“Not only no, but hell no! I don’t want to die that fast. I’d probably have us upside down before you could scream.”
Geoffrey Sampson had quietly placed his hands on the control yoke. “Let me give this a go, Dan.”
“You mean, try to fly it?” Dan asked.
“Indeed. Ms. Nielson? Would you assist me with the readings?”
“You bet your British backside I’ll help you,” she said, as Dan took his hands off the yoke and retrieved the interphone handset, punching up the PA.
Folks, this is me again, your pilot, Dan Wade. Obviously … the landing attempt was a disaster, and I’m terribly sorry. There was a lightning strike just as we approached the runway, and it knocked out the instrument landing system … and, ah, the automatic pilot can’t land that way. We drifted off the runway and clipped the top of a radio tower and lost number-two engine on the left wing and now all of our radios are gone, and somehow … I’ve got to find a place to land and figure out how to do it without eyesight and without contact with the ground. I’ll … talk to you again when we’ve got a plan worked out.
When something had crunched through the forward fuselage, Britta had jumped to her feet and raced downstairs from nose to tail, but other than terrified passengers, there was no visible damage. She’d turned at the rear galley to head back toward the front when a hand reached out and grabbed her arm.
“What?” she said none too gently as she turned. Oh. The smart-mouthed kid with the radio. Britta adopted a stern expression and looked him in the eye. “What can I do for you?”
“That guy’s losin’ it!” the boy said as he pointed to the approximate position of the PA speaker. His accent was clearly American.
Britta frowned at him. “He’s doing the best he can.”
“Look, Ma’am, we’re in deep shit if he’s blind without an autopilot.”
“Watch your language, young man! I don’t have time for this.”
“Do you need another pilot up there or don’t you?”
Britta hesitated. Someone so young couldn’t be of any help. Or could he? “Are you saying that you are a pilot?”
He nodded hesitantly. “This is a seven-forty-seven four hundred, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Then I can make it fly.”
Make it fly? Britta thought. That’s not the way a pilot would talk. She leaned over and dropped to her knee, speaking directly to him. “Listen, I don’t mean to put you down, but I have a hard time believing that someone your age has been trained in something this big. Explain how that could be.”
“Look, we almost crashed back there and the pilot says he can’t see. I know enough to do a better job than a blind pilot!”
“How did you learn to fly? How? I need specifics.”
“My dad manages a pilot training simulator company. I can fly all of them. I don’t have a license, but I can fly the seven-forty-seven four hundred simulator.”
“Can you land?”
“Ah … sometimes.”
“‘Sometimes’ isn’t good enough.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t see any other pilots running to the cockpit.”
“What’s your name again?” Britta asked, suppressing her dislike of him.
“Steve Delaney,” he shot back with an acidic tone. “What’s yours?”
She ignored the retort. “I’ll tell the pilot of your offer, Mr. Delaney.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Britta stood up and leaned over him. “Young man, when I say I’m going to do something, you may stake your life on it. I will brief the pilot and see if he thinks your expertise can help. If so, I’ll be back to get you quickly.”
She turned and moved rapidly up the aisle, working to stay upright as the aircraft began shuddering through turbulence.
“We’ve got a lot of lightning ahead, Dan,” Dallas reported, her eyes flicking back and forth between the instruments and the clouds they were entering.
“Oh, God,” Dan said, “I forgot the thunderstorms. Is the radar working?”
Dallas looked at the display screen and shook her head. “No, it’s not.”
“Then we could be in for a rough ride.” He reached up to the overhead panel and fumbled for the switch that controlled the seat belt sign, flipping it off and on twice before reaching for the PA handset and ordering everyone to stay strapped in.
“Are we going back to Hong Kong, Dan?” Robert asked quietly from the jump seat behind the copilot.
“I, ah, don’t know what we’re going to do. There’s … been no time to think about a plan.” Dan turned toward the left seat. “Geoffrey, I need you to keep us level and slowly turn us back to the west. And I need all of you strapped in.”
Geoffrey Sampson was fighting the airplane, overcontrolling on the upside, then on the downside, but slowly getting the hang of it, with Dallas’s help.
“I’m trying, Dan. This is very hard. I seem to be out of phase.”
“I can feel what you’re doing. Hold that input, Geoff! Don’t push down yet. Let it stabilize … there. Now push down. You’re chasing it and getting too tense.” Dan could feel the yoke being pumped first backward, then forward, then backward again, as the 747’s pitch-up, pitch-down response became more pronounced with each circuit.
“I can’t bloody well imagine why I’m tense. Can you?” Geoffrey snapped.
“I’ve got it, Geoff. Please let go for a few seconds,” Dan said.
“Very well.”
Dan took the yoke, instinctively dampening the porpoising effect. “Dallas, am I zero rate of climb and in a right turn?”
“Close,” Dallas replied, noticing the lead flight attendant in the doorway of the cockpit. “Bring the nose down just a hair, and roll a bit left.”
Britta had moved into the cockpit. “Dan, this is Britta.”
He slumped a bit in the seat. “We … were almost there, Britta. Is everyone okay downstairs?”
“I heard your PA. Everyone’s very scared, but no one was hurt. No internal cabin damage.”
He nodded without comment. She could see his right hand holding the control yoke as Robert gave her a quick synopsis. Her eyes grew wider. “How can you fly by hand? I mean, can’t … Mr. Sampson fly for you?”
“He’s trying, but he has no experience.”
“But how about the lady here? She has some experience.”
Dallas Nielson held up her hand. “No! I told you I can read the instruments, but I can’t fly this mother.”
“Geoff, take it back now,” Dan ordered. “Take it and just stay calm with your corrections.”
Geoffrey Sampson’s hands closed around the yoke as he swallowed hard. “Very well.”
“So—” Britta’s eyes were wide with fear as she looked around the cockpit and at the featureless black of night beyond the windscreen, punctuated every few seconds by lightning. The big ship shuddered through a small patch of turbulence, then steadied. “What, ah, what are we going to do?”
Dan sighed. “Britta, we’re in desperate trouble. All our radios are out. We’re deaf, dumb, and blind. We can’t talk to anyone down there, and without the autoflight system, I couldn’t set us up for another approach even if I could find an airport. There’s another ILS at Hong Kong, but we can’t use it even if I could find it. We may … have to ditch. If I can’t do anything else, I … guess we could descend slowly into the water off a coastline somewhere. But we’d have to wait until daylight.”
“But … can you … can we … oh, God!”
Dallas reached out and took Britta’s hand.
The sudden impact of the 747 with a wall of hailstones was preceded by only a few seconds of rough turbulence as the jumbo flew blindly into the side of a thunderstorm cell. Britta and Robert were thrown into each other, and then partially into the air as the entire structure of the big Boeing flexed and lurched through the angry updrafts and downdrafts. Sheets of lightning played out in front of them, accompanied by real thunder audible through the skin of the shi
p. Dallas grabbed her armrests, then reached out to grab on to Britta. Beads of perspiration showed on Geoffrey Sampson’s forehead as he fought to control the 747, his body straining hard against the seat belt with each lurch.
“Hang on to it, Geoff!” Dan called from the right seat. “Aim for three degrees nose up and wings level, and don’t even worry about altitude or rate of climb.”
“I’m trying!” Geoffrey managed, his voice strained and thin.
“Britta, Dallas, Robert? Are y’all okay?”
“We’re hanging on,” Robert MacCabe answered. Another thunderous impact of hail blotted out all other noises. The bouncing was too severe to read the instruments.
“What … is … the heading?” Dan asked, his voice nearly drowned.
“WHAT?” someone bellowed.
“THE HEADING. WHAT’S … OUR HEADING?”
“TWO HUNDRED FORTY DEGREES!” Dallas yelled back.
The hail ended as suddenly as it began, leaving a wall of rain in its place. Dallas could see Dan flailing around the overhead panel, feeling for a certain switch.
“WHAT DO YOU NEED, DAN?” She could hear his rapid breathing.
“ANTI-ICE. THERE!” He clicked on the wing and engine anti-ice systems, his hand repeatedly bouncing off the overhead surface as they lurched through air currents that seemed sure to tear the jumbo apart.
“Geoff! Roll back to the right,” Dallas barked in his ear.
There was no reply, just a nod, but the 747 responded, the roll to the right throwing all of them slightly to the left.
Again a wall of hail and rain and lightning and turbulence engulfed them, and the altitude decreased as Geoff struggled to keep the attitude and bank angle under control. The impacts of flying into shifting air currents at over 200 knots of airspeed bounced them too much to permit reading the instruments at times, and moment by moment the passenger flying in the left seat had to cope with recovering from a severe roll to the left or right, or a severe nose up or down attitude.
“GEOFF! WE’RE DESCENDING. WE’RE GOING DOWN THROUGH THREE THOUSAND!” Dallas shouted. “GEOFF! PULL IT UP!”
“I’M TRYING!” Geoff cried.
“THIS FEELS LIKE A DOWNDRAFT!” Dan yelled. “ALTITUDE?”
“TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED. DESCENDING FAST.”
“PULL IT UP, GEOFF! NOW!” Dan ordered.
“WE’RE BELOW TWO THOUSAND!” Dallas yelled in Geoff’s ear, watching him haul back on the yoke timidly. The nose came up to ten degrees as the altitude continued to wind down.
“WHAT’S HAPPENING? TALK TO ME, DALLAS!” Dan demanded, his hands holding on to the yoke and trying to follow what was going on. “WHAT’S OUR PITCH ATTITUDE?”
“TWELVE DEGREES UP!” Dallas yelled back. “AIRSPEED DECREASING, NOW TWO HUNDRED TWENTY.”
Dan grabbed the control yoke and yanked hard without warning. “TELL ME WHEN WE’RE THIRTY DEGREES NOSE UP OR LESS THAN ONE HUNDRED FIFTY KNOTS!” he commanded.
“WE’RE DROPPING THROUGH ONE THOUSAND FEET, DAN!” Dallas yelled. “OH, LORD! WE’RE GONNA HIT!” Anguish was creeping into her voice as the 747 continued to descend, the remaining three engines at maximum power, the nose pitched up to a frightening deck angle. To her right, Robert MacCabe and Britta Franz hung on to the seat backs and watched the altimeter unwinding in detached silence.
“WE’RE THIRTY DEGREES NOSE UP. SPEED’S ONE HUNDRED SEVENTY.”
“ALTITUDE?”
“COMING THROUGH FIVE HUNDRED FEET … FOUR HUNDRED … DAN, IT’S SLOWING, BUT WE’RE STILL DESCENDING!”
chapter 13
HONG KONG APPROACH CONTROL,
CHEK LAP KOK/HONG KONG INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
NOVEMBER 13—DAY TWO
2:31 A.M. LOCAL/1831 ZULU
The facility chief sat down hard next to one of his controllers and shook his head, his eyes on the computer-generated control screen. “You saw him descending, and then lost the transponder?”
The wide-eyed controller nodded in a staccato motion. “Yes, Sir.”
“Where did you lose him? What altitude?”
“Two thousand feet, descending at over two thousand feet per minute. He had made a broad turn back west.”
“How long ago?”
“Seven minutes ago. I called you immediately.”
The chief took a deep breath and shook his head, feeling the weight of the loss. There had been over 200 people on that aircraft, but if they had hit the water at a hefty descent rate in the middle of the night, the survival chances were minimal.
“Very well. Start the notifications. You know what to do.”
The controller turned to the task of notifying rescue forces and the world that Meridian Flight 5 had crashed at sea.
THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
The President of the United States swept through the east door of the most familiar office in the world and nodded to the Air Force chief of staff—a four-star general—and the press secretary, who had assembled for an emergency telephone conference on the unfolding aerial crisis in Hong Kong. He shook the general’s hand and settled into a chair near the lighted fireplace, looking to Jason Pullman, the press secretary, whose finger was poised over a speakerphone. “Who’s on the line, Jason?” he asked.
“Richard Herd, the director of Central Intelligence; FBI Deputy Director Jake Rhoades; and Dr. Stella Mendenhall at the National Transportation Safety Board.”
The President nodded and Jason punched through the conference call. There was a brief round of hellos.
“All right,” the President began, “on this end we’ve got General Tim Bauer, Air Force Chief of Staff, and Jason Pullman, my press secretary. Now, who called the meeting?”
“I did, Mr. President,” Herd, the DCI, responded. “The rumors are going to start flying on this one, and I felt you needed to be briefed immediately.”
“What rumors, Richard?”
“Unfounded rumors that this Hong Kong situation is somehow connected to the SeaAir crash near Cuba, and that Hong Kong is, in fact, an act of terrorism.”
“Is it?” the President asked.
“We don’t think so on either count, Mr. President, but we don’t know yet.”
The President sighed. “Okay, Richard, give me the briefing.”
The DCI filled in the facts to the moment, detailing the possibility of midair collision versus airborne attack before the President interrupted him.
“Wait a minute,” the President said. “You say the remaining pilot also mentioned the possibility of a nuclear detonation?”
“Oh, it definitely wasn’t that, Sir,” the DCI replied. “National Reconnaissance Office confirms their sensors have picked up nothing nuclear.”
“What, then?” the President continued. “You said a midair collision or some sort of attack, but to have a midair, someone’s got to be missing an airplane.”
“Well, there is an aircraft missing,” the DCI said, relating the puzzle of the U.S. business jet and the fact that FAA was still verifying who owned it.
The President leaned forward, twirling a fountain pen in his fingers, his eyes on the floor. “And the third possibility is some sort of attack? What sort of attack? Military? Terrorist? And using what, a missile?”
General Bauer raised a finger. “Sir, we have no reason whatsoever to suspect hostile military action. This was a scheduled airline flight, ten miles from Hong Kong’s airport, on a normal departure track. No way would the Chinese Air Force be involved. Now, if we’re talking about what kind of an attack could blind two pilots …”
“That boggles my mind,” the President interjected, shaking his head. “The captain dead, the copilot blinded. How?”
The DCI spoke up before the general could answer. “Any large flash, such as a direct lightning strike or fuel exploding during a collision, could temporarily flash-blind the pilots. We know of nothing that could kill with a burst of light alone, but whatever happened probably triggered a secondary reaction, a heart attack or a stro
ke.”
“General, you weren’t finished?” the President said.
“I was going to say, Sir,” General Bauer continued, “that the intensity of the so-called explosion this surviving pilot reported is not inconsistent with the burst of a phosphorous-based warhead at very close range. A lightning strike wouldn’t do it.”
“A what?” the President exclaimed, sitting up and cocking his head.
“Phosphorous, Sir. The flash against a nighttime background is devastatingly bright. If someone lobbed a small missile at them with such a warhead designed to explode just in front of the aircraft, I’m told it could seriously interfere with a pilot’s vision for several hours.”
“Flash blindness and a missile?” the President asked, watching the general nod in response. “Terrorist, in other words?”
The DCI spoke up again from Langley. “We don’t think it likely, Mr. President. We think the most credible possibility is a midair collision and explosion. If this was a terrorist act, it would require a missile, a place to launch it from, and the uncertain assumption that flash-blinding the pilots would bring down the aircraft.”
“Okay.”
“Then, too, Sir,” the DCI went on, “there’s the matter of the type of missile required. It couldn’t be a heat seeker because an infrared tracker would go for the engines. You’d have to have a pretty sophisticated missile to fly close to a cockpit and explode without physically damaging the aircraft, and we think that unlikely.”
The President’s eyes snapped to the Air Force chief of staff, who was shaking his head. “General? You disagree?”
“Absolutely. A sophisticated missile is likely. In fact, this is the signature of a laser-guided missile. That so-called missing aircraft could easily have been the target designator, holding what is essentially an invisible infrared laser dot on the seven-forty-seven while a confederate below fires the missile. All they’d have to do is program the missile to detonate by internal radar a hundred yards out.”
“That’s your guess?” the President asked.
“No, Sir. That’s our assessment. It fits.”
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