Chapter 4 - THE THUNDER IN THE VALLEYS
Marcus pulled both thrust levers all the way back to flight idle.
The roar of the massive turbofans outside the windows decayed instantly into a hollow, ghostly whistle. Without the tremendous kinetic thrust pushing the aircraft from below the center of gravity, the physics of the Boeing asserted themselves. The heavy nose, robbed of the upward momentum created by the full-power engines, hesitated at twenty-six degrees, bobbled for two terrifying seconds in the thin mountain air, and then fell forward like a sledgehammer.
“NEGATIVE G!” Davies screamed as his flight manual, a half-empty coffee mug, and a pen floating off the center console hovered in mid-air.
Back in the main cabin, loose bags burst from the overhead bins, tumbling down into the aisles. Oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling panels with a series of loud, mechanical pops, dangling like yellow spiders before the faces of weeping passengers.
Evelyn grabbed Chloe’s arm with one hand and Colonel Arrington’s shoulder with the other, her knuckles bleeding against the armrest plastic as her body lifted two inches out of her seat. The world outside the oval windows spun from endless gray cloud to vertical granite—the snow-covered face of Mount Elbert rushing upward at three hundred miles per hour.
In the cockpit, Marcus waited.
Ten degrees nose-down.
Twenty degrees nose-down.
Airspeed climbing: 240 knots… 280 knots… 320 knots.
The altimeter unwound like a broken stopwatch: 34,000… 31,000… 28,000.
“We’re in a dive!” Davies shrieked, clawing at his harness. “Pull up! Pull up!”
“Not yet,” Marcus growled through gritted teeth. His eyes were glued to the vertical speed indicator. He was waiting for the airflow over the wings to generate enough natural dynamic lift to overcome the dead weight of the locked elevator.
At 24,000 feet, plunging straight into a jagged canyon between two 14,000-foot peaks, Marcus jammed the left engine throttle forward to ninety percent power while leaving the right engine at idle.
The asymmetric thrust kicked the tail of the plane violently to the right. The aerodynamic roll induced by the differential power caused the left wing to rise and the nose to scoop out of the vertical plunge.
“TERRAIN. TERRAIN. PULL UP,” the GPWS computer screamed.
Marcus slammed both throttles forward to maximum continuous thrust. The GE90 engines drank thousands of pounds of Jet-A fuel and screamed like dying dragons. The sheer torque slammed both pilots back into their seats with crushing force. The massive aircraft groaned, its wingtips flexing upward toward the cabin windows as the g-force reached 2.4 Gs.
Beneath them, less than nine hundred feet below the landing gear, the jagged pine forests and white scree fields of the Rockies blurred past in a deafening rush.
The climb resumed.
Davies collapsed against his window, vomiting into an air sickness bag, his entire body shuddering with shock.
Marcus didn't move. His hands were locked on the throttles, manipulating them in micro-increments—left lever forward half an inch, right lever back a quarter-inch—treating the massive engines like twin oars on a rowboat in white water. He reached up with his left hand, clicked the transmit switch on his headset, and tuned the secondary VHF radio to 121.5—the international emergency frequency.
“Mayday, Mayday, Mayday,” Marcus said, his voice flat, steady, and utterly terrifying in its calm. “This is United 1442, heavy. Squawking 7700. We have an unresponsive pilot, complete loss of center and right hydraulic systems, secondary structural damage to the aft fuselage. We are operating on engine thrust control only. Declare an emergency. We need a clear vector to the longest runway in North America.”
A second later, the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center crackled through the speakers, the controller’s voice strained with disbelief.
“United 1442, Denver Center, radar contact lost briefly in the valley, we have you back at two-two thousand feet. Confirm you are operating without flight controls?”
May you like
“Affirmative, Denver,” Marcus responded. “Elevator locked. Upper rudder unresponsive. Right aileron floating. I have two hundred and forty-seven souls on board, and I am flying this bird with the throttles. Clear the airspace from here to Kansas.”
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