Mayday (16 page)

“Terri!” Sharon shook her friend’s arm.

“Forget it!” yelled Berry. “Come in here!” Sharon glanced into the cockpit and saw a man sitting in the captain’s seat. His
voice was vaguely familiar. But she was too shocked to think clearly. She ignored Berry and moved back past the stairwell
over to the sprawled bodies of Stuart and McVary beside the piano. She shook the pilot’s shoulders. “Captain Stuart!”

Stein watched as a man in the main cabin mounted the spiral staircase. Another man, then a woman, followed. Soon a line of
people were walking clumsily up the circular steps. “Go down! Down!”

“Aaahh!”

Stein braced himself on the rail and brought his foot down on the head of the first man.

The man fell to his knees and toppled back, sending the whole line stumbling and falling backward.

Linda Farley knelt beside Sharon Crandall. “They’re very sick. I tried to help them.”

Sharon glanced at the girl blankly, then looked at Harold Stein by the rail and the unconscious body of Barbara Yoshiro. She
walked to the bar and recovered a first-aid box. She carried a vial of ammonium carbonate to Barbara Yoshiro, broke it, and
held it under the girl’s nose. “Easy, now.”

Barbara Yoshiro made a gasping sound, then opened her eyes. Crandall helped her sit up.

The two flight attendants held onto each other, Sharon Crandall comforting Barbara Yoshiro as she began sobbing. “Easy now,
Barbara. We’re going to be all right.”

Stein looked down at them. “Go into the cockpit and see if you can lend a hand there. Okay?”

Crandall helped Yoshiro to her feet and steadied her as they walked toward the cockpit. “Don’t mind these people. Come on.
Into the cockpit.”

Berry glanced quickly over his shoulder. “Do either of you know anything about the cockpit?”

“I thought you were a pilot,” said Crandall.

“Yes, I am,” answered Berry. “But I’m not familiar with this craft. I can fly it with a little help. Do you know
anything
about the cockpit?”

“No,” said Crandall. She helped Yoshiro into Fessler’s seat. They both noticed the blood on the desk but didn’t comment on
it. “How bad are the pilots?”

“They’ll be okay.”

“There’s no need to lie to us,” said Crandall.

“They’re brain damaged. Maybe—just maybe—the copilot will come out of it with enough faculties left to help.”

Crandall considered this for a long few seconds. She’d liked McVary. Liked all of them, actually. Now they were all gone,
including the other flight attendants she’d spent so many hours with. Flight crews rarely spoke about accidents, but she had
heard talk about decompression incidents. “What exactly happened?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t make a lot of difference, does it?”

“No.”

Berry turned and looked at Barbara Yoshiro. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. I’m feeling better.”

Berry nodded. He had the feeling, no more than intuition, that she would remain calm from here on. It was a good thing to
know, and it didn’t especially matter if it was true or not. He asked her, “Do you know the cockpit at all?”

Yoshiro shook her head. “I usually stay downstairs in the kitchen. Below the main cabin.”

Crandall spoke. “I come to the cockpit often, but I never really noticed much.”

“You probably know more than you think. Sit down.”

Sharon Crandall sat in the copilot’s seat. “This is not going to help.”

At first Berry had no special recollection of her, but as he looked at her profile closely, he knew who she was. He felt a
smile form on his lips. He was happy that she had made it. It was a conversation that had taken place a century ago, but it
had brought him a few minutes of pleasure and he was happy to pick it up where it had ended. “Do you remember me?”

She looked at him. “Yes. Of course. The salesman. I was going to sit with you.” Crandall paused. “You’re not a pilot.”

“Yes, the salesman. I fly, too.”

“Fly what?”

“This and that. My company airplane. I can handle this.” He had suddenly become an old hand at keeping everything calm. Perhaps
he was being too reassuring. He guessed that no one would stay calm for very long once they watched him attempt to fly the
airliner. “Where were you two when the decompression began?”

Yoshiro answered. “We were both in the lower kitchen.”

Berry nodded. “There must have been pressure trapped down there. The three of us were in lavatories.”

“That’s what the other man told us,” Yoshiro replied. “I guess there might be others.”

“Yes. That’s why I sent Stein down.” He lowered his voice. “His wife and two children are down there. The girl’s name is Linda
Farley. Her mother was near the hole. I’m John Berry.”

“Barbara Yoshiro. You know Sharon.”

“Yes,” said Berry.

“Look,” Sharon Crandall said, “call Trans-United Ops. They’ll give you a course to fly, and then coach you through the landing.”

Telling him to use the radio was not the sort of information he had been looking for. “Good idea,” said Berry. “But the radios
don’t work.”

There was a long silence in the cockpit. Berry broke it. “I’m going to turn and put us on an approximate heading for California.
If the fuel lasts, we’ll decide then if we should look for a landing area or put it down near the beach. Maybe I can raise
someone on the radio when we get closer. How does that sound?”

The two flight attendants said nothing.

Barbara Yoshiro stood. “I’m going below to see if anyone else is . . . sane.”

“I wouldn’t do that now,” said Berry.

“Believe me, Mr. Berry, I’d rather not go. But there were two of our company pilots aboard—going on vacation with their wives—and
I have to see if they’re alive and sane. And I’m still on duty and I have an obligation to the other passengers.”

Berry refused to get excited about the possibility of finding real pilots who could fly the Straton. “The passengers are dangerous.”

“So am I. Black belt, judo and karate. And they’re not very coordinated, I assume.”

“There are three hundred of them.”

Crandall turned in her seat. “Don’t go, Barbara.”

“If it looks really bad, I’ll come back.” Berry glanced at her. “I can’t let Stein go with you. He has to stay at the top
of the stairs to keep anyone from coming up.”

“I didn’t ask for company.”

Berry nodded. “All right, then. Call at the flight-attendant stations every few minutes. If we don’t hear from you . . . well,
if we can, we’ll come after you.”

“Okay.” She walked quickly out of the cockpit.

Berry turned to Sharon Crandall. “Lots of guts there.”

“More than you know. She doesn’t know any more about judo or karate than I do. She’s trying to make it up to us for fainting.
But there
are
two of the company’s pilots back there. We both spoke to them. And I hope to God they’re all right.”

“Me, too.”

He tried to picture Jennifer doing something selfless, noble. He almost laughed. God, if only he could get back and tell her
what he thought of her.

Crandall picked up the copilot’s microphone and held it awkwardly. “I’ve used this a few times.” She held down the button.
“Trans-United Operations, this is Trans-United Flight 52. Do you read me? Over.”

They both waited in the silence of the cockpit.

Berry looked at her as she sat with her head tilted, waiting for the speaker to come alive the way it always had. “Forget
it,” he said.

She put down the microphone.

The minutes ticked by. Suddenly, the interphone buzzed. Sharon Crandall grabbed the phone from the console. “Barbara!” She
listened. “All right. Be careful. Call in three minutes. Good luck.” She replaced the phone and turned to Berry. “The pilots.
They’re both dead.” She added, “It’s your ship, Mr. Berry.”

“Thanks.”

Crandall thought about the government-approved procedures in her manual. It was technically
her
ship, or, more correctly, Barbara Yoshiro’s. Barbara was the senior surviving crew member. What difference did it make? Barbara’s
ship, or Sharon’s? Impossible. Absurd.

Berry tried not to show any emotion. “All right. Let’s talk about this cockpit. Is there some sort of emergency signal device,
for instance? Here . . . what’s this?”

She looked at the red button he was pointing to and shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Berry decided to let her sit and think. He mentally sectioned off the cockpit into six areas and began examining the first
one to his lower left, switch by switch, button by button, gauge by gauge. There were things he knew and a lot more he didn’t
know. He began memorizing locations of the instruments and control devices.

“What about the data-link?” she said.

“What?”

“The data-link. Did you try that?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The
data-link
. This thing.” She pointed to a keyboard mounted between the pilots’ seats and slightly below the radios. “I saw the crew
use it a lot of times. They type on it. Messages come in, too.” She pointed to a small video screen on the lower center of
the panel. “It’s linked to the Operations Center in San Francisco.”

Berry stared at the device. He had looked at it before but dismissed it as just another gang of unknown buttons. He thought
the screen was some sort of radar. Now it was making sense. He had read about data-links—a discreet electronic screen for
sending individual messages to various aircraft. Most airlines had them to link their aircraft together without having to
broadcast over the airwaves. He turned to Sharon.

“Do you know how to work it?”

“No. But I think they just type on it. Let’s give it a try.” There was an edge of excitement in her voice. “Go on. We have
nothing to lose. You need a green light to know it’s on. Here. This light has to be green.”

Berry scanned the keyboard. His hand reached out tentatively and he pushed a button labeled entry. The green light flashed
on. Berry assumed this meant that he had a clear channel. He pressed a button labeled
TRANSMIT
and typed out three letters on the keyboard: sos. He looked at the video screen. Nothing. “Aren’t you supposed to see your
message?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t see anything. Goddamn it. Goddamned airplane.”

“I think you type the message first,
then
you push transmit.”

“Okay.” Berry hit the clear button. “Okay. Let’s see.” He typed sos again. He reached over and pushed the
TRANSMIT
button. They both looked at the video screen. sos appeared in white, angular computer letters.

Sharon gave a small shout. “We did it! We did it!” She reached out and squeezed Berry’s hand.

Berry was grinning. “Yes. Damn it. We did it. Okay. Okay.” But Berry suspected that the video screen’s picture meant very
little. The only way to determine if the signal had actually been sent from the Straton and received by someone else was to
wait for an answer to appear on the screen.

Berry was fairly certain that the data-link couldn’t send and receive at the same time, so he resisted the temptation to transmit
again and waited for the reply. Unlike a radio, if this machine worked, there was a displayed entry somewhere waiting to be
read. He wondered how often the data-links were checked.

The Straton 797 maintained a steady northwesterly heading across the Pacific as the minutes ticked off.

John Berry knew that this was their last hope of surviving. He looked at Sharon Crandall. She seemed to know it too. “Buy
you a drink?” He motioned back toward the bar.

“No. Not now. Maybe later. Get one if you want, I’ll watch the screen.”

“I don’t need one.” He glanced at the video monitor, then back at Sharon Crandall. “You want to hear about Japanese businessmen?
Japanese customs? It’s very interesting.”

She looked at him. “Sure,” she said, with little conviction and a forced smile. Her smile faded quickly as she looked down
at the data-link screen. Except for their own SOS message printed in the upper corner, the screen remained ominously blank.

L
ieutenant Matos had the distinct impression, though he was not looking directly at the Straton, that the aircraft had banked
briefly, then leveled out again. He stared at it closely, but it seemed level now. He looked at his magnetic compass. Still
325 degrees. No, the Straton had not banked. It was only an illusion. He rubbed his eyes. He was becoming fatigued.

The F–18 lay back in trail and followed the huge airliner at a distance of a thousand yards. Matos experienced some turbulence
in the Straton’s wake and lifted his fighter slightly higher. His last message from the
Nimitz
had been bizarre. A bizarre message even for a bizarre situation.
Navy three-four-seven. Follow in trail. Keep out of sight of portholes and cockpit. Do not, I say again, do not attempt to
communicate with Straton. Acknowledge.

Matos had acknowledged and followed orders without question. Had his position been more tenable, he would have asked for a
clarification. But he was now numero uno on Sloan’s famous shitlist, and that had the effect of putting him in a complete
state of psychological dependence and subservience. Whatever Sloan said, Sloan would get. Certainly there was some method
to Sloan’s madness.

Matos was beginning to recognize tonal qualities in Sloan’s voice despite the fact that the voice was scrambled in transmission,
then unscrambled on his audio. And there had been a strange quality in Sloan’s latest instructions that had not escaped Matos’s
attention. The voice was not hostile or curt. It was almost friendly, cajoling. The voice seemed to say,
All right, Peter, you screwed up, but just follow orders and we’ll be able to square everything.

But how in the name of God could anyone, even Commander Sloan, square
this?

It occurred to Matos, now that he had time to think, that his career wasn’t the only one that was finished. He’d been thinking
only of himself, which was natural under the circumstances. Now he saw the situation for what it was. A monumental fuckup.
It started with him, but it would chain-react and obliterate Sloan and anyone else unlucky enough to be in the electronics
room. It would also smash the
Nimitz
’s commander, Captain Diehl, and probably his staff as well. The blast would reach into the Halls of the Pentagon, the Department
of the Navy, the Department of Defense, and maybe into the White House itself. At whatever level this decision had been made
to test-fire a weapon banned by the new Voluntary Arms Limitation Treaty, everyone involved from that level down would be
culpable.
No es tu culpa, Pedro.