There it is. You feel that? Walter said quietly across the aisle. Ethan didn't look at him. Yeah, that's not Weather.
No, Ethan said. It's not. Up front, a chime sounded, then another. Then the seat belt sign blinking hard. Delane's voice came over the intercom tight and forced calm.
Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has asked everyone to return to their seats and fasten their seat belts. We're experiencing some uh some technical please remain seated. The uh was what did it? Ethan heard the crack in her voice. He'd heard that crack before in radio calls from pilots who knew they were in trouble and were trying not to say so.
Margaret Voss, two seats away, went pale. What's happening? What did she mean? Technical. Nothing.
The businessman said, not believing it. It's fine. Planes do this. The plane dropped. Not a lurch this time.
A drop. A sickening elevator cable snapping plunge that lifted every stomach on the aircraft into every throat. Screams tore through the cabin. Overhead bins rattled. Someone's phone flew into the aisle.
A cup of coffee. Ethan's coffee leapt off the tray and shattered. And then it caught. The plane leveled hard, groaning like a wounded animal. People were crying now.
Really crying. A man was praying loudly in Spanish. The baby's cries had become shrieks. Ethan didn't move, but his eyes. His eyes were doing something.
Scanning, counting, reading the way the aircraft shuttered and recovered. The way the engine note wandered, building a picture in his head he didn't want to build. Number two, engines surging. They've got a hydraulic issue. That correction was Manuel not auto somebody's hand flying it up there and fighting for control.
He didn't want to know these things. He'd spent 13 years trying to unknow them. But you don't unlearn how to save lives. It just waits in your hands like a loaded weapon you swore you'd never fire again. The cockpit door was 30 ft in front of him.
Behind it, though, none of the passengers knew it yet. Captain Raymond Doyle, 59 years old, 31 years flying. Four years from a pension he'd earned twice over was slumped against his harness with his hand pressed to his chest and gray flooding into his face. Ray Ray, first officer Kalin Brooks was shaking him with one hand and holding the yolk with the other. She was 34.