Mayday (46 page)

“No.”
She turned away from him and stared out the windshield as though the argument was over.

He realized that he’d known her for less than seven hours, yet he felt he knew her as well, certainly, as he knew Jennifer.
Sharon Crandall had given him her complete and unquestioned trust, but now she was withdrawing it in favor of her own instincts,
and he saw that she meant it. It was his turn to show the same perfect trust, though as a technical person he mistrusted instincts
and always went with the odds and the gauges. “Okay. A little longer,” he said.

The Straton flew on. Hovered above the blinding fog, a sense of unreality filled the cockpit. For Berry, Flight 52 had ceased
to be a real flight long ago, and the fog only added the final dimension to that feeling.

Sharon Crandall stared placidly out at the rolling fog, an odd smile on her face. She raised her arm and pointed out the front
windshield.

Berry looked out to where she was pointing. A glint of red caught his eye, and he sat forward. It disappeared, then reappeared
again. Directly in front of the Straton, about seven miles in the distance, the twin towers of the Golden Gate Bridge rose
majestically through the solid blanket of white.

Sharon Crandall’s eyes nearly filled with tears. “Oh, God, yes! Yes!”

Berry felt a constriction in his throat as he stared out at the faraway reddish towers.

As she always did when she made the announcements from a returning overseas flight, she said, “Welcome home.”

Berry nodded. “Yes, welcome home.” He watched the bridge towers grow quickly in his windshield as the Straton approached at
six miles a minute.

“Look,” said Crandall. “Look beyond the bridge.” Berry looked out toward the bay. As if the Golden Gate were a wall, the bank
of fog ended abruptly at the bridge. The entire bay, as far as he could see to Berkeley and Oakland on the opposite shore,
was clear.

“I told you we could beat the fog, John.” Crandall laughed. “Look to the right.”

Berry glanced out the right windshield. Indistinct angular forms rose out of the fog—the shape of a city. Golden sunlight
glinted from the tops of the Bank of America Building and Transamerica Pyramid, like El Dorado, thought Berry, but this was
no spectral city, and a sense of reality began to return to him. The buildings grew rapidly as the Straton hurled toward them
at 340 knots. Berry steered the Straton to the left, away from the city, and lined its nose up between the bridge towers,
like a helmsman navigating the approaches to the bay.

The airliner passed through the inlet and sailed over the Golden Gate Bridge, the twin towers barely a hundred feet below
the aircraft. Berry spotted Alcatraz Island coming up below him. He banked the Straton to the right and followed the curve
of the bay, south toward the airport, which he knew was less than three minutes’flight time away. Even if they flamed out
now, he thought, he’d be able to avoid the populated areas. “Okay,” he said matter-of-factly, “we’re approaching the airport.
Sharon, get ready to begin the landing procedure we practiced.”

“I’m ready.”

Berry felt that there was, between them, that bond that instantly develops between pilot and copilot, helmsman and navigator,
observer and gunner; the knowledge that two must work as a perfect team, become nearly one, if they are to beat the long odds
against survival.

The skies were clear, and out of the right-side window, the city of San Francisco lay among the hills of the peninsula. Flight
52 was a sudden intruder on the city’s hectic rush hour. Along Fisherman’s Wharf, cars stopped and pedestrians turned to gawk
and point at the huge aircraft lumbering over the bay. On Nob Hill and Telegraph Hill, people watched the aircraft sail past
at eye level. Vehicles pulled off the road, and children shouted. Many of the onlookers spotted the holes in the sides of
the Straton, the jagged wound highlighted by the low angle of the sun. Even those who had not seen the damage could see that
the low-flying Trans-United airliner was in trouble.

Berry saw the silvery San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge lying straight ahead across the Straton’s flight path. He knew that
this bridge was the last obstacle to a successful ditching in the bay. He held his breath until he was certain that the Straton’s
glide path in a sudden flame out would carry it over the bridge.

As he passed over the bridge, he allowed himself to look out at San Francisco International Airport. It sat on a small piece
of lowland jutting into the bay, less than fifteen miles ahead. “There it is.” He knew he should be applying the flaps if
he was going to try for the airport. But the flaps would cause extra drag and burn off too much fuel. He thought he wanted
to get as close to the airport as possible before he made the decision on where to come down, or had it made for him by a
flame out. He let the Straton streak along at 340 knots.

Crandall looked at the rapidly approaching airport. Instinctively, she knew they were coming in too fast. “John, too fast.
Too fast.”

Berry tried to calm himself. There were so many things to do and so little flight time left in which to do them. Everything
had to be a trade-off from here on; every maneuver would be a compromise between the right thing and the expedient thing,
always trying to avoid the dead-wrong thing. “All right. All right. I’m going for distance. We can hit the brakes later.”
He looked at his fuel gauge. The electronic needles were lying dead against the empty mark.

Berry recalled his first solo landing in a Cessna 140, an older tail-wheeled aircraft he had some trouble checking out in.
When the instructor finally got out, Berry kept finding excuses to continue with other kinds of practice rather than land,
until his fuel was too low to put the landing off any longer.
No excuses this time. Bring it right in.
Sweat started to form on his brow and neck, and his hands were starting to become unsteady on the control wheel.

Berry yanked back on the four throttles, putting the engines at idle power. He watched as the ship’s airspeed began to bleed
off to a lower, more reasonable indication for landing. Intent on the cockpit instruments, Berry failed to see what was passing
a few miles to his left. On the east side of the bay was the Naval Air Station at Alameda, and farther south was Oakland’s
giant airport. Either one of those airports was a minute or two closer, but John Berry was focused, physically and mentally,
on San Francisco International. That was where he had started, and that was where he intended to end. He hoped that the emergency
equipment would be waiting there. “All right,” he said softly, “all right. No ditching. We’re going into San Francisco International.”
Berry saw that the airspeed was now low enough. “Flaps down.”

Sharon sat motionless for a second, mesmerized by the sight of the rapidly approaching airport jutting into the bay in front
of her. In her mind she had already arrived home safely. The realization that they were still hundreds of feet off the ground
and miles from the runway jarred her.

“Flaps down! Flaps!”

She reached out mechanically with her left hand, as she had done dozens of times in practice during the last three hours,
and grabbed the flap handle.

“Pull it to the first notch. Quickly.”

She pulled the handle, and the flaps dropped.

Berry felt the aircraft slow even more and saw the speed bleed off on his airspeed indicator: 225 knots. Altitude 700 feet.
To his right he saw Candlestick Park pass beneath his wingtip. “About five miles. We’re coming home. Coming home. Put out
more flap. Go ahead. Now.”

Crandall pulled back at the flap lever and moved it to the next setting.

The Straton began to decelerate more quickly, and the nose jumped up. The aircraft began to pitch up toward the sky.

“John!”

Linda screamed.

“Calm down! It’s all right. It’s all right. I’ve got it under control That was normal. Just relax. We’re doing okay. Okay.
Coming home. A couple more minutes.” The giant airliner was more of a handful than Berry imagined. It was heavy, ponderous,
a hell of a lot different from the Skymaster . . . yet the principles of flight were the same.
It is the Skymaster,
he said with conviction.
Nothing is different.

Suddenly, the wheel began to vibrate violently in his hands and the stall warning synthetic voice filled the cockpit.
AIRSPEED . . . AIRSPEED
. “Oh, Christ.” He had allowed the Straton to slow too much. The airframe began to shake badly. “Power, Sharon, power.” He
held on to the wheel with both hands, knowing that if he let go with even one, the aircraft might get away from him.

Crandall reached out and grabbed the four throttles. She pushed them a few inches forward. “Power.”

“Not too much. Easy, easy. We don’t have much fuel.” Berry lowered the nose of the Straton to pick up airspeed. He prayed
that he hadn’t asked for too much from the fuel-starved engines. The control wheel in his hands stopped vibrating and the
flight smoothed out.

But Berry could see that he had very little altitude left; he certainly couldn’t afford another approaching stall. Yet he
had to ration every ounce of fuel, to balance engine power against altitude, altitude against speed, speed against lift and
drag. The airport was coming up fast. He reached out and pulled the throttle back to a lower setting. “Okay, coming home,
coming home, Sharon, full flaps.”

Crandall pulled the flap lever to its last notch. “Full flaps.”

Suddenly, another cockpit horn sounded, followed by another synthetic electronic voice. LANDING GEAR.

Berry looked down at the instrument panel. “Damn. . . .” He realized now that he had put out full flaps without lowering the
landing gear, and that had automatically triggered the warning. A gentle reminder to pilots like himself who had too many
problems to think about trivialities like landing gear. “Sharon—the landing gear. Put it down. Down!”

Crandall knew she also should have remembered—it had been part of the drill they had practiced. She reached out and lowered
the big handle directly in front of her. “Gear down.”

The airport was almost beneath the nose of the Straton, and Berry knew it was too late to try to put it down on the shorter
runway in front of him. He swung the Straton to the left, toward the widest part of the bay, away from the airport.

“John. The airport.”

“No good, I need room to maneuver.” The landing-gear voice continued, and he wondered if the gear was functioning. He focused
on the three unlit landing-gear lights directly in front of him. “Forget it. No gear.

We’re going to put it down in the bay.” Suddenly, the horn stopped and three bright green lights glowed in front of him. “Gear
down! Gear down. Okay. Hold on. We’re turning in.” Berry banked the aircraft back to the right, but as soon as the airport
came into sight again, he saw that his turn had been too wide.
Christ, Berry, do something right. Get a grip on yourself.

“John, we’re too far left of the airport.”

“I know. Take it easy. I can slide it back.” He applied the proper amounts of rudder and aileron, and the Straton began sliding
back toward the airport. “We’re okay. Coming in, everything is all right.” Berry felt that he could negotiate the approach
with some degree of skill and confidence. But it was the last five or ten seconds to touchdown that killed—that transition
between approach and landing, those moments when the lift of the aircraft had to end and the forces of gravity had to fully
take over again.

He looked down at the airport, a right-angle cross of double runways jutting into the bay. He could see the main terminal
and the long passageways radiating from it to connect the satellite terminals. He saw movement and activity on the ground,
and knew they were waiting for him. There were two parallel runways in front of him now. He expected to see the runways foamed,
but remembered that it was no longer considered useful in a crash situation. The white approach lights that ran out into the
bay were blinking to show him they wanted him to use the left runway. “Okay, I read you. I read you.”

The touchdown zone lights embedded into the runway were on and the green runway lights were visible even in the daylight.
There was no question about where they wanted him to land. The only question was what kind of landing it would be. All he
could promise them was that he wouldn’t kill anyone on the ground.

The Straton kept sliding right as it descended on its long, shallow glide slope toward the runway in front of it. Berry stopped
the slide and lined up the nose with the centerline. “Okay. Soon.” He had no idea why the engines were still running. He glanced
at the altimeter. Three hundred feet above sea level, and the airport was at about thirty feet above sea level. Two hundred
seventy feet to touchdown. He looked out the windshield. The runway was about two miles ahead. They were low by normal standards,
but nothing about this flight had been normal. The airspeed was slow, but not slow enough for a stall. He grasped the wheel
with one hand and pulled off more power from the throttles with the other. “Okay, we’re going in. Going in. Sharon. Linda.
Just hold on. Hold on. I’ll touch it down as easy as possible. Sharon, read off the speeds to me the way I told you.”

Crandall looked down at the airspeed indicator: “One hundred sixty knots.”

“Right.” Berry felt he could do it, as long as the fuel lasted another fifty or sixty seconds. As long as he didn’t fall apart
within the next minute. He drew a long, deep breath. In front of him, a series of sequence strobe flashers in the bay drew
his eyes toward the runway centerline.
Very elaborate system. Very nice airport.
“Speed.”

“One hundred fifty knots.”

Berry held the wheel steady and felt the huge aircraft sinking slowly from its own weight, down toward the earth.

He heard a sound behind him, the sound of ripping— ripping fiberglass. John Berry kept his eyes on the runway, but he knew
what that sound meant.