The Freedom Broker (Thea Paris #1)(50)

“Captain, you okay?” She didn’t want to intrude, but what if he needed help? She lifted the cover on the lavatory sign and slid the door lock open from the outside. If people realized how easy it was to open an airplane lavatory door, they might not be so quick to join the mile-high club.

She found Captain Houston facedown over the toilet, arms limp at his sides. Vomit pooled on the floor. She tried gently shaking him. No response. She reached for his carotid artery. No pulse. She lowered him to the floor. His face had a blue tinge.

Dead.

The aircraft lurched again. She turned toward the passenger cabin, looking for Rif. He could fly anything from a helicopter to a jumbo jet, and she wanted him in the captain’s seat keeping an eye on the first officer.

He was already headed in her direction.

“Captain Houston’s dead. Looks like poisoning. Can you join the first officer?”

Rif ducked into the flight deck, and she followed. The pungent smell hit her hard. Vomit. The first officer groaned, and his coffee spilled on the floor. She leaned over to check on him while Rif buckled into the left seat, slipped the headset on, and grabbed the control wheel.

The first officer went limp. He slumped in his seat, only his shoulder harness holding his body upright. White froth leaked out of his mouth.

Thea searched for a pulse. Nothing.

“I need to start CPR on him.” She reached for his seat belt, but a muffled explosion well aft of the flight deck sent a jarring shudder through the airframe. The instruments went wild, the lights dimmed.

“Sounds like something blew in the hell hole,” Rif said in a clipped voice, shooting a concerned glance at her.

Hell hole: the unpressurized compartment beneath the vertical tail, where the batteries, hydraulic accumulators, auxiliary power unit, and other vital systems were housed and serviced.

“Strap yourself in. We’re dropping fast. You can’t help him.”

“I need to try.”

A needle on the instrument cluster took a disturbing nosedive. Rif’s left hand gripped the half-arc control wheel while the right one danced across the large display screen on the instrument panel, touch-tapping an array of menus, colored bars, and computer-generated dials.

“In the seat. Now.”

The first officer was clearly dead. They were on their own. She folded down the jump seat in the flight deck doorway and buckled its lap belt.

“We’re in deep shit,” he muttered. “Losing hydraulic pressure, controls are already mushy. Hang on, I’m taking her down.” He pulled the jet’s twin throttles back to near idle and pushed the nose over, thumbing the trim switch on his control wheel to hold a steep dive angle.

“Here?” She swallowed hard, looking down at the endless expanse of sand filling the windows.

“Where else? Gotta get this bird on the ground before hydraulic pressure drops to zip and I lose control of the plane.”

Peter and the two flight attendants, Brianna and Megan, needed to know what was going on. She grabbed the microphone. “Seat belts, please. Prepare for an emergency landing. Could be rough.”

Rif’s face was inscrutable; he held the control wheel forward in a steep, forty-five-degree descent, eyes flicking between the instruments and the desert rushing toward them. Thea gripped the back edge of his seat. Her stomach floated to her throat. She felt as if they were diving straight at the ground.

Rif pulled a thin boom microphone to his lips and pressed the radio transmission switch. “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday—Yankee Tango . . .”

She grabbed the intercom microphone again. “Brace for landing.” Her ears popped as the plane’s altimeter unwound at a dizzying rate.

Given her anxiety about flying, Thea knew every safety regulation by heart. She tightened her seat belt and lowered it to her pelvis. Every centimeter of slack in the seat belt tripled the g-forces on impact, and the strong bone of the pelvis handled those stresses better than did the fragile internal organs. She desperately needed a shoulder harness, but it was too late to drag the dead co-pilot out of his seat.

Rif was talking to himself. “Don’t extend the landing gear. Sand’s too soft, will flip the plane, rip off the nose. Belly landing’s the only hope.”

Their altitude plummeted. He worked quickly, his concentration intense. “Prepare for impact.”

She bent forward, chest on her thighs, head between her knees, hands gripping her ankles. Her hair was scant inches from the switch-covered center console separating the pilots’ seats. Seconds ticked by. The anticipatory dread heightened. They barreled toward the earth, wings rocking back and forth, the plane’s nose wandering while Rif fought to keep the bird right-side up. Seconds later, the aircraft hit hard, bounced, then slammed back down to the earth, creating a tsunami of sand.

The fuselage swung sharply to the right as a wingtip sliced into a sand berm. Thea’s body lurched forward, then whiplashed sideways. Pain wrenched her lower back. The Gulfstream shuddered as it torpedoed through the dunes, the windshield buried in reddish-brown sand, darkening the flight deck. They skidded sideways, the piercing screech of grinding metal penetrating her eardrums.

Every joint ached. White spots filled her vision. Her teeth rattled. The plane finally rumbled to a halt. Shell-shocked, she sucked in a deep breath and tried to orient herself.

A gash had appeared on Rif’s forehead. Blood dripped into his eyes as he stopcocked both engines and ripped off his seat belt. “You okay?” he yelled above the moan of dying turbines.