Mayday

  “Report.”

  “Down to twelve hundred feet. Turbulence heavy. Clouds less dense here. I can see the ocean now. No chance of a successful ditching in this kind of heavy sea.” The F-18 broke out into the sunshine at 19,000 feet. Matos continued to climb at full throttle, as if the altitude would get him far away from the whole situation. Below him nothing was visible except solid, heavy rain clouds.

  “Too heavy a sea for survivors?”

  “Roger.” Matos glanced down but could see only the thunderstorms he had just risen out of. He turned to the blue sky ahead. When the F-18 continued climbing, he thought about James Sloan. Matos had heard a tone of triumph in Sloan’s voice. Not for the first time, he wondered if the Commander was sane. It occurred to him that even the first navigation error that had started this nightmare might not have been his own fault. He thanked God that he had not fired his second missile into the Straton. At the worst, he was guilty of criminal negligence. He could live with that. But he was not guilty of murder.

  “I say again—too heavy for survivors?”

  “That’s correct, Homeplate. The seas are too heavy for survivors,” Matos transmitted, reinforcing his lie. But he, too, was relieved. So relieved that tears came to his eyes and he took a deep breath to control his voice. “The Straton is nosing down,” he added as he kept his eyes fixed to the distant horizon.

  “Roger.”

  Matos leveled the fighter at 36,000 feet. The storms were far astern and below him, and the warm afternoon sun bathed his face. He looked down at the weather below him. Rising from the top of the large mass were the distinctive anvil-shaped clouds that made the cloud layer easily recognizable as thunderstorms. It was, thought Matos, almost as though God made them that way, in the beginning, so that one day man would recognize that he was approaching the forge and the blast furnace of the heavens.

  “We’re down to four hundred feet,” Matos lied. The thought that he should go to Captain Diehl crossed his mind. He had to confess, not so much for his own soul but more importantly so that Commander Sloan would be put away where he could do no more harm. “We are down to two hundred feet. The rain is lighter. Visibility improved. The seas are very high. The Straton is nearly in. Nearly in. Stand by.” Matos closed his eyes tightly. It was madness. He tried to forget that his playacting was a duplication of what was happening to that airliner. He could see it in his mind’s eye very clearly now, hitting the towering water—

  “Matos! Matos! Is it in? Is it in?”

  Matos took a deep breath. “Yes.” He put a heavy tone in his voice and noticed that it was not all an act. “Yes. It’s in. Much of it . . . broke apart in the ditching

  . . . The seas are too rough . . . Most of it has already sunk . . . Only the tail . . . part of one wing remains above the surface. No possible survivors.”

  “Roger. Circle for a while to be sure.”

  “Roger.”

  “What is your fuel status?”

  Sloan’s question jolted him. He had forgotten to monitor his fuel status for more than an hour. He’d heard stories of pilots in combat doing that under stress. He didn’t have to look at his gauges to reply, “Critical.” He glanced at the gauges. His climb to 35,000 feet had been a foolish indulgence. “I’m down to forty-five minutes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Maybe less. Where is that tanker?”

  “Close. Heading westbound from Whidbey Island. Their last position was four hundred miles from your current position. He’ll be closer now. Are you looking for survivors?”

  “Yes. But my fuel is critical. No survivors.”

  “Roger. Okay, okay, begin your climb and steer a heading of zero-seven-five to expedite the intercept.”

  “Roger.” Without hesitation, Matos turned his F-18 to the easterly heading. He was now pointed into the worst part of the thunderstorms, the part that towered high above his present altitude. “Homeplate, there’s a lot of severe weather out here. The new heading is taking me further into it.” As much as he wanted to find the tanker, he wanted nothing to do with that line of storms.

  “Navy three-four-seven, this is Rear Admiral Hennings. Commander Sloan is on the phone with the tanker. These are your instructions—the tanker is cruising at thirty-one thousand feet, so you might as well get to that altitude to meet it. The weather should be better at that altitude than down lower.”

  “Yes, sir.” Although Sloan had mentioned the Admiral earlier, Matos had no idea who Admiral Hennings was. But the voice was reassuring. Any vague misgiving that Matos had concerning Commander Sloan’s intentions was put to rest. He pictured the electronics room crowded with officers and men, all trying to get him home. He looked out of his windshield. He was already above most of the weather at 35,000 feet. Now he had to descend slightly to meet the tanker. “The climb has taken—is taking—a great deal of fuel. I’m really low, sir.”

  The Admiral’s voice came back, gentle, fatherly.

  “Take it easy, Peter. The tanker is cruising at five hundred knots. He’ll be on station within twenty-five minutes. A few minutes for the fuel hook–up and you’ll be heading back. Here’s Commander Sloan.”

  Sloan’s voice filled Matos’s earphones. “It’s important to stay calm, Peter. Practice fuel-conservation techniques. Keep us filled in.”

  Matos pictured himself flaming out just before he reached the tanker. He was glad that Sloan was so calm. It wasn’t Sloan’s ass. “Roger. Can you arrange air-sea rescue just in case?”

  “Roger that,” said Sloan. “Way ahead of you. Some of the air-and-sea rescue for the Straton is closing in on your area, including F-18s from the Nimitz. Plenty of help out there, but don’t think about that now. Hightail it to thirty-one thousand and call me when you’re leveled out.”

  “Roger. What’s the frequency of the rendezvous?”

  There was a long silence in his earphones. Matos was about to call again when Sloan’s voice came on. “I’m speaking to the tanker on a frequency that is not available on your set. I just requested that they put one of their radios on your channel. They have a voice scrambler set to yours, so leave yours on. Give them a call now. Their call sign is Cherokee 22.”

  “Roger. Break. Cherokee 22, this is Navy three-four-seven. How do you read me? Over.”

  Matos waited in the silent cockpit, then transmitted again. “Cherokee 22, Cherokee 22, Navy three-four-seven, how do you read?” He waited, but there was no answer. “Homeplate, Cherokee 22 does not respond.”

  “I can’t read them on your channel either. Stand by.” After a few seconds, Sloan’s voice came back. “They are having radio problems on most of their command channels. But I hear them fine on their administrative channel, which is patched into my interphone. We can work around their problem. I’ll relay messages between you. But they’re homing in on your channel with a radio navigation homing device and, of course, they’ll have you solidly on radar soon. In the meantime, you have to leave your radio set to this channel. Their homing equipment and radar will lead them in.”

  “Roger.”

  “And leave your voice scrambler on, too. Try to call them every five minutes. They’ll be on voice scramble. If they hear you, they will tell me. Then you can go back to regular communications directly with them.”

  “Roger.” Matos slid his transmitter override button to the continuous position. As long as he was transmitting a signal he knew he could not receive any messages, and hearing any voice, even Sloan’s, would have been reassuring. But the first priority was the tanker.

  Matos turned on his radar. He watched the tube as it glowed luminescent green. He adjusted the knobs and looked for the tanker, which should have been on the outer edge of his range by now. Not only did he not see the tanker within the 500-mile limit of his scope, but he saw no other aircraft either. He spoke into his open radio. “Homeplate. Where the hell are all the aircraft that are supposed to be out here? I don’t see the tanker on a bearing of zero-seven-five, and I don’t see anyone else.
” He released his transmit override and waited for the reply.

  Sloan’s voice came back quickly. “Matos, the tanker sees you. The rescue aircraft in your area see you. Your radar has been the problem from the beginning when . . . I can’t say anything of a confidential nature any longer. Other aircraft are on this frequency now, and we have to maintain the security of this test. Be careful of what you say from now on. Resume your continuous radio signal and keep working your radar. You’ll rendezvous with the tanker shortly.”

  “Roger. I have to release the missile to cut down on weight and drag.”

  “Negative. That’s no longer possible Too much airto-sea traffic in your area now. We don’t want another . . . Do you understand?”

  “Roger.” Matos thought that the possibility of hitting an aircraft or ship was very remote—absurdly remote—but without functioning radar he could not be sure, and with the way his luck was running he’d probably hit the tanker. But the damned missile was adding to his fuel problems. “Roger, I’ll hold the missile.” Matos locked his radio on and sat back. There were too many glitches today, too many goblins in the electronics. This was all possible, but not probable. Yet it had happened. This was the stuff that accidents were made of. Fifty percent human error, fifty percent equipment failure. How would they classify this monumental screwup? A little of both, and a lot of bad luck.

  Matos worked his radar for a few minutes, but the results were negative. He alternated his attention between scanning the tops of the churning black clouds for aircraft and glancing down at his sinking fuel gauges. It was ironic, he thought, that he should wind up with the same problem that finally killed the Straton. Running out of gas. That was pure stupidity. He never should have let it go that far.

  Thirty-one thousand feet. Peter Matos had used every trick he knew to keep the fuel flow as low as possible. Someday he’d learn to think about fuel first and everything else afterward. He remembered his flight instructor at Pensacola: Gentlemen, even the best fighter–bomber in the world can only go in one direction when the fuel runs out.

  But even if the worst happened, he would be picked up at sea. He tried to settle down into a calm state of mind and anticipate the coming problem instead of reacting to them as they came.

  He thought of Sloan briefly. There was no percentage in going to Captain Diehl and confessing. Sloan might be difficult to deal with, but he was all Navy. He anticipated problems and put the wheels in motion to take care of them before they became insoluble. He was cunning and even somewhat dishonest in his methods, but whatever he did, he did for his country, for the Phoenix program, for national security. And in the final analysis, no matter what else he did, James Sloan took care of his men.

  John Berry sat motionless in the captain’s chair. An instant before the failure of the Straton’s four jet engines registered on the instrument gauges, it registered on John Berry’s senses, and he knew exactly what was happening to them. He felt the aircraft yaw slightly to the left, then felt the deceleration forces against his body.

  Sharon Crandall shouted, “John! What’s happening? What’s happening?” The panel in front of her was a sudden mass of blinking lights and bouncing needles. The engine gauges in the center of the panel unwound rapidly.

  A loud warning horn blared from somewhere in the panel and the cockpit was filled with its ominous, deep-pitched sound.

  Linda Farley opened her mouth, and her long, piercing scream drowned out the sound of the horn.

  In the lounge, the passengers began losing their precarious balance and fell to the floor or crashed against the bulkhead of the cockpit. Deep bellowing cries, punctuated by shrill screeching, penetrated the cabin.

  Berry’s ears were filled with noise, and his eyes blurred from the blinking colored lights in front of him. For a few seconds, he was stunned. His stomach churned from the sinking sensation of the sudden descent. He felt his heart speed up and his mouth went dry. It was only the full realization of what they had done to him, and the anger it produced, that brought him back to his senses. He slammed his fist on the glare shield in front of him. “Bastards! Goddamned sons-of-bitches!”

  His eyes ran wildly over the center instrument panel. Nearly every needle and light on the electronic display was active, but the messages they sent him were too complex to comprehend. He could see that the aircraft had lost all engine power. “Flame out in all four” was the expression, he remembered. He was also able to see that their electrical energy was falling off as each of the engine’s generators dropped out of the circuit. Berry took a few long, deep breaths and steadied his hands. He reached up and pushed the fuel valve emergency power switch back to its previous position, then reset the four fuel valves.

  Crandall turned in her seat and shouted above the noise of the screaming girl and the blaring horn. “John! We’re going down! Put the switches back! Put them back! Please hurry!”

  Berry looked up and yelled. “They’re back. Calm down. Just sit there. Linda! Be quiet.” Berry looked down at the panel and waited for some sign from it, or for some physical sensation that would indicate that the engines were producing power again. But nothing happened. Whatever he had done by moving the switches could not be undone by putting them back.

  Crandall’s voice was choked with sobs. “John . . . John . . . do something. . . . We’re going to crash. . . .”

  Berry was alternating between periods of trying to disassociate himself from his impending death and trying to find a way to avoid it. He made an effort to sort out the messages that the lights and instruments were telling him, but couldn’t keep his thoughts straight. Valve power. Fuel. Generator. He knew what was wrong, but he had no idea of what to do about it. It was only the image of a man in San Francisco typing out his death warrant that kept him from giving up.

  Most of the cockpit lights had gone out when the generators shut down, but a few remained on, dimly powered by the aircraft’s batteries. Suddenly, the cockpit became darker and Berry heard a new noise that completely obliterated all the others. He turned and looked at the windshield. The Straton had entered the edge of the first thunderstorm, and the roar of rain and hail hammered against the windows and the roofline. The hail was so violent he thought the windshield might shatter. “Hold on! Hold on!” he shouted, but he knew no one could hear him.

  The Straton began to bounce wildly, then slid dangerously to the right. The nose of the aircraft pitched up and down at the same time that its wings rolled on its axis and its tail yawed left and right.

  Berry thought the aircraft might break apart if the violent, unstable flight condition kept up much longer. He saw Sharon Crandall hunched forward in her chair, holding on to the armrests. Linda Farley couldn’t get a grip on her chair and was lifted up and dropped, held down only by her lap belt. The autopilot made the corrections in the flight and the Straton began to steady out, except for the bouncing caused by the air turbulence as it continued its powerless descent.

  Berry tried to catch his breath and steady his shaking body. He turned back to the panel and scanned the small display of emergency instruments, which were all that remained after the generators failed. He was searching for anything that might spark his memory and set in motion a sequence of thoughts that would tell him what he must do. Circuit breakers . Berry thought that maybe the panel of circuit breakers on the right would be a clue—maybe one of the breakers was out. He flipped off his seat belt, stood up, and moved aft. He knew he had not much more time before the Straton hit the ocean.

  Cutting through the sounds of the weather, the blare of the warning horn and the screaming from the lounge, he heard a voice shouting a single word over and over. He looked over at Sharon, who was turned in her seat, gesturing wildly at him. Her mouth kept forming a single word. Autopilot.

  Berry looked back at the center instrument panel between the two seats. The amber disengage light now glowed brightly in the darkened cockpit. “Oh, God.” With the generators dropped off the circuits, he knew the autopilot was not get
ting the proper power to stay engaged. The last chance that they had for staying in control until the ditching was now gone. He shouted to Crandall, “Hold the wheel! Hold the wheel!”

  The Straton’s forward momentum had kept the downward glide steady for a few seconds, but the winds began to break up the controlled descent. The Straton pitched nose upward, and the first step Berry took to get himself back into the captain’s chair sent him careening in the opposite direction, backward, into the cockpit door. The door gave slightly under his weight. The aircraft rolled to the right, and he collided with the circuit breaker panel. He lunged at the back of Crandall’s chair, but the aircraft rolled left and he headed straight for Linda Farley. He tried to avoid her, but his foot caught the tautly stretched nylons and he tumbled over and fell onto her, then rolled off and came to rest against the left wall.

  Sharon Crandall watched for a second, then turned and faced the flight controls. The copilot’s control wheel moved by itself, as if it were still safely under the command of the autopilot. But the blinking amber light told her it was not. She reached out and took hold of the wheel.

  Berry managed to stand and grabbed the back of the captain’s chair. The aircraft remained in a sharp nose-up attitude and he hung on, trying to climb into the chair. He knew that the aircraft’s normal stability would keep it upright for a few seconds longer, but unless he could get to the wheel, the Straton could point itself straight up or straight down, go into a spin, or roll, wing over wing, into the sea. “Hold the wheel, Sharon! Hold the wheel!”

  Crandall was trying to hold on to it, but it had begun to vibrate with such force that it broke her grip each time she grabbed it.

  Berry climbed head first over the back of the pilot’s chair. The first violent updraft smacked into the Straton like a giant fist aimed at the solar plexus. The huge aircraft lifted like a toy, then dropped sickeningly, straight down. Berry saw himself rise off the chair, almost hit the ceiling, then fall abruptly to the floor between the captain’s chair and the observer’s chair. He lay there, dazed and disoriented, not able to tell up from down, or to determine what he had to do to stand upright. He saw Linda Farley’s face above him, and heard her screaming his name.