* * *
The young girl clung to John Berry as he stood in the aisle of the forward cabin of the stricken airliner. The din from the Straton’s engines and the noise of air rushing past the two holes in its fuselage filled the cabin, yet Berry could still hear the girl’s sobs and feel her wet tears against his arm. He was thankful for her physical presence. Facing the nightmare alone would have been too much. Any companion, even a child, was better than none.
Berry’s first notion that something unforeseen would break into their moment of tranquillity came from a muffled noise from behind. Berry, still holding the child, turned.
“Down!” he yelled, and he shoved the girl into an empty center row of seats. A tall and muscular man with wild eyes rushed toward them, a jagged section of a serving tray held high in his right hand. The people who had followed the man up the aisle stopped a few rows before reaching Berry and the girl. They seemed more curious than aggressive. They stood in mute wonder, watching the encounter in front of them.
The man yelled incoherently. His facial muscles were contorted with hatred, and sweat covered his forehead. Somehow, in his damaged brain, the man had formulated the thought that the young girl was crying because Berry had hurt her. The man would protect the young girl. He would kill Berry.
“Stop!” Berry screamed. As the man approached, Berry wheeled himself to one side. The jagged serving tray was flung harmlessly past him. Deranged and acting alone, the crazed man was no match for a normal adult. With a right uppercut against the man’s jaw, Berry knocked him backward across a row of seats.
John Berry stood in the center of the aisle. His right hand throbbed with pain, and for a few seconds, he thought he might have broken it. He rubbed his aching hand, and while he did he felt an awakening, a long-forgotten sense of pride. He had successfully defended himself and the girl.
Berry glared at the other passengers and raised his fists. It was an act, a show of force for the half dozen of them who stood around him watching. Inwardly, Berry wanted to run. But if they were to attack en masse, he would have no chance. Deranged or not, there were simply too many of them. Too much muscle. He hoped that his threatening gesture would be enough to keep them away.
In the minds of the passengers, rivulets of rational thoughts ran across arid areas of damaged brain cells. They could still sense personal fear, and it had caused them, one by one, to back off. Berry thanked God that they did not have enough presence of mind to gang up against him. Not yet, anyway.
Berry took the young girl’s arm and ushered her toward the circular staircase.
“You okay, mister?” she asked.
“Yes.” His heart pounded, and his mouth was dry. He flexed his fingers and could tell that nothing had been broken. He would need to be careful. If he allowed himself to be hurt, they would be defenseless. He would get himself some sort of weapon as soon as he could, and get one for the girl, too.
Berry inhaled deeply and felt his body begin to calm. “Keep your eyes open. Stay alert.”
“Okay,” she answered.
They climbed up the staircase and into the upper lounge. The stairway creaked under their feet.
The scene in the lounge was a welcome relief from the madness below. Except for the dangling oxygen masks, everything appeared normal at first glance. But as they walked through the lounge, the abnormalities became obvious.
There were nine people in the upper lounge, and Berry’s impression was that they were asleep. Then he noticed that they sat in tensed and contorted positions. On their faces they wore expressions of soul-chilling terror. Two of them, a flight attendant and an old woman, were semiconscious.
The flight attendant leaned against the bar and ranted nonsensically. She had a crazed look in her eyes, and she groped spastically at the edges of the bar to maintain her balance. Berry could see from her name tag that she was Terri O’Neil. He had noticed her during the morning snack service. A little more than a half hour before, she had been serving food and drinks in the first-class cabin, and now she could hardly stand straight. Berry turned away.
On the other side of the lounge was the old woman. She was stroking the head of her husband as he lay face down across the table in front of her. She spoke to his dead body in singsong tunes, the snatches of her pathetic and childlike words filling Berry’s ears.
Three men and two women sat on a horseshoe-shaped couch near the piano. They all wore oxygen masks, and they looked unconscious. A man wearing the black glasses of the blind sat near them, his arms outstretched in a futile search for the oxygen mask that dangled only inches to his left. He appeared to be dead.
The opened cockpit door was a dozen feet ahead, and Berry could see that all of the crew were slumped over in their seats. With each step Berry slowed his pace, reluctant to enter the cockpit.
Finally, he stepped across the threshold. All three of the pilots were unconscious.Pull yourself together , Berry thought.
The young girl stood directly behind him. She said, “No one’s steering.”
“It’s automatic. Like an elevator.” The flight controls moved gently in unison, responding to small electronic commands of the gyrostabilized autopilot to keep the aircraft on its programmed course.
The girl looked around the cockpit and saw Carl Fessler’s lifeless body draped across his desk. She could hear the hissing sounds that came from the continuous flow of oxygen pouring out of his dislodged mask. She took a step backward and looked in wonder at him.
Berry was hardly aware of the girl. He had guessed correctly at Fessler’s condition as soon as he saw that the engineer’s mask was off. The Captain, who was still strapped to his oxygen mask, was Berry’s concern. He approached the man and tried to shake him into consciousness. Their survival depended on it.
Captain Alan Stuart was breathing, but comatose. Slowly, Berry accepted the fact that the Captain was probably beyond help.
Berry looked toward the copilot. He, too, was unconscious. Berry and the girl had survived this far, only to discover that there was no one left to fly the aircraft.
Berry glanced around the cockpit. The walls that surrounded the pilot stations were crammed with instruments. He understood some of what he saw, but entire panels and rows of gauges were a total mystery. The difference between a giant jetliner and his four-seat private propeller airplane was like the difference between an airliner and the Space Shuttle. All they had in common was that, on occasion, they flew through the sky.
John Berry knew that he could not fly this huge supersonic aircraft. He was backed against an insurmountable wall of anguish and despair. All he now cared about was their immediate survival—to stay alive within the confines bounded by the sweep second hand of the cockpit clock.
The copilot stirred in his seat and his arm swung off his lap. It fell, with a thud, onto the center console. Berry held his breath while he waited to see what would happen. If the man moved again, he might inadvertently disengage the autopilot or do some other harm to their stable flight condition. In that maze of switches, Berry knew that he could not hope to find the proper combination to set things straight.
“Quick. Help me get him out of the seat,” he said to the girl. She came over and grabbed clumsily at the copilot’s legs as Berry lifted McVary’s limp body out of the chair.
“Don’t let him touch the controls.”
“I won’t.” She raised his feet above the equipment on the center console as Berry lugged the man backward.
“I’ll do the lifting. Don’t let his legs touch anything.” Once they had cleared the center console, Berry let the copilot’s feet drag on the floor as he pulled the man back into the lounge.
“Is he sick?” the girl asked. She could see that he was not dead. He was breathing and his head occasionally swayed from side to side, although his eyes were shut.
“Yes. Lay him there. Pull his legs out straight. Give me that pillow.” Berry propped the pillow under the copilot’s head. He rolled back the man’s eyelids. The pupil
s seemed dilated, although he wasn’t sure. Berry looked at the girl. “He might get better. Make him comfortable. That’s all we can do.”
“I’ll get a blanket.” She pointed to one wedged beneath a nearby seat.
Berry nodded. The copilot might come out of it, at least enough to help Berry fly the airplane. With the copilot talking him through it, Berry thought he might be able to steer the 797. Maybe.
The young girl brought the blanket over. The two of them knelt in the center of the upper lounge and busied themselves at making McVary comfortable. Berry glanced back at the cockpit. He knew that, shortly, he would have to get the girl to help him take the unconscious Captain out of his seat, and also drag the lifeless body of the flight engineer out of the cockpit. But he could put those things off for a few more minutes. In the meanwhile, he focused his attention on the copilot. He was, without question, their best hope.
Berry asked the girl, “What’s your name?”
“Linda. Linda Farley.”
“Are you alone?”
“Yes.”
“How old are you?”
“I’ll be thirteen in four days. …”
Her voice trailed off, and Berry forced a smile. He thought,Happy birthday, Linda .
Berry and Linda worked on making First Officer Daniel McVary as comfortable as they could. They remained oblivious to the aircraft outside the cabin windows that had flown within sixty feet of where they knelt.
* * *
“Homeplate, I see no life in the cabin.” Matos split his attention between the long row of windows and the technical needs of flying a close formation. His hands played constantly with the throttles and control stick as he made the corrections to keep his F-18 as near to the Straton’s port side as he dared.
His position in the formation was a little higher than optimum, but to put his aircraft in direct line with the fuselage windows would have been tricky. The airflow across the Straton’s giant supersonic wing made that region too turbulent. Matos opted to fly in the smoother area a dozen feet higher.
“It’s hard to see clearly. The cabin is dark. Stand by.” With the bright Pacific sunlight shining down on them, any attempt to look across the intervening distance through one of the small windows and into the cabin was bound to fail. Matos already knew that it would. His first guess had been that the two holes in the fuselage would give him a clear view. But they did not. Too much debris and too many shadows. Even if someone were alive, they certainly couldn’t be expected to get close to the holes. The wind alone would keep them back. Matos knew that all he could hope to see were those people who wanted to be seen. Those on the 797—if anyone was left alive—would need to press themselves against the windows to become visible. Once they moved a foot or two back they would vanish into the relative darkness inside.
Surely they would try to be seen. They would want to get Matos’s attention. To get Matos’s help.
“Okay, Matos. Nothing in the cabin. Go to the cockpit.” Sloan’s voice was again impatient. Commanding. Bullying, according to most of theNimitz ’s pilots. The man obviously wanted the job done quickly. For what purpose, Matos could not even guess. He wondered for a moment what sort of orders he would receive next.
Matos nudged the throttles and maneuvered his aircraft slowly forward. As he passed the widest section of the Straton’s fuselage, he inched his F-18 to the right, placing his wingtip within a dozen feet of the 797’s flight deck.
As he finished his maneuvering, something caught his eyes. He had been directing most of his attention toward his wingtip clearance, but suddenly he had an impression of movement. Something on the Straton’s flight deck.Someone in the cockpit. Someone alive , Matos said to himself.
He stared intently at the Straton. The relative narrowness of the cockpit and its broad expanse of glass made it easier to see into than the cabin.Far side. Copilot’s seat .
Something on the right side of the 797’s cockpit had moved. At least he thought that it had. Now he was not sure. On closer scrutiny, he could see nothing. No one. If anyone was still there, they were slumped down below the window line.
It must have been a reflection. A glint of sunlight. A distortion in the cockpit glass. No one alive, Matos thought. He sat there for another minute and looked at the Straton, then he maneuvered the F-18 outboard and slightly away.
Lieutenant Peter Matos’s emotional wound had reopened. “Homeplate. There is no one in the cockpit. There is no one alive.” As much as he tried to control himself, Matos could not be the uninvolved technician any longer. His heart had risen to his throat.Es tu culpa, Pedro .
The F-18 slackened its formation on the Straton. It drifted aft. As it did, it flew alongside the upper lounge and within sixty feet of the rows of windows that lined it. Unable to force himself to look at the devastated Straton airliner any longer, Peter Matos kept his eyes focused straight ahead.
5
* * *
Jack Miller sat at his long, functionally modern desk in the center of the starkly lit, windowless room. He glanced at the wall clock—11:37—then looked over at his assistant, Dennis Evans, who sat at a smaller desk, flipping desultorily through some papers. “I’m breaking for lunch in five minutes, Dennis.”
Evans glanced up from his desk. “Okay.”
The Trans-United Airlines dispatching office at San Francisco International Airport was experiencing its usual midday lull. The morning departures were well into their routines, and it was too early to begin the flight plans for the late-afternoon trips. The half-dozen dispatchers read newspapers, their assistants made an attempt to look occupied, and the junior aides tried to appear busy and eager.
Miller yawned and stretched. After twenty-eight years at Trans-United, he had enough seniority to get the two things he’d always wanted: a nine-to-five dispatcher’s shift, and assignment to the Pacific desk. Now that he had them both, he was bored. He almost yearned for the night shift and the more hectic South American desk again. Such was life.
Miller flipped absently through the pages of hisSports Illustrated , then laid it aside. He looked at his computer console, at the display of assigned trips. He was, at that moment, responsible for monitoring only four flights: 243 from Honolulu, 101 from Melbourne, 377 to Tahiti, and 52 to Tokyo.
The weather across the Pacific routes was good, and all the flights had ample reserve fuel. No problems. Not much to do. On days like this, he found himself watching the clock. Miller’s eye caught an empty entry on his display screen. He regarded the blank column for a second. “Dennis.” He spoke in a voice that years of practice had trained to penetrate the ambient sounds of the room without actually rising above the noise. “Dennis, did you forget 52’s update?”
“Hold on.” The young man walked over to a stack of computer messages on a countertop and leafed through them. He went through them a second time, more slowly. He looked up and called across the room. “Didn’t get one. It’s overdue. Want me to send a request?”
Miller didn’t like Dennis Evans’s choice of the word “overdue.”Overdue connoted something quite different fromlate in airline parlance. Miller looked at the wall clock. The fuel and position report was only a few minutes behind schedule. Late. It was purely routine. Minor information. Yet Miller would not, under any circumstances, turn anything over to Evans that wasn’t perfect. Twenty years before, he had left an open item on his sheet and gone to dinner. When he returned, he’d found the dispatcher’s office full of company executives. One of their new Boeing 707s had gone down somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico. That was the night that the euphemism “overdue” became clear.
Miller glanced back at the wall clock, then at the computer screen again. He didn’t like it, but he wasn’t overly concerned. “Well … we’ve got time.” He punched the computer keys to get a different screen, then looked down at the names of the crew. He was familiar enough with the name Alan Stuart. Like a lot of modern business relationships, this one was totally electronic. Just a voice on the telephone
and the radio. Yet he felt he knew the man, and he knew that Flight 52’s captain was dependable. Miller wasn’t familiar with the other names on the crew list, but he knew that Stuart ran a tight ship. Miller was certain that Stuart would soon discover the oversight and send an update. Bugging a pilot, especially a conscientious one like Stuart, was the quickest way to become a disliked dispatcher, and Jack Miller had no intention of doing anything like that during the remainder of his career. It was the sort of stunt that Evans was noted for. He looked up at Evans, who was going through the messages again. “We’ll get the update soon. If we don’t, then …” Miller paused and considered. He didn’t want to request Flight 52’s updates by relaying a message through air-traffic control for everyone to hear. His eyes fixed on the door to the small glass-enclosed communications room that housed the data-link machine. “If we don’t hear from them by, say, twelve o’clock, type out a request to them on the link.”
Evans grunted a reply. The radio was faster and easier than the data-link—sometimes link messages just didn’t get through—but Miller was always concerned with discretion and politeness. If a captain was sitting on his thumb up there, he ought to be called on the radio and told about it. Evans pushed the computer messages aside and sat back at his desk.
Miller glanced at the computer screen again, then punched a button to turn off the display. “It’s a nice day out there,” he called to Evans. “They’re drinking coffee and daydreaming.”
Evans mumbled something as he worked on another flight’s data.
Miller watched the clock. The room became still except for the background noises of the electronics. Miller focused on the sweep second hand. He was accustomed to this kind of waiting, but it always made him uneasy. Like the times his wife was overdue. Late. Or his teenaged son or daughter. The clock moved, not slowly, but quickly, at times like this, running through the minutes, making the awaited party more awaited. Making one wonder all sorts of things.
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