Nelson DeMille - Mayday

The scene in the lounge was a welcome relief from the madness below. Except for the dangling oxygen masks, everything appeared normal at first glance. But as they walked through the lounge, the abnormalities became obvious.

There were nine people in the upper lounge, and Berry’s impression was that they were asleep. Then he noticed that they sat in tensed and contorted positions. On their faces they wore expressions of soul-chilling terror. Two of them, a flight attendant and an old woman, were semiconscious.

The flight attendant leaned against the bar and ranted nonsensically. She had a crazed look in her eyes, and she groped spastically at the edges of the bar to maintain her balance. Berry could see from her name tag that she was Terri O’Neil. He had noticed her during the morning snack service. A little more than a half hour before, she had been serving food and drinks in the first-class cabin, and now she could hardly stand straight. Berry turned away.

On the other side of the lounge was the old woman. She was stroking the head of her husband as he lay face down across the table in front of her. She spoke to his dead body in singsong tunes, the snatches of her pathetic and childlike words filling Berry’s ears.

Three men and two women sat on a horseshoe-shaped couch near the piano. They all wore oxygen masks, and they looked unconscious. A man wearing the black glasses of the blind sat near them, his arms outstretched in a futile search for the oxygen mask that dangled only inches to his left. He appeared to be dead.

The opened cockpit door was a dozen feet ahead, and Berry could see that all of the crew were slumped over in their seats. With each step Berry slowed his pace, reluctant to enter the cockpit.

Finally, he stepped across the threshold. All three of the pilots were unconscious. Pull yourself together, Berry thought.

The young girl stood directly behind him. She said, “No one’s steering.”

“It’s automatic. Like an elevator.” The flight controls moved gently in unison, responding to small electronic commands of the gyrostabilized autopilot to keep the aircraft on its programmed course.

The girl looked around the cockpit and saw Carl Fessler’s lifeless body draped across his desk. She could hear the hissing sounds that came from the continuous flow of oxygen pouring out of his dislodged mask. She took a step backward and looked in wonder at him.

Berry was hardly aware of the girl. He had guessed correctly at Fessler’s condition as soon as he saw that the engineer’s mask was off. The Captain, who was still strapped to his oxygen mask, was Berry’s concern. He approached the man and tried to shake him into consciousness. Their survival depended on it.

Captain Alan Stuart was breathing, but comatose. Slowly, Berry accepted the fact that the Captain was probably beyond help.

Berry looked toward the copilot. He, too, was unconscious. Berry and the girl had survived this far, only to discover that there was no one left to fly the aircraft.

Berry glanced around the cockpit. The walls that surrounded the pilot stations were crammed with instruments. He understood some of what he saw, but entire panels and rows of gauges were a total mystery. The difference between a giant jetliner and his four-seat private propeller airplane was like the difference between an airliner and the Space Shuttle. All they had in common was that, on occasion, they flew through the sky.

John Berry knew that he could not fly this huge supersonic aircraft. He was backed against an insurmountable wall of anguish and despair. All he now cared about was their immediate survival-to stay alive within the confines bounded by the sweep second hand of the cockpit clock.

The copilot stirred in his seat and his arm swung off his lap. It fell, with a thud, onto the center console. Berry held his breath while he waited to see what would happen. If the man moved again, he might inadvertently disengage the autopilot or do some other harm to their stable flight condition. In that maze of switches, Berry knew that he could not hope to find the proper combination to set things straight.

“Quick. Help me get him out of the seat,” he said to the girl. She came over and grabbed clumsily at the copilot’s legs as Berry lifted McVary’s limp body out of the chair.

“Don’t let him touch the controls.”

“I won’t.” She raised his feet above the equipment on the center console as Berry lugged the man backward.

“I’ll do the lifting. Don’t let his legs touch anything.” Once they had cleared the center console, Berry let the copilot’s feet drag on the floor as he pulled the man back into the lounge.

“Is he sick?” the girl asked. She could see that he was not dead. He was breathing and his head occasionally swayed from side to side, although his eyes were shut.

“Yes. Lay him there. Pull his legs out straight. Give me that pillow.” Berry propped the pillow under the copilot’s head. He rolled back the man’s eyelids. The pupils seemed dilated, although he wasn’t sure. Berry looked at the girl. “He might get better. Make him comfortable. That’s all we can do.”

“I’ll get a blanket.” She pointed to one wedged beneath a nearby seat.

Berry nodded. The copilot might come out of it, at least enough to help Berry fly the airplane. With the copilot talking him through it, Berry thought he might be able to steer the 797. Maybe.

The young girl brought the blanket over. The two of them knelt in the center of the upper lounge and busied themselves at making McVary comfortable. Berry glanced back at the cockpit. He knew that, shortly, he would have to get the girl to help him take the unconscious Captain out of his seat, and also drag the lifeless body of the flight engineer out of the cockpit. But he could put those things off for a few more minutes. In the meanwhile, he focused his attention on the copilot. He was, without question, their best hope.

Berry asked the girl, “What’s your name?”

“Linda. Linda Farley.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

“How old are you?”

“I’ll be thirteen in four days…”

Her voice trailed off, and Berry forced a smile. He thought, Happy birthday, Linda.

Berry and Linda worked on making First Officer Daniel McVary as comfortable as they could. They remained oblivious to the aircraft outside the cabin windows that had flown within sixty feet of where they knelt.

“Homeplate, I see no life in the cabin.” Matos split his attention between the long row of windows and the technical needs of flying a close formation. His hands played constantly with the throttles and control stick as he made the corrections to keep his F-18 as near to the Straton’s port side as he dared.

His position in the formation was a little higher than optimum, but to put his aircraft in direct line with the fuselage windows would have been tricky. The airflow across the Straton’s giant supersonic wing made that region too turbulent. Matos opted to fly in the smoother area a dozen feet higher.

“It’s hard to see clearly. The cabin is dark. Stand by.” With the bright Pacific sunlight shining down on them, any attempt to look across the intervening distance through one of the small windows and into the cabin was bound to fail. Matos already knew that it would. His first guess had been that the two holes in the fuselage would give him a clear view. But they did not. Too much debris and too many shadows. Even if someone were alive, they certainly couldn’t be expected to get close to the holes. The wind alone would keep them back. Matos knew that all he could hope to see were those people who wanted to be seen. Those on the 797-if anyone was left alive-would need to press themselves against the windows to become visible. Once they moved a foot or two back they would vanish into the relative darkness inside.