Turbulence

by Nance, John J. ;

  Brian shook his head against the fatigue and shock and confusion. He knew that somewhere deep within, the line between Daphne and this reality was blurring dangerously, but he was too tired mentally to resist the anger that was rapidly taking over. The image of the copilot’s body lying somewhere behind them on the runway wouldn’t leave his head, the accompanying stab of pain and guilt and helplessness bridging his last vestige of resistance as the copilot became the surrogate for his wife and son. In the slimy grip of Meridian, they were one and the same. That might as well be Daphne and their son back there on that runway, bleeding to death, abandoned by another murderous Meridian captain.

  And once again he had been robbed of the chance to save them.

  Brian sat forward with a start, forcing himself into the present. This was still a real and live and very dangerous situation, and he was in the belly of a jumbo jet full of passengers whose lives were being imperiled. It was too late for Garth, just as it was too late for Daphne, yet the same type of uncaring captain was at the controls of this aircraft, and there was still a chance to make a difference. Those people one deck above his head needed to know what had happened—what was happening.

  Brian pulled himself up to a squatting position as he looked at the patch of light from the main cabin overhead and calculated what to do. Somehow they had to get the captain away from the controls, but who else could fly now that the captain had so effectively eliminated the copilot? There must be other pilots aboard. Somehow he’d have to find them quickly.

  But why would a captain get rid of his copilot? Brian wondered. Somehow nothing made sense as long as he couldn’t understand the captain’s conduct. Meridian obviously bred hateful, uncaring pilots, but what was it that had driven this one to land in a war zone, and then get rid of his copilot? Why?

  An answer came slithering in through the portal of his medical training. He wasn’t a psychiatrist, but exposure to basic psychology was required for physicians, and some warning signs he’d missed before now began to emerge.

  He thought back to two terrible crashes that had grabbed worldwide attention, one involving a suicidal Egyptian copilot on a Boeing 767 out of New York, the other an apparently distraught Singaporean captain in a 737 somewhere over Malaysia.

  What if he’s planning to kill himself? Oh God, that must be it! He’s planning to kill himself and take us with him. How else to explain his conduct? Brian thought. Suicidal intent would explain everything bizarre the captain had done. I guess I’m the only one aboard who understands what’s really happening, and the only one who’s witnessed hard evidence of lethal intent.

  The realization chilled him even more. I’m the only one who understands the danger we’re in.

  He had to change that. Somehow he had to find a way to wrest control from the captain before he succeeded in killing them all.

  Brian stood up and glanced at the oxygen bottle and broken wires damaged by his attempt to repel the invading army. Brian moved quickly on rubber legs to the small ladder leading to the main deck and climbed up through the hatch, surprised to find himself surrounded by some of the familiar faces who’d rallied behind him before. They pressed around him in a whirlwind of concern and curiosity, asking what had happened and where the copilot was.

  “The captain left him on the runway for dead,” Brian said, unexpected tears cascading down his cheeks as he clenched his teeth in an effort to regain control of himself. Several hands reached down to pull him up and he shook them off, turning with his right hand up to quiet the questions.

  “We’re in terrible trouble here,” he began. “The captain’s suicidal.”

  Voices stopped for a moment as the men and women around him tried to come to grips with what he was saying.

  “I’m sorry, what did you say?” one of them asked.

  “I said, the captain is suicidal. I didn’t understand that at first, but it’s the only rational explanation I can come up with for this.”

  Quick, worried glances were exchanged among the group as Brian described the images he’d seen of the copilot slipping away, the call to the cockpit, and the captain’s refusal to stop the takeoff. The color drained from the faces around him, and he felt a surge of hope that they would understand the truth of what he was saying. There would be many more to convince.

  “We’ve got to find out quickly if there’s anyone else on board who can fly,” Brian said.

  The chairman of English Petroleum was on the periphery listening carefully, and he nudged forward now. “You’re quite certain, are you, Doctor, that the captain knew the copilot was injured?” Robert MacNaughton watched the recognition in Brian’s eyes as the physician nodded energetically in response.

  “He knew. That bastard definitely knew. I told him on the interphone that Garth was badly injured, that he’d been shot, that he had to stop the airplane, and he did stop. Did you all feel him hit the brakes before he turned around?”

  MacNaughton nodded gravely, as did several others.

  “Okay. He stepped on the brakes at the precise moment I told him what had happened. But then the unspeakable bastard turned around and took off, leaving the poor guy to bleed to death down there.”

  “Good heavens,” MacNaughton said. “He was that badly injured?”

  “When you’ve been shot several times with high-powered weapons and probably have an artery severed, you’ll bleed out rapidly without immediate help. I could have saved him, but …” The words stung horribly the moment he spoke them, and Brian winced as he tried to control what was becoming dangerously close to hyperventilation.

  The small, pretty woman who had identified herself sometime earlier as a deadheading flight attendant took his forearm, her eyes searching his.

  “Why, exactly, do you think the captain’s suicidal?” Janie Bretsen asked.

  Brian looked at her. “The copilot told me a lot about what had been going on up there since we left London. There was a pitched battle between them. The captain kept trying to land in the most dangerous places, and now I realize it was to get rid of the copilot. When you add it all up, suicide … and killing all of us … is the most likely explanation.”

  Brian felt the panic rising again in his gut as he surveyed their eyes and realized they weren’t grasping it.

  “That’s a rather substantial leap, don’t you think?” MacNaughton replied, as Janie Bretsen stood silently surveying Brian’s eyes.

  Brian looked around quickly, as if the soldiers he had battled might climb out of the electronics bay and overwhelm him as effectively as their doubts were ensnaring his ability to save them.

  They don’t understand! They think I’m nuts, he thought to himself.

  “Look, I’m not a psychiatrist,” Brian said quickly. “Of course I could be wrong about his motive, but the reality of what he’s done and what he’s doing is still the same. I’m sure you understand that. We’ve got an out-of-control pilot in the cockpit who’s already put us in great danger more than a few times today, and he’s up there alone right now, in the air, and able to do anything he wants to. It’s the middle of the night over the middle of Africa, we were peppered with bullets and may have lost God knows what systems, and no one’s monitoring this wild man. We know he left his copilot behind to die on purpose, and I’m telling you we’ve got to find some way of controlling him until we get on the ground at Cape Town. Does anybody disagree with that?”

  Thank God! Brian thought to himself. They were all nodding, except for the petite flight attendant, who was still skeptical.

  “What do you propose we do?” Janie Bretsen asked, her voice soft and precise as her eyes bored into him like velvet lasers.

  “I … guess we can’t use the PA without his hearing us, so we’ll have to fan out and try to find any pilots.”

  “Why?” Janie replied, her tone hardening. “You want to find someone who may be qualified on a Cessna 150 to replace a Boeing 747 captain? I’d call that a bit more than risky.”

  Brian looked into Jani
e Bretsen’s eyes, realizing on a deeper level that she was penetrating his facade of control and that the others were watching the interchange carefully.

  “No,” he said evenly. “Not to take over. To monitor what he’s doing. We only need a takeover if he tries to crash us.”

  Janie nodded at last, and Brian felt a small wave of relief course through him.

  Judy Jackson had escaped from the forward galley as the aircraft lifted off the runway, and just minutes before Brian had emerged from the electronics bay. She’d made her way quickly past the grim and accusing faces of the passengers to the upper deck and the cockpit, going through the procedures to gain entry, which Phil Knight granted with the push of a button from inside. She reclosed the door and checked the locks.

  “You left the copilot,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone as she sat down in the jump seat behind Phil.

  The captain looked around, trying to see her expression in the darkness. The glow of the instrument panel reflected in her eyes, which were staring into space.

  He nodded. “I know. I thought he was aboard. On takeoff, I … I saw him off to the side. I couldn’t stop.”

  “I know,” Judy said. “I saw it happen.”

  He turned again. “Saw what happen?”

  “That doctor. Logan. He clubbed Garth with an oxygen bottle when Garth tried to get back in.”

  “WHAT?”

  From the jump seat behind him, she gripped the back of the captain’s chair, her hands shaking on the top edge of it.

  Phil Knight’s head swiveled as he looked back and forth between the instrument panel and Judy Jackson. “Get … get in the seat over there and look at me,” he ordered. “What the hell are you saying?”

  Judy slid into the absent copilot’s seat and repeated what she’d seen.

  “Why on earth?” he asked.

  “I … I don’t know.”

  “Why would he kill a pilot?”

  “He’s insane, Captain. I tried to tell you both, but you wouldn’t listen. All this has something to do with his dead wife. I think he’s out to kill us.”

  She saw the pasty look on Phil Knight’s face as he turned to her once again. “Judy, make sure the cockpit door is locked. I’ve got to talk to the company.”

  “I locked it.”

  Phil pulled the satellite phone from its cradle. The display was lighted but nothing he dialed would connect, and only static coursed through the earpiece.

  “Damn!”

  “What?” she asked, her voice shaking.

  He glanced at her as if she were the source of his irritation. “Our satellite phone is dead. Without it, I can’t call the dispatcher.”

  “What are we going to do?” Judy asked, her voice shaky, the roar of the passing slipstream pressing in on her. “The passengers are with him.”

  Phil ran his eyes over the instruments, making sure the aircraft was still climbing. All the “door open” lights were out and even number-four engine was running steadily, but events were closing in on him, suffocating his thinking. If Judy were to be believed, they had a homicidal madman aboard who had clubbed his copilot out of the aircraft, and here he was, the only pilot left. At least the door was the new modified security version. No one could get through it, or so he’d been told. Yet, if that proved wrong, he had no gun to use to defend himself.

  How am I going to explain leaving him behind? The question lunged at him like a snake, springing from the dark corners of his rationalizations. He closed his eyes for a second and forced the question away. He would deal with it later.

  The idea that a passenger could have attacked Garth Abbott and dumped him overboard seemed too bizarre to be true. Could he trust Judy Jackson’s account?

  But, he’d seen the copilot himself on the side of the runway!

  Yet, hadn’t Abbott reported on the radio that he was back aboard? I heard him say that, Phil recalled. Abbott had come aboard, yet somehow he’d ended up back out on the runway, and that fact made Judy’s tale all the more believable.

  And wasn’t it Judy who’d watched Logan dive into the electronics bay? Why else would he do that if not to attack the copilot?

  This is surreal! Phil thought, glancing at the fuel panel and doing some quick mental calculations of distance, time, and fuel flow. Making Cape Town before running out of gas was becoming a marginal prospect, he realized. Getting them there safely would depend on the winds. If they continued southbound and ran short of fuel, where could he land? Certainly they were still closer to Europe than to Cape Town.

  Maybe I should turn around, he thought.

  Phil thought about the Nigerian air traffic controllers. Their frequency was still dialed into the number-one VHF radio, but he hadn’t talked to them, and the realization was embarrassing. Here he was climbing into Nigerian airspace without a clearance or even the basics of a radio call. Stupid move! he chided himself. He jabbed at the transmit button and called repeatedly, but there was no response. He tuned the radios to another en-route frequency and tried again, but there was still nothing. The radios were clearly unpowered.

  Now what? Phil thought.

  “What’s the matter?” Judy asked.

  “The radios are dead! I can’t talk to anyone.” Phil felt his hand shaking slightly on the yoke. He was letting panic influence him, and he had to calm down.

  “What … what are we going to do, Captain?” Judy pressed.

  “You’ve already asked that question!” he snapped as the cockpit call chime rang. He could feel the situation pressing in on him again, controlling him, forcing him to flail at the process of deciding what to do.

  Phil grabbed the handset and swept it to his ear expecting any voice but Brian Logan’s.

  “Is this the captain?” Logan asked, his voice low and threatening. The owner was breathing heavily.

  “Yes. Who’s this?”

  “You know very well who this is, you murderer! And you know very well what you did.”

  There was tense silence for a few seconds before Phil could find a response. “What are you talking about? What do you want, Doctor?”

  “You left your copilot to die out there! They shot him twice. I told you to stop so I could go out and get him, and you heard me, but you made sure to keep moving.”

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re babbling about, Logan, but there are enough witnesses to what you did down there to put you on death row. Nobody shot Abbott. You clubbed him with an oxygen bottle, and you’re going to the gas chamber for it.”

  There was silence for a few seconds on the other end. “You are mad,” Logan said at last. “I was trying to keep soldiers out. I was clubbing soldiers, you bastard.”

  “Then where’s my copilot?”

  “You left him! Listen, I don’t know what’s wrong with you, but there are three hundred passengers down here who’re taking over as of this moment, you son of a bitch, and you’re going to do precisely what we tell you from now on with no more unscheduled stops and no more lies and no more tricks.”

  “Or what? You’ll club all my flight attendants to death with more oxygen bottles and come fly the airplane yourself?”

  “Head this aircraft to Cape Town as fast as it’ll go. You understand that?”

  “We’re already headed to Cape Town. You … you just sit down and leave my people alone.”

  “Are you trying to kill us all, Captain? Are you suicidal?”

  “WHAT?”

  Brian Logan repeated the question, misinterpreting the silence from the cockpit.

  “Of course I’m not suicidal, for God’s sake!” Phil managed at last. “I’m trying to keep everyone safe. We had an engine problem, we had to land back there …”

  “We’re in control of this airplane now,” Logan interrupted. “And we’re going to send several off-duty pilots up there to watch you, and if you try anything else, we’ll pull your miserable carcass out of that seat and let someone else fly, you arrogant little bastard!”

  “No one’s entering
this cockpit, Logan.” Phil could hear the doctor’s voice increasing in volume as he almost sputtered into the microphone, the venality of his words deeply chilling. “You’re just an arrogant little Caesar, aren’t you, Captain? You can just sit up there and let people die because you don’t care. A copilot, some poor schmuck in coach with broken ribs, a baby … You don’t give a damn. You want to finish yourself off and you don’t care one whit about the other lives on board. That poor copilot had both legs shattered and needed your help, and all you could do was leave him to die. Someone’s got to stop bastards like you, and this time, there’s someone on board to do it.”

  Phil Knight’s voice rose in timbre and volume under the stress. “What … you’re trying to do is commit air piracy … ah … in addition to attacking the copilot, and … and it’s punishable by death!”

  “Who cares,” Logan replied. “I’m already dead inside, thanks to you.”

  “I’VE GOT A GUN UP HERE!” Knight bellowed out of fear, well aware his voice was too loud and too high but unable to control it. “If you try to come through that cockpit door, I’ll shoot you on sight!” Phil slammed the handset back in its cradle before he could hear a response. His hands were shaking visibly as he turned to Judy Jackson who was watching him closely, her face a mask of fear.

  “You have a gun?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “No, but I don’t want him to know that.” Phil breathed rapidly, half expecting to hear a crowd trying to batter down the door at any second.

  He reached for the interphone handset again, stabbing in the PA code.

  This is the captain. I want all of you to listen closely. We’re headed for Cape Town, and we’re lucky to be alive. Stay in your seats or I’ll have to land again at the first available airport with security. Stay in your seats! I’m not going to tolerate a riot! And one more thing. There’s a wild man down there in the cabin you’d better get under control. His name is Logan. Don’t let him talk you into doing something stupid.