Chapter 2 - Into the Furnace
The heat hit Travis like a physical wall before his boots even touched the aircraft wing.
Thick, swirling grey smoke billowed from the belly of the Asterion 900, carrying the sweet, sickening smell of burning aviation fuel and melting insulation. On the tarmac below, sirens wailed in the distance, but the airfield fire trucks were still two minutes away. Two minutes was an eternity in an aircraft fire.
Travis sprayed the fire extinguisher over the main landing gear bay, knocking back the roaring orange flames just enough to reach the lower service hatch behind the cockpit.
The main entry door was warped and fused shut by the blast. He knew the structural layout of the Asterion prototype better than the engineers who designed it—because six years ago, before he was a disgraced contractor wearing grease-stained coveralls, he had been a lead systems engineer for the defense division that built its core architecture.
He hoisted himself up, slammed the butt of the heavy extinguisher against the emergency release pin of the lower service hatch, and kicked it inward.
The metal panel gave way with a screech of tearing aluminum.
Travis crawled through the narrow, dark crawlspace beneath the cabin floorboards. Smoke bit at his eyes and burned his lungs like acid. Coughing violently, he used a hand tool from his belt to pop the floor access hatch from underneath, bursting into the main passenger cabin.
Visibility inside the luxury cabin was near zero.
"Audrey!" Travis yelled, pulling his shirt collar over his nose and mouth. "Audrey, answer me!"
A weak, muffled gasp came from the mid-cabin section.
Travis dropped to his knees, staying beneath the thickest bank of black smoke rolling along the ceiling. He crawled past burning upholstery until his hands hit a heavy, velvet-trimmed mahogany bulkhead panel that had torn free from the galley structure.
Beneath it lay Audrey Langford.
Her face was smeared with soot, her silk blouse singed at the shoulder. Her leg was pinned tightly under the heavy frame, and her breathing was rapid and shallow as carbon monoxide filled her lungs.
"Hold on," Travis grunted, wedging his boot against the side frame and straining against the bulk panel.
Audrey looked up through the haze, her wide, panicked eyes meeting his. She recognized him instantly—the rough-looking technician she had brushed off five minutes earlier on the ramp.
With a surge of strength, Travis lifted the panel four inches. "Get your leg out! Now!"
Audrey dragged her trapped foot free, gasping in pain as she crawled out from beneath the wreckage. Travis grabbed her by the belt of her suit trousers, hauling her to her feet.
"The main door is jammed!" Audrey choked out, coughing violently. "The cockpit hatch—"
"The pilots ran," Travis said grimly, guiding her toward the narrow service hatch in the floor. "And the wing tanks are about to cook off. We can't go back down to the tarmac."
Suddenly, a violent secondary explosion rocked the belly of the jet.
The shockwave knocked them both against the leather seating. Through the forward cockpit glass, Travis saw a terrifying sight. The fuel line fire had spread to the ground service cart, igniting a massive pool of leaked Jet-A fuel directly beneath the fuselage.
A wall of fire was spreading rapidly across the ramp toward the airfield’s central fuel storage depot, located less than three hundred yards away.
If the jet exploded here on the ramp, it would set off a chain reaction across three million gallons of high-octane fuel, wiping out the entire airfield and the adjacent coastal highway.
"We can't jump down," Audrey gasped, looking through the soot-stained windows at the ocean of fire surrounding the aircraft. "We'll burn alive!"
Travis looked toward the cockpit. The engines were still spooling up, fed by an emergency fuel bypass that should have been shut down by the onboard automated fire-suppression system. But the suppression system had been overridden.
The sabotage wasn't just meant to kill the jet on the ground—it was meant to start a fire that couldn't be put out.
Travis made a split-second decision that defied every rule of aviation safety.
He grabbed Audrey by her shoulders and shoved her into the jumpseat directly behind the captain's chair. "Buckle in! Tight!"
"What are you doing?!" she screamed above the roar of the flames and the howling alarms. "We need to get off this plane!"
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"If this plane stays here, nobody on this airfield survives the next two minutes!" Travis yelled back.
He lunged into the captain's seat, slammed his hands onto the dual throttles, and kicked the left rudder pedal to disengage the parking brake.
