Nelson DeMille - Mayday

Matos looked up at the manual gun sight, then down at the unguarded firing mechanism as though he were seeing them both for the first time. Oh, Jesus.

His hand was cramped, and he realized he had been pressing hard on his radio transmit button to keep possession of the radio channel between him and the Nimitz. But he knew he could not keep the channel away from Sloan forever. He spoke, to justify his finger on the transmit button, and to give himself time to think. “It was a deliberate turn. Someone is flying the aircraft-someone is working the autopilot. I could fly alongside the cockpit to verify.” He released the button.

“No!” shouted Sloan. “This is an order. Stay in trail formation. Do nothing to attract attention until you receive orders to do so. And keep your hand off the transmit button unless you are transmitting. Don’t try to cut me off again. Do you understand?”

Matos nodded, almost meekly. “Roger. Sorry, I was just… excited and… must have been gripping the stick… Over.”

“Roger. Are you still monitoring the radio channels?”

Matos glanced down at his side console. His monitoring equipment was still on, still silent. “That’s affirmative. No radio activity from the Straton on the normal frequencies.”

“Okay, Peter. Stay in trail until further notice. Acknowledge.”

“Roger, I read, stay in trail.”

“Roger, out.”

Matos ran his tongue across his parched lips and looked down at his compass. Reluctantly, he reached for his transmit button. When a commander gave an “out” it was the equivalent of, Don’t call me, I’ll call you. End of conversation. But Matos had things he wanted to say. “Homeplate.”

There was a short pause. “What is it, Navy?”

“Homeplate, whoever is flying that airliner knows what they’re doing. The Straton is flying steadily. Its new heading is 120 degrees. They are heading toward California.”

The silence in Matos’s headset seemed to last a long time.

“Roger. Anything further?”

Matos could not read the flat tone in Sloan’s voice. He wondered what was going through the Commander’s mind now. Why had they thought everyone onboard the Straton was dead? Matos could not hold himself back from asking the obvious question. “Homeplate, I don’t understand. Why am I staying out of sight of the cockpit?” He settled back and waited through the long, expected silence.

After a full minute his headset crackled. “Because, Lieutenant, I ordered you to.” The voice was no longer neutral. Sloan’s words continued, “We are all ass-deep in bad trouble. If you don’t want to spend the rest of your fucking life in Portsmouth Naval Prison, you will stay out of sight of that cockpit. Suppose, Lieutenant, you think about why you should keep out of sight and you radio me back with the answer when you figure it out. Okay?”

Matos nodded again and stared at his hands wrapped around the control stick. “Roger.”

“Homeplate, out.”

Matos pushed aside the manual gun sight and snapped back the safety cover of the firing switch. He sat back, deep in his upholstered flight chair, and stared down at the Straton until his eyes went out of focus. He closed his eyes, then made his mind go blank. He erased all the extraneous information he had accumulated and started at the beginning, at the moment he had first seen two targets on his radar screen. Slowly, he realized what Sloan was getting to. Now he knew precisely what he might yet be called on to do. Say it, Peter, he thought. Murder.

T he Straton leveled, and in the cockpit the sensation of the slight increase in G force lessened, then disappeared. The cockpit returned to a straight and level altitude.

John Berry smiled, and Sharon Crandall smiled back. “We did it! John, that was great. Very, very good.”

Berry couldn’t suppress a small laugh. “Okay. Okay, we’re heading in. Great. The control surfaces respond. We can turn.” He felt the wide grin still plastered across his face and knew he looked foolish. He thought ahead to the landing he would have to attempt, and the grin faded without much effort. Flying, he reflected, was like walking a high wire. One slip and it’s finished. No do-overs. “All right, let’s bang out a message.” He reached out and typed.

FROM FLIGHT 52: TURN COMPLETE. HEADING 120 DEGREES. ADVISE.

He pushed the transmit button.

The incoming message bell sounded almost immediately.

TO FLIGHT 52: VERY NICE WORK. STAND BY. RELAX. EVERYONE HERE IS WORKING ON BRINGING YOU HOME.

Berry nodded. Home. An evocative word. Its meaning was changing every minute. “Relax,” he read. “Okay. I’m relaxed. How are you?”

Sharon Crandall nodded. She looked at Berry out of the corner of her eye. Very nice work. Very cool. Competent. Most people would be in a complete state of panic by now. She’d seen men-macho types-whimpering in their seats during an electrical storm. She’d seen a whole football team on the verge of hysteria as their aircraft hit heavy turbulence. She glanced at John Berry. Here was a man who was a sort of low-key salesman who occasionally flew his company aircraft-and he’d acted admirably. More so than she or Barbara had, in fact. She thought she liked John Berry very much. “Do you want something to drink? A glass of water? Something stronger?”

“No, thanks.”

She nodded. There were undoubtedly all types of powerful forces at work up here that would draw her to him, but even on the ground, she thought, he would be a person she would want to know. “I’ll call Barbara.”

“Yes. She should be on her way. Try one of the closer stations.”

“Okay.” She switched to the mid-ship station and pressed the call button.

There was no answer.

She tried every station, including the below-decks galley.

Berry looked back into the lounge and shouted, “Harold. Call down to Barbara.”

Stein called down. He looked up at Berry and shook his head.

Berry reached for the PA microphone, then hesitated. “No. That makes them excited.” He tapped his fingers impatiently on the steering column. “She’s probably between stations. Or in the galley elevator. We’ll wait.” He glanced at Sharon Crandall before he turned his head back to the windshield. If she were a bit older… But why was he thinking about that now? It was odd how people made long-range plans in terminal situations. His father had planned his spring garden the winter he was dying of cancer. “Sharon, what are you going to do after this? I mean, would you fly again?”

She looked at him and gave him a very big smile. “After this, John, I’ll take one week off. Maybe even two weeks.” She laughed, but then her expression turned serious. “After that, I’ll report for duty as usual. If you have a bad experience in flight, you have to go back. Otherwise, the rest of your life becomes a series of avoidances. Besides, what else would I do at my age? Who’s going to pay me this kind of money?” She looked out at the horizon line. “And what about you? Will you stop flying that little whatever-it-is for your company?”

“Skymaster. No. Of course not.”

“Good.” She hesitated, then leaned over toward him and placed her hand on his arm. “How do you feel about landing this plane?”

Berry looked directly at her. Her countenance and the language of her body were unmistakably clear and had little to do with the question. Yet there was nothing brazen about her. Just an honest offering. Within hours they might be alive on the ground. More likely, they would be dead. Still, her offer did not seem out of place. “You’ll help me. We can land this plane.” He felt slightly awkward, a little flustered at her touch and her sudden intimacy.

Sharon Crandall settled back in her seat and stared out her side window. She thought briefly about her last live-in lover, Nick, from crew scheduling. Emptiness, boredom. Sex and television. In the final analysis, they’d shared nothing, really, and his leaving left no emptiness, no loneliness beyond what she’d felt when he was there. He had left the same way he had arrived, like a gray afternoon sliding into a dark night. But she was still lonely. “Why don’t you send a message from each one of us to someone on the ground?” she said. She instantly wondered whom she would send her message to. Her mother, probably.