long years since I walked away from military service and built a shadowy empire on the brutal streets of Chicago to protect my family from enemies who played by no rules. But muscle memory is a stubborn ghost. The moment my palms wrapped around the yoke and my boots found the rudder pedals, the chaotic haze vanished. My heartbeat slowed to a steady, surgical rhythm.
The aircraft was fighting me. The master caution panel was lit up like a Christmas tree: hydraulic system B pressure was dropping rapidly due to a severed bleed line, and the automatic trim system had suffered an electrical runaway, forcing the nose stubbornly downward into a dive.
"Terrain! Pull up! Whoop whoop! Pull up!" the automated flight warning computer barked relentlessly into the headset.
"Not today," I muttered under my breath.
I reached up and killed the runaway electric trim breaker on the overhead panel with a sharp flick of my thumb. Then, grabbing the manual stabilizer trim wheel beside my knee, I hauled it back with everything I had. The heavy steel wheel resisted fiercely, biting into my calloused hands, but I leaned my entire weight into the motion. Slowly, agonizingly, the nose began to level out. The screaming airspeed alarms dropped back below the redline just as the altimeter settled at nineteen thousand feet.
I keyed the radio switch on the yoke, tuning into the North Atlantic oceanic control frequency.
"Gander Oceanic, this is transatlantic flight 402, declaring Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. Captain and first officer incapacitated. Civilian passenger with military flight credentials in command. We have partial hydraulic failure and are maintaining level flight at one-niner thousand."
A frantic pause hung on the frequency before a calm, shocked air traffic controller responded from the Canadian mainland. "Flight 402, Gander Center copies your Mayday. Say again, passenger in command? Who is at the controls?"
"Commander Warren Hayes, United States Navy retired," I answered cleanly. "We have two hundred and forty souls on board. Clear the airspace around us and find me a runway with emergency arresting gear or full emergency ground support within three hundred miles."
Through the cockpit monitor, I could see pandemonium breaking out in the main passenger cabin. The sudden descent had tossed loose luggage out of the overhead bins, and terrified screams echoed through the thin partition. At the front row, Douglas Martinez was frantically demanding answers from a crying flight attendant, waving his smartphone in the air even though there was zero cell signal over the ocean.
I clicked the cabin PA system switch.
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"Ladies and gentlemen, this is Warren Hayes from seat 8A. The flight crew suffered a sudden medical emergency, and I have assumed control of the aircraft. The aircraft is stable at nineteen thousand feet. Return to your seats, fasten your seatbelts tightly, and prepare for an emergency diversion. We are going to get through this."
As my voice echoed throughout the plane, I looked at the side mirror monitor. Down in row eight, little Norah was wide awake now. She wasn't screaming like the adults around her. She was clutching her teddy bear, looking directly up at the flight deck door with quiet, unshakeable trust in her father.
