Nelson DeMille - Mayday

A bolt of lightning flashed close outside his left window and the cockpit was illuminated with an orange glow, followed by the crackling sound of unharnessed electricity. Berry sat up quickly. Suddenly, all the complexities of the overhead instrument panel were swept away. “Oh, for God’s sake!” He saw in a moment of unbridled clarity his old Buick, rolling down a hill in Dayton, Ohio, engine off, and he saw his hand turn the ignition switch, and heard again the sound of the Buick’s engine firing into life. “Sharon! The ignitors! The ignitors! Listen. Listen to me. Get up. Get up!” He looked down at the altimeter. Two thousand feet.

As she unbuckled her belt and slid from her chair, the Straton broke through the bottom of the thunderstorm, and Berry could see the surface of the ocean clearly now. The sky was relatively calm, and the aircraft flew without much turbulence. But even from this altitude he could see the towering white foam of the swelling waves. He knew that even if they could get out of the aircraft, they wouldn’t survive that sea.

Sharon Crandall was holding his arm and looking at him. Berry realized in an instant that she had perfect trust and confidence in him; as a flight attendant, she must have known that to ditch without a restraining belt meant almost certain death.

Berry spoke clearly and firmly. “I can’t look away from the flight instruments… On the overhead panel there are four switches marked ‘engine ignitors.’ Hurry.”

She knelt down behind the pedestal between the pilot’s chairs and looked up. Her eyes swept the instruments and switches above her. “Where? Where? John…”

Berry tried to reconstruct the panel in his mind while he kept his eyes glued to the flight instruments. He finally glanced up for a brief instant, for as long as he could dare. “Lower left! Lower left! Four switches. Yellow lights above them. Yellow! Yellow! Turn them on. On!”

Crandall spotted them and passed her hand over all four switches at once, pushing them into the on position. “On! On!”

Berry looked down at the altimeter. Nine hundred feet. The rate of descent had slowed slightly, but they had lost some airspeed. They had less than half a minute before the Straton would hit the water. He called out to Sharon, “Back in the seat. Strap in.” He stared at the center panel and watched to see if the Straton’s engine instruments would come to life. He tried to think if there was anything else he had to do to fire up the engines, but couldn’t think of anything. He focused intently on the four temperature gauges. Slowly, the needles began to rise. “Ignition! Ignition! We have power!” But he knew that the process of accelerating the jet engines and producing enough thrust for lift would take time, perhaps more time than they had left.

He glanced at the altimeter. Two hundred and fifty feet. The airliner’s speed had bled off to 210 knots and the descent was slower, but he sensed he was very close to a stall. As soon as that thought entered his mind, the stall warning alarm began to sound-a synthetic voice repeating the word AIRSPEED, AIRSPEED, AIRSPEED. Berry knew that he should push forward on the wheel, lower the nose, and pick up airspeed to avert the stall, but he had no altitude left for that. Reluctantly, he pulled slightly back on the wheel and felt the nose rise. The Straton began to vibrate, the tremors shaking the air-frame so violently that it became nearly impossible to read the instruments. The Straton was engaged in a test of strength between gravity and the thrust of its accelerating engines. As he glanced at his altimeter, he saw that gravity was winning. One hundred feet.

He looked down out of the side window. The hundred feet that was showing on the altimeter seemed less than that in reality. The swelling sea that sped by beneath him seemed to rise up to the wings of the airliner. He glanced out the front windshield. Huge, towering waves rose and broke only a short distance below him. If even one of those waves reached up and touched the Straton, the aircraft would lose enough speed to make a crash a certainty.

Berry scanned his instruments. Engine power was up, airspeed was good, but altitude was still dropping. Berry nudged the control column, trying to keep the nose up. He was walking a shaky tightrope, and one slip would put them into the violent sea at nearly 200 knots.

The synthetic voice announcing AIRSPEED continued, and so did the prestall vibrations. Berry worked the flight controls judiciously, trying to trade their few ounces of available energy for a few inches of extra altitude.

The altimeter read zero, though he guessed the airplane was still about twenty feet above the water. It was becoming obvious that the Straton was not going to make it, given the rate of increasing thrust against the rate of descent. Involuntarily, the muscles of his buttocks tightened and he rose imperceptibly from his seat. “Come on, you pig-climb! Climb, you bastard!” He turned to Crandall and shouted above the noise. “Locate the afterburners! Afterburners!”

She scanned the overhead panel again, near where the ignitor switches had been. She raised her arm and gave Berry a thumbs-up.

“Hit the switches!” He paused for a split second and said, “Then get into position to ditch.”

Crandall hit the four switches.

Berry heard and felt a two-phased thud as the after-burners kicked in. He had no idea what would happen next.

Crandall called to Linda. “Put your head down! Like this.” Crandall hunched over into a crash position, as well as she could with the copilot’s wheel in front of her. Before she put her head down, she glanced up to see if Linda had done the same.

Berry felt the slight sensation of being pressed against his seat. The Straton was accelerating as fuel was injected directly into the jet exhausts and ignited to give extra thrust to the engines. The prestall airframe buffeting lessened, and he pulled farther back on the control wheel. The nose came up, and the ocean seemed to sink beneath his windshield. The stall alarm voice sounded one more time, then stopped. The altimeter showed 100 feet and climbing. “We’re climbing! We’re climbing! We’re lifting!”

Sharon Crandall picked her head up. She felt the increased Gs against her body as the aircraft rose. “Oh, God. Dear God.” Tears ran down her cheeks.

Berry held the control column with his left hand, reached his right hand out, and spread his fingers over the four engine throttles. For the first time since he had climbed into the flight chair, he was in control.

He called out to Sharon Crandall. “Afterburners-off.”

She reached up and shut them down.

The Straton decelerated slightly and Berry worked the four throttles, feeling the aircraft accelerate again. He watched the engine temperature and pressure gauges rise and the altimeter needle move upward. Five hundred feet, six hundred. Berry sat back. The unknown terrors of flying the airliner, like most unknown terrors, had been exaggerated.

No one spoke. All the lights in the cockpit came back on, and most of the warning lights extinguished. Outside, the violent storm raged above them, but at their lower altitude it produced no more than rain and manageable winds. John Berry cleared his throat. “We’re heading home. Sharon, Linda, are you both all right?”

The girl answered in a weak voice. “I’m not feeling good.”

Crandall released her seat belt, stood, and stepped over the girl. She noticed that her own legs were wobbling. She took the girl’s face in her hands. “Just a little airsick, honey. You’ll be all right in a minute. Take a lot of deep breaths. There.”

Berry recognized the automatic words of the veteran flight attendant, but the tone was sincere.

Crandall leaned over and gave Berry a light kiss on the cheek, then slid back into the copilot’s chair without a word.