“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.