“Are you all right?”
“Yes.”
Crandall turned to Berry. “I’ve got her. Thank God. She’s at the rear station. She’s okay.”
Berry nodded.
“Barbara, come back up,” Crandall said.
“Give me five more minutes. I have to check one more lavatory. I don’t see the steward-Jeff Price. Maybe I’ll go below to the galley.”
Crandall glanced at Berry.
Berry was ready to begin the turn. “Okay. Tell her we’re about to turn. Stay where she is until the turn is completed.”
Crandall nodded and spoke into the phone. “Wait in the rear station. John is going to turn the aircraft. We’ve made contact on the data-link. Everything is all right. We’re heading in. Stay there until the turn is completed. Take care. See you soon. Okay?”
There was a lighter note in Barbara Yoshiro’s voice. “Yes. Good. Very good.”
Berry took the phone. “Barbara, this is John Berry. How are the passengers?”
There was a short pause, then the voice came back. “I… I don’t know. They seem… better.”
Berry shook his head. They were not better. They never would be. Better meant worse. More animated. More dangerous. “Be very, very careful. See you later.”
“Okay.”
The phone clicked dead.
Berry exchanged glances with Crandall, then looked over his shoulder into the lounge. Stein had taken the news about the data-link connection calmly, almost without interest. He had other things on his mind. “Harold. Linda,” Berry shouted back to them. “Hold on to something. We’re turning. Back to California. Be home in a few hours.”
Stein looked up from his post at the head of the stairs and waved distractedly.
Berry turned and positioned himself carefully in his seat. He reached out and put his hand on the autopilot heading control knob. He had a vague awareness of a shadow passing over the starboard side of the cockpit’s windshield. He glanced at Sharon Crandall, but she seemed unaware of it. He half stood and leaned over her seat and looked out the side windshield. He craned his neck back toward the tail. Nothing. A cloud probably. But he could see no clouds.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” He sat down and again placed his hand over the small heading knob. “Okay. We’re heading home.” Slowly, a few degrees at a time, he began turning the knob. The big supersonic craft banked to the right.
For a brief instant, Matos thought that his aircraft was responsible for the apparent movement between them. The action of a missile release would do that. But he had not, he realized, pressed the button hard enough to make contact. His missile-fire light was not on.
The large Straton transport moved rapidly across Matos’s gun sight. He removed his hand from the firing button and raised his eyes from the crosshairs. The Straton was in a shallow bank, moving away from the fighter.
Turbulence, was Matos’s first thought. No. Impossible. There is no turbulence. His own aircraft flew smoothly. Yet the 797 was banking. Instinctively, he banked with it and lined up his gun sights again. The Straton moved at a steady rate. Gracefully. Deliberately. Intentionally.
Matos sat up straight in his seat. His hand came down hard on his radio transmit button. “Homeplate! Homeplate! Navy three-four-seven. The Straton is turning. Banking.” He followed the airliner as it began its slow, wide circle. “It’s going through a north heading. Still turning. Approaching a northeasterly heading. The turn remains steady. The bank angle is approximately thirty degrees and steady. The airspeed and altitude are unchanged.” Matos kept his transmit button locked on so he could not receive, and kept up a continuous report of the airliner’s progress.
As gently as it had begun, the Straton’s bank angle started to lessen. Matos watched as the airliner began to roll to wings-level position. He placed his fighter twenty-five yards astern of the 797.
Matos could see from the rate of the Straton’s turn and the symmetry of its entry and exit that the control inputs were being measured electronically. Only a computer-controlled autopilot could provide that sort of precise motion control. He radioed, “Homeplate, the Straton is still on autopilot.” But he also knew, beyond any doubt, that there was a human hand working that autopilot.
Matos looked up at the manual gun sight, then down at the unguarded firing mechanism as though he were seeing them both for the first time. Oh, Jesus.
His hand was cramped, and he realized he had been pressing hard on his radio transmit button to keep possession of the radio channel between him and the Nimitz. But he knew he could not keep the channel away from Sloan forever. He spoke, to justify his finger on the transmit button, and to give himself time to think. “It was a deliberate turn. Someone is flying the aircraft-someone is working the autopilot. I could fly alongside the cockpit to verify.” He released the button.
“No!” shouted Sloan. “This is an order. Stay in trail formation. Do nothing to attract attention until you receive orders to do so. And keep your hand off the transmit button unless you are transmitting. Don’t try to cut me off again. Do you understand?”
Matos nodded, almost meekly. “Roger. Sorry, I was just… excited and… must have been gripping the stick… Over.”
“Roger. Are you still monitoring the radio channels?”
Matos glanced down at his side console. His monitoring equipment was still on, still silent. “That’s affirmative. No radio activity from the Straton on the normal frequencies.”
“Okay, Peter. Stay in trail until further notice. Acknowledge.”
“Roger, I read, stay in trail.”
“Roger, out.”
Matos ran his tongue across his parched lips and looked down at his compass. Reluctantly, he reached for his transmit button. When a commander gave an “out” it was the equivalent of, Don’t call me, I’ll call you. End of conversation. But Matos had things he wanted to say. “Homeplate.”
There was a short pause. “What is it, Navy?”
“Homeplate, whoever is flying that airliner knows what they’re doing. The Straton is flying steadily. Its new heading is 120 degrees. They are heading toward California.”
The silence in Matos’s headset seemed to last a long time.
“Roger. Anything further?”
Matos could not read the flat tone in Sloan’s voice. He wondered what was going through the Commander’s mind now. Why had they thought everyone onboard the Straton was dead? Matos could not hold himself back from asking the obvious question. “Homeplate, I don’t understand. Why am I staying out of sight of the cockpit?” He settled back and waited through the long, expected silence.
After a full minute his headset crackled. “Because, Lieutenant, I ordered you to.” The voice was no longer neutral. Sloan’s words continued, “We are all ass-deep in bad trouble. If you don’t want to spend the rest of your fucking life in Portsmouth Naval Prison, you will stay out of sight of that cockpit. Suppose, Lieutenant, you think about why you should keep out of sight and you radio me back with the answer when you figure it out. Okay?”
Matos nodded again and stared at his hands wrapped around the control stick. “Roger.”
“Homeplate, out.”
Matos pushed aside the manual gun sight and snapped back the safety cover of the firing switch. He sat back, deep in his upholstered flight chair, and stared down at the Straton until his eyes went out of focus. He closed his eyes, then made his mind go blank. He erased all the extraneous information he had accumulated and started at the beginning, at the moment he had first seen two targets on his radar screen. Slowly, he realized what Sloan was getting to. Now he knew precisely what he might yet be called on to do. Say it, Peter, he thought. Murder.
8
