Chapter 62
Kurt grasped the doorframe to keep himself from tumbling backward. Joe latched onto the arm of the jump seat and held tight.
Wedging his foot against a notch on the deck, Kurt lunged toward the pilot’s seat. He grabbed the backrest and pulled himself forward, struggling to slip into the seat. The plane was pointing upward as if climbing a steep hill. It started to shudder.
“Push the yoke forward,” Joe shouted. “Hurry.”
Kurt slammed his hand into the control column, shoving it hard. Instinctively, he turned the wheel back to the center. The aircraft nosed over, preventing a stall, and then picked up speed, rapidly transitioning from a climb to a dive.
Kurt was suddenly weightless, thrown upward, along with everything else that wasn’t tied down. He slammed into the top of the cockpit and saw the horizon give way to the sea through the windshield.
He grasped the control stick with both hands and pulled firmly back. The g-forces mounted quickly, and Kurt pulled back too hard. The aircraft dipped to within fifty feet of the waves before pitching up and climbing sharply once again.
Joe rushed in, grabbing the controls and stabilizing the roller-coaster motion caused by Kurt’s heavy hand. After a few small up-and-down oscillations he had the jet flying smoothly again.
“Okay, we’re straight and level.”
“Tell me you know how to fly this plane?” Kurt asked.
“Fly it, yes,” Joe said. “Land it…not so sure.”
Kurt figured they’d cross that bridge if they were lucky enough to get to it. He looked over the instrument panel. “We’ve gone off course. We were heading oh-four-nine. Get us back to our old heading in case anyone’s watching.”
Joe dropped into the copilot’s seat and soon had the plane pointed back in the direction it had been going. With that done, he reactivated the autopilot.
“Assuming the flight plan is still programmed into the computer, this should take us to the rendezvous point. What’s your plan once we get there?”
“First we call the Pentagon and warn them,” Kurt said, searching the radio stack for a transmitter that would be compatible with NUMA’s worldwide network, but wouldn’t blow their cover.
The only system he found that wouldn’t give them away was a data link, the equivalent of an aeronautical text message.
He hoped his typing skills were up to par.
“And after that?”
“We knock Ahab and Saber One out of the sky—even if we have to ram them.”