Skyfall by Thomas Block

Author:Thomas Block
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: airliner hijack bombs airline disaster china terriorts military pilot captain
Publisher: Thomas Block

CHAPTER TWELVE

It was with more effort than he ever would have imagined necessary for Captain Alvin Blanchard to strap himself into the copilot's seat of the jet airliner. Even with the two women helping him across the short distance from the rear of the cockpit, it was a slow and agonizing journey. Once they had gotten him adjacent to the copilot seat itself, the large control pedestal that jutted out between the two pilot flight chairs meant that there wasn't enough room for the women to keep assisting Blanchard; he was on his own as he began to maneuver into the seat.

"Watch it!" Kathy shouted.

Blanchard staggered once, then began to fall toward the airliner's center control pedestal after a slight yawing motion caused his weakened leg muscles to give way. The throttles, the levers for the engine fuel controls, the primary switches for the pitch-trim devices were all in front of him as Blanchard began to lose his balance — and pushing any one of those controls in the wrong direction could lead to immediate disaster.

"Christ!" Watching the entire maneuver out of the corner of his eye, Ron had seen what would happen next. He reacted swiftly and out of an immediate reflex to protect the controls as he flung his right arm away from the control wheel and into Blanchard's descending left shoulder. The glancing blow that Ron managed to give was enough to tip the scales in Blanchard's favor. Shoved backward, the off-balance captain partially regained his footing. "Grab him, quick."

"I've got him." Barbara reached forward as far as she could and took a tentative hold of Blanchard by the collar of his blood-stained white uniform shirt as she tried to keep him from falling again. As soon as she saw that she wouldn't be able to get a good grip on Blanchard where he stood in the narrow space between the copilot's flight chair and the center control pedestal, she did the next best thing she could: Barbara pushed Blanchard toward the copilot's seat and away from the controls that Ron was obviously attempting to protect.

Blanchard half fell and half sat in the copilot's chair, his body dropping heavily, his legs and body twisted away from a proper seating position. He was positioned in the copilot's flight chair awkwardly, but at least now his bulk was no longer a threat to any of the flight controls around him.

"I told you to stay in the back, dammit!" Ron said as he allowed himself to lose his temper. He then turned his total attention back to flying the airliner, and he discovered that even in the brief time that he had allowed his attention to be distracted, the aircraft's heading had drifted, and so had its altitude. Ron worked quickly to bring both of those values back to the ones that he wanted.

Blanchard spent a few seconds catching his breath, then several more seconds in deep silence as he rode out a new wave of pain, this time triggered by the motions of his move to the copilot's seat.

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