Her engine buzzed loud, its pitch changing to the ears below along with the dynamic stresses and speeds of her maneuvers, and she demanded all the power it could muster without redlining. Then she centered her pedals, dipped her nose, and began gaining speed again, diving towards the earth.
“How’s it going up there, Karen? Ready to cut the tape?”
“Sure am, Oshkosh!”
Her eyes scanned her instruments again. She leveled off at eight thousand feet, the clear runways and colorful crowd huddled below her. Blue sky above. Each pull of the stick put enormous g-forces on her body, and she huffed and flexed to stay conscious as she performed loop after loop. Roll after roll. She couldn’t hear the cheering below, but she knew that they were getting one hell of a show.
Now she would start her spin. Full left pedal, full back and slightly left stick… enter the stall… feel her stomach floating up, and then the green and red and blue outside the windscreen tornadoed into a blur and her aircraft departed controlled flight.
This was her most challenging maneuver.
An eight-thousand-foot controlled drop, plummeting and twirling seemingly out of control, like a maple leaf falling in the air, spinning and spinning towards the ground, all the while she was in control, taking a scalpel to the air and carving it up exactly how she intended.
Her spin would transform into a steep dive below two thousand feet, and she would once again pull herself out just feet over the runway, using her propeller to cut a thin plastic ribbon which had been set up just in front of the crowd.
The two men in gray flight suits were just waiting there.
“What are they doing?” asked Trent.
Max spoke into his earpiece. “Caleb, if they’re armed, they could be at the VIP tent in about thirty seconds. Trent and I are going to head over there. Has the senator been alerted to the threat?”
Wilkes shook his head. “Local law enforcement is passing on the warning now.”
Max looked back and saw a man he knew to be a plainclothes police officer assigned to the senator’s security detail. He was speaking into the senator’s ear, with Max’s father looking concerned next to them. Max’s father also had a bodyguard, but if these guys had the same equipment they’d used down in Texas and Mexico, the best course of action was to evacuate the VIPs immediately and notify the police.
Overhead, Karen’s aircraft was looping and swirling, a bright red stream of smoke trailing behind her.
Hugo had spotted several plainclothes security personnel during his time on the air show grounds this morning, but his risk would soon be minimal.
He had a clear line of sight to his target from here. Hugo fished into the navy-blue maintenance bag on his lap and took the black plastic transmitter in his hands. He had powered it up moments ago, making sure that the LED lit up green. Now he had to wait until his target was in just the right position.
He had trained for this for the past few weeks, working with an explosives expert to custom-design the charge and ensure that they had just the right weapon for this job.
There. His target was at the perfect spot.
Hugo flipped up the transmit switch and watched Karen Becker’s plane.
Just as she was about to take herself out of the spin, Karen heard a sharp mechanical pop underneath her, and her controls went slack in her hands and under her feet.
All the resistance pushing back against her right hand, which gripped the yoke, and against her boots on the pedals was now completely gone. Karen rapidly moved the yoke as far as it would go in all directions, alternating pumps with each foot. Moving it around in a big square. Slow at first. Then fast. Both directions.
Nothing.
A terrifying chill ran up her spine as her aircraft continued to spin, plummeting towards the earth.
What she didn’t know was that Hugo and his ISI assistant, who had been trained by the Pakistani Air Force in small aircraft maintenance procedures, had accessed Karen Becker’s plane at three a.m. local time. Together they had placed a trace amount of plastic explosive at three critical points that connected the plane’s flight controls. A silver-colored patch was placed over the control rod, encasing a small receiver, trigger, and detonator. The charges had been painstakingly planted in a ring-shape around the control rod. The explosions would be small, but quite effective, snapping apart the linkage from the flight controls to the aircraft’s control surfaces.
The work was almost invisible to the naked eye and had not been noticed by the maintenance or pilot inspections, as it was located inside the aircraft — a position only checked during scheduled maintenance tune-ups.
“Tower,” she began, her voice strained.
“Say again, Bravo Sierra… ” A different voice over the radio now. Deeper, and this man had used her call sign, all pretense of showmanship gone.
She tried again, moving her yoke in one big square, attempting to fix the problem. She pushed and pulled both foot pedals all the way forward and backward, to no avail. Nothing was giving her control back. It was like the mechanical connections had all been severed.
Her altitude wound down with sickening speed, the colors of the spectators still swirling together as the ground rushed up to meet her.
“Tower, Bravo Sierra. Declaring an emergency. Loss of flight controls… ”
Max and Trent made their way through the grove of trees towards the two men in gray flight suits. They were watching the aerobatics demonstration.
“Hold on,” Wilkes said. “Are you guys listening to this?”
Trent and Max were farther away from the air show loudspeakers. The two men stopped and turned to see where the crowd was pointing.
One woman near Max was hugging her husband and wincing, saying, “Oh my God… ” Another man was swearing over and over, seemingly unaware of the children next to him. Both were looking up at Karen Becker’s aircraft.
What had Max missed?
Then he heard Karen’s radio call, still being broadcast over the speaker.
“Did she say loss of controls?”
Trent looked alarmed, his head on a swivel, careful not to lose the men standing by the outdoor theater.
Max looked up towards Karen Becker’s aircraft. Red and black, spiraling downward, lower and lower. His eyes widened as it became obvious she was in real trouble. She was too low. She should have recovered from that spin by now…
Max looked towards the VIP tent. He could just make out the figure of Senator Becker pressed up against the translucent plastic of the tent, looking up at the plane, and then away at the ground.
Max looked up at the aircraft again.
“Something’s wrong,” Max said. “Something is very wrong… ”
The last hundred feet felt like the aircraft was flying straight down.
Screams from the crowd the closer it got.
And the chilling cries of Karen herself, still broadcasting over the outdoor speakers as the aircraft slammed into the hard pavement of the nearest taxiway. A gaseous yellow fireball erupted from the concrete, transforming into plumes of thick black smoke.
A collective gasp of horror from hundreds of thousands of spectators, holding their mouths and picking up crying children. Men and women stared at the wreckage, held captive by their own morbid curiosity.
Sirens blared from a mile away as the crash crew activated. Giant versions of fire engines and heavy-duty ambulances raced to the scene. They sprayed water on the fires, but there was nothing anyone could do for Karen Becker now.
Max looked at the senator. He was on his knees, one hand still holding the plastic of the tent window, the other over his face.