General had just apologized to the cameras, regretting that he had to shoot me, when this little old lady stood up and told him, “Put that gun down, sonny.” And it wasn’t so much that she dared to talk back to General, who probably weighed three times as much as she did, but it was the boldness with which she addressed him that seemed to tilt the entire axis of power in the cabin.
General gave a little chuckle, but I could tell by his face he was thrown off. “Who are you?” he demanded, and she smiled at him sweetly and answered, “You can call me Grandma Lucy. And I’m here to save this young woman’s life.”
I’d never been at the wrong end of a handgun before, and I’d certainly never witnessed some ninety-year-old grandma try to talk down a raving terrorist, but sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.
“If you need a hostage,” Grandma Lucy said, her voice as calm and patient as if she’d been discussing the roses in her garden, “why don’t you take me instead?”
I hadn’t expected General to look even more thrown off than he already did, but his expression at Grandma Lucy’s words proved me wrong.
“If you shoot me,” Grandma Lucy explained as if she were reciting Bible stories to a class of first-graders, “you’ll still get your point across, and you won’t have to worry about murdering someone so young and scared. As for me, I’ve been ready to see my Jesus for the past fifty years.”
She stood squarely between me and the gun, stuck out her chest, and waited.
I’d like to tell you about how I came to my senses, realized how selfish it would be to let this tiny four-foot-tall grandma take a bullet for me, but I was too stunned. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t talk.
Surprisingly, Grandma Lucy suffered from none of these problems.
“But before you kill me,” she began, “there’s something I’d like to tell you. Something your audience might be interested in hearing.”
He sneered at her. “Yeah? What’s that?” I could tell he was growing impatient.
Grandma Lucy’s voice rose in both volume and conviction. “That Jesus Christ is the risen Savior of the world. He is my shepherd, my redeemer, my healer, and my coming king. If you kill me, my soul will leave this broken jar of clay and enter into the presence of God. And since you’re doing me such a great honor, I want to return the favor.”
What was going on? Was she just stalling? And how in the world was it working? Who was this old white-haired lady? Was she a martyr, some kind of miracle worker, or was she just insane?
And then, believe it or not (did I mention before that truth is stranger than fiction?), this Grandma Lucy lady stretched out her hand, raised it to General’s forehead (I’m surprised she could actually reach that high), and she started to pray for him.
After everything happened, once the plane crash-landed and we all got evacuated, I looked for Grandma Lucy. Nobody was supposed to leave triage. Once we got our injuries taken care of, we had to answer all kinds of questions from the authorities.
But nobody knew where Grandma Lucy went.
I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but I’ll just go ahead and come right out and say it. Sometimes I’ve wondered if she was really some sort of angel sent to distract General. Because while she was praying and General was focused on her, Raul (remember Math Babe?) and a couple other passengers managed to rush him from behind. I swore to the feds doing the interviews later that I heard the gun go off, but apparently my mind must be filling in blanks because nobody else recalls anything like that, and there were no stray bullets anywhere in the cabin.
Go figure.
It just goes to show that I really can’t trust my memory at this point in the story because what I remember most vividly is a gunshot, a whole bunch of screams, and a scuffle that was over before I even realized I was still alive. General was subdued. The captain came on and assured us we were just a few minutes away from landing.
The nightmare was over.
That’s what we all wanted to believe at least.
But really the terror was just beginning.