Chapter 6 - The Sabotaged Sky
Oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling with a loud POP.
The aircraft shuddered violently, dipping forty degrees to the left as cold, thin air roared through the cabin. The high-altitude pressure loss felt like heavy weights crushing against my tiny ears. I screamed, but the roar of the rushing wind swallowed the sound.
Mama grabbed an oxygen mask and strapped it over my face, then put one on herself, tears streaming down her eyes. "Hold on, Emma! Hold on to Mama!"
Alejandro remained unnaturally calm. Despite his side bleeding onto the leather seats, he unbuckled himself, grabbed the intercom receiver, and yelled to the cockpit: "Captain! Can you override the manual controls?!"
"No, Don Alejandro!" the captain’s voice crackled through static. "The control software has been infected with a trojan worm! Someone loaded a malware script into the flight computer before we took off from Italy! We're losing altitude fast—10,000 feet per minute!"
Marco rushed into the main cabin from the radio station, holding a satellite tablet. "It’s DeLuca, sir! He didn't just want you dead on the ground—he bought off the maintenance crew at the private airfield! They planted a remote kill-switch in the jet's avionics!"
Alejandro’s eyes burned with cold rage. He grabbed the tablet from Marco. On the screen was a live video transmission from a private bunker in Zurich.
Frank DeLuca’s ugly face appeared on the screen, drinking scotch.
"Enjoy the view from thirty thousand feet, Alejandro?" DeLuca sneered. "I told you—you can't escape me. When that plane crashes into the icy Atlantic Ocean, your bloodline ends forever. And the little maid’s girl goes down with you."
Alejandro leaned into the camera, his voice terrifyingly steady despite the roaring wind around him. "If I go down into that ocean, Frank... I promise you, my ghost will dragged you into hell with me."
"Save your breath, Don," DeLuca laughed. "You have about three minutes of oxygen left. Goodbye."
The screen went black.
"Boss! What do we do?!" Marco yelled over the alarms. "We have three parachutes on board!"
There were five people on the plane: the pilot, Marco, Alejandro, my mother, and me.
Mama immediately grabbed one of the parachute packs and strapped it onto Alejandro’s chest. "Take it! Take Emma and jump! Leave me!"
"No!" I cried, grabbing my mother's sweater. "Mama, no!"
"Don't be stupid, Elena!" Alejandro barked, ripping the parachute off his chest and forcing it onto Mama. "You are putting this on. Marco, put the second one on Emma!"
"What about you, Don?" Marco asked, holding the last pack.
"I'm flying this damn plane," Alejandro gritted his teeth.
Alejandro shoved his way into the cockpit, pushing the terrified pilot aside. Alejandro was not just a mafia boss—before taking over the family, he had served six years as a tactical combat pilot in the military.
He gripped the dual yoke, his eyes scanning the dead control screens.
"Marco! Pull the manual hydraulic circuit breakers under the floorboards!" Alejandro yelled over the scream of the falling jet. "We're going to bypass the digital computer completely and fly this bird on mechanical cables!"
Marco ripped open the floor panel, grabbing a heavy crowbar, smashing through the electronic control box, and manually yanking the emergency steel cables.
CLANK!
The heavy iron levers engaged! The plane’s nose shuddered, slowly lifting up as the mechanical flaps fought against the raging wind!
"Hold on!" Alejandro screamed, pulling the yoke back with all the physical strength left in his battered body.
The dark ocean water was rushing up to meet us through the clouds—5,000 feet... 2,000 feet... 1,000 feet!
With a deafening roar, the jet leveled out mere hundreds of feet above the freezing Atlantic waves, skimming the water like a flat stone before roaring back up into the dark sky!
In the back cabin, Mama and I tumbled onto the carpet, holding each other tight, weeping in absolute relief.
Alejandro wiped sweat and blood from his forehead, looking out at the distant city lights of the American coastline appearing on the horizon.
"Marco," Alejandro said into the radio headset, his voice dripping with venom. "Call my brother Leo in Chicago. Tell him to arm every soldier we have."
He looked back at me through the open cockpit door.
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"We aren't hiding anymore," Alejandro declared. "We're going to war."
Hook: But when our damaged plane finally made an emergency landing on a private runway outside Chicago, a fleet of twenty black armored sedans was waiting on the tarmac—and out stepped Alejandro’s brother, Leo, holding a gun pointed straight at Alejandro’s chest.
