Nelson DeMille - Mayday

Berry concentrated on the instruments. He let the Straton come up to 900 feet, then leveled out before they rose into the bottom of the thunderstorm.

He listened for sounds from the lounge, but heard nothing that penetrated the noise of the rain, the hum of electronics, or the droning of the jet engines.

He shut off the windshield wipers, experimented with the flight control for a few minutes, then reached out and reengaged the autopilot. The amber light went off, and he released the wheel and the throttles and took his feet off the pedals. He flexed his hands and stretched his arms, then turned to Sharon. “That was about as close as it comes. You were very cool.”

“Was I? I don’t remember. I think I remember screaming.” She looked closely at him. “John… what happened? You didn’t do something

… no… I read the message.”

“Neither you nor I did anything wrong… except to listen to them.”

“What…?”

The alerting bell rang.

They looked at each other, then stared down at the data-link screen. TO FLIGHT 52: DO YOU READ? ACKNOWLEDGE. SAN FRANCISCO HQ. Berry motioned toward the console. “Those bastards. Those sons-of-bitches.”

Crandall looked at him, then back at the message. She had not had time to think clearly about what had happened, and had not yet come to terms with what she’d thought about, but her half-formed conclusions suddenly crystallized. “John… how could they…? I mean, how could… why…?”

“God, I can’t believe what an idiot I’ve been. Hawaii. That should have been my tip-off. Shift the center of gravity. Fuel gauges. Those goddamned lying sons-of-bitches.”

Crandall was still trying to understand all that had happened. “That was partly my fault. I talked you into-”

“No. I trusted them too. But I shouldn’t have. I should have known. I did know, goddamn it.”

“But why? Why, in the name of God, would they do that?”

“They don’t want”-Berry jerked his thumb over his shoulder-“ them back.”

Crandall nodded. She’d thought of that for some time, but never pursued the thought to its natural conclusion. “What are we going to do? What are we going to answer them?”

“ Answer? I’m not going to answer anything.”

“No, John. Answer them. Tell them we know what they tried to do.”

Berry considered, then shook his head. “Someone who is trying to kill us has control of the situation down there. Someone in that tight little room off the Dispatch Office. Talking to the man-or men-in that room is like shouting to the man who just pushed you into the water that you’re drowning. I’m not going to tip them off that we’re still alive. That’s our secret, and we’ll make the most of it.”

Crandall nodded reluctantly. “Yes, I suppose. God, I wish we could tell someone. If we don’t get back… no one will ever know.”

Berry thought about the data-link messages. He tried to reconstruct them in his mind. “Even if we do get back, we’ll have a hell of a time trying to make anyone believe us. It would be our word against theirs, and we are the ones who suffered decompression, and we are the ones who can’t understand or follow the instructions of trained personnel.”

Sharon Crandall was beginning to get a very clear picture. “Those bastards. Oh, those bastards. Damn them.” She tried to imagine who in the Trans-United hierarchy would be capable of something like this. A few names came to mind, but she decided it could be anyone with enough to lose by having the Straton come back.

Berry was thinking of motives. “They probably don’t want to have to admit that their airport security was bad. They’ll discredit the bomb message we sent them-if they even bothered to pass it on, and try to pin it on someone or something else. The Straton Corporation. Structural failure. What a bunch of conniving, immoral bastards.”

“God, I can’t wait to get back and… But are they going to believe us?”

“We have to remember what we read, and believe that what we remember is correct.”

Linda Farley spoke. “We can show them the words printed on the paper.”

Crandall couldn’t follow what the girl was saying. “Did you understand what we were talking about?”

“Yes.”

Berry kept his eyes on the control panel and spoke to her. “Those men in San Francisco lied to us, Linda. They tried to… they told us things that would make us crash. Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“What words?” asked Crandall.

“In the back. Near where I was sleeping before. It’s sitting in a little door on the wall, and it printed while you were typing and-”

“John! There’s a printer at the rear of the cockpit! I forgot about it.” She tore off her seat belt and jumped down from the flight chair. She moved quickly to the aft bulkhead and peered into a space in the corner near the fuselage wall. “Here it is.” She reached in and tore the narrow sheet from the printer, then grabbed a stack of folded messages from a collecting basket. She held them up and stretched them out. “John! It’s all here. Everything.”

Berry found that he was smiling. Nothing, he admitted, is as sweet as revenge. “Let me see them.”

She brought over the stack of perforated paper, no more than five inches wide, and let the loose end fall. It reached down to the center console between the seats. Each small perforated section held a computer-typed message.

Berry scanned the messages hanging in her hand. “That looks like all of them.” He turned back and stared out the windshield. He could see Sharon’s reflection in the dark, wet glass, standing beside him, the paper trailing down from her hand as she read from it. He watched her for a few moments, her movements, her facial expressions.

Sharon refolded the messages. “We have to get back and expose these people.”

Berry nodded. If they died in the crash and the cockpit were destroyed, or if they put down at sea, the printouts would probably not survive. He turned to Crandall. “Give me those. Get life vests for all of us.”

Crandall opened the pouch on the bulkhead and handed out the orange life vests. She watched as Berry and Linda put on their life vests, then put one on herself. She took a first-aid kit from the emergency locker on the bulkhead and treated a small cut on Linda Farley’s forehead. She moved beside Berry. “Hold still. You have a lot of scrapes and cuts.”

Berry watched her as she dabbed antiseptic cream on his arms and face. “Where did you get that kit?”

“In the emergency locker.”

“What else is in there?”

“Not much. Most of the emergency equipment is in the cabins and lounges.” At the mention of the lounge, Crandall looked toward the cockpit door. She had, until just then, forgotten about what was on the other side.

Berry handed her the printouts. “Put these into Linda’s vinyl pouch on her life vest. Try to wrap them so they’re waterproof.”

Sharon Crandall understood that he was trying to prepare for the worst. She walked to the locker behind the observer’s chair, took out two items, and brought them up front to Berry. “This is a waterproof flashlight. These are asbestos fire gloves.”

Berry smiled. “Very good.”

Crandall unscrewed the end of the flashlight, removed the batteries, and stuffed the printouts into the empty battery case. She screwed the end back on and slipped the asbestos gloves over both ends of the flashlight. She wrapped the entire package securely with a length of bandage from the first-aid kit and placed it in the pouch fixed to Linda’s life jacket, then snapped it shut. “Linda, you know this is important. If anything happens to us, show this to…”

“A policeman,” said the girl.