Nelson DeMille - Mayday

Crandall turned in her seat and shouted above the noise of the screaming girl and the blaring horn. “John! We’re going down! Put the switches back! Put them back! Please hurry!”

Berry looked up and yelled, “They’re back. Calm down. Just sit there. Linda! Be quiet.” Berry looked down at the panel and waited for some sign from it, or for some physical sensation that would indicate that the engines were producing power again. But nothing happened. Whatever he had done by moving the switches could not be undone by putting them back.

Crandall’s voice was choked with sobs. “John… John… do something… We’re going to crash…”

Berry was alternating between periods of trying to disassociate himself from his impending death and trying to find a way to avoid it. He made an effort to sort out the messages that the lights and instruments were telling him, but couldn’t keep his thoughts straight. Valve power. Fuel. Generator. He knew what was wrong, but he had no idea of what to do about it. It was only the image of a man in San Francisco typing out his death warrant that kept him from giving up.

Most of the cockpit lights had gone out when the generators shut down, but a few remained on, dimly powered by the aircraft’s batteries. Suddenly, the cockpit became darker and Berry heard a new noise that completely obliterated all the others. He turned and looked at the windshield. The Straton had entered the edge of the first thunderstorm, and the roar of rain and hail hammered against the windows and the roofline. The hail was so violent he thought the windshield might shatter. “Hold on! Hold on!” he shouted, but he knew no one could hear him.

The Straton began to bounce wildly, then slid dangerously to the right. The nose of the aircraft pitched up and down at the same time that its wings rolled on its axis and its tail yawed left and right.

Berry thought the aircraft might break apart if the violent, unstable flight condition kept up much longer. He saw Sharon Crandall hunched forward in her chair, holding on to the armrests. Linda Farley couldn’t get a grip on her chair and was lifted up and dropped, held down only by her lap belt.

The autopilot made the corrections in the flight and the Straton began to steady out, except for the bouncing caused by the air turbulence as it continued its powerless descent.

Berry tried to catch his breath and steady his shaking body. He turned back to the panel and scanned the small display of emergency instruments, which were all that remained after the generators failed. He was searching for anything that might spark his memory and set in motion a sequence of thoughts that would tell him what he must do. Circuit breakers. Berry thought that maybe the panel of circuit breakers on the right would be a clue-maybe one of the breakers was out. He flipped off his seat belt, stood up, and moved aft. He knew he had not much more time before the Straton hit the ocean.

Cutting through the sounds of the weather, the blare of the warning horn and the screaming from the lounge, he heard a voice shouting a single word over and over. He looked over at Sharon, who was turned in her seat, gesturing wildly at him. Her mouth kept forming a single word. Autopilot.

Berry looked back at the center instrument panel between the two seats. The amber disengage light now glowed brightly in the darkened cockpit. “Oh, God.” With the generators dropped off the circuits, he knew the autopilot was not getting the proper power to stay engaged. The last chance that they had for staying in control until the ditching was now gone. He shouted to Crandall, “Hold the wheel! Hold the wheel!”

The Straton’s forward momentum had kept the downward glide steady for a few seconds, but the winds began to break up the controlled descent. The Straton pitched nose upward, and the first step Berry took to get himself back into the captain’s chair sent him careening in the opposite direction, backward, into the cockpit door. The door gave slightly under his weight. The aircraft rolled to the right, and he collided with the circuit breaker panel. He lunged at the back of Crandall’s chair, but the aircraft rolled left and he headed straight for Linda Farley. He tried to avoid her, but his foot caught the tautly stretched nylons and he tumbled over and fell onto her, then rolled off and came to rest against the left wall.

Sharon Crandall watched for a second, then turned and faced the flight controls. The copilot’s control wheel moved by itself, as if it were still safely under the command of the autopilot. But the blinking amber light told her it was not. She reached out and took hold of the wheel.

Berry managed to stand and grabbed the back of the captain’s chair. The aircraft remained in a sharp nose-up attitude and he hung on, trying to climb into the chair. He knew that the aircraft’s normal stability would keep it upright for a few seconds longer, but unless he could get to the wheel, the Straton could point itself straight up or straight down, go into a spin, or roll, wing over wing, into the sea. “Hold the wheel, Sharon! Hold the wheel!”

Crandall was trying to hold on to it, but it had begun to vibrate with such force that it broke her grip each time she grabbed it.

Berry climbed head first over the back of the pilot’s chair. The first violent updraft smacked into the Straton like a giant fist aimed at the solar plexus. The huge aircraft lifted like a toy, then dropped sickeningly, straight down. Berry saw himself rise off the chair, almost hit the ceiling, then fall abruptly to the floor between the captain’s chair and the observer’s chair. He lay there, dazed and disoriented, not able to tell up from down, or to determine what he had to do to stand upright. He saw Linda Farley’s face above him, and heard her screaming his name.

Sharon Crandall seized the wheel and held it, letting it move her arms at first, then slowly exerting more and more pressure to steady it. She focused on the largest and most prominent gauge on the panel in front of her, one of the few of them that was still lit. It was marked ARTIFICIAL HORIZON. This was one instrument that was familiar to anyone who had ever spent any time inside a cockpit. It showed the relative position of the aircraft against a horizon line, and she could see that the Straton was far from level. But inside the clouds she was too disoriented to tell if they were pitched forward or backward, or if the wings were rolled right or left. She tried to get a physical sensation of how the aircraft was moving, but the increased Gs kept her pressed to her seat and she had no sensation of backward or forward, left or right. All she knew for certain was that they were going to crash. It occurred to her that if it weren’t for the fact that John Berry was on the floor, they could even be upside down.

She had a firm grip on the vibrating wheel, but her arms and shoulders ached. She knew she had to do something before the aircraft tumbled. She glanced at the artificial horizon, then tried to get a gut feeling based on her thousands of hours in flight. She decided that the aircraft was traveling nose up and the left wing was dropped, though the reverse might be true if she were reading the instrument backwards. She pushed forward with all the strength she had and rotated the wheel to the right.

For an instant, she thought she had guessed wrong as the artificial horizon line traveled even farther the wrong way. Then slowly the line straightened, then moved to align itself. The vibrations subsided and the aircraft flew steady except for the constant buffeting of the winds. She gripped the wheel tightly and held it with every ounce of strength she had left.

Berry pulled himself up and noticed that the aircraft was much steadier. He looked quickly at Linda. She was very pale and her body was doubled over with dry heaves. He climbed quickly into the pilot’s chair. He strapped himself in and grabbed the captain’s control wheel. He held it very tight, his knuckles turning white. It wasn’t the wheel that was shaking, he realized, but his hands. He took several long breaths before he found his voice. “Sharon… Sharon…” He looked at her but couldn’t think of what to say.