Mayday

  More and more people had given up on the masks, but many people still tried desperately to suck from them, silently cursing what they thought was a failure of the system to provide oxygen. But the oxygen was there. The molecules poured out of the masks and swirled around their faces like a cruel joke, then dissipated into the low-pressure atmosphere.

  In the freezing tourist cabin, where anyone who cared to look could see the holes, sunlight poured in through the south-facing port-side hold and starkly illuminated the rubble and carnage left in the wake of the missile.

  By this time, everyone who was capable of forming thought knew they were suffocating. Yet outside, through the holes, they could see the unlimited sky, a cloudless deep blue, bright with sunlight. It looked balmy, enchanting, but it was as lethal as the bottom of the sea.

  Captain Stuart was barely conscious. He moved his head to his right. McVary was still sitting upright, staring straight ahead. He turned his head and looked back at Stuart with an odd expression. Stuart turned his head away and looked over his shoulder. Fessler was still lying across his desk in a pool of blood. The bleeding seemed to have stopped.

  Stuart’s fingers were numb and his limbs were heavy. His brain seemed detached from his body and he felt as though he were free-floating.

  The cells in his brain were dying, but one shining thought, like a faraway landing beacon, was becoming increasingly clear in the darkening cockpit. Ever since he had begun to fly the Straton, the thought of high-altitude decompression had played on his mind and he had formulated a response to this possibility that was so ingrained that it had not yet died or become jumbled like everything else. He knew he must shut off the autopilot and push the aircraft into a sudden dive. It was all coming to him now. He had it. If they did not all die quickly and someone in the cockpit was still functioning when the aircraft descended into the breathable air, then that person might have enough intellect left to put the aircraft down somewhere. He looked at Mc-Vary again. Young. Good health. Sucking hard on his mask. Half his brain might survive. The idiot would save them from death and condemn them to that shadowy place, that place of perpetual eclipse, that state of being which is called half-life—speechless, blind, paralyzed, dim-witted. He thought of his wife and family. Oh, God. No.

  Stuart reached his hand out toward the autopilot release button on the control wheel. No good. McVary might turn it on again. He pushed his hand toward his console and found what he wanted—the autopilot master switch, which was not duplicated on the copilot’s side. He pushed his hand over the guarded cover of the switch and rolled it back. His fingers found the small toggle.

  He hesitated. The instinct for survival—any kind of survival—began overtaking his fading intellect. He had to act quickly. Quickly! Act what? He tried to remember what he was supposed to act on, then remembered for a flash of a second and tugged on the switch. It held fast. He recalled clearly that the solenoid was designed to require a good deal of force to shut down the auto . . . auto what? What?

  Captain Alan Stuart sat back in his seat and stared out the windshield. He frowned. He had a headache. Something was bothering him. Coffee. Brazil. He had to go to Brazil for coffee. He smiled. A small trickle of saliva ran down his chin.

  The automatic pilot continued to steer the Straton 797 through its programmed emergency descent. Its electronic memory bank and preset responses were in no way affected by the oxygen deprivation. Never once did it consider the effects of anoxia on its human charges. It was true that one young creator of this autopilot had suggested once that a sudden and complete decompression at altitudes of over 50,000 feet should induce a shutdown of the autopilot. But that young man no longer designed autopilots and his “self-destruct response,” as the Straton executives had labeled it, was not part of the autopilot’s repertoire. The autopilot could and would descend to 11,000 feet where the air was breathable and warmer, and would continue piloting the Straton on its flight path to Tokyo. It could do that and more. The thing it could not do was land the plane, not without additional inputs from the crew.

  John Berry felt the effects of the rarefied atmosphere. He had begun to hyperventilate. His head ached painfully and he was dizzy. He sat on the small commode until he felt a little better.

  He rose again and pulled at the door. It was still firmly stuck. He felt too weak to try it again. He glanced at his watch on the shelf. 11:04. Only two minutes had gone by since he had felt the bump. It seemed longer.

  Berry began pounding on the door. “Open up! Open the damn door! I’m stuck in here!” He put his ear to the door. Odd sounds were coming from the cabin. He pounded again, then sank back against the bulkhead. He wanted to try the door again, but decided to wait until he felt stronger.

  John Berry knew that if the aircraft made an emergency landing in the ocean, he would not be able to get to the life rafts. He would drown when the aircraft sank. He put his hands to his aching head, bent over, and vomited on the floor, disregarding the commode. He straightened up and inhaled deeply several times, but a light-headedness rolled over him like a giant wave. He wanted to wash his face and mouth, but remembered that the tap had run dry. Why?

  The lavatory seemed to get darker, and he felt weaker. He slipped to the floor. His transition to unconsciousness came slowly, and he allowed his body to untense. He felt a strange euphoria and decided that death would not be that bad. He had never thought it would be. He recalled his childhood, which did not surprise him, even thought of his children, which made him feel less guilty about the way he felt about them. He remembered Jennifer, the way she once was. He closed his eyes and lapsed into blackness.

  The vent in the lavatory continued to send a steady stream of pressurized and heated air into the enclosed space. The pressure leaked out around the edges of the door, but it leaked slowly, slowly enough to keep a pressure of over two pounds per square inch on the door, sealing it shut. The pressure loss was also slow enough so that the atmosphere in the lavatory never rose above 31,000 feet.

  John Berry lay crumpled on the floor, breathing irregularly. Five more minutes at the altitude of 31,000 feet would cause him permanent and irreversible brain damage. But the Straton’s autopilot was bringing the airliner down rapidly.

  In the tourist cabin, the first-class cabin, the first class lounge, and the cockpit, the passengers and crew of Trans-United’s Flight 52 had fallen, one by one, into a deep, merciful sleep; the level of oxygen being supplied to their brain cells had dropped too low for too long.

  At 11:08 A.M., six minutes after the Phoenix missile had passed through the Straton 797, the airliner reached 18,000 feet. The autopilot noted the altitude and began a gradual recovery from the emergency descent. The speed brakes were automatically retracted, followed by a slow and steady autothrottle power advance to the four engines.

  In the cockpit three figures sat slumped over, strapped to their seats. The two control wheels moved in unison, the four throttles advanced, the ailerons made slight and continuous adjustments. The aircraft was flying nicely. But this was no ghost ship, no Flying Dutchman; it was a modern aircraft whose autopilot had taken charge as it was told to do. Everything would be fine, at least for a while.

  As the autopilot’s electronic circuitry sensed the proximity of the desired altitude, it leveled out the giant airliner and established it at an altitude of 11,000 feet and a slow, fuel-saving speed of 340 knots. The air-pressurization system had automatically disengaged as the aircraft sank into the thicker atmosphere. The fresh sea breezes of clean Pacific air filled the cabin of Trans-United’s Flight 52.

  A few minutes after leveling off, the first passengers began to awaken from their unnatural sleep.

  3

  Lieutenant Peter Matos flew his F-18 fighter on a straight and level course. Reluctantly, he pushed his radio-transmit button. “Homeplate, this is Navy three-four-seven.” He continued to hold down on the transmit button so he could not receive a reply from the Nimitz until he was ready to deal with it. His mind whirled with
conflict. Something was still not quite right. Finally, he slid his finger off the button, which freed the channel so he could receive their reply.

  “Roger, Navy three-four-seven. We have also registered the intercept,” Petty Officer Kyle Loomis answered. Matos knew that the carrier had been equipped to monitor the missile, and that the men in electronics Room E-334 had watched the needle that registered the sudden end-of-transmission from the AIM-63X as it had impacted against the target, destroying its transmitter.

  “Navy three-four-seven, this is Homeplate.”

  The voice in Matos’s earphones was unmistakably that of Commander Sloan. Even though a special encoding voice scrambler was being used to prevent anyone else from monitoring their channel, the deep and measured qualities of Sloan’s voice came through. Matos discovered that he had suddenly braced himself, as if he had run across Sloan in one of the Nimitz ’s below-decks corridors.

  “We are receiving conflicting signals,” Sloan said.

  Matos sensed a growing anger at the edges of Sloan’s voice. He had never personally experienced a run-in with the Commander, but too many of the other pilots had. Sloan’s wrath was legendary. Don’t get jumpy, Matos said to himself. It’s just an electronic echo that makes him sound that way. Keep your mind on the job.

  “Our monitors agree with your report of missile impact. But we’re still monitoring the target drone,” Sloan continued. “Its condition reads as steady. That conflicts with the Phoenix’s readout. Do you have the engagement area in good radar resolution?”

  Matos slumped lower in the cockpit seat to the limits that his cinched-up harness would allow. His heart sank with the words, and he could taste the bile from the pit of his stomach. Christ Almighty, Mother of God. He moistened his lips and cleared his throat before pressing the transmit button. “Roger, Homeplate. This is three-four-seven. I’m beginning to get the impact zone in good resolution. Stand by.”

  James Sloan had no intention of being put off, even momentarily, by one of his subordinates. “Three-four-seven, execute a radar lock-on with the Phoenix,” he transmitted. “The test missile must have failed before it engaged the target. That would explain why we still read the target drone.”

  “Roger, Homeplate.” But Matos knew that the Phoenix had hit something. He had watched the radar tracks converge. He also knew that the Nimitz ’s shipboard radar could not see the impact area. The carrier was hundreds of miles astern of his F-18, which put it out of radar range of the test site. All that the carrier people would be able to tell from the equipment in the electronics room was that there was no longer any radio signal coming from the test missile, and that the target drone continued, inexplicably, to send a loud-and-clear transmission.

  Matos huddled over his radar screen. The target had maintained a steady course for a short while after the intercept. Matos turned on two cockpit switches, then made an adjustment to the radar. He could now plot both the target drone and the Phoenix’s altitude losses on his vertical display board. Beyond the target was the faint radar reflection that was the remains of the AIM-63X Phoenix missile. It was visible for half a minute, and Matos tracked it continuously as it fell into the sea. “Homeplate, this is three-four-seven. The test missile has dropped into the ocean. I am now tracking the target drone. I am locked to it in the vertical scan. It is descending. Altitude is approximately fifty-one thousand feet. Descent rate registers as twelve thousand feet per minute.”

  “Okay,” Sloan answered, “that’s good. Our readout still shows the target as level at sixty-two thousand. The target’s transmitting equipment must have been damaged by the impact. Maybe the Phoenix just grazed the drone.” With no warhead, Sloan knew that complete destruction would require a full-face hit. “Continue to track, and we’ll consider our shipboard monitors as dysfunctional.”

  “Roger.” But something else bothered Matos. The target was not falling very rapidly. His own jet could dive faster than the target was going down. For what should have been a smashed target drone tumbling through the sky, it was not performing as expected.

  Data is missing, he thought. The only reason it made no sense was that he was operating without all the information. Garbage in, garbage out, as they said in the computer classes at Pensacola. Don’t jump to wild conclusions. Leave the emotional responses to civilians. Military technicians waited for the data. Technology was really the science of hindsight. When they corrected and analyzed all the material, they would easily discover what had made this test seem so bizarre.

  Matos was no longer apprehensive. There was something about rote procedures that was calming and comforting. As long as he stuck to the technician’s routines, then he could push his fears away. The blips on his radar had again become no more than game pieces, and the entire maneuver had taken on the aura of electronic chess.

  The impact has distorted the drone’s shape, Matos thought. It’s been bent into some sort of low-drag lifting body. Flattened out into a metal parachute that has already reached its terminal velocity. Wilder things have happened. Matos felt that Commander Sloan’s idea that the test missile had only nicked the target drone was probably right. That would explain how and why the drone’s misleading signals were still being routinely sent to the Nimitz.

  “Vertical scan indicates twenty-five thousand,” Matos reported. Events had settled down, and things were beginning to make sense. “Seventeen thousand feet. The target is now tracking thirty-eight degrees to the right of its intercepted course. I am showing . . .”

  As Matos’s eyes traveled over the array of data readouts, he froze when he saw the new trend. It was too far from normal to pretend otherwise. “Homeplate . . . the target’s descent rate has decreased.” Matos’s voice was pitched higher. “Eight thousand a minute. Now it’s six thousand a minute. The altitude is fourteen thousand feet. The descent rate has dropped to three thousand a minute. The target is leveling out at eleven thousand feet!”

  After just a few minutes’ pause, Sloan’s voice filled the void. “Navy three-four-seven, I don’t know what the hell has happened out there, but you better find out. Fast.” There was no longer any mistake about the timbre of Sloan’s voice or its intent.

  “Roger, Homeplate. Proceeding toward the target. I’ll obtain a visual sighting.” Matos pushed the throttles forward. The F-18 accelerated rapidly, pushing him back against his seat. A flood of disjointed emotions swelled in him, but he held them at bay. He directed all his energies at the technical task of intercepting the moving radar target.

  “That’s a good question, Commander. What the hell has happened out there?” Randolf Hennings had begun to allow himself a small measure of an admiral’s anger. He had played silent errand boy far too long. Retired or not, Hennings’s natural propensity for leadership—in mothballs for the past several years, like his naval uniforms—had begun to emerge. Sloan was losing control of the situation.

  Hennings had not liked Commander James Sloan from their first handshake. There was something too shrewd and calculated about the man. He had shown no hint of good nature. It was as if the universe had been created solely for the benefit of Commander Sloan.

  Sloan had ignored the Admiral’s question. “We’ll take over,” he said to Petty Officer Loomis. He dismissed the technician, and Loomis left the room quickly and quietly. “Nothing wrong has happened, I’m sure,” Sloan finally answered, turning toward Hennings. “But even if something has . . . there’s no need to let it get beyond the two of us. I won’t call the electronics specialist back until we’ve resolved whatever the problem is.”

  “There are three of us,” Hennings said. “Don’t forget your pilot. He knows more than we do. He’s the one who’s out there. We don’t get a very clear picture . . .” He motioned toward the stack of electronics. “. . . from all of this.”

  “Matos is no problem,” Sloan answered. “I know how to pick men. I know how to assign jobs.”

  Randolf Hennings looked with marked disdain at the young commander. He doesn’t command
men. He uses them, Hennings thought. Men like him were no good for a crew, a ship, or a navy. “Don’t be surprised if your subordinates sometimes take a tack against the prevailing wind.”

  “Surprised? Hell, no. I’d be amazed.” But as soon as he said it, Sloan knew he had gone too far. He had let the remark out too quickly, on the heels of all the wrong turns that events had taken. The remark hung in the air between the two men, and Sloan regretted it. An unnecessary indulgence.

  Sloan tried to eradicate his error. He smiled at Hennings, then forced a small laugh. “You’re right, Admiral. They sometimes try to tack against the wind. We all do, on occasion.”

  Hennings nodded slightly but said nothing. He resented being linked to Sloan, no matter how minor the inference. If this were the old days back on the John Hood, he would have called this officer to his quarters and, in private, reamed him out. Remember the mission, Hennings thought, quoting to himself what a lifetime of experience had taught him.

  “We’re trying to do a job, not win points,” Hennings said. The retired Admiral had built his naval career on precisely that premise. Embarrassing your subordinates was, he felt, counterproductive. You would get a man’s best only when he cared enough to produce. Threats would get you no more.

  Sloan grunted an unintelligible reply, then turned his eyes toward the electronics console. He basically understood how to work the equipment, and he checked it over to refresh his memory. Sloan moved quickly and competently around the gangs of switches and dials, like a skilled surgeon performing a familiar operation.

  Hennings watched him for a few moments, then sighed. Perhaps he had been too critical. Perhaps he was getting too old. Times had changed. It was Sloan’s show. Undermining the Commander’s confidence or taking exception with his methods would do no one any good, least of all the Navy. No one should try to be the captain of every ship.