Blackout

by Nance, John J. ;

  It was a full twenty seconds before Lucy Haggar and the two flight attendants with her could exhale.

  “Okay,” Lucy began. “I asked for straight talk, I got straight talk. Now I think I need a straight bourbon. Maybe the whole damn bottle.”

  “I can get that for you,” Claire replied, but Lucy had her hand up, her head cocked, and a strange smile on her face.

  “I’m only kidding, Honey. Nightmares are best handled sober. But later I’m gonna close a few bars in Kowloon before I take the train back to Austin.”

  She turned and headed back to her seat as Bill Jenkins began a translation of the announcement in Mandarin Chinese.

  The Autopilot Disconnect Warning coursed through Dan Wade’s consciousness like an electric shock, causing him to jump at the same instant the huge 747 lurched downward.

  “Gad!” He grabbed the control yoke, turning his head toward the captain’s seat. His left hand was already on the control panel along the top of the glareshield, feeling for the square button, which he punched again to reconnect the autopilot while holding the control yoke as steady as he could.

  The feel of the panel was reassuringly familiar, and for a split second, he almost forgot his eyesight was gone. But reality came back in a tidal wave of fear. He felt the bandage and the salve that Dr. Tash had slapped on his eyes minutes before. Fear was eating at him, distracting him from the task of trying to land. Despite his reassuring words on the PA, a safe landing was anything but certain; that reality was clouding his judgment, pushing him to rush the landing to get it over with.

  It seemed far too hot in the cockpit to Dan, but there was no time to fumble for the temperature control. He was thirsty, too.

  “What’s my altitude, Geoffrey?” Dan asked the unseen passenger to his left.

  “I’m—I’m looking,” Geoffrey replied, his cultured voice cracking in fear. “I believe it says … yes, it says we’re at just under twelve thousand.”

  “Good. Please verify that the altimeter is steady.”

  Another pause.

  “It’s steady.”

  “Geoffrey, did you push that sideways button on the control yoke?”

  “Yes. I am most terribly sorry. I was just trying to get familiar with things.”

  “That’s the Autopilot Disconnect button. I’ll ask you to punch that when we get on the ground, but only on my command, okay?”

  “Certainly.”

  Bringing him to the cockpit was probably a mistake, Dan thought. A few hours of instruction in light airplanes forty years ago was pretty thin preparation for being thrown into a space capsule. But what other choice did he have?

  “First rule, Geoffrey,” Dan added, holding his left index finger in the air, his voice shaking slightly, “is never push, turn, punch, twist, or alter anything up here unless you know precisely what you’re doing, or I tell you to. We desperately need the autopilot to stay connected.”

  “I understand. I apologize.”

  Dan was sweating profusely, his breath coming in spurts, his hands shaking.

  “How’re you doing?” Graham Tash asked evenly. It was mostly rhetorical. He could see how the copilot was doing. The copilot was in pain and struggling and scared to death, like every one of his passengers.

  There was a derisive sound from Dan as he started to shake his head, then winced. “How am I doing? I’m sorry, Doc. I’m just … I’m just … trying to cope, ah, with all this, okay? We’re flying level on autopilot, we’ve got plenty of fuel—in fact, too much—and I’m just about ready to get this beast to land itself.”

  “Did the shot help?”

  “It took the edge off, but it feels like someone’s stabbing burning knives in my face and my eyes. I’ve … I’ve never felt pain like this, but I can’t let you knock me out with too much painkiller.”

  Dan turned his bandaged face toward the British passenger in the captain’s chair. “Ah … Geoffrey?”

  “Yes, Dan.”

  “We need to go over the plan again.” Dan rubbed his forehead above the bandage before continuing. “I’ll, ah, tell you each step I need to take, and if—if you’ll read me whatever I’m pointing to, I’ll …” He stopped and grimaced as a wave of pain engulfed him; then, with great effort, he continued. “In other words, when Hong Kong Approach gives me a turn toward the localizer—that’s the radio beam that leads us to the runway—I’ll put my hand on the heading selector I showed you a few minutes ago … here.” Dan held his finger on the glareshield panel and moaned. He took a deep breath and readjusted himself in the seat.

  “Okay. This … ah, is the heading selector. What heading is it dialed to?”

  “Two-eight-zero, Dan.”

  “Good.”

  Geoffrey Sampson watched with great concern as the copilot hung his head and moaned again.

  “Are you all right, Dan?” Robert MacCabe asked. Robert reached over to grab the copilot’s shoulder and shake him gently. “Dan?”

  The copilot nodded, his head still down. He took a ragged breath. “I’m … fine. No. That’s a damned lie. I’m not fine. I’m in pain, but I’m going to be fine. I’m just trying to deal with it. Geoffrey, after the heading, I’ll … dial in a lower altitude, here.” Dan reached over with obvious effort to touch the altitude selection knob.

  “Very well,” Geoffrey Sampson replied.

  Dan pointed to the airspeed dial, his words coming with substantial effort. “Then I’ll slow us down … with this one and … arm the approach mode. That’s where I’ll need precise readings from you to make sure I’m hitting the right buttons.”

  “I understand, Dan. And then the airplane will land itself, correct?”

  There was a pause from the right seat. “As … ah … as long as I set it up right, it will get us down safely. I have to dial in the right radio frequency and … extend the flaps and gear … but the autopilot should do the job. The thing you’ll need to do is … hit the Autopilot Disconnect button when I tell you to … the one you accidentally punched.”

  “I understand,” Geoffrey responded.

  Dan slumped over again, his hand furiously rubbing his forehead.

  Robert had been sitting in the jump seat immediately behind the captain’s chair. The doctor stood behind the copilot’s seat, keeping a worried eye on his patient. Robert got up suddenly and took Graham’s arm, guiding him to the rear of the cockpit for a whispered conference.

  “I’m not a physician, Doctor, but I don’t know if he’s going to make it without a reduction in that pain. Have you been watching his reactions?”

  Graham nodded, his face grim. “He has to disconnect every few minutes in order to hold on. But he doesn’t want any more painkiller, and, in truth, much more would leave us without a pilot.”

  “Try asking him again, okay?”

  Graham nodded, moving to the copilot as Robert slid back into the jump seat.

  “Dan?” Graham asked. “This is the doctor. You hanging in there?” Graham put his hand on the copilot’s right shoulder.

  There was no answer.

  “Dan, this is Doctor Tash. Can you hear me?”

  Dan nodded. “Yeah, yeah, Doc. I’m here. I’m … just hurting very badly.”

  “Look, maybe you need a very small booster shot.”

  “No. NO! Look … I’m sorry, but I’ve got to tough this out. Now … I need to go over with Geoffrey … what to do if … if, God forbid, we have to pull up and go around.”

  Robert glanced at the worried eyes of the physician. Graham swallowed in a shared gesture of apprehension, then leaned over toward the jump seat to whisper in Robert’s ear.

  “Would you keep an eye on him? I want to go talk to my wife.”

  Robert nodded. “You bet.”

  Graham moved to the cockpit door but stopped and looked back. It was like looking at a surreal scene through a thick lens, he thought. A terrifying dream, laced with the background hum of electronics and the sound of the slipstream, all of it leaving him momentarily dizzy and
disoriented.

  The man in the left seat—Sampson—had been just an ordinary passenger like him less than an hour ago. But in the blink of an eye, everything had changed, and now their lives depended on an automatic system and a blind pilot.

  Maybe it would work. The agony of not knowing was weakening his knees.

  Through the windscreen Graham saw a wall of puffy cumulus clouds looming dead ahead, illuminated by the landing lights, the impending impact inevitable, if harmless. The onrushing certainty of the collision with the cloud would be a chilling dress rehearsal for what might lie ahead in Hong Kong within the hour if the copilot lost control. He found himself feeling detached, wondering what the impact would feel like if the cloud were solid. They were racing toward it at over three hundred knots. There would be no pain and no time to scream. Not even time enough to tell Susan how much he loved her.

  The thought of his beautiful new wife caused him to turn back toward the upper first-class cabin, where they had the aisle and window seats in the third row. He’d navigated through two failed marriages to find Susan, though she’d been there all along, working for ten years as scrub nurse on his surgical team—someone he always admired, and sometimes lusted after, but never knew. “You always knew me, though,” she was fond of saying, “just not in the biblical sense.”

  He opened the cockpit door now, catching her eye and reveling in the warmth of her smile. He tried to smile in return, but the paralyzing fear that they could lose the exhilarating new life they’d found was too overwhelming.

  Susan was terrified, too, but she could hide it better. She had helped move the captain’s body to a small crew bunk behind the cockpit, then returned to her seat to wait for him. How she could even force a smile amazed him.

  Graham covered the twenty feet to where she sat, ignoring the haunted expressions on the faces of the other passengers. He sat down beside her, taking her hand.

  “How bad, Honey?” she asked quietly, inclining her head toward the cockpit.

  “If all the equipment works right, no problem.”

  chapter 10

  ABOARD MERIDIAN 5, IN FLIGHT,

  WEST OF HONG KONG

  NOVEMBER 13—DAY TWO

  1:44 A.M. LOCAL/1744 ZULU

  In the business-class section of the main deck, Dr. Diane Chadwick glanced at her watch again, aware she was putting off the inevitable. The idea that a serious in-flight crisis was a perfect moment for observational research had felt like a cruel joke when it first ricocheted through her mind. She was too busy trying to control her own fear to worry about anyone else’s. There were limits to what a behavioral psychologist could be expected to do, weren’t there?

  But this is my field! she reminded herself, slowly prying her fingers from around the armrests of her seat. She had written papers about the reactions of airline passengers and crews in a crisis, and here she was in the middle of an unscheduled laboratory experiment. How is this going to look back at NASA Ames if I survive this and have to admit I just sat here like a catatonic moron?

  There was a steno pad in her large purse. She had to use every ounce of willpower to reach down and retrieve it, along with a pen.

  Four rows of business class stretched in front of her, and then another eight rows of first class extended to the nose of the 747. She was trying to discern what was going on by looking at the backs of the heads ahead of her, and that would no longer do.

  Okay. Up. Now! Diane unsnapped her seat belt and tried to smile at her seatmate, a quiet Asian gentleman who was gnawing his fingertip and paying no attention to her. She smoothed her cropped auburn hair and adjusted her glasses before walking all the way forward, then all the way to the rear, making mental notes that she would transfer to paper later.

  Two of the flight attendants looked up as Diane passed, but they didn’t interfere. It was an advantage, she thought, knowing how to dress innocuously. She enjoyed those occasions when she could put on “girl clothes” outside the academic arena and really feel feminine, but for some reason, even on her own time—such as flying to and from the terrorist conference in Hong Kong—“academic mousy” was the style with which she felt most comfortable.

  Diane reached the small forward closet in the first-class cabin and turned, forcing herself to remain calm as she strolled back. The first five rows were a mixture of men and women—a political delegation, she had heard. One woman was standing and talking to a wide-eyed man, but most were sitting with their seat belts on, hands clasped together, or talking quietly with a seatmate in a picture of tightly controlled fear. Eyes were cast in Diane’s direction only as long as it took to conclude that she wasn’t the bearer of news, good or bad.

  In the galley behind first class, the two flight attendants she’d passed had been joined by a third. They were talking quietly to one another as they worked to keep the liquor flowing. There were a few brief smiles and a nervous joke they tried to keep her from hearing. An older, male flight attendant joined them as she passed, placing both hands on the shoulders of two of the three women and saying reassuring things.

  A father figure, or so he’s trying to be, she concluded. Probably decades on the job. I’ll want to find out.

  The calm atmosphere in coach class was a surprise. Everywhere she looked, people stood talking earnestly to one another, gesturing forward and to the ceiling, and engaging any flight attendant who happened by. The atmosphere wasn’t panicked, but it was serious and concerned, and she knew from her studies that passengers were capable of turning ugly if they felt they weren’t being told the truth.

  On her left, in the twenty-third row, a young woman sat weeping. She was trying to hide it, and her male seatmate, with a look of disgust, tried to signal that he was wholly unaffected by the situation and not subject to the emotional instability of the “weaker” sex.

  She’s reaching out to him and he’s rejecting her.

  In the third coach cabin a gray-haired woman brushed past Diane officiously and leaned down to talk to first one row of passengers, then another. Diane moved closer to hear the woman’s message, a broad interpretation of the announcement the pilot had already made.

  “He’s just being the usual conservative pilot, dear. These airplanes don’t really even need pilots except to program their fancy computers, so this shouldn’t be a problem, okay? Relax. We’ll get another night in Hong Kong out of this, free.”

  Several rows to the rear a teenage boy sat in a window seat, wearing the first truly angry expression Diane had noticed. He had the candy-striped badge of an unaccompanied minor on his shirt, and was holding a small headset connected to an electronic device in his hand.

  Diane reached the rear galley and took a deep breath. She’d start talking to selected passengers now, such as the young couple holding hands tightly enough to cut off circulation, and the obese man playing solitaire while maniacally munching potato chips. The range of human emotions being displayed was awesome.

  Her own fright forgotten, she paused next to the rear galley to make notes.

  In the cockpit, Robert MacCabe was watching Dan Wade carefully. The quick breathing, the sweating in the cold cockpit, and the clipped speech told a tale of incredible stress—not to mention pain. So far Dan was handling it, but how long he could hang on was a deep concern. Although the copilot appeared to be in his early forties and in good health generally, Robert found himself praying that Dan had a very strong heart.

  There was movement suddenly at the cockpit door, and Rick Barnes stepped inside, shutting the door behind him. He spotted Robert and nodded to him, then pointed to Geoffrey Sampson with a mouthed “who?” Robert introduced them and Barnes extended his hand to Geoffrey Sampson.

  “Glad to meet you. I’m the CEO of the airline. Thanks for helping.”

  “I assure you, Mr. Barnes, my efforts are pure, enlightened self-interest.”

  Rick turned to look at the man in the right seat, the sight of the bandage around his eyes sending a chill up his back. “Ah, Dan? Rick Barnes.”<
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  There was a long sigh from the copilot. “Yes, Mr. Barnes?”

  Rick hesitated, feeling unsure what to say. “Ah, I just … wanted to—”

  “Come up here and take over? Lord, I wish you could.”

  Rick laughed nervously. “God no, I’m not trying to take over. Just … get us on the ground safely, Dan. I have no idea how bad this is with your eyes, but we’ll stop at nothing to get you the best doctors in the world.”

  A crack about the recent reduction in pilot medical benefits crossed Dan’s mind, but he rejected it. This wasn’t the time. Barnes was as scared as everyone else.

  “I appreciate the support, Mr. Barnes, but you need to go sit down now.”

  Rick Barnes nodded. “You’re right. I’m just outside if you need—I don’t know, if you need the airline chief to yell at someone on the ground, I guess.”

  He turned and left as Britta entered with a small bottle of water, which she placed in Dan’s hand. “How are you doing, Danny?”

  “Okay, I guess. I just wish you had pilot experience, like Karen Black.”

  “Who?” Britta shot back, a puzzled expression crossing her face.

  “It was … a movie, Britta. Never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Oh! God! You mean that awful film. Airport Seventy-something.” Britta let a few seconds of silence pass before speaking again, her eyes ranging over the cockpit, her voice a shade softer. “Dan, I need to know our status, and precisely what you want me to do.”

  The copilot moved his head to the left as if to look at her, then stopped. “We’re probably about ten minutes away from starting the approach, Britta. I want everyone strapped in. Put them in a brace position. Brief them all on the emergency exits. And there’s something else that’s really important.”