Perhaps, thought Berry,the antenna cables to those radios were severed along with the voice radios . Voice communication was not that critical for a landing, but unless he could get a good radio navigation signal, and lock onto it, he would not be able to get a bearing for the final steer toward the airport.
Crandall glanced down at the West Coast radio chart in her lap. “Are you sure we’ve got the navigation radios set up right?”
“Let me see the chart again.” Berry reached out for it, glanced at the chart and then the navigation radio, but he knew there was no mistake in the settings. Maybe he was still too far from the coast, or he was too far north or south, or worse, the radios simply weren’t working. He didn’t know, and he might never know. He handed the charts back. “We must still be out of range. Keep watching the needle on your side. If it moves, even a bit, let me know.”
“Will do.” Her eyes involuntarily passed across the data-link screen. The message sat there, then disappeared as someone at the other end pressed the repeat button. The alerting bell rang again, and the same message began to print across the screen as it had done every three or four minutes for the last three hours.TO FLIGHT 52: IF YOU CAN RECEIVE US, DON’T THINK WE HAVE ABANDONED YOU. THIS LINK WILL BE MANNED CONTINUOUSLY UNTIL YOU ARE FOUND. SAN FRANCISCO HQ.
“Maybe we should answer.”
Berry didn’t bother to look at the message again. Every time the alerting bell rang, he turned to the screen. He was beginning to feel as conditioned as Pavlov’s dog. His willwas weakening, and he wanted to answer. But then he might still be persuaded to do whatever they said.
“John, it’s inconceivable that they would keep repeating this message if they—”
“They just want to be absolutely certain we’re down.”
He thought about that rapid succession of fifteen to twenty messages that had come in hours before. They had made the alerting bell ring continuously for more than a minute. “More probably they have to show that they’re still trying to do something for us. They’ll send messages until some government official or some airline executive determines that if we were still flying, we’d be out of fuel. It’s probably standard operating procedure. I don’t know exactly what’s going on back there, but don’t forget the Hawaii vector, and don’t forget those informative instructions on how to shut off the damn fuel.”
Crandall nodded. The words looked so sincere, sitting there on the screen. “John, maybe—”
“Change the subject.” Berry had spent a good portion of the last few hours trying to imagine the scene at the other end of the data-link.Bastards .
“John? Do you think we should practice any more?” Sharon pointed to the flap handle.
“No. You’ve got that routine down okay.” The two of them had been going over the landing sequence so that Sharon could operate the flaps and landing gear at Berry’s command. That would free him to concentrate on the runway—or the surface of the ocean, if it came to that. “You don’t want to be overtrained, do you?” Berry asked, smiling.
She forced a smile in return.
The cockpit grew silent and allowed the sounds of the lounge to penetrate. Berry could hear crying and some soft moaning, but for the most part it was quiet. They were sleeping, he thought. Then the piano began to play again, loudly this time, and Berry recognized the piece. It was unmistakably a passage from Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 1, though in a terrible deranged arrangement. “Hold the wheel.”
Berry ripped off his seat belt and moved quickly to the door.
“John, what are you doing?”
Berry pushed the door open against the stretched nylon and held it while he craned his head around the edge. He looked back into the lounge. The twisted forms of the dead and dying lay everywhere, like broken dolls strewn about the room of a disorderly child. Many of the passengers were still moving, however, roaming aimlessly over the body-strewn carpet. Daniel McVary was standing, facing the cockpit door, his face battered and one eye swollen shut. He walked slowly, with a limp, toward Berry.
At the piano sat Isaac Shelbourne, his long white hair wildly disheveled, and his hands moving dexterously over the keyboard as Berry had seen them move so many times on television. “Stop! Shelbourne, shut up! For Christ’s sake, stop it!”
“John!”
Linda called out. “Mr. Berry … please close the door.”
Berry drew his head back and let the door be pulled closed by the tension of the nylon. He turned and walked slowly back to the flight chair and climbed in. He sat staring down at his lap for several seconds, then lifted his hands and took the wheel. “All right, I’ve got it.”
Sharon Crandall looked at him and reached out to touch his shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m fine.”
There was an awkward silence in the cockpit.
Linda heard a noise behind her and turned in her seat. She screamed.
Berry and Crandall looked back quickly.
Several groping hands crept through the door opening. A few hands wrapped around the edge and pulled.
Crandall unbuckled her belt. “Damn it, you stirred them up again.” She rose out of her seat.
“Stay here. I’ll go.”
“No. I can handle it. Fly the plane.” She stepped to the bulkhead and took the fire extinguisher from its wall rack, then moved to the door and examined the length of panty hose. “You stretched it.”
Berry didn’t answer.
Crandall looked at the knot wrapped around the broken latch. The knot was secure, but the fiberglass door around the latch was cracked, and she couldn’t remember if it had been that way before. The rivets on the latch assembly seemed loose also. She looked up and saw faces and bodies at the opening, which was about six inches wide. She raised the fire extinguisher and pointed it directly at Dan McVary’s face. She pressed the trigger, and a rushing cloud of vapor blasted into the door opening. Excited squeals came from the other side of the door. Most of the hands disappeared. She raised the extinguisher and brought it down on one of the remaining hands, then struck out at the finger still gripping the door. She waited for a moment, then turned and replaced the extinguisher in its rack and sat down. “The door area around the latch is cracking.”
Berry nodded.
“The copilot … Dan McVary … seems to be instigating. …”
“I know.” Berry wondered how a single obsession could take hold in that damaged a brain. How was he communicating his leadership to the others?
“The extinguisher feels like it’s nearly empty.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Why not?”
“Look, I’m sorry. I got a little carried away. Okay?”
She nodded, and tears started to form in her eyes. “I’m sorry, too. It wasn’t your fault. You’ve done so well, John. I don’t know if any of our regular pilots could have done the same.”
“No, they couldn’t have. Because they would have realized it was hopeless from the start.” He reached out and ran his hand over the side of her face. “I have a good crew.” He turned and looked down at Linda Farley. “You’ve been a good member of the crew.” He smiled at her.
Linda gave him an embarrassed smile.
Sharon Crandall put her hand on his arm. “Want me to take the wheel?”
“No. I’ve got it.”
“Do you want to try to engage the autopilot again?”
“No. It’s just as easy to fly it myself. I need the practice.”
“Okay.”
Berry would have liked to have the autopilot, not only to relieve him at the wheel but because the autopilot might have made it possible for him to try for an automatic landing if they found the airport—although he didn’t really know how to set that up, either. Without the autopilot, he would have to hand-fly the damaged Straton right into the touchdown. He scanned the horizon and watched his radio bearing indicator.
“John! It moved!”
Berry leaned far out of his seat and stared d
own at the indicator on the copilot’s navigation radio.
They both looked at it for a long time, but the needle lay lifeless in the center of its scale. Berry saw too that the distance-to-go readout was blank.
“I thought I saw it move.” She tried to sound emphatic. “I was sure I did.”
“Nothing.” He straightened up in his chair. “Keep an eye on it.”
“Right.”
Berry settled back again. Everything on the instrument panel remained unchanged. Dead voice radios. Dead navigation radios. Amber autopilot-disengage light on. Heading of 131 degrees. Airspeed of 340 knots. Altitude of 900 feet. The only change was the fuel gauge, which had sunk below the one-eighth mark. Even if they spotted land now, it was going to be very close.
Berry looked up at the horizon. Nothing. The long, uneventful three-and-a-half-hour portion of the flight had raised their hopes, but now with land supposed to be in sight, the tension was beginning to show. He tried to calm the mounting uneasiness within him.
Sharon pointed to the horizon. “What’s that?”
Berry sat up and peered out the window. For the last half hour, every patch of low sea fog had become California, every hazy discoloration on the horizon had been San Francisco. Their imaginations and their hopes kept creating solid land out of each vapor, only to see it melt away as they approached. He stared at the low hazy line on the horizon and saw it move, then drift away as an ocean breeze caught it. “Nothing. More fog.”
“It might be the fog of San Francisco.”
“It might—What?”
“The San Francisco fog.” She looked at her watch. “It’s just past six. That’s nearly always the time that the fog rolls in during the summer.”
Berry looked at her. “Why the hell didn’t you remind me? Damn! What am I supposed to do if the airport is covered with fog?”
“Well … you can make an instrument landing, can’t you?”
Berry resisted the temptation to remind her of his meager qualifications. “No. A full instrument landing is out of the question.” He had no business in the Straton’s captain’s seat. There were more instruments in the Straton’s cockpit than there were combined in the last ten planes he had flown. “Damn, I should have headed north or south to another airport.”
Crandall reminded him, “Since we don’t know where we are, we may already be north or south of San Francisco.” She tapped her finger against the fuel gauge. “We’ll be lucky if we even see the coast. I wouldn’t worry about the San Francisco fog yet.”
Berry looked down at the gauge.One-sixteenth . “Yes. You’re right.”
“Maybe we can put it down near the beach,” she said as she stole a glance at him. “Can we do that?”
“I suppose. If we get that far, and if I see that the coastline is covered with fog, I’ll ditch it.” Berry knew that a ditching into heavy fog would be suicide. “I’d like to try for the airport, but we would have to consider the people on the ground. …”
“Then don’t try it. Whatever you want to do is all right. Just take it easy. You’ll do the best you can when the time comes.”
“Right.” His nerves were becoming raw, and he hoped he had something left in him when the time came to put the plane down. From the first time he stepped into the cockpit and saw the disabled crew, he knew that, barring any midair catastrophe, he would have to put the Straton down eventually. That time—as the fuel gauges told him—was nearly here.
“It’s not always foggy.”
“What? Oh, right.”
“And when it is, the fog usually comes in slowly. We may be able to beat it. And sometimes it doesn’t get as far as the airport.”
“Good.” He noticed that no one offered to bet a dinner on it.
The Straton continued on its southeasterly flight path, the sinking sun casting the airliner’s shadow onto the smooth ocean in front of its port wing. Berry scanned the horizon for land, and watched for other aircraft or ships that might recognize that the airliner was in trouble. But they were alone.
“John! It moved again!”
He looked quickly down at the copilot’s panel. “It’s not moving.”
She stared at the navigation radio bearing indicator, but the needle was dead. “It did. There’s no question this time. I saw it. Damn it, I saw it.”
“Okay, okay.” Berry watched the needle carefully. He’d heard stories of desperate pilots who had wanted to see runway lights or encouraging indications from their instruments so badly that they hallucinated into existence whatever they needed.
“I saw it move.”
“Okay. Let’s watch it.”
They stared at it for a full minute. Berry picked up the radio chart and rechecked the frequency. The navigation radio in front of Crandall was unquestionably tuned to the San Francisco station. Berry turned and looked back at its indicator. “Still dead,” he said in a whisper, as if his voice would scare away the signal.
She said nothing.
As they both watched, the needle finally gave a small, barely perceptible bounce.
Sharon Crandall jumped in her seat. “Did you see it?”
Berry’s face broke into a wide smile. “I saw it. You bet I saw it.”
The needle began to bounce more vigorously as the navigation radio received the signal more strongly. The electronic pathway to San Francisco suddenly opened to them.
As the small needle quivered with the electronic impulse of San Francisco Airport’s directional beam, John Berry knew how all the lost and lonely aviators, seamen, and explorers felt when they laid eyes on the object of their search. “We’re heading home. Not much farther to go now.”
“John, we’re going to make it. I know it.”
“Our odds have certainly improved. Turn that dial. That one—until the needle centers.”
She did as he said.
“Okay?”
“Yes. Now read me the number that shows on the display.”
“One-three-nine.”
“Okay.” Berry faced the wheel and began steering the Straton through a shallow right turn until the compass heading of 131 degrees swung to the new heading of 139 degrees, then leveled out.
Sharon looked back at Linda Farley, who had maintained her usual silence. “We have San Francisco on the radio.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
She smiled. “No. It’s a … navigation radio. Like a compass. We know where the airport is now.”
“Do they know where we are?”
Berry spoke. “Not yet. But they’ll see us on radar soon.”
Linda Farley leaned forward in her seat and asked, “Are you going to land the airplane, Mr. Berry?”
Berry nodded. “Yes, I am.” He paused. “But we might still have to land in the water. You remember what Sharon told you about landing in the water?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Berry set his navigation radio from Salinas to San Francisco. “I’ll read it from here on. Look for land.” He adjusted the dials and watched as the distance-to-go meter began cycling into place. He looked at the readout and smiled. “San Francisco Airport dead ahead—ninety-three miles.”
“Ninety-three miles,” she repeated. “How much longer?”
“About fifteen minutes. What time is it?”
“Eight minutes past six.”
Berry nodded. “Well, we’ll be on the ground no later than six-thirty.”
“Oh, dear God, I can’t believe it.” Her voice became choked. “Oh, John—oh, God, I can’t believe it.” She put her face down into her hands and her body began to shake. “We’re almost home.”
“Yes,” Berry answered absently. He had let his eyes drift toward the fuel gauges. The needles were almost on the empty marks. He had gotten good at translating the graduations on the fuel gauges into flight time.By six-thirty , he said to himself,we’ll be out of fuel .
17
* * *
Hot lights always annoyed Edward Johnson, and today they seemed more annoying than
usual. The long, walnut-paneled press conference room on the second level of the main terminal building was filled to overflow capacity with newspeople, camera crews, company officials. Everyone loved a disaster, reflected Johnson, except the people who were physically or financially involved. “Goddamn vultures,” he said.
“Lower your voice,” said Wayne Metz. Metz stood next to Johnson, trying to look inconspicuous, as though he had no direct connection with Johnson. “There are microphones in front of you.”
Johnson was feeling reckless. “Goddamn vultures.” There was such a din in the room, he didn’t think anyone could hear him if he shouted out a full confession. He mopped his brow and noticed with annoyance that half the lights had not yet been turned on. “It’ll be over soon.” He glanced up at the clock. 6:08. “These goddamned things never start on time.”
Hank Abbot, the Straton Aircraft Corporation representative, pushed his way through the crowd. “Hello, Ed. Bad break.”
Johnson glanced at him. “Yeah.”
Abbot turned to Metz. “Wayne Metz, right? Beneficial?”
“Right.”
“Bad break for you, too.”
Johnson broke in. “Have you notified your insurance carrier yet?”
Abbot looked at him for several seconds until he understood. “Hold on, Ed. One of those data-link messages mentioned a bomb.”
“Did you see the damage, Hank?”
“No, of course not, but …”
“Neither did an engineer. Do you think some half-hysterical, possibly brain-damaged passenger could tell the difference between a bomb blast and a structural failure?”
“Wait a damned minute—”
“If a wall or window blew out because the hull couldn’t handle the air pressure, that would be your problem, wouldn’t it?”
“Look, Ed, we’ve done business with Trans-United since before the war. On those rare occasions when an accident was caused by structural failure or faulty design, we’ve owned up and made good, but …”
“Sorry, Hank. No aircraft, no survivors, no one knows anything. I don’t think we should be speaking to each other at this time without counsel present.”
Mayday Page 32
