Mayday (8 page)

The autopilot was taking the aircraft down, as fast as it could safely go, into the thicker atmosphere at 30,000 feet where
they would find enough ambient pressure to make the oxygen masks workable. The rate of descent was racing against the physiological
effects of anoxia—suffocation—and suffocation was winning. Stuart could see no way out of it. All the numbers— airspeed, altitude,
rate of descent, rate of pressure loss—had been predictable. He knew the numbers before he had ever stepped into the cockpit
of his first Straton.
If only the damned hole had been smaller . . .

In the first-class lounge, an elderly man, John Thorn-dike, released his seat belt and quickly stood. A familiar sensation
gripped his chest and he reached for a pillbox in his jacket. He paled, then turned blue as his heart gave out. He tottered
for a moment, then fell forward across the cocktail table, landing on his wife, who tried to scream but couldn’t.

In the tourist and first-class cabins, older people began dying. Some slipped away noiselessly, others moaned their protests
as hearts and lungs failed.

Throughout the aircraft, the old, then those with preexisting medical conditions began to die. Lungs collapsed, hearts gave
up, thin blood vessels burst, and hemorrhaging blood poured from all the body orifices. Internally hemorrhaging blood collected
in skulls and body cavities causing a more painful death. Pockets of pressurized air developed in body cavities, and people
began clawing at their faces and torsos, irrationally trying to get at the source of the pain.

Everyone, young and old, weak and healthy, experienced hyperventilation, dizziness, blurred vision, and nausea. People choked
on their vomit when oxygen-deprived brains and muscles failed to respond to the vomiting reflex. Skin colors went from white
to blue. Bowels and bladders released, and if normal breathing and its adjunct, the sense of smell, had been possible, the
cabin would have reeked.

More and more people had given up on the masks, but many people still tried desperately to suck from them, silently cursing
what they thought was a failure of the system to provide oxygen. But the oxygen was there. The molecules poured out of the
masks and swirled around their faces like a cruel joke, then dissipated into the low-pressure atmosphere.

In the freezing tourist cabin, where anyone who cared to look could see the holes, sunlight poured in through the south-facing
port-side hold and starkly illuminated the rubble and carnage left in the wake of the missile.

By this time, everyone who was capable of forming thought knew they were suffocating. Yet outside, through the holes, they
could see the unlimited sky, a cloudless deep blue, bright with sunlight. It looked balmy, enchanting, but it was as lethal
as the bottom of the sea.

Captain Stuart was barely conscious. He moved his head to his right. McVary was still sitting upright, staring straight ahead.
He turned his head and looked back at Stuart with an odd expression. Stuart turned his head away and looked over his shoulder.
Fessler was still lying across his desk in a pool of blood. The bleeding seemed to have stopped.

Stuart’s fingers were numb and his limbs were heavy. His brain seemed detached from his body and he felt as though he were
free-floating.

The cells in his brain were dying, but one shining thought, like a faraway landing beacon, was becoming increasingly clear
in the darkening cockpit. Ever since he had begun to fly the Straton, the thought of high-altitude decompression had played
on his mind and he had formulated a response to this possibility that was so ingrained that it had not yet died or become
jumbled like everything else. He knew he must shut off the autopilot and push the aircraft into a sudden dive. It was all
coming to him now. He had it.
If they did not all die quickly and someone in the cockpit was still functioning when the aircraft descended into the breathable
air, then that person might have enough intellect left to put the aircraft down somewhere
. He looked at Mc-Vary again. Young. Good health. Sucking hard on his mask. Half his brain might survive. The idiot would
save them from death and condemn them to that shadowy place, that place of perpetual eclipse, that state of being which is
called half-life—speechless, blind, paralyzed, dim-witted. He thought of his wife and family.
Oh, God. No.

Stuart reached his hand out toward the autopilot release button on the control wheel. No good. McVary might turn it on again.
He pushed his hand toward his console and found what he wanted—the autopilot master switch, which was not duplicated on the
copilot’s side. He pushed his hand over the guarded cover of the switch and rolled it back. His fingers found the small toggle.

He hesitated. The instinct for survival—any kind of survival—began overtaking his fading intellect. He had to act quickly.
Quickly! Act what?
He tried to remember what he was supposed to act on, then remembered for a flash of a second and tugged on the switch. It
held fast. He recalled clearly that the solenoid was designed to require a good deal of force to shut down the auto . . .
auto what? What?

Captain Alan Stuart sat back in his seat and stared out the windshield. He frowned. He had a headache. Something was bothering
him.
Coffee. Brazil.
He had to go to Brazil for coffee. He smiled. A small trickle of saliva ran down his chin.

The automatic pilot continued to steer the Straton 797 through its programmed emergency descent. Its electronic memory bank
and preset responses were in no way affected by the oxygen deprivation. Never once did it consider the effects of anoxia on
its human charges. It was true that one young creator of this autopilot had suggested once that a sudden and complete decompression
at altitudes of over 50,000 feet should induce a shutdown of the autopilot. But that young man no longer designed autopilots
and his “self-destruct response,” as the Straton executives had labeled it, was not part of the autopilot’s repertoire. The
autopilot could and would descend to 11,000 feet where the air was breathable and warmer, and would continue piloting the
Straton on its flight path to Tokyo. It could do that and more. The thing it could not do was land the plane, not without
additional inputs from the crew.

John Berry felt the effects of the rarefied atmosphere. He had begun to hyperventilate. His head ached painfully and he was
dizzy. He sat on the small commode until he felt a little better.

He rose again and pulled at the door. It was still firmly stuck. He felt too weak to try it again. He glanced at his watch
on the shelf. 11:04. Only two minutes had gone by since he had felt the bump. It seemed longer.

Berry began pounding on the door. “Open up! Open the damn door! I’m stuck in here!” He put his ear to the door. Odd sounds
were coming from the cabin. He pounded again, then sank back against the bulkhead. He wanted to try the door again, but decided
to wait until he felt stronger.

John Berry knew that if the aircraft made an emergency landing in the ocean, he would not be able to get to the life rafts.
He would drown when the aircraft sank. He put his hands to his aching head, bent over, and vomited on the floor, disregarding
the commode. He straightened up and inhaled deeply several times, but a light-headedness rolled over him like a giant wave.
He wanted to wash his face and mouth, but remembered that the tap had run dry.
Why?

The lavatory seemed to get darker, and he felt weaker. He slipped to the floor. His transition to unconsciousness came slowly,
and he allowed his body to untense. He felt a strange euphoria and decided that death would not be that bad. He had never
thought it would be. He recalled his childhood, which did not surprise him, even thought of his children, which made him feel
less guilty about the way he felt about them. He remembered Jennifer, the way she once was. He closed his eyes and lapsed
into blackness.

The vent in the lavatory continued to send a steady stream of pressurized and heated air into the enclosed space. The pressure
leaked out around the edges of the door, but it leaked slowly, slowly enough to keep a pressure of over two pounds per square
inch on the door, sealing it shut. The pressure loss was also slow enough so that the atmosphere in the lavatory never rose
above 31,000 feet.

John Berry lay crumpled on the floor, breathing irregularly. Five more minutes at the altitude of 31,000 feet would cause
him permanent and irreversible brain damage. But the Straton’s autopilot was bringing the airliner down rapidly.

In the tourist cabin, the first-class cabin, the first class lounge, and the cockpit, the passengers and crew of Trans-United’s
Flight 52 had fallen, one by one, into a deep, merciful sleep; the level of oxygen being supplied to their brain cells had
dropped too low for too long.

At 11:08
A.M
., six minutes after the Phoenix missile had passed through the Straton 797, the airliner reached 18,000 feet. The autopilot
noted the altitude and began a gradual recovery from the emergency descent. The speed brakes were automatically retracted,
followed by a slow and steady autothrottle power advance to the four engines.

In the cockpit three figures sat slumped over, strapped to their seats. The two control wheels moved in unison, the four throttles
advanced, the ailerons made slight and continuous adjustments. The aircraft was flying nicely. But this was no ghost ship,
no Flying Dutchman; it was a modern aircraft whose autopilot had taken charge as it was told to do. Everything would be fine,
at least for a while.

As the autopilot’s electronic circuitry sensed the proximity of the desired altitude, it leveled out the giant airliner and
established it at an altitude of 11,000 feet and a slow, fuel-saving speed of 340 knots. The air-pressurization system had
automatically disengaged as the aircraft sank into the thicker atmosphere. The fresh sea breezes of clean Pacific air filled
the cabin of Trans-United’s Flight 52.

A few minutes after leveling off, the first passengers began to awaken from their unnatural sleep.

L
ieutenant Peter Matos flew his F-18 fighter on a straight and level course. Reluctantly, he pushed his radio-transmit button.
“Homeplate, this is Navy three-four-seven.” He continued to hold down on the transmit button so he could not receive a reply
from the
Nimitz
until he was ready to deal with it. His mind whirled with conflict. Something was still not quite right. Finally, he slid
his finger off the button, which freed the channel so he could receive their reply.

“Roger, Navy three-four-seven. We have also registered the intercept,” Petty Officer Kyle Loomis answered. Matos knew that
the carrier had been equipped to monitor the missile, and that the men in electronics Room E-334 had watched the needle that
registered the sudden end-of-transmission from the AIM-63X as it had impacted against the target, destroying its transmitter.

“Navy three-four-seven, this is Homeplate.”

The voice in Matos’s earphones was unmistakably that of Commander Sloan. Even though a special encoding voice scrambler was
being used to prevent anyone else from monitoring their channel, the deep and measured qualities of Sloan’s voice came through.
Matos discovered that he had suddenly braced himself, as if he had run across Sloan in one of the
Nimitz
’s below-decks corridors.