Berry shook his head. They were not better. They never would be. Better meant worse. More animated. More dangerous. “Be very, very careful. See you later.”
“Okay.”
The phone clicked dead.
Berry exchanged glances with Crandall, then looked over his shoulder into the lounge. Stein had taken the news about the data-link connection calmly, almost without interest. He had other things on his mind. “Harold. Linda,” Berry shouted back to them. “Hold on to something. We’re turning. Back to California. Be home in a few hours.”
Stein looked up from his post at the head of the stairs and waved distractedly.
Berry turned and positioned himself carefully in his seat. He reached out and put his hand on the autopilot heading control knob. He had a vague awareness of a shadow passing over the starboard side of the cockpit’s windshield. He glanced at Sharon Crandall, but she seemed unaware of it. He half stood and leaned over her seat and looked out the side windshield. He craned his neck back toward the tail. Nothing. A cloud probably. But he could see no clouds.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He sat down and again placed his hand over the small heading knob. “Okay. We’re heading home.” Slowly, a few degrees at a time, he began turning the knob. The big supersonic craft banked to the right.
For a brief instant, Matos thought that his aircraft was responsible for the apparent movement between them. The action of a missile release would do that. But he had not, he realized, pressed the button hard enough to make contact. His missile-fire light was not on.
The large Straton transport moved rapidly across Matos’s gun sight. He removed his hand from the firing button and raised his eyes from the crosshairs. The Straton was in a shallow bank, moving away from the fighter.
Turbulence, was Matos’s first thought. No. Impossible. There is no turbulence. His own aircraft flew smoothly. Yet the 797 was banking. Instinctively, he banked with it and lined up his gun sights again. The Straton moved at a steady rate. Gracefully. Deliberately. Intentionally.
Matos sat up straight in his seat. His hand came down hard on his radio transmit button. “Homeplate! Homeplate! Navy three-four-seven. The Straton is turning. Banking.” He followed the airliner as it began its slow, wide circle. “It’s going through a north heading. Still turning. Approaching a northeasterly heading. The turn remains steady. The bank angle is approximately thirty degrees and steady. The airspeed and altitude are unchanged.” Matos kept his transmit button locked on so he could not receive, and kept up a continuous report of the airliner’s progress.
As gently as it had begun, the Straton’s bank angle started to lessen. Matos watched as the airliner began to roll to wings-level position. He placed his fighter twenty-five yards astern of the 797.
Matos could see from the rate of the Straton’s turn and the symmetry of its entry and exit that the control inputs were being measured electronically. Only a computer-controlled autopilot could provide that sort of precise motion control. He radioed, “Homeplate, the Straton is still on autopilot.” But he also knew, beyond any doubt, that there was a human hand working that autopilot.
Matos looked up at the manual gun sight, then down at the unguarded firing mechanism as though he were seeing them both for the first time. Oh, Jesus.
His hand was cramped, and he realized he had been pressing hard on his radio transmit button to keep possession of the radio channel between him and the Nimitz. But he knew he could not keep the channel away from Sloan forever. He spoke, to justify his finger on the transmit button, and to give himself time to think. “It was a deliberate turn. Someone is flying the aircraft—someone is working the autopilot. I could fly alongside the cockpit to verify.” He released the button.
“No!” shouted Sloan. “This is an order. Stay in trail formation. Do nothing to attract attention until you receive orders to do so. And keep your hand off the transmit button unless you are transmitting. Don’t try to cut me off again. Do you understand?”
Matos nodded, almost meekly. “Roger. Sorry, I was just . . . excited and . . . must have been gripping the stick. . .. Over.”
“Roger. Are you still monitoring the radio channels?”
Matos glanced down at his side console. His monitoring equipment was still on, still silent. “That’s affirmative. No radio activity from the Straton on the normal frequencies.”
“Okay, Peter. Stay in trail until further notice. Acknowledge.”
“Roger, I read, stay in trail.”
“Roger, out.”
Matos ran his tongue across his parched lips and looked down at his compass. Reluctantly, he reached for his transmit button. When a commander gave an “out” it was the equivalent of, Don’t call me, I’ll call you. End of conversation. But Matos had things he wanted to say. “Homeplate.”
There was a short pause. “What is it, Navy?”
“Homeplate, whoever is flying that airliner knows what they’re doing. The Straton is flying steadily. Its new heading is 120 degrees. They are heading toward California.”
The silence in Matos’s headset seemed to last a long time.
“Roger. Anything further?”
Matos could not read the flat tone in Sloan’s voice. He wondered what was going through the Commander’s mind now. Why had they thought everyone on-board the Straton was dead? Matos could not hold himself back from asking the obvious question. “Homeplate, I don’t understand. Why am I staying out of sight of the cockpit?” He settled back and waited through the long, expected silence.
After a full minute his headset crackled. “Because, Lieutenant, I ordered you to.” The voice was no longer neutral. Sloan’s words continued, “We are all ass-deep in bad trouble. If you don’t want to spend the rest of your fucking life in Portsmouth Naval Prison, you will stay out of sight of that cockpit. Suppose, Lieutenant, you think about why you should keep out of sight and you radio me back with the answer when you figure it out. Okay?”
Matos nodded again and stared at his hands wrapped around the control stick. “Roger.”
“Homeplate, out.”
Matos pushed aside the manual gun sight and snapped back the safety cover of the firing switch. He sat back, deep in his upholstered flight chair, and stared down at the Straton until his eyes went out of focus. He closed his eyes, then made his mind go blank. He erased all the extraneous information he had accumulated and started at the beginning, at the moment he had first seen two targets on his radar screen. Slowly, he realized what Sloan was getting to. Now he knew precisely what he might yet be called on to do. Say it, Peter, he thought. Murder.
8
The Straton leveled, and in the cockpit the sensation of the slight increase in G force lessened, then disappeared. The cockpit returned to a straight and level altitude.
John Berry smiled, and Sharon Crandall smiled back “We did it! John, that was great. Very, very good.”
Berry couldn’t suppress a small laugh. “Okay. Okay, we’re heading in. Great. The control surfaces respond. We can turn.” He felt the wide grin still plastered across his face and knew he looked foolish. He thought ahead to the landing he would have to attempt, and the grin faded without much effort. Flying, he reflected, was like walking a high wire. One slip and it’s finished. No do-overs. “All right, let’s bang out a message.” He reached out and typed.
FROM FLIGHT 52: TURN COMPLETE. HEADING 120 DEGREES. ADVISE.
He pushed the transmit button.
The incoming message bell sounded almost immediately.
TO FLIGHT 52: VERY NICE WORK. STAND BY. RELAX. EVERYONE HERE IS WORKING ON BRINGING YOU HOME.
Berry nodded. Home. An evocative word. Its meaning was changing every minute. “Relax,” he read. “Okay. I’m relaxed. How are you?”
Sharon Crandall nodded. She looked at Berry out of the corner of her eye. Very nice work. Very cool. Competent. Most people would be in a complete state of panic by now. She’d see men—macho types— whimpering in their seats during an
electrical storm. She’d seen a whole football team on the verge of hysteria as their aircraft hit heavy turbulence. She glanced at John Berry. Here was a man who was a sort of lowkey salesman who occasionally flew his company aircraft—and he’d acted admirably. More so than she or Barbara had, in fact. She thought she liked John Berry very much. “Do you want something to drink? A glass of water? Something stronger?”
“No, thanks.”
She nodded. There were undoubtedly all types of powerful forces at work up here that would draw her to him, but even on the ground, she thought, he would be a person she would want to know. “I’ll call Barbara.”
“Yes. She should be on her way. Try one of the closer stations.”
“Okay.” She switched to the mid-ship station and pressed the call button.
There was no answer.
She tried every station, including the below-decks galley.
Berry looked back into the lounge and shouted, “Harold. Call down to Barbara.”
Stein called down. He looked up at Berry and shook his head.
Berry reached for the PA microphone, then hesitated. “No. That makes them excited.” He tapped his fingers impatiently on the steering column. “She’s probably between stations. Or in the galley elevator. We’ll wait.” He glanced at Sharon Crandall before he turned his head back to the windshield. If she were a bit older . . . But why was he thinking about that now? It was odd how people made long-range plans in terminal situations. His father had planned his spring garden the winter he was dying of cancer. “Sharon, what are you going to do after this? I mean, would you fly again?”
She looked at him and gave him a very big smile. “After this, John, I’ll take one week off. Maybe even two weeks.” She laughed, but then her expression turned serious. “After that, I’ll report for duty as usual. If you have a bad experience in flight, you have to go back. Otherwise, the rest of your life becomes a series of avoidances. Besides, what else would I do at my age? Who’s going to pay me this kind of money?” She looked out at the horizon line. “And what about you? Will you stop flying that little whatever-it-is for your company?”
“Skymaster. No. Of course not.”
“Good.” She hesitated, then leaned over toward him and placed her hand on his arm. “How do you feel about landing this plane?”
Berry looked directly at her. Her countenance and the language of her body were unmistakably clear and had little to do with the question. Yet there was nothing brazen about her. Just an honest offering. Within hours they might be alive on the ground. More likely, they would be dead. Still, her offer did not seem out of place. “You’ll help me. We can land this plane.” He felt slightly awkward, a little flustered at her touch and her sudden intimacy.
Sharon Crandall settled back in her seat and stared out her side window. She thought briefly about her last live-in lover, Nick, from crew scheduling. Emptiness, boredom. Sex and television. In the final analysis, they’d shared nothing, really, and his leaving left no emptiness, no loneliness beyond what she’d felt when he was there. He had left the same way he had arrived, like a gray afternoon sliding into a dark night. But she was still lonely. “Why don’t you send a message from each one of us to someone on the ground?” she said. She instantly wondered whom she would send her message to. Her mother, probably.
Berry considered the idea. “No,” he finally said. “That would be a little . . . melodramatic. Don’t you think so? A little too terminal. We have some time yet. I’ll send one for everyone later. Who do you want to . . .?”
She ignored his question. “Your wife must be frantic.”
Berry considered several answers. My insurance is paid up. That should take the edge off any franticness. Or, Jennifer hasn’t been frantic since she lost her Bloomingdale’s charge card. He said, “I’m sure the airline is keeping everyone informed.”
“That’s true.” She changed the subject abruptly. “You’ve got good control of the airplane,” she said with some authority. “The flight controls are working okay. And we’ve still got nearly half our fuel.” She nodded toward the fuel gauges.
“Yes,” Berry answered, recalling that he had pointed that out to her only ten minutes before. “That’s true. It should be enough fuel.” But he knew that headwinds or bad weather could change that. As far as the flight controls were concerned, all he knew for certain was that he could make a right-hand turn and level out. He had no information about turning left or going up or down.
“I remember,” Crandall added, “how Captain Stuart once told me that as long as the flight controls worked and the engines had a steady supply of fuel, then the situation wasn’t hopeless.”
“That’s true,” said Berry. The mention of Stuart’s name made him look back over his shoulder. At the far end of the lounge, the two pilots still lay motionless on the thick blue rug, near the piano. Berry turned and scanned the Straton’s flight instruments and autopilot. Everything was steady. He stood. “I’m going back to the lounge to see what’s going on.”
“Okay.”
“Scan the instruments. If anything seems wrong, yell.”
“You bet.”
“If the data-link bell—”
“I’ll call you.”
“Okay. And watch the autopilot closely.” He leaned over her seat and put his right hand casually on her shoulder. He pointed with his left hand. “See this light?”
“Yes.”
“It’s the autopilot disconnect light. If it shows amber, call me—fast.”
“Roger.” She turned her head toward him and smiled.
Berry straightened up. “Okay. Be right back.” He turned and walked into the lounge.
The flight attendant in the upper lounge, Terri O’Neil, was walking around now. Berry didn’t like that. The attractive woman on the horseshoe-shaped couch had unfastened her seat belt and was staring out the porthole. The remaining three men and one woman continued to sit on the couch, making spastic, senseless movements with their arms. One of the men had unfastened his seat belt and tried repeatedly to stand, but couldn’t seem to manage it.
Berry could see that, as Barbara Yoshiro said, they were all getting better—physically. Mentally, they were more inquisitive. They were beginning to think, but to think things that were not good. Dark things. Dangerous things.
The Straton, reflected Berry, was a protected environment, like an egg. Puncture the shell of a fertilized egg with a pin and the embryo would not survive. And if it did, it would be changed in some terrible way. He formed a mental picture of the Straton sitting serenely on the airport ramp, two small holes on the sides the only outward indication of anything being amiss. The stairs were wheeled up. The crowd cheered. The doors opened. The first passengers appeared. . .. He shook his head and looked up.
Terri O’Neil wandered toward the cockpit door. Berry stepped up to her. He took her shoulder and turned her around. Terri pushed his hand away roughly and spoke to him as though she were berating him for touching her, but the words were gibberish. Berry was reminded of his daughter at fourteen months old. He waited until the flight attendant ambled off, away from the cockpit door, then began walking to the far side of the lounge toward Stein, who was leaning against the rail of the staircase. Stein seemed unaware of Berry’s presence and continued to stare down the open stairway. “How is it going?” Berry asked.
Stein pointed down the stairs.
Berry leaned over. A group of men and women were staring up at him, mouths drooling and faces covered with the now familiar, repugnant pattern of blood and vomit. A few of the people pointed up to him. Someone called out; a woman laughed. Berry could hear what he thought were children crying. One man pushed his way to the base of the stairs and spoke directly to Berry, trying hard to be understood. The man became frustrated, and shouted. The woman laughed again.
Berry stepped back from the stairwell, turned, and looked at Linda Farley. She slid off the piano bench and took a few steps toward him. Berry said, “Stay there, Linda.”
>
Stein said to Berry, “I told her to stay away from the stairs. Although this,” he motioned around the big lounge, “this is not much better.”
Berry asked the girl, “What is it, Linda?”
She hesitated. “I’m hungry, Mr. Berry. Can I get something to eat soon?”
Berry smiled at her. “Well . . . how about a Coke?”
“I looked.” She motioned toward the bar. “There’s nothing left.”
“Well, I don’t think there’s any food up here. Can you wait awhile?”
She looked disappointed. “I guess.” “How are the two pilots?”
“The same.”
“Take good care of them.”
Linda Farley was getting all of life’s adversities in one big dose. Hunger, thirst, fatigue, fear, death. “Just a little while longer, sweetheart. We’ll be home soon.” He turned. It occurred to him that he was hungry and thirsty, too. And if he and Linda Farley were hungry and thirsty, then so were many of the people below. He wondered if that would stimulate them to acts of aggression.
“Down!” Stein yelled. “Go down!” Berry moved quickly to the stairs. A man was halfway up.
Stein took a coin from his pocket and threw it, striking the man in the face. “Down! Go down!”
The man retreated a step.
Stein turned to Berry. “Do you have anything I can throw?”
Berry reached into his pocket and handed Stein some change. “I don’t like the looks of this, Harold.”
Stein nodded. “Neither do I.”
Berry looked around the lounge. “How are these people behaving?”
“Erratic. They make me nervous. Too close.”
Berry watched Terri O’Neil walking awkwardly toward the cockpit again. He wished he could close and lock the damaged door. The flight attendant stood a few feet from the door and stared into the cockpit, her eyes fixed on Sharon Crandall, who didn’t seem aware of the other flight attendant’s presence. Berry glanced back at Stein. “I think, as a precaution, we might want to help these people get downstairs.”