Charlie says. “That’s our approach button. It’ll capture the localizer and the glide slope, which will take us safely down on an autoland.”
It takes me a while to find it—just below the autopilot button—and as I’m pressing it, Charlie’s already on the next instruction: to lower the landing gear. The handle’s in the middle position, and I pull it out and then down, the rush of air making a long rumbling sound.
“Mina, did you press the APP button? Is the bar beneath it lit up?”
I look at the panel. Nothing’s lit up.
“I pressed it, but…”
“You’ve missed the intercept. We’ll need to go around again. How much fuel do we have left?” I find the right button and read out the figure from the bottom screen. I picture Charlie, sitting at a computer in Brisbane, watching an LED light move slowly across the screen. There’s a long pause, and when he speaks again, the calm in his voice sounds forced. “Okay, Mina. Let’s try that again.”
“Do we have enough fuel?”
A beat. I close my eyes. Think of Sophia and Adam. Charlie hasn’t told me if they’re okay, and I don’t know if it’s because he doesn’t know or because he knows they’re not.
“It’s tight, Mina. I’m not going to lie.”
I take a deep breath. It has to be enough. We can’t get this close only to fail.
“Heading zero-nine-zero.”
“Zero-nine-zero,” I repeat once I’ve made the turn. We’re flying at three thousand feet, the air clear below us. The ocean is navy blue, tiny, white horses galloping across the waves. It seems impossible that we only set off from London yesterday; so much has happened in twenty hours. My tiredness feels as solid as me, a greatcoat draped around my shoulders, weighing me down, my alertness a sham fueled by fear, like the temporary burst of energy after coffee.
“One-eight-zero.”
“One-eight-zero.”
“Three-one-zero.”
I make the final heading, and the plane’s nose moves slowly toward the airport. I am not flying this plane but guiding it, and I wonder at the feat of engineering that allows us to maneuver several hundred tons of metal through the air, from one country to another.
“Now press the APP button.”
I press it firmly, releasing it only when I see the horizontal bar light up beneath my finger. In a few moments, I feel the plane turn and line up with the runway as we finally capture the localizer. I breathe.
“Flaps all the way out now, Mina.”
As Charlie gives me our final speed, the plane goes nose-down, the top of a glide slope that will take us to the runway. I sit on my hands, knowing that the slightest jolt of an instrument will switch off the ILS.
Parallel runways protrude into Botany Bay like a two-tined fork, and as we descend, I see that the left has been cleared of aircraft, the planes grounded on the adjacent runway. A bank of emergency vehicles waits to one side.
The automated countdown begins. Fifty, forty, thirty…
I’ve never been a religious person, despite my mother’s entreaties to join her for Mass every Sunday. But as the runway rushes up to meet us, bright-blue ocean either side, I keep my eyes on the center line, and I pray.
FORTY-NINE
7 A.M. | ADAM
How long has it been?
I tried to keep track of the minutes by counting the seconds, but every crash from above made me lose track, and it feels as though Sophia has been gone for hours. The electrics have tripped, the strip of fluorescent light beneath the door flickering twice and then disappearing, the radio cutting out, midway through more breaking news.
As Flight 79 approaches Sydney, air traffic control operators have made contact with members of the crew. It has not been confirmed whether the aircraft remains under the control of the hijackers. Emergency services are on standby at Sydney airport.
The cellar is pitch-black, the darkness dense and oppressive. I can’t see the smoke, but I can feel it. I can taste it. It catches at the back of my throat, making me cough until I retch, the convulsions jerking my wrists against their metal cuffs. I can no longer feel my hands or feet—a combination of pins and needles and the cold—and my head feels heavy, the way it did after Becca drugged me, although I don’t know if that’s the smoke or just exhaustion.
Sophia must be in town by now. I recite her journey, second-guessing where she’s gotten to. Bookshop, then empty shop, then the ’state agent where they sell houses. I picture her outside the