They looked at each other for a brief, intense moment. In a flash of recognition, she suddenly understood that Berry was like her and not like the others. He was no threat. She ran up to him, buried her face in his chest, and began to cry.
“We’ll be okay,” Berry said. His words were as much for himself as for her. For the first time since he had awakened he allowed himself a small measure of emotion. “Thank God,” he said to himself, choking back tears of gratitude for this small miracle. The child continued to cry, but more softly. He held her small, tense body against his.
While his attention was focused on the young girl, he failed to notice that several of the passengers had gotten up and were moving toward them. John Berry and the girl huddled together in the center of the forward cabin as the silent passengers encircled them.
Commander James Sloan was transfixed by the radio message that had come from his pilot. He stared at the towering panel of electronic gear as if he expected to find a way out of the situation in its switches and meters. Yet there was nothing on the console but the neutral data of frequencies and signal strengths. What Sloan wanted to know was available from only one source.
“Matos, are you sure?” Sloan asked. His perspiring hands gripped the microphone. His normally stern voice had a strange, new tone woven through it, and his words sounded out of place.
There was no immediate response from the F-18, and while he stood in the silent electronics room, Commander James Sloan realized that he was suddenly afraid. It was an emotion he was not accustomed to, and one he seldom allowed himself to experience. But too much had happened too quickly. “Matos,” he said again, “take your time. Look again. Be absolutely certain.”
Retired Rear Admiral Randolf Hennings, who had remained silent since Matos had sent his first startling message, stepped closer to the radio. He could hear the loud rhythm of his own heartbeat, and he was sure that Sloan could hear it too.
But James Sloan was not listening. His entire universe had shrunk. There was nothing he cared about now except the words that were about to come through the radio speaker. There was no other inroad to his thoughts.
“There’s no doubt, Commander,” Matos’s transmission began.
Sloan’s face went pale. He listened to the remainder of the pilot’s message through a filter of personal static, as his mind raced.
“It’s right in front of me. I’m only fifty feet in trail. Trans-United, a Straton 797. There’s a three-foot hole on its port side, and another hole in the starboard fuselage. The starboard hole is bigger-three or four times as big. I don’t see any movement in the cockpit or the cabin.”
Sloan stood with his eyes shut, both his hands laid against the console. He had not been face-to-face with fear since he was a young boy. All his body muscles tensed and he wanted to run, to bolt from the room and get away. He wanted to shake himself awake from the incredible nightmare.
“Now what?” Randolf Hennings finally asked, his mild voice barely breaking the silence. “What can we do? What should we do?”
Sloan slowly opened his eyes, then turned his head to stare at Hennings. As he held eye contact with the Admiral, James Sloan pulled himself out of the deepest emotional pit of his life. He had very nearly lost his self- control. The Commander’s frown had returned, as had his iron-willed expression and bearing.
“What do you suggest, Admiral?” Sloan asked in an obviously sarcastic tone; he was goading the old man. Hennings appeared puzzled. Sloan waved his hand nonchalantly. “Perhaps we should take a walk below-decks. We could lock ourselves in the brig. Better yet, let’s go to the officers’ ward room. They’ve got a nice pair of ceremonial swords on the wall. We could take them down and fall on them.”
Hennings uttered an unintelligible sound that showed his surprise.
“Listen, Admiral,” Sloan continued, “we’ve got to evaluate this situation realistically. Figure out precisely where we stand. The last thing we want is to rush off to do something we’ll regret. Something bad for the Navy.”
Sloan hoped he had not pushed the old man too far. Or too quickly. Still, it was his only chance. Without Hennings along, there was no way he could pull off some sort of cover-up. Sloan had done it once before, when, because of a foul-up, one of his pilots had shot up a Mexican fishing boat. The responsibility for that one might have wound up in Sloan’s lap, so he moved quickly to fix it. It had taken only a quick helicopter ride and a small pile of Yankee greenbacks. This one would require more. Much more. But it could still be done.
“I don’t know what you mean. What is it you want to do?” Hennings finally asked.
Sloan sat down in the seat in front of the console. He took out a cigarette. He took his time lighting it, then inhaled deeply. He swiveled the seat around to face Hennings and sat back.
“Let’s list the obvious things first,” Sloan said. His words were slow, full measured, and carefully picked. “Neither of us wanted this. It was a pure accident. God only knows how it happened. That area was supposed to be clear of air traffic. I checked it myself this morning.”
Sloan paused. Procedures had required him to recheck, in case of a last-minute change. He had tried, but he hadn’t been able to get through on the normal channels, even on the patch. The chance that a flight would have altered its course during the short time he was without a clear channel was minuscule. Less than minuscule. Yet it happened, Sloan thought. He managed to dispel the miscalculation with a simple shrug of his shoulders, then returned his attentions to Hennings. “How that aircraft got there is beyond me. I guess our luck was super- bad.”
“Our luck?” Hennings said. “What the hell’s the matter with you? What about that airliner? It’s got people aboard. Women and children.” The old man’s face was red and his hands trembled. The volume of his voice filled the room and made it seem smaller than it was. Hennings had the sudden disquieting sensation of being closed in. The smallness of the electronics room had trapped him, and he desperately wanted to go above-decks.
James Sloan sat motionless. He continued to wear the same ambiguous expression. “You’re right,” he said. “It’s a tragedy. But it’s not our fault.” Sloan stopped speaking for a moment to let his words sink in. He took another deep drag on his cigarette. He knew that it was his fault, at least partially. But that was beside the point.
Hennings looked down at Sloan in disbelief. “Are you somehow suggesting that we pretend this never happened?” He was beginning to wonder if Sloan was insane. For a person to even entertain such wild notions seemed evidence enough of insanity. “We’ve got to help those people.”
Sloan leaned closer to Hennings. “That’s the point, Admiral. There are no people.”
A dead quiet hung between the two men. Numbers paraded by on the digital clock, but time stood still. Finally, the Admiral shook his head. He did not understand. “But it’s an airliner,” he said. “Trans-United. It’s got to have passengers. It must have a crew.”
“No, Admiral. Not anymore.” Sloan was choosing his words carefully. “The impact of the missile punctured two holes in their pressurized shell. At sixty-two thousand feet, they couldn’t survive. They’re dead, Admiral. All dead.”
Sloan sat back and watched as the words registered on the old man. Sloan had known, as soon as he had begun to think clearly again, that the hole made by the Phoenix missile would make the aircraft decompress. A decompression at 62,000 feet would be fatal.
Hennings’s expression had changed. Shock had been replaced by pain. “Dead? Are you sure?” he asked.
“Certainly.” Sloan waved his hand in a gesture of finality. But he knew that there was still a measure of technical doubt. If he let those doubts surface, they would erode his resolve and eat away at the basics of his plan. He knew that Hennings would need an excuse to go along with a cover-up. He figured that the old man wanted an excuse. Sloan would be happy to provide one. More than likely, everyone aboard that airliner was already dead-or soon would be. The harm had already been done. It was now a matter of saving himself. And the mission. And, of course, the reputation of the Navy, which needed all the help it could get these days.
Sloan leaned closer to Hennings. “I know that Matos won’t say anything. He’s in this with us. We do no good by turning ourselves in. This was an accident. If the truth came out, the entire Navy would suffer.”
Sloan cleared his throat. He took a few seconds to gauge how Hennings was reacting. So far, Sloan still had him. Hennings had nodded in agreement. The good of the Navy was his soft spot. It was worth remembering. Sloan might need to play on it again, now that he was coming to the sensitive part.
“Our best bet,” he continued, “is to have Matos put his second missile into the… target. It’s being flown by its autopilot. At close range, he could direct his missile toward the Straton’s cockpit. It would wipe out the ship’s
