Berry froze. The woman’s face, which appeared unmarked and unhurt, turned. Beneath the falls of her blonde hair was the bloody stump of her neck.
Berry turned his eyes away. His throat constricted and he began to gag. His heart pounded. For a moment, he thought that he might pass out. He closed his eyes and steadied himself against the bulkhead.
John Berry looked to the front of the airliner. At first glance it seemed normal enough, except that oxygen masks dangled from the overhead compartments above each seat. Briefcases and pieces of clothing were jammed in the corners. But what caught his attention was the thing that was glaringly absent: life. The passengers sat motionless in their seats, like a display of mannequins strapped into the mock-up of an airplane.
Berry walked to where his seat had been. In the row ahead was a man Berry had exchanged friendly words with. Pete Brandt, from Denver, he recalled. Berry reached for the man’s wrist and felt for a pulse. Nothing. He put his hand up to Brandt’s mouth. He felt no breathing.
Berry looked around and then realized that Brandt, and all those seated within five rows of him, had no oxygen masks. For some reason the masks had failed to drop from the compartment above each seat in that section. Berry looked down at the seat he had been in. No mask.I’d be dead , he thought.
He turned around and looked across the cabin. Most of the passengers on that side had their oxygen masks strapped on. Berry went directly toward the row where a balding, elderly man was seated. They had nodded politely to each other when they had boarded the flight.
Even before Berry laid his hand against the man’s chest, he knew. The white clamminess of his flesh and his frozen facial expression told Berry he was dead. Fear and agony were etched into his face. Yet he wore an oxygen mask, and Berry could feel the trickle of life-sustaining air still being pumped through its plastic tube. Then why had he died?
Berry looked to the next man. It was Isaac Shelbourne, traveling with his wife. Berry knew the famous pianist by sight and had recognized him while they waited to board. He had hoped to strike up a conversation with him during the flight.
Berry laid his hand on Shelbourne’s shoulder. The man stirred.Alive , Berry thought, and his heart filled with hope. He could hear Shelbourne mumble incoherently beneath his oxygen mask, and Berry slipped the mask off the man’s face.
He grabbed Shelbourne’s shoulders with both his hands and shook him. “Wake up,” he said in a loud voice. He shook him again, more violently. Shelbourne’s eyes were open, but his gaze was blank. The pianist’s eyes teared and blinked involuntarily. Saliva ran out from one corner of his mouth. Sounds emanated from the depths of his throat, but they were no more than unintelligible noises.
“Shelbourne!” Berry screamed, his own voice taking on an ominous sound as it cracked. In a sickening moment, Berry understood how totally and irrevocably impaired Isaac Shelbourne was.
Berry looked around the cabin. Others had awakened, and they too exhibited the same signs that Shelbourne had: dysfunctional speech, spastic muscular action, and no apparent capacity for rational thought.Brain damage! The hideousness of that notion hit Berry full force. He released his grip on the man he had attempted to revive.
John Berry took a few steps away from where he stood. He was now both afraid and revoited. The people in the cabin were apparently all brain damaged. He understood that a sustained lack of oxygen could do that. Having an oxygen mask on was evidently not enough protection. Vaguely, he recalled an article about pressure versus the percentage of oxygen. Above a certain altitude, even pure oxygen wasn’t enough.No pressure, no flow , was the line he remembered. He wondered if it applied to the Straton’s cruise altitude. Sixty-two thousand feet. Yes, that was it. Of course. They had been traveling in subspace.
He knew for certain that everyone he had seen without an oxygen mask was dead, and those who had worn them had lived—only to become brain damaged. Yet he was alive, and capable of rational thought—and he had not worn an oxygen mask. Why had he not been affected? The idea that the brain damage might be progressive jarred him. His mind might still begin to fade, as the result of oxygen deprivation began to have its effect.
Nine times seven is sixty-three, he said to himself.Newton’s first law concerns bodies at rest . He was rational. That was no illusion. He had the impression that brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation was not progressive. He was sure of that. At least he felt that he was sure of it.
Some of the passengers had gotten up from their seats. Berry saw that those who moved around were disabled to varying degrees. Some had difficulty walking, while others seemed to move normally. But up close, he could see that even those who retained normal muscular control had been affected; he could see it in their eyes.
Berry stepped aside to allow a college-age boy to move down the aisle. The boy stumbled a few times. Several feet past Berry he suddenly stood rigidly up-right, then fell to the floor. His body writhed in convulsions. An epileptic seizure. Berry remembered that he should do something to prevent the boy from swallowing his tongue. But he could not bring himself to step toward him. He turned away feeling disgusted and helpless.
A young girl, hardly more than eleven or twelve, moved slowly down the aisle. She had come from somewhere in the rear of the airplane. Her face showed that she was afraid, and that she understood the horror. She turned to Berry.
“Mister. Can you hear me? Do you understand me?” Her voice was tenuous and her face was covered with tears.
“Yes” was all that he could think to reply.
They looked at each other for a brief, intense moment. In a flash of recognition, she suddenly understood that Berry was like her and not like the others. He was no threat. She ran up to him, buried her face in his chest, and began to cry.
“We’ll be okay,” Berry said. His words were as much for himself as for her. For the first time since he had awakened he allowed himself a small measure of emotion. “Thank God,” he said to himself, choking back tears of gratitude for this small miracle. The child continued to cry, but more softly. He held her small, tense body against his.
While his attention was focused on the young girl, he failed to notice that several of the passengers had gotten up and were moving toward them. John Berry and the girl huddled together in the center of the forward cabin as the silent passengers encircled them.
* * *
Commander James Sloan was transfixed by the radio message that had come from his pilot. He stared at the towering panel of electronic gear as if he expected to find a way out of the situation in its switches and meters. Yet there was nothing on the console but the neutral data of frequencies and signal strengths. What Sloan wanted to know was available from only one source.
“Matos, are you sure?” Sloan asked. His perspiring hands gripped the microphone. His normally stern voice had a strange, new tone woven through it, and his words sounded out of place.
There was no immediate response from the F-18, and while he stood in the silent electronics room, Commander James Sloan realized that he was suddenly afraid. It was an emotion he was not accustomed to, and one he seldom allowed himself to experience. But too much had happened too quickly. “Matos,” he said again, “take your time. Look again. Be absolutely certain.”
Retired Rear Admiral Randolf Hennings, who had remained silent since Matos had sent his first startling message, stepped closer to the radio. He could hear the loud rhythm of his own heartbeat, and he was sure that Sloan could hear it too.
But James Sloan was not listening. His entire universe had shrunk. There was nothing he cared about now except the words that were about to come through the radio speaker. There was no other inroad to his thoughts.
“There’s no doubt, Commander,” Matos’s transmission began.
Sloan’s face went pale. He listened to the remainder of the pilot’s message through a filter of personal static, as his mind raced.
“It’s right in front of me. I’m only fifty feet in trail. Trans-United, a Straton 7
97. There’s a three-foot hole on its port side, and another hole in the starboard fuselage. The starboard hole is bigger—three or four times as big. I don’t see any movement in the cockpit or the cabin.”
Sloan stood with his eyes shut, both his hands laid against the console. He had not been face-to-face with fear since he was a young boy. All his body muscles tensed and he wanted to run, to bolt from the room and get away. He wanted to shake himself awake from the incredible nightmare.
“Now what?” Randolf Hennings finally asked, his mild voice barely breaking the silence. “What can we do? What should we do?”
Sloan slowly opened his eyes, then turned his head to stare at Hennings. As he held eye contact with the Admiral, James Sloan pulled himself out of the deepest emotional pit of his life. He had very nearly lost his self-control. The Commander’s frown had returned, as had his iron-willed expression and bearing.
“What do you suggest, Admiral?” Sloan asked in an obviously sarcastic tone; he was goading the old man. Hennings appeared puzzled. Sloan waved his hand nonchalantly. “Perhaps we should take a walk below-decks. We could lock ourselves in the brig. Better yet, let’s go to the officers’ ward room. They’ve got a nice pair of ceremonial swords on the wall. We could take them down and fall on them.”
Hennings uttered an unintelligible sound that showed his surprise.
“Listen, Admiral,” Sloan continued, “we’ve got to evaluate this situation realistically. Figure out precisely where we stand. The last thing we want is to rush off to do something we’ll regret. Something bad for the Navy.”
Sloan hoped he had not pushed the old man too far. Or too quickly. Still, it was his only chance. Without Hennings along, there was no way he could pull off some sort of cover-up. Sloan had done it once before, when, because of a foul-up, one of his pilots had shot up a Mexican fishing boat. The responsibility for that one might have wound up in Sloan’s lap, so he moved quickly to fix it. It had taken only a quick helicopter ride and a small pile of Yankee greenbacks. This one would require more. Much more. But it could still be done.
“I don’t know what you mean. What is it you want to do?” Hennings finally asked.
Sloan sat down in the seat in front of the console. He took out a cigarette. He took his time lighting it, then inhaled deeply. He swiveled the seat around to face Hennings and sat back.
“Let’s list the obvious things first,” Sloan said. His words were slow, full measured, and carefully picked. “Neither of us wanted this. It was a pure accident. God only knows how it happened. That area was supposed to be clear of air traffic. I checked it myself this morning.”
Sloan paused. Procedures had required him to recheck, in case of a last-minute change. He had tried, but he hadn’t been able to get through on the normal channels, even on the patch. The chance that a flight would have altered its course during the short time he was without a clear channel was minuscule. Less than minuscule. Yet ithappened , Sloan thought. He managed to dispel the miscalculation with a simple shrug of his shoulders, then returned his attentions to Hennings. “How that aircraft got there is beyond me. I guess our luck was super-bad.”
“Our luck?” Hennings said. “What the hell’s the matter with you? What about that airliner? It’s got people aboard. Women and children.” The old man’s face was red and his hands trembled. The volume of his voice filled the room and made it seem smaller than it was. Hennings had the sudden disquieting sensation of being closed in. The smallness of the electronics room had trapped him, and he desperately wanted to go above-decks.
James Sloan sat motionless. He continued to wear the same ambiguous expression. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s a tragedy. But it’s not ourfault .” Sloan stopped speaking for a moment to let his words sink in. He took another deep drag on his cigarette. He knew that it was his fault, at least partially. But that was beside the point.
Hennings looked down at Sloan in disbelief. “Are you somehow suggesting that we pretend this never happened?” He was beginning to wonder if Sloan was insane. For a person to even entertain such wild notions seemed evidence enough of insanity. “We’ve got to help those people.”
Sloan leaned closer to Hennings. “That’s the point, Admiral. There are no people.”
A dead quiet hung between the two men. Numbers paraded by on the digital clock, but time stood still. Finally, the Admiral shook his head. He did not understand. “But it’s an airliner,” he said. “Trans-United. It’s got to have passengers. It must have a crew.”
“No, Admiral. Not anymore.” Sloan was choosing his words carefully. “The impact of the missile punctured two holes in their pressurized shell. At sixty-two thousand feet, they couldn’t survive. They’re dead, Admiral. All dead.”
Sloan sat back and watched as the words registered on the old man. Sloan had known, as soon as he had begun to think clearly again, that the hole made by the Phoenix missile would make the aircraft decompress. A decompression at 62,000 feet would be fatal.
Hennings’s expression had changed. Shock had been replaced by pain. “Dead? Are you sure?” he asked.
“Certainly.” Sloan waved his hand in a gesture of finality. But he knew that there was still a measure of technical doubt. If he let those doubts surface, they would erode his resolve and eat away at the basics of his plan. He knew that Hennings would need an excuse to go along with a cover-up. He figured that the old manwanted an excuse. Sloan would be happy to provide one. More than likely, everyone aboard that airliner was already dead—or soon would be. The harm had already been done. It was now a matter of saving himself. And the mission. And, of course, the reputation of the Navy, which needed all the help it could get these days.
Sloan leaned closer to Hennings. “I know that Matos won’t say anything. He’s in this with us. We do no good by turning ourselves in. This was an accident. If the truth came out, the entire Navy would suffer.”
Sloan cleared his throat. He took a few seconds to gauge how Hennings was reacting. So far, Sloan still had him. Hennings had nodded in agreement. The good of the Navy was his soft spot. It was worth remembering. Sloan might need to play on it again, now that he was coming to the sensitive part.
“Our best bet,” he continued, “is to have Matos put his second missile into the … target. It’s being flown by its autopilot. At close range, he could direct his missile toward the Straton’s cockpit. It would wipe out the ship’s controls.” The coup de grace to the back of the neck, he wanted to say, but didn’t. “It will go down. No evidence. Just a sudden disappearance in mid-Pacific. Terrorists. A bomb. Structural failure. We’d be off the hook. The Navy—”
“No!” Hennings shouted, pounding his fist on the console. “It’s insane. Criminal. We’ve got to help them. They could still be alive. They’ve probably sent out distress signals. More than just the three of us know. Everyone knows.” Hennings pointed to the radio equipment. “They must have sent an SOS.”
“That’s not true, Admiral.” The conversation between them had taken on the atmosphere of a debate, and James Sloan was not unhappy about that. He had hardly expected to reach an agreement with Hennings without some sort of fight. Hennings was still talking and deliberating, and that was a good sign. Now all Sloan had to do was find the right words.
“We monitor both international emergency channels on these two sets,” Sloan said, pointing to two radio receivers at the top of the console. “There’s been nothing from them. You’ve heard that for yourself. Our shipboard communications center, down in CIC on the 0-1 level, would instantly get any word of a problem from ships or planes anywhere near here. We even get the routine stuff. Things like ships with minor leaks and aircraft with minor equipment difficulties. There’s no way that a distress message was sent from that aircraft without our CIC getting involved in it. The CIC duty officer would immediately call me if he had gotten something.”
“But what about the people?” Hennings said. “We just can’t assume that they’re dead.”
“
Matos reported that he saw no activity. There was no one in the cockpit. He can get within fifty feet of that aircraft. If there’s no one visible, it’s because they’re dead. Slumped in their seats.”
“Well … I don’t know,” Hennings said. What Sloan said seemed to make sense, although he wondered for an instant if the Commander was being completely honest. Hennings wanted to do what was best for the Navy. The accident was a monumental tragedy. But, as Sloan pointed out, nothing could change that. Nothing could erase the errors, oversights, and coincidences to bring those people back. Disgracing the Navy was the last thing he wanted to do. Hennings’s friends in the Pentagon would be exposed. He knew that they were vulnerable, since the testing had not been authorized. He realized that he, too, was in an impossible position if the truth became known. The faces of his old friends in the Pentagon flashed through his mind.Protect the Navy. Protect the living , Hennings thought.
“Admiral,” Sloan said, sensing that Hennings could now be pushed to the conclusion he had steered him toward, “I understand your reservations. Your points are valid. I want to check them out. I’ll call down to CIC to be sure that no emergency message was sent by the Straton. Then we’ll get Matos to take another look. A close look. If he reports that there’s no one alive, then we know what we need to do.”
As Sloan reached across the desk for the direct telephone to CIC, he kept his eyes riveted on Hennings. Sloan was playing the percentages. He wanted to cement the retired Admiral into the conspiracy. He needed him. The odds were low that Matos would be able to see any life aboard the Straton transport.
Hennings stood rigidly, every muscle of his body tensed. He watched as Sloan held the telephone. His eyes wandered to the digital clock. Half a minute ran off while his mind stayed as blank as theNimitz ’s gray walls. Hennings turned to Sloan. Everything seemed to be in a state of suspended animation, waiting for him. Finally, with a nearly imperceptible motion, retired Rear Admiral Randolf Hennings nodded his head.
Mayday Page 8