Mayday

  “It’s the control tower,” said Fitzgerald. “The radar room.”

  The production assistant barked an order and the camera turned toward Fitzgerald. Technicians ran across the room with hand microphones and the electrical crew swung several of the white lights around. The shadow of Kevin Fitzgerald holding the telephone in his outstretched hand rose up on the stark wall behind him. “The control tower says,” shouted Fitzgerald over the rising noise, “that they have a large unidentified aircraft on their radarscope. The aircraft is headed directly toward San Francisco Airport. It is now sixty-two miles west of here, flying at a low altitude, and at an airspeed of three hundred and forty knots. They believe the aircraft may be . . .” He glanced up at Johnson, then finished the sentence with the words that were already on everyone’s lips: “. . . the Straton.”

  The room exploded with sound. Some reporters rushed up to Fitzgerald, and others grabbed the phones on the long conference table. The Straton executives had already positioned themselves at the door in the rear of the room. They disappeared into the corridor and headed for a small VIP conference room across the hall.

  Wayne Metz pushed through the crowd and grabbed Johnson by the shoulder. “How? How can this be possible? Johnson?”

  Edward Johnson looked at Metz as if he hadn’t understood the question.

  “Johnson, damn it! Can it be true?”

  Johnson was in a daze. A few reporters, unable to get to Fitzgerald, crowded around Johnson. Questions bombarded him from all sides. He pushed through the reporters and broke out into the corridor, half walking, half running toward the staircase.

  Wayne Metz came up behind him, breathless. “Johnson! Is it true? Is it true?”

  Johnson turned and spoke distractedly as he bounded down the stairs. “How the hell do I know?”

  Metz followed. “Where are you going?”

  “To the damn ramp, Metz. At the speed that aircraft is traveling, it’ll be here in less than ten minutes.”

  Metz followed him to the lower level, down a long corridor that led to a satellite terminal, then to a door that led to the aircraft parking ramp. Johnson put his identification card into an electronic scanner, and the door opened. The two of them walked outside, onto the airport ramp. “Can it be the Straton? Tell me. Please.”

  Edward Johnson ignored Wayne Metz and looked up into the setting sun, shielding his eyes with his hands as he moved. He tried to think clearly, but his mind was unable to absorb all the ramifications of what had happened. Stunned with a terror he had never before known, he ran across the parking ramp. He felt that the Straton was sweeping down on him as he ran, like a winged nightmare from hell, a dead thing that came back from a watery grave. He thought he saw a small dot coming out of the sun, but realized it was too soon yet to see it. Please God. Not the goddamn Straton.

  18

  Sharon Crandall looked at the distance-to-go meter. “Twenty-three miles.”

  Berry held the wheel tightly in his hands. He stared at the fuel gauges. They were within a needle’s width of empty; two low-fuel warning lights glowed a brilliant red, probably for the first time since the aircraft was built.

  “John, do we have enough fuel to reach the airport?”

  The time for thin assurances was ended. They could flame out before he drew his next breath. “I can’t tell. Fuel gauges aren’t accurate when they’re that low.” He saw the electronic needle nudge against the empty mark. Technically, they were already out, but feasibly the engines could run for as long as ten more minutes. There was no way to tell until that first sickening sensation of power loss, which he remembered from when he had put faith in the data-link instructions and almost landed in the sea. He felt the muscles in his stomach and buttocks tightening.

  “Twenty-two miles. Still on course.” She paused. “We’re going to make it, you know.”

  Berry glanced at her and smiled. “What time is it? Exactly.”

  “Six-twenty-one.”

  Berry looked down at the unbroken top of the low white fog that stretched out in all directions. Some of the vapor rose up and obscured his windshield. “Damn it, if we’re twenty-two miles from the airport, we can’t be more than ten miles from the Golden Gate Bridge. We would be able to see the bridge or the city by now if it weren’t for this fog.”

  “We’ll see it soon.”

  “We’re going to have to see something soon. We’re less than five minutes’ flight time to the airport—and we’ll be coming up to congested airspace. Linda, keep watching for other airplanes.”

  “Okay.”

  He turned to Sharon. “I hope to God they’ve spotted us on radar and kept everyone away from us.”

  “I’m sure they have.” A calm had come over her, brought on in part by the presence of the fluffy white blanket of vapor beneath them, in part by fatigue, and the feeling that it would be all over, one way or the other, in less than five minutes.

  Linda Farley called out. “Look! What’s that?”

  Berry and Crandall turned back to her, then followed her outstretched arm.

  Berry peered hard out of the Straton’s left-side window. Off the wingtip, he saw a ghostly gray mass rising through the layer of fog. A mountain. Its peak was at least 1,500 feet higher than the Straton. “I see it. Sharon, look.”

  “Yes, I see it.”

  “Do you recognize it?”

  “I don’t know. Wait . . . I can’t tell.” She leaned closer toward Berry. “Yes, It’s Mount Tamalpais. In Marin County.”

  “Okay. Give me the charts.” He looked at the navigation chart and studied it. “That’s north of the Golden Gate Bridge?”

  “Yes. The bridge should be ahead. A little to the left.”

  “Okay.” He looked over his shoulder and forced a smile. “Linda, you win the champagne . . . the prize. We’ll get you something nice when we land.”

  She nodded.

  He turned to the front and began a shallow turn to the left. “I’m going to try to steer directly over the bridge. We have to stay over the bay.” He knew he was too low to try to cut across either San Francisco or mountainous Marin County. At 900 feet he was below the summit of at least three of San Francisco’s famous peaks, and below the tops of a few of its newer skyscrapers. The Golden Gate Inlet to the bay was just that—a gate into the harbor, the same for an aircraft at 900 feet as for a sailing ship. “Sharon, Linda, look for the bridge—we may be able to see its towers.”

  “I’m looking,” said Crandall.

  Berry continued the left turn toward a course of due east, trying to find the inlet to the bay, trying to feel his way across the top of the fog. It occurred to him that one of the arguments that must have been used against bringing the Straton home was that he would be endangering the city, but Berry had no intention of endangering anyone on the ground. He’d keep the flight over the water no matter what the cost to him or the others. “Sharon, if we don’t see the inlet very soon, I’m going to put it down in the ocean. We can’t risk hitting a hill or a building.”

  “Can’t you climb higher?”

  “That takes too much fuel and too many miles. We don’t have either.” He looked down at the fog. He could see a few breaks in it now, and caught a glimpse of the water. He could see that the fog went all the way to the water’s surface. A blind landing in the sea would mean almost certain disaster. He consoled himself with the knowledge that this close to the coast, they might recover the bodies. He thought he felt a sinking sensation in the seat of his pants, as if the airliner were suddenly decelerating. “Did you feel that?”

  “What?”

  He sat motionless for several seconds. “Nothing.” Damn it. There it is again. Was he imagining it? From this altitude, his glide time after a flame out would be less than thirty seconds, and there would be no restarting of the engines this time. And a thirty-second powerless glide on this heading might put him into the bridge, or into the city, but not into the bay beyond the city. “I’m going to put it in the water. We can’t
keep heading this way.”

  “Wait, John. Please. Just a bit longer.”

  “Damn it, Sharon. I might be heading into a mountain or into a building. We have no right to fly over the city. I’ll put it in the ocean while I know we’re still over it. They’ve seen us on radar. They know where we are.”

  She looked at him and said very definitely, “No. Keep going. I know the inlet is straight ahead.”

  He looked at her. There was something in her voice and her manner that made him think she had some information from a source not displayed on the instrument panel. “Sharon . . .” He saw a picture of the Straton plunging down through the fog, the fog parting, the city of San Francisco rising up through his windshield, and the nose of the huge airliner pointed into the streets below. He shook his head quickly to clear the image from his mind. He said softly, ”I’ve got to put it down right now.“

  “No.” She turned away from him and stared out the windshield as though the argument was over.

  He realized that he’d known her for less than seven hours, yet he felt he knew her as well, certainly, as he knew Jennifer. Sharon Crandall had given him her complete and unquestioned trust, but now she was withdrawing it in favor of her own instincts, and he saw that she meant it. It was his turn to show the same perfect trust, though as a technical person he mistrusted instincts and always went with the odds and the gauges. “Okay. A little longer,” he said.

  The Straton flew on. Hovered above the blinding fog, a sense of unreality filled the cockpit. For Berry, Flight 52 had ceased to be a real flight long ago, and the fog only added the final dimension to that feeling.

  Sharon Crandall stared placidly out at the rolling fog, an odd smile on her face. She raised her arm and pointed out the front windshield.

  Berry looked out to where she was pointing. A glint of red caught his eye, and he sat forward. It disappeared, then reappeared again. Directly in front of the Straton, about seven miles in the distance, the twin towers of the Golden Gate Bridge rose majestically through the solid blanket of white.

  Sharon Crandall’s eyes nearly filled with tears. “Oh, God, yes! Yes!”

  Berry felt a constriction in his throat as he stared out at the faraway reddish towers.

  As she always did when she made the announcements from a returning overseas flight, she said, “Welcome home.”

  Berry nodded. “Yes, welcome home.” He watched the bridge towers grow quickly in his windshield as the Straton approached at six miles a minute.

  “Look,” said Crandall. “Look beyond the bridge.” Berry looked out toward the bay. As if the Golden Gate were a wall, the bank of fog ended abruptly at the bridge. The entire bay, as far as he could see to Berkeley and Oakland on the opposite shore, was clear.

  “I told you we could beat the fog, John.” Crandall laughed. “Look to the right.”

  Berry glanced out the right windshield. Indistinct angular forms rose out of the fog—the shape of a city. Golden sunlight glinted from the tops of the Bank of America Building and Transamerica Pyramid, like El Dorado, thought Berry, but this was no spectral city, and a sense of reality began to return to him. The buildings grew rapidly as the Straton hurled toward them at 340 knots. Berry steered the Straton to the left, away from the city, and lined its nose up between the bridge towers, like a helmsman navigating the approaches to the bay.

  The airliner passed through the inlet and sailed over the Golden Gate Bridge, the twin towers barely a hundred feet below the aircraft. Berry spotted Alcatraz Island coming up below him. He banked the Straton to the right and followed the curve of the bay, south toward the airport, which he knew was less than three minutes’flight time away. Even if they flamed out now, he thought, he’d be able to avoid the populated areas. “Okay,” he said matter-of-factly, “we’re approaching the airport. Sharon, get ready to begin the landing procedure we practiced.”

  “I’m ready.”

  Berry felt that there was, between them, that bond that instantly develops between pilot and copilot, helmsman and navigator, observer and gunner; the knowledge that two must work as a perfect team, become nearly one, if they are to beat the long odds against survival.

  The skies were clear, and out of the right-side window, the city of San Francisco lay among the hills of the peninsula. Flight 52 was a sudden intruder on the city’s hectic rush hour. Along Fisherman’s Wharf, cars stopped and pedestrians turned to gawk and point at the huge aircraft lumbering over the bay. On Nob Hill and Telegraph Hill, people watched the aircraft sail past at eye level. Vehicles pulled off the road, and children shouted. Many of the onlookers spotted the holes in the sides of the Straton, the jagged wound highlighted by the low angle of the sun. Even those who had not seen the damage could see that the low-flying Trans-United airliner was in trouble.

  Berry saw the silvery San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge lying straight ahead across the Straton’s flight path. He knew that this bridge was the last obstacle to a successful ditching in the bay. He held his breath until he was certain that the Straton’s glide path in a sudden flame out would carry it over the bridge.

  As he passed over the bridge, he allowed himself to look out at San Francisco International Airport. It sat on a small piece of lowland jutting into the bay, less than fifteen miles ahead. “There it is.” He knew he should be applying the flaps if he was going to try for the airport. But the flaps would cause extra drag and burn off too much fuel. He thought he wanted to get as close to the airport as possible before he made the decision on where to come down, or had it made for him by a flame out. He let the Straton streak along at 340 knots.

  Crandall looked at the rapidly approaching airport. Instinctively, she knew they were coming in too fast. “John, too fast. Too fast.”

  Berry tried to calm himself. There were so many things to do and so little flight time left in which to do them. Everything had to be a trade-off from here on; every maneuver would be a compromise between the right thing and the expedient thing, always trying to avoid the dead-wrong thing. “All right. All right. I’m going for distance. We can hit the brakes later.” He looked at his fuel gauge. The electronic needles were lying dead against the empty mark.

  Berry recalled his first solo landing in a Cessna 140, an older tail-wheeled aircraft he had some trouble checking out in. When the instructor finally got out, Berry kept finding excuses to continue with other kinds of practice rather than land, until his fuel was too low to put the landing off any longer. No excuses this time. Bring it right in. Sweat started to form on his brow and neck, and his hands were starting to become unsteady on the control wheel.

  Berry yanked back on the four throttles, putting the engines at idle power. He watched as the ship’s airspeed began to bleed off to a lower, more reasonable indication for landing. Intent on the cockpit instruments, Berry failed to see what was passing a few miles to his left. On the east side of the bay was the Naval Air Station at Alameda, and farther south was Oakland’s giant airport. Either one of those airports was a minute or two closer, but John Berry was focused, physically and mentally, on San Francisco International. That was where he had started, and that was where he intended to end. He hoped that the emergency equipment would be waiting there. “All right,” he said softly, “all right. No ditching. We’re going into San Francisco International.” Berry saw that the airspeed was now low enough. “Flaps down.”

  Sharon sat motionless for a second, mesmerized by the sight of the rapidly approaching airport jutting into the bay in front of her. In her mind she had already arrived home safely. The realization that they were still hundreds of feet off the ground and miles from the runway jarred her.

  “Flaps down! Flaps!”

  She reached out mechanically with her left hand, as she had done dozens of times in practice during the last three hours, and grabbed the flap handle.

  “Pull it to the first notch. Quickly.”

  She pulled the handle, and the flaps dropped.

  Berry felt the aircraft slow even more
and saw the speed bleed off on his airspeed indicator: 225 knots. Altitude 700 feet. To his right he saw Candlestick Park pass beneath his wingtip. “About five miles. We’re coming home. Coming home. Put out more flap. Go ahead. Now.”

  Crandall pulled back at the flap lever and moved it to the next setting.

  The Straton began to decelerate more quickly, and the nose jumped up. The aircraft began to pitch up toward the sky.

  “John!”

  Linda screamed.

  “Calm down! It’s all right. It’s all right. I’ve got it under control That was normal. Just relax. We’re doing okay. Okay. Coming home. A couple more minutes.” The giant airliner was more of a handful than Berry imagined. It was heavy, ponderous, a hell of a lot different from the Skymaster . . . yet the principles of flight were the same. It is the Skymaster, he said with conviction. Nothing is different.

  Suddenly, the wheel began to vibrate violently in his hands and the stall warning synthetic voice filled the cockpit. AIRSPEED . . . AIRSPEED. “Oh, Christ.” He had allowed the Straton to slow too much. The airframe began to shake badly. “Power, Sharon, power.” He held on to the wheel with both hands, knowing that if he let go with even one, the aircraft might get away from him.

  Crandall reached out and grabbed the four throttles. She pushed them a few inches forward. “Power.”

  “Not too much. Easy, easy. We don’t have much fuel.” Berry lowered the nose of the Straton to pick up airspeed. He prayed that he hadn’t asked for too much from the fuel-starved engines. The control wheel in his hands stopped vibrating and the flight smoothed out.

  But Berry could see that he had very little altitude left; he certainly couldn’t afford another approaching stall. Yet he had to ration every ounce of fuel, to balance engine power against altitude, altitude against speed, speed against lift and drag. The airport was coming up fast. He reached out and pulled the throttle back to a lower setting. “Okay, coming home, coming home, Sharon, full flaps.”

  Crandall pulled the flap lever to its last notch. “Full flaps.”