Chapter 4 - The Storm of the Century
The asymmetrical thrust threw the 777 into a violent slip.
With the left engine idling and the right engine roaring at eighty-five percent core thrust, the massive aircraft wanted to cartwheel through the clouds. The rudder pedals kicked back under Malachi’s sneakers with terrifying force.
"Rudder!" Malachi grunted, his voice a strained squeak as he threw his entire body weight onto the right pedal.
His quadriceps burned, his small knee joints popping under the mechanical pressure. Because the hydraulic system was degraded, the aerodynamic assist was cut in half; pushing that pedal was like trying to bench-press three hundred pounds with one leg.
"Shannon!" Malachi gasped into the mic, sweat pouring down his face despite the freezing cabin air. "Right rudder applied... but I can't hold it manually! My leg is cramping! I can't keep her straight!"
"Malachi, trim the rudder!" Sarah Jenkins yelled, her professional composure fracturing for the first time. "The rudder trim knob is on the center pedestal, right behind the throttle quadrant! Turn it clockwise! Crank it until the slip-skid indicator centers!"
Malachi reached back with his right hand, his fingers slipping on the smooth plastic knob. His leg was shaking uncontrollably, his sneaker slipping off the metal pedal. The nose was drifting ten degrees... fifteen degrees off course.
*If we enter a spin in the clouds,* Malachi thought, panic finally clawing at his chest, *we will never recover. The wings will tear off.*
"Dad," Malachi sobbed aloud, the tears finally bursting from his eyes. "Dad, I can't push it hard enough!"
Suddenly, the cockpit door flew open.
A man threw himself into the flight deck, panting, smelling of sweat, blood, and fear. It was Gerald Whitmore.
"What do I push?" Gerald shouted, his voice wild as he dropped to his knees between the two pilot seats. "Tell me what to push, kid! Tell me!"
Malachi didn't have time to ask how he got in, or why he was there. "The right pedal! Down there! Push the right pedal with your boot! Don't touch the brakes at the top—just push the bottom of the pedal!"
Gerald didn't hesitate. He jammed his heavy dress shoe against the right rudder pedal, throwing the full weight of his two-hundred-pound body against the metal arm.
The pedal slammed forward to its mechanical stop.
The nose of the giant airliner swung back toward the center line with a sickening shudder that rattled the instrument panels.
"Hold it there!" Malachi yelled, his hands flying to the rudder trim knob. He cranked the dial clockwise with furious, frantic spins until the mechanical trim indicator locked the control surface into position, relieving the pressure. "Okay! Let off! Slowly!"
Gerald eased his foot back. The trim held. The aircraft remained stable, slicing through the violent Atlantic squall on one screaming engine and one idling turbine.
Gerald collapsed against the side of the center pedestal, his chest heaving, staring at the twelve-year-old boy in the captain's seat.
"Did I... did I do it right?" Gerald whispered.
Malachi looked down at him, his face pale, his dark eyes wide. "You saved us from a flat spin, Mr. Whitmore."
Gerald let out a ragged, choking sob, half-laugh, half-cry, and pressed his forehead against the floorboards. "I'm sorry," he wept. "Malachi, I'm so sorry. For everything."
"Stay on the floor," Malachi said, his voice instantly returning to the cold reality of the instrument panel. "Grab the base of the jumpseat and hold on. We are entering the storm."
Outside the cockpit glass, the black ocean vanished into a wall of swirling, violent white.
The aircraft plunged into the Category 3 low-pressure system off the west coast of Ireland. Freezing rain lashed the windshield with the sound of machine-gun fire. Severe turbulence hit the widebody jet like a series of physical blows, tossing the three-hundred-ton machine up and down in fifty-foot vertical drops.
*WARNING: WINDSHEAR! WINDSHEAR! WINDSHEAR!* the synthesized ground proximity warning system screamed through the flight deck speakers.
The primary flight display flickered wildly as static electricity—St. Elmo’s fire—danced across the nose cone in crackling spiderwebs of neon violet light.
"Shannon, Flight 782 is encountering severe windshear," Malachi reported, fighting the yoke with both hands as the wings rocked thirty degrees to the left, then thirty degrees to the right. "Altimeter nine thousand feet. We are descending through the cloud deck. I have no visual on the coast."
In the Shannon control center, Sarah Jenkins leaned toward the glass, staring out into the rain-drenched night. Outside, the runway lights of Shannon Airport were barely visible through the torrential sheets of water blowing sideways across the tarmac. A dozen emergency vehicles—yellow airport fire crash trucks, ambulances, police cruisers—sat parked along the perimeter road, their blue and red lights painting the drenched asphalt in surreal patterns.
"Flight 782, radar contact lost," the automated system chimed.
Sarah’s heart stopped. "Radar supervisor! Where did they go?"
"The storm cell over the Loop Head peninsula just blinded the secondary radar array," the supervisor answered grimly. "Atmospheric blackout. We don't have their transponder. We’re blind, Sarah. He’s flying blind."
Sarah grabbed her microphone, her knuckles turning bone white.
"Malachi Brooks," she called into the dead static. "Malachi, we have lost radar contact. You are five miles off the Irish coast. The Cliffs of Moher are to your north—elevation seven hundred feet. The Loop Head lighthouse is to your south. You must maintain five thousand feet until you intercept the Shannon Runway 24 Instrument Landing System localizer. Do not descend below five thousand, do you copy me? Malachi!"
Nothing came back through the radio except the hiss of the storm.
One minute passed.
Two minutes.
In the passenger cabin, Evelyn Brooks sat with her eyes closed, her worn Bible held tightly against her chest. Around her, passengers were crying, praying aloud in English, Spanish, French, and Gaelic. The Aberdeen oil worker was holding the hand of a frightened teenager in seat 3B. Gerald Whitmore was on the floor of the flight deck, his fingers locked around the jumpseat rails, whispering the Lord's Prayer—words he hadn't spoken since he was seven years old.
Inside the clouds, the aircraft was shuddering violently.
"Five thousand feet," Malachi whispered to himself, his eyes locked onto the glowing numbers of the standby altimeter. "Level off. Level off."
He pulled back on the yoke.
Nothing happened.
The yoke moved freely in his hands, loose and floppy, offering no resistance at all.
Malachi’s stomach plummeted into a bottomless pit.
He looked down at the hydraulic panel. The Right hydraulic system indicator—the last remaining operational hydraulic circuit powering the flight controls—was flashing red.
*HYD PRESS SYS R: 0 PSI.*
The second hydraulic line had ruptured under the extreme aerodynamic stress of the storm.
The flight control surfaces were unpowered. The giant elevators on the tail, the massive ailerons on the wings—they were completely dead. The control yoke in Malachi's hands was nothing more than a disconnected piece of plastic.
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The nose of Flight 782 dropped once again, pointing directly down into the churning, black jaws of the Atlantic Ocean.
***
