Chapter 3 - “SIT DOWN BEFORE I HAVE YOU ARRESTED”
The words struck harder than turbulence.
My grandfather told me you were dead.
Pauline stared through the windshield at the F-35 holding position beside the aircraft.
Its canopy was too far away to see the pilot clearly.
But she could imagine him.
Young.
Disciplined.
Probably wondering why a seventy-one-year-old civilian grandmother had just answered to a classified call sign that belonged to another era.
Pauline pressed the transmit button.
“Who was your grandfather?”
The fighter pilot answered immediately.
“Colonel Samuel Hayes.”
Pauline stopped breathing.
Mark noticed.
“Mrs. Sanders?”
She raised one hand.
Silence.
For thirty-seven years, Pauline had kept one photograph hidden in a box beneath winter blankets in her bedroom closet.
Six pilots.
Five men.
One woman.
Samuel Hayes stood behind them with his arms crossed.
Pauline was twenty-eight in the photograph.
Dark hair.
Flight suit.
No gray.
No wrinkles.
No grandchildren.
No idea how quickly history could erase people.
Samuel had died seven years ago.
Pauline had attended the funeral from the back row.
She had left before the military salute.
Nobody had recognized her.
Or so she had believed.
“Your name?” Pauline asked.
“Captain Ethan Hayes, United States Air Force.”
Pauline closed her eyes for half a second.
“Sam had a grandson named Ethan.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“He was four the last time I saw his photograph.”
“He kept yours.”
Pauline looked toward the fighter.
“What?”
“My grandfather kept your photograph in his desk until the day he died.”
Something tightened in Pauline’s throat.
Mark sat silently.
He understood that he was listening to something far beyond aviation history.
Ethan’s voice softened.
“He said if I ever heard the call sign Widow Six, I was to believe the person using it before I believed anybody telling me she didn’t exist.”
Pauline almost laughed.
That sounded exactly like Samuel.
Stubborn even from the grave.
Then the aircraft shook again.
Reality returned.
“Ethan,” Pauline said, “I appreciate the reunion, but we have two hundred eighty-six people aboard and deteriorating control.”
“Yes, ma’am. We have you.”
“No. You’re escorting me. There’s a difference.”
A tiny pause.
Then Ethan laughed once.
“My grandfather said you’d say something like that.”
Mark looked at Pauline.
“You know, five minutes ago I threatened to have you arrested.”
“Yes.”
“I’m beginning to think that might have been a professional error.”
“Focus, Mr. Jensen.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He almost smiled.
Almost.
Then a warning appeared.
HYDRAULIC PRESSURE LOW.
Mark’s smile vanished.
Pauline scanned the instruments.
The failures were spreading.
Too quickly.
“Isolate system B,” she said.
Mark did.
Pressure stabilized briefly.
Then dipped again.
“Leak?”
“Maybe.”
Pauline’s eyes moved to the fuel data.
Something else bothered her.
The left wing tank quantity was changing at an abnormal rate.
“Cross-check fuel.”
Mark did.
His expression changed.
“We’re losing fuel.”
“Where?”
“Left side.”
The F-35 pilot came over the radio.
“Seven Zero Two, Noble One. We see a faint vapor trail from your left wing root.”
Pauline looked at Mark.
“Fuel leak.”
He whispered something under his breath.
Pauline ignored it.
“Can we shut feed from that tank?”
“Yes.”
“Do it.”
Mark moved through the checklist.
The cabin interphone rang.
Chloe.
Mark answered.
“Cockpit.”
“Passengers are frightened. They can see the fighters. We need to tell them something.”
Mark looked at Pauline.
She shook her head.
“Tell them we have military assistance and are diverting. Nothing more.”
Chloe hesitated.
“People are recording everything.”
Of course they were.
By now, Pauline knew the world outside Flight 702 was beginning to notice.
A passenger had already posted a shaky video of the F-35 beside the window.
Another had livestreamed the sudden drop.
Someone had probably recorded Pauline arguing with Mark.
Within minutes, social media would invent ten explanations.
Hijacking.
Terrorism.
Military interception.
Alien spacecraft if the internet was feeling creative.
Pauline had lived most of her life successfully avoiding public attention.
Now millions of strangers might soon learn her face.
She hated the thought.
Then something struck the aircraft.
A metallic bang.
People screamed in the cabin.
The left engine indicator dropped.
Mark stared.
“Engine rollback.”
“Shut it down.”
“We might not get it back.”
“We’re not getting it back anyway.”
He pulled the appropriate control.
The engine began winding down.
Now Flight 702 was a large passenger aircraft with one functioning engine, degraded hydraulics, questionable navigation data, a fuel leak, and an unconscious captain.
Pauline inhaled slowly.
She had survived worse.
But never with two hundred eighty-six lives behind her.
“Noble One,” she transmitted.
“Go ahead, Widow Six.”
“We’re single engine.”
“Copy.”
“Closest runway?”
Ethan answered.
“Falcon Ridge Air Reserve Base. Thirty-eight miles east-southeast. Runway eleven thousand eight hundred feet.”
Mark pulled up the airport.
“That base isn’t on our civilian database.”
“It won’t be,” Pauline said.
He turned.
“You know it?”
“I knew it by another name.”
Mark stared for half a second, then returned to flying.
Noble Control spoke.
“Meridian Seven Zero Two, Falcon Ridge is preparing emergency response. You are cleared direct.”
Mark nodded.
Finally, something straightforward.
Then Pauline saw movement on the weather radar.
The storm cell had expanded.
Fast.
Right between them and Falcon Ridge.
Mark noticed.
“We can go around.”
“With what fuel?”
His jaw tightened.
“Not much.”
Ethan transmitted.
“Widow Six, we’re receiving conflicting guidance from regional ATC. Someone is broadcasting false position updates using legitimate identifiers.”
Mark stared at the radio.
“Someone is spoofing air traffic control?”
“That is our assessment.”
Pauline felt the last piece click into place.
This was not bad luck.
Someone had incapacitated the captain.
Something had interfered with aircraft systems.
Someone had attempted to vector them into dangerous weather.
And now communications were compromised.
Flight 702 was being pushed toward disaster.
Mark whispered, “Why?”
Pauline looked at the instrument panel.
Then at the silver aircraft pin on her red jacket.
She had worn it today for one reason.
It was the anniversary.
Forty years to the day.
Of the mission.
The mission no government record acknowledged.
The mission where three pilots died.
The mission after which Widow Six disappeared.
Pauline’s stomach tightened.
She reached into her jacket and touched a small envelope she had been carrying since Denver.
She had intended to deliver it personally to someone in Washington.
Inside was a photocopy of a document she had received anonymously two weeks earlier.
A document tied to that buried mission.
A document proving that one of the men officially killed in 1983 might still be alive.
Suddenly Pauline understood.
Maybe Flight 702 wasn’t being targeted because she happened to be aboard.
Maybe Flight 702 was being targeted because she was aboard.
She turned toward Mark.
“Do you know if the passenger manifest is public?”
“Airline systems have it.”
“Could someone access it?”
“With enough access, yes.”
“Then we have another problem.”
“What problem?”
Pauline removed the envelope.
Mark looked at it.
“What’s that?”
“Possibly the reason your captain is unconscious.”
His face changed.
Before he could answer, Chloe called from the cabin.
Her voice was barely controlled.
“Mark, we have a passenger trying to enter the rear galley service compartment. He says he’s airline maintenance.”
Mark frowned.
“Do we have airline maintenance personnel aboard?”
“No.”
Pauline and Mark looked at each other.
“Keep him away from anything electrical,” Pauline said.
Chloe whispered:
May you like
“He already opened the panel.”
Then the cockpit screens went black.
