Zone

by Jack Lance

  Boris Ferrell had been Joe’s boss at the time. In private Joe called him Boris Karloff, because he bore an uncanny resemblance to the actor in tallness of height, plumpness of girth, and shallowness of brain. From the start, he and Joe had disagreed on nearly every subject. One day, however, Boris turned out to be anything but stupid. He proved himself to be an immoral asshole.

  The matter at issue concerned a proposed takeover of a rival company. In the middle of the meeting, as they were analyzing the projected cash-flow figures, Joe got one of his splitting headaches above his right eye. The pain could have been inspired by the muddle of accounting numbers, but Joe suspected a different reason.

  Joe knew the numbers made no sense. And true to his nature, he spoke his mind.

  ‘If these figures represent the company’s net annual cash flows for the next five years,’ he stated emphatically to the group huddled around the table, ‘then we’re offering too much money for the company. I may not understand present value analysis and the other financial mumbo jumbo you’re throwing around here today, but I can see with my own two eyes that we’re about to grossly overpay what the company is worth.’

  Karloff made a dismissive gesture, as if brushing off a bothersome fly. ‘What would you know about that?’ he sneered, his contempt for Joe’s financial analytic abilities evident to all present.

  Joe was unfazed. He realized Karloff had a point. Joe was no CPA or financial analyst, so it was natural to assume he was arguing simply for argument’s sake.

  But Joe was convinced he smelled something as rotten as a fish carcass left out in the sun. And there was something else he knew.

  Karloff was not as stupid as he looked. He was hiding something, and he was trying to pull a fast one on them.

  ‘Our offer is over the top,’ Joe insisted stubbornly. But he was talking to deaf ears. Not one of the other managers at the table supported him. He was on his own.

  Karloff heaved a sigh, indicating he wanted the meeting concluded. But as Karloff was about to call for adjournment, Joe, headache and all, shoved his chair back, strode purposely over to where Karloff was sitting at the head of the table, and punched him squarely in the face.

  Karloff’s chair toppled over with the impact and he collapsed on to the ground, blood oozing from his nose and upper lip. The others present were too stunned to lift a finger. They just sat there, slack-jawed.

  ‘Fuck him,’ Joe threw over his shoulder as he stormed out of the room. He then went home to await a letter of dismissal that never came.

  A week later another man who had attended the meeting appeared on Joe’s doorstep. He informed Joe that Karloff’s figures had been re-examined by the board of directors. During its investigation, the board discovered that Karloff had cut a deal with the management of the targeted company. If the proposed transaction had been consummated, a substantial portion of the proceeds would have landed in Boris’s bank account. Joe had saved the company’s shareholders a bundle, and he had gone from goat to hero. After that incident, his life had improved dramatically. Today he managed his own business empire with 238 people in his employ. He could now afford to drink the best wines and order the best foods, so all in all his car accident had benefited him greatly. He had built his empire and his fortune on his knowing. Every time he suffered a migraine, such as on this flight to Sydney, it was a premonition to him that something was seriously amiss and to be on his guard. Sitting in his seat on the plane, he felt a fierce stab of pain lance his skull and he groaned. He felt as though he was in the belfry of a church spire, stuck between two enormous tolling bells.

  Joe peered outside through his window. The black of night covered the ocean like a cloak.

  He decided to switch on his entertainment screen. He hadn’t touched it thus far during the flight. He hated television, for the same reason he had eventually started hating everything that emitted radiation. Cell phones were the worst horror, but he had to carry one around with him. Some people considered him paranoid, but he knew better. Not too long ago he had read Cell, a novel by Stephen King. Joe hadn’t read many of King’s books because he found them too disturbing. But he had selected this one because of its title, and to his mind it cogently explained why he hated the damn things.

  Joe pushed a few buttons on the touch screen, searching for some flight information. He couldn’t find anything useful, although he did stumble upon one channel whose screen was entirely black.

  When he did, something clicked inside his tortured mind.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, to let whatever it was reveal itself, and suddenly he understood what was bothering him.

  We’re going somewhere we’re not supposed to be going.

  He again peered into the nocturnal darkness outside, again observing nothing unusual. That was an illusion. He knew what was wrong now. He suffered no doubts.

  He had to do something. But Joe had no authority on board the aircraft. He was only a passenger. The pilot would never listen to him, for the same reason the managers in the meeting with Boris Karloff had not listened to him – at first.

  Nor would he get an opportunity to punch the pilot in the nose, to get his attention.

  What on earth could he do?

  TEN

  Squawking

  Greg Huffstutter had his eyes glued on the instrument panel; beside him, Jim contemplated the ruins of his marriage. But when his copilot suddenly hunched forward, Jim saw what Greg was gaping at. The navigation display was empty. The screen was blank!

  Familiar locations – airports, beacons, waypoints – had all disappeared. It was as if a map on a car’s navigation system had suddenly lost the names of roads and cities. Only the vast Pacific Ocean was displayed on the screen, dotted here and there with islands. The coast of California was visible on one edge, and the coasts of Queensland and New South Wales on the other. Even the miniature plane representing the Princess was gone.

  Greg shook his head in disbelief. ‘Malfunction in the database memory?’ he ventured dubiously.

  He was referring to the database memory that contains location points. But EICAS, a device that detects failures, had nothing to report. Worse, the navigation instruments no longer displayed either the plane’s departure airport, LAX, or their destination city, SYD. A nondescript straight line on the screen suggested the system had no clue where they were heading, since there was no data and therefore no course it could calculate.

  ‘No,’ Ben muttered. ‘If that were the problem we would still be seeing wind directions. There must be something wrong with the GPS or IRS. But I can’t imagine what, unless our government has declared war on someone and switched off the GPS system.’

  Jim was about to add a comment when a harsh beeping sound permeated the cockpit.

  ‘She’s using her wings,’ he said, meaning that the 747 was now flying straight ahead, following its nose, because the autopilot was no longer functional.

  This was not only indicated by the harsh beeping. Jim noted with his own eyes that they were deviating from their initial heading: a bright star that had been dead ahead had shifted slightly to the right.

  ‘I’ll adapt heading select,’ he announced, as he entered a change into the autopilot to adjust the plane’s direction. After he’d done that, the star shifted back to its original position, the straight line in the navigation system disappeared, and the beeping ceased. An eerie silence settled over the flight deck.

  All three pilots on that deck understood that a manual change in the autopilot represented a stopgap measure only. Without computer data, Jim no longer had accurate bearings.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘What the hell is going on?’

  ‘The IRS is empty, as well,’ Greg reported.

  Jim quickly confirmed that report. The last time he had checked the inertial navigation display, it had indicated their position in degrees and coordinates in glowing bright-green characters. Now there was nothing. That screen, too, had gone blank.

  ‘This can’t be happening,�
� Jim mumbled.

  Again he glanced at EICAS. It detected no equipment failures; thus it indicated that all systems were functioning properly.

  Problem was, they weren’t.

  Ben cleared his throat, but said nothing. Greg, too, was silent. What was happening went beyond their collective professional experience.

  ‘What about the mechanical compass?’ Jim mused, unable to recall when the last time was he had even thought of this device. But now he found himself consulting the primitive, magnetic little sphere, inside a glass case filled with liquid fastened to the bar between two windscreens, right in front of him. A legacy from the pioneering days of aviation, in a modern-day cockpit this compass was the sole navigational aid not connected to computers.

  ‘It’s pointing north,’ he said with disgust. ‘But we’re flying southwest. Damn it to hell, even this damn thing is nuts!’

  ‘Magnetic interference,’ Greg suggested.

  Jim considered that. ‘Could be,’ he said. ‘I haven’t got a better answer. Have you, Ben?’

  ‘No,’ Ben said grimly.

  Around them, stars bathed the world in a pale-yellow light. The vast ocean below remained hidden beneath a thick blanket of clouds. Everything seemed normal.

  ‘What heading are you following now?’ Ben asked.

  Jim pointed straight ahead. ‘That star over there. You see it?’

  Ben peered his eyes. ‘Yes.’

  Jim bit his lower lip, trying to ease the roiling in his intestines. He had not felt that sort of ominous prickling since combat training as a Navy pilot. ‘For the moment, at least,’ he said tightly, ‘we’re continuing pretty close on our initial course. Nothing like having to rely on visual navigation,’ he added with a sardonic chuckle.

  ‘But what is all this nonsense?’ Ben groused. ‘What are we dealing with here?’

  Jim shrugged. ‘If this was some glitch in the computers or in the GPS, then the mechanical compass would still be working. Maybe Greg is right. Maybe it is magnetic interference.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Ben said in a faraway voice. ‘So what are we going to do?’

  ‘What choice do we have?’ Jim replied. ‘We’re going to keep flying. We haven’t enough fuel to turn around and go back to LAX. And I can’t land anywhere because I can’t determine where airports are located. Let’s hope and pray you contact someone soon, Greg. Anyone will do.’

  During the next few minutes, Greg sent out transmissions on all frequencies. None was answered.

  The roiling in Jim’s stomach intensified.

  ‘Use the transponder,’ he said. ‘Let’s start squawking.’

  ‘Roger that,’ Greg said. Betraying, Jim felt, his nervousness by using this old-fashioned slang.

  The copilot entered code 7600, which informed anyone who happened to be listening that the cockpit crew of Flight 582 had lost all communications. The electronic radar signal they now broadcasted – or squawked, in pilot parlance – should be acknowledged by all ground stations and planes within a 250-mile radius. That distance computed to half an hour of flying, about as far as Jim would see at this altitude in daytime.

  ‘The transponder should be picked up momentarily,’ Jim said. ‘Keep sending out radio messages every five minutes, as well. That’s all we can do.’

  Greg nodded and added, his voice calm and yet barely concealing his unease, ‘I doubt it’s a coincidence that we’ve been experiencing these malfunctions from the first moment that turbulence hit us.’

  The copilot was a man of few words, but when he spoke, especially at a time like this, he normally had something important to say.

  ‘Yes,’ Jim agreed. ‘That’s when they started.’

  He threw another glance toward the navigation display and the IRS. The fact that they had received no immediate response on their transponder code could mean only one thing: the only other people within a range of 250 miles from their current position were the passengers and crew with them on board the Princess of the Pacific.

  ELEVEN

  Pursued

  Sharlene had finally fallen asleep for a brief period. When she awoke, her wristwatch read 3:20, an hour before her next shift started. She couldn’t determine if Aaron was asleep, but she assumed he was. It seemed that whenever his head touched a pillow, he fell asleep instantly, and it took a bucket of water in the face or a cannon firing to wake him. She envied that gift.

  For her, rest had ended the moment she opened her eyes. Uncontrollable nervousness continued to rage within her body. Usually she managed to find some way to control her nerves. But not tonight.

  ‘Might as well get up,’ she mumbled to herself as she slid out of her bunk and tiptoed away from the crew’s rest area.

  Inside the cabin, the murk and dark threw elongated shadows. Passengers were slouching or lying prostrate or sitting in their seats in every position imaginable. Some of them were snoring with their mouths open, while others were sitting up straight staring at their flickering entertainment screens. Whatever alarm and chaos had been generated by the fierce turbulence had apparently already been forgotten. Sharlene found Gloria Rodriguez and Ray Jacobstein at work in the main galley.

  ‘We’re having trouble with MEG,’ Gloria said in greeting to Sharlene, using the acronym for Movies, Entertainment and Games, the onboard entertainment system.

  Gloria was a svelte woman with short sandy-brown hair. As she normally did, she had applied a bright red lipstick, an adornment that Ray Jacobstein – the only other male flight attendant on board besides Aaron and Devin Felix – believed looked good on her. He had once confessed to Sharlene that he was very impressed with Gloria and found her attractive. And that was fine with Sharlene. Ray was single, as was Gloria, and she was not a woman to shy away from male attention.

  ‘Trouble?’ Sharlene said. ‘What sort of trouble?’

  ‘The flight map channel isn’t working,’ Gloria informed her. ‘It’s the same with the big screens.’

  ‘All we’re getting is black screen,’ Ray put in. ‘A few passengers have complained about it. I tried to reset the system, but that didn’t help. So I decided to turn the large screens off. Do you think Aaron would want to know?’

  ‘When did the channel go blank?’

  ‘About half an hour ago, I think,’ Gloria said. ‘Maybe an hour, I’m not sure.’

  ‘There’s always something,’ Sharlene said, shaking her head. ‘Aaron had a busy shift. He’s asleep now, and I suggest we leave him be. I’ll tell the captain.’

  She left the galley, this time choosing the right-hand aisle, so as not to pass the ponytailed girl who kept staring awkwardly at her.

  When she walked past her row, however, she chanced a glance at the girl, four seats away. But Cassie paid her no mind, nor did either her mother or the brunette woman sitting beside her.

  Sharlene glanced at the television monitors mounted against the ceiling. They had been switched off, as Ray had indicated. No one commented to her about it, so apparently the passengers didn’t care. That would probably change at dawn, she speculated, as they made their approach to Sydney and passengers began waking up. Then everyone would want to know how much longer until touchdown.

  In the galley on the upper deck, she found Mara leaning against the counter and looking bored. Her eyebrows lifted in surprise when she noticed Sharlene approaching her.

  ‘Hey, what are you doing here?’ she asked cheerfully.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ Sharlene said evasively. ‘How are things here?’

  ‘Aaron said he’d had a pretty hectic night, but for me it’s been just the opposite. I’m bored silly, to tell you the truth.’

  Sharlene smiled. ‘Enjoy it while you can.’

  Mara returned the smile. She then launched into details of the diet she wanted to try – or rather, the diet she wanted to try next. Every previous effort to shed excess pounds had ended in frustration and failure, and a resolve to try some other plan.

  ‘I envy you,’ Mara said, with an admi
ring glance at Sharlene’s waistline. But while Sharlene did not have to exert herself to maintain a size-four dress, she didn’t require the services of Sherlock Holmes to discern why Mara’s outfits were several sizes larger. On the counter next to her were opened bags of chocolates, potato chips, and fudge brownies.

  ‘I’m heading to the cockpit,’ Sharlene said, adding as she left, ‘We’re having problems with the entertainment screens.’

  At the cockpit door, she rang the bell by pressing 1 on the code lock. When the door unlocked with a loud click, she pushed it open. All three pilots turned to look at her.

  If everything had been normal, one of the three would have been asleep and the other two on duty would have had little or nothing to do. Sydney was still a long way off, and there wasn’t much that needed to be done on the flight deck. Usually during the dead hours the pilots appreciated a visit by a crew member. Besides supplying a happy diversion, he or she might be coaxed into getting them some coffee or food.

  But the look Jim gave her was far from happy or relaxed. He appeared angry, as if she was an unwelcome intruder. The same held true for Greg Huffstutter and Ben Wright.

  ‘Can I bring you guys anything?’ she asked when none of them uttered a word.

  ‘I’m fine, thank you,’ Jim said.

  Greg and Ben also declined.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ she inquired tentatively. The tension on the flight deck was palpable.

  Jim had turned back to his instruments. With her question, he stared ahead into space. Sharlene waited, her body becoming increasingly tense. This was not the same affable man she had come to know that night in the bar of the Intercontinental Hotel in Singapore.

  I’ll get you home safely, Sharlene, and I always will.

  He had made that promise to her after she confessed her fears and insecurities to him. She had needed a shoulder to lean on, and Jim had kindly taken her under his wing. She hadn’t met Aaron yet.

  Since then she had felt safe flying with Jim, and he had always treated her courteously, more like a daughter than an underling.