“What if Berry, when he loses contact, turns from the Hawaii heading and heads back toward the coast?”
Johnson shook his head. “He won’t. We’ll tell him that the air-and-sea rescue units will be intercepting him on his new heading, and that the military and civilian airports in Hawaii are expecting him. He won’t want to throw that chance away.”
Metz nodded. “Can’t he change channels on his data-link?”
“They tell me the different channels are for the relay stations only. There’s a computer somewhere that automatically sends all the Trans-United messages to this unit.” Johnson pointed at the data-link machine in front of him.
“I see,” said Metz, although he didn’t see, not exactly. It was, as they said in business school, all PFM-pure fucking magic-and the details of how and why didn’t interest him in the slightest. Metz looked up at the Pacific chart. In a vast expanse of blue, a few green dots represented the islands of Hawaii. He spoke to Johnson as he stared at the map. “What if he finds Hawaii?”
“With the heading I give him, he won’t come close. He’ll be lost, alone, with no radio, a damaged aircraft, no idea of how to fly the aircraft, no fuel reserve, and no one looking for him. If he survives all that, Mr. Metz, he sure deserves to live.”
Johnson began to type the new heading.
John Berry watched the small piece of one-way glass in the cockpit door.
The passengers of Flight 52 moved up the staircase of the Straton like fish or birds on some perverse and incomprehensible migration. Or, thought Berry, like air and water that moves according to the laws of physics to fill a sudden vacuum. They filled the lounge and wandered aimlessly over the thick blue carpet, around the brightly upholstered furniture-men, women, and children-ready to seep into the next empty place that they could fill. Berry felt comforted by this analogy. It denied the possibility that they were acting according to a plan, that they were looking for the cockpit.
Berry made a quick count of the passengers in the lounge. About fifty now. If they all suddenly moved toward the door of the cockpit, and if one of them pulled it open rather than pressed against it, then he, Sharon, and Linda could not stop them from flooding the cockpit.
He thought again of the autopilot master switch. Anything was preferable to the nightmare of sharing the cockpit with dozens of them.
He noted McVary, sitting in a lounge chair facing the cockpit door, staring hard at it. Berry placed his fingers around the nub of the broken latch. He had very little to grab. He pulled the door shut a few more inches, but it sprang open again.
Berry turned and scanned the cockpit for something that would secure the door, but could find nothing. There was a way to do it, he was sure, but his thoughts, which had stayed so calm for so long, were beginning to ramble; fatigue was dulling his reason. “Damn it! Sharon, we’ve got to keep this door closed.”
She turned in her chair and looked at the door. Forms and shadows passed by the opening between the edge of the door and the jamb. “Why don’t I go into the lounge and put my back to the door? I’ll take the fire extinguisher. They won’t be able-”
“No! Forget it. We’ve had enough heroes and martyrs already. If we go…” he looked at Linda Farley, sitting quietly in one of the extra cockpit chairs “… we all go together. No more sacrifices. No splitting up. We’re not losing any more of us.”
Crandall nodded, then turned back and stared out the windshield.
For a long time there was a silence in the cockpit, broken only by the dull murmur of electronics and the soft, susurrant sound of someone brushing by the door.
The alerting bell sounded.
Berry moved beside Crandall’s chair, and they both looked down at the video display.
TO FLIGHT 52: WE HAVE ACCURATELY DETERMINED YOUR POSITION. CLOSEST AIRPORT HAWAII. TURN AIRCRAFT TO HEADING OF 240 DEGREES FOR VECTOR TO HAWAII. AIR AND SEA RESCUE WILL INTERCEPT YOU ON NEW HEADING. AIRPORTS IN HAWAII WAITING FOR YOU WITH EMERGENCY EQUIPMENT. ACKNOWLEDGE. SAN FRANCISCO HQ.
Sharon Crandall clutched Berry’s arm. “They know where we are.” She turned her head to him and smiled. “We’ll be in Hawaii…” She looked up at him. Something was wrong. “John…?”
Berry shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I don’t know.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure.” He reread the data-link’s display screen. “I’m not comfortable with this.”
“Comfortable?” She looked at him for a few seconds. She tried to keep the edge of annoyance out of her voice as she spoke. “How in God’s name can we be comfortable with anything out here? What are you saying?”
Berry suddenly felt angry. “Comfortable,” he said coolly, “is a pilot’s term. It means that I have no faith in that course of action.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” he said, slowly but emphatically, “the Hawaiian Islands are a pretty damned small target, as you might know, while the North American continent is pretty big.” He leaned back against the side of the pilot’s chair. “Look, we are headed somewhere now. North America. California, probably. We can’t miss that coastline. If we do what they ask, we’d be putting everything on a long shot. All we stand to gain is a shorter flight time of maybe an hour or two. But if we miss Hawaii-and it wouldn’t take much of a navigation error to do that… then…” he smiled grimly “… we’ll wind up with Amelia Earhart.”
Sharon Crandall looked down at the display screen again, then back at Berry. Her life, she realized, was totally in the hands of this man. If John Berry didn’t want to make a course change, she couldn’t make him do it. Yet she wasn’t going to let him make the decision without some good reasons. She turned away from him and looked out at the far horizon. “How do regular airline flights find Hawaii?”
“With this.” Berry pointed to the radio console and the blackened readouts of the satellite navigation sets. “They’re either not functioning or I don’t know how to work them. And San Francisco hasn’t responded to my request for instructions.”
“Ask them again.”
Berry slid into the pilot’s chair and typed.
NEED INSTRUCTIONS ON OPERATING NAV SETS BEFORE COURSE CHANGE. SETS MAY BE DAMAGED. FOR THE RECORD, NOW ONLY 3 IN COCKPIT-YOUNG GIRL LINDA FARLEY-FLIGHT ATTENDANT
SHARON CRANDALL-MYSELF-OTHERS PRESUMED LOST. BERRY.
Berry knew that sending a list of who was still in the cockpit-who was still alive and rational-was an unnecessary addition to the message. But after his comment to Sharon about them needing to not split up anymore, sending that shortened list of names seemed like a necessary comment to the world. Berry pushed the transmit button, and they waited in the silent cockpit.
Suddenly, the door swung open. Linda Farley screamed.
Berry vaulted out of his chair and stared up at the door. Faces, some grinning, some frowning, peered in at him. Daniel McVary stepped into the cockpit, looking, thought Berry, very irate.
Berry grabbed the fire extinguisher from the floor and sprayed it into the faces closest to him. The people screamed and tried to move back, but the press from behind was too great and the crowd moved forward, squeezing through the door, one and two at a time, into the cockpit.
Berry was vaguely aware of the sounds of feminine screams behind him and the hands and faces pressing in on him. Without being conscious of it, he had raised the heavy metal extinguisher above his head and brought it down into the face of the man closest to him. The man’s face erupted into a distorted mass of red pulp.
Berry swung the extinguisher again and again, striking at the heads and faces of the men and women around him. He was half aware of hitting a young boy in the face. Screams filled the cockpit and the lounge, and drowned out the sounds of even the Straton’s engines. Blood and teeth splattered in the air, and he could hear the distinct crack of skulls and jaws. The loudest sound of all was a voice that he identified as his own. The voice bellowed out like an animal in agony.
