Sloan finally spoke. “The situation has not changed. Our only mistake was waiting for the Straton to go down by itself. But there’s no sense continuing this argument. Try to think of it as a tactical war problem.”
Hennings was fatigued and his head ached. “Stop giving me those war analogies, Commander. That doesn’t work anymore.” After Matos’s report that the Straton had made a turn, Hennings thought that Sloan would see that they couldn’t proceed with the destruction of the aircraft. Hennings was almost relieved at the prospect of confessing to Captain Diehl what they had done. But Sloan, as Hennings should have known, had not given up so easily. To Sloan there was little difference between shooting down an aircraft that they first believed to be filled with corpses, and shooting down an aircraft that showed signs of life. “And stop telling me nothing has changed. Everything is changed now.”
“Yes, and for the worse. Let me point out again, Admiral, that I don’t want to go to jail. I have my whole life in front of me. You may get VIP treatment in Portsmouth—a cottage of your own, or whatever they do with admirals, but I . . . Which reminds me, you’ll be the first American admiral to be court-martialed in this century, won’t you? Or maybe with your retired status, you’ll suffer the indignity of a civilian trial.”
Hennings tried to remember—to understand the sequence of small compromises that had brought him so far down that he had to listen to this from a man like Sloan. He was either getting senile or there was a flaw in his moral fiber that he had not been made aware of. Certainly James Sloan wasn’t that sharp. “You think a lot of yourself, don’t you?” he said. “But if you were as shrewd as you think you are, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“I don’t mind sticking my neck out if I can gain by it. What I do mind is your getting in my way. This would have all been resolved long ago if you hadn’t procrastinated, and if we hadn’t listened to Matos’s bullshit about fatigue cracks and damage.”
Hennings nodded. That was certainly true. For the last hour, Sloan had explained to him why Peter Matos should destroy the Straton. For the last hour, Hennings had advised waiting for some word from Matos that the Straton had gone down by itself. Matos’s reports had confirmed that the Straton was damaged but still flying, straight and steady, except for one deliberate but unexplainable course change from a 120-degree heading to a 131-degree heading. Also, Matos reported people falling or jumping from the airliner. None of this was comprehensible. “Why did they change course? Why are people falling from a steady aircraft? There was obviously no fire. They can’t be jumping. That makes no sense. What the hell is going on up there?”
Sloan wasn’t sure he knew what was going on up there either. The first heading seemed to put the Straton closer to its home base of San Francisco. The new heading might put them on a parallel course to the coast. He looked at Hennings. “The pilot must be lost. His navigation sets are probably malfunctioning. As for the people . . .” He thought for a moment about that bizarre happening. “I told you they’ve probably suffered brain damage.” He was beginning to imagine for the first time what it must be like for the people onboard the Straton. “The pilots may be brain damaged, too. That’s why they’re changing their headings.” He looked Hennings in the eye. “They may crash into a populated area. Think about that.”
Hennings was through thinking and through arguing. His only argument had been based on his own understanding of the moral and ethical issues involved. Against that thin, apparently weightless argument, Sloan had thrown a dozen expedient reasons for destroying the Straton and the people onboard.
“We’re running out of time.” Sloan said it casually, as if he were late for a tennis match at the officers’ club. “Matos is low on fuel.”
Hennings stepped closer to Sloan. “If I say no?”
Sloan shrugged. “Then I go to Captain Diehl and tell him my side of the story.”
“You don’t bluff well.”
Sloan smiled. “Well, I guess it’s not important for you to concur any longer. You’ve already committed a half-dozen court-martial offenses. Just stay out of my way, and I’ll call Matos and finish it off. The Straton’s obviously not going down on its own.” Sloan picked up the microphone and glanced at Hennings out of the corner of his eye. He started to push the transmit button, then hesitated. It would be much better if the Admiral was in on it. As he pondered his next move, the telephone rang. He put down the microphone and snatched up the receiver. “Commander Sloan,” he said impatiently, then listened for a few seconds. “Yes. Go ahead with the message. Exactly as received.”
“Who is it?” Hennings asked, apprehension in his voice.
Sloan ignored him. “Okay. I understand. Then their request is specifically for a broad-area search, and only within the boundaries you’ve described?”
Hennings was certain that it concerned the Straton, but couldn’t guess in what way.
Sloan was shaking his head. “I’m tied up here—with this special test. Yes, it’s still not finished, but that’s not your business. Have Lieutenant Rowles lay out the initial patterns and assignments. At least eight aircraft each shift. To be launched at one-hour intervals. Begin the search in the northern quadrant, and expand the search southward.” Sloan glanced at the console clock. “Tell Rowles to get the first group off within fifteen minutes.” He hung up and turned to Hennings. “A message came from air traffic control to initiate a search and possible rescue mission.”
“The Straton?”
“Trans-United Flight 52. A supersonic Straton 797 from San Francisco to Tokyo. Unless the Trans-United Stratons are having a bad day, that must be ours.”
“But I thought we would hear any transmissions from them.” He gestured toward the radio-monitoring equipment.
Sloan hesitated. He had to pick and choose what to tell Hennings. “They transmitted on a data-link, a typed-out message that displays on a computer screen. I presume only the Trans-United operations office can receive from them. Anyway, the pilot was apparently dying. Brain damage. He made that turn, then made the course change, then they lost contact. They suspect that he died or blacked out, and that the Straton went down and . . .”
“Then they don’t know it’s still—”
“No. They don’t. The good news is that one of the data-link messages from the Straton mentioned a bomb. Everyone thinks there was a bomb onboard. Do you see it all now, Admiral? A pilotless aircraft filled with dead and dying, and with enough fuel left to reach
California. Even if it weren’t our fault, I’d say we had a duty to bring it down.”
“How soon will your search party be in the area?”
“Soon.” Sloan had been asked to search an area that was hundreds of miles from where he knew the Straton actually was. By the time his aircraft worked their search pattern, the Straton would have flown hundreds of miles farther. “Very soon,” he lied. He looked at Hennings. “You can’t avoid any of the responsibility if I order this aircraft shot down. Silence is acquiescence. You’re no better than I am. But if you want to remain silent and let me do the dirty work . . .”
Suddenly, Hennings understood Sloan’s insistence on getting his approval for an act that he had the power to accomplish by himself. Sloan was looking for a personal victory over Hennings, and all that Hennings represented. All the old notions of honor, virtue, and integrity. Somehow it would make Sloan feel better to rub Hennings’s face in the muck.
Sloan said, “You had no qualms about serving a commander in chief who was a draft dodger, a notorious liar, and who had nothing but contempt for the military. Or, if you had any such qualms, you sure kept them to yourself, Admiral. We all did. Don’t talk to me about doing the right thing, about standing up for principle. None of us resigned over Vietnam, and none of us spoke out against the draft dodger in the White House. We’re all whores and we’re all compromised. The only thing I believe in is the career of James Sloan.”
Hennings made no reply, no protest.
Neither man spoke for a lon
g time.
Hennings looked around the room known as E-334.
Sterile, gray metal, covered with mazes of electrical conduit, the smell of electronics hanging in the air-conditioned atmosphere. The world was full of Room E-334s now, on the sea, in the air, underground. Small tight compartments with no human touch. The destiny and the fate of mankind would someday be decided from a room like this one. Hennings was glad he would not be around to see it. He looked at Sloan. This man was the future. He knows how to live in this world. “Yes. Of course. Order Matos to shoot the Straton down.”
Sloan hesitated for a second, then sat down quickly at the radio console.
“Make sure he understands what he is to do and why he is to do it, Commander.”
Sloan glanced back at Hennings. “Yes. All right. I know what to do. We had him at this point once before.” But he knew Matos could go either way. “Navy three-four-seven, this is Homeplate. Do you read?” Sloan looked again at Hennings. “You wanted me to be honest with him, and I will.”
The radio crackled, and Matos’s voice, strained and perhaps even frightened, came through the scrambler and filled the room. “Roger, Homeplate. Go ahead.”
Sloan heard the edginess in the young man’s voice. That was a good beginning. “Peter, this is Commander Sloan. I asked you a question before, and now I want the answer. Why have you been ordered to keep out of sight of the cockpit?”
There was a long silence in the room, then the radio came alive with Matos’s voice. “I was to keep out of sight of the cockpit because there might be a pilot in there. If he was able to get his radios working, and if he saw me, he might understand what happened to his aircraft and radio the message. Or he might tell someone when he landed.”
“Yes. And we have new information from ATC. They think it was a bomb onboard. Go on. What else, Peter?”
“The accident was our . . . my fault. I have a chance to cover it up by shooting the Straton down.”
“For the good of the Navy, for the good of national security, for our own good.”
“Yes.”
“The test we were conducting is in violation of an international treaty. It is illegal. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“The people onboard are dead or brain damaged. They are heading toward California—like a cruise missile, with enough destructive force to level a small town or wipe out twenty city blocks.”
“I understand.”
“Every boat and aircraft in the area is heading your way now, including a flight from this carrier. If anyone sees you, we are all finished. Within the next ten minutes, you are to fire the Phoenix missile into the Straton, just as you were going to do before.”
“Roger.” There was a pause. “My fuel is low.”
“All the more reason to get it done quickly. When you complete your mission, keep heading for the coast and I will have a refuel mission meet you. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
Sloan decided it was time to pull out all the stops. He said to Matos, “I have here with me Rear Admiral Randolf Hennings, who concurs with my decision. He will personally debrief you when you land. Understand?”
“Yes.”
Sloan glanced at Hennings, whose face had gone white. Sloan said to Matos, “Enough talk, Peter. Fire your missile into the cockpit of the Straton. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Get into position, steady aim, and fire. No miss. Ten minutes, max. Call me when you’ve accomplished the mission.”
“Roger.”
“Roger. Out.” Sloan set his countdown clock for ten minutes, then swiveled his chair and faced Hennings. The Admiral looked pale and was leaning against the bulkhead. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. I think so.”
Sloan nodded. “I hope you don’t think this is any easier for me than for you.”
Hennings wiped the clammy sweat from his neck. “I suspect it is.”
Sloan stared at him. The old man looked as if he might be having a heart attack.
Hennings stood up straight. “I think I’ll go on deck and get some air.”
Sloan didn’t want Hennings out of his sight. There was an aura in this room, a spell that could be broken by sunlight and other voices, other faces. “I’d like you to stay around. For ten minutes at least.”
Hennings nodded. “Yes. Of course. I’ll see it through.” He pushed aside the blackout curtain, opened the porthole, and took a deep breath. Then, for the first time in more than forty years, he became sick at sea.
Sloan watched the man out of the corner of his eye. Hennings was a very weak link in a three-link chain. Matos was stronger, but he might break too. Now that the problem of the Straton was as good as out of the way, Sloan thought more about Matos and Hennings. He had pretty much decided how to deal with Lieutenant Peter Matos.
Sloan walked over to the end of the console where a half-dozen interphones, color coded to indicate their function, sat in a row. He picked up the green one and, before anyone answered, reached down and switched it off. “Operations? This is Commander Sloan. We have a problem. Navy three-four-seven, F-18, Matos, is in a critical fuel situation. I want a tanker from the closest coastal base to rendezvous with him.” Sloan gave Matos’s present coordinates into the dead phone. “Thank you.” He hung up and picked up the blue phone and switched it off. “Rowles? Sloan. Alert the Straton search party that they may have to split the mission and look for three-four-seven. Yes. He had a fuel emergency, but I have a tanker on the way and it should reach him in plenty of time. Just keeping you alerted. Right.” He hung up and slid a clipboard over the onoff switches, then turned toward the Admiral.
Randolf Hennings was a more difficult problem. As long as Hennings lived and breathed and spoke, with all his pent-up guilt and remorse, James Sloan would never have another good night’s sleep, never know when a summons to the captain’s office would be arrest. James Sloan couldn’t allow that. Not at all.
The view from the captain’s flight chair of the Straton 797 was spectacular. Berry sat, mesmerized by the churning mass of black boiling clouds in the distance. He had seen them first as a vague haziness on the far horizon, shafts of sunlight streaking from them into the ocean at a sharp angle. The closer he got, the more awesome they looked—and the more he knew he was in trouble.
He leaned forward and scanned the horizon. The line of storms stretched as far as he could see in either direction, like a great solid wall between heaven and earth. They’d dropped down into the sea like a curtain, hiding the horizon line, and towered up above them so high that he knew he could not climb above them.
Sharon touched his arm and spoke softly, worry in her voice. “I haven’t seen them this bad in a long time.”
Berry had never seen them quite this bad, ever. The only thing they had going for them had been the weather and the daylight, and he had begun to take that for granted, not believing that anything else could go wrong for Flight 52. “You’ve been through these before?”
“A few times. You?”
“No. Not on a commercial flight.”
“In your Skymaster?”
“No.” In his Skymaster he would simply have turned and found an airport. Out here there was no airport to turn to.
Crandall looked down at the weather radar screen on the center instrument panel. “Do you see a break in the clouds?”
Berry stared at the screen. A thin green trace line swept across the radarscope every six seconds, leaving patterns of colored patches in its wake. “I don’t really know how to work it or how to read it.” He glanced at the line of thunderstorms, then back at the radarscope. What he saw on the scope was supposed to represent what he saw from his windshield, but he could see no correlation. “I’ve read articles on weather radar, but I’ve never worked it.”
Crandall heard a noise behind her and looked back. Linda was curled up near the cockpit’s rear bulkhead, asleep. Crandall looked up at the door. An entire arm, right up to the shoulder, ha
d slid through the opening and the hand was feeling around the inside of the door. The hand found the nylon hose and pulled at it, loosening the tension on the door and allowing his shoulder to slide through. She saw the blue shoulder boards of First Officer Daniel McVary, then saw his face peeking in at the opening. “John. . . .”
Berry looked back. “For God’s sake.” He hesitated, then stood. He walked to the door and examined the knot around the latch. He took the disembodied arm and tried to force it out, but the hand grabbed his shirt. Berry stepped back. There was something grotesque about this arm reaching out to him. He was reminded of the stories told around a campfire at night. But this was real. He reached into his pocket and found the gold lighter that he carried. He lit it, hesitated, then reluctantly touched the flame to McVary’s hand. There was a long scream and the arm disappeared from the cockpit. Berry looked up at Sharon and met her eyes, but there was no censure in them, only understanding.
Berry knelt down beside Linda, who had awakened.
“Go back to sleep.”
She closed her eyes. “I’m very thirsty.”
Berry patted her cheek. “Soon. Don’t think about it.” He stood and walked back to his chair.
Sharon fixed her eyes on the radar set. “Are these all the radar controls?”
Berry looked at her. There had developed a tacit understanding among the three of them that they were not to talk about the others. Berry looked down at the console. “Yes. Antenna tilt. Gain. Brilliance. Mode selector. . . . Here’s one called erase rate. I’ve never even heard of that.”
Crandall looked up again at the black wall outside the windshield. It was closer now, and she could see its inner violence, the black-gray smoke churning. “Can we go around it without the radar?”
Berry shook his head. “These lines sometimes stretch for hundreds of miles. I don’t think we have the fuel to try an end run.”
“Hawaii?” She didn’t want to throw that up to him, but it seemed too important to be left unsaid.