Chapter 8 - The Combat Dive
The turbulence hit them like a solid wall.
A vertical downdraft seized the three-hundred-ton aircraft, throwing it downward at four thousand feet per minute. The cabin behind them erupted in screams as passengers were lifted against their seatbelts.
Maya felt her stomach drop into her throat. This was the exact phenomenon she had drilled hundreds of times in tactical combat simulators: an unrecoverable stall buffet in deep weather.
If she pulled up to counter the descent, the wings would stall, and the plane would tumble tail-first into the sea.
"Nose down," Maya whispered to herself, fighting every natural human instinct.
She pushed the yoke forward.
The descent steepened. The airspeed indicator needle crept upward out of the red stall zone: two hundred knots, two hundred and twenty, two hundred and fifty.
"What are you doing?!" Kane yelled from the floor, terror breaking through his composure. "You're flying us into the water!"
"Shut up," Maya said.
She watched the mechanical airspeed indicator. The aircraft surged forward, cutting through the downdraft like an arrow. The wings bit into clean, dense air at eighteen thousand feet.
With precise, steady pressure, Maya pulled back on the yoke. The G-forces pressed her deep into the leather seat. The airframe shuddered, groaning under the immense stress, but the nose swung upward, slicing through the bottom of the cloud deck.
They broke through the base of the clouds into clear, rain-swept air.
May you like
Below them, five miles in the distance through the salt spray, a string of runway approach lights glowed against the dark cliffs of the Azores—Lajes Field.
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