Tod and Mike waited until after the two Middle Eastern men that had trouble answering the security questions had boarded the plane before they stood up and followed. "We'll follow them and convince the person in the seat next to them to let us sit there," Tod told Mike as they walked to the gate. "That way we'll be able to stop them before they can hurt anybody." He continued, "I remember what the pilot looks like, too. When I meditated I saw him sitting in the same section of the plane."

They walked down the plane, one on each side of the middle section of seats. They stopped at row 9 where they saw the two men sitting next to each other. Without too much trouble they were both able to sit next to the two men, trapping them in between them. As they were waiting for the plane to take off Tod scanned the section they were sitting in, looking for the terrorist pilot. It only took a short while before he saw another Middle Eastern man only two seats in front of him. He couldn't be positive, not having a good look at the man's face, but he was pretty sure this was the pilot.

After a few minutes of waiting and instructions from a flight attendant the plane took flight. About 20 minutes later the seatbelt light turned off and the pilot announced that they had reached their cruising altitude and would be arriving in Los Angeles in approximately six hours. Mike and Tod unbuckled their seat belts and waited anxiously for the two men between them or the terrorist pilot to make a move. After 10 minutes of anticipation the two men murmured something to each other that Tod and Mike couldn't understand. Then the two of them stood up and turned to the left to get out onto the aisle closest to Tod.

Tod stuck his foot out and grabbed the arm of the man in front of him, pulling him down face first into the aisle. At the same time Mike had stood up behind the other man and shoved him into the back of his tumbling friend. At the same time, the man that Tod suspected of being the terrorist pilot stood up. Grabbing a knife from the back pocket of the man Mike had shoved onto the ground; Tod jumped over the two of them and had the other man in an arm lock with a knife at his throat before he was even all the way into the aisle. "Don't even think about moving," he said.

Turning around, still holding the knife at the man's throat, Tod saw that the two men had gotten back up and were now facing Mike. The larger of the two lunged at Mike, but he ducked out of the way and flipped him over his back. However, in the process of doing this the other man had managed to tackle him. Holding Mike with one arm he started reaching towards his back pocket with the other. Mike head butted him and took advantage of the fact that the man had momentarily relaxed his grip on Mike. He lifted his body up and twisted, grabbing the knife out of the man's hand as he did so, and was now on top of him holding a knife. All around the passengers were screaming, not having known what exactly had happened, but that there was a fight and two teenagers were holding knives at the throats of other people.

Three flight attendants came running in, having heard all the screaming. They saw Tod and Mike holding knives to the necks of these two men and another man standing in between them looking back and forth between the two trying to decide what to do. A minute later another two flight attendants and the first officer also came running in. Mike and Tod tried to explain that these men were terrorists and that they had stopped them from hijacking the plane.

However, most of the passengers told the officer that those two had started the fight as soon as these men had stood up and that the men hadn't done anything to provoke it. The woman that had been sitting next to the terrorist pilot was holding a child, sobbing. She told the officer that the man in the arm lock with the knife at his throat was her husband and that he was just about to go to the bathroom when Tod attacked him.

The officer checked them and found that the only weapons any of the five people had were the two knives that Tod and Mike were holding. Tod claimed that they had grabbed the knives from the terrorists. However, it had all happened so quickly that none of the passengers really saw what happened. Some of them claimed that the other men never had any knives and that they had only seen Tod and Mike ever holding any knives.

The first officer took the knives from Tod and Mike and spent about 15 minutes listening to everybody's stories. After 15 minutes of listening to everybody accusing Tod and Mike and not hearing a single person defend them he decided to lock them up in the back of the plane. He grabbed Tod's arm and started pulling it behind his back so that he could handcuff him and take him into the back. Tom easily pulled his arm out of the officer's grip and turning around to face him said, "Whoa, wait a minute. If you don't believe us that's your choice, but don't lock us up and leave these other guys here free to hijack the plane."

"What makes you so convinced that these guys are going to hijack the plane," the officer asked them.

"I can't really explain how I know, but I do," Tod replied.

"What… are you some kind of racists? You think that just because they aren't white like you that they are terrorists?" he asked with disgust.

"Don't you accuse me of being racist," Tod shot back. "My step-dad is from Iraq. I know better than most that just because someone is different doesn't make them a terrorist. But these men are planning to hijack the plane and crash it into the World Trade Center," Tod said angrily.

"You expect me to believe that, but don't even give me any evidence or any reason at all to believe you. Besides, you two were the ones holding the knives and none of them had any sort of weapon."

"We already told you," Mike said impatiently, "We took the knives off of them."

"Doesn't add up," the officer said. "There are two knives and three of them, but only two of you. Why aren't there three knives if there are three terrorists?"

"Fine," Tod said. "Don't believe us if you don't want to. Go ahead and lock us up for the rest of the flight, we'll go willingly, but only if you lock these three up, too."

"I can't lock them up," the officer said irritated. "They haven't done anything, and there is no evidence that they are planning to. If I lock them up with two people who have already assaulted them I'd have a law suit to deal with."

"Better than being dead along with everybody else on this plane," Mike muttered.

"He's right," Tod said, waving his hand in front of the officer's face. "You don't want to leave any suspected terrorists free to hijack the plane. You want to lock all of us up. You can even handcuff us two to make sure we don't do anything else to these guys."

"You're right," he said looking at Mike. "I want to lock all of you up. I'll handcuff you two." With that Mike and Tod were handcuffed and the officer and flight attendants herded the five of them to the back of the airplane where they locked them up in some compartment.

A couple minutes after the officer had locked the door and left both Mike and Tod were out of their handcuffs. Tod reached into his pocket and grabbed his cell phone. He scrolled through his address book and called Sarah's phone. After a couple of rings she answered, "Hello."

"Hey, it's Tod. Can I talk to Nick?"

"Yeah, sure thing," she replied.