Nelson DeMille - Mayday

Crandall glanced down at the West Coast radio chart in her lap. “Are you sure we’ve got the navigation radios set up right?”

“Let me see the chart again.” Berry reached out for it, glanced at the chart and then the navigation radio, but he knew there was no mistake in the settings. Maybe he was still too far from the coast, or he was too far north or south, or worse, the radios simply weren’t working. He didn’t know, and he might never know. He handed the charts back. “We must still be out of range. Keep watching the needle on your side. If it moves, even a bit, let me know.”

“Will do.” Her eyes involuntarily passed across the data-link screen. The message sat there, then disappeared as someone at the other end pressed the repeat button. The alerting bell rang again, and the same message began to print across the screen as it had done every three or four minutes for the last three hours.

TO FLIGHT 52: IF YOU CAN RECEIVE US, DON’T THINK WE HAVE ABANDONED YOU. THIS LINK WILL BE MANNED CONTINUOUSLY UNTIL YOU ARE FOUND. SAN FRANCISCO HQ.

“Maybe we should answer.”

Berry didn’t bother to look at the message again. Every time the alerting bell rang, he turned to the screen. He was beginning to feel as conditioned as Pavlov’s dog. His will was weakening, and he wanted to answer. But then he might still be persuaded to do whatever they said.

“John, it’s inconceivable that they would keep repeating this message if they-”

“They just want to be absolutely certain we’re down.”

He thought about that rapid succession of fifteen to twenty messages that had come in hours before. They had made the alerting bell ring continuously for more than a minute. “More probably they have to show that they’re still trying to do something for us. They’ll send messages until some government official or some airline executive determines that if we were still flying, we’d be out of fuel. It’s probably standard operating procedure. I don’t know exactly what’s going on back there, but don’t forget the Hawaii vector, and don’t forget those informative instructions on how to shut off the damn fuel.”

Crandall nodded. The words looked so sincere, sitting there on the screen. “John, maybe-”

“Change the subject.” Berry had spent a good portion of the last few hours trying to imagine the scene at the other end of the data-link. Bastards.

“John? Do you think we should practice any more?” Sharon pointed to the flap handle.

“No. You’ve got that routine down okay.” The two of them had been going over the landing sequence so that Sharon could operate the flaps and landing gear at Berry’s command. That would free him to concentrate on the runway-or the surface of the ocean, if it came to that. “You don’t want to be overtrained, do you?” Berry asked, smiling.

She forced a smile in return.

The cockpit grew silent and allowed the sounds of the lounge to penetrate. Berry could hear crying and some soft moaning, but for the most part it was quiet. They were sleeping, he thought. Then the piano began to play again, loudly this time, and Berry recognized the piece. It was unmistakably a passage from Tchaikovsky’s Concerto No. 1, though in a terrible deranged arrangement. “Hold the wheel.”

Berry ripped off his seat belt and moved quickly to the door.

“John, what are you doing?”

Berry pushed the door open against the stretched nylon and held it while he craned his head around the edge. He looked back into the lounge. The twisted forms of the dead and dying lay everywhere, like broken dolls strewn about the room of a disorderly child. Many of the passengers were still moving, however, roaming aimlessly over the body-strewn carpet. Daniel McVary was standing, facing the cockpit door, his face battered and one eye swollen shut. He walked slowly, with a limp, toward Berry.

At the piano sat Isaac Shelbourne, his long white hair wildly disheveled, and his hands moving dexterously over the keyboard as Berry had seen them move so many times on television. “Stop! Shelbourne, shut up! For Christ’s sake, stop it!”

“John!”

Linda called out. “Mr. Berry… please close the door.”

Berry drew his head back and let the door be pulled closed by the tension of the nylon. He turned and walked slowly back to the flight chair and climbed in. He sat staring down at his lap for several seconds, then lifted his hands and took the wheel. “All right, I’ve got it.”

Sharon Crandall looked at him and reached out to touch his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. I’m fine.”

There was an awkward silence in the cockpit.

Linda heard a noise behind her and turned in her seat. She screamed.

Berry and Crandall looked back quickly.

Several groping hands crept through the door opening. A few hands wrapped around the edge and pulled.

Crandall unbuckled her belt. “Damn it, you stirred them up again.” She rose out of her seat.

“Stay here. I’ll go.”

“No. I can handle it. Fly the plane.” She stepped to the bulkhead and took the fire extinguisher from its wall rack, then moved to the door and examined the length of panty hose. “You stretched it.”

Berry didn’t answer.

Crandall looked at the knot wrapped around the broken latch. The knot was secure, but the fiberglass door around the latch was cracked, and she couldn’t remember if it had been that way before. The rivets on the latch assembly seemed loose also. She looked up and saw faces and bodies at the opening, which was about six inches wide. She raised the fire extinguisher and pointed it directly at Dan McVary’s face. She pressed the trigger, and a rushing cloud of vapor blasted into the door opening. Excited squeals came from the other side of the door. Most of the hands disappeared. She raised the extinguisher and brought it down on one of the remaining hands, then struck out at the finger still gripping the door. She waited for a moment, then turned and replaced the extinguisher in its rack and sat down. “The door area around the latch is cracking.”

Berry nodded.

“The copilot… Dan McVary… seems to be instigating…”

“I know.” Berry wondered how a single obsession could take hold in that damaged a brain. How was he communicating his leadership to the others?

“The extinguisher feels like it’s nearly empty.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Why not?”

“Look, I’m sorry. I got a little carried away. Okay?”

She nodded, and tears started to form in her eyes. “I’m sorry, too. It wasn’t your fault. You’ve done so well, John. I don’t know if any of our regular pilots could have done the same.”

“No, they couldn’t have. Because they would have realized it was hopeless from the start.” He reached out and ran his hand over the side of her face. “I have a good crew.” He turned and looked down at Linda Farley. “You’ve been a good member of the crew.” He smiled at her.

Linda gave him an embarrassed smile.

Sharon Crandall put her hand on his arm. “Want me to take the wheel?”

“No. I’ve got it.”

“Do you want to try to engage the autopilot again?”

“No. It’s just as easy to fly it myself. I need the practice.”

“Okay.”

Berry would have liked to have the autopilot, not only to relieve him at the wheel but because the autopilot might have made it possible for him to try for an automatic landing if they found the airport-although he didn’t really know how to set that up, either. Without the autopilot, he would have to hand-fly the damaged Straton right into the touchdown. He scanned the horizon and watched his radio bearing indicator.

“John! It moved!”

Berry leaned far out of his seat and stared down at the indicator on the copilot’s navigation radio.