Nelson DeMille - Mayday

Sloan’s voice filled Matos’s earphones. “It’s important to stay calm, Peter. Practice fuel-conservation techniques. Keep us filled in.”

Matos pictured himself flaming out just before he reached the tanker. He was glad that Sloan was so calm. It wasn’t Sloan’s ass. “Roger. Can you arrange air-sea rescue just in case?”

“Roger that,” said Sloan. “Way ahead of you. Some of the air-and-sea rescue for the Straton is closing in on your area, including F-18s from the Nimitz. Plenty of help out there, but don’t think about that now. High-tail it to thirty-one thousand and call me when you’re leveled out.”

“Roger. What’s the frequency of the rendezvous?”

There was a long silence in his earphones. Matos was about to call again when Sloan’s voice came on. “I’m speaking to the tanker on a frequency that is not available on your set. I just requested that they put one of their radios on your channel. They have a voice scrambler set to yours, so leave yours on. Give them a call now. Their call sign is Cherokee 22.”

“Roger. Break. Cherokee 22, this is Navy three-four-seven. How do you read me? Over.”

Matos waited in the silent cockpit, then transmitted again. “Cherokee 22, Cherokee 22, Navy three-four-seven, how do you read?” He waited, but there was no answer. “Homeplate, Cherokee 22 does not respond.”

“I can’t read them on your channel either. Stand by.” After a few seconds, Sloan’s voice came back. “They are having radio problems on most of their command channels. But I hear them fine on their administrative channel, which is patched into my interphone. We can work around their problem. I’ll relay messages between you. But they’re homing in on your channel with a radio navigation homing device and, of course, they’ll have you solidly on radar soon. In the meantime, you have to leave your radio set to this channel. Their homing equipment and radar will lead them in.”

“Roger.”

“And leave your voice scrambler on, too. Try to call them every five minutes. They’ll be on voice scramble. If they hear you, they will tell me. Then you can go back to regular communications directly with them.”

“Roger.” Matos slid his transmitter override button to the continuous position. As long as he was transmitting a signal he knew he could not receive any messages, and hearing any voice, even Sloan’s, would have been reassuring. But the first priority was the tanker.

Matos turned on his radar. He watched the tube as it glowed luminescent green. He adjusted the knobs and looked for the tanker, which should have been on the outer edge of his range by now. Not only did he not see the tanker within the 500-mile limit of his scope, but he saw no other aircraft either. He spoke into his open radio. “Homeplate. Where the hell are all the aircraft that are supposed to be out here? I don’t see the tanker on a bearing of zero-seven-five, and I don’t see anyone else.” He released his transmit override and waited for the reply.

Sloan’s voice came back quickly. “Matos, the tanker sees you. The rescue aircraft in your area see you. Your radar has been the problem from the beginning when… I can’t say anything of a confidential nature any longer. Other aircraft are on this frequency now, and we have to maintain the security of this test. Be careful of what you say from now on. Resume your continuous radio signal and keep working your radar. You’ll rendezvous with the tanker shortly.”

“Roger. I have to release the missile to cut down on weight and drag.”

“Negative. That’s no longer possible. Too much air-and-sea traffic in your area now. We don’t want another… Do you understand?”

“Roger.” Matos thought that the possibility of hitting an aircraft or ship was very remote-absurdly remote-but without functioning radar he could not be sure, and with the way his luck was running he’d probably hit the tanker. But the damned missile was adding to his fuel problems. “Roger, I’ll hold the missile.” Matos locked his radio on and sat back. There were too many glitches today, too many goblins in the electronics. This was all possible, but not probable. Yet it had happened. This was the stuff that accidents were made of. Fifty percent human error, fifty percent equipment failure. How would they classify this monumental screwup? A little of both, and a lot of bad luck.

Matos worked his radar for a few minutes, but the results were negative. He alternated his attention between scanning the tops of the churning black clouds for aircraft and glancing down at his sinking fuel gauges. It was ironic, he thought, that he should wind up with the same problem that finally killed the Straton. Running out of gas. That was pure stupidity. He never should have let it go that far.

Thirty-one thousand feet. Peter Matos had used every trick he knew to keep the fuel flow as low as possible. Someday he’d learn to think about fuel first and everything else afterward. He remembered his flight instructor at Pensacola: Gentlemen, even the best fighter-bomber in the world can only go in one direction when the fuel runs out.

But even if the worst happened, he would be picked up at sea. He tried to settle down into a calm state of mind and anticipate the coming problem instead of reacting to them as they came.

He thought of Sloan briefly. There was no percentage in going to Captain Diehl and confessing. Sloan might be difficult to deal with, but he was all Navy. He anticipated problems and put the wheels in motion to take care of them before they became insoluble. He was cunning and even somewhat dishonest in his methods, but whatever he did, he did for his country, for the Phoenix program, for national security. And in the final analysis, no matter what else he did, James Sloan took care of his men.

John Berry sat motionless in the captain’s chair. An instant before the failure of the Straton’s four jet engines registered on the instrument gauges, it registered on John Berry’s senses, and he knew exactly what was happening to them. He felt the aircraft yaw slightly to the left, then felt the deceleration forces against his body.

Sharon Crandall shouted, “John! What’s happening? What’s happening?” The panel in front of her was a sudden mass of blinking lights and bouncing needles. The engine gauges in the center of the panel unwound rapidly.

A loud warning horn blared from somewhere in the panel and the cockpit was filled with its ominous, deep-pitched sound.

Linda Farley opened her mouth, and her long, piercing scream drowned out the sound of the horn.

In the lounge, the passengers began losing their precarious balance and fell to the floor or crashed against the bulkhead of the cockpit. Deep bellowing cries, punctuated by shrill screeching, penetrated the cabin.

Berry’s ears were filled with noise, and his eyes blurred from the blinking colored lights in front of him. For a few seconds, he was stunned. His stomach churned from the sinking sensation of the sudden descent. He felt his heart speed up and his mouth went dry. It was only the full realization of what they had done to him, and the anger it produced, that brought him back to his senses. He slammed his fist on the glare shield in front of him. “Bastards! Goddamned sons-of-bitches!”

His eyes ran wildly over the center instrument panel. Nearly every needle and light on the electronic display was active, but the messages they sent him were too complex to comprehend. He could see that the aircraft had lost all engine power. “Flame out in all four” was the expression, he remembered. He was also able to see that their electrical energy was falling off as each of the engine’s generators dropped out of the circuit. Berry took a few long, deep breaths and steadied his hands. He reached up and pushed the fuel valve emergency power switch back to its previous position, then reset the four fuel valves.