Mayday (33 page)

John Berry watched the small piece of one-way glass in the cockpit door.

The passengers of Flight 52 moved up the staircase of the Straton like fish or birds on some perverse and incomprehensible
migration. Or, thought Berry, like air and water that moves according to the laws of physics to fill a sudden vacuum. They
filled the lounge and wandered aimlessly over the thick blue carpet, around the brightly upholstered furniture—men, women,
and children—ready to seep into the next empty place that they could fill. Berry felt comforted by this analogy. It denied
the possibility that they were acting according to a plan, that they were
looking
for the cockpit.

Berry made a quick count of the passengers in the lounge. About fifty now. If they all suddenly moved toward the door of the
cockpit, and if one of them pulled it open rather than pressed against it, then he, Sharon, and Linda could not stop them
from flooding the cockpit.

He thought again of the autopilot master switch. Anything was preferable to the nightmare of sharing the cockpit with dozens
of
them.

He noted McVary, sitting in a lounge chair facing the cockpit door, staring hard at it. Berry placed his fingers around the
nub of the broken latch. He had very little to grab. He pulled the door shut a few more inches, but it sprang open again.

Berry turned and scanned the cockpit for something that would secure the door, but could find nothing. There was a way to
do it, he was sure, but his thoughts, which had stayed so calm for so long, were beginning to ramble; fatigue was dulling
his reason. “Damn it! Sharon, we’ve got to keep this door closed.”

She turned in her chair and looked at the door. Forms and shadows passed by the opening between the edge of the door and the
jamb. “Why don’t I go into the lounge and put my back to the door? I’ll take the fire extinguisher. They won’t be able—”

“No! Forget it. We’ve had enough heroes and martyrs already. If we go . . .” he looked at Linda Farley, sitting quietly in
one of the extra cockpit chairs “ . . . we all go together. No more sacrifices. No splitting up. We’re not losing any more
of us.”

Crandall nodded, then turned back and stared out the windshield.

For a long time there was a silence in the cockpit, broken only by the dull murmur of electronics and the soft, susurrant
sound of someone brushing by the door.

The alerting bell sounded.

Berry moved beside Crandall’s chair, and they both looked down at the video display.

TO FLIGHT 52: WE HAVE ACCURATELY DETERMINED YOUR POSITION. CLOSEST AIRPORT HAWAII. TURN AIRCRAFT TO HEADING OF 240 DEGREES
FOR VECTOR TO HAWAII. AIR AND SEA RESCUE WILL INTERCEPT YOU ON NEW HEADING. AIRPORTS IN HAWAII WAITING FOR YOU WITH EMERGENCY
EQUIPMENT. ACKNOWLEDGE. SAN FRANCISCO HQ.

Sharon Crandall clutched Berry’s arm. “They know where we are.” She turned her head to him and smiled.

“We’ll be in Hawaii . . .” She looked up at him. Something was wrong. “John . . . ?”

Berry shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I don’t know.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure.” He reread the data-link’s display screen. “I’m not comfortable with this.”

“Comfortable?” She looked at him for a few seconds. She tried to keep the edge of annoyance out of her voice as she spoke.
“How in God’s name can we be
comfortable
with anything out here? What are you saying?”

Berry suddenly felt angry. “Comfortable,” he said coolly, “is a pilot’s term. It means that I have no faith in that course
of action.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” he said, slowly but emphatically, “the Hawaiian Islands are a pretty damned small target, as you might know, while
the North American continent is pretty big.” He leaned back against the side of the pilot’s chair. “Look, we are headed somewhere
now. North America. California, probably. We can’t miss that coastline. If we do what they ask, we’d be putting everything
on a long shot. All we stand to gain is a shorter flight time of maybe an hour or two. But if we miss Hawaii—and it wouldn’t
take much of a navigation error to do that . . . then . . .” he smiled grimly “. . . we’ll wind up with Amelia Earhart.”

Sharon Crandall looked down at the display screen again, then back at Berry. Her life, she realized, was totally in the hands
of this man. If John Berry didn’t want to make a course change, she couldn’t make him do it. Yet she wasn’t going to let him
make the decision without some good reasons. She turned away from him and looked out at the far horizon. “How do regular airline
flights find Hawaii?”

“With this.” Berry pointed to the radio console and the blackened readouts of the satellite navigation sets. “They’re either
not functioning or I don’t know how to work them. And San Francisco hasn’t responded to my request for instructions.”

“Ask them again.”

Berry slid into the pilot’s chair and typed.

NEED INSTRUCTIONS ON OPERATING NAV SETS BEFORE COURSE CHANGE. SETS MAY BE DAMAGED. FOR THE RECORD, NOW ONLY 3 IN COCKPIT—YOUNG
GIRL LINDA FARLEY—FLIGHT ATTENDANT SHARON CRANDALL—MYSELF—OTHERS PRESUMED LOST. BERRY.

Berry knew that sending a list of who was still in the cockpit—who was still alive and rational—was an unnecessary addition
to the message. But after his comment to Sharon about them needing to not split up anymore, sending that shortened list of
names seemed like a necessary comment to the world. Berry pushed the transmit button, and they waited in the silent cockpit.

Suddenly, the door swung open. Linda Farley screamed.

Berry vaulted out of his chair and stared up at the door. Faces, some grinning, some frowning, peered in at him. Daniel McVary
stepped into the cockpit, looking, thought Berry, very irate.

Berry grabbed the fire extinguisher from the floor and sprayed it into the faces closest to him. The people screamed and tried
to move back, but the press from behind was too great and the crowd moved forward, squeezing through the door, one and two
at a time, into the cockpit.

Berry was vaguely aware of the sounds of feminine screams behind him and the hands and faces pressing in on him. Without being
conscious of it, he had raised the heavy metal extinguisher above his head and brought it down into the face of the man closest
to him. The man’s face erupted into a distorted mass of red pulp.

Berry swung the extinguisher again and again, striking at the heads and faces of the men and women around him. He was half
aware of hitting a young boy in the face. Screams filled the cockpit and the lounge, and drowned out the sounds of even the
Straton’s engines. Blood and teeth splattered in the air, and he could hear the distinct crack of skulls and jaws. The loudest
sound of all was a voice that he identified as his own. The voice bellowed out like an animal in agony.

Berry swung the extinguisher, but nothing stood around him any longer. He dropped to one knee, picked up a body and pushed
it out the door, then pushed and pulled the rest of the limp or writhing forms into the lounge. He laid them in an open space
made by the crowd, which stood in a semicircle watching curiously, fearfully, but without any hate or anger that he could
detect. McVary, he noticed, was among them.

Berry grabbed the edge of the door and drew it toward him as he stepped back into the cockpit. He turned and looked around,
trying to focus his eyes.

Sharon Crandall was standing in front of him. She had kicked off her shoes and was peeling off her panty hose. She pushed
by him without a word and tied the feet of the hose around the small broken latch, then pulled on them.

Berry grabbed the top of the panty hose and stretched them out. He looked around quickly for something to fasten it to.

Fingers and hands curled around the edge of the door, trying to pull it open. Berry pulled harder on the hose, drawing the
door tight against the probing fingers. He found a cross brace on the left sidewall. He looped the panty hose around the brace
and pulled them so tightly that they thinned out, resembling a long rope running between the door and the cross brace. He
knotted it quickly, then leaned back heavily against the pilot’s chair, his whole body shaking. An involuntary laugh rose
in his throat.

Sharon fell into his arms and they held on to each other, her body trembling against his, both of them trying to keep from
crying and laughing.

Linda Farley moved toward them tentatively, then rushed to them, circling their waists with her arms.

Berry looked up at the door. There was less than an inch of opening around the jamb, and no fingers probing at the edges.
He saw blood splattered on the door’s blue-green paint. He pressed Sharon closer to him.

“Oh, God, Sharon, good thinking. . . . God, we . . .”

Crandall shook her head quickly and wiped her tears. “How stupid of me not to think of it sooner.”

“Me too,” Berry said. It was an indication of his state of mind, he thought, that his initial resourcefulness was failing
him. He wondered if he hadn’t misjudged San Francisco’s intentions.

He stepped away from Sharon and Linda, then looked down at his hands. He was covered with blood, and he could see pieces of
teeth, gums, and flesh on his arms and hands. The gray carpet near the door was soaked with blood. As the shock wore off,
he felt his stomach heave, and his body began to tremble again. He stumbled up to the pilot’s chair and sat there trying to
get control of himself.

Linda sat in the extra pilot’s chair, slumped over the small desk on the sidewall, her face buried in her arms. Sharon stood
behind the girl and stroked her hair.

After a full minute, Berry looked up at the data-link screen and stared at the new message that was waiting there to be read.

TO FLIGHT 52: EXECUTE TURN AS INSTRUCTED. SATELLITE SETS NOT CRITICAL FOR FINDING HAWAII—BUT WILL BEGIN NAV OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS
EN ROUTE TO HAWAII. UNDERSTAND 3 REMAINING IN COCKPIT. ACKNOWLEDGE. SAN FRANCISCO HQ.

It seemed to Berry that the tone of the last few data-link messages had changed, as though someone new was sending them. But,
of course, he knew that it was he, the receiver, who was reading them in a different state of mind.

Sharon stepped over the panty hose at her feet and leaned over Berry’s chair. She looked down at the message. She had decided
that if she was going to trust him, she would trust him completely, with no reservations, no hesitation. “What are you going
to do?”

Berry kept staring at the new message. It seemed to be patently wrong. If only he could speak to them on the radio, hear their
voices instead of reading words displayed on a cathode-ray tube. He remembered his near panic when he had no communication,
and knew he ought to be thankful for even this.

Berry thought a minute, then shook his head. “They say they know where we are, but what if they’re wrong? Then the new heading
is wrong. A few degrees at this distance from Hawaii would put us hundreds of miles off course. And what if this damned data-link
malfunctions before we reach Hawaii? They won’t be able to send us any course corrections. What if the satellite navigation
system doesn’t work, or if I can’t work it?” He thought of something he’d read once.
The least reliable component of a modern airplane is its pilot.
In this case that was he, John Berry. He looked at the control panels in front of him. “We’d run out of fuel somewhere in
the Pacific. I’d have to try to land in the ocean. It would be a race between the rescue craft and . . . the sharks.”

Sharon put her hands on his shoulders, then leaned forward and whispered in his ear. “John, Linda is . . .”

“Sorry.”

She turned her face and kissed him on the cheek, then straightened up quickly. She looked down at the panty hose and followed
it with her eyes to the door handle. It was taut and secure. No hands poked around the small crack in the door. Suddenly,
she felt optimistic again. She looked over at Linda. “All right,” she said, trying to put a light tone in her voice. “Linda,
Hawaii or California?”

The girl picked up her head from the desk. “I want to go home.”

Sharon smiled. “California it is, then. John, tell them we’re coming home.”

Berry felt the tears collect in his eyes and wiped them quickly. He reached out to the console and typed a short, succinct
message.

E
dward Johnson stared down at the message that had just come from Flight 52.

TO SAN FRANCISCO: WE DO NOT WANT TO TURN. HAWAII IS TOO SMALL A TARGET. WILL MAINTAIN CURRENT HEADING OF 120 DEGREES. ADVISE
US OF EXACT COURSE AND DISTANCE/TIME TO SAN FRANCISCO AS SOON AS YOUR COMPUTATIONS ARE AVAILABLE. BERRY.

“Shit.” Johnson took out a cigar and bit the end off. “Smart-ass son-of-a-bitch.” He looked at the cigar for a moment, then
threw it on the floor.

Metz looked at Johnson. He hadn’t liked this idea of heading the Straton toward Hawaii, and he was half relieved that it hadn’t
worked. “You have to
do
something, Ed. You have to give him instructions that will put him down so we can get the hell out of here before—”

“Shut up, Metz. I know what I have to do.” There was some question in his mind about whether or not Berry was onto his game.
“I can’t push him. He’s too savvy.”

“What are you going to answer?”

“What choice do I have? I’m going to give him the information he asked for.”

“Christ, now we’re helping him.”

“I have to get him off our backs for a while.” Johnson walked to the Pacific chart. He picked up a ruler from the counter
and took some crude measurements. “They won’t be any better off with this new heading. Maybe a little worse off. But I can’t
make it too absurd. Berry is . . .”

“I know. Sharp.”

“I was going to say he may be suspicious.”

Metz walked to the data-link machine and slapped his hand on it. “Don’t let this guy spook you. He’s some weekend pilot sitting
in the biggest, most complicated aircraft ever built—which, incidentally, has two rather large holes in it, and is crammed
full of the living dead. Christ. John Wayne couldn’t buck those odds.” He paused, then said softly, “All Berry needs is a
little nudge in the wrong direction and he’ll fall.”