Chapter 3 - The Mask Comes Off
The momentary calm inside the cabin shattered the instant I completed the primary diagnostic scan. A piercing master warning chime rang out through the flight deck: a catastrophic electrical fire in the lower avionics bay had knocked out the main radar and disabled the aircraft's fuel cross-feed valves. Worse yet, our starboard engine was starving for fuel while the left wing was overloaded with unused kerosene. We were wildly asymmetric, flying blind into a massive Atlantic squall with failing flaps and compromised brakes.
The cockpit door buzzer chimed. I flipped the security latch, and Jillian rushed in, pale as a ghost, accompanied by Douglas Martinez, who had forced his way past the galley curtain despite crew protests.
"You can't just hijack this plane!" Douglas yelled hysterically, sweat drenching the collar of his designer shirt. "I have contacts in the Department of Transportation! You're a nobody in a discount sweatshirt! We demand you turn back to Boston immediately! You don't have the legal authority to fly this aircraft!"
I didn't turn around. I kept one hand firmly on the vibrating yoke, feeling the drag of the dead fuel tank pulling our nose to the right.
"Douglas," I said, my tone dangerously low and lethal. "If you take one more step onto this flight deck, I will have the purser zip-tie you to a lavatory toilet for interfering with flight operations during a Mayday emergency."
"Do you know who I am?!" he shrieked. "I run a four-hundred-million-dollar tech firm! I could buy your whole family!"
I slowly turned my head. For the first time, I looked him dead in the eyes—the exact same look I gave the rival syndicate bosses in Detroit before their crews packed their bags and left my territory for good. The look of a man who had walked through literal gunfire and held life and death in his hands for a living.
"And I run Hayes Logistics out of Chicago," I said quietly. "The firm that owns the server infrastructure your little software company rents every single month. The firm that controls the dock yards where your hardware arrives. Sit your worthless ass back in seat 2B and shut your mouth before I decide your seat is extra ballast."
Douglas froze. His arrogant expression cracked, his jaw dropping as the name finally registered. He had spent years hearing whisperings about Warren Hayes—the untouchable, mysterious syndicate figure who owned half the transport logistics in Illinois and was feared by corrupt politicians and street syndicates alike. The tech mogul went completely white, backed out of the cockpit without a single word, and stumbled back down the aisle like a terrified schoolboy.
"Commander Hayes," Jillian whispered, her voice trembling with awe. "The weather radar is dead. The controller at Gander says there is a Category 3 coastal blizzard sweeping across our nearest diversion point in Newfoundland. The runway is covered in slush and zero-visibility fog."
"Then we don't have time to hesitate," I said, clicking the radio toggle. "Gander Center, Hayes on 402. Radar is dead. We are flying on backup instruments. Direct us toward St. John’s International. Tell their crash fire rescue to foam the strip. We’re coming in hot and heavy with asymmetric thrust and no trailing-edge flaps."
"Flight 402, St. John's is reporting wind shear and a three-hundred-foot ceiling," the controller responded, tension bleeding through the static. "Are you confident you can find the runway visually without navigation guidance?"
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I took a deep breath, picturing Norah's sweet face sitting back in row eight. She had lost her mother two years ago to an aggressive illness; I had made a solemn vow on my wife's grave that I would never let harm touch our daughter.
"I was landing supersonic jets on pitch-black pitching carrier decks in fifty-knot gales before you took this job, Gander," I replied, my voice steady as iron. "Have the ambulances waiting at the end of the strip. Hayes out."
