Mayday

by Nelson DeMille

  LIKE A GROWING TIDAL WAVE, THE ESCAPING AIR WAS GATHERING MOMENTUM.

  * * *

  A teenaged girl in aisle 18, seat D, near the port-side aisle, her seat dislocated by the original impact, suddenly found herself gripping her seat track on the floor, her overturned seat still strapped to her body. The seatbelt failed and the seat shot down the aisle. She lost her grip and was dragged after it. Her eyes were filled with horror as she dug her nails into the carpet, as the racing air pulled her toward the yawning hole that led outside.

  Her cries were unheard by even those passengers who sat barely inches away from her struggle. The noise of the escaping air was so loud that it was no longer decipherable as sound, but seemed instead a solid thing pounding at the people in their seats. …

  “Truly horrific … delicious terror … MAYDAY is a novel for the true connoisseur of disaster novels.”

  —New York Times Book Review

  OTHER NOVELS BY THE AUTHORS

  Nelson DeMille

  BY THE RIVERS OF BABYLON

  CATHEDRAL

  THE TALBOT ODYSSEY

  WORD OF HONOR

  THE CHARM SCHOOL

  THE GOLD COAST

  THE GENERAL’S DAUGHTER

  SPENCERVILLE

  PLUM ISLAND

  Thomas Block

  ORBIT

  AIRSHIP NINE

  FORCED LANDING

  OPEN SKIES

  SKYFALL

  MAYDAY

  * * *

  A NOVEL BY

  Nelson DeMille

  AND

  Thomas Block

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  WARNER BOOKS EDITION

  Copyright © 1979, 1998 by Nelson DeMille

  All rights reserved.

  This Warner Books Edition is published by arrangement with the author.

  Warner Books, Inc.

  1271 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Visit our Web site at http://www.twbookmark.com

  An AOL Time Warner Company

  ISBN 0-7595-8570-9

  First eBook edition: June 2002

  The authors would like to thank

  Mel Parker

  for his careful editing

  and his unwavering

  enthusiasm for this novel.

  About the Authors and the Book

  Thomas Block and Nelson DeMille met for the first time at Dutch Broadway Elementary School, in Elmont, Long Island, New York. They were both second graders, but due to some fluke in the system, Nelson was a full eighteen months Tom’s senior, an age difference that was advantageous to Nelson in Dutch Broadway School, but which became less important in their later years.

  Tom and Nelson successfully completed elementary school together, perfect products of the suburban 1950s. They entered Elmont Memorial Junior and Senior High School and became involved with numerous activities, such as football, track, wrestling, and operating the stage lights for school plays. Nelson was elected to student government, while Tom wrote a column for the school newspaper,The Elmont Oracle , which exposed corruption in student government. “That’s what friends are for,” said Tom recently.

  Tom had begun flying lessons when he was fourteen years old and obtained his pilot’s license at seventeen, the minimum legal age. Nelson, at Tom’s suggestion, started lessons when he was seventeen and got out of the flying business at eighteen, much to the relief of his flight instructor.

  After high school graduation in 1962, Tom attended Morehead State College in Kentucky, and Nelson attended Hofstra University in New York.

  Tom left college and pursued his aviation career, joining the former Mohawk Airlines at age nineteen, becoming the youngest airline copilot in the United States. Mohawk survived the experience and went on to become Allegheny Airlines, USAir, and subsequently US Airways. Today, Tom is a Senior Captain for US Airways, flying wide-body jets to Europe.

  Nelson completed three years at Hofstra and, bored, joined the United States Army in 1966 to see the world, not fully realizing there was a war heating up in Vietnam. Nelson went to Officer Candidate School, was commissioned a Second Lieutenant, and trained in Panama, then was assigned to lead an infantry platoon in Vietnam, where he served from October 1967 to November 1968 with the First Cavalry Division.

  Upon discharge, Nelson returned to Long Island, where Tom was living. Nelson went back to college and obtained his degree as Tom moved up the airline seniority ladder. Tom and Nelson discovered they both had developed an interest in writing. Tom had begun writing for aviation magazines, and soon became a columnist forFlying Magazine , the world’s largest-circulation aviation publication. Nelson began writing the Great American War Novel based on his combat experiences in Vietnam. Unfortunately, no one wanted to publish a VietnameseNaked and the Dead . Tom transferred to Pittsburgh in 1972, while Nelson remained on Long Island.

  In about the mid-1970s, Tom and Nelson began collaborating on general magazine pieces, none of which was published, but the experience of working together was a prelude of things to come. The years passed, and Tom became an internationally known aviation writer, while Nelson published a series of paperback novels.

  In 1977, Nelson began an ambitious novel,By the Rivers of Babylon , in which Arab terrorists hijack two El Al Concordes. Nelson soon discovered that he didn’t have the technical expertise to write the aviation scenes that were important to his novel, so he turned to his old friend Tom for help with those portions of the book.

  The process worked well, andBy the Rivers of Babylon became a Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection, aReader’s Digest Condensed Book, and a national and international bestseller.

  There is a section inBy the Rivers of Babylon that reads:Then there was the thing that bothered Becker from the first day he had taken the Concorde up to 19,000 meters. It was the problem of sudden cabin decompression of the type that can happen if you are hit by a missile, or if there is a small explosion on board, or if someone shatters a window with a bullet … at 19,000 meters, you needed a pressure suit to make breathing possible, even with an oxygen mask. Lacking pressure suits, you had only a few seconds of usable consciousness to get down to where you could breathe with a mask. There was no way to do that at 19,000 meters. You put the mask on, but you blacked out anyway. The onboard computer sensed the problem and brought the plane down nicely, but by the time you got down to where you could breathe with the mask, you woke up with brain damage.

  One day, Tom said to Nelson, “We should collaborate on a novel about the high-altitude decompression of a plane, and what happens to its passengers and its crew.” And thus was bornMayday .

  Tom and Nelson worked on the novel for over a year.Mayday was published in hardcover by G. P. Putnam in 1979 and was a critical and commercial success. The paperback appeared on bestseller lists across the country and around the world.

  Tom went on to publish five more aviation adventure novels, and Nelson went on to publish eight bestselling novels. Although they never collaborated again,Mayday was a fun and exciting experience for both of them, a convergence of their interests in writing as well as a friendship-strengthening episode for the two kids from Elmont, Long Island.

  Nelson has reached the pinnacle of success in his writing career, and Tom has done the same in his flying career and as an aviation magazine writer.

  While neither Tom nor Nelson has any immediate plans to collaborate again on a novel, they both felt thatMayday , a timeless and edge-of-the-seat tale of high-altitude terror, deserved to be republished.

  Working with me at Warner Books, Tom and Nelson updated some of the politics and technology in the story to bring it into
the ’90s.

  For old fans ofMayday , the authors hope this updated version is as immediate and exciting as the one you read in the late 1970s. For new readers, welcome to Flight 52. Fasten your seat belts and prepare for takeoff. You’ve never had a ride quite like this.

  MAYDAY!

  MELPARKER

  Publisher

  Warner Paperbacks

  MAYDAY

  * * *

  SUCCESS/FOUR FLIGHTS THURSDAY

  MORNING/ALL AGAINST TWENTY

  -ONE-MILE WIND/STARTED FROM

  LEVEL WITH ENGINE POWER ALONE/

  AVERAGE SPEED THROUGH AIR

  THIRTY-ONE MILES/LONGEST

  FIFTY-NINE SECONDS/INFORM

  PRESS/HOME CHRISTMAS

  * * *

  —Telegram to the Rev. Milton Wright,

  from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina,

  December 17, 1903

  1

  * * *

  Silhouetted against the deep blue horizon of the stratosphere, Trans-United Flight 52 cruised westbound toward Japan.

  Below, Captain Alan Stuart could see pieces of the sunlit Pacific between the breaks in the cloud cover. Above was subspace—an airless void without sun or life. The continuous shock wave generated by the giant craft’s supersonic airspeed rose invisibly off its wings and fell unheard into the mid–Pacific Ocean.

  Captain Stuart scanned his instruments. It had been two hours and twenty minutes since the flight had departed San Francisco. The Straton 797 maintained a steady Mach-cruise component of 1.8—930 miles per hour. The triple inertial navigation sets with satellite updating all agreed that Flight 52 was progressing precisely according to plan. Stuart picked up a clipboard from the flight pedestal between himself and the copilot, looked at their computer flight plan, then glanced back at the electronic readout of position: 161 degrees, 14 minutes west, 43 degrees 27 minutes north—2100 miles west of California, 1500 miles north of Hawaii. “We’re on target,” he said.

  First Officer Daniel McVary, the copilot, glanced at him. “We should be landing at Chicago within the hour.”

  Stuart managed a smile. “Wrong map, Dan.” He didn’t care for cockpit humor. He unfolded the chart for today’s mid-Pacific high-altitude navigation routes and laid it on his lap, studying it slowly with the motions of a man who had more time than duties. The chart was blank except for lines of longitude and latitude and the current flight routes. Flight 52 had long left behind any features that mapmakers could put on a chart. Even from their aerie of over twelve miles altitude, there was no land to be seen over this route. Captain Stuart turned to First Officer McVary. “Did you get the fourth and fifth sectors in?”

  “Yes. Updates, too.” He yawned and stretched.

  Stuart nodded. His mind drifted back to San Francisco. His hometown. He’d done a television talk show the previous morning. He’d been anxious about it and, like an instant replay, snatches of the conversation kept running through his brain.

  As usual, the interviewer had been more interested in the Straton than in him, but he’d become accustomed to that. He ran through the standard spiel in his mind. The Straton 797 was not like the old British/ French Concorde. It climbed to the same altitude the Concorde did, but it flew a little slower. Yet it was measurably more practical. Armed with some aerodynamic breakthroughs of the ’90s, the Straton engineers had aimed at less speed and more size. Luxury coupled with economy of operation.

  The aircraft held 40 first-class and 285 tourist-class passengers. For the interview, he remembered to mention the upper deck where the cockpit and first-class lounge were located. The lounge had a bar and piano. One day when he was feeling reckless he would tell an interviewer that it had a fireplace and pool.

  Stuart had spouted the advertising hype whenever he couldn’t think of anything else to say. The Straton 797 flew faster than the sun. Slightly faster than the rotational velocity of the earth.

  At a cruise speed of close to 1,000 miles per hour, Flight 52 should arrive in Tokyo at 7:15A.M. local time, though it had departed San Francisco at 8:00A.M. At least that was usually the case. Not today. They had departed San Francisco thirty-nine minutes late because of a minor leak in the number-three hydraulic system. While the mechanics changed the bad valve, Captain Stuart and his flight crew spent the delay time reviewing their computer flight profile. An updated winds aloft forecast had been sent to them, and Stuart had used the new wind information to revise his flight plan. They would fly south of the original planned routing to stay away from the worst of the newly predicted headwinds.

  Time en route would be only slightly greater than usual, at six hours and twenty-four minutes. It was still impressive; grist for the media’s mill. Across seven time zones and the International Date Line in less than a working man’s day. The marvel of the decade.

  But it was a little frightening. Stuart remembered the time he had been candid during a magazine interview. He had honestly explained the technical problems of supersonic flight at 62,000 feet, like the subtle effects of ozone poisoning and the periodic increases in radiation from sunspots. The interviewer had latched on to some of his points, exaggerated others, and had written an article that would have scared the hell out of a Shuttle astronaut. Stuart had been called in to speak to the Chief Pilot about his candor. Never again. “I did another one of those damned TV interviews. Yesterday morning.”

  McVary looked at him. “No kidding? Why didn’t you tell us? Not that I would have gotten up that early …”

  The junior pilot in the cockpit, Carl Fessler, who sat behind them at the relief copilot’s position, laughed.

  “Why do they always pick on you, Skipper?”

  Stuart shrugged. “Some idiot in public relations thinks I come across good. I’d rather fly through a line of thunderstorms than face a camera.”

  McVary nodded. Alan Stuart was every inch the image of the competent captain, from his gray hair to the crease in his pants. “I wouldn’t mind being on TV.”

  Stuart yawned. “I’ll suggest it to PR.” He looked around the flight deck. Behind McVary, Fessler was typing into a portable computer—an electronic equivalent of a ship’s log—with backup data from the instrument panel. McVary had returned to staring blankly ahead, his mind, no doubt, on personal matters.

  The usual mid-flight routines had laid their blue veil over the crew. The blue mid-Pacific blues. The doldrums, as they were called by seamen—but this ship was not becalmed as a ship caught in the doldrums. It was ripping along at close to the velocity of a bullet. Yet there was really nothing, at that moment, for the three pilots to do. At 62,000 feet, all the weather was beneath them. An hour before, they had flown over an area of bad weather. Some of the towering cumulus clouds had reached up high enough to at least give any of the crew and passengers who cared to look at them something to see. But there had not been even the slightest turbulence at those altitudes. Stuart would have welcomed a little bump, the way truck drivers did on a long haul across endless smooth blacktop. He glanced out the front window again. There was one thing to see that never ceased to fascinate him: the rounded horizon line that separated earth from sub-space.

  The autopilot made small and silent corrections to keep the flight on the preprogrammed course. Stuart listlessly laid two fingers of his right hand on the control wheel. He had not steered the 797 manually since right after takeoff. He would not use the control wheel again until the final moments of their landing approach at Tokyo.

  Carl Fessler looked up from his portable computer. He laid it down on the small table next to him. “What a lot of crap this backup data is. Most of the other airlines don’t do this crap anymore.”

  Stuart took his eyes off the horizon and glanced back at his relief copilot. “I bet we could find some eager young new-hire pilot to take your place. He’d probably type faster, too.” Stuart smiled, but he had been pointedly serious. He had little patience for the new breed. They had a job that was fifty times better than what had come before, yet they se
emed to complain constantly. Did they realize that thirty years ago Alan Stuart had to hand-plot each and every route segment before climbing into the copilot’s seat?Spoiled , Stuart said to himself. Telling them about it was a waste of time. “If we land in the teeth of a monsoon at Tokyo, you’ll earn your day’s pay, Carl.”

  McVary closed his copy ofPlayboy and put it into his flight bag. Reading was not authorized, and Stuart was starting to get into one of his Captain moods. “That’s right, Carl. Or if one of these lights starts blinking, we’ll find something useful for you to do real quick.”

  Fessler could see which way the wind was blowing. “You’re right. It’s a good job.” He swiveled his seat slightly toward the front. “In the meantime, are you guys any good at trivia? What’s the capital of Rwanda?”

  McVary looked back over his shoulder. “Here’s a trivia question for you. Which one of the stews has the hots for you?”

  Fessler suddenly looked alert. “Which one?”

  “I’m asking you.” He laughed. “Look, I’ll press the stew call button, and if fate brings you your secret lover, I’ll nod. If not … well, you have ten left to wonder about.” He laughed again, then glanced at Captain Stuart to read his mood. The old man seemed to be taking it well enough. “Skipper, anything for you?”

  “Might as well. Coffee and a pastry.”

  “Coffee for me,” Fessler said.

  McVary picked up the ship’s interphone and pushed the call button.