Mayday (11 page)

“Yes” was all that he could think to reply.

They looked at each other for a brief, intense moment. In a flash of recognition, she suddenly understood that Berry was like
her and not like the others. He was no threat. She ran up to him, buried her face in his chest, and began to cry.

“We’ll be okay,” Berry said. His words were as much for himself as for her. For the first time since he had awakened he allowed
himself a small measure of emotion. “Thank God,” he said to himself, choking back tears of gratitude for this small miracle.
The child continued to cry, but more softly. He held her small, tense body against his.

While his attention was focused on the young girl, he failed to notice that several of the passengers had gotten up and were
moving toward them. John Berry and the girl huddled together in the center of the forward cabin as the silent passengers encircled
them.

Commander James Sloan was transfixed by the radio message that had come from his pilot. He stared at the towering panel of
electronic gear as if he expected to find a way out of the situation in its switches and meters. Yet there was nothing on
the console but the neutral data of frequencies and signal strengths. What Sloan wanted to know was available from only one
source.

“Matos, are you sure?” Sloan asked. His perspiring hands gripped the microphone. His normally stern voice had a strange, new
tone woven through it, and his words sounded out of place.

There was no immediate response from the F-18, and while he stood in the silent electronics room, Commander James Sloan realized
that he was suddenly afraid. It was an emotion he was not accustomed to, and one he seldom allowed himself to experience.
But too much had happened too quickly. “Matos,” he said again, “take your time. Look again. Be absolutely certain.”

Retired Rear Admiral Randolf Hennings, who had remained silent since Matos had sent his first startling message, stepped closer
to the radio. He could hear the loud rhythm of his own heartbeat, and he was sure that Sloan could hear it too.

But James Sloan was not listening. His entire universe had shrunk. There was nothing he cared about now except the words that
were about to come through the radio speaker. There was no other inroad to his thoughts.

“There’s no doubt, Commander,” Matos’s transmission began.

Sloan’s face went pale. He listened to the remainder of the pilot’s message through a filter of personal static, as his mind
raced.

“It’s right in front of me. I’m only fifty feet in trail. Trans-United, a Straton 797. There’s a three-foot hole on its port
side, and another hole in the starboard fuse-lage. The starboard hole is bigger—three or four times as big. I don’t see any
movement in the cockpit or the cabin.”

Sloan stood with his eyes shut, both his hands laid against the console. He had not been face-to-face with fear since he was
a young boy. All his body muscles tensed and he wanted to run, to bolt from the room and get away. He wanted to shake himself
awake from the incredible nightmare.

“Now what?” Randolf Hennings finally asked, his mild voice barely breaking the silence. “What can we do? What should we do?”

Sloan slowly opened his eyes, then turned his head to stare at Hennings. As he held eye contact with the Admiral, James Sloan
pulled himself out of the deepest emotional pit of his life. He had very nearly lost his self-control. The Commander’s frown
had returned, as had his iron-willed expression and bearing.

“What do you suggest, Admiral?” Sloan asked in an obviously sarcastic tone; he was goading the old man. Hennings appeared
puzzled. Sloan waved his hand nonchalantly. “Perhaps we should take a walk below-decks. We could lock ourselves in the brig.
Better yet, let’s go to the officers’ ward room. They’ve got a nice pair of ceremonial swords on the wall. We could take them
down and fall on them.”

Hennings uttered an unintelligible sound that showed his surprise.

“Listen, Admiral,” Sloan continued, “we’ve got to evaluate this situation realistically. Figure out precisely where we stand.
The last thing we want is to rush off to do something we’ll regret. Something bad for the Navy.”

Sloan hoped he had not pushed the old man too far. Or too quickly. Still, it was his only chance. Without Hennings along,
there was no way he could pull off some sort of cover-up. Sloan had done it once before, when, because of a foul-up, one of
his pilots had shot up a Mexican fishing boat. The responsibility for that one might have wound up in Sloan’s lap, so he moved
quickly to fix it. It had taken only a quick helicopter ride and a small pile of Yankee greenbacks. This one would require
more. Much more. But it could still be done.

“I don’t know what you mean. What is it you want to do?” Hennings finally asked.

Sloan sat down in the seat in front of the console. He took out a cigarette. He took his time lighting it, then inhaled deeply.
He swiveled the seat around to face Hennings and sat back.

“Let’s list the obvious things first,” Sloan said. His words were slow, full measured, and carefully picked. “Neither of us
wanted this. It was a pure accident. God only knows how it happened. That area was supposed to be clear of air traffic. I
checked it myself this morning.”

Sloan paused. Procedures had required him to re-check, in case of a last-minute change. He had tried, but he hadn’t been able
to get through on the normal channels, even on the patch. The chance that a flight would have altered its course during the
short time he was without a clear channel was minuscule. Less than minuscule. Yet it
happened,
Sloan thought. He managed to dispel the miscalculation with a simple shrug of his shoulders, then returned his attentions
to Hennings. “How that aircraft got there is beyond me. I guess our luck was super-bad.”

“Our luck?” Hennings said. “What the hell’s the matter with you? What about that airliner? It’s got people aboard. Women and
children.” The old man’s face was red and his hands trembled. The volume of his voice filled the room and made it seem smaller
than it was. Hennings had the sudden disquieting sensation of being closed in. The smallness of the electronics room had trapped
him, and he desperately wanted to go above-decks.

James Sloan sat motionless. He continued to wear the same ambiguous expression. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s a tragedy.
But it’s not our
fault.
” Sloan stopped speaking for a moment to let his words sink in. He took another deep drag on his cigarette. He knew that
it was his fault, at least partially. But that was beside the point.

Hennings looked down at Sloan in disbelief. “Are you somehow suggesting that we pretend this never happened?” He was beginning
to wonder if Sloan was insane. For a person to even entertain such wild notions seemed evidence enough of insanity. “We’ve
got to help those people.”

Sloan leaned closer to Hennings. “That’s the point, Admiral. There are no people.”

A dead quiet hung between the two men. Numbers paraded by on the digital clock, but time stood still. Finally, the Admiral
shook his head. He did not understand. “But it’s an airliner,” he said. “Trans-United. It’s got to have passengers. It must
have a crew.”

“No, Admiral. Not anymore.” Sloan was choosing his words carefully. “The impact of the missile punctured two holes in their
pressurized shell. At sixty-two thousand feet, they couldn’t survive. They’re dead, Admiral. All dead.”

Sloan sat back and watched as the words registered on the old man. Sloan had known, as soon as he had begun to think clearly
again, that the hole made by the Phoenix missile would make the aircraft decompress. A decompression at 62,000 feet would
be fatal.

Hennings’s expression had changed. Shock had been replaced by pain. “Dead? Are you sure?” he asked.

“Certainly.” Sloan waved his hand in a gesture of finality. But he knew that there was still a measure of technical doubt.
If he let those doubts surface, they would erode his resolve and eat away at the basics of his plan. He knew that Hennings
would need an excuse to go along with a cover-up. He figured that the old man
wanted
an excuse. Sloan would be happy to provide one. More than likely, everyone aboard that airliner was already dead—or soon
would be. The harm had already been done. It was now a matter of saving himself. And the mission. And, of course, the reputation
of the Navy, which needed all the help it could get these days.

Sloan leaned closer to Hennings. “I know that Matos won’t say anything. He’s in this with us. We do no good by turning ourselves
in. This was an accident. If the truth came out, the entire Navy would suffer.”

Sloan cleared his throat. He took a few seconds to gauge how Hennings was reacting. So far, Sloan still had him. Hennings
had nodded in agreement. The good of the Navy was his soft spot. It was worth remembering. Sloan might need to play on it
again, now that he was coming to the sensitive part.

“Our best bet,” he continued, “is to have Matos put his second missile into the . . . target. It’s being flown by its autopilot.
At close range, he could direct his missile toward the Straton’s cockpit. It would wipe out the ship’s controls.” The coup
de grâce to the back of the neck, he wanted to say, but didn’t. “It will go down. No evidence. Just a sudden disappearance
in mid-Pacific. Terrorists. A bomb. Structural failure. We’d be off the hook. The Navy—”

“No!” Hennings shouted, pounding his fist on the console. “It’s insane. Criminal. We’ve got to help them. They could still
be alive. They’ve probably sent out distress signals. More than just the three of us know. Everyone knows.” Hennings pointed
to the radio equipment. “They must have sent an SOS.”

“That’s not true, Admiral.” The conversation between them had taken on the atmosphere of a debate, and James Sloan was not
unhappy about that. He had hardly expected to reach an agreement with Hennings without some sort of fight. Hennings was still
talking and deliberating, and that was a good sign. Now all Sloan had to do was find the right words.

“We monitor both international emergency channels on these two sets,” Sloan said, pointing to two radio receivers at the top
of the console. “There’s been nothing from them. You’ve heard that for yourself. Our shipboard communications center, down
in CIC on the 0-1 level, would instantly get any word of a problem from ships or planes anywhere near here. We even get the
routine stuff. Things like ships with minor leaks and aircraft with minor equipment difficulties. There’s no way that a distress
message was sent from that aircraft without our CIC getting involved in it. The CIC duty officer would immediately call me
if he had gotten something.”

“But what about the people?” Hennings said. “We just can’t assume that they’re dead.”

“Matos reported that he saw no activity. There was no one in the cockpit. He can get within fifty feet of that aircraft. If
there’s no one visible, it’s because they’re dead. Slumped in their seats.”

“Well . . . Idon’t know,” Hennings said. What Sloan said seemed to make sense, although he wondered for an instant if the
Commander was being completely honest. Hennings wanted to do what was best for the Navy. The accident was a monumental tragedy.
But, as Sloan pointed out, nothing could change that. Nothing could erase the errors, oversights, and coincidences to bring
those people back. Disgracing the Navy was the last thing he wanted to do. Hennings’s friends in the Pentagon would be exposed.
He knew that they were vulnerable, since the testing had not been authorized. He realized that he, too, was in an impossible
position if the truth became known. The faces of his old friends in the Pentagon flashed through his mind.
Protect the Navy. Protect the living
, Hennings thought.

“Admiral,” Sloan said, sensing that Hennings could now be pushed to the conclusion he had steered him toward, “I understand
your reservations. Your points are valid. I want to check them out. I’ll call down to CIC to be sure that no emergency message
was sent by the Straton. Then we’ll get Matos to take another look. A close look. If he reports that there’s no one alive,
then we know what we need to do.”

As Sloan reached across the desk for the direct telephone to CIC, he kept his eyes riveted on Hennings. Sloan was playing
the percentages. He wanted to cement the retired Admiral into the conspiracy. He needed him. The odds were low that Matos
would be able to see any life aboard the Straton transport.

Hennings stood rigidly, every muscle of his body tensed. He watched as Sloan held the telephone. His eyes wandered to the
digital clock. Half a minute ran off while his mind stayed as blank as the
Nimitz
’s gray walls. Hennings turned to Sloan. Everything seemed to be in a state of suspended animation, waiting for him. Finally,
with a nearly imperceptible motion, retired Rear Admiral Randolf Hennings nodded his head.