Nelson DeMille - Mayday

With his right hand, he made careful adjustments on the audio panel. “Mayday. Do you read Mayday? Any station. Do you read Mayday?” He sat back and listened. Listened for the familiar crackle, the squelch-break that was the electronic equivalent of a man clearing his throat before he spoke. But there was only the persistent, unbroken hum of the speakers.

Berry slumped into the seat. He was confused. If there was one thing he knew from his years of flying, it was how to work a radio. It seemed simple enough even in the Straton. The airliner’s radios did not seem much different from all the other sets that he had operated. Yet there must be something different about them, some small esoteric task that had to be performed before the radios would transmit. But what? And why? Why should these radios be different? “Damn it.” Berry wondered how in God’s name he could ever fly the aircraft if he couldn’t even work the radios.

The urge to talk to someone had become overwhelming. It had gone beyond the simple necessity to report the disaster and ask for assistance. It had become an overpowering need to hear a human voice just for the sake of hearing it. But as each minute of silence passed, Berry was losing hope and was becoming alternately frantic and despondent. His hand shook so badly now that he stopped trying to transmit and sat back and tried to calm himself. He glanced at the instruments. Everything looked good, but after his failure with the radios, he was beginning to doubt his ability to read even standard gauges. And the majority of the Straton’s instrumentation was standard enough to be familiar. But the markings-the altitudes, speeds, fuel reserves, engine temperatures-were incredibly amplified. He tried to imagine he was in the Skymaster and tried to reduce the problems and the instrument panels to manageable proportions.

He looked at the fuel reserves. Less than half full. What this meant in flying time at the present speed and altitude, he didn’t know. But he’d figure it out soon enough as the needles drifted leftward and the minutes passed. He stared at the control wheels as they moved slightly-inward, outward, left, right. The rudder pedals made small movements. The flight was steady.

Something odd caught his eye and he looked down near his left knee. He stared at the open protective cover and read the words above it. AUTOPILOT MASTER SWITCH. He stared at the toggle, which was pointing to ON. He understood. The Captain had either lost his nerve or lost consciousness before he could complete his last mission. Berry nodded. It sort of made sense. But for Berry, there was no such easy way out. Not yet. He reached down and snapped back the protective cover.

He found he was building up a healthy anger toward fate and toward death, if for no other reason than to tell his wife what he really thought about her. Unfinished business. He reached down and grabbed the microphone. “Mayday! Mayday, you sons-of-bitches! Answer Mayday!”

He began changing the frequency he was using, alternating between the frequencies left on the radios. When he transmitted, he knew he should keep to the universally understood words. He could save the explanations for when he made contact. “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!” He waited for a reply, but again there was none.

Out of desperation he began to randomly turn the dials and transmit on every channel and on each of the four radios in the cockpit. “Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday.”

He switched back to the original frequency. “This is Trans-United Flight…” What was the flight number? What difference did it make? He tried to remember his boarding pass but couldn’t. “This is the Tokyo-bound Trans-United Airlines Straton 797. Mayday. Do you read Mayday? Trans-United Operations, this is the Tokyo-bound Straton 797, we have an emergency. Do you read?” He waited. Nothing.

He could see that the radio’s transmission lights blinked whenever he pressed the microphone button. He could tell from the sidetone in the cockpit speakers that the radios were operating. But for some reason they were not putting out. He suspected that something-the antenna perhaps-had been damaged. He had hoped that someone in the cockpit had been able to put out a distress signal, but he was fairly certain now that they hadn’t. The fault in transmitting was not his-he’d known that, really. The radios were all set by the pilots to transmit. They simply weren’t sending. That’s all there was to it. No distress call had been sent and none ever would be sent.

No radios equaled no chance of flying the plane home. He almost felt a measure of relief. The responsibility of flying and landing this huge machine was not a prospect he’d looked forward to. But he did want to live. He put the microphone down and stared at the clear skies around him. His problems on the ground were in their proper perspective now. He could and would change a lot of things if he ever got back to New York. But everyone facing death must make that observation. One more chance. But more often than not, nothing changed if you were lucky enough to get a second chance. Still, he didn’t want to lie down and die. That’s what he’d been doing for the last ten years. He had to think it all out. Later.

John Berry turned and looked back through the open cockpit door into the lounge. He could see Linda Farley sitting in a club chair, weeping quietly.

Berry slid out of the captain’s seat and walked back into the lounge. The Captain and the copilot lay near the piano where he and the girl had dragged them, covered with blankets. The body of the flight engineer lay against the far bulkhead, his face and torso covered with a lap blanket.

Berry watched the flight attendant whose name tag said Terri. She was sitting on a small sofa, speaking incoherently to herself. Her face was smeared with blood and saliva. She seemed calm, but he’d have to watch her carefully for signs of violence. He’d have to keep her away from the cockpit, where she could do real harm.

Berry noticed that the old lady had stopped babbling to her dead husband and was now crouched behind a club chair peering over the top and making odd clucking sounds. Blood and drool covered her face also. Her husband’s body was still slumped over the cocktail table, but it seemed to have shifted. Berry wondered if rigor mortis was setting in already.

The five passengers on the horseshoe-shaped couch were still unconscious. One, a pretty young woman, was making odd sounds that came from her throat, and Berry wondered if that was what was called the death rattle.

The lounge smelled of feces, urine, and vomit. Berry closed his eyes and pressed his fingers against his temples. His head still ached from the oxygen loss, and he was becoming queasy.

He opened his eyes and surveyed the scene again. He’d thought that the confusion of these people might improve, might be reversible. But he was fairly certain now that it wasn’t. His world was divided neatly and irrevocably, with no fuzzy lines, between Us and Them. And there were a lot more of Them.

Berry walked over to the girl and put his hand on her shoulder. His daughter had been this girl’s age when her remoteness and alienation had begun. But that was on the earth. Here, an adult enjoyed all the old prerogatives. “You’re going to have to calm down and start helping me.”

Linda Farley wiped her eyes and nodded.

Berry walked to the bar and found a can of Coca-Cola and opened it. He rummaged through the debris under the bar and extracted a miniature bottle of liquor. Johnny Walker Red. He opened it and drained off the ounce and a half, then carried the cola to the girl. “Here.”

She took it and drank. “Thank you.”

Berry knelt down beside McVary and pushed his eyelids back. Partly dilated. Breathing regular, but shallow. He looked up at the girl. “Did he move at all?”