Nelson DeMille - Mayday

“Barbara Yoshiro. You know Sharon.”

“Yes,” said Berry.

“Look,” Sharon Crandall said, “call Trans-United Ops. They’ll give you a course to fly, and then coach you through the landing.”

Telling him to use the radio was not the sort of information he had been looking for. “Good idea,” said Berry. “But the radios don’t work.”

There was a long silence in the cockpit. Berry broke it. “I’m going to turn and put us on an approximate heading for California. If the fuel lasts, we’ll decide then if we should look for a landing area or put it down near the beach. Maybe I can raise someone on the radio when we get closer. How does that sound?”

The two flight attendants said nothing.

Barbara Yoshiro stood. “I’m going below to see if anyone else is… sane.”

“I wouldn’t do that now,” said Berry.

“Believe me, Mr. Berry, I’d rather not go. But there were two of our company pilots aboard-going on vacation with their wives-and I have to see if they’re alive and sane. And I’m still on duty and I have an obligation to the other passengers.”

Berry refused to get excited about the possibility of finding real pilots who could fly the Straton. “The passengers are dangerous.”

“So am I. Black belt, judo and karate. And they’re not very coordinated, I assume.”

“There are three hundred of them.”

Crandall turned in her seat. “Don’t go, Barbara.”

“If it looks really bad, I’ll come back.”

Berry glanced at her. “I can’t let Stein go with you. He has to stay at the top of the stairs to keep anyone from coming up.”

“I didn’t ask for company.”

Berry nodded. “All right, then. Call at the flight attendant stations every few minutes. If we don’t hear from you… well, if we can, we’ll come after you.”

“Okay.” She walked quickly out of the cockpit.

Berry turned to Sharon Crandall. “Lots of guts there.”

“More than you know. She doesn’t know any more about judo or karate than I do. She’s trying to make it up to us for fainting. But there are two of the company’s pilots back there. We both spoke to them. And I hope to God they’re all right.”

“Me, too.”

He tried to picture Jennifer doing something selfless, noble. He almost laughed. God, if only he could get back and tell her what he thought of her.

Crandall picked up the copilot’s microphone and held it awkwardly. “I’ve used this a few times.” She held down the button. “Trans-United Operations, this is Trans-United Flight 52. Do you read me? Over.”

They both waited in the silence of the cockpit.

Berry looked at her as she sat with her head tilted, waiting for the speaker to come alive the way it always had. “Forget it,” he said.

She put down the microphone.

The minutes ticked by. Suddenly, the interphone buzzed. Sharon Crandall grabbed the phone from the console. “Barbara!” She listened. “All right. Be careful. Call in three minutes. Good luck.” She replaced the phone and turned to Berry. “The pilots. They’re both dead.” She added, “It’s your ship, Mr. Berry.”

“Thanks.”

Crandall thought about the government-approved procedures in her manual. It was technically her ship, or, more correctly, Barbara Yoshiro’s. Barbara was the senior surviving crew member. What difference did it make? Barbara’s ship, or Sharon’s? Impossible. Absurd.

Berry tried not to show any emotion. “All right. Let’s talk about this cockpit. Is there some sort of emergency signal device, for instance? Here… what’s this?”

She looked at the red button he was pointing to and shook her head. “I don’t know.”

Berry decided to let her sit and think. He mentally sectioned off the cockpit into six areas and began examining the first one to his lower left, switch by switch, button by button, gauge by gauge. There were things he knew and a lot more he didn’t know. He began memorizing locations of the instruments and control devices.

“What about the data-link?” she said.

“What?”

“The data-link. Did you try that?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The data-link. This thing.” She pointed to a keyboard mounted between the pilots’ seats and slightly below the radios. “I saw the crew use it a lot of times. They type on it. Messages come in, too.” She pointed to a small video screen on the lower center of the panel. “It’s linked to the Operations Center in San Francisco.”

Berry stared at the device. He had looked at it before but dismissed it as just another gang of unknown buttons. He thought the screen was some sort of radar. Now it was making sense. He had read about datalinks-a discreet electronic screen for sending individual messages to various aircraft. Most airlines had them to link their aircraft together without having to broadcast over the airwaves. He turned to Sharon.

“Do you know how to work it?”

“No. But I think they just type on it. Let’s give it a try.” There was an edge of excitement in her voice. “Go on. We have nothing to lose. You need a green light to know it’s on. Here. This light has to be green.”

Berry scanned the keyboard. His hand reached out tentatively and he pushed a button labeled ENTRY. The green light flashed on. Berry assumed this meant that he had a clear channel. He pressed a button labeled TRANSMIT and typed out three letters on the keyboard: sos. He looked at the video screen. Nothing. “Aren’t you supposed to see your message?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t see anything. Goddamn it. Goddamned airplane.”

“I think you type the message first, then you push transmit.”

“Okay.” Berry hit the CLEAR button. “Okay. Let’s see.” He typed sos again. He reached over and pushed the TRANSMIT button. They both looked at the video screen. sos appeared in white, angular computer letters.

Sharon gave a small shout. “We did it! We did it!” She reached out and squeezed Berry’s hand.

Berry was grinning. “Yes. Damn it. We did it. Okay. Okay.” But Berry suspected that the video screen’s picture meant very little. The only way to determine if the signal had actually been sent from the Straton and received by someone else was to wait for an answer to appear on the screen.

Berry was fairly certain that the data-link couldn’t send and receive at the same time, so he resisted the temptation to transmit again and waited for the reply. Unlike a radio, if this machine worked, there was a displayed entry somewhere waiting to be read. He wondered how often the data-links were checked.

The Straton 797 maintained a steady northwesterly heading across the Pacific as the minutes ticked off.

John Berry knew that this was their last hope of surviving. He looked at Sharon Crandall. She seemed to know it too. “Buy you a drink?” He motioned back toward the bar.

“No. Not now. Maybe later. Get one if you want, I’ll watch the screen.”

“I don’t need one.” He glanced at the video monitor, then back at Sharon Crandall. “You want to hear about Japanese businessmen? Japanese customs? It’s very interesting.”

She looked at him. “Sure,” she said, with little conviction and a forced smile. Her smile faded quickly as she looked down at the data-link screen. Except for their own SOS message printed in the upper corner, the screen remained ominously blank.

Lieutenant Matos had the distinct impression, though he was not looking directly at the Straton, that the aircraft had banked briefly, then leveled out again. He stared at it closely, but it seemed level now. He looked at his magnetic compass. Still 325 degrees. No, the Straton had not banked. It was only an illusion. He rubbed his eyes. He was becoming fatigued.