The entire episode seemed unreal and was profoundly frightening. The enormity of a medical emergency seemed so much more threatening than she had imagined. Maybe she wasn’t cut out to be a physician after all. Thank God there had been a real doctor on board to guide her.
She opened her eyes and looked at the unconscious face.
“Please, God,” she muttered, “let him live!”
Barb Rollins, the lead flight attendant, picked up the interphone and reported the latest facts to the cockpit, surprised that both pilots answered. She could hear tension in their voices. James Holland thanked her and clicked off as he turned toward Robb to continue an interrupted argument. London now lay thirty miles to the south, and Dick Robb wanted to go off somewhere over the English Channel and dump fuel to lighten the aircraft.
“We don’t have time,” Holland told him. “We’ve got a man dying back there.”
Robb shook his head angrily. “You’re planning an overweight landing in a hundred-sixty-million-dollar airplane on the assumption that you can save one passenger? We have to get our landing weight down. We have to dump fuel like the book says.”
Holland looked at him, trying to read the depth of Robb’s resolve in the redness of his face and the angle of his head. Overweight landings were prohibited, except in emergencies. But this was an emergency, and if the touchdown was gentle enough, it didn’t matter from a structural point of view.
Yet, Robb was in charge.
“You can overrule me, Dick, but that’s my decision. I’ll touch down way below the three-hundred-feet-per-minute descent rate limit. The aircraft won’t be overstressed.”
Robb’s voice, shrill and tense, shot back. “We’ll have to pull an overweight landing inspection, and that’ll take hours!”
Holland sat back and shook his head. “Okay, fine! Then what do you propose?” The thought of circling around offshore for thirty minutes to dump tens of thousands of dollars of jet fuel while a passenger died seemed idiotic.
Robb reacted as if hit with a cattle prod. Holland was dumping the decision in his lap, and he turned immediately and held up the palms of both hands.
“Oh no you don’t, Captain Holland. I’m evaluating your decisions. You want to crunch the airplane on overweight instead of dumping fuel? Go ahead!”
“You’re the one who signed for the airplane,” Holland reminded him, keeping his voice deliberately laconic.
Robb’s reply was instantaneous. “But you’re the acting captain, and I’m not making this decision for you!”
Holland turned again toward Robb, leaning over the center console and looking the younger pilot squarely in the eyes. “Then kindly shut up and stop trying to bully me!”
The senior director of the London Approach Control facility had arrived unnoticed behind the left shoulder of the controller taking the handoff of Quantum 66 from London Center. The controller issued instructions for further descent to five thousand feet and a turn to a heading of one hundred eighty degrees. The 747 would be the next aircraft landing at Heathrow. All other traffic was being routed out of the way, and the controller knew that a contingent of medical personnel and fire equipment was already in position by the runway. Precautionary emergency landings were not wholly unusual, but a medical emergency knitted everyone together with a common purpose. His entire concentration was focused now on bringing the American jumbo in as fast as possible, and an unexpected tap on his shoulder caused him to jump.
The controller turned to snap at whoever it was, and found himself staring at his boss.
“Where is Quantum?” the senior director asked.
“I’ve turned him on base leg,” the controller replied, wishing the chief would have the courtesy to watch in silence.
“Put him in a holding pattern and tell the captain to call us on the frequency his airline uses for Operations in Miami, Florida.” He handed the controller a slip of paper with “124.35” written on it. “Don’t state this frequency on the air,” he added.
The controller shook his head slightly, frowned at his screen, then glanced back at his boss before focusing again on the screen. He must have misunderstood.
“Terribly sorry sir … you said … what?”
The senior director took a deep breath and let it out before replying. This was not going to be easy. He leaned over to repeat the instructions directly into the controller’s ear, mindful that several others were listening from their consoles.
“Please just do as I say. Immediately.”
The controller’s head snapped around, his eyes searching those of the senior director, who stared back at him with his jaw clenched.
The voice of the Quantum pilot crackled through an overhead speaker at his console as well as through his headset.
“Approach, Quantum Sixty-six. We have the airport. Request a visual approach.”
Seconds of silence passed before the controller keyed his microphone. “Quantum, London Approach. I’m going to need to put you in holding. You are now cleared to hold on the London two-zero-zero-degree radial at ten miles, right-hand turns, ten-mile legs, at five thousand feet. And we’d like you to come up on the same radio frequency your company uses for …”
He glanced back at the senior director, who responded in a low voice. “Their Miami Operations frequency.”
“… your Operations frequency for Miami. We need to speak with you on that channel privately.”
There was silence at first when he released the transmit button, then the sound of a deeply perplexed American voice.
“London … you want us to enter holding? Don’t you realize we’ve got a probable heart attack victim aboard who’s barely hanging on?”
The controller sat transfixed, unsure what to say. How could he answer that? The captain had declared an emergency!
The senior director had already donned a headset and plugged in. He keyed his microphone.
“Captain, this is London Approach. Did you understand the holding instructions?”
The voice was different, authoritative, and a distinct change from the controller’s. In the cockpit of Quantum 66, James Holland watched London Heathrow sliding by his left window as his mind raced through various possibilities and came up with no feasible explanation. There was no traffic in their way. What on earth could be wrong?
Holland keyed the transmitter. “Yes, London, we copied your holding instructions … but, dammit, we can’t hold. You’re going to be responsible for a passenger’s death!”
“Captain, I beg you to do as instructed. The sooner you come up on the appropriate frequency, the sooner I can explain.”
James Holland looked to the right, finding the same puzzlement on Robb’s face.
“You’ve got the airplane, Dick. Put her in a hold as instructed while I look up the goddam frequency.”
For once, he noted, Robb responded without protest.
The frequency was buried on a page deep within Holland’s flight kit, and it took a minute to wrestle it to the surface and dial it in.
The same authoritative voice responded immediately, identifying his rank and name before cutting to the heart of the matter.
“Captain, aside from your medical emergency, the British Ministry of Health has been informed by the German Health Bureau that one of your passengers has been exposed to a particularly nasty and dangerous strain of influenza. I have no other information, but because of this exposure, you must return to Frankfurt for appropriate processing and quarantine. Your company has been informed that the British government cannot permit you to land in the U.K.”
Holland shook his head. “Because of a flu bug? I’ve been flying twenty-five years and I’ve never heard of such a thing! You quarantine individuals, not entire flights! Look, just let us get the heart attack victim off the airplane. I’ll take the rest of us back, if that’s what my company wants.”
The sound of a transmitter being keyed was followed by a sigh.
“I’m sorry, Captain, this decision has been taken at th
e highest levels of the British government. It is not subject to negotiation.”
“Why can’t we at least get help for our heart attack, dammit?”
The senior director’s voice was somber and slow.
“Captain, have you considered the possibility that your heart attack victim and the exposed passenger might be the same person?”
“Are you sure of that? Do you have the name of the exposed passenger?” Holland demanded.
“I will tell you they are one and the same, Captain, but I’m not at liberty to pass the name over the radio on a clear channel. Now, since you were a transatlantic flight, I assume you have more than enough fuel to return to Frankfurt?”
“Yes, but our passenger will be dead by the time we get there, flu or no flu!”
“That can’t be helped, I’m afraid. If you’ll return now to the previous frequency, we’ll hand you back to London Center and clear you back east.”
“What if I land at Heathrow anyway?” Holland snapped. “You planning to shoot us on short final?”
There was a telling hesitation, and he wondered if that was a key the man was hoping Holland would find. But the voice came back with even more authority.
“That would be quite foolish, Captain. You would create an international incident; your aircraft, crew, and passengers would be kept on the runway for many hours before you were still forced to depart for Germany; and you would ultimately have to answer to your government for violating a foreign government’s domestic air rules. I would expect you to lose your pilot’s license as well. Your sick passenger will get help in Frankfurt. He will get none here.”
“I hope your tape recorders are running!” Holland shot back.
“Indeed they are, sir. And for the record, I regret being forced to do this as much as you do.”
Several seconds of silence filled the frequency before Holland replied, the angry tone now absent.
“So we’re to be quarantined? Two hundred and forty-five passengers and twelve crew members? For a stupid flu?”
“In Frankfurt, yes. I have no details, but you must hurry. I was told that everyone aboard would need immediate treatment to prevent an outbreak.”
“Okay” was all Holland could manage. The whole thing was bizarre. Unreal. But what choice did they have?
He dialed in the previous frequency of London Approach and gestured to Dick Robb to make the call as he tried to focus on what the control chief had said.
So the heart attack victim had been exposed to a flu bug. So what? The man was still in the throes of a coronary, which couldn’t possibly be connected.
Or could it?
Holland yanked the interphone from its cradle and punched in the code for door 2L. Barb Rollins answered immediately.
“Barb, our heart attack? Was he ill when he came aboard?”
There was a brief hesitation before she answered. The memory of Brenda helping the same man through the door played in Barb’s mind.
“Yes, he was. How bad I don’t know. Why?”
“Nothing. Just niggling questions from the ground. I’ll explain in a few minutes,” Holland told her. He replaced the handset, with a flurry of conflicting worries cascading through his head. The Germans wanted them back for quarantine and treatment to prevent an outbreak. That was good to hear.
Holland mulled it over as Robb read back the return clearance to Frankfurt and began programming the flight management computer—the FMC.
Isn’t influenza a virus? How do you provide treatment for a virus?
He thought about the control chief’s words.
Something wasn’t right.
THREE
NEAR HEATHROW AIRPORT, LONDON, U.K. (1648Z)
At precisely 4:48 P.M. London time—as Quantum 66 climbed away from the indignity of official British rejection to return to Frankfurt—the resident of a small flat in an unremarkable brick high-rise four miles from Heathrow Airport began punching in the number of CNN’s London bureau eighteen miles distant.
The young man virtually quivered with excitement as he waited. He had most of the BBC’s and CNN’s private numbers now—the result of several years of reliable tips and the occasional sale of a tape recording of air-to-ground communications. No one monitored radio communications around Heathrow more thoroughly than he!
The young paraplegic adjusted the brake on his wheelchair and shifted the phone in his hand, proud of himself for snatching the frequency for Quantum’s Miami Operations faster than the captain of Flight 66 could get it. A quick look into his World Aviation Guide and a call to Quantum’s Operations office in Dallas had done the trick. He’d already been tuned to the right frequency, with his tape recorders rolling, when Flight 66’s captain called the air traffic control chief.
The young man glanced again at the audiocassette in his hand and smiled. The entire conversation was there, ready for the highest bidder, and this emergency was something unique: a planeload of people exposed to some nasty flu, as the controller had put it, being forced into quarantine. It was a smashing newsbreak. CNN would love it, and already he was feeling the rush as he anticipated watching the anchor back in Atlanta break the story—his story—to the world.
ABOARD FLIGHT 66
Ambassador Lee Lancaster drummed his fingers on the leather-padded armrest of seat 2A as his mind assembled bits of evidence. The captain’s announcement that they were diverting to London for a critically ill passenger was understandable. But the latest announcement from the captain about returning to Frankfurt for better coronary medical aid made no sense.
He’d been watching the lifesaving efforts a dozen yards behind him and knew that the poor fellow was barely hanging on. Time was obviously critical. So, what pilot in his right mind would fly an extra hour back to Germany when he was minutes away from Heathrow?
No, something was definitely wrong, and the bizarre and serious thought flickered across his mind that it might have something to do with him. After all, half the Arab world wanted him dead. Could the captain’s return to Frankfurt be a smokescreen to hide a hijacking?
He was aware of Rachael Sherwood’s eyes watching him. She could almost always read him, and for some reason the thought was pleasing. Rachael was as bright as they came: a Rhodes scholar and a brilliant speech-writer who should have been on the President’s staff instead of his.
But Rachael had had little experience in dealing with the focused fury of the Shiite Islamic world, or gauging the determined nature of those who hated him. This time she wouldn’t have guessed what he was thinking.
Hijacking’s a ridiculous idea! he told himself. Yet …
As it often did, a lurid scene of a shattered car in Madrid replayed itself in his mind. He’d decided to walk that spring day a year ago, leaving an embassy employee to ferry his rental car back to the American compound. He’d been warned to be especially careful in Madrid, but the beauty of the spring day and sheer bravado got in the way. After all, he had survived a decade of threats without a scratch. He had begun to believe that his own sheer force of will made him invulnerable.
The explosion had reached his ears from a half mile away. A powerful bomb under the dashboard fragmented the driver and the vehicle. An unrelated protest against the Spanish government, the public had been told. Lancaster’s name had been kept out of it, but there was no question who the target had been.
He winced at the memory. The funeral had been gruesome. In a hysterical scene he would never, ever forget, the widow had blamed him personally.
Lancaster shook his head and rubbed his temple to expunge the memory, then glanced at Rachael. She was such a beauty, he thought, and it was something even her conservative way of dressing couldn’t hide. He liked the company of beautiful women on a sheer physical level, and even with his eyes and ears closed, her physical presence a few inches away triggered a pleasant glow.
The 747 changed course again slightly, diverting his attention back to the problem at hand. As the roving American ambassador primarily respon
sible for engineering workable truces and economic relationships between Israel and the Arab states, he had long since been branded a blood enemy of Islam. The fact that he was an acknowledged Islamic scholar was immaterial to the Shiites, and even he had lost track of the full list of terrorist organizations, outlaw Islamic nations, splinter groups, and others who had sworn to kill him over the years. He had refused to become a prisoner of security precautions, though the price was high. He found himself walking a knife edge of terror, always watching his back, always aware that the balance could tip the wrong way at any moment.
His wife and family had learned to live with the danger, if not fully accept it. But Jill Lancaster was never comfortable with the stereotype of the perpetually smiling, never complaining diplomat’s wife. She hated not being able to talk about her fears, the constant wondering when her husband might come home in a flag-draped body bag.
He sighed and glanced around the first class cabin.
So, have they cornered me at last, or am I finally a certifiable paranoid?
No, he decided. Terrorists didn’t bank on unpredictable opportunities like heart attacks.
But if not, then what was going on? Could another threat be waiting for him back in Frankfurt?
He turned and raised an index finger. “Rachael, I need you to do something for me.”
“Sure, Lee.”
He leaned close, talking barely above a whisper, ignoring the scent of her perfume.
“Something’s very wrong here. I need to know exactly what’s happening, just in case … in case it involves me somehow.”
Her eyebrows fluttered up in alarm, her dark brown eyes boring into his. He raised the palm of his hand.
“It’s not likely,” he reassured her, “but this return to Frankfurt is very strange.”
“You want me to go talk to the pilots?” she asked.
“Find the lead flight attendant first. Make sure she knows who we are, and try to find out what’s really going on.”
She was suddenly nervous, he could tell, but she smiled and unsnapped her seat belt without hesitation. She unfolded her long legs, stood up, and smoothed her skirt.
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