His hand beat hers by a second pulling the turbines’ power back to zero. The airspeed indicator was already in the red.
Andréa, seeing his reaction, added her strength to his, pulling back on her own yoke from the right seat.
But the controls seemed to have their own idea. Hurling them vertically toward the ground, now down to twenty-eight thousand feet — pulling on the controls face down, hanging against seat straps that cut into her body — only preferable to being thrown against a windshield a foot from her face.
Neither of them said anything as they struggled together against gravity.
“I think it’s coming up!” she gasped. The plane’s nose slowly rose, its violent bucking smoothing out. Five degrees, ten . . .
And then another wave knocked them right over the falls. The jet’s nose continuing past vertical.
Everon thought the wings would be ripped from the fuselage. The blood rushed to his face. He clamped his teeth against the terror flowing into his skull, pushed it away with one word: PULL! While the plane raced toward an impact that would spell their deaths in the dirt.
Eighteen thousand feet . . . fifteen thousand . . . and the Lear began to respond . . . slowly, much too slowly to suit Everon, but still, the nose came forward.
Air screamed outside over the cabin. How much can the wings take?
Extreme pressure on his arms, pushed against his legs — flight angle changing at a snail’s pace, they rushed downward past nine thousand feet.
Ten degrees, twenty, forty-five . . .
At five thousand two hundred feet they finally regained the horizon.
“Hail Mary, full of grace . . . ” Andréa muttered. She took a deep breath, grabbed a look at the flashing console lights. Reached up to shut off the high-pitched alarm still pinging from their sudden altitude loss.
“What was that?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I hate to say it, Everon . . . ” she admitted shakily, massaging her stomach, “it’s a good thing you insisted we buckle these belts, preceding your aerobatic unruliness.”
“I guess that sir stuff went out the window a couple miles higher.”
She smiled weakly, “I guess so.”
“See what you can find out on the radio, okay?”
“Okay,” she said, picking up her headset off the floor.
“One-Oscar-Mike — New York Center do you read?”
Static.
She repeated the call. “Nothing.” The jet’s displays flickered.
“Cleveland?” he suggested.
“We’re probably too low now.” She switched frequencies.
“One-Oscar-Mike — Cleveland Center, do you read?”
“Oscar-Mike, Cleveland Center.” The voice was weak and broken.
“We were just hit by extreme clear air turbulence, Center.”
“We’re receiving reports of same from all over the area. Say altitude and position.”
“Level at five thousand. We took a sudden dive from flight level three-zero-zero. Systems functional. Do you have any more on what caused that air we went through over middle Pennsylvania?”
“No information on anything like that yet. No storms on radar. Wait . . . hold on . . . word is . . . Something in New York . . . stand by — ”
New York? While Andréa scanned the instruments, Everon frowned into the night. Exhaled.
“Breathe, Andréa,” he reminded her.
She let out a long blast of air. “I wonder what — ? I’ve never felt clear air turbulence like that.”
“Once in a hang glider,” he muttered. “Stupid flying below a thunderstorm in Telluride. Nothing ever in powered craft — ”
“One-Oscar-Mike,” the controller radioed. “All flight plans to the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut area are being re-routed . . . more information coming in — stand by!”
She looked over at him.
“There are only two possibilities I can think of,” Everon said, “neither of them good. The more likely, and the one I’m most afraid of, is a nuclear attack.”
“Nuclear? Could there be radiation?” she asked.
“Probably not here,” he said. “Predominant winds across New York State are west to east, right?
“On the other hand, EMP and a nuclear shockwave would extend pretty much in all directions — in terms of air turbulence much farther, much sooner. I’m betting that’s what we hit, or should I say — hit us. I’m not going jumping to any conclusions though . . . ”
“We’re pretty far from New York!” she said.
“I know. That’s what worries me most.”
Illegal to use in a plane or not, Everon pulled out a phone and tried to call his sister.
Nothing! “Lines must be down to New York,” he said softly. No! As long as — maybe — Franklin!
He tried another number. No response. The signal level flickered up and down on the phone’s display. He glanced at the instruments. They were still traveling west at five thousand feet across Pennsylvania. “Maybe if we can lock onto a ground station somewhere farther out.”
Ten minutes later he tried again. This time it rang.
“Hello?” his brother’s crackling voice responded.
“Hello?” Everon shouted back. “Hello?”
“Hello? Hello?”
Franklin couldn’t hear him.
