“I don't care who flies it,” she said sharply. “Just get us on the ground.”

Carlos nodded and set up the automatic descent profile on the flight computer to take the plane down to two thousand feet. The plane began to descend through the clouds, and before long patches of green were visible. The sight of land reassured and terrified Francesca at the same time. Her terror rose a few degrees when Carlos shuddered as if an electric current had gone through him. He grabbed Francesca's hand and held it in a death grip.

“Can't make San Pedro,” he said, his voice a wet rattle.

“You've got to,” Francesca said.

“No use.”

“Damn it, Carlos, you and your partner got us into this mess, and you're going to get us out of it!”

He smiled vacantly. “What are you going to do, senhora, shoot me?”

Her eyes blazed. “You'll wish I had if you don't get this thing down.”

He shook his head. “Emergency landing. Our only chance. Find a place.”

The big cockpit window offered a view of the thick-grown rain forest. Francesca had the feeling she was flying over a vast unbroken field of broccoli. She scanned the endless greenery again. It was hopeless. Wait. Sunlight glinted off something shiny.

“What's that?” she said, pointing.

Carlos disconnected the auto pilot and auto throttles, took the wheel in his hands, and steered toward the reflection, which came from the sun glinting off a giant waterfall. A narrow, meandering river came into view. Alongside the river was an irregularly shaped clearing of yellow and brown vegetation.

Flying almost on automatic himself, Carlos passed the open area and set up a thirty-degree banking turn to the right. He extended the wing flaps and put the plane in a boxlike flight pattern. With a hard right he prepared the plane for its final approach. They were at eighteen hundred feet, descending on a long, shallow glide. Carlos extended the wing flaps to slow them down further.

“Too low!” he growled. The treetops were rushing at them. With superhuman strength born of desperation he reached out and gave the throttles more power. The plane began to rise.

Through blurred vision he scoped the final approach. His heart fell. It was a terrible landing field, small and lumpy, the size of a postage stamp. They were doing a hundred and sixty miles per hour. Too fast.

A soggy gasp escaped from his throat. His head lolled onto his shoulder. Blood gushed from his mouth. The fingers that had clutched the wheel so tightly were curled in a useless death grip. It was a tribute to his skill that in his last moments he had trimmed the plane perfectly. The jet maintained trim, and when it hit the ground, it bounced into the air a few times like a stone skipped across water.

There was an ear-splitting shriek of tortured metal as the bottom of the fuselage made contact with the earth. The friction between the plane and the solid earth slowed it down, but it was still going more than a hundred miles an hour, the fuselage cutting through the ground like the blade of a plow. The wings snapped off, and the fuel tanks exploded, leaving twin black and orange swaths of fire in the plane's wake for another thousand feet as it hurtled toward a bend in the river.