Nelson DeMille - Mayday

But George Yates was still very much interested. From the moment he had singled her out of the crowd, from the second his instincts told him she was different, from that moment, his only thought was to capture her and make her yield. None of these words or abstractions were his to use, but the instincts remained. He turned her over on her back and knelt down with his knees straddling her.

Barbara brought her knee up and caught him in the groin.

George Yates yelled out and stood up. This was the second time she had caused him pain, the second time she had rejected him, and he was partly bewildered, but partly he now understood. She was no longer simply an object of his attraction-she had become a threat, become an enemy.

Barbara raised herself on one hand and lunged for the interphone on the wall. Her hand knocked it off the cradle and it fell to the limit of its cord. She grabbed at it as it swung by her face. She then felt a sharp pain in her eye, then another on her cheekbone. She fell backward. The plastic headset dangled above her. Through the haze of semiconsciousness, Yoshiro realized that the young man had hit her; he had hit her hard with his closed fist. He had hit her hard enough to cause a great deal of pain.

The ceiling lights of the galley were blotted out by the huge black shape hovering above her. There was no noise around her, no light entering her consciousness, and this produced a sense of unreality. She simply could not believe this was happening to her; it seemed too remote, so divorced from the world she had been part of just hours before. It was as if she’d stepped into a fog and emerged from it into a netherworld, a world almost like her own but not quite.

For the next few seconds, all Barbara could feel was the cool floor against her bare back and legs, and the steady throb of the engines as they pulsated through the airframe. Then she opened her eyes wider and focused on what was about to happen next.

After striking out at his enemy twice with his fists, George Yates had just enough of his mind and his learned reactions intact to know that a weapon was what he needed to ultimately protect himself from this perceived danger. On the floor to his left was a metal bar that had been used as a locking brace across the liquor supply cabinet. Yates grabbed the metal bar and, in one continuous motion, slammed it down hard against the upper body of his enemy.

The steel bar swept across Barbara Yoshiro’s left shoulder and into her skull with a sharp crack. She blacked out immediately from the blow to her head. As it moved across her body, the steel bar had ripped open another and even larger bleeding wound-this one across the top of her left shoulder and neck.

George Yates looked down at the growing pool of blood that surrounded the now motionless body of the person lying on the floor. As soon as he saw the new spurts of blood and her injury, he knew what it meant. The knowledge of her condition was too basic to be misunderstood: she was no longer a threat-this enemy of his had been totally defeated.

Now satisfied, Yates’s interest faded and he turned his attention elsewhere. He looked around the galley area. Like a wary animal awakened from sleep, he cautiously stalked around the small area, but he could see no avenue of escape. Yates gave no more notice to the growing mass of blood on the floor, or to the body from which it had poured. As the last of her lifeblood drained onto the metal flooring of the galley, Barbara Yoshiro died.

Edward Johnson strode briskly down the long corridor toward the blue door marked DISPATCH OFFICE. He stopped abruptly, stuffed an unlit cigar in his mouth, and tried on several expressions in the reflection on a glass door. He picked one that he called disdain mixed with impatience. He stared at himself for a second. Good jawline, hair graying at the temples, cold gray eyes. An executive. Vice President in Charge of Operations, to be exact. He had enough of the ex-baggage handler left in him to be considered salty and intimidating, yet he had cultivated a veneer to make him accepted by the people who were born into the white-collar world. Satisfied with the effect he would produce with the dispatchers, he strode on.

The windowless steel door at the end of the corridor loomed up before him. How many times had he made this walk? And for what purpose? After twenty-seven years with the airline, experience had shown him that nearly every one of these calls had been a false alarm. A real emergency had taken place more than three years before, and even that had been a waste of time. Everyone aboard that flight was already fish food long before he got the message.

So what the hell was it this time, he wondered. Someone in the Straton program probably lost his lunchbox, or some dispatcher couldn’t find his pencils. He stepped up to the door and grabbed the knob.

He paused and ran through what he already knew. It wasn’t much. Just a brief phone call that had interrupted an important management lunch in the executive dining room. A junior dispatcher named Evans or Evers. An emergency, Mr. Johnson. Flight 52. But it’s probably not too bad. Then why the hell had he been called. That’s what he wanted to say. Junior executives were supposed to take care of all the “probably not too bad” things.

Edward Johnson knew that Flight 52 was the Straton 797. The flagship of the Trans-United fleet. The Supersonic Queen of the Skies. But as far as he was concerned it was a 412-ton piece of shit. At one hundred and twenty-seven million dollars per aircraft, any problem with one of their eight 797s was a pain in the ass. The aircraft itself was reliable enough and it produced a small fortune in profits. But as Operations Chief, the fiscal considerations didn’t concern him. The goddamned airplane was too precious and too visible to the Board of Directors, and to the media. It made him too visible, too vulnerable. To make matters worse, he was one of the people who voted to buy the 797s, and he was the one who had recently pushed through the huge cost-reduction program to cut back on lots of unnecessary maintenance and checks.

Johnson pushed open the door and strode into the dispatch office. “Who’s the senior man?” he demanded. He looked around the half-empty office. An awkward silence hung over the room, broken only by the sound of a loud telephone ringing. He took the cigar out of the corner of his mouth. Before the Corporate no-smoking policy, he was able to puff on it to good effect instead of keeping the damned thing unlit. Wimpy bastards. “Where the hell is everybody?” His intimidation techniques were working well today, he noticed, but he was not so insensitive that he couldn’t read the signs of trouble, smell the stench of fear in this place. “Where is everybody?” he repeated, a few decibels more softly.

Jerry Brewster, standing a few feet from Johnson, surprised himself by speaking. “In the communications room, sir. Mr. Miller is the senior man.”

Johnson moved quickly toward the glass-enclosed room. He stuck his cigar back into his mouth, pushed the door aside, and entered the crowded communications room. “Miller? You in here?”

“Over here,” answered Jack Miller, his voice the only sound in the suddenly silent room.

Several of the dispatchers backed away to allow Johnson to pass. A few of them quickly left. Dennis Evans moved unobtrusively away from Miller and stood near the door, prepared to go either way. Jerry Brewster reluctantly walked into the small room.

Johnson went up to the data-link machine. He looked down at Miller. “What’s the problem?”

Miller had carefully rehearsed what he would say. But now that Johnson stood before him, all he could do was point to the video screen.

Johnson looked up at the screen on the far wall.