Mayday (49 page)

The door suddenly flew open, followed by a loud explosion as the nitrogen bottle fired into the inflatable emergency chute.
Berry drew in a long breath. He grabbed at the figure standing in front of him, but his eyes were burning and he couldn’t
see through the clouds of black smoke that billowed out the door.

The passengers began tumbling past him, their residual intelligence directing them toward the sunlight and air. Berry shouted
as the stream of passengers fell over him. “Sharon! Linda!”

“John. Here. We’re here. Against the copilot’s chair. Please, we can’t move.”

Berry crawled toward the voice, trying to stay below the smoke. Through his watering eyes he saw a bare leg and grabbed at
it. But the people around him were moving like a tidal wave now, like the escaping air that had started this nightmare so
many hours before. They pressed against his kneeling figure, and before he realized what had happened he was on the bright
yellow escape chute. He grabbed wildly at the sides of the chute, but he could not stop himself from sliding down, headfirst,
toward the runway below. Before he hit, he heard himself screaming, “Sharon!”

J
ohn Berry’s head throbbed and waves of nausea passed over him. In the distance he could hear sirens, brakes screeching, the
shouts of rescue workers, bullhorns, radios squawking, and the cries of injured people around him.

He got himself into a sitting position and tried to look around, but his right eye was blurry and he rubbed it; his hand came
away with blood. “Damn . . .”

He glanced at the Straton towering over him. The huge jetliner sat on its belly, but the aircraft was tilted to the right
and its nose was pointing back toward the direction from which he’d landed.
Incredible
, he thought, looking at the size of this thing that he’d brought in. The cockpit had been so small. . . . He suddenly felt
a sense of overwhelming awe and pride.

“My God . . .”

Berry thought he’d been unconscious for only a short time since hitting the concrete, because the scene around the Straton
was still chaotic with trucks and am-
426
bulances rushing toward the aircraft. He looked up at the left wing. Small wisps of smoke were still rising from the areas
around the fuel lines, but the flames were out. Several fire trucks were positioned on both sides of the airliner, spraying
foam across the wreckage from a safe distance.

Berry took a deep breath. It was strange, he thought, that his body still felt as if it were in the Straton; he still felt
the vibrations of the airframe, the pulse and sound of the engines—like a sailor who steps off a ship and walks with a swaying
gait. He ran the palms of his hands across the warm concrete, as if to assure himself he had returned to earth.

He took another deep breath to try to clear his head, but there was an acrid smell in the air and his stomach heaved again.

Berry stood unsteadily and looked around the runway. About twenty people were sprawled on the concrete, some unconscious,
some moaning, a few crawling. Berry looked for Sharon and Linda—looked for the orange life vests among the injured passengers.
But neither Sharon nor Linda was on the ground.

He looked up and saw that the yellow escape chute was still attached to the cockpit emergency door. Berry shouted up at the
open door, “Sharon! Linda!”

A figure appeared at the door, and Berry saw that it was the copilot, Dan McVary.

McVary stood at the threshold for a second, then took a step forward, as if he were walking down a flight of stairs. He fell
backward and careened quickly down the chute, howling as he accelerated. His feet hit the runway and the sudden deceleration
pitched him forward, and he tumbled right into the arms of John Berry.

Both men stared at each other for a few long seconds, and as Berry looked into the eyes of this man who had caused him so
much trouble, he realized that anger and hate were totally inappropriate emotions. He said to McVary, “I brought your plane
home, buddy. You’re home.”

McVary kept staring at Berry, showing neither comprehension nor aggression. Then he seemed to slacken in Berry’s arms, and
a tear rolled down his cheek.

A medic pushing a gurney was racing toward the people at the foot of the chute, and Berry called out to him, “Hey! Take this
guy. He’s the copilot. He needs help.”

The medic detoured to Berry, and together they forced McVary onto the gurney. Berry said, “You’d better strap him in.”

The medic nodded, and as he fastened the straps, he asked Berry, “Hey, what’s with these people?”

Berry replied, “Brain. . . . Lack of oxygen. They’re all . . . They’re not well. Unpredictable.”

The medic nodded. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re not supposed to be moving around. Just lie down here and wait for a stretcher.”

“Okay.”

The medic pushed the gurney down the runway toward a dozen parked ambulances and a few dozen trucks that had been pressed
into service to transport dead and injured.

Berry tried to make sense of what was going on around him. It appeared that most of the rescue workers and vehicles were staying
a respectable hundred yards or so from the Straton until the firefighters gave assurances that the airliner wasn’t going to
blow. There were no ladders or hydraulic platforms at any of the doors or at the holes in the sides of the aircraft. All Berry
could see were hoses shooting chemicals at the huge aircraft, nose to tail, top to bottom, wingtip to wingtip. The giant airliner
was dripping, glistening, as pools of chemicals collected around the craft. Berry noticed that a fire truck was shooting white
foam at the tail, obliterating the Trans-United logo. This, he knew, had less to do with fire fighting than with public relations.

He noticed, too, that a number of medics had braved the risk of explosion and were removing the passengers who had slid down
the only deployed chute, which was the one from the cockpit.

Berry looked up at the cockpit emergency door and shouted again, “Sharon! Linda!”

He grabbed the arm of a passing fireman and shouted, “My wife and daughter are in the cockpit! I have to get up there!”

The fireman looked up at the towering dome of the Straton 797, the place where the first-class lounge and cockpit were. The
man shook his head. “We don’t have anything on the scene that can reach that high.”

“Then get a goddamned truck and ladder here! Now!”

“Steady, fella. We’re going in through the passenger doors in a minute. We’ll get into the dome and get your family.” He added,
“I have to ask you to clear this area. Back where the ambulances are. Go on.”

Berry turned and hurried toward the tail of the aircraft.

He felt dizzy, and guessed he had a slight concussion. He surveyed the area around him, and in the far distance he saw the
main terminal and more vehicles headed his way. He spotted a number of vans with antennas and dishes on their roofs, and he
knew they were television vans. A line of police cars with rotating lights kept them at bay and kept the growing crowd from
getting closer.

It occurred to John Berry that somewhere around here was the person or the people who had access to the data-link and who
had tried to put him and everyone aboard the Straton into the ocean.
Undoubtedly
, he thought,
someone from the airline. Someone high up who could commandeer the company data-link and clear everyone else out of the area.
But that was not his main concern at the moment. His main concern was the two people he’d left behind.

Trans-United’s chief pilot, Captain Kevin Fitzgerald, moved around the ambulances, between the wheeled gurneys, and among
the aluminum trestles on which lay stretchers. He spoke quickly to medics and doctors and looked at each of the twenty or
so passengers who had slid down the chute and were being taken here, far from the aircraft that could potentially explode.

Based on what Jack Miller had told him, and on the passenger manifest, Fitzgerald was looking for passengers John Berry, Harold
Stein, and Linda Farley, and flight attendants Sharon Crandall and Barbara Yoshiro. But so far, no one answered to those names.
In fact, he realized, no one was answering to any name. Within a few minutes, the enormity of what had happened struck him.

Fitzgerald came to a gurney about to be loaded on an ambulance. On it lay a man wearing a bloodstained white shirt with epaulettes,
and a black and white name tag that said “McVary.”

Fitzgerald motioned the attendants to hold up a moment, and he leaned over McVary, seeing that he was conscious and strapped
down. Fitzgerald recalled meeting Dan McVary once briefly at a training seminar. Fitzgerald said, “Dan. Dan. Can you hear
me?”

McVary looked at the chief pilot, a man who yesterday was his boss, a man with whom he’d always wanted to have a few words.
But today, First Officer Daniel McVary wouldn’t have even recognized himself in the mirror and certainly did not recognize
Chief Pilot Kevin Fitzgerald. “Aarghh!”

“Dan? It’s Kevin Fitzgerald. Dan? Dan, can you . . . ?”
No
, Fitzgerald realized,
no, you can’t, and no, you never will
. “Damn it! Oh, my God, my God, my God . . .” Suddenly, he realized what Edward Johnson and Wayne Metz were about.

A fire truck came by, and Berry jumped on the running board beside the driver. He said, “Drive under the wing.”

The driver did a double take, but rather than argue a small point with someone who looked like he meant it, the driver turned
slightly and drove toward the tilted wing.

Berry climbed up a small ladder fixed to the side of the cab and balanced himself on the roof. As the fire truck passed beneath
the wing, Berry jumped forward and landed on all fours on top of the wing.

He scrambled up the slick, foam-covered wing toward the fuselage where the wing-top emergency door was located. He slid precariously
sideways, then found some traction and finally reached the door, grabbing for the recessed emergency latch.

He caught his breath and pulled at the latch, but the small door wouldn’t open. “Damn it!” He propped his knees under the
door and kept pulling, but the door held.

Down below, firemen were yelling to him to come down. Berry stood and edged toward the front of the wing, pressing his body
against the fuselage for friction even as his shoes slipped on the foam. He inched his body closer to the hole in the fuselage,
which was just above and forward of the wing.

A fire truck pulled up to the Straton only a few feet below him. The firemen were still shouting at him, and he saw now a
hydraulic platform rising up toward him with two rescue workers on it.

Berry realized he couldn’t quite reach the hole in the fuselage, and he conveyed this to the firemen below by turning toward
the rising platform and nodding his willingness to come down. The platform came up to a level position with the wing, and
one of the rescue workers held on to a safety rail while reaching out to Berry with his other hand. Berry grabbed the rescue
worker’s hand and jumped onto the platform.

Before the platform began to descend and before either of the rescue workers could react, Berry broke the man’s grip and dove
off the platform into the hole in the side of the fuselage.

He found himself on the floor amid the pulverized and twisted wreckage. A few bodies lay in the swath of destruction, and
Berry could hear a few people moaning. He pitied these men, women, and children who had lived through the terror of the explosion
and decompression, then the oxygen deprivation, followed by the crash landing and smoke inhalation. It occurred to him—no,
it had always been there in his mind—that he should have just pushed the nose of the airliner into the Pacific Ocean.

But he hadn’t done that, so he had left himself with some unfinished business.

The two rescue workers on the platform were shouting to him to come out. “Hey, buddy! Come on out of there! It could still
blow. Come on!”

Berry glanced back at them standing in the sunlight and yelled, “I’m going up to the cockpit to get my wife and daughter!”