Chapter 5 - Secrets in First Class
"I can help."
The voice came from the cockpit door.
Malachi glanced back through his blurred, sweat-filled vision. Gerald Whitmore was standing in the doorway. He had used the emergency release code that he had badgered out of a terrified junior flight attendant in the cabin.
But Gerald wasn't holding a fire extinguisher anymore. He looked completely transformed. The arrogant, wealthy bully was gone, replaced by a man who looked terrified but absolutely determined.
"Get out!" Malachi shouted, struggling to keep the plane from flipping over. "The air is poisoned!"
Gerald didn't listen. He took a deep breath of the metallic air, stepped into the cockpit, and immediately dropped to his knees behind the captain's seat. He grabbed Grace Holloway’s unconscious body and dragged her out into the galley where the air was cleaner, slamming the cockpit door behind him as he returned.
He climbed into the empty right-hand co-pilot's seat, his large hands instantly grabbing the secondary control yoke.
"I told you," Gerald said, his breath hitching as the toxic air began to hit his system. "I fly a Cessna. It’s not a two-hundred-ton jet, but I know what a rudder is. Tell me what to do, kid."
Malachi looked at the man who had mocked him three hours ago. There was no time for anger. There was only survival.
"Left rudder!" Malachi yelled. "Step on the left pedal! Now!"
Gerald slammed his heavy leather shoe down onto the left rudder pedal. The response was instantaneous. The violent right-hand spin stopped, the nose straightened out, and the plane stabilized, though it was still descending rapidly through fifteen thousand feet.
"Boston Center," Malachi gasped into the radio. "Passenger Gerald Whitmore is in the right seat. He’s assisting with the rudder control. We have stabilized the aircraft, but we are on one engine and descending."
In Boston, a cheer went up in the tower, but Marcus quickly cut it off. "Copy that, Flight 782. Glad you have help. You are currently twelve miles east of Bangor International Airport. The weather there is terrible—heavy snow, freezing fog, and a crosswind of thirty knots. But you don't have enough altitude to go anywhere else. This is it, boys. We’re bringing you in on Runway 33."
"Give us the setup," Gerald said, his voice already starting to slur slightly from the toxic fumes. He was older, and the poison was affecting him faster than it was affecting Malachi.
"Malachi," Captain Reynolds said from the operations center. "You need to configure the aircraft for landing. Look at the right side of the center console. Do you see the flap lever?"
"Yes," Malachi said.
"Select Flaps 5. Let’s get some lift back into this bird."
Malachi pulled the heavy plastic lever back into the notch marked 5. The plane vibrated as the massive trailing-edge flaps extended from the wings, catching the thick, winter air and slowing their descent.
"Gerald," Malachi said, looking over at the older man. Gerald’s eyes were bloodshot, and he was leaning heavily against the window structure. "Gerald, stay with me. I need your legs."
"I’m... I’m here, kid," Gerald muttered, shaking his head violently to clear the fog. "I'm not going anywhere. I’m sorry... about what I said earlier. Your dad... he would be damn proud of you."
"Focus on the lights," Malachi said, his voice dropping into that eerie, calm tone his father always used. "Look through the fog. We’re looking for the runway lights."
The plane dropped through five thousand feet. The storm was still screaming around them, shaking the massive frame of the Boeing, but the single left engine was roaring with a fierce, defiant strength.
Suddenly, a bright red warning light flashed on the center console. It was the fuel system status.
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"Malachi," Marcus Vance’s voice came through, and for the first time, the senior controller’s voice sounded cracked with emotion. "The lightning strike... it didn't just cause a fire. It caused a massive fuel leak in the right wing tank. Your fuel levels are dropping exponentially. You have less than four minutes of total engine runtime left."
The single engine that was keeping two hundred people alive was about to starve to death in the freezing sky above Maine.
