Nelson DeMille - Mayday

The alerting bell sounded.

Berry moved beside Crandall’s chair, and they both looked down at the video display.

TO FLIGHT 52: WE HAVE ACCURATELY DETERMINED YOUR POSITION. CLOSEST AIRPORT HAWAII. TURN AIRCRAFT TO HEADING OF 240 DEGREES FOR VECTOR TO HAWAII. AIR AND SEA RESCUE WILL INTERCEPT YOU ON NEW HEADING. AIRPORTS IN HAWAII WAITING FOR YOU WITH EMERGENCY EQUIPMENT. ACKNOWLEDGE. SAN FRANCISCO HQ.

Sharon Crandall clutched Berry’s arm. “They know where we are.” She turned her head to him and smiled. “We’ll be in Hawaii…” She looked up at him. Something was wrong. “John…?”

Berry shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I don’t know.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure.” He reread the data-link’s display screen. “I’m not comfortable with this.”

“Comfortable?” She looked at him for a few seconds. She tried to keep the edge of annoyance out of her voice as she spoke. “How in God’s name can we be comfortable with anything out here? What are you saying?”

Berry suddenly felt angry. “Comfortable,” he said coolly, “is a pilot’s term. It means that I have no faith in that course of action.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” he said, slowly but emphatically, “the Hawaiian Islands are a pretty damned small target, as you might know, while the North American continent is pretty big.” He leaned back against the side of the pilot’s chair. “Look, we are headed somewhere now. North America. California, probably. We can’t miss that coastline. If we do what they ask, we’d be putting everything on a long shot. All we stand to gain is a shorter flight time of maybe an hour or two. But if we miss Hawaii-and it wouldn’t take much of a navigation error to do that… then…” he smiled grimly “… we’ll wind up with Amelia Earhart.”

Sharon Crandall looked down at the display screen again, then back at Berry. Her life, she realized, was totally in the hands of this man. If John Berry didn’t want to make a course change, she couldn’t make him do it. Yet she wasn’t going to let him make the decision without some good reasons. She turned away from him and looked out at the far horizon. “How do regular airline flights find Hawaii?”

“With this.” Berry pointed to the radio console and the blackened readouts of the satellite navigation sets. “They’re either not functioning or I don’t know how to work them. And San Francisco hasn’t responded to my request for instructions.”

“Ask them again.”

Berry slid into the pilot’s chair and typed.

NEED INSTRUCTIONS ON OPERATING NAV SETS BEFORE COURSE CHANGE. SETS MAY BE DAMAGED. FOR THE RECORD, NOW ONLY 3 IN COCKPIT-YOUNG GIRL LINDA FARLEY-FLIGHT ATTENDANT

SHARON CRANDALL-MYSELF-OTHERS PRESUMED LOST. BERRY.

Berry knew that sending a list of who was still in the cockpit-who was still alive and rational-was an unnecessary addition to the message. But after his comment to Sharon about them needing to not split up anymore, sending that shortened list of names seemed like a necessary comment to the world. Berry pushed the transmit button, and they waited in the silent cockpit.

Suddenly, the door swung open. Linda Farley screamed.

Berry vaulted out of his chair and stared up at the door. Faces, some grinning, some frowning, peered in at him. Daniel McVary stepped into the cockpit, looking, thought Berry, very irate.

Berry grabbed the fire extinguisher from the floor and sprayed it into the faces closest to him. The people screamed and tried to move back, but the press from behind was too great and the crowd moved forward, squeezing through the door, one and two at a time, into the cockpit.

Berry was vaguely aware of the sounds of feminine screams behind him and the hands and faces pressing in on him. Without being conscious of it, he had raised the heavy metal extinguisher above his head and brought it down into the face of the man closest to him. The man’s face erupted into a distorted mass of red pulp.

Berry swung the extinguisher again and again, striking at the heads and faces of the men and women around him. He was half aware of hitting a young boy in the face. Screams filled the cockpit and the lounge, and drowned out the sounds of even the Straton’s engines. Blood and teeth splattered in the air, and he could hear the distinct crack of skulls and jaws. The loudest sound of all was a voice that he identified as his own. The voice bellowed out like an animal in agony.

Berry swung the extinguisher, but nothing stood around him any longer. He dropped to one knee, picked up a body and pushed it out the door, then pushed and pulled the rest of the limp or writhing forms into the lounge. He laid them in an open space made by the crowd, which stood in a semicircle watching curiously, fearfully, but without any hate or anger that he could detect. McVary, he noticed, was among them.

Berry grabbed the edge of the door and drew it toward him as he stepped back into the cockpit. He turned and looked around, trying to focus his eyes.

Sharon Crandall was standing in front of him. She had kicked off her shoes and was peeling off her panty hose. She pushed by him without a word and tied the feet of the hose around the small broken latch, then pulled on them.

Berry grabbed the top of the panty hose and stretched them out. He looked around quickly for something to fasten it to.

Fingers and hands curled around the edge of the door, trying to pull it open. Berry pulled harder on the hose, drawing the door tight against the probing fingers. He found a cross brace on the left sidewall. He looped the panty hose around the brace and pulled them so tightly that they thinned out, resembling a long rope running between the door and the cross brace. He knotted it quickly, then leaned back heavily against the pilot’s chair, his whole body shaking. An involuntary laugh rose in his throat.

Sharon fell into his arms and they held on to each other, her body trembling against his, both of them trying to keep from crying and laughing.

Linda Farley moved toward them tentatively, then rushed to them, circling their waists with her arms.

Berry looked up at the door. There was less than an inch of opening around the jamb, and no fingers probing at the edges. He saw blood splattered on the door’s blue-green paint. He pressed Sharon closer to him. “Oh, God, Sharon, good thinking… God, we…”

Crandall shook her head quickly and wiped her tears. “How stupid of me not to think of it sooner.”

“Me too,” Berry said. It was an indication of his state of mind, he thought, that his initial resourcefulness was failing him. He wondered if he hadn’t misjudged San Francisco’s intentions.

He stepped away from Sharon and Linda, then looked down at his hands. He was covered with blood, and he could see pieces of teeth, gums, and flesh on his arms and hands. The gray carpet near the door was soaked with blood. As the shock wore off, he felt his stomach heave, and his body began to tremble again. He stumbled up to the pilot’s chair and sat there trying to get control of himself.

Linda sat in the extra pilot’s chair, slumped over the small desk on the sidewall, her face buried in her arms. Sharon stood behind the girl and stroked her hair.

After a full minute, Berry looked up at the data-link screen and stared at the new message that was waiting there to be read.

TO FLIGHT 52: EXECUTE TURN AS INSTRUCTED. SATELLITE SETS NOT CRITICAL FOR FINDING HAWAII-BUT WILL BEGIN NAV OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS EN ROUTE TO HAWAII. UNDERSTAND 3 REMAINING IN COCKPIT. ACKNOWLEDGE. SAN FRANCISCO HQ.

It seemed to Berry that the tone of the last few data-link messages had changed, as though someone new was sending them. But, of course, he knew that it was he, the receiver, who was reading them in a different state of mind.