Mayday (53 page)

John Berry took a few tentative steps toward her. As he moved down the hill, he could see in the distance the tall towers
of the Golden Gate Bridge. They stood majestically, bathed in the late afternoon sun, their rigid beams framing the scene
in front of Berry. More than any other single moment, the first sighting of the Golden Gate Bridge towers had marked the beginning
of their salvation, the beginning of their new lives.

He stopped halfway down the hill and asked, “Can we have dinner together tonight?”

“I can’t. One of my old boyfriends asked me to dinner.”

“I’ll pick you up at eight.”

“He’s picking me up at eight-thirty.”

“You won’t be there.”

Sharon laughed. “Do you know where I live?”

“I’ll find you.”

Thomas Block and Nelson DeMille met for the first time at Dutch Broadway Elementary School, in Elmont, Long Island, New York.
They were both second graders, but due to some fluke in the system, Nelson was a full eighteen months Tom’s senior, an age
difference that was advantageous to Nelson in Dutch Broadway School, but which became less important in their later years.

Tom and Nelson successfully completed elementary school together, perfect products of the suburban 1950s. They entered Elmont
Memorial Junior and Senior High School and became involved with numerous activities, such as football, track, wrestling, and
operating the stage lights for school plays. Nelson was elected to student government, while Tom wrote a column for the school
newspaper,
The Elmont Oracle
, which exposed corruption in student government. “That’s what friends are for,” said Tom recently.

Tom had begun flying lessons when he was fourteen years old and obtained his pilot’s license at seventeen, the minimum legal
age. Nelson, at Tom’s suggestion, started lessons when he was seventeen and got out of the flying business at eighteen, much
to the relief of his flight instructor.

After high school graduation in 1962, Tom attended Morehead State College in Kentucky, and Nelson attended Hofstra University
in New York.

Tom left college and pursued his aviation career, joining the former Mohawk Airlines at age nineteen, becoming the youngest
airline copilot in the United States. Mohawk survived the experience and went on to become Allegheny Airlines and subsequently
USAir. Today, Tom is a Senior Captain for USAir, flying wide-body jets to Europe.

Nelson completed three years at Hofstra and, bored, joined the United States Army in 1966 to see the world, not fully realizing
there was a war heating up in Vietnam. Nelson went to Officer Candidate School, was commissioned a Second Lieutenant, and
trained in Panama, then was assigned to lead an infantry platoon in Vietnam, where he served from October 1967 to November
1968 with the First Cavalry Division.

Upon discharge, Nelson returned to Long Island, where Tom was living. Nelson went back to college and obtained his degree
as Tom moved up the airline seniority ladder. Tom and Nelson discovered they both had developed an interest in writing. Tom
had begun writing for aviation magazines, and soon became a columnist for
Flying Magazine
, the world’s largest-circulation aviation publication. Nelson began writing the Great American War Novel based on his combat
experiences in Vietnam. Unfortunately, no one wanted to publish a Vietnamese
Naked and the Dead
. Tom transferred to Pittsburgh in 1972, while Nelson remained on Long Island.

In about the mid-1970s, Tom and Nelson began collaborating on general magazine pieces, none of which was published, but the
experience of working together was a prelude of things to come. The years passed, and Tom became an internationally known
aviation writer, while Nelson published a series of paperback novels.

In 1977, Nelson began an ambitious novel,
By the Rivers of Babylon
, in which Arab terrorists hijack two El Al Concordes. Nelson soon discovered that he didn’t have the technical expertise
to write the aviation scenes that were important to his novel, so he turned to his old friend Tom for help with those portions
of the book.

The process worked well, and
By the Rivers of Babylon
became a Book-of-the-Month Club Main Selection, a
Reader’s Digest
Condensed Book, and a national and international bestseller.

There is a section in
By the Rivers of Babylon
that reads:

Then there was the thing that bothered Becker from the first day he had taken the Concorde up to 19,000 meters. It was the
problem of sudden cabin decompression of the type that can happen if you are hit by a missile, or if there is a small explosion
on board, or if someone shatters a window with a bullet . . . at 19,000 meters, you needed a pressure suit to make breathing
possible, even with an oxygen mask. Lacking pressure suits, you had only a few seconds of usable consciousness to get down
to where you could breathe with a mask. There was no way to do that at 19,000 meters. You put the mask on, but you blacked
out anyway. The on-board computer sensed the problem and brought the plane down nicely, but by the time you got down to where
you could breathe with the mask, you woke up with brain damage.

One day, Tom said to Nelson, “We should collaborate on a novel about the high-altitude decompression of a plane, and what
happens to its passengers and its crew.” And thus was born
Mayday
.

Tom and Nelson worked on the novel for over a year.
Mayday
was published in hardcover by G. P. Putnam in 1979 and was a critical and commercial success. The paperback appeared on bestseller
lists across the country and around the world.

Tom went on to publish five more aviation adventure novels, and Nelson went on to publish eight bestselling novels. Although
they never collaborated again,
Mayday
was a fun and exciting experience for both of them, a convergence of their interests in writing as well as a friendship-strengthening
episode for the two kids from Elmont, Long Island.

Nelson has reached the pinnacle of success in his writing career, and Tom has done the same in his flying career and as an
aviation magazine writer.

While neither Tom nor Nelson has any immediate plans to collaborate again on a novel, they both felt that
Mayday
, a timeless and edge-of-the-seat tale of high-altitude terror, deserved to be republished.

Working with me at Warner Books, Tom and Nelson updated some of the politics and technology in the story to bring it into
the ’90s.

For old fans of
Mayday
, the authors hope this updated version is as immediate and exciting as the one you read in the late 1970s. For new readers,
welcome to Flight 52. Fasten your seat belts and prepare for takeoff. You’ve never had a ride quite like this.

MAYDAY!

MEL PARKER
Publisher
Warner Paperbacks