Come home with me. Bring them all home. 500 ft. 165. The runway threshold rushed up at him huge now.
Real now. Lights streaking past. 300 200 100. Hold on, Ethan breathed. Everybody, hold on.
50 ft 30 20. He pulled back. The whale's nose came up. The stall warning screamed. And Ethan Carter, the biker, the outcast, the combat vet, the single father, the man no one on that airplane had believed in until they had no other choice, brought 217 souls down out of the freezing sky toward the only patch of earth that could hold them.
And in the half second before the wheels touched in the roaring silence at the bottom of the fall, he thought of his daughter's face. I'm keeping my promise, Gracie. I'm coming home. The wheels hit. Not gently.
The whole airplane slammed down onto the frozen runway with a bonejarring crash that threw every braced passenger against their belts. And for one terrible instant, the aircraft bounced. Rose hung threatened to skip back into the air where a second touchdown at this speed would tear the gear. Right off. And Ethan shoved the nose down and pinned it, forcing 200 tons of screaming metal to stay on the ground.
"Down! We're down! " Kayn shouted. "Breaks! Ethan! Brakes!
On them! " He stood on the brake pedals with everything his legs had left. "Come on, come on! " But at 180 knots with no flaps and one dead engine, the runway was disappearing under them faster than they could kill the speed. The end of the pavement and beyond it the ice, the darkness, the frozen. Nothing was rushing up in the windscreen. We're not stopping.
Calin's voice cracked. We're going off the end, Ethan. We're going off the end. No, we're not. Ethan's teeth were bared.
Reverse thrust on number one. Kayn helped me pull it. Pull the lever back. She hauled the reverser lever for the one good engine, and the airplane bellowed like a wounded beast as the thrust reversed. And now they had brakes and reverser both.
And still the pavement flew by. And still the end came and Ethan could see it now the black edge where the world ran out. "Come on, sweetheart. " He growled, standing on the brakes so hard his whole body shook. "You didn't come all this way to quit on the last 100 ft. Stop.
Stop. " The airplane groaned, shuddered, and slowed finally grudgingly. The runway lights coming past. Slower, slower. The black edge no longer rushing, but drifting and then crawling. And then the aircraft stopped.