She looked at Marcus.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Make it quick.”
“Can you actually land this?”
Marcus looked toward the runway information displayed ahead.
“Yes.”
Sarah waited.
Marcus finally glanced at her.
“That doesn’t mean it’ll be pretty.”
A faint smile appeared on her face.
“I don’t think anybody back there cares about pretty anymore.”
Then she left.
At twenty-five miles, Foster began lowering the landing gear.
Nothing happened.
He tried again.
A warning illuminated.
“Gear isn’t coming down.”
Marcus leaned toward the indicators.
“Emergency extension?”
Foster reached for the alternate control.
They waited.
A few seconds later came a heavy mechanical thump beneath the floor.
Three green lights appeared.
Foster almost laughed.
“That’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen all night.”
Marcus did not celebrate.
“Flaps?”
Foster tried.
Partial movement.
Then they stopped.
“We’ve got limited flaps.”
“Then we land fast.”
Foster looked at him.
“How fast?”
“Fast enough that we’re going to need every inch of runway.”
Shannon Tower cleared all traffic and positioned emergency vehicles along Runway 24. Fire crews lined the edges in the darkness. Ambulances waited beyond them.
At fifteen miles, the hydraulic pressure reached five percent.
Marcus felt something inside him becoming strangely calm.
He had experienced this before.
Not the passenger aircraft.
Not the Atlantic.
The narrowing.
The way an emergency slowly erased everything that did not matter until the world became a handful of instruments, a runway, and the people depending on your next decision.
Zoe disappeared from his mind.
Not because he loved her less.
Because thinking about her now could kill them.
“Four percent,” Foster said.
Marcus moved forward.
“I want the controls.”
Foster stared at him.
“You said you weren’t replacing me.”
“I’m not.”
“You just asked for control.”
“You know the systems. I know what an aircraft feels like when the systems disappear. You stay on instruments and call everything. We do it together.”
Foster hesitated.
The warning tone sounded again.
Three percent.
Foster let go.
“Your aircraft.”
Marcus wrapped both hands around the yoke.
“My aircraft.”
The first thing he noticed was how little authority remained.
He made a small correction.
The airplane answered almost two seconds later.
It felt as if Marcus were shouting commands through several locked doors.
“Ten miles,” Foster said.
Marcus saw the runway lights.
A bright white line stretched across the darkness.
“Shannon, Flight 602 established final.”
“Flight 602, cleared to land Runway 24. Wind two-five-zero at eleven. All emergency services standing by.”
Marcus keyed the radio.
“Copy.”
Two percent.
The nose drifted right.
Marcus corrected gently.
Nothing.
Then too much.
The aircraft rolled left.
He eased the opposite direction, resisting the instinct to fight aggressively.
“One thousand feet,” Foster called.
The runway filled more of the windscreen.
“One percent.”
Marcus said nothing.
“Five hundred.”
The hydraulic indicators dropped.
Zero.
Foster looked at him.
“We lost both systems.”
The yoke suddenly felt dead.
The aircraft began drifting right.
Marcus’s hands moved immediately to the throttles.
“Differential thrust.”
Foster looked at him.
“On a passenger jet?”
“We don’t have another steering system.”
Marcus increased power slightly on the right engine and reduced the left.
The nose moved.
Slowly.
Too slowly.
“Four hundred.”
Marcus adjusted again.
The jet corrected left.
“Three hundred.”
They were nearly aligned.
Then a crosswind pushed the nose.
Foster’s voice rose.
“We’re drifting.”
“I see it.”
Marcus increased asymmetric thrust.
The aircraft turned.
“Two hundred.”
The centerline moved beneath them.
“Hundred.”
Marcus reduced power.
The aircraft dropped.
“Fifty.”
Marcus whispered something Zoe had heard him say before difficult things without ever knowing where he learned it.
“Bring me home.”
The main landing gear struck the runway.
The impact shook the aircraft from nose to tail.
Several overhead compartments burst open in the cabin.
People screamed.
Marcus kept his eyes forward.
The nose gear slammed down.
They were on the ground.
But the airplane was still moving at more than one hundred sixty knots.
Foster tried the brakes.
Nothing.
“Brake pressure gone.”
Marcus had already guessed.
“Reverse thrust?”
“Limited response.”
The end of the runway was rushing toward them.
Marcus keyed the radio.
“Shannon, we have no effective braking.”
The controller answered instantly.
“Flight 602, engineered arresting area available beyond the runway. Maintain centerline. Emergency crews are repositioning.”
Marcus looked ahead.
The runway seemed impossibly short.
“Can we steer with thrust all the way into it?” Foster asked.
“We’re about to find out.”
Marcus worked the throttles separately.
A little more power left.
A little less right.
The aircraft wandered toward the edge of the runway.
Marcus corrected.
It drifted back.
The speed was dropping, but not fast enough.
The cabin crew shouted brace commands repeatedly.
Passengers bent forward with their heads against the seats in front of them.
Colonel Whitmore closed his eyes.
Sarah gripped the jump seat straps.
Dr. Shaw held the captain firmly in position.
Marcus saw the arresting surface ahead.
“Here we go.”
The aircraft left the pavement.
The first wheels struck the engineered material, and the jet decelerated violently.
Marcus slammed against his restraint.
Foster’s shoulder struck the side of his seat.
Behind them came a roar of screams and crashing luggage.
For one terrible second, the nose began yawing left.
Marcus applied right engine power.
The aircraft straightened.
Speed dropped through eighty knots.
Sixty.
Forty.
Twenty.
Then nothing moved.
Marcus remained gripping the throttles.
The cockpit became so quiet he could hear Foster breathing.
Neither man spoke.
Finally Foster looked through the windscreen.
“We stopped.”
Marcus closed his eyes.
“Yeah.”
Foster laughed once, then covered his face with both hands.
“We actually stopped.”
Behind them, Dr. Shaw checked the captain.
“He’s still with us.”
Marcus finally released the throttles.
His hands began shaking immediately.
The emergency disappeared from his body all at once, leaving behind exhaustion so deep he felt almost hollow.
Sarah opened the cockpit door.
Noise poured inside.
People were crying.
Some were cheering.
Others were calling family members.
Sarah looked at Marcus, and for the first time that night she no longer looked like a flight attendant managing a crisis.
She looked like someone who had just survived one.
“Evacuation?”
Marcus nodded.
“Get everybody out.”
The emergency slides deployed.
Fire crews surrounded the aircraft while passengers moved toward the exits. Marcus stayed near the cockpit while paramedics boarded for Captain Harris, who was conscious again but unable to stand.
Foster turned toward Marcus.
“You realize what you just did?”
Marcus shook his head.
“What we did.”
“I had eight hundred hours before tonight,” Foster said. “I thought that was a lot.”