Glenn Beck - The Eye of Moloch

“Okay.” As he took his grip Noah could feel the violence of the weather tearing at the control surfaces outside, but also there, in answer, were the sure and steady responses from the man right beside him.

“Here we go,” McCord said.

The yoke pushed slightly forward. With no horizon or any other visual reference out the windows, there was only a gradually building press of acceleration and the counterclockwise wheeling of the altimeter to tell them they were now descending.

“Eight thousand feet,” Noah said.

The plane was buffeted by a rapid series of powerful forces, some rocking them to the side, others lifting, others punching down from above. Three of the bullet holes in the front windshield suddenly joined as a whitened crack snapped between them.

“Seven thousand,” Noah said, and only seconds later he had to call out again. “Six!”

He felt the forward pressure on the yoke begin to ease and then pull back. “Five thousand.” Their rate of descent was barely slowing at all.

“Give me a hand!” McCord shouted.

Together they pulled back as one, and Noah watched as the altimeter responded, but only sluggishly. A sudden burst of hailstones hit them all at once and then was gone.

“Four thousand feet.” A blinding flash of light illuminated the clouds outside as a crack of nearby thunder reverberated through the interior. The yoke was fighting them both and it seemed the storm was intent on pushing its foolish intruders all the way to the ground.

“Twenty-five hundred!” Noah shouted, having missed the previous mark by a second or two. “Two thousand!”

There was another bright flash outside and for the first time since they’d taken off he could see the earth down below. He’d begun by then to call out the altitude in hundred-foot increments.

“Thirteen hundred. Twelve hundred. Eleven hundred . . . one thousand . . .” The descent was slowing at last, and Noah could feel the press of the Gs shifting as the plane finally passed through the bottom of a leveling curve. “Nine hundred,” he said, and after a few seconds more added, “and holding steady there.”

Chapter 57

The small radar screen in the front panel showed only a solid sea of pulsating multicolored blotches ahead and behind. Similar displays at ground stations or aboard any aircraft still in pursuit would show much the same. With no transponder, and hidden in the depths of all those angry clouds, their plane’s tiny signature would be all but invisible, just as their pilot had predicted.

When the radio was tuned to an automated weather station the report said there was an end-to-end string of severe thunderstorms forming up in a line across the region and far beyond, with worsening conditions likely to spawn the same kind of weather precisely along their route toward the East Coast. That meant this journey wouldn’t be getting any easier.

After a little over a hundred arduous, ground-hugging miles Bill McCord announced that he felt it was safe enough to ascend to an altitude where the turbulence might be less punishing. If they’d really slipped their pursuers then higher was better; it had been a brutal ride so far and more than once a sudden downdraft had nearly ended the trip.

They were tossed around repeatedly on their way back upstairs, and then without any warning the ride smoothed out and leveled off. There was a sort of kick and then a strong push from behind, and while watching his instruments the pilot explained that they must have happened onto an unusually low-traveling jet stream and were being temporarily borne along on the rapids of this powerful river of air.

For the first time there were a few moments to assess the situation and think.

All the shooting had done some damage and not all of it would be visible. A small section of the control panel was cracked and dark. There was a faint smell of sour smoke in the air, with no obvious clue to its source. Some gauges indicated warning conditions, none immediately serious but a few that seemed to be gradually worsening.

“Get a load of this,” Bill McCord said, pointing to an area of the panel near the controls for the landing gear. There were two lights to indicate that the wheels had retracted safely into their wells. Only one of them was lit green.

“What does that mean?” Noah asked.

“I hope it means that bulb’s burnt out. If not, I guess we’ll find out what it means when we go to put her down.”

It was nearly as noisy as it had been before but the unusual steadiness of the flight gradually induced a calming effect that was almost eerie. Outside of the occasional bumpy air there was no sensation of movement. McCord had informed Noah that due to the added thrust of the tailwind they were traveling quite a bit faster than this particular plane could normally go, at least under its own power.

“I’m going to go back and check on the others,” Noah said.

“That’s okay, but don’t stay unsecured any longer than you have to. This is nice and smooth right now but it’ll get ugly again without any warning.”

As Noah unbuckled his seat belt Ellen Davenport popped her head into the cockpit. Despite the stress of the situation she was now in physician mode and appeared calm and in perfect control.

“Mr. McCord,” she said, “I understand you’ve had quite a workout up here. Noah told me you might not mind if I came up and checked you out.”

“She’s a doctor,” Noah said.

“Aw, don’t spoil it for me,” McCord said, and he gave Ellen a friendly wink. “Here I was thinking that was the most flattering thing I’d heard from a lady in twenty-five years.”

Noah left the two of them alone and walked down the aisle to sit next to Molly.

“Are you holding up okay?” he asked.

She nodded. “Are we alone?”

“Yes.”

“Can I tell you a secret?”

“Sure.”

She touched his face, again as though remembering the details of the sight of him with only the tips of her fingers, and then she pulled him close and held on tight.

“I’m scared,” she said softly.

At that moment there were any number of perfectly reasonable things to be afraid of, but he could tell by the way she’d spoken that she didn’t mean any of those.

Molly said no more and neither did he. They only held one another, and in that quiet togetherness there was an understanding that had no real use for words. She was afraid, and so was he. She was worried that maybe they weren’t doing the right thing after all, and so was he. But they both knew they were on the right side, without any doubt, and knowing that, maybe together they could find the strength to put their fears behind them.

After a time there was a gentle tap on his shoulder and he looked up.

“I need you up front,” Ellen said.

When they’d gone forward she stopped him after the last row of seats, near the array of medical equipment they’d seen earlier.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Now don’t panic.”

“I’ll do my best. What is it?”

“I think he may have had a heart attack,” Ellen said. “Come on, help me with this.”

She pulled a high-tech-looking electronic case from its clips on the cabin wall and handed it to him before searching out and gathering some other items from the cabinet beneath.

“What is this thing?” Noah asked.

“Among other things it’s an emergency defibrillator, but it can also show me what’s going on with his heart, and that’s the part I need. Come on.”

Bill McCord was still flying just as he’d been before, though Ellen had hooked him up with under-the-nose tubing fed from an oxygen tank she’d secured with duct tape to the armrest of his seat. There was no room for three in the cockpit, so Noah stood just outside, holding the now-activated device in his hands where the doctor could see its screen and reach its controls.