Nelson DeMille - Mayday

Linda nodded. “He opened his eyes once. He said something, too, but I couldn’t understand it.” She pointed to Stuart. “That one never moved.”

Berry turned to Stuart. The blood and vomit on his face were dry and crusty. Berry pushed back the eyelids. The pupils were fully dilated. The Captain’s skin was clammy and his breathing was irregular. The man was dying.

Berry rose and looked down again at McVary. If the copilot regained consciousness, and if he was at all coherent, they might have a chance. The plane was flyable. All it needed was someone to fly it. Berry thought he could do it if someone talked him through it. Someone on the radio, if he could get it working, or this copilot. Without help, he’d have to wait out the hours in full consciousness of his impending death. He almost envied the others.

“Listen!”

Berry shot a glance at the girl, then steadied his breathing and listened.

“The stairs,” she whispered.

Berry nodded. “Be quiet.” The circular metal stairway that led down to the first-class cabin had apparently been loosened, and Berry remembered it creaking when he’d used it. It was creaking now.

Berry heard the footsteps on the stairs clearly now. They were coming slowly, hesitantly. He thought there was only one person, but he couldn’t be certain.

He walked quickly around the lounge searching for something to defend himself with. The barstools were fastened to the floor, the scattered bar bottles were miniatures, and the mixers were in small cans with pop tops, which meant no openers were needed. A canister of precut lemons and limes was in the galley. No knife. “Damn it.” He looked over the floor. Almost everything else that was movable had been sucked down the stairwell. He searched desperately for an attache case, an umbrella, the blind man’s cane, but he knew he would find nothing. The footsteps got louder.

Linda Farley screamed.

Berry looked at the stairwell and saw the top of a man’s head. He shouted at the girl, “Get in the cockpit and stay there. Go on!” He then moved quickly past the stairwell and knelt beside the body of Carl Fessler. He pulled the man’s belt off and wrapped it around his right hand, which still ached from the confrontation in the cabin. He let the buckle end swing free.

Berry stood quickly and moved to the opening in the rail around the stairwell. He looked down and saw a large man looking up at him. “Stop!”

The man stopped.

Berry saw that the man’s hands were on the floor a few inches from his ankles. He moved back a step. “Go down!” He raised the belt.

The man hesitated.

Berry knew that as long as he stood there he could keep anyone from coming up the stairs. But he couldn’t stand there indefinitely. “Go!”

The man backed down a few steps. He looked at Berry with an uncomprehending expression. He opened his mouth and made a small sound, then spoke clearly. “Who are you?”

Berry leaned over and looked at the man’s face. Flecks of vomit covered his chin and white shirt. His eyes looked alive. No blood covered his face, no saliva ran from his mouth. “Who are you?” Berry asked.

“Harold Stein.”

“Where are you from?”

“What?”

“What is your home address?”

The man took another step down. “Where’s the pilot? I was in the lavatory when…”

“Answer me, damn it! Tell me your home address!”

“Chatham Drive, Bronxville.”

“What day is this?”

“Tuesday. No, Wednesday. Look, who are you? Good God, man, don’t you realize what’s happened down here? Where is the pilot?”

Berry felt his chest heave and his eyes almost welled with tears. There were now three of them in that small minority. “You’re all right?”

“I think so.” Things were becoming more clear to Stein. “The people down here…”

“I know. Come up. Come up, Mr. Stein.”

Harold Stein took a hesitant step.

Berry backed off. He unwound the belt from his hand and stuffed it into his trouser pocket. “Come on. Quickly.” He glanced over his shoulder at the three men and two women sitting on the horseshoe-shaped couch behind him. Some of them were starting to stir. “Hurry.”

Stein pulled himself up to the lounge deck. “What in the name of God…”

“Later. You wouldn’t be a pilot by any chance, would you?”

“No. Of course not. I’m an editor.”

Berry thought he was beyond disappointment, but his heart sank lower still. He regarded Harold Stein for a moment. Fortyish. Big. Intelligent face. He could be of some help.

Stein’s eyes were fixed on the cockpit door. “Hey, what the hell happened to the pilot?”

Berry jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

Stein looked more closely at the scene in the lounge. “Oh, no! My God…”

“Okay, Mr. Stein. Forget that. Let’s talk about survival.”

“Survival.” Stein nodded. He was taking in about ten percent of what was happening. He’d known they were in very serious trouble, but he thought the pilots were still in control. He looked at the cockpit again and saw the captain’s wheel move. “Who’s…?”

“Autopilot.”

“What happened?”

Berry shrugged. “Bomb, I guess.” But the two holes didn’t look like bomb damage to him, and he’d heard no explosion before the other noises. “Did you see or hear anything?”

Stein shook his head.

The two men stood awkwardly in the middle of the lounge, unsure of what to do next. The overwhelming scope and speed of the disaster had kept them off balance, and they needed the situation to remain static for a few minutes until they got their bearings. Finally, Stein spoke. “Just us two?”

Berry turned toward the cockpit. “Linda, come on out!”

The girl ran out of the cockpit and placed herself beside Berry, and under his encircling arm, as though she were being displayed at a family reunion.

Berry felt her body trembling. He looked down and spoke to her. “This is Mr. Stein. He’s going to help us.”

Stein forced a distracted smile. His eyes were still darting around the lounge.

“I’m John Berry.” He extended his hand.

Stein took it.

Berry looked down at the girl. “This is Linda Farley.”

It was surreal, yet comforting, to go through the amenities. That was all they had left. Behave normally, in a civilized manner, and rational thought and action would follow. Berry said, “Let’s sit down.” He’d developed a proprietary attitude about the lounge and cockpit. He indicated an empty horseshoe-shaped sofa with a cocktail table opposite the cockpit door. “Do you need a drink, Mr. Stein?”

“Harold. Yes, please,”

Berry went to the bar and found two Canadian Clubs and another cola. He carried them to the table and sat. He broke open the seal on his bottle and drank. Around him was a scene that had badly shaken him only ten minutes earlier, but like any survivor of a disaster, his mind was blocking out the destruction, the dead, and the dying, which was now irrelevant, and he was focusing on the problems he had inherited.

Harold Stein drank the liquor and let his eyes wander around the lounge. The two men in uniform lay beside the piano in the far corner to the left of the stairwell. One moved, the other didn’t. A third uniformed man lay against the rear wall of the lounge, his face and torso covered with a blanket. The bar in the opposite corner was in a shambles. Directly in front of him was another horseshoe-shaped couch. Three men and two women sat strapped into it. Their bodies moved spasmodically from time to time; every change of position presented Stein with a new tableau, each more grotesque than the last.

Stein turned away and focused on a grouping of the club chairs along the left wall. A man wearing dark glasses sat in a frozen position, his hands apparently reaching for a hanging oxygen mask. An old man opposite him lay across the cocktail table, apparently dead also. An old woman, the most animated of anyone, was hiding behind the old man’s chair, occasionally peeking out and whimpering. A young flight attendant, also conscious, was weeping by herself, curled up on the floor near the cocktail table. Clothes and sundry lounge paraphernalia were strewn over the plush blue carpet. “This is monstrous.”