Shadow of Eden (3 page)

“No!” Verness grabbed at Palmer’s hands, but too late. The jet fuel shut off and halon fire suppressant sprayed into each engine, shutting them down. Cabin lights flickered and alarms filled the cockpit. The jet’s abrupt slowing flung Verness into the center throttle console, slamming him into switches and knobs, including the overhead intercom button.

“Help me out here!” Verness shouted, as he righted himself and grabbed Palmer from behind. Oliveros sprang to help. Steve hurriedly moved out of the way and leaned over the copilot’s seat waiting for an opportunity to assist.

Palmer thrashed and punched as they pulled him out of his seat. “You can’t take me again, you bastards!” He kicked like a madman, striking the control yoke with his foot and shoving it forward.

The floor of the cockpit plunged like an elevator with a snapped cable. Everyone flew upwards. Palmer, Oliveros, and Verness slammed their heads against the ceiling. Steve, still hunched over McElroy, smashed his back into the knob-laden ceiling; the metal switches puncturing and lacerating Steve’s back.

Gasping with the sudden pain, Steve twisted to dislodge the metal from his back but the centrifugal forces of the diving jetliner still held him against the ceiling. And despite his pain, a single thought pierced through Steve’s mind.
There was no one flying the plane!

Below, he saw the empty pilot’s seat and, right underneath him, the still unconscious co-pilot. His gaze swept out the windshield and down past a break in the clouds. The distant lights were drawing closer with each moment. They needed a pilot to pull them out of the dive. Next to him, the three other men floated in a tangle against the ceiling next to him.

“Hey!” He grabbed the arm of the nearest man, the new pilot called Verness, and shook him. The arm was limp. As he looked closer, Steve realized the pilot was out cold. He looked at the others. They were all unconscious—or dead.

Chapter 4

S
teve’s heart raced as he glanced out at the approaching ground lights. They would all die in seconds.
It was up to him.

He had taken glider lessons in the Arizona desert years back and knew the basic controls. As the instructor had put it, pull the stick back, the ground gets farther away, push it forward, it gets closer. What Steve had now, was one big, fucking glider. He just had to get to the pilot’s seat.

Following the downward acceleration, they were in free fall, making Steve weightless. He pushed off the ceiling towards the pilot’s seat, and moved far enough to grasp the pilot’s control yoke. With the yoke in hand, he curled up his legs and braced them on the floor and immediately pulled back on the yoke. Unexpectedly, the control resisted his initial tug. He pulled again, harder. It moved, but only slightly.

He repositioned his hands and pulled as hard as he could. The yoke shifted slightly towards him and he felt the nose ease upwards. Straining, he continued pulling and ever so slowly it slid towards him. Gravity returned, pulling him into the seat.

Why was it so hard?

A shrill vibration began to shake the jet.

Steve adjusted his feet for better leverage and pulled more effectively, his eyes fixed on the few lights flickering through the intervening haze. Gradually, so gradually, they moved lower as the jet’s nose fractionally rose.

As gravity returned, he heard a muffled sound behind him. The floating knot of men had landed on the floor. Looking for assistance, he twisted his head around, but saw no movement from them. They lay in a strewn heap of legs, torsos, and arms. Beyond, through the still open cockpit door, he glimpsed rows of frightened faces and locked eyes for a moment with the terrified face of a man in the first row before he turned back to his battle with the control yoke.

Gravity came on in earnest, now. His increased weight pressed him deep into the seat.

“What’s . . . going on?” rasped a voice behind him. It was the new pilot’s voice.

“I’m pulling . . . on the yoke.” Gravity stuffed Steve’s words back into his throat.

The man grunted with strain. “Keep pulling . . . hard.”

A mechanical voice cut through the din: “Terrain, pull up. Terrain, pull up.”

“What else?” Steve croaked.

Gravity distorted Steve’s vision and his shaking arms felt like he was holding up the entire plane.

The vibration worsened as if the plane were shaking apart.

They were below the clouds now. He could see lights and even some cars on the streets below.
Jesus, they were close!

“Keep . . . pulling.” The voice from behind sounded tremulous from the vibration, like he was talking into a fan.

The gravity fought to drag Steve’s arms off the yoke but the sight of streets, cars, and buildings rushing by underneath kept his hands locked in place.

A deafening bang rattled the plane. “What?” Steve exclaimed. The vibration ceased, but the massive jet swayed sickeningly like a car on ice.

“Coming . . . apart,” Steve heard Verness’s barely audible voice.

Steve glimpsed some buildings up ahead, through . . .
trees?

Tree tops slapped at the nose of the plane. Dead ahead, three office buildings, modern and well lit, loomed directly in his path. The buildings rushed towards him at a breath-taking rate.

Shit! We’re not high enough to clear!

With a massive effort, he yanked hard at the yoke and it pivoted back even more. The jetliner’s nose moved higher and the buildings vanished under the jet.

Chapter 5

L
ieutenant Scott Kuss slid his F-16 just outboard of the left side of the 747. The two jets skimmed at 120 feet of altitude and cruising at 622 knots. He had just watched the jetliner flatten out after diving from altitude.

What in the hell was going on?
It sure looked like a terrorist act.

Phillip Piper, his wingman, trailed the jetliner in a position to fire if necessary.

Pulling even with the cockpit, he looked over. In the dim light of the 747 cockpit, Kuss saw . . .
Jesus!
A pilot that looked like a civilian.

The control tower had been unable to raise the United flight. Either the damn civilian couldn’t operate the radio or he didn’t want to.

He keyed his own mike to see what would happen. “United 1733, this is the F-16 off your port side. Please respond. You are in restricted airspace.”

No answer. And no apparent response from the man in the cockpit that Kuss could see.

His wingman spoke. “Kisser, I can’t get heat lock. I think the engines are cold.”

“Cold? How?”

“No shit. I’m backing off for a radar shot.”

“Roger.”
What in holy hell was going on?
The engines were out, a near supersonic dive to an altitude below radar coverage, radio silence—and a civilian pilot. If there were an explanation not connected to a terrorist attack he could not think of it. Worse, the Pentagon was directly ahead; he had to assume the worst.

He changed radio frequencies. “SF thirty-one to Base. Requesting authorization to terminate United flight 1733.”

Inside the 747, the gravity eased as they leveled out. “Can you get up here?” Steve yelled.

“I think I can. Wait.” In a moment, Steve saw the arm of the pilot reach around his left side and grab the yoke. “Okay . . . got it.” That left the right side open for Steve to slither out. Verness jumped in and rapidly flipped switches. Quickly surveying his instruments, he commanded to Steve, “Wake up the copilot.”

Suddenly, bright lines streaked in front of the cockpit window. “Shit! Tracers!” Verness flipped a switch and a voice filled the cockpit.

“I order you to deviate this flight thirty degrees starboard or you will be shot down. This is my final warning.”

Picking up his headset, Verness responded. “This is United 1733. We are in flame-out status. I am Captain Marvin Verness now in control. We are not . . .”

“Deviate now. This is my final warning.”

Verness examined the instruments and made a quick calculation. “Listen, ace, I have no engines. If I turn, I lose airspeed and without power, we will stall.”

Lieutenant Kuss had watched the change of pilots in the dim cockpit light. The new guy appeared to be in uniform. Who was the other guy?

“You must deviate your course now,” Kuss repeated.

“Negative. I cannot turn until I have an engine and power,” the voice reported, “It takes two minutes to spool our engines up.”

Damn!
The 747 pilot had put him in a quandary. The new pilot was right. The glide ratio of the unpowered 747 jet was roughly similar to a lawn dart. Kuss’s stomach knotted in indecision. He had precious little time to make up his mind—with the Pentagon dead ahead.

“Kisser,” his wingman’s tense voice spoke. “Locked on and ready for your order.”

“Wake up, wake up!” Steve shook the unconscious copilot by the shoulders. The co-pilot’s body was limp and unresponsive. Steve read his name tag. “McElroy, wake up!” He shook him again.

A half-filled plastic water bottle sat in a cup holder right under Steve’s elbow. Snatching it up, he unscrewed the cap, and dumped it over the man’s head. McElroy’s eyes flickered open momentarily and he inhaled deeply, followed by a groan.