Jackson Ford - Random Sh*t Flying Through the Air

“I don’t give a flying fuck how much you pay him. Do we have a runway or not?”

“It does not matter. Even if there is damage, the shock absorbers on the landing gear are built for big impacts. We can handle the runway if there is damage to it. We circle until the earthquake stops, then we go down.”

“What about air traffic control?”

He shakes his head. It’s like he’s aged ten years in the past ten minutes. “There is no air traffic control. There is nothing.”

“So to be clear: we’re trying to land on a runway that may or may not exist, with no one to tell us if other planes are doing the same thing at the same time, all because you wanna play Good Samaritan?”

His gaze hardens. “It is my plane. My decision.”

“Uh, yeah, you aren’t the only person on this plane.” I turn to Mikhail. “Dude, I know we haven’t seen eye-to-eye yet on account of me breaking in here, but you cannot think this is a good idea?”

Mikhail stares back at me, stony-faced. Great. A loyal employee. This would be so much easier if Schmidt was a terrible boss.

“So land further away,” I tell Schmidt. “Find an airport with ATC still working.”

“That will take too much time,” he replies. “The longer we are in the air, the worse things on the ground may be.”

I can see from the look on his face that he’s never going to listen to me. He’s a billionaire. He doesn’t just accept risks – he enjoys them. His intuition has brought him money and supermodels and private jets, so I have precisely zero chance of convincing him.

I close my eyes. Are you there, God? It’s me again. I wanted to tell you that you’re a giant, flaming asshole .

If we don’t stick the landing, I guess I’ll be able to tell him right to his face.

You’d think that the moments before a deadly plane crash would be insane. People screaming, oxygen masks flying, bags tumbling out of overhead lockers. You know, the stuff that makes life worth living.

Turns out, if you’re on a private jet, it gets very quiet. Everyone is in their seats, white knuckles gripping armrests. Looking out the windows, or at the TV, which has the volume turned down low. I have a real sudden urge to scream at them about why they aren’t screaming, because Jesus fucking Christ we’re all going to die in a plane crash in the middle of an earthquake.

I don’t. I just sit quietly, and make myself breathe. The rain has started up again, silent drops speckling the windows.

“How do you know other planes aren’t doing the same thing we are?” I ask Schmidt again. “If there’s no air traffic control, how would we tell—?”

“Quiet,” Mikhail barks at me.

Schmidt shushes him with a gesture. “We don’t know,” he says.

“Oh, perfect.”

“Indeed. But it is a risk we must take,” he says.

“No, it’s a risk you must take. I’d rather just grab one of your parachutes.”

“There are no parachutes on board.”

“…Are you serious?”

The ghost of a smile, strained and hard. “That is not how jet aircraft work. It is not practical.”

“Well, it would be pretty fucking practical right now, don’t you think?”

“You are the one who stole aboard my plane, Jay. You do not get a say in how or where it is flown.”

Behind me, the harried news anchor is saying, “Molly Zuckerman has more from Los Angeles, where we go now, live. Molly?”

The reporter is in a helicopter, the windows showing much the same view as we have. Her frizzy brown hair is squashed awkwardly by her bulky headset. “Gina, words almost can’t describe what I’m seeing. The devastation is… total. We haven’t been able to land anywhere and our sources on the ground are completely unresponsive. From our vantage point here, the first earthquake appears to have run its course, but there’s every expectation that there will be aftershocks…”

“See?” I say. “They’re being smart. They’re not landing.”

Schmidt doesn’t bother to respond. He’s talking quietly in German to Gerhard. As I watch, he reaches out and grips the big man’s hand, squeezing tight.

The digital clock on the corner of the news channel reads 11:58. A little over an hour since I came on board. An hour since I was standing on solid, steady, very-much-unbroken LA ground. It feels like something that happened in another life.

The plane is very low now. I make myself breathe. My palms are sweaty, and wiping them on my pants doesn’t help.

Schmidt turns to me. “Tell me, do you pray?”

“Tried a few times. Didn’t work.”

“I do not either. My mother does – she is still active in her church in Berlin. Do you have family?”

There are… too many ways to answer that question. I shake my head, trying to make sense of the tumbled, chaotic, gut-wrenching thoughts.

I’m saved from having to answer when he says, “You should be thinking about them, not about parachutes. When we are on the ground, you will need to find a way to let them know you are safe. Your family, and your friends, if spies have such a thing.”

Friends.

It’s impossible not to see Carlos. See him sitting at the bar, knocking back whiskey, cackling as he described the sexual peculiarities of his latest ex. See him in the passenger seat of the China Shop van, offering me jerky to recharge my energy levels after a tough mission.

See him impaled on a steel pole, with a fire raging closer, begging me to help him.

Death never used to scare me. I didn’t want to die, because why the fuck would I, but I wasn’t scared of it. I figured I’d been through so much bad shit, death couldn’t possibly be any worse. But what if when I die, I have to face Carlos? We didn’t find his body after the fire, but that doesn’t mean anything. He could have burned to ash. What if the first thing I see in the afterlife is him, and he asks me why I didn’t save him?

The plane banks again. The ground is closer than ever before.

Fuck this. I’m not going to die. I don’t care if I have to reveal my abilities: this is not the end of me. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to lift a plane with my mind, but I’d say now would be an excellent time to find out. I send out my PK, wrapping it around the body…

Only, what the hell am I supposed to do? Am I really going to be able to land this thing better than Schmidt’s pilot? I’ll just get in the way, end up fighting with him. If the plane is damaged by the landing, I can try hold it together… but how will I know which pieces to use my PK on?

“ Macht euch bereit! ” the pilot says, clipped and urgent. Schmidt immediately bends at the waist, hands on the back of his head. No translation needed here.

Brace for impact .

I always thought airplane seatbelts were next to useless. Because if I ever was in a plane crash, there was no way a piddly little strip of fabric was going to save my ass.

Either I was wrong, or private jet seatbelts are made of titanium.

When we touch down, it’s with a bang that shudders through the cabin, my seat bucking underneath me. If it wasn’t for the belt, I’d have been thrown right out. The plane hits something – a jagged chunk of raised ground, maybe. It kicks back up into the air, listing crazily. The TV reporter is drowned out by the hideous whine of jet engines. Gerhard bellows, his belt straining. Schmidt’s knuckles have gone white.

We slam back to earth. This time, we tilt far enough for the right wing tip to just touch the ground. The belt isn’t helping any more; I have to use every muscle I have to stay in my seat, bracing my arms against the armrests. My teeth are clenched so hard my jaw creaks. I don’t care what kind of shock absorbers are built into the landing gear – they can’t take much more of this. It’s like the plane is trying to twist itself in half.