"I tried to send a Mayday on the radio, but it's been disabled. He must have cut the wires."
"Why?" her voice came out a frightened whisper.
"I don't know, but we need to get this thing down safely before it loses momentum."
"Here in the desert?"
"We don't have a choice."
"Do you know how to land a plane?"
"I've taken a couple of lessons, and the controls are pretty standard."
A couple of lessons? The missing window gave a crystal-clear view of hot blue sky and hotter amber sands. Panic quickened her breath and made her hand spring to her mouth as if to stifle a scream.
Zadir grabbed her shoulder. "Keep your head. Sit down and buckle in. Assume the crash position." He was already buckling into the pilot's seat. "The good thing is that the sand should make for a fairly soft landing and there's no fuel to start a fire."
"Comforting." Her fingers trembled so much she had a hard time closing her buckle. "I hope the plane doesn't break up on landing."
"Me too."
Although he'd told her to put her head down, she couldn't take her eyes off the windshield as he guided the plane lower, and the dunes rose up toward them. A scream tickled the back of her throat while he struggled to keep their course straight and the ground rushed toward them.
"Brace!"
She pressed her head to her knees before a jarring, bumping, rolling motion seized the cabin as the plane sledded across the desert floor. They came to a complete standstill in seconds, not like the long taxiing at an airport. She lifted her head gingerly. "We're down?"
"Yup. And still alive." He smiled.
A wave of relief washed over her. She'd survived a plane crash thanks to this man. "Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. We're probably hundreds of miles from anywhere. We need to find a way to get out of here."
He climbed out of his seat and headed back into the cabin. The plan had landed at an angle so he grabbed at the seats as he made his way down the aisle and pulled a phone from his bag. "I'm going to try to call for help, but I don't have high hopes since we are quite literally in the middle of nowhere."
She pulled out her phone and looked for bars. None.
"Service is patchy even in the main city of my home country. We're still catching up with the twentieth century out here, let alone the twenty-first." He frowned, punching numbers into his phone. "Nothing."
"Surely someone would notice the plane going off its planned route."