Chapter 13 #2
I check the fuel gauges twice as the hours drag on.
The sun begins its slow descent toward the western horizon, painting the sky in vibrant shades of orange and deep purple.
We leave the storm system far behind, crossing into the remote northern territories.
The landscape below is visible now—an endless expanse of jagged mountains, dense evergreen forests, and frozen lakes that look like shattered glass.
There is zero margin for error out here. If a plane goes down in this terrain, it disappears. The tree canopy swallows the wreckage, and the snow covers the tracks.
I check the fuel gauges. We are burning fuel on schedule. The oil pressure is stable. The altimeter reads a steady ten thousand feet.
"We are two hours out," I announce, tapping the glass of the altimeter.
Santi reaches into his coat and pulls out a satellite phone. The device is rugged and functional. He punches in a sequence of numbers. He waits.
"I am on approach," he says into the receiver. "ETA two hours. Radio silence until I confirm the signature on the ground."
He hangs up without waiting for a response. The action is dismissive of whoever is on the other end of the line. He slides the phone back into his coat.
"You expect a reception committee at the dirt strip?" I ask.
"I expect nothing. That is how you stay alive."
"A cynic. Fantastic. Just what I wanted for a co-pilot."
"A realist, Ms. Calloway."
He uses my name like a weapon. The syllables roll off his tongue with slow, deliberate precision.
His voice rolls right through my ribs. The air in the cabin grows thick again.
I shift in my seat, the harness rubbing against my shoulder.
The proximity is starting to grate on my nerves.
His thigh is too close. His scent is too invasive. His scent seeps into my pores.
I pull the aviation map onto my tablet, tracking our GPS coordinates. The green dot blinks steadily over a vast ocean of green and gray topography. The nearest town is three hundred miles away. The nearest hospital is further.
A sudden, violent shudder jolts the airframe.
It is a minor tremor, a brief hiccup in the smooth thrum of the engines. I frown, my eyes darting instantly to the instrument panel.
Fuel flow is normal. RPMs are steady.
I wait.
Thirty seconds pass.
Another shudder rocks the frame, harder this time. The yoke shakes violently under my palms. A sharp, ugly grinding noise echoes from the right wing.
My stomach drops into my boots.
The oil pressure gauge on the right engine plummets from the green zone directly into the red. The needle hits the peg with a sickening finality.
"Shit," I hiss, my hands flying to the overhead panel. I kill the fuel mixture to the right engine instantly, trying to prevent a catastrophic fire. "Right engine failure. Securing the prop."
I feather the propeller, reducing the drag. The plane immediately yaws to the right, fighting my grip. I stomp on the left rudder pedal, forcing the nose back into alignment.
The Master Caution alarm begins to scream, a high-pitched, piercing wail that fills the tiny cockpit. Red lights flash violently across the dashboard.
Santi does not jump. He does not shout. He leans forward, his hazel eyes fixed on the flashing red lights, then tracking to my face.
"Status," he demands. His voice is stripped of emotion.
"Lost oil pressure in the starboard engine. I had to shut it down to stop it from tearing itself off the wing. We are flying on one engine."
"Can we reach the destination?"
"It will be tight. We are going to lose altitude. The single engine can't maintain ten thousand feet. I need to descend and find a favorable wind current."
I grip the yoke, wrestling the plane into a steady glide path. The left engine whines in protest, struggling to carry the weight of the aircraft alone. The jagged peaks of the mountains loom below us, sharp teeth waiting to tear the metal apart.
Sweat prickles at my hairline despite the freezing temperature outside. With the right engine shut down, the cabin heater dies. The temperature inside the cockpit instantly begins to plummet. My breath puffs in a white cloud of vapor.
Santi watches me work. His gaze burns holes in the side of my face. He is not looking at the dying altitude gauge. He is looking at my hands on the controls. He is cataloging my movements, my reaction time, the steadiness of my grip.
"Don't stare at me," I snap, adjusting the trim to compensate for the dead engine. "Look out the window. If you see smoke pouring out of the left engine, tell me."
He turns his head slowly, peering through the glass at the remaining operational prop. "No smoke."
"Good. Keep watching it."
The altimeter unwinds. Nine thousand feet. Eight thousand.
The wilderness below grows larger. The green canopy of the pines separates into individual, lethal spears. The gray rocks turn into massive, sheer cliffs.
"Mayday, Mayday, Mayday," I bark into the radio headset. "This is charter flight Niner-Two-Charlie. We have a starboard engine failure. Declaring an emergency. Requesting nearest flat terrain."
Static hisses back in my ears.
"Mayday, Mayday. Anyone on this frequency, do you copy?"
More static. A unbroken wall of white noise. We are too low. The mountains are blocking the radio signals. We are cut off.
"Nobody is coming," Santi states. It is not a question.
"We are out of range. The terrain is blocking the transmission."
"Understood."
Seven thousand feet.
The left engine holds steady for ten agonizing minutes. Then, it begins to sputter.
The sound is small at first. A tiny hesitation in the rhythmic roar of combustion. A misfire.
My blood turns to ice.
"No, no, no," I chant, my hands flying over the mixture controls. "Come on. Don't do this to me. Not both."
The left engine surges, catching the fuel mixture, whining loudly, and then—
A massive, concussive bang rocks the entire aircraft.
Black oil sprays across the windshield, immediately freezing into an opaque sludge. The left propeller grinds to a horrific halt, the blades locking into place.
Silence slams into the cabin.
It is the worst sound in the world. The absence of engine noise. The only thing left is the high, shrieking whistle of the wind tearing across the aluminum hull as the plane turns into a two-ton brick plummeting from the sky.
Gravity rips away from us. My stomach lurches as the nose dips aggressively toward the earth. The altimeter spins wildly. The Master Warning alarms scream in a deafening chorus.
We are dropping out of the sky.
I pull back on the yoke with all the strength in my arms, trying to keep the nose up, trying to convert our falling momentum into forward glide speed. The controls are leaden without the hydraulic assist from the engines. My muscles burn. The flight suit pulls tight across my shoulders.
"Impact imminent," I shout over the wind. "Brace!"
Santi Costa shifts his weight. He reaches down, grabs the canvas bag, and wedges it firmly between his legs. He reaches over and pulls his harness tighter until the straps dig into his chest. He does not duck or brace his head against the instrument panel.
He turns his head and looks directly at me.
The hazel eyes lock onto mine. The aristocratic face is devoid of panic. He is watching me wrestle the metal frame toward the ground. He is watching me drag the metal yoke backward, my teeth bared, my arms shaking with the effort of keeping us alive for three more seconds.
"Sixty seconds to impact," I grit out, my boots stomping on the rudder pedals to keep the wings level.
The frozen oil on the windshield blocks the forward view. I am flying by instruments and the peripheral vision out the side windows. A massive, snow-covered peak rushes past the right wingtip, close enough that I can see the individual cracks in the stone.
We clear the ridge by inches.
The ground falls away into a steep, heavily forested valley. The tree line rushes upward at terrifying speed. Green and white blur together in the side windows.
Fifty seconds.
"Pull up," Santi commands. His low voice cuts through the shrieking wind with absolute authority.
"I am pulling!" I scream back, my biceps screaming in agony as I haul the yoke to my chest.
Thirty seconds.
The tops of the pine trees scrape the bottom of the fuselage. The sound is horrific—a violent, tearing screech of wood against aluminum. The plane shudders massively, the impact throwing me forward against my harness. The straps dig into my collarbones, bruising the flesh instantly.
Twenty seconds.
"Hold it steady," he commands.
He is not looking out the window. He is looking at me. The gold watch on his wrist gleams as he grips the edge of the console.
Ten seconds.
The right wing clips a massive pine trunk.
The metal tears away with an explosive crack. The plane snaps violently to the right, entering a terrifying, uncontrollable spin. The horizon tilts into a sickening diagonal line.
Five seconds.
The world turns into a violent blender of shattered glass, twisting metal, and the crushing impact of the earth rising up to swallow us whole.
The noise is apocalyptic. The cabin crunches inward. The windshield shatters inward, spraying the cockpit with freezing glass and black oil.
Then, everything goes violently black.
End of preview. Continue reading Ruin of the Mafia Shadow here.