MAYDAY

Nelson DeMille

AND

Thomas Block

Copyright © 1979, 1998 by Nelson DeMille

1

Silhouetted against the deep blue horizon of the stratosphere, Trans-United Flight 52 cruised westbound toward Japan.
     Below, Captain Alan Stuart could see pieces of the sunlit Pacific between the breaks in the cloud cover. Above was subspace—an airless void without sun or life. The continuous shock wave generated by the giant craft’s supersonic airspeed rose invisibly off its wings and fell unheard into the mid–Pacific Ocean.
     Captain Stuart scanned his instruments. It had been two hours and twenty minutes since the flight had departed San Francisco. The Straton 797 maintained a steady Mach-cruise component of 1.8—930 miles per hour. The triple inertial navigation sets with satellite updating all agreed that Flight 52 was progressing precisely according to plan. Stuart picked up a clipboard from the flight pedestal between himself and the copilot, looked at their computer flight plan, then glanced back at the electronic readout of position: 161 degrees, 14 minutes west, 43 degrees 27 minutes north—2100 miles west of California, 1500 miles north of Hawaii. “We’re on target,” he said.
     First Officer Daniel McVary, the copilot, glanced at him. “We should be landing at Chicago within the hour.”
     Stuart managed a smile. “Wrong map, Dan.” He didn’t care for cockpit humor. He unfolded the chart for today’s mid-Pacific high-altitude navigation routes and laid it on his lap, studying it slowly with the motions of a man who had more time than duties. The chart was blank except for lines of longitude and latitude and the current flight routes. Flight 52 had long left behind any features that mapmakers could put on a chart. Even from their aerie of over twelve miles altitude, there was no land to be seen over this route. Captain Stuart turned to First Officer McVary. “Did you get the fourth and fifth sectors in?”
     “Yes. Updates, too.” He yawned and stretched.
     Stuart nodded. His mind drifted back to San Francisco. His hometown. He’d done a television talk show the previous morning. He’d been anxious about it and, like an instant replay, snatches of the conversation kept running through his brain.
     As usual, the interviewer had been more interested in the Straton than in him, but he’d become accustomed to that. He ran through the standard spiel in his mind. The Straton 797 was not like the old British/ French Concorde. It climbed to the same altitude the Concorde did, but it flew a little slower. Yet it was measurably more practical. Armed with some aerodynamic breakthroughs of the ’90s, the Straton engineers had aimed at less speed and more size. Luxury coupled with economy of operation.
     The aircraft held 40 first-class and 285 tourist-class passengers. For the interview, he remembered to mention the upper deck where the cockpit and first-class lounge were located. The lounge had a bar and piano. One day when he was feeling reckless he would tell an interviewer that it had a fireplace and pool.
     Stuart had spouted the advertising hype whenever he couldn’t think of anything else to say. The Straton 797 flew faster than the sun. Slightly faster than the rotational velocity of the earth.
     At a cruise speed of close to 1,000 miles per hour, Flight 52 should arrive in Tokyo at 7:15 A.M. local time, though it had departed San Francisco at 8:00 A.M. At least that was usually the case. Not today. They had departed San Francisco thirty-nine minutes late because of a minor leak in the number-three hydraulic system. While the mechanics changed the bad valve, Captain Stuart and his flight crew spent the delay time reviewing their computer flight profile. An updated winds aloft forecast had been sent to them, and Stuart had used the new wind information to revise his flight plan. They would fly south of the original planned routing to stay away from the worst of the newly predicted headwinds.
     Time en route would be only slightly greater than usual, at six hours and twenty-four minutes. It was still impressive; grist for the media’s mill. Across seven time zones and the International Date Line in less than a working man’s day. The marvel of the decade.
     But it was a little frightening. Stuart remembered the time he had been candid during a magazine interview. He had honestly explained the technical problems of supersonic flight at 62,000 feet, like the subtle effects of ozone poisoning and the periodic increases in radiation from sunspots. The interviewer had latched on to some of his points, exaggerated others, and had written an article that would have scared the hell out of a Shuttle astronaut. Stuart had been called in to speak to the Chief Pilot about his candor. Never again. “I did another one of those damned TV interviews. Yesterday morning.”
     McVary looked at him. “No kidding? Why didn’t you tell us? Not that I would have gotten up that early …”
     The junior pilot in the cockpit, Carl Fessler, who sat behind them at the relief copilot’s position, laughed.
     “Why do they always pick on you, Skipper?”
     Stuart shrugged. “Some idiot in public relations thinks I come across good. I’d rather fly through a line of thunderstorms than face a camera.”
     McVary nodded. Alan Stuart was every inch the image of the competent captain, from his gray hair to the crease in his pants. “I wouldn’t mind being on TV.”
     Stuart yawned. “I’ll suggest it to PR.” He looked around the flight deck. Behind McVary, Fessler was typing into a portable computer—an electronic equivalent of a ship’s log—with backup data from the instrument panel. McVary had returned to staring blankly ahead, his mind, no doubt, on personal matters.
     The usual mid-flight routines had laid their blue veil over the crew. The blue mid-Pacific blues. The doldrums, as they were called by seamen—but this ship was not becalmed as a ship caught in the doldrums. It was ripping along at close to the velocity of a bullet. Yet there was really nothing, at that moment, for the three pilots to do. At 62,000 feet, all the weather was beneath them. An hour before, they had flown over an area of bad weather. Some of the towering cumulus clouds had reached up high enough to at least give any of the crew and passengers who cared to look at them something to see. But there had not been even the slightest turbulence at those altitudes. Stuart would have welcomed a little bump, the way truck drivers did on a long haul across endless smooth blacktop. He glanced out the front window again. There was one thing to see that never ceased to fascinate him: the rounded horizon line that separated earth from sub-space.
     The autopilot made small and silent corrections to keep the flight on the preprogrammed course. Stuart listlessly laid two fingers of his right hand on the control wheel. He had not steered the 797 manually since right after takeoff. He would not use the control wheel again until the final moments of their landing approach at Tokyo.
     Carl Fessler looked up from his portable computer. He laid it down on the small table next to him. “What a lot of crap this backup data is. Most of the other airlines don’t do this crap anymore.”
     Stuart took his eyes off the horizon and glanced back at his relief copilot. “I bet we could find some eager young new-hire pilot to take your place. He’d probably type faster, too.” Stuart smiled, but he had been pointedly serious. He had little patience for the new breed. They had a job that was fifty times better than what had come before, yet they seemed to complain constantly. Did they realize that thirty years ago Alan Stuart had to hand-plot each and every route segment before climbing into the copilot’s seat? Spoiled, Stuart said to himself. Telling them about it was a waste of time. “If we land in the teeth of a monsoon at Tokyo, you’ll earn your day’s pay, Carl.”
     McVary closed his copy of Playboy and put it into his flight bag. Reading was not authorized, and Stuart was starting to get into one of his Captain moods. “That’s right, Carl. Or if one of these lights starts blinking, we’ll find something useful for you to do real quick.”
     Fessler could see which way the wind was blowing. “You’re right. It’s a good job.” He swiveled his seat slightly toward the front. “In the meantime, are you guys any good at trivia? What’s the capital of Rwanda?”
     McVary looked back over his shoulder. “Here’s a trivia question for you. Which one of the stews has the hots for you?”
     Fessler suddenly looked alert. “Which one?”
     “I’m asking you.” He laughed. “Look, I’ll press the stew call button, and if fate brings you your secret lover, I’ll nod. If not … well, you have ten left to wonder about.” He laughed again, then glanced at Captain Stuart to read his mood. The old man seemed to be taking it well enough. “Skipper, anything for you?”
     “Might as well. Coffee and a pastry.”
     “Coffee for me,” Fessler said.
     McVary picked up the ship’s interphone and pushed the call button.
     Flight attendants Sharon Crandall and Terri O’Neil were in the first-class galley in the main cabin below when the light blinked. Terri O’Neil picked up the phone. After a brief exchange with McVary, she hung up and turned to Sharon Crandall.
     “They want coffee again. It’s a wonder they don’t turn brown with all they drink.”
     “They’re just bored,” said Crandall.
     “Too bad. Walking all the way upstairs every time the cockpit crew needs a diversion is no fun.” O’Neil took out a dish of pastry and poured three coffees.
     Crandall smiled. Terri was always carrying on about something. Today, it was walking to the cockpit. “I’ll go, Terri. I need the exercise. I have to go down to the pit pretty soon to help Barbara Yoshiro.” She nodded toward the service elevator that led to the lower kitchen. “There’s no room to move down there.”
     “No. Take a break. If anyone needs the exercise, it’s me. Check these hips.”
     “Okay. You go.” They both laughed. “I’ll do the cleaning up,” Crandall said.
     Terri O’ Neil picked up the tray, left the galley, and walked the short distance to the circular staircase. She waited at the base of the stairs while an elderly, well-dressed woman worked her way down.
     “I’m sorry I’m so slow,” the woman said.
     “Take your time. No rush,” O’Neil answered. She wished the woman would move a little faster.
     “My name is Mrs. Thorndike.” She introduced herself with the automatic manners of the old, not recognizing or caring that modern travel didn’t require it. “I like your piano player. He’s quite good,” the woman said. She stopped on the bottom step to chat.
     O’Neil forced a smile and balanced the tray of coffees and pastry against the handrail. “Yes. He’s good. Some of them are even better than he is.”
     “Really? I hope I have one of the better ones on the flight home.”
     “I hope you do.”
     The old woman finally stepped aside and the flight attendant trudged up the stairway. Strands of “As Time Goes By” floated down to O’Neil over the normal inflight noises. With each step the singing of the more gregarious passengers got louder.
     When O’Neil reached the top of the staircase, she frowned. Three of the male passengers stood arm-in-arm around the piano. So far, they were content to sing softly. But she knew that whenever men acted openly chummy while they were still sober, they were certain to become especially loud after they began to drink. Alcohol released the Irish tenor in them. O’Neil knew they would soon get their chance, since she was supposed to open the bar in a few minutes. She wished the airline would go back to the old-fashioned lounge instead of the aerial nightclub.
     “Hello,” O’Neil called to the young piano player. She could not recall if his name was Hogan or Grogan. He was too young for her anyway. She edged her way around half-a-dozen passengers, across the heavily carpeted lounge, and toward the cockpit. With the tray balanced in her hands, she tapped against the fiberglass door with the toe of her shoe. She could see from the shadow that someone in the cockpit had leaned up against the door’s tiny section of one-way glass to see who had knocked.
     Carl Fessler unlocked the door for her, and O’Neil walked into the cockpit.
     “Coffee is served, gentlemen.”
     “The pastry is mine, Terri,” Stuart said.
     Everyone took a plastic cup, and she handed Stuart the pastry dish.
     Stuart turned to Fessler. “Carl, see if the passengers’ flight-connection information has come in yet.” Stuart glanced down at the blank electronics screen on the pedestal between the two flight chairs. “Maybe we missed it on the screen.”
     Fessler looked over his shoulder toward the right rear of the cockpit. He had left the data-link printer’s door open. The message tray was still empty. “Nothing, Skipper.”
     Stuart nodded. “If we don’t get that connection information soon,” he said to Terri O’Neil, “I’ll send another request.”
     “Very good,” said O’Neil. “Some of the first-class passengers are getting nervous. Having a printout of connection updates works even better than giving them Valium.” While she spoke with the Captain, O’Neil could see out of the corner of her eye that Fessler and McVary were looking at each other in a peculiar way, evidently conveying some sort of signal. Terri realized that the First Officer and Second Officer were playing a game—and that she had become part of it. Boys. After everyone mumbled his thanks, O’Neil left the flight deck and closed the door behind her.
     Captain Stuart had waited for the coffee and pastry as though it were a special event—a milestone along a straight desert highway. He ate the pastry slowly, then sat back to sip at his coffee. Of the three of them on the flight deck, only Stuart remembered when everything they ate was served on real china. The utensils then were silver and the food was a little less plastic as well. Now even the aromas were a weak imitation of what he had remembered as a new copilot. The whole cockpit smelled different then. Real leather, hydraulic fluid, and old cigarettes; not the sterile aroma of acrylic paints and synthetic materials.
     Alan Stuart’s mind wandered. He had flown for Trans-United for thirty-four years. He’d crossed the Pacific more than a thousand times. He was a multimillion-miler, although supersonic speeds had made that yardstick meaningless. Now he was losing count of his hours, miles, and number of crossings. He sighed, then took another sip from his plastic cup. “I don’t know where the company buys this lousy coffee,” he said to no one in particular.
     Fessler turned around. “If that’s a trivia question, the answer is Brazil.”
     Stuart didn’t answer. In a few seconds his thoughts had slid comfortably back to where they had been. Supersonic transports were not actually flown; they were just aimed and watched. What modern pilots did mostly was to type instructions into onboard computers, and that was how actual flight tasks got accomplished. It had become such a passive job—until something went wrong.
     In the old days, there was much more work, but much more fun. There were the long layovers in Sydney, Hong Kong, Tokyo. Some days in the Straton he would sit in his twelve-mile-high perch and look down on the routes he had flown as a young man. Old Boeing 707s—the original jets. And the captains that he had flown with had once flown the DC-4s, DC-6s, and DC-7s on those very routes. Even with the old 707, they needed to make refueling stops everywhere. The lighter passenger loads meant that the flights operated only a few times each week, so they had several days’ layover in lots of remote and faraway places. Life, he was certain, had been simpler yet more exciting then.
     Carl Fessler tapped his pencil on the digital readout of the Total Airframe Temperature gauge. He was beginning another round of required entries into the portable backup computer, entries of their mid-flight aircraft performance numbers. Records of every sort, to be fed into the company mainframe computer and never to be seen again.
     The Total Airframe Temperature needle sat on 189 degrees Fahrenheit, closing in on the red-line mark of 198. The operational limits at 62,000 feet were always a matter of temperatures and pressures, reflected Fessler. The Straton transport’s skin was not to exceed its designated limit. If necessary, Fessler would tell the Captain and he would slow the ship down. The environment they operated in was hostile enough. Don’t press it. “What’s the capital of Japan?” he asked without looking up from his paperwork.
     McVary glanced over his shoulder. “Mount Fuji?”
     “Close,” said Fessler. “But not close enough for you to try to land on it.” Fessler entered the final figures into the computer and looked up at the windshield. Just beyond the glass and the aluminum-and-titanium alloy skin of the 797 was a slipstream of air moving so fast that anything its friction touched was instantly heated to over 175 degrees Fahrenheit. Yet the actual temperature of the atmosphere outside was 67 degrees below zero. The air itself was thin enough to be nonexistent. Less than one pound per square inch—one-fifteenth the normal sea-level amount. The oxygen composition was less than one percent. The mass was unbreathable anyway, since the pressure was too low to force the few oxygen molecules into the lungs. Subspace, reflected Fessler. Subspace was not what he’d been hired for five years before. But here he was.
     McVary suddenly sat erect in his seat and put down his coffee. “Skipper, what’s that?” He pointed to his right front. There was a small dot on the horizon—hardly more than a speck against the cockpit glass.
     Stuart sat up and put his face closer to the windshield.
     Fessler put down his coffee and turned in his seat to look.
     They watched the dot on the right side of the windshield. It was moving across their front, apparently at an oblique angle to their flight path. It was growing slightly, but not alarmingly. It did not—at least for the moment—pose any threat of collision.
     McVary relaxed a bit. “Must be a fighter. Some military jet jockey horsing around.”
     Stuart nodded. “Right.” He reached into his flight bag and pulled out a pair of binoculars, a good set of Bausch & Lomb that he had bought in Germany many years before. He carried it as an amusement. He used to watch ships, planes, and faraway coastlines when he flew low enough to see something worth looking at. He’d meant to take them out of his bag long ago, but habit and nostalgia—he’d seen a good deal of the world through them—had postponed the retirement of the glasses. He adjusted the focus knob. “Can’t make it out.”
     “Maybe it’s a missile,” McVary said. “A cruise missile.” He had been an Air Force pilot, and his mind still worked in that direction.
     Fessler half stood near his console. “Would they shoot it up here?”
     “They’re not supposed to,” said McVary. “Not near commercial routes.” He paused. “We did deviate pretty far south today.”
     Stuart twisted the focus knob again. “Lost it. Wait … Got it. …”
     “Can you make it out, Skipper?” asked McVary, a slight edge to his voice.
     “Funny-looking. Never seen anything like it. Some sort of missile, I think. I can’t tell. Here.” He handed the binoculars to McVary. “You look.”
     The ex-fighter pilot took the glasses. Even without them he could see that the object had gotten closer. To the naked eye it appeared to be a sliver of dark-colored metal against the blue sky. He raised the glasses and adjusted them. There was something very familiar about that object, but he couldn’t place it. It was hard to get a perspective on its size, but instinctively he knew it was small. “Small,” he said aloud. “And at that speed and these altitudes it could only be military.”
     Fessler stepped closer to the front windshield. “Whose military?”
     McVary shrugged as he continued to scan. “The Martian Air Force, Carl. How the hell do I know?” He leaned farther forward. For a brief, irrational moment he thought he might be seeing the opening salvo of an atomic war. The end of the world. No. It was too low, too small, and going toward the open Pacific. “It’s got to be a jet fighter … but …”
     “If it gets closer, we’ll turn,” Stuart said. Altering the course of a supersonic transport was no easy matter, however. At cruise speed it would take him nearly four-and-a-half minutes to turn the 797 around, and during that time the ship would have flown sixty-seven miles. At any greater rate of turn, the passengers would be subjected to an unacceptable level of positive Gs. Those who were standing would be thrown to the floor. Those seated would be unable to move. He flipped on the switch for the cabin seat-belt sign, then turned in his seat and wrapped his hands around the control wheel. His left thumb was poised over the autopilot disengage button. He looked at the object on the horizon, then at his crew. The cockpit had changed quickly. It was always that way. Nothing to do, or too much to do. He glanced at his relief copilot, who was still out of his seat and looking out the window. “Fessler. Who played opposite Cary Grant in North by Northwest?”
     “I don’t know.”
     “Then get back in your seat and do something you do know. Sit down, strap in, get ready.”
     “Yes, sir.”
     Small beads of perspiration had begun to form on the Captain’s forehead. “I’m going to turn,” he said, but still did not press the autopilot release button on his control wheel. Alan Stuart—like most commercial pilots—was reluctant to alter course, speed, or altitude unless absolutely necessary. Jumping headlong into an unneeded evasive action was a student pilot’s stunt.
     The fourth being in the cockpit—the autopilot—continued to maintain the 797’s heading and altitude.
     The object was easily visible now. It was becoming apparent to Stuart that the mysterious missile was not on a collision course with the Straton. If neither of the crafts altered course, the object would pass safely across their front. Captain Stuart relaxed his grip on the control wheel but stayed ready to execute a turn toward the north if the object’s flight path changed. He glanced at his wristwatch, which was still set to San Francisco time. It was exactly eleven o’clock.
     McVary saw the object clearly now in the binoculars.
     “Oh, Christ!” His voice was a mixture of surprise and fear.
     Captain Stuart experienced a long-forgotten but familiar sensation in his stomach. “What, what … ?”
     “It’s not a missile,” said McVary. “It’s a drone. A military target drone!”

At 10:44 A.M. San Francisco time, the helmsman of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Chester W. Nimitz made a three-degree course correction to starboard. Positioned 2,000 yards astern of the Nimitz were the cruiser Belknap and the destroyers Coontz and Nicolas. Their helmsmen also made appropriate corrections. The fleet steered a steady course of 135 degrees, making a headway of 18 knots. They rode serenely over the mid-Pacific, their position 900 miles north of Hawaii. The midmorning skies were clear and the air was warm. The weather forecast for the next thirty-six hours called for little change.
     Retired Rear Admiral Randolf Hennings stood on the 0-7 deck of the carrier’s superstructure. Hennings’s blue civilian suit stood out among the officers and men dressed in tropical tans. The orange ALL-ACCESS pass pinned to his collar made him more, not less, self-conscious.
     From the seven-story-high balcony behind the bridge, Hennings had an unrestricted view of the Nimitz’s flight deck. Yet his eyes wandered from the operational activities toward the men who stood their stations a dozen feet away inside the glass-enclosed ship’s bridge.
     Captain Diehl sat in his leather swivel chair, overseeing the morning’s operation. He was, at that moment, in conversation with Lieutenant Thompson, the Officer of the Deck, and with another lieutenant, whom Hennings had not met. The helmsman stood attentively at the Nimitz’s steering controls.
     The flurry of on-deck activities from the dawn practice maneuvers had subsided. Hennings counted half-a-dozen aircraft on the starboard quarter of the Nimitz’s flight deck. One by one, they were being taken to the servicing area on the hangar deck below. The plotting board in the Air-Ops Room had shown only one aircraft yet to be recovered. Navy 347. F-18. Pilot Lt. P. Matos. Launched 1027 hours, 23 June. Special test. Estimated time of return, 1300 hours.
     Hennings had not liked that “special test” designation. It was too close to the truth—and the truth was not to be openly discussed. He would have preferred something even more routine, like “extra training.”
     Hennings knew too well why the test was a secret, even though no one had actually spoken with him about it. It was, he knew, because of the new Voluntary Arms Limitation Treaty recently approved by Congress and signed by the President. Hennings had read that the agreement specifically prohibited the development of improved tactical missiles, among other things. Today’s secret test would be the first for the updated Phoenix missile. Its range had been doubled to 500 miles, a new self-guiding radar system had been added, and, most importantly, its maneuverability had been vastly increased. All of this was unquestionably outside the limitations of the treaty Congress had decided on. But if the weapon proved workable, it could significantly alter the balance of power in any future air-to-air combat scenario.
     Hennings became aware that a young ensign was holding a salute, speaking to him. He glanced at the woman’s blue and white name tag. “What is it, Ms. Phillips?”
     The ensign dropped her salute. “Excuse me, Admiral. Commander Sloan requests that you join him in E-334.”
     Hennings nodded. “Very well. Lead on.”
     Hennings followed the ensign through the hatchway and down the metal stairs. They walked in silence. Hennings had entered the Navy at a time when female personnel did not serve on warships. By the time he left the Navy, it was not uncommon. While in the Navy, Hennings had towed the official line and outwardly approved of women serving with men aboard ship. In reality, Hennings thought the whole social experiment had been and was a disaster. But the Navy and the Pentagon had covered up most of the problems so that the public was never aware of the high pregnancy rate among unmarried female personnel, the sexual harassment, abuse, and even rapes, and the general lowering of morale and discipline. In short, it was a nightmare for the ships’ commanders, but it wasn’t his problem.
     On the 0-2 deck of the conning tower, they stepped into a long gray corridor similar to the thousands that Hennings had walked through in his shipboard career. There had been an incredible amount of technological innovation aboardship since his day, but the old architectural adage that form should follow function was never more true than on a warship. There was a familiarity about naval architecture that was comforting. Yet, deep down, he knew that nothing was the same. “Did you ever serve on an older ship, Ms. Phillips?”
     The ensign glanced back over her shoulder. “No, sir. The Nimitz is my first ship.”
     “Could you imagine what these corridors were like before air-conditioning?”
     “I can imagine, sir.” The ensign stopped abruptly and opened a door marked “E-334.” She was relieved to be rid of her charge, relieved not to have to hear a story about wooden ships and iron men. “Admiral Hennings, Commander.”
     Hennings stepped into the small gray-painted room packed with electronics gear. The door closed behind him.
     An enlisted man sat in front of a console. Standing behind the man and looking over his shoulder was Commander James Sloan. Sloan looked up as Hennings entered the room. “Hello, Admiral. Did you see the launch?”
     “Yes. The F-18 was being strapped to the catapult when I arrived on the bridge. Quite impressive.”
     “That machine really moves. Excuse me for just one minute, Admiral.” Sloan leaned over and said something to the electronics specialist, Petty Officer Kyle Loomis, in a voice just a bit too low for Hennings to hear.
     Hennings could see that Sloan was unhappy. They were apparently having some technical difficulty. Still, Hennings had the feeling that he was not being shown all the military courtesy possible, but decided not to make an issue of it. Retired, after all, meant retired. He had one mission aboard the Nimitz, and that was to carry back the results of the “special test” to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to carry on his person untitled and unsigned test results, and to commit to memory everything that could not be written. He was a messenger. The execution of the test was not an area he cared to get involved with.
     His old friends in Washington threw him these consulting plums as a favor. He had little else to do. This time, however, he was beginning to wish he hadn’t been home when the phone rang. Hennings had the feeling that all those soft jobs to exotic places and those generous “consulting fees” had been a setup for the time when his friends might need a special favor. Could this be that special time? Hennings shrugged. It didn’t matter. His friends had earned his loyalty, and he would provide it.
     Commander Sloan was pointing to a panel of gauges above the console. Loomis mumbled something. Sloan shook his head. He was clearly not happy.
     “Problem, Commander?”
     Sloan looked up and forced a smile. “Only the usual … Admiral.” He paused and considered for a second. “One of our high-frequency channels to San Diego isn’t working. Can’t figure out why.” He glanced at the equipment panel as though it were an enlisted man who had jumped ship.
     “Will it delay things?”
     Sloan thought it might, but that wasn’t the proper answer. “No. It shouldn’t. We can go through Pearl. Just a procedural step.” He paused again. He wondered how much of this Hennings was taking in. “We could eliminate the step anyway. The things we need are working.”
     “Good. I’m to be at a conference tomorrow morning.”
     Sloan already knew that. The famous breakfast meetings of the Joint Chiefs, where bleary-eyed old men turned the talk from golf scores to nuclear holocaust with the ease of a piano player going through a familiar medley.
     “I’m set up on a commercial flight out of Los Angeles late tonight. I need to be off the carrier by 1600 hours.”
     “The mission should be completed shortly.”
     “Good. Now, do you mind telling me why you summoned me here, Commander?” His tone was as gentlemanly as always, so the words were more, not less, terse.
     Sloan was taken aback for a second. “I didn’t summon … I mean, I thought you would want to be here.”
     “This …” Hennings waved his hand around the room, “… this means very little to me. I would rather have just gotten an oral and written report from you at the completion of the test. But if you want me here, I’ll stay.” He sat in a small swivel chair.
     “Thank you, sir, I would.” Sloan didn’t trust himself to say any more. He had treated Hennings in an offhand manner since he’d come aboard, but now he was reminded, in case he had forgotten, that Randolf Hennings had friends. More than that, though, the old saying, “Once an admiral, always an S.O.B.”, was brought home.
     As Hennings watched Sloan shuffle through some papers, he realized for the first time how much Sloan wanted him to be here, as an actual accomplice in the missile test. They were, Hennings now realized, doing something criminal. But it was too late to turn back. Hennings pushed those disquieting notions out of his mind and forced himself to think of other things.
     Sloan turned to the electronics. He peered at the panel intently, but he was trying to recall all that he knew about Randolf Hennings. Action in and around Vietnam. He was considered a likable man by his peers, but you never knew about admirals, retired or otherwise. They could change as quickly as the North Atlantic weather. Hennings was known for having enough perseverance to get his job done but not enough to be a threat to his seniors. Those very seniors who had made it to the top had now picked Hennings to carry out a most sensitive mission. Hennings was known to be the epitome of dependability and discretion. Like a dinghy caught in the suction of a battleship’s wake, thought Sloan, retired Rear Admiral Hennings had followed at a speed and course set by others. Yet Sloan had to reckon with him. He glanced back at Hennings. “Coffee, Admiral?”
     “No, thank you.”
     Sloan’s mind was still not on the electronics problem but on the politics of the test. He thought about asking Hennings for some information, but decided that would be a mistake. At any rate, Hennings wouldn’t know much more than he, Sloan, did.
     “Sir, the patch to Pearl isn’t carrying.”
     Sloan looked at the electronics man. “What?”
     “The problem might be on their end.”
     “Right. Probably is.” Sloan glanced at Hennings. Hennings was drumming his fingers restlessly on the arm of his chair. His attention seemed to be focused on the video screen that was displaying routine weather data.
     Petty Officer Loomis glanced back over his shoulder. “Sir? Should I keep trying?”
     Sloan tapped his foot. Time for a command decision. He felt acid in his stomach and knew why officers had more ulcers than enlisted men. He considered. The test elements were nearly all in position. A delay could disrupt things for hours. Hennings had to be at the Pentagon the next morning with the report. If the report said only “Special test delayed,” Commander James Sloan would look bad. The men behind the test might lose their nerve and cancel it for good. Worse, they might think he had lost his nerve. He considered asking Hennings for advice, but that would have been a tactical blunder.
     “Sir,” the electronics man said, his hand poised over a set of switches on the console.
     Sloan shook his head. “Get back to the mission profile. We can’t spend any more time on routine procedures. Send the approval for the release, then get another update from Lieutenant Matos.”
     Petty Officer Kyle Loomis returned to his equipment. He had begun to suspect that all was not routine here, but as a former submariner, his knowledge of fighters and missiles was too limited to allow him to piece together what was not routine about this test. Without anyone telling him, he knew that his ignorance had gotten him out of the submarine that he’d come to hate and onto the Nimitz, which he found more tolerable. He also knew that his transfer request to the Mediterranean Fleet was secure as long as he kept his mouth shut.
     Sloan watched the electronics procedure for a few seconds, then glanced at Hennings, who was still staring at the video screen. “Soon, Admiral.”
     Hennings looked up. He nodded.
     It occurred to Sloan that perhaps Hennings, like himself, wanted to go on record as having said nothing for the record.
     Petty Officer Loomis spoke. “Sir, Lieutenant Matos is on-station. Orbiting in sector twenty-three.”
     “All right. Tell him that we expect target information shortly.”
     “Yes, sir.”
     Sloan tried to evaluate his own exposure in this thing. It had begun with the routine delivery of the two Phoenix test missiles to the carrier a month before. He had signed for the missiles. Then came a routine communication from Pearl informing the Nimitz’s commander, Captain Diehl, that Hennings was coming to observe an air-to-air missile testing. Not unusual, but not routine. Then came the brief communication that directed a routine practice firing of the missiles. The only exception to the routine was that “procedures and distances” be in accordance with the manufacturer’s new specifications for the AIM-63X version of the Phoenix. That was when Sloan had known that there was a top-level conspiracy—no, wrong word; initiative—a top-level initiative among the Joint Chiefs. They were going to secretly ignore the new arms limitation agreement that Congress had enacted. And by a stroke of fate, Sloan had been named the technical officer in charge of conducting the test. Within a year, he’d be a captain … or he’d be in Portsmouth Naval Prison. He looked at Hennings again. What was in this for him?
     Sloan knew that he could have backed out at any time by asking for shore leave. But those old men in the Pentagon had done their homework well when they studied his personnel file. They knew a gambler when they saw one. A small stream of perspiration ran down Sloan’s neck, and he hoped Hennings hadn’t noticed it. “Approximately ten minutes, Admiral.” He punched a button on the console and a digital countdown clock began to run.
     Sloan had an inordinate fascination, mixed with phobia, for countdown procedures. He watched the digital display running down. He used the time to examine his motives and strengthen his resolve. To rationalize. The updated Phoenix was a crucial weapon to have in the event of war, even though the idiots in Congress were acting as if there would never be any more wars. One discreet test of this missile would tell the Joint Chiefs if it would work under combat conditions, if the increased maneuverability would mean that the kill ratio of this newest weapon could be nearly one hundred percent.
     The Navy brass would then know what they had, and the politicians could go on jawing and pretending. American airpower would have an unpublicized edge, no matter what happened in the future. Russia could go back to being the Soviet Union and the Cold War could refreeze; U.S. combat forces would have something extra. And with modern technology, a slight edge was all you could ever hope for. All you ever needed, really. There was also the matter of the Navy finding its balls again, after countless years of humiliation at the hands of the politicians, the gays, and the feminists. Nine minutes.
     Commander Sloan poured a cup of coffee from a metal galley pitcher. He glanced at Hennings. The man was looking uncomfortable. He could see it in his eyes, as he had seen it several times the day before. Did Hennings know something that he didn’t?
     Sloan walked to the far end of the console and looked at the gauges. But his thoughts were on Hennings now. Hennings seemed to be almost uninterested in the testing. Uninterested in Sloan, too, which was unusual since Sloan was certain that Hennings was to make an oral evaluation report on him. Sloan felt that almost forgotten ensign’s paranoia creeping over him and shook it off quickly. A seasoned officer turns everything to his advantage. He would turn Hennings’s detachment to his advantage, if necessary.
     Hennings stood suddenly and moved nearer to Sloan. He spoke in a low voice. “Commander, will the data be ready as soon as the testing is complete? Will you need to do anything else?”
     Sloan nodded. “Just a few qualitative forms.” He tapped his fingers on a stack of paperwork on the console desk. “Thirty minutes or so.”
     Hennings nodded. The room was silent except for the ambient sounds of electronics.
     Randolf Hennings let his eyes wander absently over the equipment in the tight room. The functions of this equipment were not entirely a mystery to him. He recognized some of it and guessed at what looked vaguely familiar, as a man might do who had been asleep for a hundred years and had awakened in the twenty-first century.
     When he was a younger man he had asked many questions of his shipboard technicians and officers. But as the years passed, the meaning of those young men’s answers eluded him more each time. He was, he reminded himself, a product of another civilization. He had been born during the Great Depression. His older brother had died of a simple foot infection. He remembered, firsthand, a great deal about World War II, the Nazis and the Japs, listening to the bulletins as they came across the radio in their living room. He recalled vividly the day that FDR died, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the day the Japanese surrendered, the day, as a teenager, that he saw a television screen for the first time. He remembered the family car, a big, old, round-bodied Buick, and how his mother had never learned to drive it. They’d come an incredibly long way in a short span of time. Many people had chosen not to go along on that fast ride. Others had become the helmsmen and navigators. Then there were people like himself who found they were in positions of command without understanding what those helmsmen and navigators were doing, where they were going.
     He walked over to the single porthole in the room and pushed back the blackout shade. The tranquil sea calmed his troubled conscience. He remembered when he had finally made the decision that he would have to evaluate his men on their personal traits and then trust their technical advice accordingly. Men, he understood. Human beings did not really change from generation to generation. If his sixty-seven years were good for anything, it was that he had arrived at an understanding of the most complex piece of machinery of all. He could read the hearts and souls of his fellow men; he had peered into the psyche of Commander James Sloan, and he did not like what he saw.
     Petty Officer Loomis turned around. “Commander Sloan.” He pointed to a video display screen.
     Sloan walked over to the screen. He looked at the message. “Good news, Admiral.”
     Hennings closed the blackout shade and turned around.
     Sloan spoke as he read the data. “Our elements are in position. The F-18 is on station, and the C-130 is also in position. We need only the release verification.” He glanced at the digital countdown clock. Five minutes.
     Hennings nodded. “Fine.”
     Sloan gave a final thought to the one command check he was not able to complete. If the test had not been a secret, and if delay had not meant possible cancellation, and if cancellation had not meant potential disadvantage in a future war, and his career weren’t in the balance, and if Hennings weren’t evaluating him with those steely gray eyes, and if it wasn’t time for the Navy to gets its balls back, and if that damn digital clock weren’t running down … then, maybe, maybe he would have waited. Four minutes.
     The video screen’s display updated again, and Sloan looked at the short message. He read it first to himself, smiled, and then read it aloud. “The C-130 has launched its target and it was last tracked as steady and on course. The target drone has accelerated to Mach 2, and is now level at sixty-two thousand feet.” He glanced at the digital countdown. “In two minutes and thirty seconds I can instruct Lieutenant Matos to begin tracking the target and engage it at will.”

“Would you like another drink?”
     “No, I think I’ll wait.” John Berry put down his empty glass and looked up at the flight attendant. Her shoulder-length brunette hair brushed across the top of her white blouse. She had narrow hips, a slender waist, and very little visible makeup. She looked like one of those models from a tennis club brochure. Berry had spoken to her several times since the flight had begun. Now that the job of serving the midmorning snack was nearly finished, she seemed to be lingering near his seat. “Not too crowded,” Berry said, motioning around the half-empty forward section of the Straton 797.
     “Not here. In the back. I’m glad I pulled first-class duty. The tourist section is full.”
     “High season in Tokyo?”
     “I guess. Maybe there’s a special on electronics factory tours.” She laughed at her own joke. “Are you going on business or pleasure?”
     “Both. It’s a pleasure to be away on business.” Disclosures can come out at unusual moments. Yet, for John Berry, that particular moment wasn’t an unusual one. The young flight attendant was everything that Jennifer Berry was not. Even better, she seemed to be none of the things that Jennifer Berry had become. “Sharon?” He pointed to the flight attendant’s name tag.
     “Yes, Sharon Crandall. From San Francisco.”
     “John Berry. From New York. I’m going to see Kabushi Steel in Tokyo. Then a metal-fabricating company in Nagasaki. No electronics factories. I go twice a year. The boss sends me because I’m the tallest. The Japanese like to emphasize their differences with the West. Short salespeople make them nervous.”
     “Really?” She looked at him quizzically. She grinned. “No one ever told me that before. Are you kidding?”
     “Sure.” He hesitated. His throat was dry. Just the thought of asking this young woman to sit with him was mildly unnerving. Yet all he wanted was someone to talk to. To pass the time. To pretend for a few relaxing moments that the situation in New York didn’t exist.
     Jennifer Berry’s tentacles reached even this far. Her presence stretched across a continent and over an ocean. The image of his difficult and complaining wife lay over John Berry’s thoughts. Their two teenaged children—a son and a daughter—were on his mind, too. They had grown further from him every year. The family tie had become mainly their shared name. Shared living space and shared documents. Legalities.
     The rest of what was termed these days their lifestyle was, to Berry, a cruel joke. An outrageously expensive house in Oyster Bay that he had always disliked. The pretentious country club. The phony bridge group. Hollow friendships. Neighborhood gossip. The cocktails, without which all of Oyster Bay, along with the neighboring suburbs, would have committed mass suicide long ago. The futility. The silliness. The boredom. What had happened to the things he cared about? He could hardly remember the good times anymore. The all-night talks with Jennifer, and their lovemaking, before it became just another obligation. Those camping trips with the kids. The long Sunday breakfasts. The backyard baseball games. It seemed like another life. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
     John Berry found himself dwelling on the past more and more. Living in the past. A 1960s song on the radio made him yearn for Dayton, Ohio, his hometown. An old movie or serial on television brought on a nostalgia so acute that his heart ached.
     He looked up at the young woman standing over him. “How about having a drink with me? Never mind. I know … you’re on duty. Then how about a Coke?” Berry was speaking quickly. “I’ll tell you about Japanese businessmen. Japanese customs. Very educational. Wonderful information. Great stuff to know if you ever want to become an international corporation.”
     “Sure,” she said. “Love to hear it. Just give me a few minutes to finish up. A few more trays. Ten minutes.” Sharon Crandall gathered Berry’s tray and half a dozen others. She smiled at him as she walked past on her way to the service elevator in the rear of the first-class compartment.
     Berry turned and watched as she stepped inside. The narrow elevator was barely big enough for both her and the trays. In a few seconds she had disappeared behind the sliding door, on her way down to the below-decks galley beneath the first-class compartment.
     John Berry sat alone for a minute and collected his scattered thoughts. He got out of his seat and stretched his arms. He looked around the spacious first-class section. Then he looked out the window at the two giant engines mounted beneath the Straton’s right wing. They could swallow the Skymaster. One gulp, he thought.
     His company, Taylor Metals, owned a four-seat Cessna Twin Skymaster for the sales staff, and if Berry had any real interest left, flying was it. He supposed that flying was mixed up somehow with his other problems. If he found the earth more tolerable, he might not grab every opportunity to fly above it.
     Berry turned toward the rear of the first-class cabin. He saw that the lavatories were vacant. He looked at his wristwatch. He had time to wash up and comb his hair before Sharon returned.
     On his way to the rear of the cabin, Berry glanced out the window again. He marveled at the enormous size and power of the giant airliner’s engines. He marveled, too, at the solitude of space. What he failed to notice was that they were not alone. He did not see the tiny dot against the horizon that was rapidly approaching the Straton airliner.

Lieutenant Peter Matos held the F-18’s control stick with his right hand. He inched the power levers slightly forward. The two General Electric engines spooled up to a higher setting. Matos continued to fly his Navy fighter in wide, lazy circles at 54,000 feet. He held the craft’s airspeed constant at slightly less than Mach 1. He was loitering, flying nondescript patterns inside a chunk of international airspace known to his country’s military as Operations Area R-23. He was waiting for a call from Home. It was overdue and he was just beginning to wonder about it when his earphones crackled with the beginning of a message. It was the voice of Petty Officer Kyle Loomis, whom Matos vaguely knew.
     “Navy three-four-seven, this is Homeplate, over.”
     Matos pressed a button on the top of his control stick. “Roger, Homeplate. Three-four-seven. Go ahead, over.” He began another turn through the tranquil Pacific sky.
     The voice of the electronics mate in Room E-334 carried loud and clear. “The target has been released. We estimate an initial in-range penetration of your operational area within two minutes. Operation status is now changed to Foxtrot-alpha-whiskey. I say again, Foxtrot-alpha-whiskey.”
     “Roger, Homeplate. I read Foxtrot-alpha-whiskey.” Matos released the transmit button and simultaneously pulled back on the control stick. Foxtrot-alpha-whiskey. Fire-at-will. He would never see the target, the hit, or the destruction except on his radar, yet the predator’s stimuli were there and his heart beat faster. The F-18 tightened its turn, and Matos felt the increase in G forces as he accelerated around the remainder of the circle he had been flying. He leveled the fighter on a northeasterly heading and spooled up the engines again. He felt like a knight charging into the field to do battle.
     Peter Matos, like most military men who were not born in the continental United States, was more loyal, more patriotic, more enthusiastic than the native-born Americans. He had noticed this right from the beginning. Wherever the flags of the American military had flown—Germany, Guam, the Canal Zone, the Philippines—young men had rallied to those flags. There was also the Cuban officer subculture, the Mexicans, the Canadians, and others who saw the American armed forces as more than a military organization, more than a necessary expense, or just an organization you sent your tax money to, but never your sons. To men like Pedro Matos, who came out of the most abject poverty that his homeland, Puerto Rico, had to offer, the military was home, family, friends, life itself.
     Matos worked hard at his duties, studied his manuals, watched what he said, never bucked the chain of command, expressed opinions only when asked, and carried out all orders with enthusiasm and without hesitation. Outwardly, he was sure he was getting it all right, but inwardly, he prayed to San Geronimo that he wouldn’t be passed over for promotion. One pass-over could mean the end of his military career, especially in a peacetime Navy.
     Loomis’s voice jarred him out of his reverie. “Navy three-four-seven, do you have target acquisition?”
     Matos glanced down at his radar screen. “Negative, Homeplate.”
     “Roger, Navy. Keep us informed.”
     “Will do.” Matos kept an eye on the radar screen as he let his mind drift back to the larger problems. Matos was certain that the results of this test would determine how the rest of his life would run. The test was secret. That much he was told. It was also illegal. That much he had figured out for himself. What he could not figure out was why they had chosen him to fire this missile.
     The new AIM-63X Phoenix missiles rode on the belly mounts of his F-18. For this test, the missiles were fitted with dummy warheads of stainless steel and titanium, and the target was a supersonic military drone launched several hundred miles away by a Navy C-130 Hercules turboprop. Except for those facts, thought Matos, he could have been aiming a pair of live missiles at an attacking Tupolev bomber or a Chinese MiG-21. Of course, both Russia and China were friends of the United States at the moment—but like most military people, Matos knew that friends like these could turn into foes in a heartbeat.
     Matos glanced down at his radar screen. No target yet. Today’s mission was a maximum-range exercise to test the updated maneuverability of the new weapon. The radar’s normal 200-mile range had been modified to accept a 500-mile limit. Once launched, the new Phoenix would require none of his usual follow-through guidance. His orders were to fire the first missile, wait for it to stabilize, fire the second missile, then turn 180 degrees and proceed at top speed away from the combat area. The new self-guidance system would seek out the target and continue to track it with no further assistance from Peter Matos.
     Tactically, this missile was much safer for a combat pilot. Before the enemy craft knew they had been attacked, the fighter was gone. Matos wasn’t sure he liked this innovation. It called for less personal skill than guiding the missile from the F-18, and it was not as … manly … as remaining in the area. Too, there was no longer even a remote possibility of seeing the hit. But none of that was his business.
     He focused on the radar. An electronic blip began to track across the outer fringes of his screen. He pressed the radio button on his control stick. “Homeplate. Three-four-seven has preliminary target acquisition.” His voice was cool, almost laconic. He smiled at the image of those German and Japanese pilots on the late-night movies screaming into their aircraft’s radio, while the American and British pilots always sounded so bored as their craft was falling apart around their ears. Cool. “Do you copy, Homeplate?”
     “Roger, three-four-seven. Preliminary target acquisition. Proceed. Out.”
     Lieutenant Matos punched a console button, then raised his eyes toward the firing control processor. An electronic symbol slewed to the target’s blip. Matos watched the screen for a few seconds. Suddenly, another blip appeared. Matos blinked. He looked again. The second blip looked weaker and smaller. It was directly behind the first one. False image, Matos thought. Some screwy transistor or diode a tenth of a degree too warm. Something like that. He’d experienced these electronic aberrations before. So had most of the fighter pilots in his squadron. Glitches, or angels, they were called. False images. Echoes. Bounceback. Reflections from some other radar set. Reflections from the surface of the sea. Apparitions with no more substance than a vapor cloud. Vaporware, in the parlance of modern-day computer-speak.
     Matos pressed a button on his console. He twisted a knob to adjust the screen’s resolution setting. The aft target began to fade. Then it disappeared. It appeared to have merged with the original, stronger blip, which he was certain was the target. He pressed his radio talk button. “Homeplate, Navy three-four-seven has the target in good resolution. Distance is four hundred and eighty miles. Over.”
     Loomis’s voice was flat, neutral, like every radio operator’s in the military. “Roger, three-four-seven.”
     Matos hesitated. He thought about mentioning the glitch, but decided against it. If there was one thing they didn’t want to hear about, it was nonexistent problems. He looked back at the radar screen. Good target. He flipped a safety switch, then lifted a cover that guarded the firing trigger. He was about to fire the longest air-to-air missile shot ever attempted. He pressed his radio button. “Fire number one.” He waited a second, took a deep breath, then pressed the triggering button.
     The AIM-63X Phoenix missile dropped away from the F-18’s supporting structure. For a brief moment the missile appeared dormant as an electronic delaying device allowed the weapon to clear itself from any potential conflict with Matos’s aircraft. When the proper interval had passed, a microvolt was internally induced. Flowing down a maze of printed circuit boards, the current reached its goal—the proper solenoids were activated and the rocket engine was ignited.
     A stream of orange flame roared out of the Phoenix’s tailpipe. Within seconds the missile accelerated to twice the speed of the F-18.
     Matos saw the missile streak off. He was about to begin the launch sequence for the second Phoenix. He glanced down at his radar screen. The target had again split into two images. Two targets. Matos pressed the console resolution buttons. No change. He pressed them again. Still the same. Two distinct targets. If one was the target drone, what was the other one? Jesus Christ. The self-guided missile that he had already launched was completely out of his control.
     The Phoenix’s self-guiding system was working on the problem. The conflict between the two electronic images presented the missile with a quandary. In keeping with a logic and priority array that had been formulated in a conference room thousands of miles away, a trickle of voltage moved down yet another decisive path. The AIM-63X Phoenix, with its enhanced tracking and maneuverability, made a slight adjustment in its course. It steered toward the larger of the two targets.

2

Lieutenant Peter Matos kept staring at his radar screen, hoping that the second target would disappear. He knew he needed to make some sort of report. The seconds were flashing by on his console clock. They’re waiting to hear from you, Matos. Reluctantly, he slid his thumb back to the microphone button. “Homeplate, this is Navy three-four-seven.”
     “Go ahead, three-four-seven,” replied Loomis.
     “I … I’m having difficulty with target resolution. Will delay second firing. Stand by for updates.”
     “Roger. Out.”
     Matos’s throat was dry. He had evaded the problem. Lied. But if the worst had happened, then nothing could save that other aircraft—if that’s what the second radar blip was. On the other hand, if it was only an electronic aberration, then there was no reason to report anything more than he’d already said. Trouble with target resolution. They were already probably chewing their lips on the Nimitz. Play it cool, Peter.
     He looked back at the screen, hoping again that it was all resolved. But there were still two targets. The weaker of the two crossed in front of the stronger, then disappeared off his screen to the southwest. The stronger blip remained steady on its previous course. Again he reminded himself that even if the stronger target began evasive maneuvers, the outcome would be the same. The Phoenix AIM-63X’s guidance system had already chosen the larger object—chosen it to die. Phoenix would stay with its victim like a hunting bird, stalk it, pursue it, and pounce on it. That’s all it knew. All it had been created for.
     But what was the other target? Who was he? Then it hit him like a fist. It had to be the Hercules C-130. Jesus Christ, he thought. Jesus Christ, I’ve made a navigation error. My fault. My fault.
     Matos turned to the satellite navigation set on the left side of the F-18’s cockpit. He punched in several commands. His hand sweated beneath the leather of his flying glove. He hit a wrong button and had to clear the set and start over. Damn it. Calmete!
     While he fumbled with the navigation set, his memory slid into an unpleasant track. He was seventeen years old and he was driving his first car, a ’71 Ford. In the rear of the car were his mother, father, and Grandmother Matos. His sister was seated next to him. He had gotten off the interstate at the wrong exit. While his cousin Dolores was being married, he steered his angry family through the unfamiliar streets of North Miami. His father had hissed at him through clenched teeth, “Es tu culpa, Pedro.”
     He looked down at the navigation display. It verified his position as correct. To be certain, he went through it again. Correct. He was where he was supposed to be. At least that’s what the equipment said. Then what was that second target?
     He looked down at his radar screen. The Phoenix missile was small and ghostly white as it tracked across the green screen, outbound toward its target. Matos was always reminded of one of those video games. A game. That’s all it is, he decided. They had introduced another element into the game to see how he would respond. That big white target on the green field was not an aircraft transporting flesh and blood. It was an electronic decoy. A mirage, sent out by the Hercules or the target drone. He should have reported it. They had tested him, and he had failed. He had compromised himself. He was through.
     He kept staring at the screen. It all made sense. It all fit. Except for one thing. The Phoenix was tracking the large target, and the Phoenix would not track an electronic decoy.
     The distance between the hunter and the hunted narrowed to less than 200 miles. The missile was traveling at Mach 3, covering nearly one mile every second.
     Matos started to press the radio button but took his hand away. He racked his brain for answers. Could the Hercules be off course? Could my navigation equipment be wrong? He knew that if the problem was his equipment, it would still be technically his fault. An error from his craft was equivalent to an error from its captain. It was unfair, but effective. It compelled those in authority to pay close attention to details. The modern Navy was getting away from that concept, but it wasn’t totally gone. Not yet. And this accountability did not discriminate between the captain of the 91,000-ton Nimitz and the captain of a 64,000-pound naval aircraft. Electronics could betray you, but a navigation set would never stand in the dock with you in front of a board of inquiry. If he had fired at the Hercules, a demonstrable mechanical fault in his navigation set might keep him from being court-martialed, but his naval career would be finished. He reminded himself that the naval careers of the crew of the Hercules would be terminated even more abruptly if that missile were headed for them.
     The sound of his own breathing filled his helmet and perspiration collected under his pressure suit. His right hand gripped tightly around the control stick. His left arm tensed against the side console, his fingers touching the throttles. He had stopped trying to make any additional adjustments on the radar. The picture that it painted was accurate.
     He felt his nerves becoming steadier as he resigned himself to all the worst possible scenarios. He stared distractedly at the radar screen, then, for the first time since he had fired, he looked out of the Plexiglas bubble at the world he flew in. Es tu culpa, Pedro. It is your fault, Peter. He pushed his finger against the thin Plexiglas. Half an inch away was an airless, subzero void.
     A glint of hope shook him out of his lassitude. There was one straw he hadn’t grasped at yet. He looked back at his console. Working quickly with the radar controls, he slewed a computer readout to the target on his screen. In a few seconds another entry displayed on his information board. The target was cruising at 62,000 feet. It was making a ground speed of 910 miles per hour.
     Matos smiled for the first time since he had catapulted off the deck of the Nimitz. No Hercules turboprop could match even half that performance. Very few aircraft could. High-altitude supersonic flight was the province of missiles, special target drones, and advanced fighters, bombers, and spy planes. He would know of any such friendly craft in his area unless they had gotten off course. Two possibilities remained: The first was that it was an enemy aircraft, in which case he wouldn’t get a medal for shooting it down, but he wouldn’t be court-martialed either. It would be covered up and he would be the secret envy of every flight officer aboard. It had happened before.
     The second possibility was the more likely. The profile being flown by the target on his screen was very close to the predicted performance of the drone. The Hercules must have released two drones, either by mistake or by design. That must be it. Matos felt better. His naval career had a fair chance now. He had to call the Nimitz immediately. Explain. He could still relocate the other target, fire the missile, do a turnaround, and get the hell out of there. He looked down again at the radar screen. The distance between the Phoenix and its target lessened rapidly. Thirty miles, twenty miles, ten miles. Then the missile and the target merged, became one. Matos nodded. The missile worked. That much they now knew. But he was left wondering what he had hit.

John Berry pushed the stopper valve halfway and turned on the water until the basin filled, then adjusted the taps until the inflowing water equaled the draining water. He took off his wristwatch and laid it on the aluminum shelf. 11:02. It was still set to California time. Jet lag was not nearly so bad with the Straton as it was on the conventional jets, but it still caused his body clock to become disoriented. Time was relative. His body was on New York time, his watch was on California time, but he was actually in an obscure time zone called Samoan-Aleutian, and he would soon land in Tokyo at a different time altogether. Yet at home, time dragged, almost stood still, hourly, daily, weekly. But that hadn’t stopped him from getting older—in fact, it speeded up his aging process. Relative. No doubt about it. He bent over the basin and began splashing water on his face.

The Phoenix missile, with its updated maneuverability, made one small correction and aimed itself so that it would strike the broad port side of the midfuselage slightly above the leading edge of the wing. Somewhere in the circuitry, the sensors, the microcomputer of the Phoenix—the place that was the seat of its incomplete powers of judgment and reason—there might have been a sense or an awareness that it had succeeded in its purpose. And having no fear, no hesitation, no instinct for survival, it accelerated headlong into its prey, consigning it, and itself, into oblivion.

A middle-aged man sitting in aisle 15, seat A, glanced out the window. He noticed a silvery spot at least a mile away. He blinked. The spot was now as large as a basketball and a few inches outside the window. Before his brain could transmit even the most primitive response of ducking or screaming, the silver orb was through the window, taking a section of the fuselage and his head and torso with it. The Phoenix plowed across the remaining two seats in the section, B and C, disintegrating the passenger’s wife and mother. It crossed the aisle to the middle section, pushing some of its grisly harvest with it, and swept away the four center seats, D, E, F, and G, and the passengers in them, then crossed the starboard aisle. It then pushed seats H, J, and K, with three more passengers, through the fuselage and, along with other collected debris, out into the void.
     Everything in the Phoenix’s path, its wake, and a yard on either side of it, was pulverized by the high-speed disintegration of the fuselage wall. Seats and people were turned into unrecognizable forms and their high-speed disintegration in turn reduced people and objects near them to smashed and torn remnants of what they had been. With no warhead on the missile there was, of course, no explosion—but the impact forces had the same effect on everything in its path.
     The deceleration had caused the Phoenix to begin to tumble as it reached the third gang of seats. Its tail rose up and it hit the starboard sidewall broadside, cutting, as it exited, an elongated swath nearly eight feet high and six feet across. It tumbled out into space, dragging more metal and flesh with it. Its energies spent, the Phoenix continued for only a short distance before it faltered and fell, end over end, twelve miles down into the Pacific Ocean.
     The first sound that John Berry heard was an indistinct noise, as if a high shelf stacked with rolls of sheet metal had been knocked over. He felt the aircraft bump slightly. Before he could even raise his head from the basin, he heard a rushing noise, a roar, that sounded like someone had opened the window of a speeding subway train. He straightened up quickly and froze for a second until his senses could take in all the stimuli. The flight was steady, the water was still running in the tap, the lights were on, and the rushing sound was lower now. Everything seemed nearly normal, but something—his pilot’s instincts—told him he was flying in a dying aircraft.
     Outside, in the cabin, the enormous quantity of internal pressurized air began to exit through the gaping holes in the Straton’s fuselage. All the small, loose objects onboard—glasses, trays, hats, papers, briefcases—were immediately propelled through the cabin, and were either wedged behind something stationary or sucked out the holes.
     The passengers sat quietly for a long second, completely unable to comprehend what had just happened. There was no point of reference in their minds for it. The normal reactions of screaming, quickened heartbeat, adrenaline flow, fight or flight, were absent. They reacted with only silence and stillness amid the noises of rushing air.
     Like a growing tidal wave, the escaping air was gathering momentum.
     A baby was sucked out of its uncomprehending mother’s arms and hurled along over the heads of the passengers and out the starboard hole and into the nothingness of space.
     Someone screamed.
     Three unaccompanied children, a boy and two girls, in seats H, J, and K, aisle 13, near the starboard hole, had not fastened their seat belts and were picked up by the howling wind and sucked out, screeching with terror.
     Everyone was screaming now as the sights and sounds around them began to register on their consciousness.
     A teenaged girl in aisle 18, seat D, near the port-side aisle, her seat dislocated by the original impact, suddenly found herself gripping her seat track on the floor, her overturned seat still strapped to her body. The seat belt failed and the seat shot down the aisle. She lost her grip and was dragged down the aisle by an invisible and extreme force. Her long blonde hair was pulled taut and her skirt and blouse were stripped from her body. Her eyes were filled with horror as she continued to fight against the unseen thing that wanted to take her. She dug her nails into the carpet as the racing air pulled her toward the yawning hole that led outside.
     Her cries were unheard by even those passengers who sat barely inches away from her struggle. The noise of the escaping air was so loud that it was no longer decipherable as sound, but seemed instead a solid thing pounding at the people in their seats. The events in the cabin took on a horrific aura of pantomime.
     Some of the bolts that held other damaged seats to their tracks began to fail. Several gangs of seats broke loose in sequence and rammed into rows of seats ahead, some of the seats tumbling over the tops of other seats as they rushed toward the hole. A gang of four seats, the passengers still strapped in, wedged into the smaller entry hole, partly blocking the hole and causing more suction at the larger exit hole on the starboard side. At the starboard hole, a gang of loosened seats seemed to pile up like paratroopers nervously bunching up, waiting for their turn to jump. Another flying seat loosened the logjam and one after the other they all shot out into space, the passengers strapped in them screaming, kicking, and clawing at the air.

John Berry, unaware of what was happening outside, turned the handle of the lavatory door and pulled inward on it. It seemed to be stuck. He tried again, pulling with all his strength, but the fiberglass door would not budge, though he could see the latch disengage. He braced both feet against the jamb and with both hands on the latch pulled with every ounce of strength he could summon. Still it would not move even a fraction of an inch. He was frightened and puzzled. He repeatedly pressed the assistance call button and waited for help.
     As the internal air escaped from the Straton’s tourist cabin, then its first-class cabin and upstairs lounge, the flow of cabin pressure still being pumped into the aircraft was literally piling up in those areas where it could not so readily escape—the five lavatories with inward-opening doors. The pressurized air poured into these lavatories through the normal air vents, and though some of the pressurized air leaked out from around the edges of the lavatory doors, the net trend was positive. Those five inward-opening fiberglass doors were sealed shut with a differential air pressure of two pounds per square inch, which added up to four thousand pounds pressing them shut.
     The seven outward-opening lavatory doors blew open into the vacuum, hurling their occupants into the cabin and toward the two gaping holes that awaited them.
     In the lounge on the upper deck, drink glasses and liquor bottles were sucked toward the spiral staircase that led down to the first-class cabin. Books, magazines, and newspapers were ripped from passengers’ hands and sent into the vortex of rushing air. Every loose object in the lounge spun around the stairwell like a tornado.
     The passengers who had chosen to stay in the lounge when the seat belt signs came on watched in horrified fascination as every movable thing in the room was sucked toward the growing vortex of debris around the stairwell.
     Eddie Hogan, the piano player, had been playing “Autumn Leaves” when the sudden burst of airflow pulled him backward off the rigidly mounted bench. The bench had been equipped with a special seat belt, but Hogan had declined to use it. He was pulled, head-first, down the staircase, across the main cabin, and then swiftly out through the gaping starboard hole.
     A blind man, seated near the piano, screamed repeatedly for someone to tell him what was happening. His body strained against his seat belt and he pulled against the leash of his Seeing Eye dog. The golden retriever seemed to be pulling away from him with an unnatural strength. He yelled at the dog. “Shannon! Shannon! Stop that!” The dog whimpered as she dug her claws into the soft pile. The leash broke and the dog was taken into the vortex and carried down into the first-class cabin, where its limp body wedged under an empty seat.
     As the dozen lounge passengers watched from their secured seats, the piano and bench danced in their mounts but continued to hold against the maelstrom. Everyone in the upper deck became hysterical almost simultaneously.
     In the first-class cabin below, objects from the lounge ripped through the accelerating air, cutting and smashing against heads and arms held up in protective gestures. The cloud of debris raced through the curtain into the tourist cabin and joined the other, incredibly numerous objects in their headlong rush out into the vacuum as though this void could be filled, satiated, if only enough objects and people were sacrificed to it.
     In the tourist cabin, a big man strapped to his seat in the aft section was bellowing at the top of his lungs. He was raging against the wind, against the hurtling objects, and against the fates that had conspired to put him on this aircraft for his first flight. He had seen his half-dressed wife pulled out of one of the seven outward-opening lavatories and watched her as she seemed to run, tumble, and fly toward the hole, screaming his name as she went by and looking at him with puzzled eyes. Suddenly, he unfastened his belt and jumped to his feet. He half flew, arms and legs outstretched over seated passengers, skimming their heads as he sailed along. At the starboard-side hole his big body smashed into the jagged aluminum skin, opening his throat and severing his left arm as he was vomited out of the sick and dying aircraft.
     In those lavatories that had opened, water gushed out of the taps and commodes into the low-pressure environment. From the bowels of the giant airliner, waste tanks flowed backward and their contents came up through the sink drains and toilets.
     In the galleys, water valves ruptured and water overflowed the sinks. Pantries and refrigerators swung open and their contents flew out into the passageways and into the cabins.
     In the pressurized baggage compartments below the cabin floor, aerosols and pressurized containers ruptured and disgorged their contents throughout the luggage. The cats and dogs that rode in kennels beneath their masters were banging wildly against their cages in fear.
     The outward-opening cockpit door held for a moment. It strained against its lock and aluminum hinges, but the difference in pressure between the cockpit and the cabin was too great and the door finally burst outward into the first-class upper lounge.
     Captain Stuart heard the door go. Suddenly, every loose object on the flight deck—maps, pencils, coffee cups, hats, and jackets—lifted into the air and converged on the open door, then disappeared into the lounge and down the stairway. Stuart felt himself pulled back into his seat. His arms flew up over his head and his wristwatch ripped loose. He pulled his arms down into his lap and waited until the initial rush of air subsided. He sat still trying to steady the hard beating in his chest. He calmed his rushing thoughts and tried to reconstruct what had happened in the last few seconds. He remembered that he had felt the jolt of a mild impact on the Straton only seconds before, but he had no idea what had caused it. What he did know was that the autopilot was still functioning and the craft was still under control. He glanced quickly at McVary, then glanced quickly back at Fessler. “What happened?” he yelled.
     McVary kept staring silently at his instruments.
     Fessler was looking back at the open door and didn’t respond.
     “Descend!” Stuart commanded, and yanked shut the power levers controlling all four engines, then disengaged the autopilot and pushed forward on the control wheel. The Straton transport abruptly nosed downward. But at their incredibly high cruise speed, the forward momentum slowed their initial descent. Stuart watched the ground altimeter as they moved slowly downward. Fifty-eight thousand feet. Fifty seconds had gone by since the impact.
     Stuart quickly scanned his instruments. Cockpit indications were still good, except that he had already lost a major portion of his pressurized cabin air. His first thought was that a fuselage door had somehow opened. He looked at the door warning lights. They showed all the doors closed. Had a faulty window blown out? No. The decompression was much too rapid for that, and what had caused the jolt? A bomb. It had to be a bomb, he thought. What is happening back there?
     Stuart looked at the cabin altimeter—the differential pressure gauge—which told him at what relative altitude the cabin pressure was. The hands of the cabin altimeter were spinning upward like those of a broken clock. The cabin pressure, which had always been kept at 10,000 feet, was now at 19,000 feet. Losing pressure. Hold the pressure. They were losing the artificial atmosphere that they had brought with them—this atmosphere from earth that made it possible to live at 62,000 feet—throwing it out into subspace, through some large hole.
     Stuart glanced at the two altimeters together. The ground altimeter showed that the Straton had only gotten down to 55,000 feet. The cabin altimeter showed that they now had an artificial altitude pressure of 30,000 feet, then 35,000 feet. Stuart estimated that the artificial atmosphere would bleed off at about the time the Straton hit 50,000 feet. Then the altimeters would read the same. Subspace would be in the cabin.
     Stuart started to feel light-headed. Instinctively, he pushed the autopilot button back on. He slammed his hand into the automatic descent selector, pushing it to its maximum rate of descent, letting the computer bring it down as fast as it was safely possible. He sat back in his seat. His head was pounding with pain. Sinus cavities. The air pockets inside his skull could not adjust to the rapid rate of cabin altitude change. His nose began to bleed. A river of blood poured down his white shirt. His lungs had already been emptied of most of their air. He felt hollowed out. His hands and feet were cold, and he didn’t know if it was from loss of blood or loss of cabin heat.
     The Straton’s four engines were sucking up and compressing the thin outside air and pumping all the pressurized air they could into the ruptured cabin. As they descended lower, the air was slightly thicker and the pressurized airflow became stronger. But Alan Stuart suspected, knew really, that it was a losing battle. There was one hell of a big hole back there, and the arithmetic of the problem … If a basin has ten gallons of water and is losing one gallon a second through the drain, and a tap is replacing a half gallon every five seconds, how long before … Too long. His head was bursting, and he couldn’t think of anything but the pain now.
     Captain Stuart turned his head slowly toward McVary. McVary had strapped on the copilot’s oxygen mask and was transmitting an emergency radio message on the international distress frequency. Stuart shook his head. “Useless,” he said softly, but he also reached for his oxygen mask and pulled it on, tightening the straps hard against his face. He looked back at Fessler. Fessler was lying slumped across his desk. Blood was pouring from his mouth, ears, and nose.
     McVary continued to transmit the distress signal, though his speech and thoughts were fragmented. He sucked hard on the oxygen mask as he spoke, and blood collected in his mouth and he had to swallow it.
     McVary knew that the oxygen mask alone was not enough. Without a sustaining pressure to force the oxygen into and through his lungs, it was almost totally useless. The flight deck’s emergency oxygen canister, behind Fessler’s panel, could just as well be back in San Francisco for all the good it was doing them. Only a military pressure suit—a space suit—of the type he had once worn could exert the necessary pressure on his body so that he could breathe. But he knew that even if he had one, there would not have been enough time to hook it up.
     Dan McVary, who as a young man had flown exotic military jets through wild maneuvers, was suddenly more frightened than he had ever been. How had this happened? Commercial transports were not supposed to completely decompress the way military craft did when they were hit in combat. The possibility of sudden decompression was so slight that it had been ignored by the aeronautical engineers who built the Straton. There were no air-lock doors or pressure bulkheads between the sections as there were watertight compartments on a ship or airtight compartments on modern dirigibles. These safety features were too heavy for an airliner. Too costly. A complete decompression was not supposed to happen. But it had. How? He wondered if airtight compartments would have helped anyway. The image of the Titanic with its so-called watertight compartments flashed through his mind. Engineering marvels … every contingency planned for … only a set of the most … the most unusual circumstances … his head was splitting and he felt a coldness deep down in his body that chilled him in a way he had never felt before. Dan McVary knew he was dying.
     Captain Stuart’s vision began to blur. He pushed his face forward to read the digital clock. Over a minute had passed since he felt the jolt. The Straton was still on autopilot and was beginning to descend very rapidly. He could see that the vertical descent rate had increased to 12,000 feet per minute. They passed through 53,000 feet. The cabin pressure was up to 45,000 feet. They were definitely not going to get down to a level where the oxygen masks could be used in time to save anyone who was still able to use them. They would not get into the naturally breathable atmosphere for several minutes after that. He shook his head. They were all dead.
     For an instant, Stuart considered the passengers. They were his responsibility. But there was nothing he could do, or even say. There were no slow sinkings on an aircraft, no dramatic speeches from the captain, no leisurely good-byes or farewell toasts. There were only a few minutes or seconds of horror, then death.
     In the tourist cabin, the noise from the wind and escaping air had lessened considerably as the inside and outside pressure approached equilibrium. People could hear each other now, but there was very little talking. Most people sucked hard on their released overhead oxygen masks, inhaling and exhaling deeply, puzzled by the absence of that familiar feeling of having taken a good deep breath.
     A coldness permeated the cabin and deepened the effects of shock and increased the effects of oxygen deprivation. Layers of condensed moisture formed along the ceiling, caused by the natural onboard water vapor that had suddenly been squeezed out by the reduced cabin pressure. The passengers stared up at these forming clouds, unsure of what they were or what they meant.
     Someone yelled, “Fire!” and some people screamed, but most remained silent, accepting this new aberration, too numbed and disoriented to react. The cloud moved through the cabin like a sea fog rolling into a coastal city, casting an amorphous gray haze over the silent people. The cabin lights shone with an unearthly luminescence through the cloud. Eerie white ice particles began forming on the walls and windows. Near the starboard hole there was a brief snow flurry.
     The moisture dissipated and the cabin atmosphere became dry except for the breath fog still exhaled by the living and the blood pouring from the open wounds of the dying. Blood and breath crystallized and formed frosts of red and white wherever they touched a freezing surface.
     The outside sounds of the four Straton engines and the airflow past the gaping holes grew louder as the sound of the outward-rushing air lessened. These new noises filled the tourist cabin and drowned out the weak moans of the injured.
     An uncounted number of people were dead or dying, and most of the rest were in shock. But it appeared that the worst of the ordeal was over. The aircraft was still flying and showed no visible signs of crashing. A strange calm, a pleasant languor simulating the effects of alcohol or tranquilizers, took hold of the passengers of Flight 52 as the first effects of oxygen deprivation began to register. There was still the pain behind the eyes, in the ears, but it did not seem so acute now.
     Captain Stuart pressed his face against his console. Everything appeared dark in the cockpit, but he could see that the instrument lights were working. They shone like dying suns in a faraway galaxy, yet they seemed to emit no light beyond their surface. He read the two altimeters. Aircraft altitude was 51,000 feet, and descending. Cabin altitude was also 51,000 feet and descending now with the aircraft. The cabin differential pressure was zero. Inside was outside. Outside was inside.
     The autopilot was taking the aircraft down, as fast as it could safely go, into the thicker atmosphere at 30,000 feet where they would find enough ambient pressure to make the oxygen masks workable. The rate of descent was racing against the physiological effects of anoxia—suffocation—and suffocation was winning. Stuart could see no way out of it. All the numbers—airspeed, altitude, rate of descent, rate of pressure loss—had been predictable. He knew the numbers before he had ever stepped into the cockpit of his first Straton. If only the damned hole had been smaller …
     In the first-class lounge, an elderly man, John Thorndike, released his seat belt and quickly stood. A familiar sensation gripped his chest and he reached for a pillbox in his jacket. He paled, then turned blue as his heart gave out. He tottered for a moment, then fell forward across the cocktail table, landing on his wife, who tried to scream but couldn’t.
     In the tourist and first-class cabins, older people began dying. Some slipped away noiselessly, others moaned their protests as hearts and lungs failed.
     Throughout the aircraft, the old, then those with preexisting medical conditions began to die. Lungs collapsed, hearts gave up, thin blood vessels burst, and hemorrhaging blood poured from all the body orifices. Internally hemorrhaging blood collected in skulls and body cavities causing a more painful death. Pockets of pressurized air developed in body cavities, and people began clawing at their faces and torsos, irrationally trying to get at the source of the pain.
     Everyone, young and old, weak and healthy, experienced hyperventilation, dizziness, blurred vision, and nausea. People choked on their vomit when oxygen-deprived brains and muscles failed to respond to the vomiting reflex. Skin colors went from white to blue. Bowels and bladders released, and if normal breathing and its adjunct, the sense of smell, had been possible, the cabin would have reeked.
     More and more people had given up on the masks, but many people still tried desperately to suck from them, silently cursing what they thought was a failure of the system to provide oxygen. But the oxygen was there. The molecules poured out of the masks and swirled around their faces like a cruel joke, then dissipated into the low-pressure atmosphere.
     In the freezing tourist cabin, where anyone who cared to look could see the holes, sunlight poured in through the south-facing port-side hold and starkly illuminated the rubble and carnage left in the wake of the missile.
     By this time, everyone who was capable of forming thought knew they were suffocating. Yet outside, through the holes, they could see the unlimited sky, a cloudless deep blue, bright with sunlight. It looked balmy, enchanting, but it was as lethal as the bottom of the sea.
     Captain Stuart was barely conscious. He moved his head to his right. McVary was still sitting upright, staring straight ahead. He turned his head and looked back at Stuart with an odd expression. Stuart turned his head away and looked over his shoulder. Fessler was still lying across his desk in a pool of blood. The bleeding seemed to have stopped.
     Stuart’s fingers were numb and his limbs were heavy. His brain seemed detached from his body and he felt as though he were free-floating.
     The cells in his brain were dying, but one shining thought, like a faraway landing beacon, was becoming increasingly clear in the darkening cockpit. Ever since he had begun to fly the Straton, the thought of high-altitude decompression had played on his mind and he had formulated a response to this possibility that was so ingrained that it had not yet died or become jumbled like everything else. He knew he must shut off the autopilot and push the aircraft into a sudden dive. It was all coming to him now. He had it. If they did not all die quickly and someone in the cockpit was still functioning when the aircraft descended into the breathable air, then that person might have enough intellect left to put the aircraft down somewhere. He looked at McVary again. Young. Good health. Sucking hard on his mask. Half his brain might survive. The idiot would save them from death and condemn them to that shadowy place, that place of perpetual eclipse, that state of being which is called half-life—speechless, blind, paralyzed, dim-witted. He thought of his wife and family. Oh, God. No.
     Stuart reached his hand out toward the autopilot release button on the control wheel. No good. McVary might turn it on again. He pushed his hand toward his console and found what he wanted—the autopilot master switch, which was not duplicated on the copilot’s side. He pushed his hand over the guarded cover of the switch and rolled it back. His fingers found the small toggle.
     He hesitated. The instinct for survival—any kind of survival—began overtaking his fading intellect. He had to act quickly. Quickly! Act what? He tried to remember what he was supposed to act on, then remembered for a flash of a second and tugged on the switch. It held fast. He recalled clearly that the solenoid was designed to require a good deal of force to shut down the auto … auto what? What?
     Captain Alan Stuart sat back in his seat and stared out the windshield. He frowned. He had a headache. Something was bothering him. Coffee. Brazil. He had to go to Brazil for coffee. He smiled. A small trickle of saliva ran down his chin.
     The automatic pilot continued to steer the Straton 797 through its programmed emergency descent. Its electronic memory bank and preset responses were in no way affected by the oxygen deprivation. Never once did it consider the effects of anoxia on its human charges. It was true that one young creator of this autopilot had suggested once that a sudden and complete decompression at altitudes of over 50,000 feet should induce a shutdown of the autopilot. But that young man no longer designed autopilots and his “self-destruct response,” as the Straton executives had labeled it, was not part of the autopilot’s repertoire. The autopilot could and would descend to 11,000 feet where the air was breathable and warmer, and would continue piloting the Straton on its flight path to Tokyo. It could do that and more. The thing it could not do was land the plane, not without additional inputs from the crew.

John Berry felt the effects of the rarefied atmosphere. He had begun to hyperventilate. His head ached painfully and he was dizzy. He sat on the small commode until he felt a little better.
     He rose again and pulled at the door. It was still firmly stuck. He felt too weak to try it again. He glanced at his watch on the shelf. 11:04. Only two minutes had gone by since he had felt the bump. It seemed longer.
     Berry began pounding on the door. “Open up! Open the damn door! I’m stuck in here!” He put his ear to the door. Odd sounds were coming from the cabin. He pounded again, then sank back against the bulkhead. He wanted to try the door again, but decided to wait until he felt stronger.
     John Berry knew that if the aircraft made an emergency landing in the ocean, he would not be able to get to the life rafts. He would drown when the aircraft sank. He put his hands to his aching head, bent over, and vomited on the floor, disregarding the commode. He straightened up and inhaled deeply several times, but a light-headedness rolled over him like a giant wave. He wanted to wash his face and mouth, but remembered that the tap had run dry. Why?
     The lavatory seemed to get darker, and he felt weaker. He slipped to the floor. His transition to unconsciousness came slowly, and he allowed his body to untense. He felt a strange euphoria and decided that death would not be that bad. He had never thought it would be. He recalled his childhood, which did not surprise him, even thought of his children, which made him feel less guilty about the way he felt about them. He remembered Jennifer, the way she once was. He closed his eyes and lapsed into blackness.
     The vent in the lavatory continued to send a steady stream of pressurized and heated air into the enclosed space. The pressure leaked out around the edges of the door, but it leaked slowly, slowly enough to keep a pressure of over two pounds per square inch on the door, sealing it shut. The pressure loss was also slow enough so that the atmosphere in the lavatory never rose above 31,000 feet.
     John Berry lay crumpled on the floor, breathing irregularly. Five more minutes at the altitude of 31,000 feet would cause him permanent and irreversible brain damage. But the Straton’s autopilot was bringing the airliner down rapidly.

In the tourist cabin, the first-class cabin, the first-class lounge, and the cockpit, the passengers and crew of Trans-United’s Flight 52 had fallen, one by one, into a deep, merciful sleep; the level of oxygen being supplied to their brain cells had dropped too low for too long.

At 11:08 A.M., six minutes after the Phoenix missile had passed through the Straton 797, the airliner reached 18,000 feet. The autopilot noted the altitude and began a gradual recovery from the emergency descent. The speed brakes were automatically retracted, followed by a slow and steady autothrottle power advance to the four engines.
     In the cockpit three figures sat slumped over, strapped to their seats. The two control wheels moved in unison, the four throttles advanced, the ailerons made slight and continuous adjustments. The aircraft was flying nicely. But this was no ghost ship, no Flying Dutchman; it was a modern aircraft whose autopilot had taken charge as it was told to do. Everything would be fine, at least for a while.
     As the autopilot’s electronic circuitry sensed the proximity of the desired altitude, it leveled out the giant airliner and established it at an altitude of 11,000 feet and a slow, fuel-saving speed of 340 knots. The air-pressurization system had automatically disengaged as the aircraft sank into the thicker atmosphere. The fresh sea breezes of clean Pacific air filled the cabin of Trans-United’s Flight 52.
     A few minutes after leveling off, the first passengers began to awaken from their unnatural sleep.

3

“That’s a good question, Commander. What the hell has happened out there?” Randolf Hennings had begun to allow himself a small measure of an admiral’s anger. He had played silent errand boy far too long. Retired or not, Hennings’s natural propensity for leadership—in mothballs for the past several years, like his naval uniforms—had begun to emerge. Sloan was losing control of the situation.
     Hennings had not liked Commander James Sloan from their first handshake. There was something too shrewd and calculated about the man. He had shown no hint of good nature. It was as if the universe had been created solely for the benefit of Commander Sloan.
     Sloan had ignored the Admiral’s question. “We’ll take over,” he said to Petty Officer Loomis. He dismissed the technician, and Loomis left the room quickly and quietly. “Nothing wrong has happened, I’m sure,” Sloan finally answered, turning toward Hennings. “But even if something has … there’s no need to let it get beyond the two of us. I won’t call the electronics specialist back until we’ve resolved whatever the problem is.”
     “There are three of us,” Hennings said. “Don’t forget your pilot. He knows more than we do. He’s the one who’s out there. We don’t get a very clear picture …” He motioned toward the stack of electronics. “… from all of this.”
     “Matos is no problem,” Sloan answered. “I know how to pick men. I know how to assign jobs.”
     Randolf Hennings looked with marked disdain at the young commander. He doesn’t command men. He uses them, Hennings thought. Men like him were no good for a crew, a ship, or a navy. “Don’t be surprised if your subordinates sometimes take a tack against the prevailing wind.”
     “Surprised? Hell, no. I’d be amazed.” But as soon as he said it, Sloan knew he had gone too far. He had let the remark out too quickly, on the heels of all the wrong turns that events had taken. The remark hung in the air between the two men, and Sloan regretted it. An unnecessary indulgence.
     Sloan tried to eradicate his error. He smiled at Hennings, then forced a small laugh. “You’re right, Admiral. They sometimes try to tack against the wind. We all do, on occasion.”
     Hennings nodded slightly but said nothing. He resented being linked to Sloan, no matter how minor the inference. If this were the old days back on the John Hood, he would have called this officer to his quarters and, in private, reamed him out. Remember the mission, Hennings thought, quoting to himself what a lifetime of experience had taught him.
     “We’re trying to do a job, not win points,” Hennings said. The retired Admiral had built his naval career on precisely that premise. Embarrassing your subordinates was, he felt, counterproductive. You would get a man’s best only when he cared enough to produce. Threats would get you no more.
     Sloan grunted an unintelligible reply, then turned his eyes toward the electronics console. He basically understood how to work the equipment, and he checked it over to refresh his memory. Sloan moved quickly and competently around the gangs of switches and dials, like a skilled surgeon performing a familiar operation.
     Hennings watched him for a few moments, then sighed. Perhaps he had been too critical. Perhaps he was getting too old. Times had changed. It was Sloan’s show. Undermining the Commander’s confidence or taking exception with his methods would do no one any good, least of all the Navy. No one should try to be the captain of every ship.
     “Just a few more minutes, Admiral.” Sloan was aware of Hennings’s displeasure. It was another factor to be considered. The successful completion of the mission was the first concern, but not alienating the retired Admiral was an important second. He had gotten off to a bad start with the old man, and would need to do some work to get things even-keeled. A successful test firing would make it easy to bridge the gap. Nothing made people friendlier than a shared success.
     Hennings sat down on the edge of the console. He gazed blankly across the room at the closed hatchway door.
     Sloan found himself tapping his fingers against the glass face of the panel-mounted clock. He shifted positions. Then he coughed lightly to clear his throat. If things went well, it could all be wrapped up within the hour. “Not much longer,” he said to break the silence. “Matos should be just about in visual range of our target.”

Matos’s first sight of the target was routine enough: a black dot that hung motionless against the blue sky. Without anything nearby to provide perspective, size was an indeterminate thing.
     The target maintained a steady course of 342 degrees. It had gradually slowed during its descent, and it now held a speed of 340 knots. Flying the F-18 over three times the target’s velocity, he was quickly closing the remaining distance between them. He would intercept the target shortly.
     Matos had been splitting his attention between the radar and the windshield, and now that he had the target in visual contact, he kept his eyes fixed on it. “Navy three-four-seven has visual contact,” he transmitted.
     “Roger,” Sloan answered, his tone impatient.
     Matos paid no attention to the implied message. He had stopped worrying about Sloan, and instead concentrated completely on the job at hand. To stay emotionally uninvolved was the proper attitude in any scientific trade.
     Matos’s left hand eased back the F-18’s throttles. He began a reduction that would have his aircraft flying at a similar speed when he pulled alongside the target, thus avoiding an overshoot. Formation flying was still a matter of practice, skill, and gut reactions. In the modern fighter pilot’s repertoire, it was one area that had yet to be taken over by electronics. Peter Matos was particularly good at high-speed formations. He would sometimes lay far astern of his squadron, then zoom up and rapidly tuck into his assigned slot. “Nice showboat,” his buddies would radio, but everyone was impressed. Matos was good.
     Yet today he was having a problem. The target stayed its distance. Matos had misjudged. He had begun a speed reduction from a point too far away. The hundreds of subtle clues that went into compiling a pilot’s instinctive reactions were somehow off base. Something was wrong. Matos took his eyes off the black dot on the horizon and glanced at his radar screen.
     Six miles. Christ, he thought. How could it still be that far? Matos looked out the windshield. He sped up again, and the distance shortened. The black dot was apparently not a drone. It was too big. That was what had thrown off his speed adjustment and perception. His mind’s eye had expected a ten-foot object, and he had played off his airspeed accordingly.
     As the space between them narrowed, the size of the target grew rapidly. It was huge. The first distinguishing mark was a horizontal line across the middle of the structure. A wing line. Then the tail section sprouted from the indistinctness. Matos sat stunned. It was an aircraft. A large jet. “My God!”
     A commercial transport! There was no doubt in his mind that this was the target he had hit. The craft appeared ghostly, like a ship abandoned on the high seas. Dead in the water. He closed the remaining distance without any additional thoughts or feelings.
     Matos pulled alongside. The Trans-United logo seemed incongruous. Vibrant colors—green, blue, and yellow. Living colors on a dead ship.
     The Straton 797 looked eerie, as if the aircraft itself knew what had happened to it and who had done it. It flew with its nose canted slightly upward. Its four jet engines produced a continuous flow of exhaust gases. It was holding steady at 11,000 feet and was making an airspeed of 340 knots. Matos guessed that it was being flown by its computer.
     Matos maneuvered his fighter closer. He scanned the port side of the wide-bodied fuselage and saw what he was looking for. The hole. A black spot on the silver body, like an ominous spot on an X-ray. He took his craft around to the starboard side. The exit hole, like an exit wound of a bullet, was much larger. Huge, jagged, ugly. His hands, then his knees, began to shake. He threw his head back and looked up out of his bubble into the sky. “Oh, Jesus. Oh, God.”
     He did not look at the Straton for a long time. Finally he forced himself to study it again. There were no people visible at any of the windows. No eyes looked back as he flew parallel with the rows of Plexiglas, only thirty feet from where the people should have been. He had flown intercepts on transports before, and he knew he should be seeing the people. Matos nudged the throttles and flew forward to get beside the cockpit. No heads in the cockpit, either. There were no people anywhere. No passengers, no crew. No survivors.
     “Three-four-seven!” the radio shouted, and Matos jumped. Sloan’s sudden transmission had startled him. “Are you there? What the hell’s happening?”
     “I … Homeplate …” Matos’s thumb stayed locked to the microphone button. As he allowed his F-18 to drift aft and fly a looser formation, the shadow from the transport’s upper fuselage crossed his canopy. From below, the 797 appeared incredibly immense. Matos’s F-18 seemed an insignificant speck. He was piloting a toy compared to the mammoth machine he hovered beneath.
     Yet the unimaginable had happened. Matos’s toy had destroyed a great airliner. Beyond all doubts and all talk lay the reality of what was in front of him. His face was covered with sweat, and his eyes welled up with tears. “Homeplate. We have hit a transport. A Straton 797. Trans-United.”
     There was no reply from the Nimitz.

4

Commander James Sloan was transfixed by the radio message that had come from his pilot. He stared at the towering panel of electronic gear as if he expected to find a way out of the situation in its switches and meters. Yet there was nothing on the console but the neutral data of frequencies and signal strengths. What Sloan wanted to know was available from only one source.
     “Matos, are you sure?” Sloan asked. His perspiring hands gripped the microphone. His normally stern voice had a strange, new tone woven through it, and his words sounded out of place.
     There was no immediate response from the F-18, and while he stood in the silent electronics room, Commander James Sloan realized that he was suddenly afraid. It was an emotion he was not accustomed to, and one he seldom allowed himself to experience. But too much had happened too quickly. “Matos,” he said again, “take your time. Look again. Be absolutely certain.”
     Retired Rear Admiral Randolf Hennings, who had remained silent since Matos had sent his first startling message, stepped closer to the radio. He could hear the loud rhythm of his own heartbeat, and he was sure that Sloan could hear it too.
     But James Sloan was not listening. His entire universe had shrunk. There was nothing he cared about now except the words that were about to come through the radio speaker. There was no other inroad to his thoughts.
     “There’s no doubt, Commander,” Matos’s transmission began.
     Sloan’s face went pale. He listened to the remainder of the pilot’s message through a filter of personal static, as his mind raced.
     “It’s right in front of me. I’m only fifty feet in trail. Trans-United, a Straton 797. There’s a three-foot hole on its port side, and another hole in the starboard fuselage. The starboard hole is bigger—three or four times as big. I don’t see any movement in the cockpit or the cabin.”
     Sloan stood with his eyes shut, both his hands laid against the console. He had not been face-to-face with fear since he was a young boy. All his body muscles tensed and he wanted to run, to bolt from the room and get away. He wanted to shake himself awake from the incredible nightmare.
     “Now what?” Randolf Hennings finally asked, his mild voice barely breaking the silence. “What can we do? What should we do?”
     Sloan slowly opened his eyes, then turned his head to stare at Hennings. As he held eye contact with the Admiral, James Sloan pulled himself out of the deepest emotional pit of his life. He had very nearly lost his self-control. The Commander’s frown had returned, as had his iron-willed expression and bearing.
     “What do you suggest, Admiral?” Sloan asked in an obviously sarcastic tone; he was goading the old man. Hennings appeared puzzled. Sloan waved his hand nonchalantly. “Perhaps we should take a walk below-decks. We could lock ourselves in the brig. Better yet, let’s go to the officers’ ward room. They’ve got a nice pair of ceremonial swords on the wall. We could take them down and fall on them.”
     Hennings uttered an unintelligible sound that showed his surprise.
     “Listen, Admiral,” Sloan continued, “we’ve got to evaluate this situation realistically. Figure out precisely where we stand. The last thing we want is to rush off to do something we’ll regret. Something bad for the Navy.”
     Sloan hoped he had not pushed the old man too far. Or too quickly. Still, it was his only chance. Without Hennings along, there was no way he could pull off some sort of cover-up. Sloan had done it once before, when, because of a foul-up, one of his pilots had shot up a Mexican fishing boat. The responsibility for that one might have wound up in Sloan’s lap, so he moved quickly to fix it. It had taken only a quick helicopter ride and a small pile of Yankee greenbacks. This one would require more. Much more. But it could still be done.
     “I don’t know what you mean. What is it you want to do?” Hennings finally asked.
     Sloan sat down in the seat in front of the console. He took out a cigarette. He took his time lighting it, then inhaled deeply. He swiveled the seat around to face Hennings and sat back.
     “Let’s list the obvious things first,” Sloan said. His words were slow, full measured, and carefully picked. “Neither of us wanted this. It was a pure accident. God only knows how it happened. That area was supposed to be clear of air traffic. I checked it myself this morning.”
     Sloan paused. Procedures had required him to recheck, in case of a last-minute change. He had tried, but he hadn’t been able to get through on the normal channels, even on the patch. The chance that a flight would have altered its course during the short time he was without a clear channel was minuscule. Less than minuscule. Yet it happened, Sloan thought. He managed to dispel the miscalculation with a simple shrug of his shoulders, then returned his attentions to Hennings. “How that aircraft got there is beyond me. I guess our luck was super-bad.”
     “Our luck?” Hennings said. “What the hell’s the matter with you? What about that airliner? It’s got people aboard. Women and children.” The old man’s face was red and his hands trembled. The volume of his voice filled the room and made it seem smaller than it was. Hennings had the sudden disquieting sensation of being closed in. The smallness of the electronics room had trapped him, and he desperately wanted to go above-decks.
     James Sloan sat motionless. He continued to wear the same ambiguous expression. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s a tragedy. But it’s not our fault.” Sloan stopped speaking for a moment to let his words sink in. He took another deep drag on his cigarette. He knew that it was his fault, at least partially. But that was beside the point.
     Hennings looked down at Sloan in disbelief. “Are you somehow suggesting that we pretend this never happened?” He was beginning to wonder if Sloan was insane. For a person to even entertain such wild notions seemed evidence enough of insanity. “We’ve got to help those people.”
     Sloan leaned closer to Hennings. “That’s the point, Admiral. There are no people.”
     A dead quiet hung between the two men. Numbers paraded by on the digital clock, but time stood still. Finally, the Admiral shook his head. He did not understand. “But it’s an airliner,” he said. “Trans-United. It’s got to have passengers. It must have a crew.”
     “No, Admiral. Not anymore.” Sloan was choosing his words carefully. “The impact of the missile punctured two holes in their pressurized shell. At sixty-two thousand feet, they couldn’t survive. They’re dead, Admiral. All dead.”
     Sloan sat back and watched as the words registered on the old man. Sloan had known, as soon as he had begun to think clearly again, that the hole made by the Phoenix missile would make the aircraft decompress. A decompression at 62,000 feet would be fatal.
     Hennings’s expression had changed. Shock had been replaced by pain. “Dead? Are you sure?” he asked.
     “Certainly.” Sloan waved his hand in a gesture of finality. But he knew that there was still a measure of technical doubt. If he let those doubts surface, they would erode his resolve and eat away at the basics of his plan. He knew that Hennings would need an excuse to go along with a cover-up. He figured that the old man wanted an excuse. Sloan would be happy to provide one. More than likely, everyone aboard that airliner was already dead—or soon would be. The harm had already been done. It was now a matter of saving himself. And the mission. And, of course, the reputation of the Navy, which needed all the help it could get these days.
     Sloan leaned closer to Hennings. “I know that Matos won’t say anything. He’s in this with us. We do no good by turning ourselves in. This was an accident. If the truth came out, the entire Navy would suffer.”
     Sloan cleared his throat. He took a few seconds to gauge how Hennings was reacting. So far, Sloan still had him. Hennings had nodded in agreement. The good of the Navy was his soft spot. It was worth remembering. Sloan might need to play on it again, now that he was coming to the sensitive part.
     “Our best bet,” he continued, “is to have Matos put his second missile into the … target. It’s being flown by its autopilot. At close range, he could direct his missile toward the Straton’s cockpit. It would wipe out the ship’s controls.” The coup de grace to the back of the neck, he wanted to say, but didn’t. “It will go down. No evidence. Just a sudden disappearance in mid-Pacific. Terrorists. A bomb. Structural failure. We’d be off the hook. The Navy—”
     “No!” Hennings shouted, pounding his fist on the console. “It’s insane. Criminal. We’ve got to help them. They could still be alive. They’ve probably sent out distress signals. More than just the three of us know. Everyone knows.” Hennings pointed to the radio equipment. “They must have sent an SOS.”
     “That’s not true, Admiral.” The conversation between them had taken on the atmosphere of a debate, and James Sloan was not unhappy about that. He had hardly expected to reach an agreement with Hennings without some sort of fight. Hennings was still talking and deliberating, and that was a good sign. Now all Sloan had to do was find the right words.
     “We monitor both international emergency channels on these two sets,” Sloan said, pointing to two radio receivers at the top of the console. “There’s been nothing from them. You’ve heard that for yourself. Our shipboard communications center, down in CIC on the 0-1 level, would instantly get any word of a problem from ships or planes anywhere near here. We even get the routine stuff. Things like ships with minor leaks and aircraft with minor equipment difficulties. There’s no way that a distress message was sent from that aircraft without our CIC getting involved in it. The CIC duty officer would immediately call me if he had gotten something.”
     “But what about the people?” Hennings said. “We just can’t assume that they’re dead.”
     “Matos reported that he saw no activity. There was no one in the cockpit. He can get within fifty feet of that aircraft. If there’s no one visible, it’s because they’re dead. Slumped in their seats.”
     “Well … I don’t know,” Hennings said. What Sloan said seemed to make sense, although he wondered for an instant if the Commander was being completely honest. Hennings wanted to do what was best for the Navy. The accident was a monumental tragedy. But, as Sloan pointed out, nothing could change that. Nothing could erase the errors, oversights, and coincidences to bring those people back. Disgracing the Navy was the last thing he wanted to do. Hennings’s friends in the Pentagon would be exposed. He knew that they were vulnerable, since the testing had not been authorized. He realized that he, too, was in an impossible position if the truth became known. The faces of his old friends in the Pentagon flashed through his mind. Protect the Navy. Protect the living, Hennings thought.
     “Admiral,” Sloan said, sensing that Hennings could now be pushed to the conclusion he had steered him toward, “I understand your reservations. Your points are valid. I want to check them out. I’ll call down to CIC to be sure that no emergency message was sent by the Straton. Then we’ll get Matos to take another look. A close look. If he reports that there’s no one alive, then we know what we need to do.”
     As Sloan reached across the desk for the direct telephone to CIC, he kept his eyes riveted on Hennings. Sloan was playing the percentages. He wanted to cement the retired Admiral into the conspiracy. He needed him. The odds were low that Matos would be able to see any life aboard the Straton transport.
     Hennings stood rigidly, every muscle of his body tensed. He watched as Sloan held the telephone. His eyes wandered to the digital clock. Half a minute ran off while his mind stayed as blank as the Nimitz’s gray walls. Hennings turned to Sloan. Everything seemed to be in a state of suspended animation, waiting for him. Finally, with a nearly imperceptible motion, retired Rear Admiral Randolf Hennings nodded his head.

The young girl clung to John Berry as he stood in the aisle of the forward cabin of the stricken airliner. The din from the Straton’s engines and the noise of air rushing past the two holes in its fuselage filled the cabin, yet Berry could still hear the girl’s sobs and feel her wet tears against his arm. He was thankful for her physical presence. Facing the nightmare alone would have been too much. Any companion, even a child, was better than none.
     Berry’s first notion that something unforeseen would break into their moment of tranquillity came from a muffled noise from behind. Berry, still holding the child, turned.
     “Down!” he yelled, and he shoved the girl into an empty center row of seats. A tall and muscular man with wild eyes rushed toward them, a jagged section of a serving tray held high in his right hand. The people who had followed the man up the aisle stopped a few rows before reaching Berry and the girl. They seemed more curious than aggressive. They stood in mute wonder, watching the encounter in front of them.
     The man yelled incoherently. His facial muscles were contorted with hatred, and sweat covered his forehead. Somehow, in his damaged brain, the man had formulated the thought that the young girl was crying because Berry had hurt her. The man would protect the young girl. He would kill Berry.
     “Stop!” Berry screamed. As the man approached, Berry wheeled himself to one side. The jagged serving tray was flung harmlessly past him. Deranged and acting alone, the crazed man was no match for a normal adult. With a right uppercut against the man’s jaw, Berry knocked him backward across a row of seats.
     John Berry stood in the center of the aisle. His right hand throbbed with pain, and for a few seconds, he thought he might have broken it. He rubbed his aching hand, and while he did he felt an awakening, a long-forgotten sense of pride. He had successfully defended himself and the girl.
     Berry glared at the other passengers and raised his fists. It was an act, a show of force for the half dozen of them who stood around him watching. Inwardly, Berry wanted to run. But if they were to attack en masse, he would have no chance. Deranged or not, there were simply too many of them. Too much muscle. He hoped that his threatening gesture would be enough to keep them away.
     In the minds of the passengers, rivulets of rational thoughts ran across arid areas of damaged brain cells. They could still sense personal fear, and it had caused them, one by one, to back off. Berry thanked God that they did not have enough presence of mind to gang up against him. Not yet, anyway.
     Berry took the young girl’s arm and ushered her toward the circular staircase.
     “You okay, mister?” she asked.
     “Yes.” His heart pounded, and his mouth was dry. He flexed his fingers and could tell that nothing had been broken. He would need to be careful. If he allowed himself to be hurt, they would be defenseless. He would get himself some sort of weapon as soon as he could, and get one for the girl, too.
     Berry inhaled deeply and felt his body begin to calm. “Keep your eyes open. Stay alert.”
     “Okay,” she answered.
     They climbed up the staircase and into the upper lounge. The stairway creaked under their feet.
     The scene in the lounge was a welcome relief from the madness below. Except for the dangling oxygen masks, everything appeared normal at first glance. But as they walked through the lounge, the abnormalities became obvious.
     There were nine people in the upper lounge, and Berry’s impression was that they were asleep. Then he noticed that they sat in tensed and contorted positions. On their faces they wore expressions of soul-chilling terror. Two of them, a flight attendant and an old woman, were semiconscious.
     The flight attendant leaned against the bar and ranted nonsensically. She had a crazed look in her eyes, and she groped spastically at the edges of the bar to maintain her balance. Berry could see from her name tag that she was Terri O’Neil. He had noticed her during the morning snack service. A little more than a half hour before, she had been serving food and drinks in the first-class cabin, and now she could hardly stand straight. Berry turned away.
     On the other side of the lounge was the old woman. She was stroking the head of her husband as he lay face down across the table in front of her. She spoke to his dead body in singsong tunes, the snatches of her pathetic and childlike words filling Berry’s ears.
     Three men and two women sat on a horseshoe-shaped couch near the piano. They all wore oxygen masks, and they looked unconscious. A man wearing the black glasses of the blind sat near them, his arms outstretched in a futile search for the oxygen mask that dangled only inches to his left. He appeared to be dead.
     The opened cockpit door was a dozen feet ahead, and Berry could see that all of the crew were slumped over in their seats. With each step Berry slowed his pace, reluctant to enter the cockpit.
     Finally, he stepped across the threshold. All three of the pilots were unconscious. Pull yourself together, Berry thought.
     The young girl stood directly behind him. She said, “No one’s steering.”
     “It’s automatic. Like an elevator.” The flight controls moved gently in unison, responding to small electronic commands of the gyrostabilized autopilot to keep the aircraft on its programmed course.
     The girl looked around the cockpit and saw Carl Fessler’s lifeless body draped across his desk. She could hear the hissing sounds that came from the continuous flow of oxygen pouring out of his dislodged mask. She took a step backward and looked in wonder at him.
     Berry was hardly aware of the girl. He had guessed correctly at Fessler’s condition as soon as he saw that the engineer’s mask was off. The Captain, who was still strapped to his oxygen mask, was Berry’s concern. He approached the man and tried to shake him into consciousness. Their survival depended on it.
     Captain Alan Stuart was breathing, but comatose. Slowly, Berry accepted the fact that the Captain was probably beyond help.
     Berry looked toward the copilot. He, too, was unconscious. Berry and the girl had survived this far, only to discover that there was no one left to fly the aircraft.
     Berry glanced around the cockpit. The walls that surrounded the pilot stations were crammed with instruments. He understood some of what he saw, but entire panels and rows of gauges were a total mystery. The difference between a giant jetliner and his four-seat private propeller airplane was like the difference between an airliner and the Space Shuttle. All they had in common was that, on occasion, they flew through the sky.
     John Berry knew that he could not fly this huge supersonic aircraft. He was backed against an insurmountable wall of anguish and despair. All he now cared about was their immediate survival—to stay alive within the confines bounded by the sweep second hand of the cockpit clock.
     The copilot stirred in his seat and his arm swung off his lap. It fell, with a thud, onto the center console. Berry held his breath while he waited to see what would happen. If the man moved again, he might inadvertently disengage the autopilot or do some other harm to their stable flight condition. In that maze of switches, Berry knew that he could not hope to find the proper combination to set things straight.
     “Quick. Help me get him out of the seat,” he said to the girl. She came over and grabbed clumsily at the copilot’s legs as Berry lifted McVary’s limp body out of the chair.
     “Don’t let him touch the controls.”
     “I won’t.” She raised his feet above the equipment on the center console as Berry lugged the man backward.
     “I’ll do the lifting. Don’t let his legs touch anything.” Once they had cleared the center console, Berry let the copilot’s feet drag on the floor as he pulled the man back into the lounge.
     “Is he sick?” the girl asked. She could see that he was not dead. He was breathing and his head occasionally swayed from side to side, although his eyes were shut.
     “Yes. Lay him there. Pull his legs out straight. Give me that pillow.” Berry propped the pillow under the copilot’s head. He rolled back the man’s eyelids. The pupils seemed dilated, although he wasn’t sure. Berry looked at the girl. “He might get better. Make him comfortable. That’s all we can do.”
     “I’ll get a blanket.” She pointed to one wedged beneath a nearby seat.
     Berry nodded. The copilot might come out of it, at least enough to help Berry fly the airplane. With the copilot talking him through it, Berry thought he might be able to steer the 797. Maybe.
     The young girl brought the blanket over. The two of them knelt in the center of the upper lounge and busied themselves at making McVary comfortable. Berry glanced back at the cockpit. He knew that, shortly, he would have to get the girl to help him take the unconscious Captain out of his seat, and also drag the lifeless body of the flight engineer out of the cockpit. But he could put those things off for a few more minutes. In the meanwhile, he focused his attention on the copilot. He was, without question, their best hope.
     Berry asked the girl, “What’s your name?”
     “Linda. Linda Farley.”
     “Are you alone?”
     “Yes.”
     “How old are you?”
     “I’ll be thirteen in four days. …”
     Her voice trailed off, and Berry forced a smile. He thought, Happy birthday, Linda.
     Berry and Linda worked on making First Officer Daniel McVary as comfortable as they could. They remained oblivious to the aircraft outside the cabin windows that had flown within sixty feet of where they knelt.

“Homeplate, I see no life in the cabin.” Matos split his attention between the long row of windows and the technical needs of flying a close formation. His hands played constantly with the throttles and control stick as he made the corrections to keep his F-18 as near to the Straton’s port side as he dared.
     His position in the formation was a little higher than optimum, but to put his aircraft in direct line with the fuselage windows would have been tricky. The airflow across the Straton’s giant supersonic wing made that region too turbulent. Matos opted to fly in the smoother area a dozen feet higher.
     “It’s hard to see clearly. The cabin is dark. Stand by.” With the bright Pacific sunlight shining down on them, any attempt to look across the intervening distance through one of the small windows and into the cabin was bound to fail. Matos already knew that it would. His first guess had been that the two holes in the fuselage would give him a clear view. But they did not. Too much debris and too many shadows. Even if someone were alive, they certainly couldn’t be expected to get close to the holes. The wind alone would keep them back. Matos knew that all he could hope to see were those people who wanted to be seen. Those on the 797—if anyone was left alive—would need to press themselves against the windows to become visible. Once they moved a foot or two back they would vanish into the relative darkness inside.
     Surely they would try to be seen. They would want to get Matos’s attention. To get Matos’s help.
     “Okay, Matos. Nothing in the cabin. Go to the cockpit.” Sloan’s voice was again impatient. Commanding. Bullying, according to most of the Nimitz’s pilots. The man obviously wanted the job done quickly. For what purpose, Matos could not even guess. He wondered for a moment what sort of orders he would receive next.
     Matos nudged the throttles and maneuvered his aircraft slowly forward. As he passed the widest section of the Straton’s fuselage, he inched his F-18 to the right, placing his wingtip within a dozen feet of the 797’s flight deck.
     As he finished his maneuvering, something caught his eyes. He had been directing most of his attention toward his wingtip clearance, but suddenly he had an impression of movement. Something on the Straton’s flight deck. Someone in the cockpit. Someone alive, Matos said to himself.
     He stared intently at the Straton. The relative narrowness of the cockpit and its broad expanse of glass made it easier to see into than the cabin. Far side. Copilot’s seat.
     Something on the right side of the 797’s cockpit had moved. At least he thought that it had. Now he was not sure. On closer scrutiny, he could see nothing. No one. If anyone was still there, they were slumped down below the window line.
     It must have been a reflection. A glint of sunlight. A distortion in the cockpit glass. No one alive, Matos thought. He sat there for another minute and looked at the Straton, then he maneuvered the F-18 outboard and slightly away.
     Lieutenant Peter Matos’s emotional wound had reopened. “Homeplate. There is no one in the cockpit. There is no one alive.” As much as he tried to control himself, Matos could not be the uninvolved technician any longer. His heart had risen to his throat. Es tu culpa, Pedro.
     The F-18 slackened its formation on the Straton. It drifted aft. As it did, it flew alongside the upper lounge and within sixty feet of the rows of windows that lined it. Unable to force himself to look at the devastated Straton airliner any longer, Peter Matos kept his eyes focused straight ahead.

5

John Berry sat strapped into the captain’s seat of the Straton. The midday sun poured through the cockpit windows, bathing him in bright sunlight. He pressed the talk button on the hand microphone again and spoke loudly. “Do you read me? Does anyone read?” Beads of perspiration dotted his forehead, and his mouth felt dry.
     With his right hand, he made careful adjustments on the audio panel. “Mayday. Do you read Mayday? Any station. Do you read Mayday?” He sat back and listened. Listened for the familiar crackle, the squelch-break that was the electronic equivalent of a man clearing his throat before he spoke. But there was only the persistent, unbroken hum of the speakers.
     Berry slumped into the seat. He was confused. If there was one thing he knew from his years of flying, it was how to work a radio. It seemed simple enough even in the Straton. The airliner’s radios did not seem much different from all the other sets that he had operated. Yet there must be something different about them, some small esoteric task that had to be performed before the radios would transmit. But what? And why? Why should these radios be different? “Damn it.” Berry wondered how in God’s name he could ever fly the aircraft if he couldn’t even work the radios.
     The urge to talk to someone had become overwhelming. It had gone beyond the simple necessity to report the disaster and ask for assistance. It had become an overpowering need to hear a human voice just for the sake of hearing it. But as each minute of silence passed, Berry was losing hope and was becoming alternately frantic and despondent. His hand shook so badly now that he stopped trying to transmit and sat back and tried to calm himself. He glanced at the instruments. Everything looked good, but after his failure with the radios, he was beginning to doubt his ability to read even standard gauges. And the majority of the Straton’s instrumentation was standard enough to be familiar. But the markings—the altitudes, speeds, fuel reserves, engine temperatures—were incredibly amplified. He tried to imagine he was in the Skymaster and tried to reduce the problems and the instrument panels to manageable proportions.
     He looked at the fuel reserves. Less than half full. What this meant in flying time at the present speed and altitude, he didn’t know. But he’d figure it out soon enough as the needles drifted leftward and the minutes passed. He stared at the control wheels as they moved slightly—inward, outward, left, right. The rudder pedals made small movements. The flight was steady.
     Something odd caught his eye and he looked down near his left knee. He stared at the open protective cover and read the words above it. AUTOPILOT MASTER SWITCH. He stared at the toggle, which was pointing to ON. He understood. The Captain had either lost his nerve or lost consciousness before he could complete his last mission. Berry nodded. It sort of made sense. But for Berry, there was no such easy way out. Not yet. He reached down and snapped back the protective cover.
     He found he was building up a healthy anger toward fate and toward death, if for no other reason than to tell his wife what he really thought about her. Unfinished business. He reached down and grabbed the microphone. “Mayday! Mayday, you sons-of-bitches! Answer Mayday!”
     He began changing the frequency he was using, alternating between the frequencies left on the radios. When he transmitted, he knew he should keep to the universally understood words. He could save the explanations for when he made contact. “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” He waited for a reply, but again there was none.
     Out of desperation he began to randomly turn the dials and transmit on every channel and on each of the four radios in the cockpit. “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.”
     He switched back to the original frequency. “This is Trans-United Flight …” What was the flight number? What difference did it make? He tried to remember his boarding pass but couldn’t. “This is the Tokyo-bound Trans-United Airlines Straton 797. Mayday. Do you read Mayday? Trans-United Operations, this is the Tokyo-bound Straton 797, we have an emergency. Do you read?” He waited. Nothing.
     He could see that the radio’s transmission lights blinked whenever he pressed the microphone button. He could tell from the sidetone in the cockpit speakers that the radios were operating. But for some reason they were not putting out. He suspected that something—the antenna perhaps—had been damaged. He had hoped that someone in the cockpit had been able to put out a distress signal, but he was fairly certain now that they hadn’t. The fault in transmitting was not his—he’d known that, really. The radios were all set by the pilots to transmit. They simply weren’t sending. That’s all there was to it. No distress call had been sent and none ever would be sent.
     No radios equaled no chance of flying the plane home. He almost felt a measure of relief. The responsibility of flying and landing this huge machine was not a prospect he’d looked forward to. But he did want to live. He put the microphone down and stared at the clear skies around him. His problems on the ground were in their proper perspective now. He could and would change a lot of things if he ever got back to New York. But everyone facing death must make that observation. One more chance. But more often than not, nothing changed if you were lucky enough to get a second chance. Still, he didn’t want to lie down and die. That’s what he’d been doing for the last ten years. He had to think it all out. Later.
     John Berry turned and looked back through the open cockpit door into the lounge. He could see Linda Farley sitting in a club chair, weeping quietly.
     Berry slid out of the captain’s seat and walked back into the lounge. The Captain and the copilot lay near the piano where he and the girl had dragged them, covered with blankets. The body of the flight engineer lay against the far bulkhead, his face and torso covered with a lap blanket.
     Berry watched the flight attendant whose name tag said Terri. She was sitting on a small sofa, speaking incoherently to herself. Her face was smeared with blood and saliva. She seemed calm, but he’d have to watch her carefully for signs of violence. He’d have to keep her away from the cockpit, where she could do real harm.
     Berry noticed that the old lady had stopped babbling to her dead husband and was now crouched behind a club chair peering over the top and making odd clucking sounds. Blood and drool covered her face also. Her husband’s body was still slumped over the cocktail table, but it seemed to have shifted. Berry wondered if rigor mortis was setting in already.
     The five passengers on the horseshoe-shaped couch were still unconscious. One, a pretty young woman, was making odd sounds that came from her throat, and Berry wondered if that was what was called the death rattle.
     The lounge smelled of feces, urine, and vomit. Berry closed his eyes and pressed his fingers against his temples. His head still ached from the oxygen loss, and he was becoming queasy.
     He opened his eyes and surveyed the scene again. He’d thought that the confusion of these people might improve, might be reversible. But he was fairly certain now that it wasn’t. His world was divided neatly and irrevocably, with no fuzzy lines, between Us and Them. And there were a lot more of Them.
     Berry walked over to the girl and put his hand on her shoulder. His daughter had been this girl’s age when her remoteness and alienation had begun. But that was on the earth. Here, an adult enjoyed all the old prerogatives. “You’re going to have to calm down and start helping me.”
     Linda Farley wiped her eyes and nodded.
     Berry walked to the bar and found a can of Coca-Cola and opened it. He rummaged through the debris under the bar and extracted a miniature bottle of liquor. Johnny Walker Red. He opened it and drained off the ounce and a half, then carried the cola to the girl. “Here.”
     She took it and drank. “Thank you.”
     Berry knelt down beside McVary and pushed his eyelids back. Partly dilated. Breathing regular, but shallow. He looked up at the girl. “Did he move at all?”
     Linda nodded. “He opened his eyes once. He said something, too, but I couldn’t understand it.” She pointed to Stuart. “That one never moved.”
     Berry turned to Stuart. The blood and vomit on his face were dry and crusty. Berry pushed back the eyelids. The pupils were fully dilated. The Captain’s skin was clammy and his breathing was irregular. The man was dying.
     Berry rose and looked down again at McVary. If the copilot regained consciousness, and if he was at all coherent, they might have a chance. The plane was flyable. All it needed was someone to fly it. Berry thought he could do it if someone talked him through it. Someone on the radio, if he could get it working, or this copilot. Without help, he’d have to wait out the hours in full consciousness of his impending death. He almost envied the others.
     “Listen!”
     Berry shot a glance at the girl, then steadied his breathing and listened.
     “The stairs,” she whispered.
     Berry nodded. “Be quiet.” The circular metal stairway that led down to the first-class cabin had apparently been loosened, and Berry remembered it creaking when he’d used it. It was creaking now.
     Berry heard the footsteps on the stairs clearly now. They were coming slowly, hesitantly. He thought there was only one person, but he couldn’t be certain.
     He walked quickly around the lounge searching for something to defend himself with. The barstools were fastened to the floor, the scattered bar bottles were miniatures, and the mixers were in small cans with pop tops, which meant no openers were needed. A canister of precut lemons and limes was in the galley. No knife. “Damn it.” He looked over the floor. Almost everything else that was movable had been sucked down the stairwell. He searched desperately for an attaché case, an umbrella, the blind man’s cane, but he knew he would find nothing. The footsteps got louder.
     Linda Farley screamed.
     Berry looked at the stairwell and saw the top of a man’s head. He shouted at the girl, “Get in the cockpit and stay there. Go on!” He then moved quickly past the stairwell and knelt beside the body of Carl Fessler. He pulled the man’s belt off and wrapped it around his right hand, which still ached from the confrontation in the cabin. He let the buckle end swing free.
     Berry stood quickly and moved to the opening in the rail around the stairwell. He looked down and saw a large man looking up at him. “Stop!”
     The man stopped.
     Berry saw that the man’s hands were on the floor a few inches from his ankles. He moved back a step. “Go down!” He raised the belt.
     The man hesitated.
     Berry knew that as long as he stood there he could keep anyone from coming up the stairs. But he couldn’t stand there indefinitely. “Go!”
     The man backed down a few steps. He looked at Berry with an uncomprehending expression. He opened his mouth and made a small sound, then spoke clearly. “Who are you?”
     Berry leaned over and looked at the man’s face. Flecks of vomit covered his chin and white shirt. His eyes looked alive. No blood covered his face, no saliva ran from his mouth. “Who are you?” Berry asked.
     “Harold Stein.”
     “Where are you from?”
     “What?”
     “What is your home address?”
     The man took another step down. “Where’s the pilot? I was in the lavatory when …”
     “Answer me, damn it! Tell me your home address!”
     “Chatham Drive, Bronxville.”
     “What day is this?”
     “Tuesday. No, Wednesday. Look, who are you? Good God, man, don’t you realize what’s happened down here? Where is the pilot?”
     Berry felt his chest heave and his eyes almost welled with tears. There were now three of them in that small minority. “You’re all right?”
     “I think so.” Things were becoming more clear to Stein. “The people down here …”
     “I know. Come up. Come up, Mr. Stein.”
     Harold Stein took a hesitant step.
     Berry backed off. He unwound the belt from his hand and stuffed it into his trouser pocket. “Come on. Quickly.” He glanced over his shoulder at the three men and two women sitting on the horseshoe-shaped couch behind him. Some of them were starting to stir. “Hurry.”
     Stein pulled himself up to the lounge deck. “What in the name of God …”
     “Later. You wouldn’t be a pilot by any chance, would you?”
     “No. Of course not. I’m an editor.”
     Berry thought he was beyond disappointment, but his heart sank lower still. He regarded Harold Stein for a moment. Fortyish. Big. Intelligent face. He could be of some help.
     Stein’s eyes were fixed on the cockpit door. “Hey, what the hell happened to the pilot?”
     Berry jerked his thumb over his shoulder.
     Stein looked more closely at the scene in the lounge. “Oh, no! My God …”
     “Okay, Mr. Stein. Forget that. Let’s talk about survival.”
     “Survival.” Stein nodded. He was taking in about ten percent of what was happening. He’d known they were in very serious trouble, but he thought the pilots were still in control. He looked at the cockpit again and saw the captain’s wheel move. “Who’s … ?”
     “Autopilot.”
     “What happened?”
     Berry shrugged. “Bomb, I guess.” But the two holes didn’t look like bomb damage to him, and he’d heard no explosion before the other noises. “Did you see or hear anything?”
     Stein shook his head.
     The two men stood awkwardly in the middle of the lounge, unsure of what to do next. The overwhelming scope and speed of the disaster had kept them off balance, and they needed the situation to remain static for a few minutes until they got their bearings. Finally, Stein spoke. “Just us two?”
     Berry turned toward the cockpit. “Linda, come on out!”
     The girl ran out of the cockpit and placed herself beside Berry, and under his encircling arm, as though she were being displayed at a family reunion.
     Berry felt her body trembling. He looked down and spoke to her. “This is Mr. Stein. He’s going to help us.”
     Stein forced a distracted smile. His eyes were still darting around the lounge.
     “I’m John Berry.” He extended his hand.
     Stein took it.
     Berry looked down at the girl. “This is Linda Farley.”
     It was surreal, yet comforting, to go through the amenities. That was all they had left. Behave normally, in a civilized manner, and rational thought and action would follow. Berry said, “Let’s sit down.” He’d developed a proprietary attitude about the lounge and cockpit. He indicated an empty horseshoe-shaped sofa with a cocktail table opposite the cockpit door. “Do you need a drink, Mr. Stein?”
     “Harold. Yes, please,”
     Berry went to the bar and found two Canadian Clubs and another cola. He carried them to the table and sat. He broke open the seal on his bottle and drank. Around him was a scene that had badly shaken him only ten minutes earlier, but like any survivor of a disaster, his mind was blocking out the destruction, the dead, and the dying, which was now irrelevant, and he was focusing on the problems he had inherited.
     Harold Stein drank the liquor and let his eyes wander around the lounge. The two men in uniform lay beside the piano in the far corner to the left of the stairwell. One moved, the other didn’t. A third uniformed man lay against the rear wall of the lounge, his face and torso covered with a blanket. The bar in the opposite corner was in a shambles. Directly in front of him was another horseshoe-shaped couch. Three men and two women sat strapped into it. Their bodies moved spasmodically from time to time; every change of position presented Stein with a new tableau, each more grotesque than the last.
     Stein turned away and focused on a grouping of the club chairs along the left wall. A man wearing dark glasses sat in a frozen position, his hands apparently reaching for a hanging oxygen mask. An old man opposite him lay across the cocktail table, apparently dead also. An old woman, the most animated of anyone, was hiding behind the old man’s chair, occasionally peeking out and whimpering. A young flight attendant, also conscious, was weeping by herself, curled up on the floor near the cocktail table. Clothes and sundry lounge paraphernalia were strewn over the plush blue carpet. “This is monstrous.”
     “Let’s stay calm. This,” Berry waved his arm, “doesn’t concern us … unless they become … unmanageable.”
     “Yes, all right.” He seemed to be considering. “Maybe we ought to … help these people … get below.”
     Berry nodded. “Yes. They’re an unsettling influence, but I’m not sure if that’s the right thing to do with them. I … Anyway, it wouldn’t be an easy job. Let it lie for now.”
     “All right.”
     Berry leaned forward. “Where were you when the … air let go?” Berry had begun to look for answers. If he could figure out what happened, he might be able to figure out what to do next.
     “I told you. I was in the lavatory.”
     The girl put down her cola. “Me, too, Mr. Berry.”
     “Okay,” said Berry. “That’s it. I was in the lavatory, too. The lavatories held more of their pressure. Did either of you black out?”
     They both nodded.
     “Okay. But we’re all right now. The people who didn’t put their masks on are dead. Those who did are either dead or brain damaged.”
     Stein leaned forward and spoke softly. “Brain damaged?”
     “Yes. Of course. That’s what it looks like, doesn’t it?”
     “Well … yes. I … my wife … two kids …” Stein put his hands to his face.
     Somehow Berry hadn’t thought of the possibility that Stein was not traveling alone. Berry had traveled alone for so many years that it had accustomed him to think only of himself. Even at home, he seemed to think mostly in ones. Everything had happened so quickly that his thoughts had never gotten to the obvious, even concerning Linda Farley. She most of all would certainly have been with someone. “I’m sorry, Harold. I didn’t realize …” He could see that he was losing Stein, and the girl was going with him. “Listen, I’m a pilot and I have experience with these things, and the effects of … of oxygen deprivation are temporary. I didn’t mean brain damage—that was the wrong word. I think I can land this thing, and when everyone gets the proper medical attention, well, they’ll be all right. Now, you’ve got to help me so I can bring us all home. Okay?” He turned to the girl, who was crying again. “Were you with anyone, Linda? Come on. Take a deep breath and speak to me.”
     Linda Farley wiped her tears. “Yes, my mother. We were … I tried to find her before. Then everything happened so fast …”
     “Yes, I’m sure she’s all right. Where was she sitting?” As soon as he asked the question he regretted it. But something made him want to know.
     “In the middle. I think near where the hole is.” Her eyes filled with tears again. She understood what that meant.
     John Berry turned away from them and focused on a picture hanging on the far wall near the piano. Dalí’s celebrated The Persistence of Memory. A bizarre grouping of melted watches, lying across a surreal landscape. If ever a painting fit a room, it was that painting in this room. He turned away and stared down at the white plastic table in front of him. He had been spared any concern beyond his own survival. He was thankful at least for that. If they ever got back, he would be the only one who would not carry any scars of this. In fact, he thought with some guilt, he could come out of it better than he’d gone in. But there were close to three hundred and fifty souls onboard. Souls, he remembered, was the official term. How odd. And most of those souls were dead or dying. It was a hell of a high price to pay for Berry’s personal resurrection. If he survived.
     Berry glanced at Stein. The man wore a numbed expression. He was obviously haunted by the presence of his brain-damaged family, who sat no more than a hundred feet from him. Berry wondered how he, himself, would stand up under a similar strain. For an instant he conjured up the image of Jennifer and his two children.
     He tried to examine his feelings. The thought had crossed his mind to give up and simply wait for the fuel to run out, but he had also thought about trying to fly the airliner, fly it to a landing. He glanced at Stein and the girl. He thought of the others in the cabin of the 797, and the word euthanasia came into his mind.
     Berry knew that the pulse of the engines was lulling him into a false security, a lethargy that made it difficult for him to act as long as there appeared to be no immediate danger. But every minute that passed was a minute less flying time. He wondered if there was actually enough fuel left, considering the high fuel consumption at low altitudes, to get him to a body of land. He supposed he could ditch the plane in the ocean. Did the Straton have an emergency signal transmitter in the tail like his Skymaster did? If so, was it working? If it was there and if it worked, a ship might eventually come. But he didn’t know if the three of them could clear the aircraft before it sank. And how about the others? And if some of them did clear the aircraft, how long would they have to float with their life vests in the ocean? He thought of sunstroke, dehydration, storms, and sharks. Clearly they were all as good as dead unless he did something. For some reason, known only to God, he, Linda Farley, and Harold Stein had been given a second chance, an opportunity to save themselves. He suddenly stood. “Okay. First priority. Find others who did not suffer … decompression. Mr. Stein … Harold … you go below into the cabins and make a search.”
     Stein looked at the staircase. The thought of going down there with three hundred dysfunctional and probably dangerous passengers was not comforting. He didn’t move.
     Berry had another idea. “All right. Stay here.” He went into the cockpit and looked around for a moment. Finally, he found what he needed: He grabbed the PA microphone and pressed the button. He heard the squelch-break and took a deep breath. “Hello. This is … the Captain speaking.” His own voice boomed out in the lounge, and he could hear the echoes of his words coming up the stairwell. “If there is anyone in the aircraft who … who …” Damn it. “Who is not affected by decompression, who feels all right, and who can think clearly, please come up to the first-class lounge.” He repeated his message and went back into the lounge.
     Berry and Stein stood at the railing of the staircase and watched and listened. Some of the passengers were shaken out of their lethargy by the voice and were making odd noises—squeals, grunts, groans, and growls. A high piercing laugh came from the far recesses of the cabin and penetrated into the lounge. Stein shuddered and shook his head spasmodically. “Good God.”
     They waited, but no one came.
     Berry turned to Stein and put his hand on his shoulder. “I’m afraid that’s not conclusive. Someone may be trapped or frightened out of his wits. You’ll have to go down.”
     “I don’t want to go downstairs,” Stein said in a small voice.
     Berry bit into his lower lip. He realized that if he allowed it, Harold Stein would soak up time and attention like a sponge. It was an understandable need. But John Berry could not spare the time, or allow himself a normal man’s compassion. “Stein, I don’t give a damn what you want. I don’t want to die. Neither does the girl. What we want isn’t enough anymore. All that matters is what we need. I need to know if anyone else on this goddamned airplane can help us. We’ve got to find a doctor, or someone from the crew. Maybe another pilot.”
     Berry glanced toward the cockpit. The sight of the empty flight deck sent a chill down his spine. He shrugged it off and turned back to Stein. “Take this belt. Find other weapons. We may need them. Linda, you stay here in the lounge and look after these people. Especially look after the copilot over there. All right?”
     “Yes, sir.”
     “If anyone acts … funny, let me know. I’ll be in the cockpit. Okay? Linda? Harold?”
     Stein nodded reluctantly. He half believed that his family would recover and almost believed that Berry could fly the aircraft. “I’ll bring my family up here. I’d rather they be up here. They’ll be okay in a little while.”
     Berry shook his head. “They’re fine where they are. Later, when they are more aware, we’ll bring them up.”
     “But—”
     “I have to insist. Please go. I have other things to attend to in the cockpit.”
     Stein glanced back at the empty cockpit. “The radio? Are you going to try to contact … ?”
     “Yes. Go on down below. Let me worry about the cockpit.”
     Harold Stein rose slowly and took the belt and wrapped it around his right hand. “Do you think they’re very … dangerous?”
     Berry glanced around the lounge. “No more than these people.” He paused. He owed Stein more than that. Some lies were necessary. Other were self-serving. “Be careful. I was attacked down there. Different people react differently to oxygen loss. The brain is a complicated … Just be careful. Each flight-attendant station should have a call phone. You may be able to use the phones if you want to speak to me.”
     “All right.”
     Berry turned abruptly and walked quickly back into the cockpit.
     Stein watched as Berry slid into the pilot’s seat. He glanced at the girl, forced a smile, and began descending the staircase.

Berry had an urge to shut down the autopilot and take the wheel. Just for a second to get the feel of the machine. To take his fate into his own hands. He stared at the switch on his control wheel and reached out his hand. Steering the giant aircraft could possibly be within his skills. But if the craft somehow got away from him, he knew that he would never be able to get it back under control. Yet eventually he knew he’d take the wheel when the fuel ran out. At that point, he would have absolutely nothing to lose in trying to belly-land in the ocean. So why not try a practice run now? His hand touched the autopilot disengage switch. No. Later. He took his hand away.
     He thought about going down in the ocean. If nothing else, he should probably make a 180-degree turn and head south before they left the mid-Pacific’s warmer water. He looked up at the autopilot controls mounted on the glare shield that ran between the pilots. One knob was labeled HEADING. Berry put his hand on it, took a deep breath, and turned it to the right.
     The Straton slowly dropped its right wing as its left wing rose and the aircraft went into a bank. The tilting motion made him experience that familiar sensation in the seat of his pants. It would take a very long time to turn 180 degrees at this rate of turn, but he didn’t actually want to turn around yet. Not until he had a firm plan of action in mind. It was an old pilot’s creed not to make course changes aimlessly. He glanced at the fuel gauges. He had time. The water beneath them was probably still warm enough for ditching, and would be for a while. Berry was satisfied that the autopilot would respond to its turn control knob. That was all he had the nerve for right now. He turned the knob back slightly and the Straton leveled out. He looked at the magnetic compass and saw that he was on a slightly different heading of 330 degrees. He turned the knob again to put the proper reading under the cursor, and the airplane rolled back to its original heading of 325 degrees.
     He sat back. His hands were trembling and his heart was beating faster. He took a few seconds to calm himself. He considered trying the radios again but decided that they were definitely malfunctioning. Psychologically, it wasn’t good to have another failure with them, and he didn’t want to cultivate a dependence on them. The hell with the radios. If he was going to fly the Straton, he was going to have to do it himself, unless Stein came back with a licensed airline pilot. Berry wasn’t counting too heavily on that.

Stein stood at the base of the stairs, peering into the dim, cavernous cabin. He’d felt the aircraft tilt and thought it would crash. Then it leveled off. Berry was flying it. He relaxed a bit and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darker shadows around him.
     In the center of the first-class cabin, a few feet from the stairs, was the enclosed area that held the two lavatories. He stepped to the side of the wall and looked back into the tourist section. With the section dividers gone, he could see how huge the Straton was. Row upon row of seats, like a movie theater. Shafts of sunlight cut though the windows, and he could see dust motes in them. A larger shaft of sunlight lay across the wide body from hole to hole, and the air rushing past the holes created an odd noise. He noticed a mild and pleasant breeze in the cabin that helped to dissipate the smell of sick people and sewage. The pressure and airflow had leveled out into a state of near equilibrium.
     As if they had also reached an internal equilibrium, most of the passengers sat motionless. Their initial bursts of energy had been spent, and they sat with their eyes shut and their faces slack and pasty white, many of them smeared with blood and vomit. A dozen or so people were still making noises, and from the back of the aircraft somewhere came a terrible laugh. A few men and women continued to move aimlessly up and down the aisles, in a sort of trance. It was a cross between an insane asylum and a slaughterhouse. How, thought Stein, who was a religious man, could God permit this to happen? Why did God give man the ability to reach this high into the heavens and then desert them all like this? And why was he spared? Was he spared?
     He searched the faces of the people closest to him. None of them offered even the slightest promise of normality. He took a breath and stepped a few feet up the aisle. He forced himself to look at the four center-row seats where his family sat. The two girls, Debbie and Susan, were smiling at him with blood-covered mouths. His wife seemed not to notice him at all. He called her name. “Miriam. Miriam!” She didn’t look up, but a lot of other people did.
     Stein realized that the noise had made them active. He remained motionless, then glanced back at his wife and daughters. Tears came to his eyes. He stepped back and leaned against the bulkhead of the lavatory. He thought he was going to pass out, and he took several deep breaths. His mind cleared and he stood up straight. He knew there was no way he would walk the length of the aircraft. He’d just wait five minutes and go back. He’d lead his family up the stairs, too.
     A peculiar sensation, a mild vibration, began to inch into his awareness. He turned and laid a hand against the bulkhead. The vibration was coming from inside the enclosure, and it was getting stronger. It was the rhythmic hum of a slow-turning electric motor. He remembered that there was a galley elevator adjacent to the lavatories. He quickly went around to the galley opening on the other side of the enclosure. He looked in at a small metal door. The motor stopped. He took a step back as the handle rotated. The door opened.
     Stein stood face-to-face with two women. Flight attendants. One tall brunette, the other Oriental. They were huddled close together in the small elevator. He could see pure terror on their faces. Their eyes were red and watery, and traces of smeared vomit clung to their blue jackets? “Are you all right?” Stein asked. “Can you … understand me?”
     “Who are you?” asked the brunette flight attendant. “What happened? Is everything okay?”
     Stein took a deep breath to get his voice under control and replied, “There’s been an accident. Holes in the airplane. We lost pressure. A few of us were trapped in the lavatories. The lavatory doors held the air pressure,” Stein said, remembering Berry’s words. “I guess where you were held its air pressure, too.”
     The brunette flight attendant said, “We were in the lower galley.”
     The Oriental girl asked, “Did a door open?”
     “No. A bomb.”
     “Oh, God!”
     Sharon Crandall stepped out of the elevator and brushed by Stein. She turned and looked down the length of the cabins. “Oh my God, oh no! Barbara! Barbara!”
     Barbara Yoshiro came quickly out of the elevator and stood behind Crandall. She screamed, a long primal scream that died in her throat as she blacked out and collapsed into Stein’s arms.
     Sharon Crandall put her hands over her face and took a series of short breaths. She turned quickly toward Stein. “The pilots. The pilots!”
     “Dead. Well … unconscious. But there’s a passenger who’s a pilot. Come on. We have to get out of here.”
     “What’s happened to these people?”
     “Brain damage. … Oxygen loss. They might get violent. Come on!”
     A dozen passengers began walking up the aisles toward them. A few more passengers near them tried to stand, but their seat belts held them down. But through trial and error, or because of some vague recollection, some people were beginning to unfasten their belts and stand up. A few of them moved into the aisles. A tall man stood up right next to Stein.
     Stein was becoming frightened. “Go ahead! Go first!”
     Sharon Crandall nodded and moved quickly up the stairway. Stein dragged Barbara Yoshiro toward the stairway. A male passenger suddenly stood in his seat and stepped into the open area in front of the staircase. With his free hand, Stein straight-armed him and the man spun away, wobbling like a malfunctioning gyroscope.
     Stein, dragging the unconscious flight attendant, took the stairs slowly. Someone was behind him. A hand grabbed his ankle. He kicked loose and moved faster up the spiral stairs, almost knocking Crandall over as he reached the top. He laid Barbara Yoshiro on the carpet and slumped over the rail. A half-dozen grotesque faces stared up at him. He thought he saw the top of his wife’s head, but he couldn’t be sure. His breathing was heavy and his heart raced wildly in his chest. “Get away. Go away!”
     Sharon Crandall looked around the lounge. “Oh my God!”
     Stein stood by the staircase and wrapped the belt around his hand. “I’ll stay here. Go into the cockpit.”
     Berry looked over his shoulder into the lounge. “Come in here!”
     But Sharon Crandall’s attention was focused on the flight attendant sitting on the carpet with her legs spread out. “Terri!” She ran over to the girl and knelt beside her. “Are you okay? Terri?”
     Terri O’Neil opened her eyes wide and looked toward where the sound had come from. It was an involuntary response to the auditory stimulus. Her rational mind had been erased by the thin air at 62,000 feet. The sight of Sharon Crandall’s face meant nothing to her. The memory of the hundreds of hours they had flown together had evaporated from her brain like water from a boiling kettle.
     “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 datalinks—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.

6

“Navy three-four-seven, this is Homeplate.” Commander Sloan’s voice was cool, controlled. Sloan looked at Hennings out of the corner of his eye as he transmitted. “Status of Straton.”
     “Status unchanged.”
     “Roger. Stand by for mission order.”
     “Roger.”
     “Out.” Sloan put down the microphone and turned to Hennings. “All right, Admiral. The time for talk is over. I am going to order Lieutenant Matos to fire his second missile into the cockpit of the Straton. I am fully convinced that there is no one alive on that aircraft. If there was a pilot onboard, he would have changed direction long ago.” He paused again and switched to a conversational tone of voice. “You know that the Navy is required to sink derelict ships that are a hazard to navigation. Now, the analogy is not precise, but that dead aircraft is a hazard to navigation too. At its present altitude and heading, it can potentially cross some commercial air lanes and …”
     “That’s absurd.”
     Sloan went on. “And it could also crash into a ship. True, there is no precedent for this, but it seems like an obvious obligation to order a derelict aircraft brought down. We must bring it down on our terms. Now. Hazard to navigation,” he said again, hoping the old terminology would produce the necessary response.
     Hennings didn’t respond, but a flicker of emotion passed over his craggy features. His memory was drawn back to an incident that they had often talked about at the Naval Academy. It had occurred at the beginning of the Second World War. One ship, the Davis, had been pulling the crew of a badly damaged destroyer, the Mercer, from the water. The Mercer was crippled and aflame but showed no signs of sinking, and the Japanese fleet had sent a cruiser and two destroyers toward it. The last thing the Navy wanted was for the Japanese to take a U.S. warship in tow, complete with maps, charts, codes, new armaments, and encrypting devices. The Davis captain, John Billings, knew there were wounded and trapped men aboard the Mercer. The survivors also reported that the Mercer’s skipper, Captain Bartlett, a classmate of Billings, was still aboard. Captain Billings, without hesitation or one trace of emotion, was said to have turned to his gunnery officer and ordered, “Sink the Mercer.”
     But that was war, Hennings thought. This was quite different. Yet … they were at war, or at least could be someday—contrary to what the fools in Congress thought with their politically correct solutions and reasoning. The Straton, if it was visually spotted or tracked on radar, or crashed near a ship, might be recovered. And if it was, the nature of its damage would be quickly recognized for what it was. And that would lead back to the Nimitz eventually. Hennings knew that was what Sloan was really saying with all his bilge about hazard to navigation.
     And if the Nimitz were suspected, all hell would break loose. America washed its dirty linen in public. The Navy would be subjected to inquiry, scandal, and ruinous publicity. It would be Tailhook a thousand times over. The incident would further emasculate the United States Navy; it was an emasculation that had already gone far beyond belief.
     Hennings knew exactly what the Joint Chiefs would say if all that happened. “Why didn’t those sons-of-bitches, Hennings and Sloan, just blow the thing out of the sky?” They would never order that done, but they expected it to be done by their subordinates. Someone had to do the dirty work and protect the people on top. Protect the nation’s defense posture and the viability of its military.
     Sloan had let enough time slip by. “Admiral?”
     Hennings looked at Sloan. If he didn’t dislike the man personally—if the suggestion had come from a more morally courageous officer—then it would be easier to say yes. Hennings cleared his throat. “Let’s give it ten minutes more.”
     “Five.”
     “Seven.”
     Sloan reached out and set the countdown clock for seven minutes. He hit the start button.
     Hennings nodded. Commander Sloan was a man who wasted neither words nor time. “Can you be sure Matos will …”
     “We’ll know soon enough. But I’d be surprised if he didn’t come to the same conclusions himself. I understand Matos better than he understands himself, though I’ve hardly spoken to the man. Matos wants to be part of the team.” He sat down and began writing. “I’m drafting a message to him, and I want you to help me with it. What we say and how we say it will be very important.”
     “Well, Commander, if you’ve convinced me, you can convince that unfortunate pilot. You need no help from me in that direction.” Randolf Hennings turned his back to Sloan and opened the blackout shade over the porthole. He stared out at the sea. He wondered what fates had conspired against him to make him do such a thing so late in life. The good years, the honest years, all seemed to count for very little when stacked up against this. He thought of the Straton. How many people onboard? Three hundred? Surely they were dead already. But now their fate would never be known to their families. Randolf Hennings had consigned them to their grave. They would lie there in the ocean where so many of his friends already lay, where he himself wished he could lie.

Jerry Brewster stood idly in the small communications room of Trans-United Operations at San Francisco International Airport, his hands in his pockets. He waited for the 500-millibar Pacific weather chart to finish printing. Working in this room was the only part of his job as dispatcher’s aide that he really disliked. The lights were too bright, the noises too loud, and the chemical smells from the color-reproduction-enhancement machines hung heavily in the stagnant air.
     The new chart was finished printing. Brewster waited impatiently for it to dry before he pulled it out of the machine. Jack Miller had requested the update on mid-altitude temperatures, and Brewster wanted to get the data to him before lunch. Brewster made it a point to drop everything else whenever Miller asked for something. Brewster liked the old man; Miller was always available for advice and training.
     Brewster reached down and carefully pulled the newly printed chart off the roller and held it up. He walked toward the door with the map suspended from two fingers, just to be sure he didn’t smudge the still-damp color ink. A bell rang behind him. The tiny sound carried from the far corner of the room above the other electronic noises. Brewster paused. It was the data-link’s alerting bell. He listened. The screen was displaying a new message, and even from this far away, he could see that it was unusually short—a few letters or numbers. Brewster knew what that meant. Another malfunction. More gibberish. A segment of some half-digested intracompany transmissions. He watched from a distance to see if the screen would update.
     After spending a small fortune to equip the entire Trans-United fleet with this electronic marvel, the data-link communications network was still subject to “technical difficulties,” as they called it. Brewster called it screwed up. Garbled messages. Phrases or letters that repeated for screen after screen. Misaligned or inverted columns of data. It was almost funny, except that they were forever calling the system engineers to troubleshoot the damned thing. Fortunately, it was used only for routine and nonessential communications—meal problems, crew scheduling, passenger connections, routine weather and position updates. When it worked fine, it was fine, and when it didn’t, you ignored it. Brewster ignored it.
     He stepped toward the door. The chemicals in the room stung his nostrils and made his eyes water. He wanted to get into the cleaner air of the dispatcher’s office, away from the irritants. He opened the door, then hesitated. Monitoring the data-link was one of his responsibilities. All right, damn it. He slammed the door shut, crossed the room and stood in front of the screen. He read the typed message:

John Berry stared at the rotary code selector on the data-link. The thing to do, he decided, was to change codes and send again. A longer message this time. That impulsive SOS had been too brief, enigmatic, he realized. He looked around the cockpit for code books but realized that, even if there had been any, they had probably been sucked out. He would have to try each channel, transmit a complete message, wait for a reply, and if there was none, go on to the next channel. Somewhere, the counterpart to this machine would print. He’d begin monitoring each channel again after he’d transmitted on all of them. It was a shotgun approach, but it was far better than waiting. The urge to hit the key was getting the better of him. “I think I’m going to try another channel. What do you think?”
     Sharon Crandall looked at the blank video screen. “Wait a minute or two. I remember that the pilots sometimes waited ten minutes or more for a reply.”
     “Why?”
     “Well, they don’t send anything important on it. They just want it so they can leave a message in the communications room—for the record.”
     “Have you seen the communications room in San Francisco?”
     “Once. I used to date a pilot. He brought me in there and showed me the data-link, weather printouts, and all that.”
     “Sounds like fun. Where’s the communications room? Physically, I mean.”
     “The room’s off the main dispatcher’s office.”
     “Anyone on duty there?”
     She thought for a moment. “No. I don’t think so … just machines. But people go in and out, though.”
     Berry nodded. “Okay. We’ll have to wait for someone to go in there and spot the message. Where’s the machine located?”
     “It’s in the middle of the room. The room’s small. They’ll see it.”
     “Okay. I hope so.”
     Crandall felt defensive, but didn’t know why she should. She tried to concentrate on the panel. Maybe she could come up with something else. The markings above the controls and gauges seemed so cryptic. RMI. LOM. Alternate Static. Gyro Transfer. “Here. This is something I remember. The ADF. I think it’s some kind of radio.”
     Berry forced a weak smile. “Yes. The automatic direction finder. It’s to home in on an airport’s signal. Maybe we can use it later.”
     “Oh.” She sat back. “I’m worried about Barbara. It’s been a while since we’ve heard from her.”
     Berry had found the cockpit clock, but it seemed to be malfunctioning. “What time is it?”
     She looked at her watch. “It’s six minutes past twelve, San Francisco time.”
     Berry glanced at the clock again. 8:06. Eight hours beyond San Francisco time. He realized it was set to Greenwich Mean Time and remembered that airlines always measured time from that internationally recognized starting point. Berry shook his head in disgust. Everything in this cockpit seemed to provide him with useless information. The radios were filled with frequencies that wouldn’t transmit. The course indicators sat blindly in the center of their scales. The clock told him that at that moment, halfway around the world, neon lights shined on Piccadilly and the London theater had raised the curtain on their first acts. All that useless information was unnerving. He had, he realized, become increasingly morose. He needed to pull himself out of it. He coughed dryly into his hand to clear his parched throat. “At least the weather’s good and we have some daylight left. If this happened at night …”
     “Right.” Crandall answered with little enthusiasm.
     They both lapsed into silence. Each knew the other was nervous, yet they couldn’t bridge the gap to comfort each other. Berry felt himself wishing that Stein were free to come to the cockpit. Crandall wished Yoshiro would hurry back. Neither of them bothered to wish that the accident had never happened; neither of them was thankful for being alive. Their whole existence was reduced to worrying about the next course of action, the next few minutes.
     Berry half rose in his seat and looked back into the lounge. “How is it going, Mr. Stein?” he shouted.
     Harold Stein called back. “They seem quiet down there. Up here, too. No change in the copilot.”
     “Call out for Barbara Yoshiro.”
     Stein called loudly down the stairwell and listened closely. He turned toward the cockpit. “Nothing.”
     Sharon picked up the interphone and looked at the console. “I don’t know which station to call.”
     “Try any one.”
     Crandall selected Station Six in the rear of the aircraft and pressed the call button. She waited. No one answered. “Should I call another station, or wait on this line?”
     Berry was impatient. “How would I know?”
     “I’m frightened for her.”
     Berry was becoming angry. “I didn’t want her to go back in the first place. She’s become part of the problem now and no help with the solution.” He took a deep breath.
     Sharon Crandall rose in her seat. “I’m going down there.”
     Berry reached out and grabbed her wrist. “No. You’re not going anywhere. I need you here.” Berry looked intently at her. An unspoken message passed between them: Berry was now in command.
     Crandall sank slowly into her seat. Finally, she nodded. “Okay.” She looked at John Berry, and he returned her stare. She felt strangely calm and confident in this man’s presence.
     “Try the rest of the flight-attendant stations,” Berry said in a low, calm voice. “I’m going to start changing channels on the data-link. Maybe if we work on it, we can get our luck to change.” Berry let his fingers slip gently off Crandall’s wrist, and he reached across the console toward the data-link.

Jack Miller was trying to decide if he should give Flight 52 more time. He looked up at Brewster. “How’s the data-link today?”
     Brewster looked up from the weather chart. “What?”
     “The link? Is it behaving?”
     “Oh.” He hesitated. “No. Just got a garbled message, as a matter of fact.”
     “Okay.” He swiveled his chair and looked at Evans. “Okay, Dennis. In ten minutes, call them on the radio. Be gentle.”
     “Always gentle, Chief.”
     “Right.”
     Jerry Brewster abruptly laid his pencil down and walked quickly to the communications room. “Damn waste of time,” he mumbled. He opened the door, ignoring the stench of color-enhancement chemicals, walked to the center of the room, and slid into the chair in front of the data-link keyboard. He saw that there were no messages on the screen, then set the machine to automatically choose and transmit on whatever channel the last incoming message had used. The SOS. He knew this procedure would work only if the aircraft had not changed the code settings on its own machine. Brewster placed his hands over the keyboard and typed a message almost as short as the one he had received.

Berry thought he felt a barely perceptible pulsation in the machine, and had actually seen one of the unit’s lights blink for an instant. He jerked his hand away from the code selector as though it were red hot.
     The bell that signaled an incoming message rang twice. Its tone filled the 797’s cockpit like the bells of Notre Dame on Christmas Eve.
     Sharon Crandall let out a startled cry.
     John Berry felt his chest heave and his throat constrict.
     Letters began to print on the data-link’s video screen.
     Sharon Crandall reached out and grabbed Berry’s arm.

“Jesus Christ!” Jerry Brewster bent over the data-link screen as he watched its message display.

7

Peter Matos stared blankly out the windshield of his F-18. His reply had been automatic. Now he was beginning to fully understand what he was supposed to do. He looked at his console clock, then reached out to push his radio-transmit button. What was he going to ask Commander Sloan? What was left unclear? Nothing that concerned him. He drew his hand away from the radio button and rested it listlessly at his side.
     He glanced out of the cockpit. The Straton 797 maintained its heading and altitude with an unerring precision. Far too precise a flight to have been guided by any human hand. He watched carefully for a full minute. He was satisfied that the Straton was indeed being flown by its computerized autopilot.
     He settled back in his flight chair. Commander Sloan’s earlier orders had not made a great deal of sense. Matos had been certain that Sloan was leading up to something. And he knew, deep inside, what it was. Even though the actual order had now been sent, it was still hard to believe.
     Matos considered his options. There were none, really, that he could exercise without a great deal of unpleasantness. The facts were that the Straton had been off course, everyone aboard was now dead, the craft presented a hazard of some sort, and the top brass wanted it brought down. Simple. Follow orders. They would take care of everything. They would look after Peter Matos once he completed the mission.
     He stared at his fuel gauges. Less than half full. He glanced at his compass. With every passing minute he delayed, he was getting farther away from the Nimitz. Every minute of delay now would add another minute to his trip home. He looked again at his clock. Three minutes had already gone by. He desperately wanted to be done with this within the next few minutes. More than anything else he wanted to be back in his bunk on the Nimitz. That was his home—he wanted to go home.
     Without another disturbing thought, he began to maneuver his fighter into a better position for the missile strike.
     His mind was now filled with the logistics of the difficult shot. The technical trade-offs were complex. The derelict Straton was a large stable target, but its very size presented a problem. How many dummy warheads would it take to bring it down? The first one had not done it. A half-dozen more might not do it. He had only one left. He was reminded of a bull in the ring being stuck with lances and banderillas.
     The Phoenix missile would hit the Straton. That was no problem. It could do that automatically. But he had to hit a particular spot. He needed a brain shot.
     The solution, now that he had a chance to study the problem, was suddenly obvious. He had to fly close to the cockpit and fire his missile at point-blank range. With no exploding warhead he could do this with a fair degree of safety. Then he had to pull out quickly and turn away. The Phoenix would strike the cockpit before its elaborate guidance system could alter its course and steer it toward the target’s midsection. Matos managed a small smile. He had outwitted the designers of the weapon. The pilot was still in control after all.
     Matos knew that selecting the best angle for the shot would have to be a compromise. He slid his fighter to the starboard side of the Straton. The small shadow of his craft passed over the gleaming silver airframe of the huge airliner. He looked down. Normally, a full side view of the target would be best, but he saw that a missile shot from that angle would be far too risky. He was liable to miss the aircraft entirely because of the high-closure speeds and his need to do the firing manually.
     He slid his craft back over the top of the Straton and a hundred yards behind its tail. The shot would have to be made from the twelve-o’clock-high position, right down into the dome that was the lounge and cockpit. The angle would have to be such that the missile would enter the roof of the lounge, pass through the cockpit, and exit from the lower nose. That would wipe out everything on the flight deck. He reached for the manual gun sight above the glare shield and snapped it into place. He looked through it. The gunnery crosshairs seemed to bob and weave as the relative positions of the two aircraft changed.
     Matos set his experienced hands to work on the flight control and soon had the calibrated crosshairs steadied and within range. The bulge of the upper lounge and cockpit filled the scope. The sight’s bull’s-eye swayed back and forth over the protruding dome.
     Matos reached down without taking his eyes off the target and turned off the Phoenix’s safety switch. He moved his hand laterally and placed his finger on the firing button. He took a deep breath and began nudging the F-18’s control stick forward. The fighter came in closer. The bull’s-eye was dead center over the dome and holding steady. The Straton’s towering tail loomed up in front of him. He would fire when he passed over the tail. He judged that from tail to dome was almost two hundred feet, and that was a good yardstick to use. Closer than that would expose him to danger from debris. And if the stricken airliner suddenly rolled, the wing could come up and hit his fighter.
     He looked through the gun sight. Thirty feet from the tail. He had never flown this close to such a large aircraft. Twenty feet. The huge Straton was spread out below him like the deck of a carrier. Ten feet. He could see the rivets in the tail. His heart started to beat heavily in his chest.
     The nose of the F-18 passed over the tail of the Straton. The bull’s-eye covered the center of the silver dome. The glare of the silvery skin made Matos squint. He exhaled deeply and pressed his finger against the firing button.

John Berry was anxious to get on with the maneuver, yet he was doing nothing. He ran his eyes over the instruments, trying to appear as though he were doing something important.
     “John?”
     “What?”
     Sharon Crandall looked anxious. “Is anything wrong?”
     “No. Just a few checks.” He paused. “Try to call Barbara again. I want her to know we’re turning. When we start to bank, she’s liable to become frightened. And tell her to stay away from the holes.”
     “Okay.” Sharon Crandall set the interphone for the mid-ship station and pressed the button repeatedly. “She doesn’t answer,” she said in a trembling voice.
     “Try another station.”
     Crandall selected the aft flight-attendant station and pressed the button. Almost immediately a muffled voice came back, nearly drowned out by the sound of rushing wind and odd babbling voices in the background. “Barbara, can you hear me? Is that you?”
     “Yes. I’m at the rear station,” Yoshiro answered in a clear voice.
     “Are you all right?”
     “Yes.”
     Crandall turned to Berry. “I’ve got her. Thank God. She’s at the rear station. She’s okay.”
     Berry nodded.
     “Barbara, come back up,” Crandall said.
     “Give me five more minutes. I have to check one more lavatory. I don’t see the steward—Jeff Price. Maybe I’ll go below to the galley.”
     Crandall glanced at Berry.
     Berry was ready to begin the turn. “Okay. Tell her we’re about to turn. Stay where she is until the turn is completed.”
     Crandall nodded and spoke into the phone. “Wait in the rear station. John is going to turn the aircraft. We’ve made contact on the data-link. Everything is all right. We’re heading in. Stay there until the turn is completed. Take care. See you soon. Okay?”
     There was a lighter note in Barbara Yoshiro’s voice. “Yes. Good. Very good.”
     Berry took the phone. “Barbara, this is John Berry. How are the passengers?”
     There was a short pause, then the voice came back. “I … I don’t know. They seem … better.”
     Berry shook his head. They were not better. They never would be. Better meant worse. More animated. More dangerous. “Be very, very careful. See you later.”
     “Okay.”
     The phone clicked dead.
     Berry exchanged glances with Crandall, then looked over his shoulder into the lounge. Stein had taken the news about the data-link connection calmly, almost without interest. He had other things on his mind. “Harold. Linda,” Berry shouted back to them. “Hold on to something. We’re turning. Back to California. Be home in a few hours.”
     Stein looked up from his post at the head of the stairs and waved distractedly.
     Berry turned and positioned himself carefully in his seat. He reached out and put his hand on the autopilot heading control knob. He had a vague awareness of a shadow passing over the starboard side of the cockpit’s windshield. He glanced at Sharon Crandall, but she seemed unaware of it. He half stood and leaned over her seat and looked out the side windshield. He craned his neck back toward the tail. Nothing. A cloud probably. But he could see no clouds.
     “What’s wrong?”
     “Nothing.” He sat down and again placed his hand over the small heading knob. “Okay. We’re heading home.” Slowly, a few degrees at a time, he began turning the knob. The big supersonic craft banked to the right.

For a brief instant, Matos thought that his aircraft was responsible for the apparent movement between them. The action of a missile release would do that. But he had not, he realized, pressed the button hard enough to make contact. His missile-fire light was not on.
     The large Straton transport moved rapidly across Matos’s gun sight. He removed his hand from the firing button and raised his eyes from the crosshairs. The Straton was in a shallow bank, moving away from the fighter.
     Turbulence, was Matos’s first thought. No. Impossible. There is no turbulence. His own aircraft flew smoothly. Yet the 797 was banking. Instinctively, he banked with it and lined up his gun sights again. The Straton moved at a steady rate. Gracefully. Deliberately. Intentionally.
     Matos sat up straight in his seat. His hand came down hard on his radio transmit button. “Homeplate! Homeplate! Navy three-four-seven. The Straton is turning. Banking.” He followed the airliner as it began its slow, wide circle. “It’s going through a north heading. Still turning. Approaching a northeasterly heading. The turn remains steady. The bank angle is approximately thirty degrees and steady. The airspeed and altitude are unchanged.” Matos kept his transmit button locked on so he could not receive, and kept up a continuous report of the airliner’s progress.
     As gently as it had begun, the Straton’s bank angle started to lessen. Matos watched as the airliner began to roll to wings-level position. He placed his fighter twenty-five yards astern of the 797.
     Matos could see from the rate of the Straton’s turn and the symmetry of its entry and exit that the control inputs were being measured electronically. Only a computer-controlled autopilot could provide that sort of precise motion control. He radioed, “Homeplate, the Straton is still on autopilot.” But he also knew, beyond any doubt, that there was a human hand working that autopilot.
     Matos looked up at the manual gun sight, then down at the unguarded firing mechanism as though he were seeing them both for the first time. Oh, Jesus.
     His hand was cramped, and he realized he had been pressing hard on his radio transmit button to keep possession of the radio channel between him and the Nimitz. But he knew he could not keep the channel away from Sloan forever. He spoke, to justify his finger on the transmit button, and to give himself time to think. “It was a deliberate turn. Someone is flying the aircraft—someone is working the autopilot. I could fly alongside the cockpit to verify.” He released the button.
     “No!” shouted Sloan. “This is an order. Stay in trail formation. Do nothing to attract attention until you receive orders to do so. And keep your hand off the transmit button unless you are transmitting. Don’t try to cut me off again. Do you understand?”
     Matos nodded, almost meekly. “Roger. Sorry, I was just … excited and … must have been gripping the stick. … Over.”
     “Roger. Are you still monitoring the radio channels?”
     Matos glanced down at his side console. His monitoring equipment was still on, still silent. “That’s affirmative. No radio activity from the Straton on the normal frequencies.”
     “Okay, Peter. Stay in trail until further notice. Acknowledge.”
     “Roger, I read, stay in trail.”
     “Roger, out.”
     Matos ran his tongue across his parched lips and looked down at his compass. Reluctantly, he reached for his transmit button. When a commander gave an “out” it was the equivalent of, Don’t call me, I’ll call you. End of conversation. But Matos had things he wanted to say. “Homeplate.”
     There was a short pause. “What is it, Navy?”
     “Homeplate, whoever is flying that airliner knows what they’re doing. The Straton is flying steadily. Its new heading is 120 degrees. They are heading toward California.”
     The silence in Matos’s headset seemed to last a long time.
     “Roger. Anything further?”
     Matos could not read the flat tone in Sloan’s voice. He wondered what was going through the Commander’s mind now. Why had they thought everyone onboard the Straton was dead? Matos could not hold himself back from asking the obvious question. “Homeplate, I don’t understand. Why am I staying out of sight of the cockpit?” He settled back and waited through the long, expected silence.
     After a full minute his headset crackled. “Because, Lieutenant, I ordered you to.” The voice was no longer neutral. Sloan’s words continued, “We are all ass-deep in bad trouble. If you don’t want to spend the rest of your fucking life in Portsmouth Naval Prison, you will stay out of sight of that cockpit. Suppose, Lieutenant, you think about why you should keep out of sight and you radio me back with the answer when you figure it out. Okay?”
     Matos nodded again and stared at his hands wrapped around the control stick. “Roger.”
     “Homeplate, out.”
     Matos pushed aside the manual gun sight and snapped back the safety cover of the firing switch. He sat back, deep in his upholstered flight chair, and stared down at the Straton until his eyes went out of focus. He closed his eyes, then made his mind go blank. He erased all the extraneous information he had accumulated and started at the beginning, at the moment he had first seen two targets on his radar screen. Slowly, he realized what Sloan was getting to. Now he knew precisely what he might yet be called on to do. Say it, Peter, he thought. Murder.

8

Barbara Yoshiro didn’t feel like talking much longer. As she looked out of the flight-attendant station in the midsection galley, she saw that the passengers were beginning to pay too much attention to her. The station was a cul-de-sac, and her only advantage with these people lay in her mobility.
     “Barbara?”
     “Yes, I’m coming back now.”
     “Is it very bad? Should I come down?” Sharon Crandall asked.
     “No.” Yoshiro put a light tone in her voice. “I’ve been a flight attendant long enough to know how to avoid groping hands.” The joke came out badly and she added quickly, “They’re not paying any particular attention to me. See you in a few minutes.” She replaced the interphone and stepped into the aisle. She kept her back against the bulkhead of the lavatory and stared into the cavern that lay between the front of the airliner and herself, then looked back toward the tail.
     The flimsy partitions of the Straton’s interior had been swept away by the decompression. Its entire length, which she remembered being told was two hundred feet, lay exposed, except for the three galley-lavatory compartments. They rose, blue plastic cubicles in a row, from floor to ceiling—one near the tail, the midship one she was standing at, and the one in the first-class cabin that blocked her view of the spiral staircase.
     Dangling oxygen masks, uprooted seats, and dislodged wall and ceiling panels hung everywhere. Sixty feet from her, midway between the galley she was standing at and the first-class section, were two bomb holes—if that’s what they were.
     Barbara Yoshiro studied the possible routes she might take through the aircraft. She could see that she had two return routes to choose from. The aisle on the left—the one she had come down earlier—was now nearly packed with milling passengers. The aisle on the right had only a few people in it, but it contained more debris. Worse, it passed very near to the larger of the two holes in the fuselage. Even from where she stood, she could see the Pacific and the leading edge of the wing through the gaping hole. Perhaps, she thought, she’d travel up the right aisle, then cross over before she got to the open area of debris between the holes. While her eyes fixed on the scene in front of her, she failed to notice that a young man in the aisle next to her was watching her closely.
     She drew a deep breath and took a few tentative steps up the aisle. The stench was overpowering despite the fresh, cold breeze, and she felt queasy. She looked up as she walked, her eyes darting quickly in all directions. About a hundred men and women still sat in their seats, blocking the spaces between the rows. Another hundred or so stood in groups or by themselves blocking the main aisles. Some were walking aimlessly, bumping into people, falling into the aisles or into the seats, then getting up again and continuing. Everyone was babbling or moaning. If they would only remain quiet she might be able to ignore them.
     It was their clothes, too, she realized, almost as much as their faces or their noises, that gave them away. Their smart suits and dresses were tattered; some of them were half naked. Most people had one shoe or were shoeless. Almost everyone’s clothes were stained with blood and splattered with vomit.
     Yoshiro noticed that some of the passengers had been wounded in the explosion. She hadn’t looked at them, she realized, as individual people who were injured, but as a great amorphous thing whose color was gray and whose many eyes were black. Now she could see a woman whose ear was grotesquely hanging, a man who had lost two fingers. A small girl was touching a terrible-looking wound on her thigh. She was crying. Pain, Yoshiro realized, was one thing that they could still feel. But why could they still feel that and not feel anything else? Why couldn’t the sense of pain have died in them, too, and spared them that last agony?
     She saw a body lying in the aisle in front of her. It was Jeff Price, the steward. Where were the rest of the flight attendants? She looked around carefully and slowly for the familiar white-and-blue uniforms.
     Kneeling almost motionless in the shaft of bright sunlight in front of her, she spotted another flight attendant. The girl had her back toward her, but Barbara Yoshiro could see by the long black hair that it was Mary Gomez. The flight attendant appeared oblivious to everything around her, oblivious to the people stumbling into her, oblivious to the wind blowing her long hair in swirls around her head and neck. Barbara Yoshiro remembered that Mary Gomez had rung up the below-decks galley and asked if she could help. She remembered Sharon’s words very clearly. No, thanks, Mary. Barbara and I are nearly finished. We’ll be up in a minute. It had actually been almost five minutes before they were ready to come up. Had they come up sooner … Her religion did not stress fate, but this kind of thing made one wonder about God’s sense of timing. She turned away from Mary Gomez.
     Someone came up behind her and grabbed her shoulder. She froze, then slowly moved aside. A boy of about eighteen stumbled past her. Someone in the seat she was leaning against grabbed her right wrist. Gently, she pulled it loose and continued up the aisle, her heart beginning to beat rapidly, her mouth dry and pasty.
     Yoshiro got a grip on herself and began edging into a corner row of seats. She sidestepped past two seats, then stopped when she saw she couldn’t squeeze by the two men who were sitting in the last two seats. Carefully, she climbed over onto the empty seat in front of her and made her way into the left aisle.
     She approached the wide area of rubble where stark sunlight illuminated the grotesque dead shapes mingled with the debris. Passengers crawled and stumbled through the twisted wreckage. She watched in horrified fascination as a woman made her way toward the large gaping hole, brushed through the hanging wires and debris, and then stepped out into space. She saw the woman breeze past the cabin windows.
     Yoshiro was too stunned to make a sound. Had the woman committed suicide? She doubted it. None of the passengers seemed to have enough intellect left to do even that. As if to confirm this, an old man began crawling toward the same hole in the fuselage. As he neared it, still oblivious to his surroundings, the slipstream took hold of him. He was whisked outside. Yoshiro saw his body bump against the top of the wing before it fell beneath the aircraft. She turned abruptly away and looked down the aisle that would lead her to the safety of the stairs.
     Some of the people on the port side had fallen down in the aisle. Others were bunched up, trying to move around and past each other, like wind-up dolls, their feet marking time, their bodies recoiling from the continuous encounters with each other. It was obscene, and Barbara Yoshiro felt as if a string inside of her was tightening, stretching, about to snap.
     Barbara moved the last few feet down the aisle to where it opened up into the wreckage. She stepped carefully over the contorted forms on the floor. Less than fifty feet in front of her rose the blue plastic galley-lavatory cubicle, behind which was the spiral staircase.
     People kept brushing and bumping her. The noise that came out of their mouths was not human. For some reason, it suddenly swelled into a crescendo of squeaking, wailing, moaning, and howling, then subsided like the noises in the forest. Then something touched it off again and the cycle began all over. An involuntary shudder passed through her body.
     She forced herself to look into the faces of the men and women around her to try to determine if they were communicating with each other, telegraphing any movements, so she could act accordingly. But most of their faces showed nothing. No emotion, no interest, no humanity, and in the final analysis, no soul. The divine spark had gone out as surely as if they’d all sold themselves to the Devil. She could more easily read the facial expressions of an ape than the blood-smeared faces of these hollow-eyed, slack-jawed former humans.
     There were a few, however, who showed signs of residual intelligence. One young man, in a blue blazer, seemed to have followed her in a parallel course down the right aisle. He was standing on the other side of the rubble area now, near the large hole, and staring at her. She saw him glance at the hole, then move away from it, toward her, pushing his way through the people near him. He stopped abruptly, then looked down at his feet.
     Barbara Yoshiro followed his gaze. She noticed a dog in the twisted wreckage. The dog of the blind man, a golden retriever. It sat on the floor, poking its head between the two upturned seats. It was eating something. … She put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, no! Oh, God!”
     The young man moved deliberately around the dog. A wave of panic began to wash over her. Her knees began trembling, and she felt light-headed. She grasped a section of twisted aluminum brace to steady her balance. The dog pulled something up from the debris. A bone. A rib. “Oh! Oh!” She felt a scream rising in her throat and tried to force it down, but it came out, long and piercing, then tapered off into a pathetic wail. “Oh, dear God.”
     The people around her turned toward the sound. The young man moved quickly toward her.
     Barbara Yoshiro ran. She stumbled over the smashed bodies and seats, then fell. The floor between the holes was damaged and sagged slightly. Her arm plunged through it, into the baggage compartment below. She yanked it out and tore her wrist. Blood ran from the jagged wound. The dog picked up its head and growled at her, a strange growl that sounded more like a man choking or gagging. She rose quickly to her feet. The young man in the blue blazer reached out for her.
     George Yates was normally a mild-mannered young man. He was in superb physical condition, a jogger, a scuba diver, and a practitioner of yoga and meditation. For a variety of physiological reasons, the results of decompression had left a large portion of his motor function unimpaired. The thin air had, however, wiped away his twenty-four years of acculturation and civilization, that part of the psyche that George Yates would have referred to as the superego. The ego itself was impaired, but partially functional. The id, the pleasure center of George Yates’s brain, the impulsive drives, the instinctive energy, that part of the psyche closest to the lower forms of life, was left dominant.
     It had been her movements that had first attracted his attention. When he had focused on those movements, they had begun to separate into perceptible components. A female.
     In small flashes that were hardly more than thin sections of memory, George Yates recognized something in her form that he wanted. His last vivid recollection in his seat before things had come apart had been a long sexual daydream. The fantasy had included the women in blue and white who walked through the aisles. Vaguely, he remembered the woman with the long black hair, remembered that she had aroused him. He was aroused now. He reached out for her.
     Barbara Yoshiro eluded his grasp. She ran across the remaining area of debris toward the first-class cabin. The forward galley and lavatories loomed in front of her. She slammed into the blue wall, then turned her back to it and began edging her way toward the corner where the wall turned toward the staircase.
     People began coming at her, hands outstretched. She hit a woman in the face with her fist and sent her staggering back into the group behind her. Immediately, she realized she should not have done that.
     People from all over the aircraft began migrating toward the focal point of the commotion. Some came out of curiosity, some were caught in the tide of bodies, some came to meet the perceived danger—Barbara Yoshiro.
     She worked her way to the edge of the lavatory and peered around the corner. Less than twenty feet away she could see the spiral staircase winding upward. But the lower half was filled with people, and the intervening space between her and the base of the stairs was a solid mass of bodies. The open area around her was getting smaller. Hands reached out to her, and she slapped them away. A young boy caught hold of her blouse and pulled at it. The thin cotton tore and exposed her shoulder. Another hand caught hold of her blouse and tore it half off. Someone pulled at her hair. The young man who seemed to be normal was wedged inside the crowd that surrounded her, deliberately pushing his way through. She took a deep breath and screamed. “Help! Someone help me!”
     Her voice sounded small against the wind, the roar of the four jet engines, and the excited howls around her. A hundred or more men and women competed with one another to make their sounds supreme in the jungle that was the Straton. She screamed again, but knew that her screams had become indistinguishable from those around her.
     She slid around the corner of the bulkhead and groped with her right hand for the lavatory door. Her hand found the knob, and she turned it. The door gave way behind her. She turned her head and peered into the small enclosure, not knowing that it was the same one that had saved John Berry’s life a few short hours before. Two men and a woman stood shoulder to shoulder, wall to wall, staring at her. She slammed the door. “Oh God. Jesus Christ.” For a second she was reminded of the terror and disgust she had felt when she had opened her kitchen cabinet late one night and found it swarming with cockroaches.
     Keeping her back to the wall, she edged farther down toward the staircase. The pressing crowd was only peripherally interested in her, and she found that if she altered between aggressive and passive behavior, she could slide by them. The young man in the blue blazer, however, was still purposefully making his way toward her.
     Barbara reached the forward corner of the cubicle, close to the staircase. The press of bodies here was so thick she could barely push through. She called up again, but the din was so loud now that she could not even hear her own voice. She saw that the passengers had gone a few steps higher. One man staggered up the last few steps and disappeared into the lounge. A second later, he came crashing down and caused an avalanche of bodies to tumble over the winding staircase. Mr. Stein, she saw, was putting up a good fight. But he could not hear her, and even if he could, he would not be able to help her.
     Yoshiro considered several alternatives. Playing dead was one, but there were so many people pressing around her that this was not possible, and she hadn’t the nerve for it anyway. She could see now that she was not being singled out by the crowd any longer, but acts of random violence made it too dangerous to try to mingle with them. Besides, that young man had singled her out. She saw that her only chance was to get into the galley area and ride the elevator to the below-decks galley. She would be safe there and she could call the cockpit on the interphone. With this goal set, she calmed herself and began pushing harder through the crowd. She noticed as she moved that she was becoming light-headed and was tiring quickly. She looked down. The blood was still running from her right wrist. She grasped it with her left hand as she moved. She kept her back to the bulkhead and edged along the forward-facing wall opposite the staircase to the next corner. She made the turn and inched sideways, back in the direction of the tail. She lost sight of the man with the blazer.
     Her back slid easily along the plastic wall, and her hand felt the open space of the galley entrance.
     The elevator. Get to the elevator. Blood continued to seep between her clenched fingers, and her legs were trembling with fatigue. Faces and bodies squeezed against her, foul breath filled her nostrils. Her stomach heaved, and she began to gag on the taste of bile.
     Her shoulder slid into the galley opening, and she moved with more force until only her left arm was still pinned against the bulkhead.
     The crowd around her seemed to part, and in the opening she saw the man with the blazer. He smiled directly at her. He looked so nearly normal that for a moment she considered calling for him to help her. But, she realized, he could not be normal. She was becoming irrational in her desperation. He stepped up to her.
     She fell back into the galley and braced her hands against the door frame. She kicked out with her feet and caught the young man in the groin. He yelled out, and that guttural yell told her beyond any doubt that he was not among the saved.
     She reached out and grabbed the accordion door and slid it shut. It bulged and began to give way almost immediately, but it gave her time to turn toward the elevator.
     There were two men in the short narrow galley, both licking spilled food from the counters. She moved quickly, but calmly, past them into the open elevator.
     Barbara Yoshiro steadied her trembling hand and slid the manual outer door closed. She frantically pushed against the elevator’s control buttons. Finally, the electric inner doors began to slowly slide shut.
     The outer doors suddenly parted. Barbara stood eye-to-eye with George Yates. Before the inner door could finish shutting, Yates slipped into the elevator. The electric doors shut behind him. The elevator started down.
     Barbara bit her hand to keep from screaming. Tears ran down her face and a pathetic whimpering sound gurgled in her throat. The man in front of her was staring intently down at her. She could feel him pressing against her, feel his body making contact with hers, smell his breath. His hands probed her body, ran over her hips and up to her breasts.
     She took a step backward into the corner of the descending elevator. The man pressed against her harder.
     The elevator stopped and the doors slipped open, revealing a small, dimly lit galley.
     George Yates pressed down on her shoulders until her knees buckled. He stood over her, his hands grabbing her long black hair, and pulled her head to his thighs.
     She tried to pull loose and rise to her feet. “No. Please. No.” She was bleeding badly now, and she felt very weak. “Leave me alone. Please.” She was crying harder now. “Please don’t hurt me.”
     Everything was spinning now, and the dark enclosure became darker. She felt herself being pulled forward by her hair. She lay prone on the floor, trying to feign death or unconsciousness, or anything that would make him lose interest.
     But George Yates was still very much interested. From the moment he had singled her out of the crowd, from the second his instincts told him she was different, from that moment, his only thought was to capture her and make her yield. None of these words or abstractions were his to use, but the instincts remained. He turned her over on her back and knelt down with his knees straddling her.
     Barbara brought her knee up and caught him in the groin.
     George Yates yelled out and stood up. This was the second time she had caused him pain, the second time she had rejected him, and he was partly bewildered, but partly he now understood. She was no longer simply an object of his attraction—she had become a threat, become an enemy.
     Barbara raised herself on one hand and lunged for the interphone on the wall. Her hand knocked it off the cradle and it fell to the limit of its cord. She grabbed at it as it swung by her face. She then felt a sharp pain in her eye, then another on her cheekbone. She fell backward. The plastic headset dangled above her. Through the haze of semiconsciousness, Yoshiro realized that the young man had hit her; he had hit her hard with his closed fist. He had hit her hard enough to cause a great deal of pain.
     The ceiling lights of the galley were blotted out by the huge black shape hovering above her. There was no noise around her, no light entering her consciousness, and this produced a sense of unreality. She simply could not believe this was happening to her; it seemed too remote, so divorced from the world she had been part of just hours before. It was as if she’d stepped into a fog and emerged from it into a netherworld, a world almost like her own but not quite.
     For the next few seconds, all Barbara could feel was the cool floor against her bare back and legs, and the steady throb of the engines as they pulsated through the airframe. Then she opened her eyes wider and focused on what was about to happen next.
     After striking out at his enemy twice with his fists, George Yates had just enough of his mind and his learned reactions intact to know that a weapon was what he needed to ultimately protect himself from this perceived danger. On the floor to his left was a metal bar that had been used as a locking brace across the liquor supply cabinet. Yates grabbed the metal bar and, in one continuous motion, slammed it down hard against the upper body of his enemy.
     The steel bar swept across Barbara Yoshiro’s left shoulder and into her skull with a sharp crack. She blacked out immediately from the blow to her head. As it moved across her body, the steel bar had ripped open another and even larger bleeding wound—this one across the top of her left shoulder and neck.
     George Yates looked down at the growing pool of blood that surrounded the now motionless body of the person lying on the floor. As soon as he saw the new spurts of blood and her injury, he knew what it meant. The knowledge of her condition was too basic to be misunderstood: she was no longer a threat—this enemy of his had been totally defeated.
     Now satisfied, Yates’s interest faded and he turned his attention elsewhere. He looked around the galley area. Like a wary animal awakened from sleep, he cautiously stalked around the small area, but he could see no avenue of escape. Yates gave no more notice to the growing mass of blood on the floor, or to the body from which it had poured. As the last of her lifeblood drained onto the metal flooring of the galley, Barbara Yoshiro died.

9

Wayne Metz sat comfortably in his silver BMW 750 as he cruised in the right lane of Interstate 280. He adjusted the knobs on his Surround-Sound CD player until the resonance of Benny Goodman’s “One O’clock Jump”—one of his favorites from his old jazz collection—was just right. He glanced at himself in the rearview mirror. Yesterday’s tennis had deepened his tan.
     He passed Balboa Park and looked at his dash clock. He’d be at the San Francisco Gold Club early enough to review his notes before tee-off with Quentin Lyle. He glanced up at the sky. Beautiful June day. Perfect for business. Before they reached the ninth hole, the Lyle factories would be the latest client of Beneficial Insurance Company. By the last hole he might have the trucking company as well. He hummed along with the music. His reverie was broken by the insistent buzzing of the cellular phone that lay on the passenger seat. He shut off the CD player and picked up the phone. “Yes?”
     The voice came through with a slight hollow sound to it. “Mr. Metz, this is Judy. Trans-United Airlines has just called.”
     He frowned. “Go on.”
     “A Mr. Evans. The message was as follows: Flight 52, Straton aircraft, sent Trans-United a message saying aircraft damaged. But Mr. Evans said they were still transmitting so it might not be too bad.”
     “That was the whole message?”
     “Yes, sir.”
     “Not too serious?”
     “That’s what he said.”
     “Hold on.” He put the phone down in his lap and turned over several alternatives in his mind. But none of them was viable, really. Trans-United was far too important a client for him to pretend that he was out of touch with his office. Still, Beneficial didn’t insure what they called the hull—the aircraft itself. They were only the liability carrier. If no one was hurt, he was safe. He picked up the phone. “All right, I’ll call them from here. I may have to go down there. Call Mr. Lyle at the club. Tell him I may be late. Emergency. Hope to be there for the back nine. Maybe sooner. Make it sound really catastrophic, but don’t mention Trans-United. Got all of that? I’ll call you later.”
     “Yes, sir.”
     Metz hung up and drove by the San Jose Avenue exit. With any luck at all, his presence at the airport wouldn’t be necessary. He slowed his car, picked up the telephone, and punched a pre-stored number. The cellular phone immediately dialed the private New York number for Beneficial’s president, Wilford Parke. A few seconds later, Parke’s secretary put him through.
     “Wayne? You there?”
     Metz held the phone away from his ear. Like many older men, Parke was speaking too loudly into the mouthpiece. “Yes, sir.” He glanced at his clock. It was almost quitting time in New York. “Sorry to bother you so late in the day, but—”
     “That’s all right, Wayne. Some sort of problem out there?”
     Metz smiled. Out there. To most New Yorkers, anything west of the Hudson was out there. To Wilford Parke, anything west of Fifth Avenue was in another solar system. “Possibly, sir. I thought I’d keep you posted.” Metz’s thoughts were already two sentences ahead. “A call from Trans-United Airlines. Some sort of problem with an aircraft. No details yet, but they said it didn’t seem too bad and may only involve the hull. Still, there may be a liability claim. I thought I should call you before you left the office.” And before you heard it from another source, he thought.
     “Good thinking, Wayne.”
     “Yes, sir. And I thought I might go out there and see to it personally.”
     “Fine, Wayne. Fine. Keep me posted. Glad to see you’re taking care of it personally. Where are you calling from?”
     “Car. I’m already on the highway to the airport.”
     “Very good. Let me know when you have some details.”
     “Yes, sir.”
     “Good-bye, Wayne.”
     Metz spoke quickly. “Sir, where can I reach you later?”
     “Later? Oh, yes. Atrium Club. Having dinner. Over on East Fifty-seventh.”
     Metz did not care where the club was located. “Can I page you there? Is the number listed?”
     “Yes. Of course. You know the place. We were there last February. We had a bottle of Chateau Haut-Brion ’59. You can reach me there until about ten o’clock. Speak to you later.”
     Metz tossed the phone onto the passenger seat. Wilford Parke was somewhere between senile and brilliant. In either case, he liked the old man. Talking with him was always a pleasure. He was a real gentleman of the old school. He was a man who believed in his company and who shared management’s privileges with those whom he trusted—like Wayne Metz. Metz had always been sure to stress his own Long Island boyhood and his college days at Princeton, which was also Parke’s alma mater. But the main reason he liked Parke was that Parke thought Wayne Metz could do no wrong. And he had thought so even before those embarrassing lapses of memory had set in. Wayne Metz hoped that Wilford Parke could hold on to his job long enough to secure Metz’s next promotion.
     Metz wheeled his BMW through a pack of cars, then accelerated again through an open stretch of highway. He knew he’d been lucky to get the call when he did, on the highway, not far from the airport. From his downtown office it would have taken him over an hour to get there. That was typical of the luck that had propelled him to the head of the West Coast office. Yet he might have to miss the first few holes with Quentin Lyle. That might be ominous. He half believed in omens, and though he found astrology silly, many of his friends read their horoscopes each morning. Money can be worrisome. Set example for loved ones by cutting down. Do what you believe to be correct. Don’t be afraid to trust your heart.
     But certainly his success had not all been luck, thought Metz. It was talent. Wilford Parke had years before seen something in Metz that as a young man he had not been aware of himself. In the corporate hierarchy, where a significant battle could be announced by a gesture as innocuous as the polite declining of a drink, Wayne Metz flourished. He was the master of the oblique and muted signal. He had an uncanny talent for projecting, in the most subtle ways imaginable, his likes and dislikes. He was, to quote his own analyst, perhaps too young a man to be so blessed.
     Metz’s cellular phone buzzed again. He picked it up. “Metz.”
     “Ed Johnson, Wayne.”
     Metz stiffened in his seat. If the Operation VP was calling, it had to be a real problem. “I was just about to call you, Ed. What’s the latest?”
     “It’s bad,” said Johnson, evenly. “It’s the Straton 797.”
     “Oh, shit.” He and Johnson had once, over drinks, kidded each other about their mutual jeopardy in the Straton program. It had been Metz’s idea that Beneficial be the sole liability carrier for Trans-United’s fleet of the giant supersonic transports. He’d offered lower premiums with the elimination of the usual, but cumbersome, insurance pool. Johnson, for his part, had been one of the people to vote for the idea. Also, he had once admitted candidly to Metz, after a third martini, that his career was closely tied to the Straton’s success for a variety of other reasons. “Where did it crash?” Metz asked. “How many were killed?”
     “It was en route to Japan. The good news is that the airliner’s still flying, and there weren’t many killed … yet. But the bad news is worse than you’d ever dream,” he said. “A bomb blew two holes in the hull and the air pressure escaped. The passengers suffered the effects of decompression. Up there, as you may know, it’s like outer space.”
     Metz didn’t know. No one at Trans-United had told him about this possibility, and he had never had the foresight to have the dangers of high-altitude supersonic flight researched. It was all supposed to be government approved, so he had assumed that there was no extraordinary risk. “What did you say was the condition of the passengers?” Metz asked.
     There was a pause, then Johnson said, “We’re not absolutely certain, you understand, but the consensus here—and up there—seems to be that they’re brain damaged.”
     “God Almighty.” The BMW nearly went off the road. “Are you sure?”
     “I said we weren’t sure, Wayne. But I’d put money on it.”
     Metz realized that he had not assimilated all of it. “The survivors … how did they … ?”
     “We’re communicating with them on the data-link. That’s like a computer screen. Radios are gone. There are only five unimpaired survivors. They were all in the whiffies or someplace like that.”
     “Whiffies?”
     “Bathrooms, Wayne. You’d better get here fast and bring your company’s checkbook.”
     Metz pulled himself out of his daze. “Look, Ed, we’re both very exposed with this thing. How many people on board?”
     “Nearly a full house. About three hundred.”
     “When will it land?”
     “It may never land.”
     “What?”
     “The aircraft is being flown by one of the passengers. Our—”
     “What the hell are you talking about?” Metz knew that he shouldn’t be speaking so candidly about such a sensitive issue on a cellular phone, but he needed to know more to understand what was happening.
     “Our three pilots are dead or unconscious. All that’s left of our flight crew are two flight attendants. The passenger who’s flying it—some guy named Berry—is an amateur pilot. He still has the Straton under control. In fact, he’s turned it around and headed back, but his exact position is unknown. Anyway, I have my doubts that he can land it without smearing it all over the runway.”
     Wayne Metz was literally speechless. He kept the telephone pressed to his ear and his eyes on the road, but his mind was thousands of miles away—in the mid-Pacific. He tried to imagine the scene. The giant Straton 797 lost somewhere over the enormous ocean, two holes blown through its hull and everyone aboard dead or brain damaged except for a few people, one of whom, a passenger, was flying it. No, no, no, no.
     “Metz? Wayne? You still there?”
     “What? Yes. Yes, I’m here. Let me think. Hold on.” As he tried to sort out the incredible facts he had just heard, he inadvertently let the BMW slow. He was traveling at less than forty miles an hour in the left lane of the highway.
     A driver in a battered blue Ford behind him hit his horn, then pulled out and passed on the right, glaring at the big sedan. Wayne glanced up distractedly at the other driver, but his mind was on other things. A thought had formed. It was not yet fully shaped, but he could start to see its outline, like a mountain emerging from a fog. The battered blue Ford stuck in his mind, too, for some reason. He cleared his throat. “Listen, Ed, I’m almost there. Who knows about this? Is it on the radio?”
     “No. Not many people know. One of our dispatchers handed me a break by not calling anyone yet. So I still have some space to maneuver.”
     “Good. Don’t call anyone else. If we can’t control the situation, at least we can control the flow of information … and that may be just as important.”
     “That’s my thinking too. But you’d better hurry.”
     “Yes. On the way.” Metz hung up. He stared out the windshield and began accelerating. He cut in the cruise control at seventy miles an hour, picked up the phone again, and called New York. Parke was still in his office. “Mr. Parke,” he began without preamble, “I’ve got bad news. There’s been a terrible accident with Trans-United’s Straton 797.”
     “Aren’t we the sole underwriters?” Parke asked quickly.
     Metz winced. “Yes, sir. For the liability coverage. We are not involved in their hull insurance.” Going it alone was a risky, unconventional way to write that sort of policy, but Metz had never liked insurance pools. He had spent months convincing Beneficial that the airline, and especially the Straton program, was extremely safe. Beneficial did not have to share the huge premiums with anyone. But now they had no one to share the loss.
     “Well, Wayne, that’s unfortunate. I personally felt that perhaps we were taking on too large a risk, but I don’t intend to second-guess you on that issue. The Board members approved it. The proposal—your proposal—had merit and was well-received. Naturally, we’ll review our corporate guidelines after a loss of this magnitude. You’ll have to make a presentation to the Board. I’ll get back to you later on that.”
     Metz felt the sweat begin to collect around his collar, and he turned up the air-conditioning. “Yes, sir.”
     “In the meantime, were all those aboard that airliner killed? Do you have a casualty total? Any estimate on our total liability?”
     Metz hesitated, then spoke in a firm, controlled tone. “A Trans-United executive told me that it was nearly a full ship. That would mean approximately three hundred passengers and a crew.”
     There was a long pause as the impact of the tragedy sunk in. “I see. All dead, did you say?”
     Metz didn’t say. He temporized. “Actually, the accident occurred only a short while ago, over the Pacific. Many of the details are still very sketchy, and nothing has been released to the press yet. It’s being kept confidential,” he added. “Trans-United didn’t want to speak over the phone.”
     “I understand. We’ll keep it quiet on this end also.”
     “Yes, sir. That would be very good.”
     “Well, bad day at Black Rock for a lot of people, including us. Listen, Wayne, don’t bother to work up a maximum-liability figure. Things are going to be pretty frantic at Trans-United. I’ll take care of it at this end. I suppose there won’t be any secondary property damages since the aircraft was over the Pacific at the time.”
     “That’s right,” Metz lied. “There should be no other claims.” He could not bring himself to tell Wilford Parke that the Straton was, at this moment, streaking toward San Francisco, carrying onboard the largest contingent of ongoing insurance liabilities in history.
     “Call me when you get more,” Parker said. “I’ll be at my club. I’m having dinner with some of the Board. We’ll have a telephone at the table. If you’d like some help, I can get people to you quickly out of the Chicago office.”
     “We should be all right, sir. I’ve got a good staff here.”
     “Fine. One more thing, Wayne …”
     “Yes, sir?”
     “I know this is your first loss of magnitude. Paying three hundred death benefits is no small thing. I’m just glad it didn’t happen over a populated area.”
     “Yes, sir.” It may yet.
     “And I’m also relieved that we’re not carrying the aircraft’s hull insurance. What do those things cost—a hundred million?”
     “Something like that.” On his desk was the first draft of a memo proposing that very coverage for Trans-United. When he got back to his office, that memo would go into the shredder before he hung up his jacket.
     “What I’m trying to say, Wayne, is that there is no insurance executive in the business who at one time or another didn’t have his name personally identified with a large loss. I know it’s an embarrassment, but the amount we can expect as the total death benefit is manageable. You’ve had a spot of bad luck. Don’t let it get you down. You don’t cry over spilled milk in this business. You insure for spilled milk and pay for the spillage out of premiums. The Board might grumble a bit, but you’ll come through. We’re just fortunate,” said Parke in a friendly tone, “that the claim isn’t more.”
     Metz shook his head. There are three hundred brain-damaged people on that aircraft, and they are coming home. Coming home to Beneficial Insurance. We will be totally liable for the care of each of them for the rest of their lives.

10

Lieutenant Peter Matos fidgeted in the seat of his F-18 fighter. A hundred yards ahead, the Trans-United Straton flew a steady course. Matos forced himself to glance at his panel clock. Its luminescent numbers seemed to jump out at him. He was amazed to see that it had been more than an hour since the Straton had turned toward California. To Matos, it seemed no more than a few minutes. He shook his head in disbelief. During all that time, all he remembered was receiving a few transmissions from Commander Sloan and doing some calculations with his navigation equipment. But other than those brief duties, he could not account for the missing minutes.
     Peter, snap out of it. Do something. Right now. Matos felt as if he were in a trance, hypnotized by the enormous and unchanging Pacific. He sucked hard on his oxygen mask to clear his head. Check the flight instruments, he said to himself. Matos knew that he should get himself back into his normal pilot’s routine. It was the best way to get his thoughts back on the right track. The gauge readings were familiar and friendly. Starting on the panel’s left side, he saw that the oil pressure was normal, the engine temperatures were normal, the fuel …
     Matos stopped. His brief moment of reverie ended abruptly. Jesus Christ. The F-18’s fuel situation was not yet critical, but Matos could see that it soon would be. Even though he had taken off on this mission with the maximum fuel the aircraft could carry, he would, without any question, have to do something very soon.
     Matos bit into his lower lip while his mind wrestled with the alternatives. But he knew what he had to do first. He read the hurriedly punched coordinates into his computer. He read the results. “Shit.” He had very little extra fuel left. The luxury of waiting out the Straton was coming to an end.
     What would happen next? Matos agonized over his choices. Should he defy Commander Sloan? He had never defied an order before, and the idea was unnerving. Bucking James Sloan—and the United States Navy, for that matter—was too drastic a course to consider. It was outside the range of his thoughts, just as the Nimitz would soon be outside the range of his fuel.
     Matos glanced at the Straton. It was flying evenly and steadily. Too steadily. He knew damn well that he had exaggerated those last damage reports he had sent to Sloan. Fatigue cracks have developed along the cabin wall. The wing spar may be damaged. It can’t fly much longer. It will overstress soon. None of that was exactly false, but it wasn’t true either. There were some cracks and signs of stress, but …
     “Navy, three-four-seven, do you read?”
     Sloan’s sudden transmission startled Matos. “Roger,” he answered, gripping tightly to the F-18’s control stick, “go ahead.” He could tell from the Commander’s voice that he had grown impatient with their unspoken plan. A sense of dread flooded Matos. He had, he now realized, put off the inevitable as long as he could.
     “What’s the situation?” Sloan asked tersely.
     “No change so far.”
     “Nothing?” Sloan sounded honestly astonished. “What about the fatigue cracks? What about the wing spar?”
     “A little more deterioration. Maybe. Not much.” Matos wished he hadn’t begun this lie. It had only made things worse. He allowed his eyes to wander over to the missile-firing controls on his side console. He was sorry he had waited. He should have shot the Straton down immediately, before he had time to think about it.
     “Matos, your damage reports have been pure bullshit. You’ve only made this goddamn job longer and harder for everyone. Don’t think I’ll forget that.”
     “No. The Straton was getting worse,” Matos lied. “Its airspeed is still steady at 340, but its altitude has drifted slightly …” Something caught Matos’s eye. It was a small, dark object below the Straton. It was falling rapidly toward the sea. Was it part of the fuselage? Was the airliner finally coming apart? Matos peered over the side of his canopy, and as he did his finger slipped off the transmit button.
     “Matos,” shouted Sloan as he latched on to the radio’s clear channel, “I don’t give a shit about airspeeds and altitudes. Will that goddamn airplane go down? That’s what I want to know. Answer the fucking question.”
     “Homeplate—people are falling out of the Straton!” Matos had not heard one word of Sloan’s last message.
     “What? Say again.”
     “Yes. They’re falling. Jumping.” Matos edged his fighter downward, closer to the airliner. He could see clearly now, as he watched another body tumble out of the port-side hold. Oh, my God. “There’s another one! There must be a fire inside.” It was the only reason Matos could think of for a person to jump to a certain death. He watched the second body turn end over end until it was too far away to see its flailing arms and legs. It receded farther and farther away, until it was no more than a black pinpoint silhouetted against the sea. Then he saw it hit the waves and disappear instantly beneath them.
     “Do you see any smoke?”
     Smoke? Matos jerked his head up and stared at the Straton. But everything appeared as it had before. Too calm. Too steady. Matos ran his tongue across his parched lips, then pushed the transmit button. “No visible smoke. Not yet.” His new bubble of hope hadn’t yet burst, but it was quickly losing air. No smoke, no fire, nothing. What could be happening in there? For a brief instant he realized the kind of person he had turned into. He pushed that thought aside. He could live with the memory of this accident—even if it was his fault—as long as he didn’t do anything else to the Straton. Please, God, let it go down. By itself.
     “Matos, don’t give me more bullshit,” Sloan said angrily, but then quickly changed his tone. “Is there any turbulence? Do you see any reason for them to jump?”
     “No, but … wait … wait …” Matos kept his finger pressed firmly to the microphone button. “More people are jumping. Two of them. Together. Yes. There must be something going on. Definitely. A fire, or fumes. Something. No doubt. We should wait. Wait. It will go down. I know it will.”
     Sloan did not answer for a long time. When he finally did, his voice had again assumed a flat and official tone. “Roger, three-four-seven. Understand. We will wait.”

As he fell with his wife in his arms, Harold Stein raised his head up and stared at the Straton above him. In that split second he saw and identified a jet fighter hovering above and behind the huge aircraft. The silver image of a long rocket hanging from its belly stuck in his mind. In a clear flash of understanding, he knew what had happened to Flight 52.

Wayne Metz disengaged the BMW cruise control and took the airport entrance at sixty miles an hour. He drove directly to the Trans-United hangar and slipped the BMW into a VIP space. He sat staring up at the blue and yellow hangar for a full minute.
     He had come up with a plan that could greatly reduce Beneficial’s enormous liability. A plan that would lessen his own liability as well.
     The plan had not been difficult to formulate. It was an obvious one. The problem now was to convince Edward Johnson that their interests coincided, and that these mutual interests could best be served by Wayne Metz’s plan. He thought he knew Johnson well enough to risk approaching him.
     Metz rummaged around his glove compartment and found his Trans-United ID card. He got out of his car and crossed the hot tarmac toward the hangar. He spotted the personnel entrance and quickened his pace. A group of airline employees stood near the door talking, and Metz brushed by them. He flashed his Trans-United “Official Visitor/Contractor” identification card at the guard, then pushed open the small inner door and mounted a flight of steps two at a time. He moved quickly down a long corridor and opened a blue door marked DISPATCH OFFICE.
     Metz approached a clerk. “I’m here to see Edward Johnson.”
     The clerk pointed to the glass-enclosed communications room. “Over there. But I don’t think he’s seeing anyone.”
     “He’s seeing me.” Metz crossed the office and stood in front of one of the thick glass panels. In the small room he could see Edward Johnson looking down at a big machine. Another man stood next to him. In an instant, Metz could see that they were both highly tense, and guessed that the tension was not completely a result of the situation but was partly generated by a friction between the two men. Metz knew that his plan could work only if he were alone with Johnson. He watched for another few seconds. The other man appeared to be a subordinate. Johnson could get rid of him. Metz rapped sharply on the glass.
     Johnson looked up, then walked to the door and unlocked it.
     Wayne Metz entered the communications room. “Hello, Ed.”
     The two men shook hands perfunctorily.
     Johnson noticed that several of the employees were looking up from their work. He glared back at them, and heads lowered all over the office. He slammed the door and bolted it. “Goddamned center stage.” Everything in this damned Straton program was too visible. He motioned to Miller. “This is Jack Miller. He’s the senior dispatcher. Fifty-two was his flight.”
     Metz nodded absently to Miller, then turned to Johnson. “Was? Did it … ?”
     “No. Wrong tense. It’s still up there. But it’s my flight now. Jack is helping out.” Yet Johnson knew that deep down he had already written the Straton off. The past tense fit the Straton, but he’d have to be more careful when he spoke of the aircraft. You had to sound optimistic. “Actually, we haven’t communicated with them since I spoke to you. But the flight is steady and there’s no reason to keep calling. If he wants us, he’ll call.”
     Metz nodded. “It looks like he might make it, then?”
     Johnson shook his head. “I didn’t say that. We’ve got to talk him through an approach and landing.” He decided to be blunt with Metz. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s almost certain death.” He motioned toward Miller. “Jack’s a bit more optimistic. He thinks this guy Berry can make a perfect three-point landing and taxi to the assigned gate.”
     Miller cleared his throat. “I do think he has a chance, Mr. Metz. He seems competent. The messages reflect that.” He glanced between Johnson and the printout of the data-link messages lying on the console.
     Johnson nodded.
     Miller picked up the messages. “All the data-link messages are here if you’d like to see them.”
     Johnson pulled them from Miller’s hand and thrust them toward Metz. “Go ahead, Wayne. Read them. They’re good for your ulcer. That goddamned Straton. I knew that goddamned airplane would get us.”
     Metz took the sheets and began reading. He subconsciously shook his head. The impersonal words, spelled out in that odd computer type, somehow made the news much worse. Made it infinitely more believable in any case. Lack of air pressure caused brain damage.
     Miller glanced at Metz, then at Johnson. He barely knew Metz, but felt an instinctive dislike for the man. Too meticulously dressed. His hair was styled like a movie star’s. Miller didn’t trust men like that, although he knew it wasn’t a fair way to judge. The fact that Johnson had asked Metz to come in was indicative of the way this airline was run these days. Ten or twenty years before, this room would have been filled with men in shirtsleeves, smoking, and drinking coffee—pilots, flight instructors, executives, dispatchers, the Straton Aircraft people, anyone who cared about Trans-United and who could lend a hand. Today, when an aircraft got into trouble, they called the insurance man and the corporation lawyers before anyone else. No one dared to smoke a cigarette, or say anything that wasn’t politically correct. It was time, thought Miller, to get out of the business.
     Metz handed the messages back to Miller and turned to Johnson. “Are you certain these messages are an accurate appraisal?”
     Johnson tapped his finger on the stack of printouts. “If he says people are dead, they’re dead. I imagine that he also knows what two holes look like.”
     “I’m talking about the brain damage business. And why do you think it’s irrevocable?”
     “My expert,” he nodded toward Miller, “tells me that, more than likely, what Berry is observing is in fact brain damage. Is it irrevocable? Probably. It’s caused by cells dying. That’s irrevocable. But who’s to say for sure what state those poor bastards are in? Berry is an amateur pilot, not a neurosurgeon. For all we know, Berry could be the son-of-a-bitch who planted the bomb in the first place, although that doesn’t seem too likely.”
     Metz nodded. “Well, it certainly looks bad.”
     “Very perceptive,” said Johnson. “Thank you for sharing. I’m glad I asked you here.”
     Metz decided to play it cool. “Why did you ask me here?”
     Johnson stared at him a long time. He answered, finally, “Evans called you because you’re in the emergency handbook.”
     Metz looked pointedly around the empty room.
     Johnson smiled to himself. Metz was a sharp customer. He was playing hard to get. “All right, I wanted some assurances from you, Mr. Insurance Man. First of all, are we completely covered for this type of thing?”
     “You would seem to be. Your hull carrier will cover the damage to the aircraft, of course. But everything else is our potential responsibility.”
     Johnson didn’t like “seem” or “potential.” He said, “Including any claims that arise if the Straton smacks into San Francisco? Everything it hits? Everybody on the ground?”
     “That’s basically correct.”
     Johnson paced for a few seconds. He hadn’t gotten the bad news that Metz wanted to give him, because he hadn’t yet asked the right questions. He looked up at Metz. “Can your company afford this?”
     Metz gave a barely perceptible shrug.
     Johnson stopped pacing. A chill ran up his spine. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
     “It means that no one can answer that until the damage is done. It also means that it is the responsibility of the insured to take every reasonable step to minimize the loss. It also means that Trans-United Airlines had better be able to prove that the accident was not a direct result of negligence on its part. It—”
     “Wait a goddamned minute. First of all, you’d better have the money. Secondly, we are trying to minimize the loss. That’s what we’re here to do. Thirdly, there was no negligence on …” But even as he said it, Johnson wondered again if any of his recent cutbacks in maintenance could have contributed to the accident—or could be made to look that way by some lawyer.
     “Someone with a bomb slipped through your security. Maybe Berry. You almost said so yourself.”
     Johnson took a step toward Metz, then turned to Miller. “Call the legal department, Jack. Then escort Mr. Metz out of here.”
     Metz realized he had pushed too far. “Wait. There are a few things I’d like to speak to you about first.” He nodded toward Miller. “Privately.”
     Before Johnson could respond, there was a knock at the door. All three men turned.
     Dennis Evans stood on the other side of the glass, nervously clutching a piece of paper.
     Edward Johnson walked to the door and unlocked it. “What is it, Evans?”
     “I’ve got a call about the Straton,” said Evans waving the paper in his hand. “From Air Traffic Control. They can’t contact Flight 52. They want to know if we can contact them on a company frequency. The guy who called, Malone, thought the flight might be having radio trouble.”
     “What did you tell him?”
     “Nothing, sir. I put him off.” He handed Johnson the piece of paper. “This is his name and phone number. I told him we’d call him back.”
     Johnson took the note and stuck it into his pocket. “Okay, Evans. Good work.” He closed the door before Evans could reply. Johnson turned and approached the telephone.
     Metz placed himself between Johnson and the phone. “Hold on, Ed. Can’t we have that talk first?”
     Johnson was not accustomed to having someone try to intimidate him. He decided that Wayne Metz was either very brash or very desperate. In either case, he had something on his mind. “I have to call them. It should have been done first thing, only this accident is happening all ass-backwards. Normally, there’d be a search-and-rescue operation heading toward them already. We’re probably going to be in a shit pot of trouble over these delays as it is.”
     Jack Miller moved around the men and picked up the phone. “I’ll take the rap for that. Give me the number, Ed. I’ll call.”
     Johnson shook his head impatiently. “Don’t be an idiot. I’ll hang Evans with it. He’s the stupid son-of-a-bitch who was supposed to make all the calls.”
     “I’m the man in charge.”
     “Jack, let me handle it.” Johnson turned and spoke to Metz. “First of all, there was always the possibility that the data-link messages were a hoax. That’s why we delayed in calling. Second, like I said, this accident happened ass-backwards. Air Traffic Control is always the first to find out, and they, in turn, notify the airline involved. Having a distress message come in on the company data-link is highly unusual. Actually, it’s never happened to any airline. It isn’t even covered in the company’s emergency handbook. And don’t forget that you asked me not to call any—”
     Metz shook his head impatiently. “This FAA business is no concern of mine. I only want to plan our announcement before you make any calls. We should keep the operations and the liability conversations separate. Otherwise, it might compromise our posture in court. I need a minute with you. One minute.”
     Johnson looked at Miller. “Jack …”
     Miller shook his head. “Now, wait a minute. Flight 52 is my flight, Ed. I have to know what’s going on.”
     Johnson put his hand on Miller’s shoulder. “This is just insurance crap, Jack. You don’t want to hear it, because if you do, you’ll be asked about it someday. Give us just one minute.”
     Miller looked at the two men. Trans-United was still like a big family—but it had become a family that had something to hide. Miller realized that there was no point in trying to buck Edward Johnson—not on this point. “All right …” He walked to the door and left the room.
     Johnson rebolted the door, then turned back to Metz. “Okay. You have your minute.”
     Metz took a deep breath and sat himself in a chair. “Okay. We’ve got to be very careful from a liability standpoint. We can’t contribute to the problems of the Straton. Legally, we’re better off doing nothing than doing the wrong things.”
     “In other words, don’t give them landing instructions?”
     “I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. The courts and juries have set the precedent. Everyone’s a Monday-morning quarterback. Whatever you do now will be judged later in court and it will be judged by the results of your actions, not your good intentions. In other words, if you talk him down and he crashes, you’re worse off than if you hadn’t tried. Your only obligation as I see it is to mount a rescue operation.”
     Johnson looked at Metz. He was saying one thing but meaning something else. “That sounds like bullshit to me. But if that’s true, then we’ve done the right thing so far by sitting on our thumbs and not giving Berry correspondence courses in flying a supersonic jet. And I’ll tell you something else—talking a pilot down by radio is a bitch; talking him into a final approach and landing by data-link is a joke. When I get the chief pilot here and tell him what he has to do, he’ll shit.” He paused. “Of course, with the way my luck has been going, Fitzgerald will pull it off and become an overnight national hero. He and Berry will do the talk-show circuit. Terrific.”
     Metz sat up in his chair. “Then there is a chance that the Straton can be landed?”
     Johnson shrugged. “There’s always a chance. Stranger things have happened in the air. All kinds of bullshit about God in the copilot’s seat, bombers landing with dead crews, mysterious lights showing the way to the airport in a storm. And don’t forget that Berry may well be an excellent pilot. Who knows?”
     Metz nodded. The phone call from Air Traffic Control was something he hadn’t planned on, and he wondered what other surprises were still in store. He had to have more facts. “Why doesn’t Air Traffic Control know where the Straton is? Aren’t they supposed to be watching on radar?”
     “There’s no radar that far out over the ocean. Each aircraft determines its own position, then radios it in to ATC. They, in turn, work like a central clearinghouse. They coordinate the flights so that none of them try to fly the same route at the same time. With the Straton 797 it’s very simple. It flies so high that there’s no one else up there except for an occasional Concorde or a military jet. That’s probably why ATC isn’t too excited by the loss of radio contact with 52. There’s nobody up there to conflict with.”
     Metz leaned forward in his chair. “Then Air Traffic Control still thinks the Straton is on its normal course and headed for … Where did you say … Japan?”
     “Right.” Johnson heard an unmistakable tone of eagerness in Metz’s voice. Clearly, the man was leading up to something, and his first statement about not giving landing instructions was a clue. That bullshit about courts and juries was just a trial balloon. Maybe Metz had something that would lessen their personal liability in this thing.
     Metz stared down at the floor. There was an exact psychological moment to go in for the kill, and it had not yet arrived—but it was close. He looked up. “So it’s not unusual to lose radio contact?”
     Johnson nodded. “Not too. Radios have problems. I’m told that all sorts of things affect radios at sixty-two thousand feet. Sunspots. The variables of the stratosphere. But all those things are temporary. If contact isn’t established soon, everyone will know there’s been trouble.”
     Metz nodded again. “So if ATC can later pinpoint the time of the accident, Trans-United is in trouble?”
     Johnson didn’t answer.
     Metz let the statement take hold for a few seconds, then changed the subject. “How far out will the Air Traffic Control radar pick up the Straton?”
     “Depends on altitude. They’re flying low now. They won’t be seen by radar until they get within fifty miles of the coast.”
     “That close?”
     “Right. But what the hell does this have to do with my liability coverage, Wayne? You’re like my goddamned automobile insurance broker. Wants to know all about the accident while I want to know when you’re going to pay.”
     Metz forced a smile. “It’s all related.”
     “Is it?” Johnson could sense that Metz was about to make a proposition, and he tried to look less intimidating and more receptive. He sat down on a high stool and smiled. “What are you getting at, Wayne? Time’s wasting.”
     “I can speak freely?”
     “Sure. Just cut through all the bullshit and give it to me straight. If it sounds good for Ed Johnson and Trans-United, you probably have a deal. But if it sounds good for Wayne Metz and company, I’m going to toss your ass out of this office. Hurry. I have to call ATC.”
     Metz stood. He looked at Ed Johnson for a long time, then spoke softly. “Ed … the Straton has to go down. And it has to go down over the water, not over land. No survivors on the aircraft. No further casualties on the ground.”
     Johnson stood also. Metz’s proposition was not a complete surprise. “You’re out of your goddamn mind.”
     Metz exhaled softly. Johnson had not immediately thrown him out of the office, and that in itself was encouraging. He knew enough to say nothing further.
     Johnson turned and faced the Pacific chart. He stared up at it, then looked down at the floor and began pacing. He stopped and stared at Metz. “Okay. I’ll bite. What do we gain if it goes down in the drink?”
     Metz knew he was in a position to score. He let the silence drag on, then he spoke. “We gain everything. We save our companies, our jobs, and we insure our future prosperity in this rat race of life.”
     “All that? Sounds great. And all we have to do is commit mass murder.”
     “This is no joke, Ed.”
     “No, it’s not. Murder is no joke.” He paused. “And how would you propose we deep-six that Straton? There are no guided missiles or fighters in our fleet at the moment.”
     “We’ll come to that later—if you’re interested.” Metz glanced at the door as though he were offering to leave.
     Johnson pretended not to see the offer. “I’m interested. I’m interested in listening.”
     Metz nodded. “All right. Listen to this. Beneficial’s liability potential is manageable if those people die. The death benefit wouldn’t be pleasant to pay, but it’s within our calculable exposure. We’ll pay it all, and we won’t involve Trans-United.” He paused. “But … if they come back and that pilot is correct about their condition, our liability is enormous. Beyond enormous. It would bankrupt Beneficial Insurance and—”
     “Before they paid all the bills?”
     “That’s right. We will be totally liable for each of those three hundred poor bastards for the remainder of their lives. And we’d be totally liable to every relative and organization that is dependent on them. Potentially, that liability might span another seventy-five years.”
     “And Trans-United might get stuck for the amount you couldn’t pay?”
     “That’s right. The amount we couldn’t pay, plus the amount we don’t have to pay because of the limits of liability on your policy. Your limits of liability are very high, but I know you’ll exceed it if that aircraft lands.”
     “Maybe it won’t exceed it.”
     “I’m talking billions, Ed. Billions. And let me just mention again, without you getting too excited, that Beneficial will undoubtedly subrogate against Trans-United. In other words, we’ll try to stick you with half the bills from the first dollar on by going to court and claiming negligence on your part. And that won’t be too hard to do. The bomb was on the Straton because your people allowed it to be there. There have been cases like this before, you know; Trans-United will be guilty of contributory negligence. Poor security. Poor supervision. Inadequate safeguards. Look at what Lockerbie did to the old Pan Am—it was what finally drove them out of business. Besides, maybe you’ve done something in your maintenance or engineering programs that’ll look bad in hindsight. You know, the Valujet scenario. Then Beneficial will gang up with the FAA and make you look real bad.”
     “I’m not buying that,” Johnson said, but in his heart he knew that it was all true. Even if the basic cause of the accident was an onboard bomb and nothing more, the lawyers and government bureaucrats could still make his maintenance economy program look responsible. Pan Am had some Arabs blow a 747 out of the sky, and eventually it put them out of business. Valujet put the wrong shipment into the cargo compartment of that doomed DC-9 out of Miami, and the FAA shut the airline down a few weeks later for bad maintenance. Metz was absolutely right.
     Metz shrugged. “You’re not the jury. And there’s no sense arguing with me. This is the age of liability and automatic fault. Cause and effect. Modern logic says that whenever something goes wrong, then it must be someone’s fault. Risk avoidance is today’s buzzword. Try to convince a judge and jury that the Straton just ran into a shitload of bad luck and see how sympathetic they’ll be to Trans-United. Picture, if you will, three hundred drooling plaintiffs in the courtroom. We’ll take you right down the tube with us. The FAA would probably ground you—at least for a month or two. It’ll make them look more efficient to the press.”
     “Unfortunately, you’re right about that.”
     “It’s a tough business. Tougher when you don’t have an insurance pool.”
     “We fucked up there, didn’t we?” Johnson said.
     “Sure did,” Metz agreed.
     Johnson sat heavily into a chair. “You bastard. Okay. You just try to prove negligence, then.”
     Metz moved to the door. He put his hand on the knob, then turned to Johnson. “Ed, I’m sorry I suggested such a thing. The best we can hope for now is that the Straton lands with a minimum loss of life on the ground. Just do us all a favor and suggest to ATC that they try to land him at sea, near a rescue ship. San Francisco is a nice town. I wouldn’t want to see a Straton 797 plow through it.”
     Johnson waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. “Spare me that bullshit.”
     Metz nodded. “All right. But I won’t spare you from the truth.” He paused and seemed to be lost in thought. “When I think of the liability of a few thousand people on the ground … over four hundred tons of steel and aviation fuel … Jesus Christ. It would be a holocaust. Think of it. Think of it. Property damage in the hundreds of millions … Well, at least we don’t insure the hull. Save a hundred million bucks there.”
     “A hundred and twenty-five million,” Johnson said.
     “Right. Well, there’s the chance the Straton will land at the airport. But it might crash into a crowded passenger terminal or plow into a couple of taxiing airliners. Which reminds me, aren’t you supposed to notify the airport of a possible crash landing or something? How about the city of San Francisco … Civil Defense or something?” He paused. “And remember, even if we don’t stick you with negligence, you still have to cover everything that exceeds your limits of liability and everything we can’t cover because of bankruptcy.” He let a second pass, then continued, “Beneficial might be able to restructure the company. Trans-United, on the other hand, will go under for good. This is potentially the biggest bad-news media event of the decade. No one even cares to know the name of the insurance company involved. But the Trans-United logo will become as notorious as the swastika. Front page of Time, for Christ’s sake. And not just for a week or two, as with most accidents. No, sir, if that plane smacks into Frisco, or especially if it lands, the attorneys will parade those poor bastards through the courts … through the media. Three hundred human beings whose brains have been turned to mashed potatoes. You will personally spend the next ten years in courtrooms. And there won’t be a lot of people lined up at your ticket counters in the interim. If we don’t take you down, the FAA will and the press will. It’s happened in the past, for less nightmarish accidents.”
     Johnson scowled but didn’t speak. Metz was making sense—too much sense.
     “How many people earn their livelihood here?” Metz asked. He took a deep breath. “God, I almost wish that thing would go down by itself. I mean, dead is dead. Final. A few weeks of splashy media happenings. Then no one will even remember the name of the airline. Hell, I don’t remember the name of the airline involved in the last big crash. All airline names sound the same to the average guy. Like insurance company names. You see, if the thing goes into the drink, then all the facts go down with it. Nothing to photograph. No one to interview. The media gets bored with that. The National Transportation Safety Board can’t poke through the debris and sift it all and reconstruct the events. At those depths in the mid-Pacific, and with the Straton’s position unknown, the flight recorder with all that information is gone. John Berry and crew are gone. No one knows anything for sure. It would take years of legal hassling to determine who was liable, and to what extent. The airline itself could even be a sympathetic victim, what with the likelihood of a bomb.”
     “Right,” said Johnson. Bombs were out of his jurisdiction, even if the airline’s security department could be faulted. And with no physical evidence in hand, there was no way any lawyer could prove that the maintenance cutbacks somehow lessened the aircraft’s survivability.
     Metz was speaking faster now. “We can implicate the Straton Aircraft people, too. We could drag our feet in court for ages and retire with our distinguished careers intact before it gets untangled. But if John Berry sails into San Francisco International Airport … well, there’s no room for legal maneuvering when conclusive evidence of the airliner’s negligence is parked on the ramp, and the local mental institutions are packed to the rafters with living, breathing, drooling proof of the outcome of Trans-United Flight 52.”
     Metz had not yet mentioned the idea that those people would be better off dead. It was a touchy argument, so he left it in reserve. “Okay, Ed. That’s all the cards, all face up on the table. Think about it. Good luck to you. Good luck to us.” He unbolted the door and opened it.
     “Shut the goddamned door. Get in here.”
     Metz shut and bolted the door. He looked at Edward Johnson and asked him, “The question is, can you give Berry flying instructions that will put that aircraft in the ocean?”
     Johnson nodded. He’d already given it some thought. “I think so. The poor bastard will never know what happened.”

11

Daniel McVary focused on the door to the cockpit. Several half-thoughts ran through his mind. The predominant one concerned water. He wanted water, and he remembered that he had drunk water in the place behind the door. He’d sat in a chair surrounded by big windows and drunk from cups. He was beginning to remember a lot more. He remembered that he belonged in the chair. His mind’s eye flashed pictures, clear and vivid, but their exact meaning wasn’t fully understood.
     Daniel McVary’s brain still functioned on many levels, but there were huge dead areas, black places, where nothing lived, no synapses connected, no memory was stored. Yet the brain was finding open circuits around these dead areas and thoughts were forming, wants and needs were recognized, action was contemplated.
     First Officer McVary’s mind focused on the image behind the door that he had seen before it closed. Someone stood near his chair. A woman. He wanted to go back to his chair. The man who had pushed him was in there also. His arm still hurt. He stepped toward the door.

Linda Farley shouted. “Mr. Berry!”
     Berry spun around and jumped out of his seat, but it was too late. The copilot crossed the threshold and walked into the cockpit. Berry lunged at him, but McVary lurched out of the way and stumbled against the side wall of the cockpit.
     Berry stood still, holding his breath. He watched as the copilot brushed across a board jammed with circuit breakers and several switches, afraid to move toward him again, knowing that if those switches were inadvertently moved, he might never be able to set them right again.
     Very slowly, Berry began moving toward McVary and reached out his hand toward the copilot as the man kept groping at the console and electronics board to regain his footing.
     McVary got his balance and turned. He came to meet John Berry. Berry proceeded more cautiously, aware that the man had a fair amount of agility and even some cunning. They moved toward, then around, each other, circling cautiously in the confined area of the cockpit.
     A group of passengers stood at the door, craning their heads, watching.
     Linda Farley moved back and climbed into the pilot’s chair. Sharon Crandall edged out of the copilot’s chair and tried to get in a position to help.
     It occurred to Berry that anyone with as much mental ability as McVary seemed to have might be capable of understanding reason. He spoke softly. “McVary. McVary. Do you understand me? Can you speak?”
     McVary seemed to listen to the words, but he kept circling. He opened his mouth. “I … I … I …”
     Berry nodded. “Yes. Please go. Go. Out to the lounge. Lounge. Lounge …”
     McVary picked his head up and looked into the lounge, then suddenly bolted toward his flight chair.
     Sharon Crandall screamed and tried to get out of his way. McVary grabbed her and threw her to the side.
     Berry caught McVary from behind, and both men fell to the floor. Berry struck his head on the seat track and a black, searing pain shot through his skull.
     He was aware that he was on the floor and that McVary wasn’t. He knew that the copilot could not be restrained by Linda or Sharon, but he couldn’t get to his feet. He felt blood running over his forehead and face. He saw McVary’s legs near his face. He looked up. McVary was struggling with Sharon. Everything became blurry, then he heard a noise, a noise that filled the cockpit and sounded like the rushing of steam through a burst pipe. McVary screamed.
     Berry was aware that Sharon was helping him sit up. He looked around. McVary was gone. The door was closed again. “What happened?”
     Sharon Crandall dabbed at his bleeding wound with a handkerchief. She motioned toward Linda Farley.
     Berry looked at the girl. She stood, trembling, with a bright red fire extinguisher in her hand, Halon still visible around its nozzle.
     Crandall touched Berry’s cheek. “Can you stand?”
     “Yes. Of course.” He stood slowly and looked at Linda Farley. “Good thinking. Very good.”
     Linda dropped the fire extinguisher and ran to Berry. She buried her face in his chest.
     Berry patted her head. “It’s all right. You didn’t hurt him. Just scared him a little.” He cradled her head in his hand and with the other hand reached out for Sharon. The three of them stood quietly for a few seconds, calming themselves.
     Berry heard scratching on the door and stepped over to it. He could see faces through the small piece of one-way glass in the door. He took a deep breath, then hit the door with his shoulder, sending two men and a woman sprawling. He looked back into the lounge. A procession of people were coming, one at a time, out of the stairwell, filling the lounge from wall to wall, pressing closer to the cockpit bulkhead. Berry looked at their blood-red eyes set in those gray, ashen faces. His head swam. His hold on reality was beginning to weaken. An irrational thought flashed through his mind, the thought that he was already dead and this place was not the Straton but some sort of perpetual flight that would never end, never land. …
     He pulled the door shut tightly and turned, facing back into the cockpit. He felt sweat on his face and his breathing had become difficult.
     Sharon Crandall looked from the door to his face, then back at the door. There was fear, thought Berry—no, terror—in her eyes. Berry controlled his voice and spoke to her. “We … we’ve lost a major advantage … with them in the lounge … but … as long as we keep them out of here … out of the cockpit …”
     His world was shrinking, reduced to these square yards—this small room that contained their only link with the world they had left … that contained the instruments of their survival and the only mechanical and human intelligence left onboard.
     Sharon Crandall held Linda Farley and nodded, but she did not see how they were going to keep the passengers of Flight 52 out of the cockpit.

Edward Johnson walked to a long shelf and took down a heavy spiral-bound book. Wayne Metz watched him carefully. The man was still walking a mental tightrope, and the slightest thing could upset his balance.
     Johnson sat on a stool and placed the book on the counter. He picked up the telephone.
     Metz spoke softly, choosing his words carefully. “Is there anything I can help you with?”
     Johnson didn’t answer. He placed the slip of paper that Evans had given him on the counter and began dialing. At the same time, he opened the big book in front of him.
     Metz was becoming anxious. “Who are you calling? What’s in that book?”
     Johnson looked at him as the phone began ringing on the other end. “I’m calling ATC.”
     “Why?”
     “Because, Wayne, from now on I have to handle it just like it’s supposed to be handled.”
     “What’s in the book?”
     Johnson spoke into the telephone. “Mr. Malone, please.” He looked up at Metz. “There’s a coffeepot in that cabinet. Make coffee.” He turned to the phone. “Mr. Malone, this is Ed Johnson. Vice-President of Operations at Trans-United.”
     “Yes, sir. What’s the story with 52?”
     “I’m afraid it doesn’t look very good. They are no longer transmitting.”
     “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
     “Before I fill you in, take down these coordinates of their last estimated position. Please take the necessary steps to begin a search-and-rescue operation.”
     “Yes. Go ahead.”
     Johnson read the coordinates. “They turned before we lost contact, so they are now on a heading of 120 degrees at a speed of approximately 340 knots. You can extrapolate from there.”
     “Yes, sir. Hold the line while I get the ball rolling on this.”
     Johnson flipped through the book in front of him.
     Malone came back on the line. “The search-and-rescue operation will be rolling shortly. Is there any chance they could still be flying?”
     “Always a chance. Incidentally, when was the last time you heard from them, Mr. Malone?”
     There was a short pause. “At eleven o’clock they radioed their position.”
     Johnson nodded. “Why didn’t you call us?”
     “Well … we were trying to contact them. Actually, we didn’t try until they’d missed their next mandatory report. It should have occurred at 12:18, so it’s not that long. And all the airlines’ 797s have a little radio trouble because of the altitude and—”
     “I understand. We’ve been a little lax here too, I’m afraid. My dispatcher didn’t have his regular one-o’clock update from them and he let it go for a while.” He would have to fill in the missed 12:00 update. “Then, when he tried to radio, he experienced the same trouble that you apparently did. But, of course, he wasn’t concerned.”
     “That’s understandable, Mr. Johnson. But what exactly happened to the aircraft? How did you finally make contact with them?”
     “Well, we’re not certain exactly what happened. A short while before I called you, we received a message on our company data-link. It was a distress message. It said only SOS.”
     “SOS?”
     “Yes. No identification of any sort. We thought, of course, that it was a hoax of some sort.”
     “Yes, of course.”
     “Then, some time later, a dispatcher discovered another message sitting in the data-link. There is no way to determine how long either message sat in the data-link.”
     “What did the message say?”
     Johnson pulled the message toward him and read, “‘Emergency. Mayday. Aircraft damaged. Radios dead. Mid-Pacific. Need help. Do you read?’”
     “That was it?”
     “My dispatcher acknowledged immediately, then called me. Are you writing this all down?”
     “Yes, sir.”
     “Good. They did not immediately call you, I’m afraid, because there was some confusion over the way the message was received and because of the wording in our company emergency handbook.”
     “Wording?”
     “Yes. It says—let me read it.” Johnson placed the handbook over the big book in front of him. “It says, ‘When Air Traffic Control notifies you of a midair emergency, contact the following.’ So my dispatcher called the numbers on the list but never thought to call Air Traffic Control, since your number wasn’t listed in the FAA-approved handbook. He may also have believed that someone else was calling you already. You know how it is, when you see a fire, you think everyone’s called. … Anyway, it was a damned stupid oversight and he will be properly reprimanded. In any case, there is nothing lost except some time in getting a search-and-rescue underway.”
     “Yes, I see.” Malone’s voice sounded apologetic. “Do you know what the nature of the emergency was?”
     “I suspect that the damage to the aircraft was too great to continue flying.”
     “What damage is that?”
     Johnson put a tone of sadness and anger in his voice. “A bomb—or structural failure … two holes in the hull. Decompression killed or incapacitated the crew and passengers.”
     “Good God. … Then … who … ?”
     “A private pilot was in a positive pressure area. The lavatory, probably. He made the transmissions and turned the aircraft at our suggestion. I suspect, too, that he may have touched something in the cockpit that led to the final … led to the possible … crash. I hope to God it’s only because of a malfunction of the data-link machine …” Johnson found something in the book that he needed.
     “Yes. Let’s hope so. Do you have copies … ?”
     “Yes. I’ll send copies of the printouts to you right now. It shows everything we know and everything we’ve done.”
     “As soon as possible, please.”
     “There won’t be any further delay on our part. I’m taking personal charge of the operation at this end.”
     “Yes. Very good. I’m still a bit concerned—”
     “There has, of course, been an unconscionable delay in getting the ball rolling here, and we will take full responsibility.”
     “Well, of course, Mr. Johnson, it was an unusual set of circumstances, to say the least.” There was a pause. “What time did you say you received the first data-link transmission?”
     Johnson took a deep breath. He had figured that it must have been at about 12:15. He looked at his watch. It was now 1:30. “About one o’clock.”
     “That’s a long time.”
     “Not when you’re trying to deal with an unusual set of circumstances. But, of course, you’re correct. And please keep in mind that the Straton was still flying up until a few minutes ago, and may still be flying this way, I should add.”
     “Yes. Well, we’ve all been a bit … slow.”
     “Please keep me up-to-date on the search operation.”
     “Of course.”
     “Meanwhile, the printouts are on the way. I’ll have them faxed to this number we show for you.”
     “Good.”
     “And we’ll keep transmitting on our data-link at three-minute intervals in the event …”
     “Yes, very good. I’m sorry.”
     “So are we.”
     “Thank you.” He hung up and turned to Metz. “Well, that went all right. A little trouble with the Federal Aviation Agency is better, I guess, than losing my job and bankrupting the company.”
     “I’d say so. Will the ATC people come here?”
     “Not them. FAA air carrier inspectors. But as long as they think we’re out of contact with the Straton, they won’t be in any rush to get here.”
     “How about the rescue operation you just set up?”
     “They’ll probably call the Navy and Air Force, and commercial shipping in the area. That’ll take hours. By that time we’ll have …” Johnson stopped, then looked directly at Metz. “By then, we’ll be finished with this.”
     Metz nodded. “How about your Trans-United people? Will they want to come here?”
     “I’ll take care of that in a minute.”
     “Good. What’s that book you’ve been looking at?”
     “Get me a cup of coffee.”
     Wayne Metz had not gotten anyone a cup of coffee in ten years. But he turned toward the coffeepot.
     Johnson slid off his stool and walked to the data-link. He took the printouts from the receiving basket and quickly read through them again. No times. No indication of spaces between the messages. Nothing that could be considered poor judgment on the part of Trans-United. The last messages since Miller’s “… working on bringing you home” looked a bit compromising, and he tore them off. With his pen he marked the SOS message: Discovered by dispatcher in link machine at approximately 1 P.M. He walked to the door and opened it.
     At Johnson’s appearance the room became quiet. Johnson’s eyes swept the room and fixed each man in turn. He said tonelessly, “Gentlemen, I’m afraid we’ve lost contact with Flight 52.”
     There was a rush of moans and exclamations.
     “I have called the Air Traffic Control and they have initiated a search-and-rescue operation. Of course, the problem may simply be the link, but …” He stepped a few feet into the room. “I will remain in the communications room and continue transmitting.” Johnson was aware of Metz behind him. He looked over his shoulder and saw the man holding a cup of coffee. That was good for the dispatchers to see. There was no doubt that Edward Johnson ran things and ran people. He turned and took the coffee from Metz. He spoke in a low voice. “Get back in the communications room and close the damned door. If that alerting bell goes off and they hear it, we’re finished.” He turned and addressed the dispatchers. “Gather round, please.”
     The more than two dozen dispatchers moved around him.
     Johnson began in an official, but friendly tone. “Gentlemen, there is no doubt in my mind that Jack Miller,” he nodded to Miller, “Dennis Evans, and Jerry Brewster,” he looked at the two men, “did everything they could do as quickly as possible. However, there was a time lapse between the first link message and now of about half an hour.” He paused and studied the faces of the men around him. Some glanced at the wall clock, some at their watches. A few looked surprised, others nodded eagerly. “The first message came in at about one o’clock, I believe someone told me. There will be some problems with ATC and even with our own people over that lag, but I’m solidly behind you, so don’t worry too much about it.” He looked around the room.
     There were more people nodding now.
     Johnson looked at Evans. “You call everyone on the list, including our press office. Have the press office call me for a statement. To the president of the airlines and to everyone else, you say the following: Flight 52 has suffered a midair decompression. Radios dead. Amateur pilot flying and communicating on data-link. Communications lost at …” he looked at his watch, “one twenty-five P.M. ATC is initiating a search-and-rescue. I suggest an emergency meeting in the executive conference room. Got it?”
     Evans nodded quickly. “Yes, sir.” He moved rapidly to his desk.
     Johnson looked at the men around him. “Each one of you call your flights and tell them to keep off the data-link.” He scanned the faces of the men. “Brew-ster?”
     “Here, sir.”
     “Okay. Brewster, you will take these printouts and make only one copy. Then fax one copy to ATC at the number they show in the Emergency Handbook.”
     “Yes, sir.”
     “Then send our copy to the executive conference room in the company office building. The original comes back to me. Quickly.”
     Brewster took the messages and double-timed out of the dispatch office.
     “That’s all, gentlemen. Thank you all for your help.” He paused. “If any of you are of a religious nature, please ask the man upstairs to look after that Straton and everyone aboard her. Thank you. Miller, come here.”
     The dispatchers moved back to their desks silently. Jack Miller approached Johnson.
     Johnson put his hand on his shoulder. “Jack, fill in the empty updates for 52 and note that they were posted at noon. Leave the one P.M. updates blank, of course.”
     Miller looked at the big man standing next to him. “Ed … we’re not going to get away with this.”
     “Of course we are. I’m doing it for you and the company as much as for myself. There have been a series of errors and blunders here, and we have nothing to lose to try to cover it. If we don’t, you, I, Evans, Brewster, and about ten random scapegoats will be fired, then we’ll be investigated by the FAA and maybe be charged with something. Your lovely wife can bake cookies for all of us and bring them out to San Quentin on Sundays. Bring the kids along, too.”
     Miller nodded. He started to move away, but Johnson held onto his shoulder.
     “Are the men with us?” Johnson asked.
     Miller nodded again. “It’s not the first time we’ve had to cover ourselves.”
     Johnson smiled. “I always knew you bastards lied for each other. Now you have to lie for me. For yourselves, too, of course. Go fill in those updates.”
     Miller moved off.
     Johnson walked quickly back into the communications room. He looked at Metz, who was staring down at the big spiral-bound book. “You know, Wayne, the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that Straton should go down.”
     Metz looked up at him quizzically. “I thought we agreed on that.”
     “In principle. Everything I did just now is standard operating procedure. I’ve done nothing wrong yet, except delay.”
     “You told everyone the plane went down.”
     “Did I? I said we lost contact with them. You don’t see any new link messages, do you?” He turned and looked out into the dispatch office. “Actually, my responsibility in this screw-up is pretty light. Those idiots out there blew it. ATC was not too swift either.”
     “They’ve all given us a chance to save it.”
     Johnson nodded. “Yes. The man who can really testify to our mishandling of this whole thing is Berry.”
     “And he’s heading home.”
     “I know. God, I wish he’d just crash,” Johnson said.
     “He probably will. Right into San Francisco. You’ve got to put him in the ocean.”
     “I know.”
     Metz sat down behind the data-link. “Look, Ed, I know this is difficult for you—it goes against all your instincts. But believe me, there is no other way. Do what you’ve got to do. If it will make it any easier, I’ll type the message to Berry.”
     Johnson laughed. “You stupid bastard. What difference does it make who types the message? There’s no difference in guilt, only a difference in nerve. Get out of that chair.”
     Metz quickly vacated the chair behind the data-link.
     Johnson sat down. He glanced up at the dispatch office outside the glass. A few heads dropped or turned away. “As far as they know, I’m still trying to contact Flight 52.”
     “What are you going to tell him to do?”
     “There’s only a few things about a cockpit I know for sure. I’ve ridden in the observer’s seat enough times and had to listen to enough pilots give me unwanted flying lessons to know what’s dangerous and what can bring an aircraft down. That book I was looking at is the Straton’s pilot manual.”
     Metz nodded appreciatively. “Any ideas?”
     “A few. I’m trying to work them out. But they’re tricky.” He looked at his watch. “That meeting in the executive conference room will be rolling in a while. They’ll chew over those link printouts and wail and whine for a good fifteen, maybe thirty, minutes. Then they’ll ring me here.”
     “Then you’d better hurry. Jesus, this is cutting it close, Ed. You didn’t leave yourself any room.”
     Neither man was aware of the insistent rapping on the glass door.
     Johnson finally looked up.
     Jack Miller stood outside the door.
     “Oh, Christ,” said Johnson. “If we let Miller in and Flight 52 begins transmitting, that would be the end of the game.” Johnson knew that if he turned off the machine, Miller would notice and ask why they weren’t trying to reestablish contact. He quickly went to the door and opened it.
     Miller took a step in.
     Johnson moved forward and edged him out a few steps, but couldn’t close the door without being too obvious. “What is it, Jack?”
     Miller’s eyes moved past Johnson into the small room. He stared at Metz, and without looking at Johnson, handed him a sheaf of papers. “Here’s the data-link printouts. Faxed to ATC and copied for the executive conference room.” He looked at Johnson. “The chief pilot, Captain Fitzgerald, is on his way here in case we make contact. Mr. Abbot, the Straton Aircraft representative, is also on his way. Is there anyone else you want here?”
     “I don’t want anyone here, Jack. Have a dispatcher intercept them in the parking lot and tell them to drive over to the executive conference room in the company office building. Okay?”
     Miller ignored the order as if he hadn’t heard it. He said, “I just don’t understand what could have happened up there. That aircraft was steady and that pilot—”
     “It had two great big fucking holes in it. You wouldn’t fly too well with two great big damn holes in you.” He pushed Miller’s chest with his forefinger and backed him up a step. “Go home and get some rest.”
     “I’m staying here.”
     Johnson hesitated, then said, “All right. Take over the Pacific desk from Evans.”
     “I mean here—in the communications room.”
     Johnson knew what he meant. “It’s not necessary.”
     “Does that mean I’m relieved of my duties?”
     Johnson, for some reason he couldn’t explain, felt that the data-link bell was going to ring momentarily. He began to perspire. “Jack …” He had to be tactful, careful. “Jack, don’t start getting sullen. You may have made a few mistakes, but you did a few heads-up things too. It’s like in the military. You’re somewhere between a medal and a court-martial. Now, don’t forget our conversations. Play it my way and we can all save our asses. Okay?”
     Miller nodded. “Are you still trying to contact … ?”
     “Yes. Every three minutes. And you’re holding me up now.” Johnson was becoming anxious. He kept glancing up at the door across the room. Soon, someone whom he couldn’t keep out of the communications room might walk into the dispatch office. In a way, he would almost have welcomed it.
     Metz called out. “I have to finish this business with you and report to my people.”
     Johnson turned his head. “Right.” He turned back to Miller. “Do me a favor. Go to the employees’ lounge—no, to the executives’ lounge—and while things are still fresh in your mind write a full report of everything that happened before I arrived. Make sure the times and actions tally with our estimates, of course. When you finish, report back here and give the report to me and me only.”
     Miller nodded.
     “Did you fill in the Straton’s updates?”
     Miller nodded again.
     “Good. When you come back you can resume your duties here in the communications room. See you later.” He stepped back, then closed and bolted the door just as the data-link bell sounded. “Oh, Christ!”
     The data-link began to print.
     Metz wiped his face with a handkerchief. “That was too close.”
     Johnson was visibly shaken. “Wayne, just keep out of this. I understand what’s got to be done, and I don’t need any help from you. In fact, you can leave.”
     “I’m going nowhere until that aircraft is down.”
     Johnson walked over to the data-link and sat down. He glanced out into the dispatch office, then quickly pulled the message off and put it in his lap.
     Metz looked down and they read it at the same time.

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.

12

The early afternoon sun reflected brilliantly off the tranquil sea that surrounded the USS Chester W. Nimitz. The aircraft carrier plodded steadily along its course. A moderate breeze, generated by the ship’s eighteen knots of forward speed, swept across its empty flight deck from bow to stern. Belowdecks, the afternoon’s activities were routine.
     Commander James Sloan and retired Rear Admiral Randolf Hennings sat quietly in Room E-334 on the 0-2 level of the conning tower. Neither of them had spoken for several minutes; each was lost in his own thoughts. For Sloan, the problem was clear and the solution was obvious. For Hennings, the situation was far more complex. Sloan’s face was set in a rigid, uncompromising expression. Hennings’s face betrayed his inner struggle.
     Sloan finally spoke. “The situation has not changed. Our only mistake was waiting for the Straton to go down by itself. But there’s no sense continuing this argument. Try to think of it as a tactical war problem.”
     Hennings was fatigued and his head ached. “Stop giving me those war analogies, Commander. That doesn’t work anymore.” After Matos’s report that the Straton had made a turn, Hennings thought that Sloan would see that they couldn’t proceed with the destruction of the aircraft. Hennings was almost relieved at the prospect of confessing to Captain Diehl what they had done. But Sloan, as Hennings should have known, had not given up so easily. To Sloan there was little difference between shooting down an aircraft that they first believed to be filled with corpses, and shooting down an aircraft that showed signs of life. “And stop telling me nothing has changed. Everything is changed now.”
     “Yes, and for the worse. Let me point out again, Admiral, that I don’t want to go to jail. I have my whole life in front of me. You may get VIP treatment in Portsmouth—a cottage of your own, or whatever they do with admirals, but I … Which reminds me, you’ll be the first American admiral to be court-martialed in this century, won’t you? Or maybe with your retired status, you’ll suffer the indignity of a civilian trial.”
     Hennings tried to remember—to understand the sequence of small compromises that had brought him so far down that he had to listen to this from a man like Sloan. He was either getting senile or there was a flaw in his moral fiber that he had not been made aware of. Certainly James Sloan wasn’t that sharp. “You think a lot of yourself, don’t you?” he said. “But if you were as shrewd as you think you are, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
     “I don’t mind sticking my neck out if I can gain by it. What I do mind is your getting in my way. This would have all been resolved long ago if you hadn’t procrastinated, and if we hadn’t listened to Matos’s bullshit about fatigue cracks and damage.”
     Hennings nodded. That was certainly true. For the last hour, Sloan had explained to him why Peter Matos should destroy the Straton. For the last hour, Hennings had advised waiting for some word from Matos that the Straton had gone down by itself. Matos’s reports had confirmed that the Straton was damaged but still flying, straight and steady, except for one deliberate but unexplainable course change from a 120-degree heading to a 131-degree heading. Also, Matos reported people falling or jumping from the airliner. None of this was comprehensible. “Why did they change course? Why are people falling from a steady aircraft? There was obviously no fire. They can’t be jumping. That makes no sense. What the hell is going on up there?”
     Sloan wasn’t sure he knew what was going on up there either. The first heading seemed to put the Straton closer to its home base of San Francisco. The new heading might put them on a parallel course to the coast. He looked at Hennings. “The pilot must be lost. His navigation sets are probably malfunctioning. As for the people …” He thought for a moment about that bizarre happening. “I told you they’ve probably suffered brain damage.” He was beginning to imagine for the first time what it must be like for the people onboard the Straton. “The pilots may be brain damaged, too. That’s why they’re changing their headings.” He looked Hennings in the eye. “They may crash into a populated area. Think about that.”
     Hennings was through thinking and through arguing. His only argument had been based on his own understanding of the moral and ethical issues involved. Against that thin, apparently weightless argument, Sloan had thrown a dozen expedient reasons for destroying the Straton and the people onboard.
     “We’re running out of time.” Sloan said it casually, as if he were late for a tennis match at the officers’ club. “Matos is low on fuel.”
     Hennings stepped closer to Sloan. “If I say no?”
     Sloan shrugged. “Then I go to Captain Diehl and tell him my side of the story.”
     “You don’t bluff well.”
     Sloan smiled. “Well, I guess it’s not important for you to concur any longer. You’ve already committed a half-dozen court-martial offenses. Just stay out of my way, and I’ll call Matos and finish it off. The Straton’s obviously not going down on its own.” Sloan picked up the microphone and glanced at Hennings out of the corner of his eye. He started to push the transmit button, then hesitated. It would be much better if the Admiral was in on it. As he pondered his next move, the telephone rang. He put down the microphone and snatched up the receiver. “Commander Sloan,” he said impatiently, then listened for a few seconds. “Yes. Go ahead with the message. Exactly as received.”
     “Who is it?” Hennings asked, apprehension in his voice.
     Sloan ignored him. “Okay. I understand. Then their request is specifically for a broad-area search, and only within the boundaries you’ve described?”
     Hennings was certain that it concerned the Straton, but couldn’t guess in what way.
     Sloan was shaking his head. “I’m tied up here—with this special test. Yes, it’s still not finished, but that’s not your business. Have Lieutenant Rowles lay out the initial patterns and assignments. At least eight aircraft each shift. To be launched at one-hour intervals. Begin the search in the northern quadrant, and expand the search southward.” Sloan glanced at the console clock. “Tell Rowles to get the first group off within fifteen minutes.” He hung up and turned to Hennings. “A message came from Air Traffic Control to initiate a search and possible rescue mission.”
     “The Straton?”
     “Trans-United Flight 52. A supersonic Straton 797 from San Francisco to Tokyo. Unless the Trans-United Stratons are having a bad day, that must be ours.”
     “But I thought we would hear any transmissions from them.” He gestured toward the radio-monitoring equipment.
     Sloan hesitated. He had to pick and choose what to tell Hennings. “They transmitted on a data-link, a typed-out message that displays on a computer screen. I presume only the Trans-United operations office can receive from them. Anyway, the pilot was apparently dying. Brain damage. He made that turn, then made the course change, then they lost contact. They suspect that he died or blacked out, and that the Straton went down and …”
     “Then they don’t know it’s still—”
     “No. They don’t. The good news is that one of the data-link messages from the Straton mentioned a bomb. Everyone thinks there was a bomb onboard. Do you see it all now, Admiral? A pilotless aircraft filled with dead and dying, and with enough fuel left to reach California. Even if it weren’t our fault, I’d say we had a duty to bring it down.”
     “How soon will your search party be in the area?”
     “Soon.” Sloan had been asked to search an area that was hundreds of miles from where he knew the Straton actually was. By the time his aircraft worked their search pattern, the Straton would have flown hundreds of miles farther. “Very soon,” he lied. He looked at Hennings. “You can’t avoid any of the responsibility if I order this aircraft shot down. Silence is acquiescence. You’re no better than I am. But if you want to remain silent and let me do the dirty work …”
     Suddenly, Hennings understood Sloan’s insistence on getting his approval for an act that he had the power to accomplish by himself. Sloan was looking for a personal victory over Hennings, and all that Hennings represented. All the old notions of honor, virtue, and integrity. Somehow it would make Sloan feel better to rub Hennings’s face in the muck.
     Sloan said, “You had no qualms about serving a commander in chief who was a draft dodger, a notorious liar, and who had nothing but contempt for the military. Or, if you had any such qualms, you sure kept them to yourself, Admiral. We all did. Don’t talk to me about doing the right thing, about standing up for principle. None of us resigned over Vietnam, and none of us spoke out against the draft dodger in the White House. We’re all whores and we’re all compromised. The only thing I believe in is the career of James Sloan.”
     Hennings made no reply, no protest.
     Neither man spoke for a long time.
     Hennings looked around the room known as E-334. Sterile, gray metal, covered with mazes of electrical conduit, the smell of electronics hanging in the airconditioned atmosphere. The world was full of Room E-334s now, on the sea, in the air, underground. Small tight compartments with no human touch. The destiny and the fate of mankind would someday be decided from a room like this one. Hennings was glad he would not be around to see it. He looked at Sloan. This man was the future. He knows how to live in this world. “Yes. Of course. Order Matos to shoot the Straton down.”
     Sloan hesitated for a second, then sat down quickly at the radio console.
     “Make sure he understands what he is to do and why he is to do it, Commander.”
     Sloan glanced back at Hennings. “Yes. All right. I know what to do. We had him at this point once before.” But he knew Matos could go either way. “Navy three-four-seven, this is Homeplate. Do you read?” Sloan looked again at Hennings. “You wanted me to be honest with him, and I will.”
     The radio crackled, and Matos’s voice, strained and perhaps even frightened, came through the scrambler and filled the room. “Roger, Homeplate. Go ahead.”
     Sloan heard the edginess in the young man’s voice. That was a good beginning. “Peter, this is Commander Sloan. I asked you a question before, and now I want the answer. Why have you been ordered to keep out of sight of the cockpit?”
     There was a long silence in the room, then the radio came alive with Matos’s voice. “I was to keep out of sight of the cockpit because there might be a pilot in there. If he was able to get his radios working, and if he saw me, he might understand what happened to his aircraft and radio the message. Or he might tell someone when he landed.”
     “Yes. And we have new information from ATC. They think it was a bomb onboard. Go on. What else, Peter?”
     “The accident was our … my fault. I have a chance to cover it up by shooting the Straton down.”
     “For the good of the Navy, for the good of national security, for our own good.”
     “Yes.”
     “The test we were conducting is in violation of an international treaty. It is illegal. Do you understand?”
     “Yes.”
     “The people onboard are dead or brain damaged. They are heading toward California—like a cruise missile, with enough destructive force to level a small town or wipe out twenty city blocks.”
     “I understand.”
     “Every boat and aircraft in the area is heading your way now, including a flight from this carrier. If anyone sees you, we are all finished. Within the next ten minutes, you are to fire the Phoenix missile into the Straton, just as you were going to do before.”
     “Roger.” There was a pause. “My fuel is low.”
     “All the more reason to get it done quickly. When you complete your mission, keep heading for the coast and I will have a refuel mission meet you. Do you understand?”
     “Yes.”
     Sloan decided it was time to pull out all the stops. He said to Matos, “I have here with me Rear Admiral Randolf Hennings, who concurs with my decision. He will personally debrief you when you land. Understand?”
     “Yes.”
     Sloan glanced at Hennings, whose face had gone white. Sloan said to Matos, “Enough talk, Peter. Fire your missile into the cockpit of the Straton. Do you understand?”
     “Yes.”
     “Get into position, steady aim, and fire. No miss. Ten minutes, max. Call me when you’ve accomplished the mission.”
     “Roger.”
     “Roger. Out.” Sloan set his countdown clock for ten minutes, then swiveled his chair and faced Hennings. The Admiral looked pale and was leaning against the bulkhead. “Are you all right?”
     “Yes. I think so.”
     Sloan nodded. “I hope you don’t think this is any easier for me than for you.”
     Hennings wiped the clammy sweat from his neck. “I suspect it is.”
     Sloan stared at him. The old man looked as if he might be having a heart attack.
     Hennings stood up straight. “I think I’ll go on deck and get some air.”
     Sloan didn’t want Hennings out of his sight. There was an aura in this room, a spell that could be broken by sunlight and other voices, other faces. “I’d like you to stay around. For ten minutes at least.”
     Hennings nodded. “Yes. Of course. I’ll see it through.” He pushed aside the blackout curtain, opened the porthole, and took a deep breath. Then, for the first time in more than forty years, he became sick at sea.
     Sloan watched the man out of the corner of his eye. Hennings was a very weak link in a three-link chain. Matos was stronger, but he might break too. Now that the problem of the Straton was as good as out of the way, Sloan thought more about Matos and Hennings. He had pretty much decided how to deal with Lieutenant Peter Matos.
     Sloan walked over to the end of the console where a half-dozen interphones, color coded to indicate their function, sat in a row. He picked up the green one and, before anyone answered, reached down and switched it off. “Operations? This is Commander Sloan. We have a problem. Navy three-four-seven, F-18, Matos, is in a critical fuel situation. I want a tanker from the closest coastal base to rendezvous with him.” Sloan gave Matos’s present coordinates into the dead phone. “Thank you.” He hung up and picked up the blue phone and switched it off. “Rowles? Sloan. Alert the Straton search party that they may have to split the mission and look for three-four-seven. Yes. He had a fuel emergency, but I have a tanker on the way and it should reach him in plenty of time. Just keeping you alerted. Right.” He hung up and slid a clipboard over the on-off switches, then turned toward the Admiral.
     Randolf Hennings was a more difficult problem. As long as Hennings lived and breathed and spoke, with all his pent-up guilt and remorse, James Sloan would never have another good night’s sleep, never know when a summons to the captain’s office would be arrest. James Sloan couldn’t allow that. Not at all.

The view from the captain’s flight chair of the Straton 797 was spectacular. Berry sat, mesmerized by the churning mass of black boiling clouds in the distance. He had seen them first as a vague haziness on the far horizon, shafts of sunlight streaking from them into the ocean at a sharp angle. The closer he got, the more awesome they looked—and the more he knew he was in trouble.
     He leaned forward and scanned the horizon. The line of storms stretched as far as he could see in either direction, like a great solid wall between heaven and earth. They’d dropped down into the sea like a curtain, hiding the horizon line, and towered up above them so high that he knew he could not climb above them.
     Sharon touched his arm and spoke softly, worry in her voice. “I haven’t seen them this bad in a long time.”
     Berry had never seen them quite this bad, ever. The only thing they had going for them had been the weather and the daylight, and he had begun to take that for granted, not believing that anything else could go wrong for Flight 52. “You’ve been through these before?”
     “A few times. You?”
     “No. Not on a commercial flight.”
     “In your Skymaster?”
     “No.” In his Skymaster he would simply have turned and found an airport. Out here there was no airport to turn to.
     Crandall looked down at the weather radar screen on the center instrument panel. “Do you see a break in the clouds?”
     Berry stared at the screen. A thin green trace line swept across the radarscope every six seconds, leaving patterns of colored patches in its wake. “I don’t really know how to work it or how to read it.” He glanced at the line of thunderstorms, then back at the radarscope. What he saw on the scope was supposed to represent what he saw from his windshield, but he could see no correlation. “I’ve read articles on weather radar, but I’ve never worked it.”
     Crandall heard a noise behind her and looked back. Linda was curled up near the cockpit’s rear bulkhead, asleep. Crandall looked up at the door. An entire arm, right up to the shoulder, had slid through the opening and the hand was feeling around the inside of the door. The hand found the nylon hose and pulled at it, loosening the tension on the door and allowing his shoulder to slide through. She saw the blue shoulder boards of First Officer Daniel McVary, then saw his face peeking in at the opening. “John. …”
     Berry looked back. “For God’s sake.” He hesitated, then stood. He walked to the door and examined the knot around the latch. He took the disembodied arm and tried to force it out, but the hand grabbed his shirt. Berry stepped back. There was something grotesque about this arm reaching out to him. He was reminded of the stories told around a campfire at night. But this was real. He reached into his pocket and found the gold lighter that he carried. He lit it, hesitated, then reluctantly touched the flame to McVary’s hand. There was a long scream and the arm disappeared from the cockpit. Berry looked up at Sharon and met her eyes, but there was no censure in them, only understanding.
     Berry knelt down beside Linda, who had awakened. “Go back to sleep.”
     She closed her eyes. “I’m very thirsty.”
     Berry patted her cheek. “Soon. Don’t think about it.” He stood and walked back to his chair.
     Sharon fixed her eyes on the radar set. “Are these all the radar controls?”
     Berry looked at her. There had developed a tacit understanding among the three of them that they were not to talk about the others. Berry looked down at the console. “Yes. Antenna tilt. Gain. Brilliance. Mode selector. … Here’s one called erase rate. I’ve never even heard of that.”
     Crandall looked up again at the black wall outside the windshield. It was closer now, and she could see its inner violence, the black-gray smoke churning. “Can we go around it without the radar?”
     Berry shook his head. “These lines sometimes stretch for hundreds of miles. I don’t think we have the fuel to try an end run.”
     “Hawaii?” She didn’t want to throw that up to him, but it seemed too important to be left unsaid.
     “No. In addition to the other reasons I gave you, we don’t have the fuel for that any longer. We have only enough to fly straight to California.”
     Crandall looked at the fuel gauges. They read less than one-third full.
     Berry played with the radar controls. If he could understand the picture on the screen, he might be able to pick out a weak spot in the wall of clouds in front of him.
     Crandall remembered other storms she’d gone through in other aircraft. The Straton 797 flew above the weather, and that, at least, was one advantage to traveling in subspace. “We can’t climb above it?”
     Berry looked up at the sheer wall of clouds. “Not with this aircraft. It won’t hold its air pressure.” He looked at the oxygen mask hanging beside his seat. An oxygen mask should be enough, as long as they didn’t climb much above 30,000 feet. Was that high enough to clear these storms? He couldn’t tell for sure, but he didn’t think so. Besides, the oxygen tanks would probably be empty, and he didn’t know if there was a reserve tank.
     Crandall was following his thoughts. “There may be an unused oxygen tank that we could switch to.”
     “There might be. But do you think we should put those people through another period of oxygen deprivation? Don’t we have to draw the line somewhere?”
     “Not if it’s our lives.”
     “They are not dead, and we don’t know that they won’t get better, and even if they won’t … Besides, in order to gain enough altitude to get over this weather, I’d have to circle—spiral upward. I’d rather not try my flying skills at this point. Anyway, the maneuver would burn off a tremendous amount of fuel.”
     “What you’re saying is that we’re committed to bucking into the storm.”
     “I’m not sure. The other options look better in the short run, but I’m thinking of the California coast.”
     “Me too.” She hesitated, then said, “Will the holes in the cabin … could the plane … ?”
     “I don’t think it will come apart.” But he didn’t know if the structure was weakened, how many longerons were severed. Completely airworthy craft had broken up in storms. He said, “It’s the wings that take the most punishment. They don’t appear to be damaged.”
     Crandall nodded. There was something reassuring about John Berry’s voice, his manner. Most pilots had that ability to make even bad news sound routine. Yet she felt there was something else troubling him. “If you think the Straton can handle it, then I can handle it.”
     Berry decided that he had to tell it to her truthfully. It was her life too, and she had a right to know what could happen. “Look, Sharon, the major problem is not the aircraft. If the turbulence gets too rough—and there’s no reason to think it won’t, by the looks of those clouds—then the autopilot could disengage itself. Then I’d have to hand-fly this thing. Christ, three experienced pilots in an undamaged craft have their hands full during a storm. I have to think about the throttles, the pitch trim … I haven’t flown this aircraft in good weather. The plane could get away from me … spin out …” Berry suddenly wanted to turn, to run and get away from the black wall closing in on him, even if he had to put the plane down at sea. Anything would be preferable to the nightmare of a bouncing, heaving aircraft caught in the center of a storm of unknown width and breadth. He turned to Sharon. “Do you want to turn? We can outrun it, but we’d probably have to ditch before we reached any land.”
     Crandall considered the options: Running from the storm knowing that each minute of flight time was another minute from the coast. Then putting it down at sea. And if they survived the landing, there would be the agony of the sea, maybe other passengers floating in the water. … She weighed that against the storm. They would live or die in the storm—nothing in between. She looked up at the clouds. Somewhere on the other side of that black veil the sun shone, and over the next horizon was the coastline of America. That’s where they said they wanted to go, and that’s where they would go. A sense of calm came over her, and she knew that one way or the other the end of their long trial was near. “We should maintain our present heading.”
     Berry nodded. He also had a need to meet the storm head-on. He thought about his wife and children for the first time in over an hour. Then he thought about his employer and his job. The worst thing that could happen to him, he realized, was that he would survive, only to pick up his life where he’d left it. He believed that somehow the crucible of that storm would cleanse him, even rebaptize him.
     Crandall said, “We should call San Francisco and tell them what’s happening. They may be able to give us some advice.”
     Berry nodded. He realized that, subconsciously, he had been avoiding the data-link. Instead of it being a lifeline, the link had become an intrusion into his small world. He typed.

13

John Berry sat motionless in the captain’s chair. An instant before the failure of the Straton’s four jet engines registered on the instrument gauges, it registered on John Berry’s senses, and he knew exactly what was happening to them. He felt the aircraft yaw slightly to the left, then felt the deceleration forces against his body.
     Sharon Crandall shouted, “John! What’s happening? What’s happening?” The panel in front of her was a sudden mass of blinking lights and bouncing needles. The engine gauges in the center of the panel unwound rapidly.
     A loud warning horn blared from somewhere in the panel and the cockpit was filled with its ominous, deep-pitched sound.
     Linda Farley opened her mouth, and her long, piercing scream drowned out the sound of the horn.
     In the lounge, the passengers began losing their precarious balance and fell to the floor or crashed against the bulkhead of the cockpit. Deep bellowing cries, punctuated by shrill screeching, penetrated the cabin.
     Berry’s ears were filled with noise, and his eyes blurred from the blinking colored lights in front of him. For a few seconds, he was stunned. His stomach churned from the sinking sensation of the sudden descent. He felt his heart speed up and his mouth went dry. It was only the full realization of what they had done to him, and the anger it produced, that brought him back to his senses. He slammed his fist on the glare shield in front of him. “Bastards! Goddamned sons-of-bitches!”
     His eyes ran wildly over the center instrument panel. Nearly every needle and light on the electronic display was active, but the messages they sent him were too complex to comprehend. He could see that the aircraft had lost all engine power. “Flame out in all four” was the expression, he remembered. He was also able to see that their electrical energy was falling off as each of the engine’s generators dropped out of the circuit. Berry took a few long, deep breaths and steadied his hands. He reached up and pushed the fuel valve emergency power switch back to its previous position, then reset the four fuel valves.
     Crandall turned in her seat and shouted above the noise of the screaming girl and the blaring horn. “John! We’re going down! Put the switches back! Put them back! Please hurry!”
     Berry looked up and yelled, “They’re back. Calm down. Just sit there. Linda! Be quiet.” Berry looked down at the panel and waited for some sign from it, or for some physical sensation that would indicate that the engines were producing power again. But nothing happened. Whatever he had done by moving the switches could not be undone by putting them back.
     Crandall’s voice was choked with sobs. “John … John … do something. … We’re going to crash. …”
     Berry was alternating between periods of trying to disassociate himself from his impending death and trying to find a way to avoid it. He made an effort to sort out the messages that the lights and instruments were telling him, but couldn’t keep his thoughts straight. Valve power. Fuel. Generator. He knew what was wrong, but he had no idea of what to do about it. It was only the image of a man in San Francisco typing out his death warrant that kept him from giving up.
     Most of the cockpit lights had gone out when the generators shut down, but a few remained on, dimly powered by the aircraft’s batteries. Suddenly, the cockpit became darker and Berry heard a new noise that completely obliterated all the others. He turned and looked at the windshield. The Straton had entered the edge of the first thunderstorm, and the roar of rain and hail hammered against the windows and the roofline. The hail was so violent he thought the windshield might shatter. “Hold on! Hold on!” he shouted, but he knew no one could hear him.
     The Straton began to bounce wildly, then slid dangerously to the right. The nose of the aircraft pitched up and down at the same time that its wings rolled on its axis and its tail yawed left and right.
     Berry thought the aircraft might break apart if the violent, unstable flight condition kept up much longer. He saw Sharon Crandall hunched forward in her chair, holding on to the armrests. Linda Farley couldn’t get a grip on her chair and was lifted up and dropped, held down only by her lap belt.
     The autopilot made the corrections in the flight and the Straton began to steady out, except for the bouncing caused by the air turbulence as it continued its powerless descent.
     Berry tried to catch his breath and steady his shaking body. He turned back to the panel and scanned the small display of emergency instruments, which were all that remained after the generators failed. He was searching for anything that might spark his memory and set in motion a sequence of thoughts that would tell him what he must do. Circuit breakers. Berry thought that maybe the panel of circuit breakers on the right would be a clue—maybe one of the breakers was out. He flipped off his seat belt, stood up, and moved aft. He knew he had not much more time before the Straton hit the ocean.
     Cutting through the sounds of the weather, the blare of the warning horn and the screaming from the lounge, he heard a voice shouting a single word over and over. He looked over at Sharon, who was turned in her seat, gesturing wildly at him. Her mouth kept forming a single word. Autopilot.
     Berry looked back at the center instrument panel between the two seats. The amber disengage light now glowed brightly in the darkened cockpit. “Oh, God.” With the generators dropped off the circuits, he knew the autopilot was not getting the proper power to stay engaged. The last chance that they had for staying in control until the ditching was now gone. He shouted to Crandall, “Hold the wheel! Hold the wheel!”
     The Straton’s forward momentum had kept the downward glide steady for a few seconds, but the winds began to break up the controlled descent. The Straton pitched nose upward, and the first step Berry took to get himself back into the captain’s chair sent him careening in the opposite direction, backward, into the cockpit door. The door gave slightly under his weight. The aircraft rolled to the right, and he collided with the circuit breaker panel. He lunged at the back of Crandall’s chair, but the aircraft rolled left and he headed straight for Linda Farley. He tried to avoid her, but his foot caught the tautly stretched nylons and he tumbled over and fell onto her, then rolled off and came to rest against the left wall.
     Sharon Crandall watched for a second, then turned and faced the flight controls. The copilot’s control wheel moved by itself, as if it were still safely under the command of the autopilot. But the blinking amber light told her it was not. She reached out and took hold of the wheel.
     Berry managed to stand and grabbed the back of the captain’s chair. The aircraft remained in a sharp nose-up attitude and he hung on, trying to climb into the chair. He knew that the aircraft’s normal stability would keep it upright for a few seconds longer, but unless he could get to the wheel, the Straton could point itself straight up or straight down, go into a spin, or roll, wing over wing, into the sea. “Hold the wheel, Sharon! Hold the wheel!”
     Crandall was trying to hold on to it, but it had begun to vibrate with such force that it broke her grip each time she grabbed it.
     Berry climbed head first over the back of the pilot’s chair. The first violent updraft smacked into the Straton like a giant fist aimed at the solar plexus. The huge aircraft lifted like a toy, then dropped sickeningly, straight down. Berry saw himself rise off the chair, almost hit the ceiling, then fall abruptly to the floor between the captain’s chair and the observer’s chair. He lay there, dazed and disoriented, not able to tell up from down, or to determine what he had to do to stand upright. He saw Linda Farley’s face above him, and heard her screaming his name.
     Sharon Crandall seized the wheel and held it, letting it move her arms at first, then slowly exerting more and more pressure to steady it. She focused on the largest and most prominent gauge on the panel in front of her, one of the few of them that was still lit. It was marked ARTIFICIAL HORIZON. This was one instrument that was familiar to anyone who had ever spent any time inside a cockpit. It showed the relative position of the aircraft against a horizon line, and she could see that the Straton was far from level. But inside the clouds she was too disoriented to tell if they were pitched forward or backward, or if the wings were rolled right or left. She tried to get a physical sensation of how the aircraft was moving, but the increased Gs kept her pressed to her seat and she had no sensation of backward or forward, left or right. All she knew for certain was that they were going to crash. It occurred to her that if it weren’t for the fact that John Berry was on the floor, they could even be upside down.
     She had a firm grip on the vibrating wheel, but her arms and shoulders ached. She knew she had to do something before the aircraft tumbled. She glanced at the artificial horizon, then tried to get a gut feeling based on her thousands of hours in flight. She decided that the aircraft was traveling nose up and the left wing was dropped, though the reverse might be true if she were reading the instrument backwards. She pushed forward with all the strength she had and rotated the wheel to the right.
     For an instant, she thought she had guessed wrong as the artificial horizon line traveled even farther the wrong way. Then slowly the line straightened, then moved to align itself. The vibrations subsided and the aircraft flew steady except for the constant buffeting of the winds. She gripped the wheel tightly and held it with every ounce of strength she had left.
     Berry pulled himself up and noticed that the aircraft was much steadier. He looked quickly at Linda. She was very pale and her body was doubled over with dry heaves. He climbed quickly into the pilot’s chair. He strapped himself in and grabbed the captain’s control wheel. He held it very tight, his knuckles turning white. It wasn’t the wheel that was shaking, he realized, but his hands. He took several long breaths before he found his voice. “Sharon … Sharon …” He looked at her but couldn’t think of what to say.
     Sharon released the wheel and sat back, trying to prepare herself for the coming impact. Several thoughts and memories flashed through her mind, but none of them seemed important. She reached out and touched Berry’s arm, then looked back at Linda.
     The girl was staring at her. “Are we going to crash?”
     “Yes. Hold on tight.”

14

John Berry felt the familiar pilot’s control pressures in his hands and realized that this was the first time he had attempted to hand-fly the giant Straton. The warning horn sounded weak and the lights became dimmer as the electrical energy was being drained away from the dying airliner. The cockpit became quieter as they dropped beneath the worst part of the storm. From the lounge, Berry could hear the moans of the injured. He released one hand from the wheel and turned on the windshield wipers. Through the rain and clouds, he thought he could see glimpses of the ocean. His heart pounded quickly. He forced himself to look down at the altimeter. “Four thousand feet,” he said aloud. They were dropping at the rate of about forty feet a second. “Less than two minutes to impact. Hold on. Sharon … the life vests …”
     “Yes. In the orange pouch against the rear wall.”
     Berry turned and looked at the orange pouch hanging on the wall, then saw the small emergency exit near the right rear of the cockpit. “When we hit, you get the vests. I’ll open the door. Linda, stay in your seat until we come for you.”
     Crandall grabbed his arm. “John … John, I’m scared.”
     “Stay calm. For God’s sake, stay calm.” Berry held the controls tightly. He knew he should be thinking about how to bring the aircraft in, and what to do if they survived the crash. But he couldn’t get his mind off the problem of the dead engines. The fuel was shut off. But the fuel is now on again. What else … ?
     A bolt of lightning flashed close outside his left window and the cockpit was illuminated with an orange glow, followed by the crackling sound of unharnessed electricity. Berry sat up quickly. Suddenly, all the complexities of the overhead instrument panel were swept away. “Oh, for God’s sake!” He saw in a moment of unbridled clarity his old Buick, rolling down a hill in Dayton, Ohio, engine off, and he saw his hand turn the ignition switch, and heard again the sound of the Buick’s engine firing into life. “Sharon! The ignitors! The ignitors! Listen. Listen to me. Get up. Get up!” He looked down at the altimeter. Two thousand feet.
     As she unbuckled her belt and slid from her chair, the Straton broke through the bottom of the thunderstorm, and Berry could see the surface of the ocean clearly now. The sky was relatively calm, and the aircraft flew without much turbulence. But even from this altitude he could see the towering white foam of the swelling waves. He knew that even if they could get out of the aircraft, they wouldn’t survive that sea.
     Sharon Crandall was holding his arm and looking at him. Berry realized in an instant that she had perfect trust and confidence in him; as a flight attendant, she must have known that to ditch without a restraining belt meant almost certain death.
     Berry spoke clearly and firmly. “I can’t look away from the flight instruments. … On the overhead panel there are four switches marked ‘engine ignitors.’ Hurry.”
     She knelt down behind the pedestal between the pilot’s chairs and looked up. Her eyes swept the instruments and switches above her. “Where? Where? John …”
     Berry tried to reconstruct the panel in his mind while he kept his eyes glued to the flight instruments. He finally glanced up for a brief instant, for as long as he could dare. “Lower left! Lower left! Four switches. Yellow lights above them. Yellow! Yellow! Turn them on. On!”
     Crandall spotted them and passed her hand over all four switches at once, pushing them into the on position. “On! On!”
     Berry looked down at the altimeter. Nine hundred feet. The rate of descent had slowed slightly, but they had lost some airspeed. They had less than half a minute before the Straton would hit the water. He called out to Sharon, “Back in the seat. Strap in.” He stared at the center panel and watched to see if the Straton’s engine instruments would come to life. He tried to think if there was anything else he had to do to fire up the engines, but couldn’t think of anything. He focused intently on the four temperature gauges. Slowly, the needles began to rise. “Ignition! Ignition! We have power!” But he knew that the process of accelerating the jet engines and producing enough thrust for lift would take time, perhaps more time than they had left.
     He glanced at the altimeter. Two hundred and fifty feet. The airliner’s speed had bled off to 210 knots and the descent was slower, but he sensed he was very close to a stall. As soon as that thought entered his mind, the stall warning alarm began to sound—a synthetic voice repeating the word AIRSPEED , AIRSPEED , AIRSPEED . Berry knew that he should push forward on the wheel, lower the nose, and pick up airspeed to avert the stall, but he had no altitude left for that. Reluctantly, he pulled slightly back on the wheel and felt the nose rise. The Straton began to vibrate, the tremors shaking the air-frame so violently that it became nearly impossible to read the instruments. The Straton was engaged in a test of strength between gravity and the thrust of its accelerating engines. As he glanced at his altimeter, he saw that gravity was winning. One hundred feet.
     He looked down out of the side window. The hundred feet that was showing on the altimeter seemed less than that in reality. The swelling sea that sped by beneath him seemed to rise up to the wings of the airliner. He glanced out the front windshield. Huge, towering waves rose and broke only a short distance below him. If even one of those waves reached up and touched the Straton, the aircraft would lose enough speed to make a crash a certainty.
     Berry scanned his instruments. Engine power was up, airspeed was good, but altitude was still dropping. Berry nudged the control column, trying to keep the nose up. He was walking a shaky tightrope, and one slip would put them into the violent sea at nearly 200 knots.
     The synthetic voice announcing AIRSPEED continued, and so did the prestall vibrations. Berry worked the flight controls judiciously, trying to trade their few ounces of available energy for a few inches of extra altitude.
     The altimeter read zero, though he guessed the airplane was still about twenty feet above the water. It was becoming obvious that the Straton was not going to make it, given the rate of increasing thrust against the rate of descent. Involuntarily, the muscles of his buttocks tightened and he rose imperceptibly from his seat. “Come on, you pig—climb! Climb, you bastard!” He turned to Crandall and shouted above the noise. “Locate the afterburners! Afterburners!”
     She scanned the overhead panel again, near where the ignitor switches had been. She raised her arm and gave Berry a thumbs-up.
     “Hit the switches!” He paused for a split second and said, “Then get into position to ditch.”
     Crandall hit the four switches.
     Berry heard and felt a two-phased thud as the after-burners kicked in. He had no idea what would happen next.
     Crandall called to Linda. “Put your head down! Like this.” Crandall hunched over into a crash position, as well as she could with the copilot’s wheel in front of her. Before she put her head down, she glanced up to see if Linda had done the same.
     Berry felt the slight sensation of being pressed against his seat. The Straton was accelerating as fuel was injected directly into the jet exhausts and ignited to give extra thrust to the engines. The prestall airframe buffeting lessened, and he pulled farther back on the control wheel. The nose came up, and the ocean seemed to sink beneath his windshield. The stall alarm voice sounded one more time, then stopped. The altimeter showed 100 feet and climbing. “We’re climbing! We’re climbing! We’re lifting!”
     Sharon Crandall picked her head up. She felt the increased Gs against her body as the aircraft rose. “Oh, God. Dear God.” Tears ran down her cheeks.
     Berry held the control column with his left hand, reached his right hand out, and spread his fingers over the four engine throttles. For the first time since he had climbed into the flight chair, he was in control.
     He called out to Sharon Crandall. “Afterburners—off.”
     She reached up and shut them down.
     The Straton decelerated slightly and Berry worked the four throttles, feeling the aircraft accelerate again. He watched the engine temperature and pressure gauges rise and the altimeter needle move upward. Five hundred feet, six hundred. Berry sat back. The unknown terrors of flying the airliner, like most unknown terrors, had been exaggerated.
     No one spoke. All the lights in the cockpit came back on, and most of the warning lights extinguished. Outside, the violent storm raged above them, but at their lower altitude it produced no more than rain and manageable winds. John Berry cleared his throat. “We’re heading home. Sharon, Linda, are you both all right?”
     The girl answered in a weak voice. “I’m not feeling good.”
     Crandall released her seat belt, stood, and stepped over the girl. She noticed that her own legs were wobbling. She took the girl’s face in her hands. “Just a little airsick, honey. You’ll be all right in a minute. Take a lot of deep breaths. There.”
     Berry recognized the automatic words of the veteran flight attendant, but the tone was sincere.
     Crandall leaned over and gave Berry a light kiss on the cheek, then slid back into the copilot’s chair without a word.
     Berry concentrated on the instruments. He let the Straton come up to 900 feet, then leveled out before they rose into the bottom of the thunderstorm.
     He listened for sounds from the lounge, but heard nothing that penetrated the noise of the rain, the hum of electronics, or the droning of the jet engines.
     He shut off the windshield wipers, experimented with the flight control for a few minutes, then reached out and reengaged the autopilot. The amber light went off, and he released the wheel and the throttles and took his feet off the pedals. He flexed his hands and stretched his arms, then turned to Sharon. “That was about as close as it comes. You were very cool.”
     “Was I? I don’t remember. I think I remember screaming.” She looked closely at him. “John … what happened? You didn’t do something … no … I read the message.”
     “Neither you nor I did anything wrong … except to listen to them.”
     “What … ?”
     The alerting bell rang.
     They looked at each other, then stared down at the data-link screen.

15

With the door closed, the Trans-United communications room had become hotter. Fumes from the color-reproduction machine lay heavily in the stagnant air. Edward Johnson sat with his sleeves rolled up and his tie loose.
     Wayne Metz kept mopping the perspiration from his face with a damp handkerchief. He nodded in satisfaction. “I think that’s it, Ed.”
     Johnson nodded slowly. He felt badly—there was no doubt about it—but he also felt that the weight of the world—the weight of the Straton—was lifted from his shoulders. He was annoyed that Metz was having trouble concealing his glee. The man didn’t understand flying, didn’t understand airlines or the people who worked for them. He only understood liabilities and how to eliminate them. Johnson reached out and pressed the data-link’s repeat button and held it down.
     The message printed.

Retired Rear Admiral Randolf Hennings leaned heavily on the rail that ran along the passageway of the 0-2 deck of the Nimitz’s superstructure. The passageway was deserted, and it would most likely remain that way for some time. He looked up at the two white stars painted above the stairwell designating the Admiral’s Passageway. This passage was off-limits to anyone of lesser rank without a specific duty there. It was another of the Navy’s long-standing traditions to have an uncluttered passageway for an admiral. Hennings had always realized how anachronistic things like that were. Pointless traditions. But he also knew how much he enjoyed them. Codes of honor. Allegiances and oaths of duty. They were all manufactured from the same need, and they all served the same end. But they were artifacts of a vanished world, and like him, they belonged in a museum … or a tomb.
     Hennings let out a long breath. He rubbed his fingers along the rope-lined handrail. Just the feel of the twisted hemp brought back a flood of memories. The South Pacific—or the South Seas, as it was called in old days. Blue water, sunny skies, palm-lined beaches, and the young officers in their tropical tan uniforms. Standing on the decks or sitting in the wardroom, listening to senior officers telling firsthand stories of the war. The great sea battles and the amphibious assaults. But those memories were tainted now. Like a submarine breaking through the surface of the sea, one word kept rising through the depths of his mind and formed on his lips: “Murder.”
     Hennings descended slowly down the deserted gray passage, then opened a hatch and stepped out onto the sunlit flight deck.
     A moderate breeze swept the wide expanses of the nearly deserted deck. Seventy-five yards forward of the conning tower sat the S-3 transport. The pilots were giving it a final line check. An orderly had already collected Hennings’s luggage from his stateroom, and it was sitting near the baggage door. It seemed so long ago that the S-3 had brought him here. Hennings turned and walked away from the aircraft.
     The Pacific sun lay directly astern of the ship, and the asphalt flight deck gave off waves of undulating heat. He spotted a seaman working near the aft starboard elevator, and he turned to avoid him. He crossed the deck diagonally and walked toward the fantail. He approached the edge of the deck and stood with his hands on the chain rail. Below, he could see the white foaming wake left behind by the giant nuclear-powered carrier. Straight down, mounted on the stern, a huge American flag hung from its mast. The flag snapped nicely in the wind, its bright colors standing out against the white wake.
     Randolf Hennings thought about his wife, Mary. He had spent most of their thirty-nine years of marriage away from her. And with her death coming so soon after his retirement, he had never really had the time to do the things with her that he had put off for so long.
     He thought about his friends. Most of them were dead, some in battle, some from natural causes. The remainder were living out their lonely retirements. As a Navy man, he had no roots, no hometown, no family that knew him.
     More and more he had come to understand that he was not only lonely, he was an anachronism as well. He had always believed that today’s scientific advancements and solutions were going to require some unexpected and unacceptable payments tomorrow. Now he realized that tomorrow was here. And today’s situation ethics as practiced by James Sloan, often led to more unhappiness and more dire consequences than yesterday’s rigid moral code. It was this runaway technology, with no clear sense of ethics and no accountability, that killed the Straton and everyone aboard her. That killed Peter Matos. Hennings had tried to fit into the new scheme but had succeeded only in being an accessory to a monstrous crime.
     He had heard the S-3’s engines starting on the forward service elevator 200 yards behind him. They would be looking for him soon. Captain Diehl and a few officers and men would assemble quickly to pipe him off, then get back to more important duties.
     Randolf Hennings stared into the churning wake. He thought of those officers he knew who were buried at sea, and whose lives had ended in the sea. They had lived shorter lives than his, but had died before anything could erase their heroic deeds.
     Someday, he believed, on the Judgment Day, the sea and the earth would give up its dead, and give up its secrets as well. Then men would point to their murderers, their torturers, to those who falsely accused them, to those whose negligence and stupidity had caused their deaths. Then God would judge each man in turn and mete out a fitting punishment.
     He heard the ship’s address system call his name in the distance.
     Randolf Hennings slid beneath the chain rail and strode purposefully to the edge of the ship’s fantail. Without breaking stride he stepped from the carrier’s deck, fell past the safety net, past the unfurled American flag, and dropped unnoticed into the white wake of the USS Chester W. Nimitz.

16

17

18

19

In the cockpit of the Straton airliner stood First Officer Daniel McVary and more than a dozen passengers—mostly men, some women, and a few children. They were babbling and wailing, their residual instincts telling them that they were in danger. Their faces and arms were covered with freshly coagulated blood from the battering they had taken during the descent into the storm.
     Sharon Crandall stared at them. “John …”
     Linda Farley fought to keep from screaming. Her body began shaking.
     “John!”
     Berry’s whole existence had been reduced to the controls in front of him and the runway looming up outside his windshield. “Ignore them! Stay in your seat! Linda, put your head between your legs and don’t move.” It was hardly more than one mile to the threshold of the runway. Thirty more seconds. The Straton’s speed was too high and its altitude too low. Berry could feel someone’s hand brush against the back of his neck. He tried to ignore what was behind him. He concentrated on the airport and his approach path.
     Berry could see the crash trucks racing in from all directions, converging on the entire length of the runway. He glanced quickly at the airspeed indicator. Still too fast. They would overshoot the runway and land in the bay or veer off and crash into the buildings outside the airport boundary. He made another adjustment with the throttles and the flight controls.
     As the airliner streaked toward the threshold of the runway, Berry became more aware of the press of bodies jammed into the cockpit of the Straton. He suddenly realized that someone was standing barely inches from him. Berry glanced to his right.
     Daniel McVary stood at the rear edge of the center console. His body leaned forward, hovering threateningly over the flight controls. The other passengers stepped to the front of the cockpit, cautiously, tentatively, like unwelcome visitors.
     Sharon Crandall drew away from McVary. Her voice came out in a barely audible whisper. “John …”
     “Stay strapped in. Don’t move. Don’t provoke them.”
     McVary reached out and put his hand on the copilot’s control wheel.
     Berry felt the pressure on his wheel, then felt a cold, clammy hand on his face. He heard Linda trying to fight down a mounting hysteria. “Christ, Jesus!” The threshold of the runway was half a mile away. The excessive speed was dropping off and the nonexistent fuel was still flowing to the engines. Please, God. He eased farther back on the throttles and felt McVary’s hand on his. “For God’s sake, get the hell out of here!” He swiped at McVary’s hand.
     With the other hand still wrapped around the copilot’s control wheel, Daniel McVary pulled hard. This was his control wheel, that much he remembered, although he had no idea what it was for.
     Berry could feel the man’s pull. He pushed forward against the captain’s control wheel with as much force as he could, to counterbalance what McVary was doing with the copilot’s wheel. Berry’s arms ached. “Get away, you stupid son-of-a-bitch. For Christ’s sake …”
     Crandall struck out at McVary with her fists. “Stop! Stop! Go away! John. Please!”
     “Steady … steady …” They had only a quarter of a mile to go, but Berry knew that he was losing in this battle of brute strength. Whatever the copilot had lost in mental ability hadn’t affected his muscle power. “Sharon! Get him off! Now! Fast!”
     Sharon tried to pry the man’s fingers from the control wheel, but McVary held to it with an incredible strength. She bent over and bit savagely into the back of his right hand, but McVary was almost totally beyond pain.
     Daniel McVary pulled against the copilot’s control wheel even harder, and it caused the Straton to suddenly pitch up and its right wing to dip low as the tail began to yaw from side to side. The stall-warning synthetic voice began to fill the cockpit again with its frightening chant. AIRSPEED. AIRSPEED . Several of the passengers howled. Linda screamed.
     Many of the people standing in the cockpit were thrown off balance by the sudden erratic motions of the Straton. They lurched back toward the bulkhead; some of them fell against the circuit-breaker panel.
     McVary held firmly onto the wheel and kept his balance.
     “You bastard! Let go, you son-of-a-bitch.” Berry knew he had only a few seconds left to get the Straton back under control. If he didn’t, they would die—right here, right now. The runway was only a short distance ahead. “Sharon! Help me! Help!”
     Sharon Crandall felt the flesh in McVary’s hand break under her teeth, and blood run over her chin and down her neck. Still, the hand would not move. She picked her head up and shot her hand out, jabbing a finger in McVary’s eye.
     The copilot screamed, and released the wheel.
     Berry pushed his control wheel abruptly forward, rotated it to the left, and pressed hard against the rudder panels. The Straton seemed to hang in its awkward position for a long second. The stall-warning synthetic voice was still sounding, the repetition of its one-word vocabulary now continuous. AIRSPEED, AIRSPEED, AIRSPEED . Berry could see the ground streaking by outside his windshield at an incredible angle, then suddenly the horizon straightened and the runway centerline swung back to the middle of the windshield.
     But the Straton had lost too much airspeed. Even without the continuous blaring of the stall-warning voice, Berry could feel the sickening sensation that told him the airliner was nearly done flying. In another moment the Straton would fall uncontrollably, like an elevator cut loose from its cable, its 400 tons crashing to the runway below.
     “John!” Sharon screamed. The ground rushed up toward them. She covered her eyes.
     Waiting as long as he dared, Berry made one last and desperate pull on the flight controls with all the strength he had left.

Captain Kevin Fitzgerald’s experienced eye told him instantly that the pilot had suddenly lost control. He found himself running toward the plummeting airliner, shouting as he ran. “He’s losing it! It’s pitching on him! Oh, goddamn it, he’s losing it. Christ Almighty!” The pilot had managed to get the giant airliner within a half mile of the runway, and now, inexplicably, he was letting the ship get away from him. He shouted like a coach trying to play the game from the sidelines. “Goddamn it! Goddamn you! Hold it, you bastard, hold it! Kick the rudder. The rudder! Kick the goddamn rudder, you son-of-a-bitch!” He suddenly stopped running.
     Just before the Straton’s wheels hit the runway, Fitzgerald could see that the pilot had made one final, desperate control input. That, coupled with the aircraft’s low airspeed, was all that averted instant and total catastrophe. But the aircraft’s unspent downward energy was still far too great for its designed limits of strength. As Fitzgerald watched, the Straton sank down onto its undercarriage, then the huge sets of landing gear snapped off as if they were made of glass. Broken wheels and struts catapulted in all directions. The airliner fell onto its belly and skidded down the runway at over a hundred knots, a shower of sparks rising beneath and behind it. The aircraft yawed left and right, dangerously close to a complete spin. Fitzgerald could see the speed brakes extend above the wings. The rudder was still working back and forth; Fitzgerald knew the pilot had not given up.
     The crowd on the grass began running as the uncontrolled airliner, as tall as a three-story building and as long and wide as a football field, began skidding toward them. Some of the crowd jumped on retreating vehicles; others hit the ground.
     Fitzgerald knew that no place was safer than any other if the Straton went off the runway, and he stood his ground and watched. Around him, four news cameramen stood in the grass, recording the progress of the giant airliner plowing across the runway less than 3000 feet away. The sound of scraping and tearing metal rose above the screaming of the engines as the tortured Straton 797 came closer.

Wayne Metz said to Ed Johnson, in an awed, faraway voice, “Did he make it?”
     “Sort of.”
     “Will it explode?”
     “Maybe.”
     They both watched as the huge aircraft continued its crabbing skid down the runway, leaving a trail of sparks, coupled with an unbelievable sound of scraping, tearing, tortured metal.
     Metz asked, “What should we do if it doesn’t explode?”
     “We should go out to the aircraft and be among the first to meet the pilot.”
     Metz glanced at Johnson, then back at the Straton. He said softly, “Explode and die.”

Berry felt the Straton settle hard on its landing gear, and heard the incredible sound of the gear ripping off. The airliner’s 820,000 pounds dropped jarringly onto the runway and the aircraft began to slide. Berry’s only emotion as the landing gear collapsed was anger. Anger at himself for getting it so far and losing it at the last moment.
     But it wasn’t all lost yet. He was alive, and he intended to stay that way. He glanced toward Sharon. As his hands reached for the fuel shut-off switches, she was looking at him, and apparently had been since the impact, watching his face, trying to see by his expression if they were going to live or die. He nodded to her, as if to say, It’s okay. But it wasn’t.
     Berry raised the spoilers on top of the wings to act as speed brakes in a last desperate attempt to slow the careening airliner. His feet worked the rudder pedals, but he could see it was having little effect on keeping the aircraft pointed straight down the runway, now that the fuselage was in contact with the pavement.
     For a split second, right before touchdown, he had seen himself taxiing the crippled airliner up to the parking ramp, but now he knew he would be lucky if he could avert an explosion. For the first time since he had begun flying, he wanted to run out of fuel. But even if the tanks were dry, there was probably enough volatile fumes in them to blow the airplane to pieces.
     He saw the crowd scattering to his left, and noticed the crash trucks moving away as well. He motioned for Sharon to get into a crash position, but she shook her head. He looked quickly over his shoulder and saw that Linda had her head between her legs. The passengers were stumbling and falling; the deceleration had thrown many of them back into the lounge.
     The sickening sound of tearing, scraping metal filled the cockpit with a noise so great that he literally could no longer think clearly. He turned back to the front and waited out the final seconds. There was nothing left for him to do concerning the Straton, and that, at least, was a welcome relief.

The Straton skidded toward Fitzgerald. As it came within a hundred feet of him, it suddenly spun out of control, its seven-story-high tail coming around in a slow clockwise direction. Fitzgerald dropped to the ground. The massive Straton filled his whole field of vision and he could actually smell its engines and feel its heat as its wing passed above him. He looked up and saw the left wing dip down and plow into the grass. The outboard engine fell from its mounts and rolled end over end in the grass, leaving a trail of blazing earth behind it.
     People began to yell, “Fire!”
     Fitzgerald looked up at the aircraft spinning and sliding away from him. He could see that the wing section around the lost engine was a maze of severed wires, tubes, and cables. Long plumes of orange flame and black smoke trailed off the damaged wing. Within seconds the entire left wing was ablaze, flames shooting up to the full height of the fuselage.
     Fitzgerald stood quickly and began running after the moving airliner. Incredibly, on his right, he saw Edward Johnson and Metz running too. Johnson he could understand. There was nothing cowardly about the man, no matter what one thought of him. But Metz … What the hell was going on here?
     The Straton had slowed considerably as soon as its wing and engine ripped into the ground, and the spinning action further slowed its forward momentum. The aircraft came to rest a hundred yards from Fitzgerald.
     Rescue units began rushing toward the Straton, and fire vehicles converged on it with nozzles spewing foam over its length, trying to smother the fire before the fumes and fuel in the tanks exploded.

From the captain’s seat, Berry could see the wall of flame that engulfed the left wing.
     Before the airliner came to a complete stop, Berry ripped off his seat belt, stood, and reached across to Sharon Crandall. He grabbed her arm and shook her. “Sharon! Sharon!” She was dazed, and he could tell from the gray pallor of her face that she was in shock. He opened her belt and pulled her out of the chair.
     She clung to him for a second, then picked her head up. “I’m all right. We have to get out of here.”
     Berry looked around. The cockpit was jammed with twisted, moving bodies. The first whiffs of acrid smoke had already floated up the circular stairs into the lounge, and drifted into the cockpit. Passengers from the lounge were beginning to respond to the smoke, and began heading toward the cockpit.
     Berry shouted above the noises of the injured and the sounds of the emergency units outside. “Open the emergency door. I’ll get Linda.”
     She nodded quickly and pushed her way through the stumbling forms around her.
     Berry pulled away a lifeless body draped over the observer’s seat and unbuckled Linda’s belt. The girl was barely conscious, and he lifted her over his shoulder.
     He pushed his way to the door, which was still closed. “Sharon! Open the door. Open the door.”
     She knelt beside the small emergency door, tears running down her face. “It’s stuck! Stuck!”
     He thrust the girl into Sharon’s arms and pulled at the emergency handle. It held fast, and he pulled again, but it wouldn’t open. Damn it. The airframe is probably bent. He looked around wildly. Through the cockpit door poured a stream of passengers, crawling, clawing, staggering, and with them came clouds of black stinging smoke, darkening the cockpit. The passengers pressed against him; they were thrashing, howling, terrified. Foam splattered against the windshields, and the cockpit became almost black. He looked up and saw that Sharon and Linda had disappeared. He reached for them, but other bodies were forcing him back against the sidewall. Berry dropped to one knee and rammed forward until he found the emergency door again. He grabbed blindly for the handle, and finally located it. The smoke was overcoming him, and he couldn’t find the strength to pull. “Sharon! Linda! Where are you?”
     “John, here.” Her voice sounded weak. “We’re over here. In the front.”
     “Hold on. Hold on.” Berry looked up, but he couldn’t see more than a few feet through the smoke and the frightened, milling passengers. He turned back to the emergency door. He grabbed the door handle and pulled on it with every bit of strength he could summon. He kept pulling until he thought he would black out.
     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!”

20

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!”
     The Straton listed to the right and was pitched slightly upward. Berry made his way up the left-hand aisle toward the spiral staircase.
     The windows were covered with foam, and the farther he got from the two holes in the fuselage, the darker it got and the heavier the smoke became. He heard people moving around him, and he felt someone push past him in the dark. It was strangely silent, except for an eerie sort of growl coming from somewhere close by. Berry thought it could be a dog.
     He had given up on Barbara Yoshiro and Harold Stein a long time ago, but he had to give it a try. He shouted, “Barbara! Barbara Yoshiro! Harold Stein! Can you hear me?”
     There was no reply at first, then someone, a male, close by in the dark, said, “Here.”
     “Where? Mr. Stein?”
     “Weah. Mista. Heah.”
     “Damn it! Damn it! Shut up!” Berry felt himself losing control, and tried to steady his nerves. He was fairly certain that Yoshiro and Stein were either dead or unconscious, and beyond his help.
     He continued on in the dark, crouching lower because of the smoke. Finally, he found the spiral staircase and grasped the handrails, discovering that the whole unit was loose. He took a few tentative steps up the stairs, then stopped and glanced back toward the shaft of sunlight passing through the holes in the midsection. He tried to see if any of the rescue workers had followed him, but all he could see was one of the brain-damaged wraiths stumbling around, his hands over his eyes, as if the light were blinding him.
     Berry took another step up, and the spiral staircase swung slightly. “Damn. …” He shouted up the stairs, “Sharon! Linda!”
     A voice shouted back, “Shaarn. Linaah!”
     Berry took a deep breath and then another step, then another, carefully making his way up the swaying staircase, shouting as he went, “Sharon! Linda!”
     And each time he was answered with “Shaarn! Linaaah!”
     He could hear people now at the bottom of the stairs, and also people in the lounge at the top of the stairs. Smoke from the cabin was rising up the staircase and, he guessed, out the open emergency door in the cockpit, so it was as if he were standing in a chimney. He found a handkerchief in his pocket and put it over his face, but he felt nauseous and dizzy again, and thought he might black out.
     This was more than heroics, he thought. For one thing, he knew he couldn’t live with himself if he survived by getting down the chute and they died in the cockpit, so close to safety. Also, there was the matter of the data-link printouts, which would prove that he wasn’t crazy when he told the authorities that someone had given him instructions that would put the Straton into the ocean. And then there were his feelings about Sharon Crandall. …
     He took another step up the staircase. A shadow loomed at the top, and a hand from below grabbed his leg. A voice shouted, “Shaarnn!” Someone laughed. A dog growled.
     He was back in hell.

Edward Johnson and Wayne Metz stepped out of the rapid intervention vehicle a hundred yards from the massive Straton, which was surrounded by yellow fire trucks that looked small by comparison, and Johnson was reminded of carrion-eating beetles around a dead bird.
     Johnson surveyed the evacuation site—the aluminum trestles and stretchers, the gurneys, empty wheel-chairs, ambulances pulling away. He found a woman with a clipboard who looked official, and he identified himself as the senior vice president of Trans-United, which he was, and which he wanted to continue being, which was why he was here; he had to control the situation to the extent possible, and with any luck, the man named Berry would be dead, and so would the flight attendant, and the data-link printouts would be sitting in the collecting tray in the cockpit. If none of that was true, Johnson knew he’d have to make some tough decisions and do some unpleasant things.
     The woman with the clipboard identified herself as Dr. Emmett of the airport Emergency Medical Service.
     Johnson asked her, “Doctor, how many people have you pulled out?”
     Dr. Emmett replied, “We haven’t pulled any out. Some came down that chute. Twenty-two, to be exact.”
     Johnson glanced at the yellow chute in the far distance.
     Dr. Emmett continued, “The rescue workers will enter the aircraft shortly. Then we’ll have our hands full.” She thought a moment, then said, “Unless, of course, they’re all dead from smoke inhalation … which is possible since we’ve seen no one inside trying to get out, and no one has deployed any other emergency chute.”
     Johnson nodded and asked her, “What’s the condition of the people you’ve got here?”
     Dr. Emmett hesitated, then said, “Well, they all seem to have suffered some physical trauma … bleeding, contusions, and such, but no burns. All seem to have experienced smoke inhalation—”
     “Their mental state, doctor,” Johnson interrupted. “Are they mentally well?”
     Dr. Emmett considered a moment, then replied, “No. I thought at first it was just shock and smoke inhalation—”
     Johnson interrupted again and said, “They experienced a period of oxygen deprivation when”—he pointed to the hole in the distant fuselage—“when that happened.”
     She nodded. “I see.”
     “Have you noticed any people who look mentally … normal?”
     “I don’t think … Some of them are unconscious and I can’t—”
     Johnson said, “We know there were at least three people who were not affected by the loss of oxygen—a man, a female flight attendant, and a young girl. There may also be another female flight attendant—Oriental—and another male passenger who is not … brain damaged.” He looked at Dr. Emmett and asked her, “Have you seen anyone like that?”
     She shook her head. “No. No women in flight-attendant uniforms for sure, and no young girls. About ten men, but …” She glanced at her clipboard and said, “We’ve taken identification from those who had ID on them—”
     “The men were named Berry and Stein.”
     Dr. Emmett scanned her list, then shook her head. “No … but there was one man in a pilot’s uniform … name tag said McVary. … He was not well.”
     Johnson nodded to himself as his eyes scanned the people in the stretchers around him.
     Dr. Emmett said, “Another gentleman was asking about those people.”
     Johnson turned back to her and described Kevin Fitzgerald, right down to his tan.
     Dr. Emmett nodded.
     Johnson asked, “Where is that gentleman now?”
     She shrugged and motioned around at the controlled chaos spread up and down the runway. “I’m sure I have other things to worry about.”
     “Right—”
     It was Dr. Emmett’s turn to interrupt, and she said, “We’re taking everyone who got out of that plane and who might get out of that plane to Hangar 14, where a field hospital is being set up.” She added, “The field morgue is in Hangar 13. Please excuse me.” She turned and walked quickly away.
     Johnson took Metz’s arm and steered him toward the aircraft.
     Metz asked, “Where are we going?”
     “To the Straton, Wayne.”
     “What if it explodes?”
     “Then we don’t have to face charges of attempted murder. We’ll be dead.”
     Metz broke free of Johnson and said, “Hold on. If it explodes, the evidence goes with it. I’m waiting here.”
     “Wayne, don’t be reactive. Be proactive.”
     “Don’t give me that management-seminar shit. I came this far with you, but no further. If you want to get closer to that … that fucking aluminum death tube filled with gasoline—”
     “Kerosene.”
     “—and brain-damaged people, go right ahead.” He added, “I’ll stay here near the ambulances and see if our friends get this far.”
     Johnson looked at Metz and asked him, “And if you happen to see them, what will you do?”
     Metz didn’t reply.
     “Will you kill them?”
     He shook his head.
     Johnson reminded Metz, “Wayne, if that guy Berry lives, you and I will spend at least ten, probably twenty years in a state or federal prison. I have better ways to spend my golden years than walking around an exercise yard in blue denims.”
     Metz seemed to stare off into space for a long time, then said, “I didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
     Johnson laughed unpleasantly. “I figured you’d say that.” He turned to Metz, then said, “Okay, partner, you can stay here and watch the store. But if I don’t get to Berry and Crandall, and if I don’t get my hands on those data-link printouts, then you can be certain that you’ll be in the cell next to mine.” Johnson turned and walked toward the Straton.
     Wayne Metz watched him go, then turned suddenly and ran toward an ambulance. He shouted to the attendants, who were about to close the doors, “Wait! I need a ride!” He brushed past them and jumped into the back of the ambulance.
     The attendants shrugged and closed the doors.
     Wayne Metz found himself crammed among three stretchers on which were three people. The first thing he realized was that there was a smell of vomit, feces, and urine coming from them. “Oh … ah … ah …” He covered his face with his handkerchief.
     The ambulance suddenly took off at high speed, and Wayne Metz stumbled into a stretcher that held a middle-aged man whose face was smeared and crusty with things Wayne Metz didn’t want to think about. Metz’s stomach heaved, and he made a retching sound. One of the patients let out a howl and another began to grunt.
     Metz backed up to the doors and called out to the two men in front, “Stop! Let me out!”
     The driver called back to him, “Next stop, Hangar 14. Pipe down.”
     Metz would have opened the doors and jumped, but the ambulance was going very fast.
     As the vehicle streaked toward Hangar 14, the three patients on board began screaming and babbling, then one of them howled again.
     Metz felt a chill run down his spine, and the hair on the back of his neck stood up. “Oh … God … get me out of here. …”
     “You jumped on board,” said the attendant in the passenger seat. “Now, keep quiet.”
     “Oh. …” Metz forced himself to look at the faces of the three people strapped into the stretchers. “Oh, my God. …” The term “continuing liability” suddenly struck home.
     He realized he was out of a job, but that didn’t seem so important anymore compared to spending a decade or two in the penitentiary.
     Metz turned and looked out the rear window of the ambulance and focused on the retreating Straton. He said a quiet prayer. “God, let the Straton explode, killing everyone on board, especially Berry and Crandall, and anyone else who has the mental capacity to testify against me, and please, God, let the data-link printouts burn, and let Ed Johnson go up in smoke, too. Thank you, God.”
     But as he watched the Straton, nothing happened. It smoked, but didn’t blow. “Please, God.”
     The patients were babbling, the ambulance reeked, and Wayne Metz’s heart was racing. He had never in his life been so miserable. He began sobbing and choking.
     The attendant had climbed out of his seat and come up behind Metz. “Here. Take these. Tranquilizers. Take the edge off. Make you feel good. Here.”
     Metz swallowed the two pills whole. “Oh … get me out of here. …”
     “Sit down.”
     Wayne pounded on the doors of the ambulance. “Stop!”
     One of the patients shouted, “Stob!”
     The attendant said to Metz, “Sit down, pal, before you fall down.”
     Suddenly, Metz felt light-headed and his knees felt rubbery. “Oh … what … what was … ?”
     The attendant said, “Did I say tranquilizers? I meant sedative. I always get them confused.”
     “But … I …”
     “You cause trouble, you get a Mickey Finn. Lie down.” The attendant helped him to the floor.
     “But … I’m not … a … I wasn’t … I’m not … a passenger.”
     “I don’t care who you are. You’re in my ambulance, and you’re causing trouble. Now you’re out like a light.”
     Metz felt his bladder release, and everything went dark.

Ed Johnson surveyed the scene at the port side of the Straton. The fire chief had declared the aircraft safe from combustion, and rescue workers wearing fire suits and oxygen masks were being lifted on hydraulic platforms into the body of the dead beast.
     Johnson saw the main guy with the gold trim and went up to him. “Chief, I’m Ed Johnson, VP of Trans-United. This is my plane.”
     “Oh, hey, sorry.”
     “Yeah.” He asked, “Anyone alive in there?”
     The chief nodded. “Yeah. The rescue workers are reporting on their radios that they have dozens—maybe hundreds in there.” He added, “We’re strapping them into scoop stretchers—immobilizing them—you know? Then we’ll begin to start taking them out.”
     Johnson nodded. His mind was working on his own problem.
     The chief thought a moment, then said, “These people … They don’t seem right, according to what I’m hearing on the radio. … I mean, nobody tried to get out. …”
     “They’re brain damaged.”
     “Jeez.”
     “Right. Hey, can you get me in there?”
     “Well …”
     “It’s my aircraft, Chief. I have to be on it.”
     “It could still catch fire,” said the chief, though the possibility had greatly diminished. He added, “Toxic smoke and fumes.”
     “I don’t care. I have to be in there with my passengers and crew.” Ed Johnson gave the chief a man-to-man stare, not entirely phony, but partly recalled from the old days before all the politics and compromises. He added, “This is my aircraft, Chief.”
     The fire chief called out to one of his men and said, “Get this man a bunker coat, gloves, and an air pack, and get him up into the craft.”
     “Thanks,” said Johnson.
     As he waited, he stared up at the hole in the side of the craft and said, “What the hell … ?”
     The chief followed his gaze and said, “Yeah. It’s, like, blown in. One of the guys said he thought it could be a meteor strike. You know? Or a piece of satellite. But the two holes are in the sides—horizontal. The other one is blown out—and a lot bigger—like something went in this side and out the other. Maybe a missile. What do you think?”
     “Jesus Christ …” It suddenly hit him. A missile. A runaway missile. A fucking runaway military missile. Or a drone. Something that operated at 60,000 feet and didn’t explode when it hit the Straton. Some military fuckup of the first order, like all those stories about TWA Flight 800. But this one had actually happened. A missile. That had to be it. And he’d been worried about structural failure or a bomb smuggled aboard through lax Trans-United security. And all the time it wasn’t their fault. “Jesus H. Christ. What a fuckup.”
     “What’s that?”
     Johnson glanced at the fire chief. “Wish me luck.”
     “Right.”
     Two firemen helped Ed Johnson into a bunker coat, showed him the fireproof gloves and flashlight hanging from Velcro straps on the coat, and fitted him with a Scott Air-Pak. Johnson let the mask hang on his chest. He said, “Let me have one of those axes.”
     One of the firemen shrugged and handed Johnson a steel-cut ax. The fireman said, “Be careful with that. It’s sharp as a razor.”
     Good. “Thanks.”
     A hydraulic lift raised Ed Johnson up to the rear catering-service door, that had been opened by the rescue workers.
     Johnson stepped from the sunlight into the cavernous Straton 797, lit now by battery-powered lights. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the dimness.
     After half a minute he could see, but he could not comprehend. “Oh, my God …”
     Slowly, he made his way up the left aisle, past rescue workers, past dead and injured passengers strapped in their seats or lying on the floor.
     He came to the holes in the fuselage and examined the swath of wreckage from left to right. He had no doubt that something had passed through the Straton, something that could be called an Act of God, or an Act of Nature, or an Act of Man—but not an act of Trans-United negligence. The irony of the situation struck him, and he would have laughed at himself or cursed his take-charge personality, but he could philosophize later, when he was on vacation or in jail. Right now, he needed to get into the cockpit and to the data-link printout tray.
     He moved forward in his cumbersome bunker coat. The farther he got from the holes, the worse the smoke was. He strapped on his oxygen mask and drove on.
     It was darker toward the front of the aircraft, so he took his flashlight and turned the beam toward where the spiral staircase should be.
     The beam of light picked out the galley and toilet cubicles and also illuminated figures moving around toward the front of the aircraft—but he couldn’t see the staircase.
     He moved up the aisle, past the rescue workers who were clearing the aisles of the dead and putting them in seats. Johnson noticed that the rescue people were also strapping the injured onto stretchers and backboards, as much to protect them from internal injuries as to keep them from wandering around like the living dead. “Jesus Christ, what a mess, what a mess …” Total decompression at 60,000 feet. Let the Straton Aircraft Corporation bright boys explain that to the news media.
     Ed Johnson got to the place where the spiral staircase should have been, but it wasn’t there. It was, in fact, lying on its side in the aisle ahead, looking like some giant corkscrew. “Damn. …” But then it occurred to him that this was better.
     Johnson stopped a passing rescue worker and spoke loudly through his oxygen mask, identifying himself as a National Transportation Safety Board investigator and asked, “Are any of your people in the dome?” He pointed the flashlight up at the circular opening in the ceiling.
     The rescue worker looked up at the opening. He said, “No, sir … I don’t think so.” He called out to the people around him, “Hey, do we have anyone up in the dome yet?”
     A woman called back, “No. There was that chute deployed there. Everyone up there either got out or is probably dead.” She added, “If we have unconscious people up there, they’ll have to wait. We have our hands full here.”
     The rescue worker near Johnson said, “We’ve got about two or three hundred dead and injured here, but I’ll get some people up to the dome—”
     “No. You’ve really got your hands full here. Just give me a boost up there, and I’ll look around.”
     “Okay.” The man called out for help, and two men appeared who made a cradle by joining hands with the third. “Step up.”
     Ed Johnson shouldered the fire ax and stepped onto the three men’s hands and arms, steadying himself on one of their shoulders with his free hand.
     One of the men said, “Check first for bleeding, then breathing, then—”
     “I’m trained in CPR. Lift!”
     The men lifted in unison, and Johnson felt himself lifted—propelled, actually—up and into the opening. He grabbed at the upright newel post that still stood on the floor, and swung himself up into the first-class lounge.
     He remained on the floor and looked and listened, the sounds of his own breathing into the oxygen mask filling his ears. The lounge was completely dark, its windows thick with foam. He heard someone moaning nearby and smelled the same evil odors he’d smelled below. God. … He breathed deeply and stayed motionless awhile and listened.
     He oriented himself without turning on the flashlight and began crawling toward the cockpit, dragging the ax with him.
     The carpet—which Johnson knew was royal blue and cost too much—was wet with different liquids, all of which felt disgusting. He stopped, wiped his hands on his coat, and pulled on the fireproof gloves. He renewed his resolve and crawled on.
     Johnson knew the layout of the lounge, and with only one detour to get around a body, he came to the cockpit door, which he discovered was open.
     Johnson shouldered the steel-cut ax and made his way in a crouch through the opening and into the cockpit.
     He stopped, kneeling on one knee, and looked around. The windshields were covered with foam, but light came through the small emergency door. The smoke here was very light, and what little remained was being suctioned out the open escape hatch. Johnson rose up a bit and peered out the door, spotting the sloping yellow chute. He turned back to the cockpit, but his eyes took a minute to readjust to the darkness. When they did, he spotted a man lying on the floor at the base of the copilot’s seat. The man was dead or unconscious. Johnson glanced all around the cockpit, but there was no one else there, dead or alive.
     Still in a slight crouch to stay beneath the curls of smoke on the ceiling, he made his way toward the observer’s station, then snapped on the flashlight and scanned the beam until he saw what he was looking for—the data-link printer. The beam rested on the tray and illuminated a page of white paper. Thank God.
     Johnson stood, pulled off his gloves and his oxygen mask, and went to the printer, where he retrieved six sheets of paper from the collecting tray. Mission accomplished. He scanned the papers with his flashlight, then turned them over. “What the hell?”
     A voice from behind him answered, “Blank printer paper from the machine.”
     Johnson swung around and pointed his flashlight toward the voice. The dead man was sitting up now, his back to the copilot’s seat. Johnson’s heart literally skipped a beat, then he got himself under control.
     Neither man spoke for a few seconds, then Johnson said, “Berry?”
     “That’s right. And who are you?”
     “None of your fucking business.”
     “I’d like to know the name of the man who tried to kill me.”
     Johnson held the ax out in front of the flashlight so Berry could see it. Johnson said, “And may still kill you.”
     Berry’s eyes focused on the big ax. He hadn’t considered facing a weapon.
     Johnson said, “You’re a brave man, Mr. Berry.”
     “You’re a heartless son-of-a-bitch.”
     “Not really. You of all people understand why I had to do what I did. And after what I saw down there, I wouldn’t change a thing I did.”
     Berry said, “You shouldn’t try to play God.”
     “Why not? Someone has to do it.”
     “Who are you?”
     “It really is best if you don’t know.”
     “If you intend to kill me with that ax, what difference does it make if I know who you are?”
     Johnson said, “The reason you’re still alive and may stay alive is that you don’t know who I am.”
     “The only reason you’re still alive is that ax.”
     Johnson ignored him and said, “If you can produce those data-link printouts, we can make a deal for your life.”
     Berry stood, and Johnson yelled, “Don’t move!”
     Berry stared at the man in the dim light for a few seconds, then said, “The printouts were hidden on the person of the girl who survived.”
     “Where is she?”
     “I put her and your flight attendant Sharon Crandall down that chute into the arms of medics. They were both breathing but unconscious. If either of them dies, I’ll see that you’re executed or I’ll kill you myself.”
     Johnson stood motionless for a second, then said, “Brave talk for a weaponless man facing an ax.”
     “Look, pal, I don’t know who you are, but the game is up. Drop the ax.”
     “I’m not so sure the game is up. I have the option of bashing in your skull—it’ll look like contact trauma—then I’ll slide down that chute and go to Hangar 14, where the survivors are, and find Linda Farley and Sharon Crandall.”
     Berry tensed, and his eyes darted toward the emergency opening.
     Johnson moved a few feet and blocked Berry’s path. Johnson said, “If you have those data-link sheets with you, I give you my word I won’t harm you. Or them.”
     “Of course you will.”
     “I don’t want to kill you. I’d rather we just called one another liars during an investigation. Even if I wind up in court, I’d trust a California jury to find me not guilty. Hell, they find everyone not guilty. Then I’ll write a book and make a lot of money. I’ll even make you a hero in my book.” Johnson laughed and continued, “Come on, Berry. Give me the sheets. Save your life. You’ve come too far to die now.”
     Berry took a deep breath and replied, “I told you, the evidence is gone. Down the chute with the girl.” He shrugged. “You’re finished.”
     “No. You’re finished.” Johnson hesitated, then raised the ax.
     From the lounge came the opening notes of “Jingle Bells” on the piano. A few seconds later, a voice called out, “I never got much beyond this. In fact, it’s the only piano piece I know.”
     Johnson swung around and peered into the dark lounge. “Oh … my God. …”
     The piano music stopped and a man approached through the murkiness. The man’s big form filled the cockpit door. Kevin Fitzgerald said, “Hello, Ed.”
     Ed Johnson stood frozen.
     Fitzgerald said, “Can you massacre both of us with that ax? I doubt it. I doubt you even want to. So drop it.”
     “You … what?” He looked over his shoulder at Berry, then back at Fitzgerald. Suddenly he realized he’d put his foot in a trap and his neck in a noose.
     Fitzgerald addressed John Berry and said, “Thank you, Mr. Berry, for agreeing to act as bait.”
     Johnson’s eyes widened, and he said, “You mean … you’ve met … ?”
     “Just before you arrived,” Fitzgerald replied. Fitzgerald said to Berry, “The gentleman with the ax is Mr. Edward Johnson, senior vice president of Trans-United Airlines. A good company man who has the best interests of the airline at heart. Not to mention the best interests of Ed Johnson.” Fitzgerald said to Johnson, “I sort of figured it was you.”
     Johnson snarled, “Bullshit!”
     “No, really, Ed. You have the right combination of balls, brains, selfishness, and total lack of conscience.”
     “Oh, fuck you, Kevin. I don’t need a fucking lecture from you. I tried to save this airline. You and your fucking pampered pilots wouldn’t do that.”
     Fitzgerald lost his patience and snapped, “My pilots save this airline every damn day they’re up there, you desk-bound son-of-a—”
     “Enough!” yelled Berry. He had a feeling this was an old argument. “Enough.” He said to Johnson, “Drop the damned ax, or so help me God, I’m coming right at you, and I’m going for your eyes. Drop it!”
     Johnson stood motionless for a second, then swung the ax in a wide arc and with incredible strength sent it sailing into the front windshield, which shattered in a thousand pieces. He said to Fitzgerald, “Fuck you. Try to prove it.” Johnson strode over to the emergency door and stood crouched at the yellow chute for a moment, then looked back over his shoulder and said to Berry, “If you had any real balls and any conscience whatsoever, you would have put this fucking planeload of living dead into the water instead of trying to save your own ass. You can both go to hell.” And with that, he propelled himself, legs first, down the long yellow chute.
     Fitzgerald said to Berry, “Don’t pay any attention to him.”
     Berry didn’t reply.
     Fitzgerald continued, “As I said to you before, and I’ll say again, you did the right thing, and you did it well. Regardless of Mr. Johnson’s opinion, Trans-United is grateful.”
     “Good. Do you think I’m too old to get a job flying commercial airliners?”
     Fitzgerald smiled and replied, “You’re obviously capable.”
     Berry smiled for the first time in a long time. He looked around, then said, “I’ve seen enough of this cockpit.”
     Fitzgerald nodded.
     Both men slid down the yellow chute into the sunlight and landed on their feet.

21

About the Authors and the Book

Then there was the thing that bothered Becker from the first day he had taken the Concorde up to 19,000 meters. It was the problem of sudden cabin decompression of the type that can happen if you are hit by a missile, or if there is a small explosion on board, or if someone shatters a window with a bullet … at 19,000 meters, you needed a pressure suit to make breathing possible, even with an oxygen mask. Lacking pressure suits, you had only a few seconds of usable consciousness to get down to where you could breathe with a mask. There was no way to do that at 19,000 meters. You put the mask on, but you blacked out anyway. The onboard computer sensed the problem and brought the plane down nicely, but by the time you got down to where you could breathe with the mask, you woke up with brain damage.

The End