Danny staggered into the cockpit, doing his best to stay upright despite the shaking of the plane. 'We've tied the hijacker up,' he announced. 'What's going on in here?'
'Radio's down,' Ben said tersely. 'Something to do with the weather, I suppose. I'm trying to avoid the hurricane.'
'Er, Ben,' Angelo butted in. 'I don't want to interfere or anything, but it still feels quite windy out there.'
As if to underline Angelo's sarcastic comment, the turbulence suddenly increased dramatically. Ben grabbed the radio once more and started shouting into it again, but there was still no reply. 'What are we going to do?' Angelo demanded hysterically.
'I don't know,' Ben replied. 'Hope I'm doing the right thing, I guess.'
As he spoke, however, the turbulence subsided. Ben breathed out deeply. 'Nice one,' he heard Danny say from behind him.
'How's everyone doing back there?' he asked.
'Non bene,' Angelo replied weakly. 'A few people have been knocked about a bit, but they're panicking more than anything.'
'I don't blame them,' Ben muttered. He peered through the windscreen. 'Look out there,' he said quickly. 'Does that look to you like land up ahead?'
Danny and Angelo squinted into the distance. 'I think you're right,' Angelo murmured. He turned to look at Ben. 'Do you know how to land this thing?'
Ben didn't reply. He didn't have time, because at that very moment there was another lurch as the plane seemed to dip sharply to one side. A feeling of dread crept over Ben's body as he compensated for the sudden change by steering in the opposite direction. The plane straightened up, but the change in lift was noticeable at the controls. He cursed under his breath. 'Feels like we lost an engine,' he said grimly.
Angelo stared at him, then rushed out to the cabin. When he returned, he was out of breath. 'The propellers are still turning on the bad side,' he said.
'They would do,' Ben replied. 'It's the movement of the plane that's making them go round, though, not the engine.' He furrowed his brow and stared straight ahead. 'We've got to land this thing,' he said. 'Make sure everyone's sitting down and strapped in. This isn't going to be fun.'
'You need any help here?' Danny asked.
Ben shook his head. 'Not unless you know how to land a plane,' he said.
'Well, I think you could use the company.' Danny sat in the co-pilot's seat and buckled himself in. 'If we don't get through this, Ben, I want you to know that you've been incredibly brave.'
That wasn't what Ben wanted to hear.
'We're going to get through it,' he said between gritted teeth.
'Yes,' said Danny. 'Yes, we are.'
They fell into an uneasy silence. Ben concentrated on keeping the aircraft straight with only the horizon line to help him. The land that they had spotted was approaching surprisingly quickly. Gradually, gently, he started to reduce the velocity and altitude. He felt sick with fear at the thought of trying to land this thing, but he knew he had no other choice but to try.
As the plane lost height, Ben noticed something. Up ahead and to one side, the sky was darkening. He felt his lips go dry — it didn't look dissimilar to the bubbling sky he had witnessed just the previous night at Alec's house. It was the storm they were escaping. It had to be.
'You'd better hold on,' Ben murmured to Danny. 'This is going to be nasty.'
The closer they got to land, the bumpier the ride became. Ben gripped the control stick fiercely, gradually reducing the altitude. From time to time he tried to kick the radio into life, but it was completely dead and in the end he just gave up and concentrated on the matter in hand: getting to land.
They were perhaps still a mile out to sea when a cloud bank seemed to come from nowhere. As he stared at it in horror, Ben heard Alec's voice in his head. 'Amazing thing, nature. Always got a surprise up its sleeve.'
'You can say that again,' Ben murmured.
'What?' Danny asked.
'Nothing,' Ben replied as the plane was suddenly plunged into the cloud. Instantly he lost all visual contact with the horizon and, not having any instruments to tell him if he was level or not, he found himself flying blind, without even a few metres' visibility.
'Hold it steady, Ben,' he told himself. 'Just hold it steady.'
His breath came in deep, long lungfuls. The turbulence increased in the cloud, making it even harder to keep the plane straight, if indeed it was straight. It was horrible, flying without any sense of what was in front of him. Ben half expected to crash into some unseen obstacle at any moment. When finally he came below the cloud line, he realized he was at an angle and veering away from land. He straightened up and tried not to think too much about what was about to happen.
It was raining now and the sky above them was black. The winds had increased again — Ben could feel them knocking the plane around. It was worse now that he had reduced his speed. More and more he felt like a speck of dust at the mercy of some incredibly powerful forces. The sea below them was grey and rough, and it was a relief when they finally flew over land. As the plane continued to lose altitude, Ben felt a momentary flash of relief that the land ahead appeared to be unpopulated.
He shuddered to think what sort of devastation he would cause if he crash-landed in the middle of an urban sprawl. But as soon as that thought flew through his mind, it disappeared. He had other things to worry about, after all… Hurtling onwards through the sheeting rain, Ben thought he could see greenery down below. And then, a long way in the distance, he thought he could make out a long, straight road running at right angles to the direction of the plane.
'We need to try and land there,' he barked at Danny — quite why, he wasn't sure, as nobody else was helping him fly this thing. He yanked the control stick to the left. The plane veered in that direction, shuddering as it did so. Ben prayed that there wouldn't be much traffic on the road. Surely people would be taking cover from the elements, he prayed. A hurricane was hitting the mainland of Florida — he hoped most people would think it wasn't a very good time to go out for a drive.
He straightened up. They couldn't be more than a hundred metres from the ground, but now that he had a closer point of reference, Ben realized just how much the plane was shaking. The road ahead did indeed seem empty. On either side of it was what looked like swamp land and with each passing second it looked more and more likely that that was where they were going to land. Ben struggled to keep the line of the road in the middle of his sight — a task made doubly difficult by the winds and the fact that one engine was down. He was holding his breath and his muscles were burning from the strain of keeping the plane straight.
They couldn't have been more than seventy-five metres up now, but as Ben fixed his eyes on the ground ahead, one thing became perfectly clear to him.
They were going too fast.
Much too fast.
Danny must have realized it too. 'This isn't going to work, is it, Ben?' he asked, his voice strangely expressionless.
Ben glanced momentarily towards him. Danny was looking straight ahead. His face was calm. He looked like he was preparing himself for something.
Preparing himself for the end.
Ben snapped his gaze back to the landing strip. Danny was right. It wasn't going to work. He took another deep breath and prepared for the plane to hit the ground.
Miami International Airport had been all but evacuated.
At the control tower, the last remaining airport employees crowded round the bank of air-traffic control screens. Half an hour ago these screens had been illuminated with the flight information of the many aircraft in the area. Now those aircraft had been redirected north, away from the freak hurricane that was about to make landfall, and the screens were blank.