Foster reacted instinctively, pulling back.
“Easy,” Marcus said.
Another jolt struck the plane.
Foster pulled harder.
Marcus put a hand on his forearm. “Don’t chase it.”
“We’re losing altitude.”
“It’s turbulence, not a departure. If you keep correcting every bump, you’ll burn through what’s left of the hydraulics.”
Foster forced himself to relax.
The aircraft shuddered again, then settled.
Marcus nodded. “There you go.”
Foster released a long breath.
“I’ve flown this route forty times.”
“Tonight isn’t the route you’re flying.”
Foster looked at him.
Marcus pointed toward the instruments.
“You’re flying the airplane that exists right now. Forget the one you wish you had.”
That sentence seemed to steady him.
In the cabin, Sarah was fighting a different emergency.
Fear.
Passengers had begun calling family members through the aircraft’s internet connection. Rumors were spreading faster than the crew could control them. Someone claimed both engines had failed, another insisted they were turning toward Iceland, and a third passenger said the captain was dead.
A man near the center of the cabin stood and demanded answers.
Sarah ordered him to sit down.
He refused.
“I paid four thousand dollars for this ticket,” he shouted. “I deserve to know who is flying this plane.”
Colonel Whitmore unbuckled his belt.
“Sit down.”
The passenger turned. “Stay out of this.”
Whitmore rose slowly.
“I spent thirty-two years around military aviation. The man they took forward knows exactly what he’s talking about.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know enough.”
The passenger gestured angrily toward the cockpit. “He’s not even an airline pilot.”
A woman across the aisle began crying again.
That was when Dr. Shaw emerged from the cockpit.
“The captain suffered a medical emergency,” she said loudly enough for several rows to hear. “The first officer remains in command of this aircraft. The former military pilot is assisting him because the aircraft has a technical problem.”
People became quiet.
Then someone asked the question everyone was thinking.
“Are we going to crash?”
Dr. Shaw paused.
She could have lied.
Instead, she said, “The best thing every one of us can do right now is give the people flying this airplane the calmest cabin possible.”
It wasn’t reassuring.
But it was honest.
Passengers sat down.
Back inside the cockpit, the hydraulic pressure had dropped below twenty percent.
Shannon was still seventy miles away.
Marcus did the calculation twice.
Both times gave him an answer he hated.
“We need to increase the descent rate.”
Foster looked over.
“That’ll require more control input.”
“I know.”
“And if the pressure collapses?”
“Then I’d rather be five thousand feet above Ireland than twenty thousand feet above the Atlantic.”
Foster looked toward the dark windscreen.
Then he nodded.
They began descending faster.
Marcus monitored airspeed while Foster handled the controls. The massive passenger jet was nothing like the Strike Eagle Marcus had once thrown through combat turns, but the language of damaged flight was familiar. Every vibration meant something.
Every hesitation meant something.
Every second they remained airborne was another second the hydraulic system could fail.
At forty miles, the pressure fell to twelve percent.
At thirty miles, nine.
Sarah returned.
“We’re preparing the cabin.”
“Good.”
She looked at Marcus.