Part 5: The 55 Ton Glider

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Clearing the annunciator, the cockpit was eerily quiet. No whine of the twin turbines, only the whoosh of air.

I was piloting a 55 ton glider.

I heard something slam against something else. The cockpit door slammed. There were sounds of a struggle. I glanced quickly over my shoulder – they were on the floor – and I got back to work. More struggling, and then pounding on the door. This time, it didn't open; the door latch held.

Martin got back in his seat. His clothes were in disarray, his tie and belt missing altogether. He smiled. "Look at this," he said. I glanced over. He had the grenade! "Notice anything?" He handed it to me. She was flying smoothly, and I didn't need my right hand for the throttles, so I reached over.

There was something, well, odd. Something caught my eye, and I turned it over – there was a hole in the bottom. "Martin, are you telling me that we're going to ditch in the ocean, and that my passengers are in mortal danger because of a fucking practice grenade?"

Martin nodded, laughing. "Hard to tell them apart, especially when the bad guy doesn't give you a chance to examine it."

There was thumping on the other side of the cockpit door. It stopped, and I got a call on the intercom. It was Sally, one of the cabin crew.

"Some passengers took out the bad guys. We're good in here," she said.

"All clear in here too," I said, looking at our hijacker, lying on the floor, hog-tied with a tie and a belt.

"Cap," Martin said, "with all the excitement, I forgot why I got up in the first place."

I laughed. "I've got her. Go do what you have to do."

"Thanks."

"Oh, and get our 'friend' out of my cockpit!"

"Aye, Cap'n."

He opened the door and cheers erupted from the passenger compartment.

I heard something being dragged on the floor, and the door closed.

When the engines died, hydraulic pumps and the generators died with them, taking out the flight controls and the computers. Fortunately, planes like ours are fitted with some very basic emergency backups. When the engines' hydraulic pumps fail, there's a little windmill that pops out of the fuselage called a Ram Air Turbine, and it works a small hydraulic pump. It's just powerful enough to control the plane. There's also a set of six old-fashioned instruments, so we can know how high we are, what direction we're going, and so on. So, we were flying old-school.

One of those instruments, the VOR receiver, came to life. It had picked up the MTL beacon. The receiver shows the direction and the distance to the transmitter; we were 200km away. At our altitude, that was too far to glide, but if we head straight for it, we'll be closer to land, and maybe some shipping...

It was a long fifteen minutes. The altimeter looks like a clock, and I spent the whole time watching it spin backward.

We'd been in radio contact with the Sri Lankan Air Traffic Controller, and they had us on RADAR the whole time. And, of course, the flight attendants had prepared everyone in the cabin – we didn't want a repeat of what happened to Ethiopian Airlines 961, another hijacking where half of the initial survivors didn't even make it out of the plane before it sank.

We were down to our last one thousand meters when Martin spotted a plane coming towards us. I just got a glimpse of it in the right hand side before it disappeared up and to our rear.

Before I knew it, a big, C130 was flying on my side. "Sri Lanka Air Force."

"Good afternoon," came over my headset. "We're here to help. We've got divers, medics, and a few power boats from the Special Boat Squadron, ready to drop and help your people until more substantial help arrives. A Navy cutter should arrive in about half an hour."

"Roger, and thanks!"

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