“It was en route to Japan. The good news is that the airliner’s still flying, and there weren’t many killed . . . yet. But the bad news is worse than you’d ever dream,” he said. “A bomb blew two holes in the hull and the air pressure escaped. The passengers suffered the effects of decompression. Up there, as you may know, it’s like outer space.”
Metz didn’t know. No one at Trans-United had told him about this possibility, and he had never had the foresight to have the dangers of high-altitude super-sonic flight researched. It was all supposed to be government approved, so he had assumed that there was no extraordinary risk. “What did you say was the condition of the passengers?” Metz asked.
There was a pause, then Johnson said, “We’re not absolutely certain, you understand, but the consensus here—and up there—seems to be that they’re brain damaged.”
“God Almighty.” The BMW nearly went off the road. “Are you sure?”
“I said we weren’t sure, Wayne. But I’d put money on it.”
Metz realized that he had not assimilated all of it. “The survivors . . . how did they . . .?”
“We’re communicating with them on the data-link. That’s like a computer screen. Radios are gone. There are only five unimpaired survivors. They were all in the whiffies or someplace like that.”
“Whiffies?”
“Bathrooms, Wayne. You’d better get here fast and bring your company’s checkbook.”
Metz pulled himself out of his daze. “Look, Ed, we’re both very exposed with this thing. How many people on board?”
“Nearly a full house. About three hundred.”
“When will it land?”
“It may never land.”
“What?”
“The aircraft is being flown by one of the passengers. Our—”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Metz knew that he shouldn’t be speaking so candidly about such a sensitive issue on a cellular phone, but he needed to know more to understand what was happening.
“Our three pilots are dead or unconscious. All that’s left of our flight crew are two flight attendants. The passenger who’s flying it—some guy named Berry—is an amateur pilot. He still has the Straton under control. In fact, he’s turned it around and headed back, but his exact position is unknown. Anyway, I have my doubts that he can land it without smearing it all over the runway.”
Wayne Metz was literally speechless. He kept the telephone pressed to his ear and his eyes on the road, but his mind was thousands of miles away—in the mid-Pacific. He tried to imagine the scene. The giant Straton 797 lost somewhere over the enormous ocean, two holes blown through its hull and everyone aboard dead or brain damaged except for a few people, one of whom, a passenger, was flying it. No, no, no, no.
“Metz? Wayne? You still there?”
“What? Yes. Yes, I’m here. Let me think. Hold on.” As he tried to sort out the incredible facts he had just heard, he inadvertently let the BMW slow. He was traveling at less than forty miles an hour in the left lane of the highway.
A driver in a battered blue Ford behind him hit his horn, then pulled out and passed on the right, glaring at the big sedan. Wayne glanced up distractedly at the other driver, but his mind, was on other things. A thought had formed. It was not yet fully shaped, but he could start to see its outline, like a mountain emerging from a fog. The battered blue Ford stuck in his mind, too, for some reason. He cleared his throat. “Listen, Ed, I’m almost there. Who knows about this? Is it on the radio?”
“No. Not many people know. One of our dispatchers handed me a break by not calling anyone yet. So I still have some space to maneuver.”
“Good. Don’t call anyone else. If we can’t control the situation, at least we can control the flow of information . . . and that may be just as important.”
“That’s my thinking too. But you’d better hurry.”
“Yes. On the way.” Metz hung up. He stared out the windshield and began accelerating. He cut in the cruise control at seventy miles an hour, picked up the phone again, and called New York. Parke was still in his office. “Mr. Parke,” he began without preamble, “I’ve got bad news. There’s been a terrible accident with Trans-United’s Straton 797.”
“Aren’t we the sole underwriters?” Parke asked quickly.
Metz winced. “Yes, sir. For the liability coverage. We are not involved in their hull insurance.” Going it alone was a risky, unconventional way to write that sort of policy, but Metz had never liked insurance pools. He had spent months convincing Beneficial that the airline, and especially the Straton program, was extremely safe. Beneficial did not have to share the huge premiums with anyone. But now they had no one to share the loss.
“Well, Wayne, that’s unfortunate. I personally felt that perhaps we were taking on too large a risk, but I don’t intend to second-guess you on that issue. The Board members approved it. The proposal—your proposal—had merit and was well-received. Naturally, we’ll review our corporate guidelines after a loss of this magnitude. You’ll have to make a presentation to the Board. I’ll get back to you later on that.”
Metz felt the sweat begin to collect around his collar, and he turned up the air-conditioning. “Yes, sir.”
“In the meantime, were all those aboard that airliner killed? Do you have a casualty total? Any estimate on our total liability?”
Metz hesitated, then spoke in a firm, controlled tone. “A Trans-United executive told me that it was nearly a full ship. That would mean approximately three hundred passengers and a crew.”
There was a long pause as the impact of the tragedy sunk in. “I see. All dead, did you say?”
Metz didn’t say. He temporized. “Actually, the accident occurred only a short while ago, over the Pacific. Many of the details are still very sketchy, and nothing has been released to the press yet. It’s being kept confidential,” he added. “Trans-United didn’t want to speak over the phone.”
“I understand. We’ll keep it quiet on this end also.”
“Yes, sir. That would be very good.”
“Well, bad day at Black Rock for a lot of people, including us. Listen, Wayne, don’t bother to work up a maximum-liability figure. Things are going to be pretty frantic at Trans-United. I’ll take care of it at this end. I suppose there won’t be any secondary property damages since the aircraft was over the Pacific at the time.”
“That’s right,” Metz lied. “There should be no other claims.” He could not bring himself to tell Wilford Parke that the Straton was, at this moment, streaking toward San Francisco, carrying onboard the largest contingent of ongoing insurance liabilities in history.
“Call me when you get more,” Parker said. “I’ll be at my club. I’m having dinner with some of the Board. We’ll have a telephone at the table. If you’d like some help, I can get people to you quickly out of the Chicago office.”
“We should be all right, sir. I’ve got a good staff here.”
“Fine. One more thing, Wayne . . .”
“Yes, sir?”
“I know this is your first loss of magnitude. Paying three hundred death benefits is no small thing. I’m just glad it didn’t happen over a populated area.”
“Yes, sir.” It may yet
“And I’m also relieved that we’re not carrying the aircraft’s hull insurance. What do those things cost—a hundred million?”
“Something like that.” On his desk was the first draft of a memo proposing that very coverage for Trans-United. When he got back to his office, that memo would go into the shredder before he hung up his jacket.
“What I’m trying to say, Wayne, is that there is no insurance executive in the business who at one time or another didn’t have his name personally identified with a large loss. I know it’s an embarrassment, but the amount we can expect as the total death benefit is manageable. You’ve had a spot of bad luck. Don’t let it get you down. You don’t cry over spilled milk in this business. You insure for spilled milk and pay for the spil
lage out of premiums. The board might grumble a bit, but you’ll come through. We’re just fortunate,” said Parke in a friendly tone, “that the claim isn’t more.”
Metz shook his head. There are three hundred brain-damaged people on that aircraft, and they are coming home. Coming home to Beneficial Insurance. We will be totally liable for the their lives.
10
Harold Stein stood, coiled, ready to strike again, but the assault seemed to have lost its momentum. The attackers had drifted off; like children, thought Stein, after a game of King of the Mountain, or like wild animals or primitive people whose ferocity subsides as quickly as it begins.
He breathed deeply and wiped the sweat from his face. His arms and legs ached. He peered down into the cabin. The passengers were apparently occupied with something else now. They were not congregating around the stairway any longer, and their noises had subsided. But they might mass again for an attack if something stirred them.
He found it hard to believe that he had actually been attacked. But he found it harder to believe that he had been so aggressive, had punched and kicked these men, women, children—people he had spoken with a few hours before.
Stein wondered why Barbara Yoshiro had not come back. Perhaps she’d been hurt, or maybe she was still searching for something. He looked into the cockpit. John Berry was talking to Sharon Crandall, but he couldn’t hear them. They sat, silhouetted against the bright Pacific sunlight, working, he supposed, on bringing them home. “They’re quieting down,” Stein called out.
Berry turned and called back, “Nice work, Harold. If you need any help, holler.”
“Right.” Stein looked around the lounge. Berry had his hands full just keeping these people out of the cockpit and trying to fly the aircraft. Stein forced himself not to look at his own trembling hands. He took a deep, measured breath to calm himself, but it was becoming an increasingly difficult task. The more he thought about their situation, the more frightened he had become. Stein knew that he had hardly any emotional or physical resources left inside of him.
His mind drifted back across an ocean and a continent to his home in Bronxville. In his mind’s eye he could see its red bricks, white shutters, and rich green lawns. He could see the red azalea bushes in bloom the way he’d last seen them. Every spring people would go out of their way to pass his house and admire Miriam’s flowers. Who would tend them now?
He longed for the comfort of the high-backed couch in front of the fireplace where he sat with Miriam most evenings. He pictured the wide stairway that led to the second floor and the bedrooms. His and Miriam’s on the left. On the right, Susan’s, wallpapered in pink gingham, the aquarium crammed with tropical fish. Beyond that room was Debbie’s, all navy and white, filled with miniature toys and the dollhouse he had made for her last birthday.
He began to cry.
He had to act, he decided. He had to do something for them. If he couldn’t bring back their minds, he could, at least, comfort their bodies, keep them from being savaged by the others.
Without realizing it, he was standing on the circular staircase. He thought briefly of Berry’s admonitions to wait. He thought of his duty to stand there and guard the gates of hell. Hell. To hell with Berry. To hell with them all. He could not wait. Not for Berry, not for Barbara Yoshiro, not for anyone.
He glanced back into the cockpit. Berry and Crandall were busy. He looked toward the piano. Linda Farley was sitting on the floor, half asleep. He glanced down. The stairs were clear. They might not be clear again. He descended quickly into the lower region of the Straton.
At the base of the stairs, he looked around cautiously. People were lying everywhere. Some were slouched against the walls of the lavatories and galley. They seemed to be in a resting state, like wild things after a period of frenzy. It wouldn’t last long, he suspected.
The people around him were whimpering softly or chattering to themselves. Now and then he thought he heard a clear word or phrase, but he knew he had not. He wanted so desperately to have someone to help him that he was beginning to create human dialogue out of the animal noises that came from those blood-smeared mouths.
Stein moved cautiously around the lavatories and back toward the area of debris.
Among the sunlit rubble, a golden-colored dog lay sleeping with a meaty bone under its paws. It seemed so incongruous even beyond the incongruity of the sunlight on the twisted deck. Then he remembered the Seeing-Eye dog. But who would let a dog have a fresh bone onboard an . . . Then it struck him. “Oh, dear God.”
He turned quickly away from the dog and saw, a few feet from him, Barbara Yoshiro. She was sitting on the floor with her head buried between her knees, her long black hair obscuring her face. He moved quickly toward her. She could help him bring his family up to the lounge. He reached down and shook her shoulder. He spoke softly. “Barbara. Barbara, are you all right?”
The flight attendant picked her head up.
Stein recoiled. The face that stared at him was horribly contorted and smeared with blood. “Barbara . . .” But it was not Barbara Yoshiro. It was another flight attendant, whom he vaguely recognized. In the sunlight he could see purple blotches on her cheeks and forehead where blood vessels had burst. The eyes stared at him, red and burning. He stepped back and collided with someone behind him. “Oh! Oh, no, please no!” He stumbled out of the rubble, knocking into people as he moved.
He looked around wildly for Barbara Yoshiro. He called back in to the dimly lit tourist cabin. “Barbara! Flight attendant!”
Someone yelled back at him. “Burbura! Fitatenant!”
Stein put his hands over his face and slumped back against a seat. God in Heaven.
Slowly, he took his hands from his face and looked up. His eyes moved reluctantly toward the center row, thirty feet from where he stood. Only Debbie and Susan were still sitting in their seats. Miriam was gone.
Debbie was trying to stand, but each time she rose, the seat belt pulled her back.
Susan was lying slumped over the seat that had been his, her hands clasped together, thrust out in front of her.
Harold Stein moved toward his daughter, slowly, hesitantly. He stood over their seats and looked down. “Debbie. Debbie, it’s Papa. Debbie!”
The girl looked up uninterestedly, then resumed her up-and-down movements, patiently, persistently trying to stand. Odd liquid vowel sounds came from her lips.
Susan was breathing, but was otherwise motionless.
Harold Stein knew in that instant that there was neither hope nor salvation for his family or for anyone on this ship. And now he knew what he had to do.
He turned and ran down the aisle, pushing aside the staggering people in his way.
He found Miriam wandering aimlessly near the rear galley. “Miriam! Miriam!”
She did not respond.
He was done with calling their names, done with pretending that anyone was who they had been a few hours before. This wandering wraith standing before him was not his wife.
He took her arm and led her back to the four adjoining seats that had held him and his family.
Stein unbuckled the two girls’ belts. He put Susan over his shoulder and pulled Debbie to her feet and led her into the aisle. Alternating with his free hand between his wife and daughter, he maneuvered them both into the area of the rubble.
The two holes that had caused this immense grief were hardly more than a dozen feet away. The wind howled through those open wounds and the noise filled his ears and made it difficult to think clearly. He hesitated, then headed for the larger hole.
Sweating and out of breath, he laid down the burden that was his daughter, then forced Debbie and Miriam to sit. Several cables whipped over their heads, and occasionally one would lash Miriam or the girls, causing them to cry out. A cable whipped across Stein’s face and opened a gash on his forehead.
He bent over Susan, and despite his resolve not to speak to any of them, he whispered in her ear. “Sue, honey, Papa’s here with y
ou. It’s going to be all right now.” He turned and looked down at Debbie. She looked at him, and for a moment he thought he saw a spark of life in those dead eyes, but then it was gone. Debbie was their firstborn, and her birth after so many childless years had been the single most joyous event in their lives. He bent forward and kissed her on the forehead.
There was no doubt in his mind that he had been spared the fate of the others for the specific purpose of allowing him to do his duty toward his family. He felt sorry for those who had to go on suffering. He felt sorry for Berry and Sharon Crandall and Linda Farley and Barbara Yoshiro. They had to suffer more than the others and would go on suffering until the aircraft crashed, or worse, landed. He honestly pitied them all, but felt no more responsibility toward any of them. The gates of hell were unguarded, and it was just as well. It might hasten the end for everyone. He, Harold Stein, had been given an unheard-of opportunity to escape from hell and escort his family to a place of eternal rest, and he was not going to shrink from that responsibility.
He wrapped his arms around his daughters’ waists, and with no further thought lifted them toward the hole. He watched as they left his hands, one at a time, and sailed away in the slipstream, end over end, through the sunlit blue sky. Each of his daughters disappeared from his view for a moment behind the tail of the craft, then he saw them again, briefly carried by the Pacific wind down toward the sea before he could see them no more.
Without a moment’s pause, Stein turned and lifted his wife to a standing position. He walked her toward the hole. She seemed to come along willingly. Perhaps she understood. He doubted it, but perhaps their love— that silent communication that had developed between them—was stronger. . . . Stein forced himself to stop thinking. He looked at the hole, but he could barely see it through the tears in his eyes. He looked back at Miriam’s face. Two lines of dried blood ran from her tear ducts down her cheeks. He pulled her face to his chest. “Miriam, Miriam. I know you don’t understand, but . . . ” His voice trailed off into a series of spasmodic sobs.