Mayday (25 page)

“Sir?” It was Jerry Brewster. He took a hesitant step toward Johnson.

“What?” Johnson could see that the young assistant was nervous.

“I’m afraid I might have . . . contributed to the problem.” Brewster was speaking rapidly, getting his confession out as quickly
as he could. “When I first saw the original SOS, I’m afraid I didn’t respond immediately. I thought it was a hoax.”

“A hoax?” Johnson raised an eyebrow. “What the hell kind of hoax could an SOS message be?”

“No, I mean a practical joke. I thought it was some-one’s idea of a joke.” Brewster fidgeted with the clipboard in his hands.
This was going to be more difficult than he thought it might be. “But I didn’t wait very long. I went back as soon—”

“Any delay is too long,” Johnson said, cutting Brewster short. “I’ll talk to you later about this,” he said angrily, dismissing
the young man with a wave of his hand. Johnson turned to the other men in the room. “As for the rest of you, I’d like to remind
everyone that there’s no room in this business for jokes. Nothing should be treated as a joke. Ever.”

Brewster turned away, embarrassed, and left the room.

Johnson stood quietly for a moment. He was glad that he now had at least one ass to hang, if things came to that. He could
use a few more. He turned to Miller. “Jack, who have you called? Who knows about this?”

“I had Evans handle that.”

Evans spoke quickly. “I did what was in the book, sir. The emergency handbook.”

“No outside press, then?”

“No, sir.” Evans licked his lips. He had an opportunity to make points, and he didn’t intend to blow it by saying or doing
something stupid. He had, however, done something daring. He took a deep breath and put a confident tone into his voice. “I
followed procedures—up to a point.”

Johnson took a step toward him. “What the hell does that mean?”

“I mean I didn’t call anyone on the list except you and Mr. Metz from our liability carrier—Beneficial.” He shot a quick glance
at Miller.

Miller gave him an annoyed look.

Evans continued. “I didn’t call the hull carrier either, because we have no real idea of the damage. I also did not call the
Straton company’s representative.” He looked at Johnson.

Johnson’s face was expressionless. “Did you also not call the president of the airline or our press office?”

Evans nodded. “I only called you and Mr. Metz.”

“Why?”

“There seemed to be no pressing need. I thought I’d wait until you arrived, sir. I knew you were in the executive dining room.
I thought I’d let you make the decision about who to call. This is not like a crash. This is an ongoing thing, wouldn’t you
say, sir? Also, at first it didn’t seem too bad. That was my reasoning, sir.”

“Was it?” Johnson reached down and picked up his unlit cigar. He put it back in his mouth. He let a few seconds go by. “Good.
Good thinking, Evans.”

Evans beamed.

Johnson looked up and addressed everyone. “Now, listen to me, all of you. No one does a thing unless they check with me. Nothing.
Clear?”

Everyone in the room nodded.

Johnson continued. “Except for Miller, I want everyone to go back to his usual routine. Evans, you take complete charge of
the Pacific desk. It’s all yours except Flight 52. I am taking personal charge of 52. If anyone asks you about 52, refer them
to me.”

Miller suddenly felt that he had been relegated to a sort of limbo. He had become a junior assistant. He wished he could get
back to his desk, or anywhere that was away from Johnson.

Johnson pointed with his cigar. “No one—I repeat,
no one
—is to say anything to anyone. No calls home to your wives or to anyone else. Also, the normal duty shift is extended indefinitely.
In other words, no one goes home. Night-differential and double time will be in effect. The incoming shift is to report to
the employees’ lounge and stay there until further notice. I want as few new people as possible to know what’s happening.
We’ve got a four-hundred-and-ten-ton aircraft streaking back toward the California coast with some weekend pilot in the left-hand
seat and three hundred dead or injured passengers onboard. I don’t have to tell you why I want the lid on this. Understand?”

Everyone murmured his assent.

“All right, make sure everyone out there understands too. Get back to work.”

The dispatchers filed quickly out of the hot, airless room.

Evans hung back a second. “Mr. Johnson, if there’s anything further I can do . . .”

“You’ve done enough, Evans. Good initiative.”

Evans smiled. “Thank you, sir.”

“And the next time you fail to follow procedures, it had fucking well better make me happy, Evans, or your ass is out. Got
it?”

Evans’s smile faded. “Yes, sir.” He left quickly.

Johnson turned to Miller. “Well. Here we are, Jack.”

Miller nodded. He and Johnson went back a lot of years. Now, with the audience gone, Johnson would start thinking and stop
playacting. As if to confirm this, Johnson threw his cigar into the garbage can in the corner. Miller was certain that the
man hated cigars, but trademarks, like the Trans-United logo and Edward Johnson’s cigar—mostly unlit these past years—took
a long time to cultivate and develop, and one didn’t drop them so easily.

Johnson glanced down at the printout in his hand. “This is one hell of a thing.”

“Yes, it is.”

“A bomb. Why the hell do people want to blow up an airliner? Shit.” He paced a few feet. “Tell me, Jack, do you think they’ve
got a chance?”

Miller glanced at the video screen, then at Johnson. “At first I didn’t give them any chance. Now . . . maybe. That pilot—Berry—handled
the turn all right. Just to get as far as he did—taking the controls, figuring out the link, turning—that took a lot of guts.
Skill, too. He’s got what it takes. Read the messages again. He’s a cool character. It comes through in the messages.”

Johnson stepped up to the Pacific chart that had been hung in the room earlier. He examined the markings on it. “Is this their
estimated position?”

“That’s our guess. We didn’t have much to go on.” Miller rose from his seat at the data-link console and walked to the wall
chart. He pointed to another spot on the chart. “This is the Straton’s last verified position. This one is an extrapolation
that Jerry Brewster worked up. Now we’re working up another one based on their turnaround and present heading. Brewster will
have—”

The thin sound of the data-link’s alerting bell cut him off. Both men glanced up at the video monitor.

FROM FLIGHT 52. ALL FIVE SURVIVORS WERE TRAPPED IN POSITIVE PRESSURE SPOTS DURING DECOMPRESSION. MOST PASSENGERS STILL ALIVE,
BUT SUSPECT SUSTAINED LACK OF AIR PRESSURE CAUSED BRAIN DAMAGE.

Miller stared at each letter as it appeared, knowing what the last two words were going to say after he saw the
B
. The message went on.

SOME PASSENGERS BECOMING UNMANAGEABLE. ATTEMPTING TO CLIMB STAIRS INTO LOUNGE/COCKPIT. STEIN HOLDING THEM BACK. BERRY.

Miller looked up. “Jesus Christ Almighty.”

Johnson slammed his hand down violently against a countertop. “Son-of-a-bitch! Goddamned rotten luck!” He turned to Miller.
“Is this possible? Could this happen?” Johnson’s technical knowledge was sketchy, and he never saw a need to pretend otherwise.

Jack Miller suddenly understood exactly what had happened. A bomb had torn two holes—two big holes—in the Straton’s fuselage.
Had they been smaller holes, the pressure might have held long enough. Had it been one of their other jets, its lower operating
altitude would have made it possible for everyone to breathe with oxygen masks. But at 62,000 feet, where the only commercial
traffic was the Straton 797 and the Concorde, a decompression, if it was sudden and complete, could theoretically cause brain
damage. Miller would have guessed that it would be fatal, but Berry said that most passengers survived. Survived.
Good Lord. How did this happen?
He stood up and felt his legs wobble a bit. “Yes,” he said weakly. “It’s possible.”

Johnson looked through the glass enclosure into the dispatch office. Dispatchers and assistants in the main room were trying
to read the new message on the video screen. Johnson motioned to Miller. “Erase the video screen. Shut it off. We’ll use only
the small display screen from now on.”

Miller pushed the buttons to do away with the video screen’s repeater display.

Johnson walked over to the door and locked it. He stood next to the data-link, put his foot on a chair, and leaned forward.
“Type a message, Jack.”

Miller typed as Johnson dictated.

TO FLIGHT 52: LOCATE SATELLITE NAVIGATION SYSTEM. IT IS ON RADIO PANEL AND IS LABELED AS SUCH. READ OUT YOUR POSITION. ACKNOWLEDGE.

A few seconds passed before the message bell rang.

FROM FLIGHT 52: HAVE PREVIOUSLY LOCATED SATELLITE NAV SET. IT MUST NEED REPROGRAMMING FOR READOUT. IT READS NOTHING NOW. ADVISE
ON PROGRAMMING.

Johnson walked over to the Pacific chart again and stared up at it. He had a vague idea of how to plot positions and no idea
of how to program a satellite set. Still looking at the chart, he spoke to Miller. “Tell him that we’ll advise later.”

Miller typed the message.

Johnson turned. “He really can’t land that thing, can he?”

“I don’t know.” Miller was already in over his head. Despite years in the dispatch office, he couldn’t tell a man how to program
a satellite navigation set. In fact, he had a vague memory of having read that they couldn’t be altered or reprogrammed en
route. Johnson had only a textbook image and knowledge of the cockpit of a 797, no conception of what actually flying the
craft was about, and he knew that Johnson had even less. “Why don’t we get Fitzgerald in here?”

Johnson thought for a moment about the chief pilot. Kevin Fitzgerald was another candidate to fill the president’s chair.
It would be good to have a pilot in the room with them, but not Fitzgerald. But to ask another pilot in would be an unforgivable
insult whose intentions would be obvious to the Board of Directors. Though why give Fitzgerald an opportunity to play hero?
The answer was to exclude him from the game for as long as possible. It was generally known that if either of them became
president, then the other one would spend the rest of his career in oblivion. Johnson knew that he could easily wind up supervising
lost baggage claims instead of in the president’s office. He looked at Miller. “Not yet. If that Straton gets within, let’s
say, two hundred miles of the coast, we’ll get Fitzgerald.” He thought for a second. “If we can’t find him, we’ll get the
head flight instructor. He’d do a better job of it, I think.”

Miller knew that it would be a good thing to start Berry’s flight instructions immediately. Either man would do. But Miller
also knew that Johnson did not make any decisions based purely on rationality. Edward Johnson’s decisions were always based
on ulterior motives. “Do you think it’s time to put out a brief statement to the press?”

“No.”

“Should we have the PR people privately contact relatives of the passengers? We can start booking them on flights to San Francisco
and—”

“Later.”

“Why?”

Johnson looked at him closely. “Because we are not going to encourage a media circus here. This is not some cheap TV drama.
This bullshit about right-to-know is just that—bullshit. There is not one damn reporter or hysterical relative who is going
to make a useful contribution to this problem. It’s about time somebody started exercising their rights to privacy and secrecy
again in this country. This is Trans-United’s business and no one else’s except, unfortunately, the Federal Aviation Agency.
We’ll notify them in just a few minutes. As far as a public statement, it may be necessary to release only one. The final
one.”

“Ed, my only concern right now is to bring that aircraft home,” Miller said. “I don’t care about any shit that is going to
be flying around here later.”

Johnson frowned. “You ought to.” But then he suddenly patted Miller on the back. Johnson had forced himself to change gears.
“You’re right. We have to bring 52 home before we can think of anything else.”

Miller turned away and walked to the Pacific chart. A little red spot of grease pencil on a field of light blue represented
more than three hundred seriously sick and injured people heading home. And the thought that their fate was in the hands of
Edward Johnson was not comforting. Miller hoped that John Berry was an exceptionally competent and discerning man.

Wayne Metz sat comfortably in his silver BMW 750 as he cruised in the right lane of Interstate 280. He adjusted the knobs
on his Surround-Sound CD player until the resonance of Benny Goodman’s “One O’clock Jump”—one of his favorites from his old
jazz collection—was just right. He glanced at himself in the rearview mirror. Yesterday’s tennis had deepened his tan.

He passed Balboa Park and looked at his dash clock. He’d be at the San Francisco Gold Club early enough to review his notes
before tee-off with Quentin Lyle. He glanced up at the sky. Beautiful June day. Perfect for business. Before they reached
the ninth hole, the Lyle factories would be the latest client of Beneficial Insurance Company. By the last hole he might have
the trucking company as well. He hummed along with the music. His reverie was broken by the insistent buzzing of the cellular
phone that lay on the passenger seat. He shut off the CD player and picked up the phone. “Yes?”