“Like it weighs a thousand tons,” Andrei grunted, muscles trembling in his arms as he tried to lift the nose. “But at least it’s listening. Keep going!”
I flipped the last switch tied to anything that looked remotely suspicious. The cockpit dimmed, but the engines kept roaring—thank God—and I dropped into the co-pilot’s seat, fumbling with the harness before clicking it into place.
Andrei’s face was tight with strain, his knuckles white. “Good news,” he said through clenched teeth. “We’re not diving at the ocean anymore.”
“And the bad news?” I asked.
“We’re still falling. And I’m flying with a probable concussion.”
Great.
I glanced at the pilot, who was still slumped unconscious to the side. He was no help at all. “Tell me what to do,” I said.
“Watch the screens,” he said. “Tell me if we’re still falling. And yell if we’re about to hit anything.”
“Wonderful instructions,” I muttered, but I did it anyway. I read the numbers aloud, the ones that told him how fast we were dropping and how quickly he could try to pull us back from it.
Outside, it was nothing but darkness. No lights. No towns. No ships. No helpful glowing runway. Just black water far below and black sky above.
“We’re over the sea still,” Andrei said, voice strained. “But we’re getting close to land. I’d really rather not find the ground by accident.”
“Then please don’t,” I snapped.
He actually laughed. “Working on it.”
Minutes crawled by like hours. Andrei fought the plane—every correction, every adjustment—to get it under control. My job was simple: keep him updated before we hit anything fatal.
We continued like this for a long time, until I spotted the glowing lights of our final destination twinkling in the distance.
“There,” I said, pointing. “Dubai. That’s the Dragunov estate runway over there.”
“I see it,” Andrei rumbled, voice rough. “Hold on.”
We didn’t have time for a smooth approach. We didn’t have time for radio contact. We barely had time at all.
Andrei lowered the landing gear, and the plane groaned its displeasure. The nose dipped too low, and he corrected it. The wings wobbled, and he steadied them. We found the switches to deploy the right flaps to help slow us down, but the plane didn’t like us for that, either, shaking and grumbling at us.
“Easy,” he whispered to the plane, as if coaxing a scared animal. “Come on, girl. Stay with me.”
The runway lights rushed toward us.
The wheels hit the ground hard—so hard my teeth clacked together—and the plane bounced once before slamming down again. Andrei cursed, clung to the controls with both hands, and forced the jet to stay straight.
I grabbed anything I could reach—the console, the seat, maybe even Andrei’s shirt at one point—and hit the brakes when he told me to.
The engines howled in reverse.
The plane screamed back at us.
And then…
We slowed.
We slowed some more.
We slid down the runway like a wounded beast fighting its last battle.
Finally, the jet rolled to a shaking, trembling stop, engines still whining.
