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For me
, she mused, conjuring an image of aspen-covered foothills, the glorious backdrop to the property. By now, the slopes of the Front Range would be pure gold. If it wasn’t for needing the money, she’d quit flying, move to Colorado with her daughter, and never come back. Someday, she’d find a way to make that dream come true.

“So,” she said wistfully, “camping’s the plan. My daughter Roberta and I. Poor kid—Boo, I call her—stuck in the wilderness for two weeks, while I drone on and on about the ranch I want to build and the horses I want to raise.”

Luckily, Roberta was into horses. They were on her backpack, her socks, her bed, and in plastic miniature form all over the house.

“Horses.” Brian perked up. “I didn’t know you rode.”

“Well, actually, I don’t.”

He gave her a funny look. People always did. She smiled sheepishly and tore open a packet of vinaigrette, sprinkling it on her salad. “It’s a dream of mine, though.” And in her dreams, she
did
know how to ride, flying across sun-soaked meadows with long fragrant grasses, the sun on her back, the wind in her hair—

A ripple of turbulence dragged her attention back to the radar. The glowing oval was in the same relative position. “That’s weird.” She leaned forward. “We turned left. The storm cell should have shifted to the right. But, look, it’s still off the nose.”

“It’s a radar problem,” Brian surmised.

“I’ll write it up when we get to San Fran.”

Then the airplane rolled abruptly to the left. Jordan grabbed her tray to keep it from sliding off her lap. Her mineral water spilled and salad dressing splashed onto her tie. “So much for blaming the equipment.” Choppy air meant the storm was real.

Another call chime rang, this time from the cabin. Cleaning herself with a napkin, Jordan picked up the phone. “Yes?”

“Jordan, Ben. How long is this turbulence going to last?”

“Not too long,” she told him. Ben Kathwari was the chief purser, in charge of all eighteen flight attendants. He needed to stay updated on all aspects of the flight. “There’s a little weather up ahead. But after that it’s clear.”

“Good. Find me some smooth air and I’ll bring you guys a couple of frozen yogurt pops.”

“Ooh. Incentive. You got it, Ben.”

A sudden sharp jolt sent the captain’s dinner tray careening off the rear seat and onto the cockpit floor. The smell of Thousand Island dressing mixed with the odor of over-cooked steak. Ice cubes skittered over the carpet.

“Seat the flight attendants,” the captain ordered.

Jordan made the announcement. “Flight attendants take your seats.” Brian slowed the big airliner from the faster speed used for cruise to what was recommended to penetrate turbulence. Jordan turned on the ignition, lighting a continuous fire in the engines, insurance against all four huge turbofans flaming out should they plow into heavy rain or hail.

“Tell ATC we need”—Brian calculated the distance and direction they’d need to skirt the rapidly intensifying storm—“eighty more to the left.”

Jordan busied herself doing what he’d asked. The bright oval shape had increased in size and clarity. But something had covered the slice of moon, making it impossible to see if something was actually outside, in front of the airplane. According to the radar, there was clear air to either side of the storm, which would allow the luxury of a wide girth as they went past.

A chime sounded. Jordan answered the incoming call and
passed along the message to the captain. “ATC says . . . yes. We can deviate.”

Again they went through the routine of circumventing the storm. But the crisp-edged ovoid on the radar mirrored their evasive maneuvers, almost as if it didn’t want to let them pass by. A crazy thought. Yet a flicker of unease prickled inside Jordan, a whisper of apprehension. It was that first hint of inner acknowledgment that something wasn’t going right, that a situation might not pan out as planned.

Promise?
Jordan could almost hear Boo’s husky little voice, feel the girl’s skinny arms in a death grip around her neck.
You’ll come home, right, Mommy?

Jordan winced, pressing her lips together. Her husband, Craig, had died five years ago, but she was lucky to have parents nearby who were happy to watch Roberta several times a month while she worked. Roberta loved staying with her grandparents. Never once had the child needed reassurance that her mother would return for her. Yet strangely Roberta had balked at this trip, a mere overnight to Hawaii. It was a short jaunt compared to the three-day trips Jordan typically flew. Had the child sensed that something might go wrong?

Jordan’s spine tingled. Before 9-11, an airline job was fraught with the usual risks: bad weather, mechanical malfunctions, and air traffic control errors. Now, she was on the front lines in the war on terror—whether she wanted to be or not. She’d never wanted to be a soldier, or a hero. But it seemed that sometimes life had different ideas.

I promise
, she had whispered into Boo’s hair.

Jaw tight, Jordan scrutinized the sky ahead. She almost missed it at first. Black against black, looming in front of the plane, was an oval of the same relative shape as the storm depicted on the radar screen. It didn’t look anything like a thunderstorm. It appeared . . . solid. “Is that an aircraft?”

“An aircraft?” Brian peered into the night. “What kind of aircraft?”

“I have no clue. I don’t see any lights. Or wings.” And it looked larger than their 747. Much larger. “I can try calling them on Guard.”

“Do it,” he ordered.

Jordan radioed in the blind on Guard frequency, 121.5, monitored by all aircraft all over the world. “Aircraft on track Bravo, this is United Five-Eight. Do you read?”

There was no answer, not from the known airplanes in the vicinity or any others. She repeated the call. No one replied.

It was deathly quiet. The moon winked out of view. The black shadow loomed. Jordan felt like a fieldmouse in the shadow of a hungry hawk.

“Do you read United Five-Eight?” she transmitted on the radio. “Do you have us in sight?” Slowly her hand fell away from the microphone button. “I don’t think they can hear us. I don’t know, Brian; I don’t think
anyone
can hear us.”

Promise, Mommy?
Jordan gave her head a quick shake and tried to block thoughts of her little girl.

The object rushed out of the darkness. St. Elmo’s fire slithered along the oval’s smooth edges. Framed in blue-white streamers of electricity, the object yawned open like a nightmarish Venus flytrap. At five hundred knots, United 58 hurtled toward its shadowy maw. Jordan’s thoughts bogged down in disbelief. Whatever was out there, they were going to hit it head on. Death would be instant.

“I can’t turn away,” the captain yelled, banking the airplane hard to the left. Several blinding flashes of light filled the cockpit. “Here we go.”

No!
The primal urge to survive exploded inside Jordan. She didn’t think. She reacted. Her hands shot out. Her boots hit the rudder pedals. But she barely had time to brace herself before the shadow engulfed the airplane and swallowed it whole.

“Terrain, terrain!” the 747’s ground-proximity warning system protested loudly. “Pull up—
whoop whoop
—pull up!” urged the computerized voice.

Convulsively, Brian’s hand shoved the throttles forward, as he was trained to do. Jordan’s gaze jerked to the radar altimeter. God. The computer was right: they were only a few feet above the ground—and getting lower. Impossible. Just seconds ago, they were at 33,000 feet!

But they were alive, still
alive
.

“Max power,” she shouted, backing up her captain. Her hand pressed against his, pushing the throttles as far as they would go.

Think. Think
. She swerved her attention to the two main altimeters that read pressure altitude, not absolute altitude like the radar altimeter. She’d hoped to gain insight as to what was happening to their aircraft. No dice. The altimeters were headed in opposite directions.

One hundred thousand feet and climbing, read one. The other was on its way down to sea level.
Damn it
. The airplane was as confused as its pilots.

The 747’s computer announced a set of altitude call-outs in feet issued only when the aircraft was landing: “Fifty . . . thirty . . . ten.” There was a grating noise. Then a sharp deceleration threw Jordan forward against her shoulder straps.

The engines stopped running. The silence was thick. Suffocating. Impossible.

Her breaths hissed in and out. Jordan peered around the dim cockpit, tried to find something that made sense. Without engine generators to make electricity, standby power had taken over, powered by the aircraft’s battery. All but the most essential electrical equipment was dead. The silence magnified the thunder of something huge slamming behind them.

The booming thud reverberated through her teeth and jaw. Was it a bomb?

Chimes from the cabin began ringing; every flight attendant on board the jet must be calling to see what had happened—or was happening.

“Tell them to remain in their seats,” the captain said hoarsely.

Jordan reached for the phone with one shaky hand. But before she could lift the receiver to her ear, the entire aircraft plunged into darkness. Not even starlight seeped into the now oppressively black cockpit. The battery, their last remaining power source, had been snuffed out, too.

The glow-in-the-dark face of Brian’s watch blazed like a full moon. Fixating on the light, she listened to the muffled sounds of passengers screaming from beyond the closed cockpit door.

It was dark. Silent. The people were terrified. Understandably. But without electricity, she had no PA, and no
way to communicate with them from the cockpit.

Jordan and Captain Wendt dug their flashlights out of their flight bags that they kept next to their seats. Without the engines running, the airplane should have been plunging toward the ocean, losing air pressure at a rapid, eardrum-wrenching rate. But it wasn’t. In fact, the airplane was so motionless that it felt like it was parked at a gate.

Jordan glanced around uneasily, trying to work moisture into her mouth. “It feels like we landed.”

“Where?” the captain snapped. “The Pacific? We’re not a hundred percent airtight. Where’s the water?”

“Okay. No water. But we’re not flying, either. Or at least I don’t think we are. And if we’re not flying, then
where are we?
”

Jordan and the captain swerved their flashlights out the forward window. Brian’s indrawn breath echoed hers as the faint glow from their flashlights illuminated the area in front of them. But it wasn’t the ocean. Or the nighttime sky. What surrounded the 747 looked like a ribbed, concave . . . 
wall
.

Jordan’s pulse surged. Her mouth went dry. The sight was so far removed from anything she expected to find that at first she was unable to comprehend, let alone accept, what was plainly before her. “We’re inside something.”

The captain made a sudden, strangled noise. His shaking hand flew to his neck and he fumbled with his tie.

“Brian! What’s wrong?”

He tried to talk. Couldn’t. His flushed face deepened in color. Then the hand at his collar became a twitching claw as his entire body stiffened. Was he convulsing?

Jordan threw off her shoulder harnesses and jumped out of her seat. With her fingers, she pressed firmly against the captain’s neck. No pulse.

The thunder of what had to be multiple fists pounded on the cockpit door. Darkness prevented Jordan from seeing
out the peephole. And the newly installed external video monitors were as dead as the engines. Outside the door might be hijackers who would hurt or kill the incapacitated captain.

What’s closer—the stun gun or the ax?

The ax was within arm’s reach, but Jordan was trained in firing the Taser, a super-powered stun gun capable of delivering a 50,000-volt blast from twenty feet away. Whipping the gun from its holster on the cockpit sidewall, she disarmed the safety switch. “Who’s there!” she shouted, the weapon clutched in her sweaty hand.

“It’s me, Ben. And Ann and Natalie!” the chief purser yelled.

Jordan lifted the heavy metal bar blocking the door. Then she pulled open the door, stepped back, and took aim. Three flight attendants lurched into the cockpit.

“It’s just us,” Ben gasped, his dark eyes slewing from the red laser on the stun gun to the slumped-over captain.

“He has no pulse—we need the defibrillator!” she told him.

“Natalie—go.” The purser dispatched one of the women to get the emergency medical kit. The Automated External Defibrillator, or AED, could restart a heart, even after sudden death from a heart attack.

Jordan shoved the Taser into its holster. “Help me get him out of here.” She raised the armrest on the captain’s seat and shifted the man’s legs away from her and the center of the cockpit. Then she lifted a lever, sending the seat as far back as it would go. Ben pulled Brian free of the seat and dragged the unconscious man out of the cockpit, where there was little room on the floor, through the open cockpit door, and into upper-deck business class.

In the dark, Ben laid him in the center of the carpeted aisle. The passengers fell silent at the sight of their captain illuminated by the beams of several flashlights, lying prone
and blue-lipped on the floor. As they edged closer, Jordan saw the terror etched on their shadowy faces.

“Stand back!” ordered Ann, the other flight attendant who had come upstairs with Ben. She was short and somewhat plump, with a round, sweet face and Asian features—Korean, she’d told Jordan—but she could bark orders like a drill sergeant. “We need room! Stand back!”

There were thirty or so passengers on the upper deck. Jordan asked, “Is anyone here a medical doctor or nurse?”

The replies were all negative. Ann met Jordan’s gaze. Her eyes broadcasted fear, but her voice was steady and calm. Like Jordan, she was calling on her extensive training to keep cool in the midst of chaos. “I’ll go downstairs and find one,” she said.