Mayday (38 page)

“Roger.” Matos thought that the possibility of hitting an aircraft or ship was very remote—absurdly remote—but without functioning
radar he could not be sure, and with the way his luck was running he’d probably hit the tanker. But the damned missile was
adding to his fuel problems. “Roger, I’ll hold the missile.” Matos locked his radio on and sat back. There were too many glitches
today, too many goblins in the electronics. This was all possible, but not probable. Yet it had happened. This was the stuff
that accidents were made of. Fifty percent human error, fifty percent equipment failure. How would they classify this monumental
screwup? A little of both, and a lot of bad luck.

Matos worked his radar for a few minutes, but the results were negative. He alternated his attention between scanning the
tops of the churning black clouds for aircraft and glancing down at his sinking fuel gauges. It was ironic, he thought, that
he should wind up with the same problem that finally killed the Straton. Running out of gas. That was pure stupidity. He never
should have let it go that far.

Thirty-one thousand feet. Peter Matos had used every trick he knew to keep the fuel flow as low as possible. Someday he’d
learn to think about fuel first and everything else afterward. He remembered his flight instructor at Pensacola:
Gentlemen, even the best fighter–bomber in the world can only go in one direction when the fuel runs out.

But even if the worst happened, he would be picked up at sea. He tried to settle down into a calm state of mind and anticipate
the coming problem instead of reacting to them as they came.

He thought of Sloan briefly. There was no percentage in going to Captain Diehl and confessing. Sloan might be difficult to
deal with, but he was all Navy. He anticipated problems and put the wheels in motion to take care of them before they became
insoluble. He was cunning and even somewhat dishonest in his methods, but whatever he did, he did for his country, for the
Phoenix program, for national security. And in the final analysis, no matter what else he did, James Sloan took care of his
men.

John Berry sat motionless in the captain’s chair. An instant before the failure of the Straton’s four jet engines registered
on the instrument gauges, it registered on John Berry’s senses, and he knew exactly what was happening to them. He felt the
aircraft yaw slightly to the left, then felt the deceleration forces against his body.

Sharon Crandall shouted, “John! What’s happening? What’s happening?” The panel in front of her was a sudden mass of blinking
lights and bouncing needles. The engine gauges in the center of the panel unwound rapidly.

A loud warning horn blared from somewhere in the panel and the cockpit was filled with its ominous, deep-pitched sound.

Linda Farley opened her mouth, and her long, piercing scream drowned out the sound of the horn.

In the lounge, the passengers began losing their precarious balance and fell to the floor or crashed against the bulkhead
of the cockpit. Deep bellowing cries, punctuated by shrill screeching, penetrated the cabin.

Berry’s ears were filled with noise, and his eyes blurred from the blinking colored lights in front of him. For a few seconds,
he was stunned. His stomach churned from the sinking sensation of the sudden descent. He felt his heart speed up and his mouth
went dry. It was only the full realization of what they had done to him, and the anger it produced, that brought him back
to his senses. He slammed his fist on the glare shield in front of him. “Bastards! Goddamned sons-of-bitches!”

His eyes ran wildly over the center instrument panel. Nearly every needle and light on the electronic display was active,
but the messages they sent him were too complex to comprehend. He could see that the aircraft had lost all engine power. “Flame
out in all four” was the expression, he remembered. He was also able to see that their electrical energy was falling off as
each of the engine’s generators dropped out of the circuit. Berry took a few long, deep breaths and steadied his hands. He
reached up and pushed the fuel valve emergency power switch back to its previous position, then reset the four fuel valves.

Crandall turned in her seat and shouted above the noise of the screaming girl and the blaring horn. “John! We’re going down!
Put the switches back! Put them back! Please hurry!”

Berry looked up and yelled. “They’re back. Calm down. Just sit there. Linda! Be quiet.” Berry looked down at the panel and
waited for some sign from it, or for some physical sensation that would indicate that the engines were producing power again.
But nothing happened. Whatever he had done by moving the switches could not be undone by putting them back.

Crandall’s voice was choked with sobs. “John . . . John . . . do something. . . . We’re going to crash. . . .”

Berry was alternating between periods of trying to disassociate himself from his impending death and trying to find a way
to avoid it. He made an effort to sort out the messages that the lights and instruments were telling him, but couldn’t keep
his thoughts straight.
Valve power. Fuel. Generator.
He knew what was wrong, but he had no idea of what to do about it. It was only the image of a man in San Francisco typing
out his death warrant that kept him from giving up.

Most of the cockpit lights had gone out when the generators shut down, but a few remained on, dimly powered by the aircraft’s
batteries. Suddenly, the cockpit became darker and Berry heard a new noise that completely obliterated all the others. He
turned and looked at the windshield. The Straton had entered the edge of the first thunderstorm, and the roar of rain and
hail hammered against the windows and the roofline. The hail was so violent he thought the windshield might shatter. “Hold
on! Hold on!” he shouted, but he knew no one could hear him.

The Straton began to bounce wildly, then slid dangerously to the right. The nose of the aircraft pitched up and down at the
same time that its wings rolled on its axis and its tail yawed left and right.

Berry thought the aircraft might break apart if the violent, unstable flight condition kept up much longer. He saw Sharon
Crandall hunched forward in her chair, holding on to the armrests. Linda Farley couldn’t get a grip on her chair and was lifted
up and dropped, held down only by her lap belt. The autopilot made the corrections in the flight and the Straton began to
steady out, except for the bouncing caused by the air turbulence as it continued its powerless descent.

Berry tried to catch his breath and steady his shaking body. He turned back to the panel and scanned the small display of
emergency instruments, which were all that remained after the generators failed. He was searching for anything that might
spark his memory and set in motion a sequence of thoughts that would tell him what he must do.
Circuit breakers
. Berry thought that maybe the panel of circuit breakers on the right would be a clue—maybe one of the breakers was out.
He flipped off his seat belt, stood up, and moved aft. He knew he had not much more time before the Straton hit the ocean.

Cutting through the sounds of the weather, the blare of the warning horn and the screaming from the lounge, he heard a voice
shouting a single word over and over. He looked over at Sharon, who was turned in her seat, gesturing wildly at him. Her mouth
kept forming a single word.
Autopilot.

Berry looked back at the center instrument panel between the two seats. The amber disengage light now glowed brightly in the
darkened cockpit. “Oh, God.” With the generators dropped off the circuits, he knew the autopilot was not getting the proper
power to stay engaged. The last chance that they had for staying in control until the ditching was now gone. He shouted to
Crandall, “Hold the wheel! Hold the wheel!”

The Straton’s forward momentum had kept the downward glide steady for a few seconds, but the winds began to break up the controlled
descent. The Straton pitched nose upward, and the first step Berry took to get himself back into the captain’s chair sent
him careening in the opposite direction, backward, into the cockpit door. The door gave slightly under his weight. The aircraft
rolled to the right, and he collided with the circuit breaker panel. He lunged at the back of Crandall’s chair, but the aircraft
rolled left and he headed straight for Linda Farley. He tried to avoid her, but his foot caught the tautly stretched nylons
and he tumbled over and fell onto her, then rolled off and came to rest against the left wall.

Sharon Crandall watched for a second, then turned and faced the flight controls. The copilot’s control wheel moved by itself,
as if it were still safely under the command of the autopilot. But the blinking amber light told her it was not. She reached
out and took hold of the wheel.

Berry managed to stand and grabbed the back of the captain’s chair. The aircraft remained in a sharp nose-up attitude and
he hung on, trying to climb into the chair. He knew that the aircraft’s normal stability would keep it upright for a few seconds
longer, but unless he could get to the wheel, the Straton could point itself straight up or straight down, go into a spin,
or roll, wing over wing, into the sea. “Hold the wheel, Sharon! Hold the wheel!”

Crandall was trying to hold on to it, but it had begun to vibrate with such force that it broke her grip each time she grabbed
it.

Berry climbed head first over the back of the pilot’s chair. The first violent updraft smacked into the Straton like a giant
fist aimed at the solar plexus. The huge aircraft lifted like a toy, then dropped sickeningly, straight down. Berry saw himself
rise off the chair, almost hit the ceiling, then fall abruptly to the floor between the captain’s chair and the observer’s
chair. He lay there, dazed and disoriented, not able to tell up from down, or to determine what he had to do to stand upright.
He saw Linda Farley’s face above him, and heard her screaming his name.

Sharon Crandall seized the wheel and held it, letting it move her arms at first, then slowly exerting more and more pressure
to steady it. She focused on the largest and most prominent gauge on the panel in front of her, one of the few of them that
was still lit. It was marked
ARTIFICIAL HORIZON
. This was one instrument that was familiar to anyone who had ever spent any time inside a cockpit. It showed the relative
position of the aircraft against a horizon line, and she could see that the Straton was far from level. But inside the clouds
she was too disoriented to tell if they were pitched forward or backward, or if the wings were rolled right or left. She tried
to get a physical sensation of how the aircraft was moving, but the increased Gs kept her pressed to her seat and she had
no sensation of backward or forward, left or right. All she knew for certain was that they were going to crash. It occurred
to her that if it weren’t for the fact that John Berry was on the floor, they could even be upside down.

She had a firm grip on the vibrating wheel, but her arms and shoulders ached. She knew she had to do something before the
aircraft tumbled. She glanced at the artificial horizon, then tried to get a gut feeling based on her thousands of hours in
flight. She decided that the aircraft was traveling nose up and the left wing was dropped, though the reverse might be true
if she were reading the instrument backwards. She pushed forward with all the strength she had and rotated the wheel to the
right.

For an instant, she thought she had guessed wrong as the artificial horizon line traveled even farther the wrong way. Then
slowly the line straightened, then moved to align itself. The vibrations subsided and the aircraft flew steady except for
the constant buffeting of the winds. She gripped the wheel tightly and held it with every ounce of strength she had left.

Berry pulled himself up and noticed that the aircraft was much steadier. He looked quickly at Linda. She was very pale and
her body was doubled over with dry heaves. He climbed quickly into the pilot’s chair. He strapped himself in and grabbed the
captain’s control wheel. He held it very tight, his knuckles turning white. It wasn’t the wheel that was shaking, he realized,
but his hands. He took several long breaths before he found his voice. “Sharon . . . Sharon . . .” He looked at her but couldn’t
think of what to say.

Sharon released the wheel and sat back, trying to prepare herself for the coming impact. Several thoughts and memories flashed
through her mind, but none of them seemed important. She reached out and touched Berry’s arm, then looked back at Linda.

The girl was staring at her. “Are we going to crash?”

“Yes. Hold on tight.”

C
ommander James Sloan kept up a constant stream of talk into the dead interphones, speaking alternatively to the phantom air-sea
rescue and the phantom tanker. He was becoming bored with the charade, but saw no alternative to it. He had to keep Hennings
in Room E-334 until Matos was down, and until he could decide what had to be done with the Admiral.