Phoenix Rising

by Nance, John J. ;

  “Mr. Lamb?”

  The sudden voice in his ear caused him to jump slightly as Ron reminded himself that the technicians back east were probably looking at him by satellite through the lens of the camera that sat staring silently at him like a cyclops some fifteen feet away.

  “This is the director in New York, Mr. Lamb. You hearing me okay?”

  “Uh, yes. Can you hear me?”

  “We can hear you and see you just fine, sir. We appreciate your getting up at such an early hour to be with us. We’re going to run a taped report about your company, then we’ll come back to the studio and to you, about six minutes from now.”

  “Okay.” Ron tried to discipline himself to look at the lens as he realized his left hand was fussing with his left ear, pushing at the earpiece.

  There were other sounds now, of microphones being adjusted on the set in New York, and of various voices talking back and forth.

  The rest of his company was filled with happy, optimistic, proud, energized people. So why am I feeling so damned negative?

  He closed his eyes for a second and felt the butterflies begin to alight, one by one.

  The familiar theme music of “Good Morning America” filled his ear now, and the soothing voices of Joan Lunden and Charlie Gibson followed as Ron Lamb took a deep breath and prepared to pump sunshine into the hearts of the flying public.

  Pan Am’s luxurious new round-the-world service starts March twenty-seventh, and by damn, I’m gonna make them want it!

  4

  Wednesday, March 8, 8:07 P.M.

  Seattle, Washington

  Beneath the high overcast that covered Puget Sound by sunset, a wispy veil of stratus now floated like an afterthought at three thousand feet. The diaphanous layer gently enfolded the nighttime city of Seattle like the gossamer curtains of an Elizabethan bedchamber, enshrouding a region of mysterious beauty and twinkling lights in multicolor hues, all softened by the diffusive effects of the clouds. Along the waterfront, the wake of a late-departing ferry heading out into Elliott Bay flared brightly and briefly in the reflected luminescence of the downtown district—the phosphorescent trail followed instantly by the marveling eyes of many newly airborne passengers as Pan Am Flight 10 slipped into the sky over the West Seattle Bridge, making a lazy left turn toward Tokyo, some five thousand miles distant.

  Within the space of five minutes, the huge Boeing jetliner—born of a giant assembly line some thirty miles to the north in Everett—lifted itself above the overcast, leaving the visage of Puget Sound below to memory. Within thirty minutes the 747-200 was essentially at sea, sailing seven miles above the waters, as the efficient silicon-based minds of the onboard computers aimed their giant client at the Japanese Archipelago, a quarter of a world away.

  Wednesday, March 8, 8:40 P.M.

  Pan Am Flight 10, in flight some 100 miles west of the Olympic

  Peninsula, Washington

  For the last few minutes there had been nothing but a soft electronic hum in the earpiece of the captain’s lightweight headset. It changed now, suddenly, the businesslike voice of an air-traffic controller cutting through the void.

  “Clipper Ten Heavy, say again your GUNNS estimate.”

  To Captain Jim Aaron, the radio channel had been quiet for so long that he’d begun to wonder if they’d lost contact with Seattle Center. But no, the controller was still with them, and wanting to know when the 747 crew expected to pass over the invisible checkpoint called GUNNS, an oceanic intersection some 360 miles west-northwest of the coastline of Washington State.

  Judy Griffin, the copilot, raised her microphone to reply.

  “Clipper Ten Heavy is estimating GUNNS at … ah …” Judy leaned to her left, her eyes searching the screen of the flight computer for the right number. “… zero-five-two-two-zulu, Seattle. We’re level now at flight level three-five-zero.”

  There was a light rustling of papers in his ear as the flight engineer, Patrick Hogan, handed the fuel plan forward for the captain’s approval. Patrick—he refused to let people shorten his name to Pat—was experienced and competent, and a longtime friend. He was also a fellow deregulatory refugee whose deceased airline had been the original Pan Am.

  The fuel would be tight tonight. With the jetstream blowing down their throats part of the way, a nonstop flight from Seattle to Tokyo was just barely within legal range without a fuel stop in Anchorage.

  Jim scribbled his initials on the log and handed it back. It would be the first step of a constant monitoring routine to make certain the fuel-burn curve didn’t start diving away from the fuel-burn plan during the ten hours of flight time that stretched ahead of them.

  He turned to Judy and then to Patrick.

  “You two ready to rig for ocean running? Turn the house lights up, I mean?”

  Night flying in a dark cockpit made everyone sleepy, and once over the ocean under positive control at high altitudes, there was no point in looking for other traffic.

  They both nodded in unison and Jim reached up to the overhead panel to flood the cockpit with light.

  Just in time, too, he thought. I was about to get comfortable and drowsy in the dark.

  “Jim, you going to use the circadian room tonight?” Patrick Hogan was watching him for an answer. They were all eager to try the new section in the belly lounge, one deck beneath the main cabin floor, which was another popular Pan Am innovation. Reached by a small elevator, part of it was an exercise room that the passengers could use by appointment, and the other side a small cabin of seats surrounded by very bright light panels that provided the illusion of daylight. New research had discovered that an hour or so of such light exposure could reset the body’s internal clock and almost erase jet lag. Pan Am had jumped at the chance to introduce what they had advertised as a bright idea long before the rest of the industry.

  The captain had just opened his mouth to answer, when a soul-shaking thud thundered through the 747 cockpit.

  The cockpit voice recorder duly recorded the time as 04:46:08 GMT—8:46 P.M. in Seattle.

  Captain Jim Aaron felt as if something large and hard had hit the plane at high speed. The combination of sound, orange light, vibration, and the sudden yawing of the 747 overwhelmed him.

  Somewhere in his head, the words What the hell was that? tried to form, but with a river of adrenaline flowing into his bloodstream and time beginning to dilate instantly, seconds seemed like minutes, and the words wouldn’t come.

  In a split second Jim’s eyes were scanning the instrument panel. The fact that a cold, foggy mist had suddenly formed in his cockpit registered, but in the immense confusion of the moment he was trying to grasp everything at once and could focus on nothing.

  The 747 immediately began to yaw dangerously to the right as the left wing came up. Jim’s hands flew to the yoke, pulling instinctively as he rolled the giant Boeing back to the left.

  Maintain aircraft control! That was the prime directive. But the mist meant that …

  “Rapid decompression!” Judy was flailing at something on her right and trying to speak above the sound of a warning bell.

  Rapid depressurization! We’re depressurized! Jim Aaron understood instantly now. Get your mask on, boy! The voice of experience was echoing in his head suddenly, and the mist of a rapid decompression made lethal sense.

  Jim clawed over his left shoulder with his right hand, flailing for his oxygen mask as he held the yoke with his left hand and fought for control. He felt a fingernail on his right hand tear as he connected with the mask—a flash of pain he ignored. There were precious few seconds left before lack of oxygen would doom him to unconsciousness.

  Finally his grasping right hand found the stem of the mask. He swept it over his head and into place with immense relief. For the next few seconds all his conscious energy flowed into the controls, trying to right the airplane. He knew Judy was fighting to pull her mask on in the right seat, but whether Patrick had grabbed his or not, he couldn’t tell. The unspoken fear that t
he 747 might be coming apart in midair sat like a cold specter on his shoulders, unseen but omnipresent.

  The controls felt mushy, and he found himself testing them, rolling the yoke left and right slightly to see if the airplane would respond.

  Please don’t let me lose the flight controls!

  The plight of United Captain Al Haynes and his uncontrollable DC-10 over Sioux City years before flashed through his head. But no, the 747 was responding. There! When he rolled the yoke left, there was a response, however tepid. They were still flying, but they were obviously in trouble.

  Now, what the hell had happened?

  He held the control yoke severely to the left, opposing the roll, his left leg holding pressure on the left rudder pedal. There was nothing but blackness outside over the moonless Pacific.

  Emergency descent! We’ve got to turn back! We’re still headed out to sea!

  His eyes scanned the center instrument panel—the zeroed readings on engine number three were all too obvious. Number four’s instruments looked strange. He stared at them. It was hard to concentrate with all the noise.

  Noise?

  There was a loud, persistent ringing noise that had been there all along, he now realized! A bell.

  Oh, jeez, a fire warning!

  It had been ringing away unheard in the confusion. Now it commanded his full attention.

  Judy was pointing excitedly to the illuminated fire handle for number three, the inboard engine on the right wing. He could see a bright orange glow out to the right over her shoulder, reflecting against the edges of the window frame. Jim fumbled for and found the intercom button, activating the small microphone in his oxygen mask. He punched it hard.

  “Engine fire number three!”

  Judy nodded vigorously, her head jerking to her right at intervals and coming back with wider eyes each time. Unable to locate her intercom button, she pulled her mask an inch away from her face for a second to yell in his direction.

  “It’s burning out there! Shut it … we need to shut it down!”

  Jim nodded as he grabbed the number three fire handle and saw Judy nod in confirmation that he had the correct one. He pulled hard, instantly shutting off the fuel supply to the engine, then punched the fire-bottle-discharge button to send a small wave of fire-extinguishing foam into the surrounding cavities of the huge engine, before dropping his hand to the center pedestal to move the start lever to off.

  Gotta get down!

  He had to get the passengers to lower altitude, where everyone could breathe. The puny passenger oxygen masks were insufficient at 35,000 feet.

  Only nineteen seconds had passed since the initial explosion, but in a court of law he would have sworn to three minutes.

  “Emergency … ah … descent!” He couldn’t seem to get the words out without a struggle, but Judy nodded again. He heard her voice on the overhead speakers as she pressed the transmit button to talk to Seattle Center, her voice straining against the constraints of the oxygen mask.

  “Ah … Seattle … ah … Pan Am … ah, Clipper Ten … we have a problem up here. We’re going to make an emergency descent … we’re turning back … leaving flight level three-five-zero now, and, ah …” Judy glanced briefly at Jim before continuing and made an instant decision. He was too busy fighting the airplane. She would declare the emergency on her own.

  “… and declaring an emergency, squawking seventy-seven hundred this time.”

  The captain’s eyes were on the forward panel as his hand closed around the four throttles. Without looking at the copilot, he was nodding his assent as she dialed the emergency code in the transponder, which would relay the information to the controller’s radar screen.

  Throttles idle, speed brake out, turn off course forty-five degrees, turn on continuous ignition, and get the checklist. The emergency memory items played in his mind as Jim Aaron pulled all four throttles and extended the speed brakes as he let the huge, 750,000-pound aircraft bank to the right and start down.

  Gotta reach fourteen thousand feet in four minutes. That’s what I want … wait a minute, how about structural integrity? Are we in one piece? It could be catastrophic to do a high-speed dive if we’re structurally damaged! I’ll keep the speed moderate until I know.

  His mind was still racing in fifty directions at once, his concentration fragmented. He felt himself shaking inside.

  The calm voice of the Seattle Center controller cut through the cockpit, a welcome sound of home. “Clipper Ten, roger, receiving your emergency squawk. You’re cleared to descend pilot discretion to ten thousand, right turn to a heading of zero-nine-zero degrees for now. Say your intentions.” The controller wanted to know what they wanted to do, but Jim couldn’t focus on the question just now.

  “Jim, number three’s still burning!” Judy’s voice penetrated his thoughts and he looked instantly back at the fire handle, which was still illuminated, meaning a fire was still in progress.

  “Look out there.” He asked her on the intercom, “What do you see?”

  “I think I see flames!”

  “Okay … ah, shoot the other bottle, Judy.” He saw her hand react instantly, pressing the alternate fire-extinguisher button for the last fire bottle they carried in the right wing.

  A firm hand on his right shoulder confused him for a second. It was Patrick, the flight engineer’s muffled intercom voice ringing out over the cabin speakers above his head.

  “Jim, we’ve lost some hydraulic systems, I, ah …” Jim glanced over his shoulder at the flight engineer, whose right hand was pointing to the hydraulic section of the huge sideways engineering panel. Even at first glance the needles looked wrong.

  Judy’s voice registered in his mind, distracting his mental effort to interpret the strange readings.

  “We’re through twenty-eight thousand now,” she announced, “coming down.”

  Jim Aaron looked at the engineer’s face and saw wide-eyed fright. Patrick met his gaze and leaned forward, pressing his interphone button again.

  “I just talked to the lead flight attendant. Everyone’s frightened, but they’re hanging on.”

  Jim nodded a thank-you, the hydraulics momentarily forgotten as Judy’s voice rang out again.

  “Jim, you’ve turned past our assigned heading.”

  He swiveled instantly back toward the instrument panel as Judy continued, “You want zero-nine-zero degrees. You want to turn us back to the left now.”

  She was right. He had overshot. He immediately rolled the yoke left as far as he dared, leveling the wings and beginning a turn back to heading, thankful she had been watching out for their navigation. It was all he could do to hang on to the airplane and just keep it flying.

  Jim focused on the unwinding altimeter. They were descending through 22,000 feet, the rate of descent more than eight thousand feet per minute. The steep nose-down angle of the 747 was frightening him as his sweaty hands strained to hang on to the control yoke, forcing it forward as the big Boeing dropped smartly toward the undercast that obscured the coastline many miles ahead.

  Jim Aaron had always hated the feeling of being behind his airplane, being pulled along by events rather than controlling them, but that was exactly his circumstance now, as he struggled to control the chaotic situation around them.

  Dear God, did we lose anyone down there? Do we have a hole like … like that United? The image of the United Airlines 747 that lost a cargo door at midnight south of Honolulu flitted across his memory. The accident had haunted all 747 pilots for years. Nine passengers had been pulled out with that door.

  He pressed the intercom button. “Patrick, ask the flight attendants if they see anything wrong—holes or such—in the cabin.

  He felt ill with revulsion at the thought that at least one passenger from that flight had been consumed by number-three engine. Here he had almost identical symptoms. Oh my Lord, that must be it! We’ve lost our cargo door!

  “Jim, we ought to dump fuel if we’re going back.” The low, urg
ent voice came from behind him, so it had to be Patrick’s.

  Jim Aaron snapped his head around to look at the engineer’s panel again. This time the four hydraulic systems registered with clarity, though what the gauges said made no real sense.

  Where the hell are the hydraulics? I don’t see pressure anywhere!

  Jim looked forward again, remembering that the 747 was following his control inputs, even if sluggishly.

  I have to have at least one hydraulic system left! I couldn’t be flying if I didn’t have at least one!

  He stared again at Patrick’s hydraulic gauges, counting the zeroed gauges.

  Only system one was working.

  “Jim, I need to dump fuel!” Patrick repeated.

  Suddenly fuel didn’t seem very important. Hydraulics did. Patrick was waiting in vain for a response.

  The controller’s voice interrupted Jim’s fragmented thoughts again. “Clipper Ten, Seattle. Come right now, to one-zero-zero degrees. State your intentions.”

  There was no answer from the left seat.

  Judy looked at her captain and faced the reality that he was task saturated. She punched the transmit button on her own. “Seattle, ah, we want vectors directly back to Seatac for an emergency landing … and we’ll level at fourteen thousand.”

  Jim was still staring at the engineer’s panel, trying to make the dead hydraulic systems live again through force of will. He punched the intercom button. “What … what the hell’s wrong here? We … are we really down to one?”

  Patrick looked back at the captain with genuine fear in his eyes and nodded. It was a short, staccato nod of one who knows the options have been reduced to a singularity.

  “Systems two, three, and four are gone—no pressure and no fluid. Number two has fluid, but the pumps won’t work, including the air pump. All we have left is hydraulic system one. We will be able to lower the gear and fly the plane, as long as nothing happens to the … the last system, but I’ll have to read you the other things we’ve lost … with the other three hydraulic systems, I mean.”