Mayday
Page 36
Berry thought he’d been unconscious for only a short time since hitting the concrete, because the scene around the Straton was still chaotic with trucks and ambulances rushing toward the aircraft. He looked up at the left wing. Small wisps of smoke were still rising from the areas around the fuel lines, but the flames were out. Several fire trucks were positioned on both sides of the airliner, spraying foam across the wreckage from a safe distance.
Berry took a deep breath. It was strange, he thought, that his body still felt as if it were in the Straton; he still felt the vibrations of the airframe, the pulse and sound of the engines—like a sailor who steps off a ship and walks with a swaying gait. He ran the palms of his hands across the warm concrete, as if to assure himself he had returned to earth.
He took another deep breath to try to clear his head, but there was an acrid smell in the air and his stomach heaved again.
Berry stood unsteadily and looked around the runway. About twenty people were sprawled on the concrete, some unconscious, some moaning, a few crawling. Berry looked for Sharon and Linda—looked for the orange life vests among the injured passengers. But neither Sharon nor Linda was on the ground.
He looked up and saw that the yellow escape chute was still attached to the cockpit emergency door. Berry shouted up at the open door, “Sharon! Linda!”
A figure appeared at the door, and Berry saw that it was the copilot, Dan McVary.
McVary stood at the threshold for a second, then took a step forward, as if he were walking down a flight of stairs. He fell backward and careened quickly down the chute, howling as he accelerated. His feet hit the runway and the sudden deceleration pitched him forward, and he tumbled right into the arms of John Berry.
Both men stared at each other for a few long seconds, and as Berry looked into the eyes of this man who had caused him so much trouble, he realized that anger and hate were totally inappropriate emotions. He said to McVary, “I brought your plane home, buddy. You’re home.”
McVary kept staring at Berry, showing neither comprehension nor aggression. Then he seemed to slacken in Berry’s arms, and a tear rolled down his cheek.
A medic pushing a gurney was racing toward the people at the foot of the chute, and Berry called out to him, “Hey! Take this guy. He’s the copilot. He needs help.”
The medic detoured to Berry, and together they forced McVary onto the gurney. Berry said, “You’d better strap him in.”
The medic nodded, and as he fastened the straps, he asked Berry, “Hey, what’s with these people?”
Berry replied, “Brain. … Lack of oxygen. They’re all … They’re not well. Unpredictable.”
The medic nodded. “You okay?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not supposed to be moving around. Just lie down here and wait for a stretcher.”
“Okay.”
The medic pushed the gurney down the runway toward a dozen parked ambulances and a few dozen trucks that had been pressed into service to transport dead and injured.
Berry tried to make sense of what was going on around him. It appeared that most of the rescue workers and vehicles were staying a respectable hundred yards or so from the Straton until the firefighters gave assurances that the airliner wasn’t going to blow. There were no ladders or hydraulic platforms at any of the doors or at the holes in the sides of the aircraft. All Berry could see were hoses shooting chemicals at the huge aircraft, nose to tail, top to bottom, wingtip to wingtip. The giant airliner was dripping, glistening, as pools of chemicals collected around the craft. Berry noticed that a fire truck was shooting white foam at the tail, obliterating the Trans-United logo. This, he knew, had less to do with fire fighting than with public relations.
He noticed, too, that a number of medics had braved the risk of explosion and were removing the passengers who had slid down the only deployed chute, which was the one from the cockpit.
Berry looked up at the cockpit emergency door and shouted again, “Sharon! Linda!”
He grabbed the arm of a passing fireman and shouted, “My wife and daughter are in the cockpit! I have to get up there!”
The fireman looked up at the towering dome of the Straton 797, the place where the first-class lounge and cockpit were. The man shook his head. “We don’t have anything on the scene that can reach that high.”
“Then get a goddamned truck and ladder here! Now!”
“Steady, fella. We’re going in through the passenger doors in a minute. We’ll get into the dome and get your family.” He added, “I have to ask you to clear this area. Back where the ambulances are. Go on.”
Berry turned and hurried toward the tail of the aircraft.
He felt dizzy, and guessed he had a slight concussion. He surveyed the area around him, and in the far distance he saw the main terminal and more vehicles headed his way. He spotted a number of vans with antennas and dishes on their roofs, and he knew they were television vans. A line of police cars with rotating lights kept them at bay and kept the growing crowd from getting closer.
It occurred to John Berry that somewhere around here was the person or the people who had access to the data-link and who had tried to put him and everyone aboard the Straton into the ocean.Undoubtedly , he thought,someone from the airline. Someone high up who could commandeer the company data-link and clear everyone else out of the area . But that was not his main concern at the moment. His main concern was the two people he’d left behind.
* * *
Trans-United’s chief pilot, Captain Kevin Fitzgerald, moved around the ambulances, between the wheeled gurneys, and among the aluminum trestles on which lay stretchers. He spoke quickly to medics and doctors and looked at each of the twenty or so passengers who had slid down the chute and were being taken here, far from the aircraft that could potentially explode.
Based on what Jack Miller had told him, and on the passenger manifest, Fitzgerald was looking for passengers John Berry, Harold Stein, and Linda Farley, and flight attendants Sharon Crandall and Barbara Yoshiro. But so far, no one answered to those names. In fact, he realized, no one was answering to any name. Within a few minutes, the enormity of what had happened struck him.
Fitzgerald came to a gurney about to be loaded on an ambulance. On it lay a man wearing a bloodstained white shirt with epaulettes, and a black and white name tag that said “McVary.”
Fitzgerald motioned the attendants to hold up a moment, and he leaned over McVary, seeing that he was conscious and strapped down. Fitzgerald recalled meeting Dan McVary once briefly at a training seminar. Fitzgerald said, “Dan. Dan. Can you hear me?”
McVary looked at the chief pilot, a man who yesterday was his boss, a man with whom he’d always wanted to have a few words. But today, First Officer Daniel McVary wouldn’t have even recognized himself in the mirror and certainly did not recognize Chief Pilot Kevin Fitzgerald. “Aarghh!”
“Dan? It’s Kevin Fitzgerald. Dan? Dan, can you … ?”No , Fitzgerald realized,no, you can’t, and no, you never will . “Damn it! Oh, my God, my God, my God …” Suddenly, he realized what Edward Johnson and Wayne Metz were about.
* * *
A fire truck came by, and Berry jumped on the running board beside the driver. He said, “Drive under the wing.”
The driver did a double take, but rather than argue a small point with someone who looked like he meant it, the driver turned slightly and drove toward the tilted wing.
Berry climbed up a small ladder fixed to the side of the cab and balanced himself on the roof. As the fire truck passed beneath the wing, Berry jumped forward and landed on all fours on top of the wing.
He scrambled up the slick, foam-covered wing toward the fuselage where the wing-top emergency door was located. He slid precariously sideways, then found some traction and finally reached the door, grabbing for the recessed emergency latch.
He caught his breath and pulled at the latch, but the small door wouldn’t open. “Damn it!” He propped his knees under the door and kept pulling, bu
t 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’tpulled 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 therewas one man in a pilot’s uniform … name tag said McVary. … He was not well.”
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?”