FLIGHT 418: THE GHOST OF PHOENIX RISES AT 30,000 FEET

At eleven thousand feet, inside the cockpit of Flight 418, all hell broke loose.

A sudden downdraft rolling off the jagged granite cliffs of the Cascades caught the unguided airliner, pitching the left wing thirty degrees downward. As Sarah slammed the right throttle forward to counteract the roll, a deafening metallic screech tore through the cabin.

BANG! BANG! BANG!

A series of violent explosions shook the entire aircraft.

"Engine one compressor stall!" First Officer Diaz screamed, pointing at the instrument panel where the left engine’s exhaust gas temperature gauge spiked straight into the red zone. "Turbine temperature passing nine hundred degrees! We're melting the core! Engine fire warning!"

A loud bell began clanging inside the cockpit. The fire handle for Engine One illuminated in brilliant scarlet.

"Pull the fire handle!" Reed shouted, reaching his hand up toward the overhead panel. "We have to extinguish the fire before it touches the fuel tanks!"

"If you pull that fire handle, you cut the fuel valve to Engine One!" Sarah roared, grabbing Reed’s wrist and wrenching it away from the switch. "If Engine One dies, we have only one engine left!"

"It's burning!" Reed yelled back, sweat pouring down his nose.

"If we lose the left engine, we lose asymmetric steering!" Sarah shouted, her face inches from his. "With only the right engine running, the plane will immediately snap-roll to the left and cartwheel into the mountains! We need that dying engine for at least ten more minutes! Do you understand me? We keep it running until the wheels touch the dirt!"

Reed looked at the temperature needle vibrating violently in the red. The entire aircraft was vibrating so hard the primary instruments were blurring.

"Throttle back left engine to forty percent," Sarah commanded Diaz. "Keep just enough airflow running through the core to prevent total flameout. Enrich the mixture slightly if the fuel computer allows. Reed, give me full manual trim on the rudder trim wheel—it's mechanically linked, it might give us half a degree of aerodynamic bite!"

Reed grabbed the large manual trim wheel between the seats, grunting with agony as he strained against the frozen aerodynamic loads. The wheel clicked twice.

"Half a degree left trim locked!" Reed panted.

"Good," Sarah said, her forearms trembling from the sheer physical exertion of holding the heavy throttle levers in exact opposition against the buffeting winds. "Now we begin our final descent. We cannot use flaps. We cannot use speedbrakes. We are coming in heavy, clean, and fast."

"Without flaps, our landing speed will be over two hundred and twenty knots," Diaz said, his voice hollow with dread. "Standard landing speed is one hundred and forty. We’ll overshoot the runway and hit the highway."

"Then we better hit the runway at the very first inch of concrete," Sarah said.

Just then, the radio crackled with a new, icy transmission from FAA Regional Command:

"Flight 418, this is FAA Regional Director Walter Harris. We have analyzed your approach profile. Due to extreme fire risk and high approach speeds, you are ordered to abort your approach to Sea-Tac. Turn heading two-seven-zero immediately. Proceed out over Puget Sound and prepare for controlled water ditching."

Sarah froze.

She stared at the radio control panel. Thirty-two years disappeared in an instant. She recognized that oily, bureaucratic cadence immediately.

She grabbed the radio microphone, clicked the transmitter, and spoke with deadly venom: