Elena turned. The black military transport had pulled closer still. Through its cockpit canopy, two helmeted figures were visible, giving a cold, mechanical signal. Beneath its fuselage, a high-intensity electronic warfare pod began to glow with a sharp, cobalt-blue pulse.
Inside the Dreamliner, every remaining screen flared white.
Chapter 37
The high-power microwave pulse from the escort jet struck Flight 001’s outer sensor arrays, scorching the primary VHF antennas and frying the remaining flight management computers. The cabin plummeted into near-total silence as both massive Rolls-Royce Trent engines surged violently, their digital engine control units thrown into emergency backup mode.
In the cockpit, Captain Vance was battling the controls as the aircraft began to buffet in violent, teeth-rattling clear-air turbulence.
"They’re using an electronic warfare jammer to fry our fly-by-wire buses!" Vance yelled, his arms shaking under the strain of the vibrating yoke. "They want to force us into an uncommanded stall! If our airspeed drops below two hundred knots at this altitude, we’ll enter a flat spin and tear the wings off!"
"Can you hand-fly her?" Elena demanded, leaning over the center console.
"Not without manual trim, and the trim motors are fried!" Vance shouted. "They're herding us like cattle. They want us to bleed off altitude until we have no choice but to follow them into their landing corridor!"
Suddenly, the encrypted satellite phone in Elena’s pocket buzzed again. The military jammer hadn't knocked out her Swiss federal device—it operated on an ultra-secure, frequency-hopping military band designed to survive nuclear EMP bursts.
Elena hit the speakerphone button and slammed the device onto the pedestal between the pilots.
"Evelyn," Elena said, her voice dropping to a dangerous, steady calm. "Your pet marshal is tied like a hog in my galley. Call off your attack jet, or you will never touch a single cent of the Zurich vault."
A bitter, chilling laugh crackled through the small speaker.
"You always were so arrogant, Elena," Evelyn’s voice answered over the hiss of static. "You think you hold the leverage? Look at the altitude gauge on your dashboard, darling. You have less than twelve minutes before your pilots lose aerodynamic control completely. Surrender the digital keys, order Vance to follow my escort, or drown in the Atlantic with three hundred innocent souls on your conscience."
Chapter 38
Elena stared at the phone, listening to the arrogant breathing of the woman who had spent decades manipulating lives, stealing identities, and running a global syndicate from behind the veneer of high society.
"You don't care about the three hundred passengers, Evelyn," Elena said, her tone cutting and razor-sharp. "You never did. But you care about your survival. If this plane hits the water, the Swiss Federal Prosecutor executes the automatic dead-man protocol. Every bank account, every shell corporation, every real estate trust bearing the Sterling name gets burned to ashes within sixty seconds. You will be a penniless fugitive hunted by every intelligence agency on earth."
Silence hung over the line for three agonizing seconds. When Evelyn spoke again, the polite veneer had evaporated entirely, replaced by raw, unhinged fury.
"You would commit suicide just to see me beg?" Evelyn hissed. "You have your father’s sickening righteousness! Arthur thought he could defy me too, and look where it brought him—dying in a disgrace he couldn't survive! You are my flesh, Elena! You exist because I allowed you to exist!"
"I exist to destroy everything you built," Elena replied coldly. "And I'm not dying today."
"Captain!" Elena barked, cutting the call and slamming her hand onto Vance’s shoulder. "Do you remember the emergency deep-stall maneuver we tested in the Seattle simulators during my fleet certification?"
Vance snapped his head toward her, his eyes wide with disbelief. "The Coffin Corner dive? Elena, that’s insane! We’d have to deliberately put the Dreamliner into a near-vertical descent through the jet stream! If the airframe overspeeds, the control surfaces will peel off!"
"The escort jet is a heavy military transport," Elena said with icy conviction. "Its wing-loading is twice ours. It can’t match our rate of descent without ripping its own wings off. Dive through the cloud deck right now, Vance! Shake them off!"
Vance looked at Davies. Davies nodded grimly, swallowing hard.
"Hold on to something, Boss," Vance whispered.
With a roar of defiance, the veteran pilot pushed the control yoke full forward.
Chapter 39
Flight 001 pitched violently down into an eighty-degree dive.