“Go on.”
“Okay, we’re totally dependent on that APU I described.” His voice was low, and he glanced over his shoulder once again to make sure he wasn’t being overheard. “I’ve got to get us ready to live without it if the worst occurs. Do you two have heavy coats here in the cabin?”
Both Kelly and her grandmother nodded, but Virginia added a postscript, gesturing with her thumb toward the window. “Not that heavy.”
He raised the palm of his hand. “Even if the APU died, I’d keep us huddled up inside. Two hundred humans put out one hell of a lot of body heat.”
The nine flight attendants were all veterans, but none of them had ever lived through such a nightmare as the previous hour. All of them were shaken, and each of them, Brian realized, were just as dependent on him for strength and reassurance as were the passengers.
With Tyson remaining in the cockpit to talk to Iqaluit and the rapidly mobilizing Canadian Rescue Forces, Brian praised his crew lavishly before getting down to organizational details.
“First, I mean it when I say we’re a team, the passengers included. I need your every idea and suggestion, I need your observations, I need your strength as well. I’m still the captain. Tyson Matthews is second-in-command. Jan, your first flight attendant, is third-in-command. Anyone can communicate with me or Tyson or Jan at any time, about anything. Now, if there’s a conflict, understand that the rest of you have authority over each passenger. But we will use that authority to compel only when absolutely necessary.” He took the time to smile and make eye contact with each of the eight flight attendants then, all of whom nodded in turn. He had intended to calm them, but felt himself calmed down as well. He felt some of the apprehension and tension drain away with each set of eyes he gazed into.
Brian smiled a broader smile than before, and took a deep breath, ignoring another gust of wind that caused the 767 to shudder.
“Okay. First, communications. We have four satellite lines, as you know. We’ll retain line one for cockpit use, but I want the other three used to let each passenger call home at our expense to let loved ones know they’re okay. Please don’t give them the inbound satcom telephone number, or our lines will be jammed solid. Ask everyone who calls to keep the call under three minutes, and tell them to be totally optimistic and not unduly worry anyone they talk to. I’m going to give you my credit card to use to charge each call. It’s on Pan Am.”
“Lord, Captain, that’s five dollars per minute!” one of the crew said.
He grinned. “So I’ll go broke when they refuse my travel voucher.”
Brian let himself envision the resulting bill. If he wasn’t already fired as chief pilot, that should do it.
He forced his mind back to business and cleared his throat. “Next item: food and water. Take inventory of what we have in unserved meals, standby meals, packaged food, everything, down to packages of peanuts, then report back to Jan.” He turned to the lead flight attendant. “Jan, let’s use simple division based on three days to figure out how much we feed each person.” He looked back at the group. “And I’m open to any other suggestions on how to handle it. We also have some survival rations in the life rafts, but let’s leave those alone for now.”
The mere mention of food reminded him that his stomach was empty, too. He’d made the mistake of turning down dinner after climb-out from Seattle.
“Captain, some people on board may have their own food. How do we handle that?” One of the flight attendants, whom he remembered only as Beth, had raised her hand slightly.
“Ask them to please reduce their share of the group food supplies by whatever they’ve got for themselves, or—if it’s packaged—contribute it. We also need an inventory of baby food for the infants, and any special requirements.”
They all nodded, and several were taking notes.
“Water use in the bathrooms has to be curtailed, and no showers in Compartment Class. Jan, have the faucets cut off in all but one bathroom. Toilets are recirculating, of course, so those are unaffected—but expect them to get pretty ripe after forty-eight hours of use.”
A quietly attractive flight attendant with huge dark eyes raised her hand and caught Brian’s attention. “Captain?”
“Yes. You are?”
“Brenda Wallace. Sir, we may have people with medication needs, too, such as diabetics. What if they need their luggage?”
He shook his head. “Not possible, Brenda. None of us is tall enough to deal with the baggage compartments, and even if we could, at fifty below with a forty-knot wind, whoever tried would be risking serious frostbite—and we’d have to open a door and use an emergency exit slide to get him to the surface. Don’t forget, our floor level is over ten feet off the ground, and it’s ice out there. Getting to the luggage at this point is not an option.”
“We can’t get to it from inside?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No, but let’s see if anyone who needs medicine left it in their bags. I would think most of them have their medicine in their carry-ons. In other words, let’s see if we really do have a problem before we try to solve it.”
Another heavy gust shoved the aircraft sideways, this time actually moving the wheels a few inches and pivoting the nose to the left. Brian suppressed the urge to run back to the cockpit to see what was happening. But there was nothing he could do anyway, except ride it out and hope.
Brian looked at the group. They were all looking back at him quietly.
“Okay,” he said at last, “when the people have those occupation sheets filled out, please bring them up. The cockpit remains the command post. Use the interphone to call us at any time, and I’ll be back in the cabin for a walk-through in a little while.” Brian started to turn toward the cockpit, but another thought held him back.
“Oh, one other thing. Even though we can’t serve much in order to ration what we have, let’s establish a regular meal schedule and try for some semblance of normalcy.”
Tyson Matthews was still on satellite phone link with Pan Am headquarters when the captain returned to the cockpit, but the radio was tuned to an aeronautical radio frequency, and the sound of another pilot booming through the overhead speakers gave Brian a rush of relief.
“Clipper four-zero, Rescue Five, we’ve been in solid cloud cover since descending through twenty thousand. We’ll continue to orbit for another two hours until bingo fuel, but until this storm lifts, there’s nothing else we can do.”
Tyson told whoever was on the other end of the phone that he’d call them back. He disconnected then, and picked up the radio microphone.
“Roger, Rescue, we’ll be here. It’s just good to know you’re up there.”
Tyson looked at Brian and shook his head sadly. “I think we gave them the wrong position, Brian. That C-130 made three passes right over the coordinates we gave him, and I couldn’t hear a thing.”
“How low was he?”
“Eight hundred feet above the surface. Low enough that we would have heard him. I had the cockpit door closed, and I opened the window just a bit. Damn near froze my ear off.”
The chill in the cockpit was still pronounced.
Brian stared out the window at the diffuse landing lights, which seemed to terminate in an opaque swirl of snow and what appeared to be ice fog. Even the embankment was no longer visible. The feeling of loneliness was almost overwhelming.
“All three inertial nav units agree, don’t they?” Brian asked at last, looking down at the INS control heads. “They’re all within three miles of each other?”
“Yes, but we don’t know what effect all those transient signals may have had on them before we lost the engines,” Tyson said.
Brian was shaking his head vigorously. “No, these damn things are too independent. If they’re off, it’s by no more than a few miles. Maybe the 130 was off.”
“No way. He’s got a global positioning satellite nav system.”
Brian sighed deeply. They had discussed putting GPS systems in the
767s, since the 747 fleet had them, but they hadn’t had time.
“Well, there’s nothing he can do anyway until this storm clears. Even if he had us pinpointed, Tyson—I mean, even if he had a perfect diagram of this lake, accurate down to a foot, and knew exactly where we were sitting—trying to land in this … this sort of stuff … would be suicidal.” Brian gestured disgustedly at the windscreen, then turned back to the copilot. “We’re at the mercy of this storm, that’s all there is to it.”
“We’re getting weathervaned by the wind, too, you know.”
Brian nodded. “I felt us get shoved sideways a while ago.”
Tyson continued, “Our heading’s changed by fifteen degrees to the left so far. If it continues, our tail’s going to be overhanging the embankment.”
The captain shrugged.
“Not a hell of a lot we can do about it.” That was the least of their problems.
Both men remained silent for a half a minute, listening to the wind gusts roar at them through the skin of the airplane and the cockpit windows, sounds that overwhelmed the soft background humming and whirring of instrument cooling fans.
Tyson spoke first, as Brian reached up to snap off the landing lights.
“Brian, Boeing and everyone in our maintenance department are scratching their heads over all this. They keep telling me there simply isn’t any way that normal failure modes in the computers could cut off the fuel switches. No way. They even asked if we could have cut off the fuel switches by mistake. I confirmed we hadn’t.”
“What do they suggest? Do they have any ideas on how to get them running again? I mean, if we could just get one of those vacuum cleaners out there fired off, I wouldn’t be so worried about the APU.” He swiveled around on the captain’s seat to face Tyson. “You understand what we’re going to be up against in survival terms, if we lose the ability to maintain heat in this aluminum tube?”
Tyson shook his head. “They have no suggestions yet, other than pulling the rack-mounted black boxes in the electronics bay below, but we don’t have any tools to work on them, let alone the problem of going outside in these temperatures to get to the compartment.”
Brian sat deep in thought for a few seconds, staring forward into the Arctic night, remembering the company decision to seal off the small floor hatch that normally connects the passenger compartment of a 767 with the lower electronics bay. On Pan Am, a permanent bulkhead covered the hatch.
“You’re right. I’d have to go outside to get in the electronics bay. And here we sit, totally dependent on that APU.”
“Brian?”
“Yeah,” he answered distractedly.
“On that subject … I hate to bring it up, but I checked the log for past problems with the APU, and I confirmed this with maintenance control.”
“And?” Brian looked around at him with an apprehensive expression.
“This APU’s had a lot of maintenance troubles lately. It’s not terribly reliable.”
18
Wednesday, March 15, 11:35 A.M.
London, England
“Elizabeth? Are you quite all right?” Alastair Wood had cocked his head and tried to meet her gaze, which had soared off through the glass windows of Lloyds’ main floor and into space.
She snapped back to London and smiled at him, anxious not to discuss Clipper Forty. For all she knew, he hadn’t heard about it yet.
“Sorry. There’s a lot on my mind, and I’m afraid jet lag’s interfering too.”
Alastair Wood had turned out to be exactly what Lloyd White had represented: a young street fighter who had acquired the manners, clothes, and linguistic capabilities required of a financier, but who still had the heart of a shark.
“Where were we?” she asked.
“Well, I have a frightful amount of phoning to do to line up our chaps, but I see no reason why we shouldn’t meet again in the morning to begin drawing up the papers.”
“You’re … that sure?”
He laughed as he got to his feet and removed his glasses. “Well, the members of my syndicate and other outside investors I handle have made a lot of money listening to me over the past four years, if you’ll forgive the shameless bragging. But they bloody well ought to go along with me, even though this is direct loan-making and not underwriting. Your interest rate offer is excellent, and we’ve got security, so why not?”
She shook his hand warmly, but her mind was on an empty office she had seen coming in. Could she use it, and the phone it contained, for a few minutes?
“Certainly,” Wood replied, showing her in and closing the door to leave her in privacy.
Elizabeth fumbled through her briefcase for the satellite access number to Clipper Forty, contained in a small directory of Pan Am telephone numbers. The incredible idea that she could pick up a phone and reach a downed airliner in grave peril in the frozen Arctic—an aircraft even rescue forces couldn’t physically get to—seemed surrealistic.
The number came up busy, and she tried again, hearing a ringing circuit on the third try.
The sound of a strained feminine voice rang clearly from the other end, but the words were surprisingly professional and matter-of-fact—as if the woman were calmly sitting at the desk of a cruise ship on a lazy, sunny day.
“Clipper Forty.”
“Uh, this is Elizabeth Sterling, your chief, ah, financial officer … of Pan Am …”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Could I speak with Captain Murphy, please?”
“Sure. Let me transfer you.”
She had seen the so-called “switchboard” for the satellite lines in the forward galley of the 747s, but somehow she’d never thought about it working like an office or hotel phone system.
A masculine voice answered with a sharp single word.
“Cockpit.” It wasn’t Brian.
She identified herself and heard the receiver being handed across the cockpit.
“Hello?”
“Brian!”
“Elizabeth? God, it’s good to hear your voice.”
“And yours! I … I just found out about what was going on a little while ago.”
“It only happened a little while ago. Hold on … hold on.”
In the background, she heard Brian ask someone to go back to the cabin for a reason she couldn’t decipher, and a moment later the unmistakable sound of a closing door reached her ears.
Brian’s voice came on the line again, much gentler now.
“Elizabeth, I … I had to fight to keep you out of my head on the way down, when the engines quit. It was a spooky experience.” He paused. “It’s still a spooky experience, especially talking to you like this. You sound like you’re only a few feet away.”
“Where are you, exactly?”
“The coordinates wouldn’t mean much unless you have a map there, but we’re above seventy-one degrees north latitude, sitting on a frozen lake on a peninsula above Hudson Bay … and in the middle of a howling gale.”
She started to reply, but his voice came back, urgent and strong.
“Elizabeth, I’ve been burning to talk to you since we slid to a halt here. I’m truly sorry for the other night. It scared me that I might not have the chance to tell you that. It kept eating at me all the way down … ‘What if we don’t make it? Will she know how much I love her?’”
Elizabeth had to clear her throat. There seemed to be a growing lump there. “I do know, Brian, and I feel the same … and I’m as much to blame for Saturday as you. We … we just have to learn to adjust to each other again. Brian, when can you get out of there?”
Several thousand miles distant, Brian hesitated, his mind racing. What should he tell her? After all, his fate was tied to her mother’s and daughter’s.
“Brian?” she prompted, understanding the pause only too well.
“Honey, we’re in a serious situation.” He filled her in without embellishment.
There was a pause on the line.
Brian continued, “It could get
tough, but we’ll be okay—and as for your mother and Kelly, they’re doing just fine.”
If he’d suddenly described palm trees and breaking surf visible from the cockpit, it wouldn’t have made less sense. Mom and Kelly? Had they called Brian too? How could they get the number so fast?
Kelly and Mom are in Bellingham … no, that’s right, they were going to Europe … oh God! I forgot!
Her mind finally recalled her mother’s words on Eric’s answering machine in New York: “Kelly and I are going to Europe on Brian’s Pan Am flight.”
“I … ah … knew they were flying to Europe, but I forgot they were with you.”
“I’m sorry to shock you.”
They talked for five more minutes before Brian called Virginia and Kelly to the cockpit for a short conversation with Elizabeth.
When the call was over, Elizabeth sat in the vacant office, still holding the receiver and staring at the wall, a tide of conflicting emotions welling up inside her.
I’ve got to get up there … be there when they’re rescued. I can fly on one of the planes, I can …
Elizabeth looked around suddenly, reminding herself where she was and what she was doing. There were five days left for Pan Am, and no one but Elizabeth could possibly carry the financial ball. In the Arctic wilds of Canada, there was nothing she could accomplish but to get in the way.
But in London—by staying to finish her mission—she might be able to save an entire airline.
She had no choice.
Wednesday, March 15, 3:55 A.M.
Seattle
“You look like hell warmed over, Conrad!”
Chad Jennings stood in front of the nose gear with his hands on his hips, shaking his head in mock disgust. Bill Conrad turned a poker face toward the younger man.
“I feel like hell warmed over too, Chad.” The words held not a hint of humor. “But I figured getting our people some power before they freeze to death up there is a little more important than getting eight hours of sleep.”
Jennings ignored the remark and focused on the open hatch to the electronics bay of Ship 103, their other Boeing 767. He had breezed into the Pan Am hangar at Seatac in his Porsche, driving through the security gate and right up to the aircraft, smelling lightly of bourbon. Bill noted the same business suit and tie he’d seen Jennings wearing earlier in the day.
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