Mayday (34 page)

Johnson ignored him and sat down at the data-link. He typed.

TO FLIGHT 52: WE ARE HERE TO HELP YOU BUT WILL DEFER TO YOUR JUDGMENT IN THIS MATTER. PLEASE FOLLOW OUR TECHNICAL INSTRUCTIONS
TO THE LETTER. IN COMPLIANCE WITH YOUR REQUEST, ACCURATE HEADING TO SAN FRANCISCO IS 131 DEGREES. DISTANCE IS 1950 MILES.
ESTIMATED TIME EN ROUTE IS FIVE HOURS AND TEN MINUTES AT CURRENT SPEED. AM ARRANGING FOR MILITARY INTERCEPT. PROBABLY INTERCEPT
YOU WITHIN TWO HOURS. SAN FRANCISCO HQ

Metz glanced up at the wall clock. It read 2:02.

Johnson followed his gaze. “That’s right. They won’t be in ATC radar range much before six p.m. We have time before anyone
sees them on a radar screen.”

“What about the military?”

Johnson allowed himself a smile. “If you don’t call them, I promise, I won’t either.”

“I mean, hasn’t Air Traffic Control called them already?”

“Sure. Half the Air Force and Navy are headed their way. But they don’t have their true heading, and it’s a mighty big sky
out there.” Johnson walked over to the weather map printer and glanced down at it. “To add to the search problems, some bad
weather is moving in out there.”

Metz looked impatient. “The way our luck is running, they’ll probably find them in the next ten minutes.”

“
Our
luck? Mr. Berry’s luck hasn’t been too good today, either. I’ll bet this is one flight he wished he’d missed. I’ll take our
luck over his. Anyway, even if a boat or plane does spot them, they can’t do much for them. Only we can do that, because only
we are in contact with them, and no one knows that but us.”

“Well, what are we going to do for them? What are we going to do to nudge that pilot down?”

The telephone rang. Johnson rose, walked to the counter, and picked it up. “Johnson.” He paused. “Yes, sir. We’re still trying
to make contact. No, sir, I think I can be more effective here.” He spoke for a minute, then said, “If any questions arise,
I’ll be here. Thank you.” He replaced the receiver and looked at Metz. “That was our illustrious airline president. Everyone
is in the executive conference room. And with any luck they will stay there, close to the bar and the air-conditioning. They
don’t like this room.”

“I’m not crazy about it myself.” Metz looked at the telephone. “I have a boss, too, and he’s probably wondering what the hell
is going on. If I knew what was going on, I’d call him.”

“You’d better call him before he starts hearing things on the news, or before our president calls him. Presidents are like
that. They call people and ask what’s going on. Anyway, if insurance company presidents are like airline presidents, he’ll
really want to know everything.”

Metz stared at the phone. “I’ll wait.” He turned to Johnson. “Well, what instructions are you going to give to Berry?”

Johnson opened the pilot’s manual. He glanced at Metz. “There’s an expression: the first time you give bad advice it’s excusable,
the second time it’s suspicious, the third time it’s enemy action. I suppose I have one more shot at it.” He looked down at
the book.

“Don’t overestimate him. If we’re going to sink him, we have to take some chances.”

Johnson flipped through the book as he spoke.

“When I offered him that vector, I held my breath. You know why? Because there is absolutely no way we could have determined
his true position, and I didn’t know if he knew that. Also, vector is shorthand for radar vector, and there is no radar out
there. That’s the equivalent of me telling you that the fastest way to Sausalito is to drive over the bay without using the
Golden Gate Bridge. I gambled that Berry knew nothing about over-ocean flying. I also gambled that Ms. Crandall never spent
a lot of time hanging around the cockpit listening to our pilots bore her with flying lessons. So don’t tell me about taking
chances.”

Metz wiped the perspiration from his face with a handkerchief. “God, I didn’t know it was going to be this complicated.”

“Ignorance, Mr. Metz, is bliss. And if you are so ignorant that you think we can yell ‘Game’s over’ and go home and forget
what we tried to do, then I have news for you. As soon as I sent that bullshit message, we were committed. Because if he gets
back, we may be able to lie about the phony break in communications, but we can’t lie about that phony vector.”

Metz lowered himself into a chair. “If they get back . . . if they do land . . . we can say they misunderstood. They were
suffering from lack of oxygen . . .”

Johnson stopped at a page and began reading, then looked up. “Right. If they do get back and survive the landing, we can say
that. Maybe we can make everyone believe that an amateur pilot who was smart enough to land a supersonic jetliner is too stupid
to accurately recall the messages we sent a short while before. Besides, there are still three normal people in that cockpit
with functioning brains. But the biggest factor of all might well become the printouts. Wayne, do you see the printouts that
are coming from our data-link?” Johnson asked.

“Yes.” Metz had forgotten about them, and what their existence implied. “We’ve got to get rid of those.”

“Good thought, Sherlock. But before we do, take a guess where the corresponding printouts are. Go ahead. One guess.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Right. Data-links sure act funny sometimes, but they don’t get brain damaged, and don’t babble on with conveniently murderous
messages. What we’ve sent to that cockpit is more than enough to have us indicted for attempted murder. If the printer in
the cockpit is turned on—and it usually is, as a backup—then they’ll have all the physical evidence they’ll need.”

Metz slumped forward in his chair. “Good God! Why didn’t you tell me all this?”

“Why? Because you have no real balls. You were all for this as long as you thought I could come up with a simple technical
solution to the problem of putting the Straton in the ocean. If you knew all the problems involved, you would have run off
to your group therapy or wherever it is that screw-up insurance whiz kids go.”

Metz stood slowly. “It’s more than our careers now. If . . .”

“Right. It’s our lives against theirs. If they land, we go up for twenty to life. That might affect our promotions.” Johnson
looked back at the book, then glanced up at the data-link. He turned to Metz. “Instead of standing there with your finger
up your ass, go over to the link and very coolly remove the printouts of the last messages.”

Metz walked over to the machine. His hands were shaking and perspiration ran from his face. He looked up into the dispatch
office. Occasionally a man would glance up at him.

Johnson stood and walked toward the door. “Go on, Wayne. One quick motion, from the printer to your pocket.” Johnson put his
hand on the doorknob to attract the attention of anyone outside who was watching them. “Go.”

Metz ripped the messages off and stuffed them in his trouser pocket.

Johnson pretended to change his mind and walked away from the door. He sat back down at the counter.

“Very good. In case of imminent capture, eat them.”

Metz walked up to Johnson. “I don’t like your sense of humor.”

Johnson shrugged. “I’m not sure I like your lack of one. First sign of mental disease—lack of humor. Inability to see the
funny side of things. Humor keeps you alert and opened to all possibilities.”

Metz felt he was losing control of the situation. He felt he had unleashed forces that were now beyond his control. Everything
in this room, including Johnson, seemed so alien. He could manipulate people and he could also manipulate, through them, their
technology, their factories, their machines. But he couldn’t manipulate the machines themselves. The human factor was really
not so unpredictable as the technical factors— the computers and the engines that ran when they should have stopped, stopped
when they should have run. “I have a feeling that the Straton will land unless we bring it down.”

Johnson smiled. “I think you’ve finally arrived at the truth. There is nothing radically wrong with that aircraft or its pilot.
If his nerve holds, he’ll bring it down on some runway, somewhere, and in some sort of condition that will allow him or some
of the others in the cockpit, or the flight recorder, to survive.”

“We can’t let that happen.”

“No, we can’t.” Johnson tapped his finger on the pilot’s manual. “In this book is something that will finish him—quickly.
And I think I’m onto what it is.”

The early afternoon sun reflected brilliantly off the tranquil sea that surrounded the USS
Chester W. Nimitz
. The aircraft carrier plodded steadily along its course. A moderate breeze, generated by the ship’s eighteen knots of forward
speed, swept across its empty flight deck from bow to stern. Below-decks, the afternoon’s activities were routine.

Commander James Sloan and retired Rear Admiral Randolf Hennings sat quietly in room E-334 on the 0-2 level of the conning
tower. Neither of them had spoken for several minutes; each was lost in his own thoughts. For Sloan, the problem was clear
and the solution was obvious. For Hennings, the situation was far more complex. Sloan’s face was set in a rigid, uncompromising
expression. Hennings’s face betrayed his inner struggle.

Sloan finally spoke. “The situation has not changed. Our only mistake was waiting for the Straton to go down by itself. But
there’s no sense continuing this argument. Try to think of it as a tactical war problem.”

Hennings was fatigued and his head ached. “Stop giving me those war analogies, Commander. That doesn’t work anymore.” After
Matos’s report that the Straton had made a turn, Hennings thought that Sloan would see that they couldn’t proceed with the
destruction of the aircraft. Hennings was almost relieved at the prospect of confessing to Captain Diehl what they had done.
But Sloan, as Hennings should have known, had not given up so easily. To Sloan there was little difference between shooting
down an aircraft that they first believed to be filled with corpses, and shooting down an aircraft that showed signs of life.
“And stop telling me nothing has changed. Everything is changed now.”

“Yes, and for the worse. Let me point out again, Admiral, that I don’t want to go to jail. I have my whole life in front of
me.
You
may get VIP treatment in Portsmouth—a cottage of your own, or whatever they do with admirals, but I . . . Which reminds me,
you’ll be the first American admiral to be court-martialed in this century, won’t you? Or maybe with your retired status,
you’ll suffer the indignity of a civilian trial.”

Hennings tried to remember—to understand the sequence of small compromises that had brought him so far down that he had to
listen to this from a man like Sloan. He was either getting senile or there was a flaw in his moral fiber that he had not
been made aware of. Certainly James Sloan wasn’t that sharp. “You think a lot of yourself, don’t you?” he said. “But if you
were as shrewd as you think you are, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“I don’t mind sticking my neck out if I can gain by it. What I do mind is your getting in my way. This would have all been
resolved long ago if you hadn’t procrastinated, and if we hadn’t listened to Matos’s bullshit about fatigue cracks and damage.”

Hennings nodded. That was certainly true. For the last hour, Sloan had explained to him why Peter Matos should destroy the
Straton. For the last hour, Hennings had advised waiting for some word from Matos that the Straton had gone down by itself.
Matos’s reports had confirmed that the Straton was damaged but still flying, straight and steady, except for one deliberate
but unexplainable course change from a 120-degree heading to a 131-degree heading. Also, Matos reported people falling or
jumping from the airliner. None of this was comprehensible. “Why did they change course? Why are people falling from a steady
aircraft? There was obviously no fire. They can’t be jumping. That makes no sense. What the hell is going on up there?”

Sloan wasn’t sure he knew what was going on up there either. The first heading seemed to put the Straton closer to its home
base of San Francisco. The new heading might put them on a parallel course to the coast. He looked at Hennings. “The pilot
must be lost. His navigation sets are probably malfunctioning. As for the people . . .” He thought for a moment about that
bizarre happening. “I told you they’ve probably suffered brain damage.” He was beginning to imagine for the first time what
it must be like for the people onboard the Straton. “The pilots may be brain damaged, too. That’s why they’re changing their
headings.” He looked Hennings in the eye. “They may crash into a populated area. Think about that.”

Hennings was through thinking and through arguing. His only argument had been based on his own understanding of the moral
and ethical issues involved. Against that thin, apparently weightless argument, Sloan had thrown a dozen expedient reasons
for destroying the Straton and the people onboard.

“We’re running out of time.” Sloan said it casually, as if he were late for a tennis match at the officers’ club. “Matos is
low on fuel.”