Evans smiled. “Thank you, sir.”
“And the next time you fail to follow procedures, it had fucking well better make me happy, Evans, or your ass is out. Got it?”
Evans’s smile faded. “Yes, sir.” He left quickly.
Johnson turned to Miller. “Well. Here we are, Jack.”
Miller nodded. He and Johnson went back a lot of years. Now, with the audience gone, Johnson would start thinking and stop playacting. As if to confirm this, Johnson threw his cigar into the garbage can in the corner. Miller was certain that the man hated cigars, but trademarks, like the Trans-United logo and Edward Johnson’s cigar- mostly unlit these past years-took a long time to cultivate and develop, and one didn’t drop them so easily.
Johnson glanced down at the printout in his hand. “This is one hell of a thing.”
“Yes, it is.”
“A bomb. Why the hell do people want to blow up an airliner? Shit.” He paced a few feet. “Tell me, Jack, do you think they’ve got a chance?”
Miller glanced at the video screen, then at Johnson. “At first I didn’t give them any chance. Now… maybe. That pilot-Berry-handled the turn all right. Just to get as far as he did-taking the controls, figuring out the link, turning-that took a lot of guts. Skill, too. He’s got what it takes. Read the messages again. He’s a cool character. It comes through in the messages.”
Johnson stepped up to the Pacific chart that had been hung in the room earlier. He examined the markings on it. “Is this their estimated position?”
“That’s our guess. We didn’t have much to go on.” Miller rose from his seat at the data-link console and walked to the wall chart. He pointed to another spot on the chart. “This is the Straton’s last verified position. This one is an extrapolation that Jerry Brewster worked up. Now we’re working up another one based on their turnaround and present heading. Brewster will have-”
The thin sound of the data-link’s alerting bell cut him off. Both men glanced up at the video monitor.
FROM FLIGHT 52. ALL FIVE SURVIVORS WERE TRAPPED IN POSITIVE PRESSURE SPOTS DURING DECOMPRESSION. MOST PASSENGERS STILL ALIVE, BUT SUSPECT SUSTAINED LACK OF AIR PRESSURE CAUSED BRAIN DAMAGE.
Miller stared at each letter as it appeared, knowing what the last two words were going to say after he saw the B. The message went on.
SOME PASSENGERS BECOMING UNMANAGEABLE. ATTEMPTING TO CLIMB STAIRS INTO LOUNGE/COCKPIT. STEIN HOLDING THEM BACK. BERRY.
Miller looked up. “Jesus Christ Almighty.”
Johnson slammed his hand down violently against a countertop. “Son-of-a-bitch! Goddamned rotten luck!” He turned to Miller. “Is this possible? Could this happen?” Johnson’s technical knowledge was sketchy, and he never saw a need to pretend otherwise.
Jack Miller suddenly understood exactly what had happened. A bomb had torn two holes-two big holes-in the Straton’s fuselage. Had they been smaller holes, the pressure might have held long enough. Had it been one of their other jets, its lower operating altitude would have made it possible for everyone to breathe with oxygen masks. But at 62,000 feet, where the only commercial traffic was the Straton 797 and the Concorde, a decompression, if it was sudden and complete, could theoretically cause brain damage. Miller would have guessed that it would be fatal, but Berry said that most passengers survived. Survived. Good Lord. How did this happen? He stood up and felt his legs wobble a bit. “Yes,” he said weakly. “It’s possible.”
Johnson looked through the glass enclosure into the dispatch office. Dispatchers and assistants in the main room were trying to read the new message on the video screen. Johnson motioned to Miller. “Erase the video screen. Shut it off. We’ll use only the small display screen from now on.”
Miller pushed the buttons to do away with the video screen’s repeater display.
Johnson walked over to the door and locked it. He stood next to the data-link, put his foot on a chair, and leaned forward. “Type a message, Jack.”
Miller typed as Johnson dictated.
TO FLIGHT 52: LOCATE SATELLITE NAVIGATION SYSTEM. IT IS ON RADIO PANEL AND IS LABELED AS SUCH. READ OUT YOUR POSITION. ACKNOWLEDGE. A few seconds passed before the message bell rang. FROM FLIGHT 52: HAVE PREVIOUSLY LOCATED SATELLITE NAV SET. IT MUST NEED REPROGRAMMING FOR READOUT. IT READS NOTHING NOW. ADVISE ON PROGRAMMING.
Johnson walked over to the Pacific chart again and stared up at it. He had a vague idea of how to plot positions and no idea of how to program a satellite set. Still looking at the chart, he spoke to Miller. “Tell him that we’ll advise later.”
Miller typed the message.
Johnson turned. “He really can’t land that thing, can he?”
“I don’t know.” Miller was already in over his head. Despite years in the dispatch office, he couldn’t tell a man how to program a satellite navigation set. In fact, he had a vague memory of having read that they couldn’t be altered or reprogrammed en route. Miller had only a textbook image and knowledge of the cockpit of a 797, no conception of what actually flying the craft was about, and he knew that Johnson had even less. “Why don’t we get Fitzgerald in here?”
Johnson thought for a moment about the chief pilot. Kevin Fitzgerald was another candidate to fill the president’s chair. It would be good to have a pilot in the room with them, but not Fitzgerald. But to ask another pilot in would be an unforgivable insult whose intentions would be obvious to the Board of Directors. Though why give Fitzgerald an opportunity to play hero? The answer was to exclude him from the game for as long as possible. It was generally known that if either of them became president, then the other one would spend the rest of his career in oblivion. Johnson knew that he could easily wind up supervising lost baggage claims instead of in the president’s office. He looked at Miller. “Not yet. If that Straton gets within, let’s say, two hundred miles of the coast, we’ll get Fitzgerald.” He thought for a second. “If we can’t find him, we’ll get the head flight instructor. He’d do a better job of it, I think.”
Miller knew that it would be a good thing to start Berry’s flight instructions immediately. Either man would do. But Miller also knew that Johnson did not make any decisions based purely on rationality. Edward Johnson’s decisions were always based on ulterior motives. “Do you think it’s time to put out a brief statement to the press?”
“No.”
“Should we have the PR people privately contact relatives of the passengers? We can start booking them on flights to San Francisco and-”
“Later.”
“Why?”
Johnson looked at him closely. “Because we are not going to encourage a media circus here. This is not some cheap TV drama. This bullshit about right-to-know is just that-bullshit. There is not one damn reporter or hysterical relative who is going to make a useful contribution to this problem. It’s about time somebody started exercising their rights to privacy and secrecy again in this country. This is Trans-United’s business and no one else’s except, unfortunately, the Federal Aviation Agency. We’ll notify them in just a few minutes. As far as a public statement, it may be necessary to release only one. The final one.”
“Ed, my only concern right now is to bring that aircraft home,” Miller said. “I don’t care about any shit that is going to be flying around here later.”
Johnson frowned. “You ought to.” But then he suddenly patted Miller on the back. Johnson had forced himself to change gears. “You’re right. We have to bring 52 home before we can think of anything else.”
Miller turned away and walked to the Pacific chart. A little red spot of grease pencil on a field of light blue represented more than three hundred seriously sick and injured people heading home. And the thought that their fate was in the hands of Edward Johnson was not comforting. Miller hoped that John Berry was an exceptionally competent and discerning man.
Wayne Metz sat comfortably in his silver BMW 750 as he cruised in the right lane of Interstate 280. He adjusted the knobs on his Surround-Sound CD player until the resonance of Benny Goodman’s “One O’clock Jump”- one of his favorites from his old jazz collection-was just right. He glanced at himself in the rearview mirror. Yesterday’s tennis had deepened his tan.
