INSTRUCTION. ACKNOWLEDGE A READY CONDITION. SAN FRANCISCO HQ.
Berry typed.
EXPERIENCING SOME TURBULENCE. SHOULD I CIRCLE TO AVOID TURBULENCE BEFORE PROCEDURE IS COMPLETE?
The reply came quickly.
NEGATIVE. MAINTAIN HEADING. PROCEDURE WILL TAKE ONLY TWO OR THREE MINUTES. ALL CONTROLS ARE LOCATED ON OVERHEAD PANEL.
“Okay.” Berry looked up at the large panel above his head. “Sharon, read me the instructions as they print.”
“Here it comes, John. Ready?”
“Ready.”
“In the center of… the overhead panel… four switches… labeled… low pressure fuel valve position… acknowledge…”
“I see them.”
“Good.” Crandall typed a quick acknowledgment. “Okay… here comes more… Turn the switches… to off…”
Berry looked over at her. “All of them?” He glanced down at the display screen himself, but at the angle he was at it was difficult to read.
“That’s what it says.”
Berry looked back at the switches. There was something wrong. Some instinct told him to be careful. To proceed cautiously. He remembered a line from an aviation magazine. Operate important switches one at a time. He put his hand on switch number one. Tentatively, he pulled it toward him so it would clear its guard, then pushed down on it and moved it to the off position. He counted off a few seconds.
“Done?”
Berry looked around the cockpit, then scanned the panel in front of him. Nothing unusual was happening.
“Did you do it?”
“Wait a minute. That’s just the first one.”
Crandall looked back at him. “Is anything wrong?”
“No. I’m just proceeding cautiously.”
Crandall turned to the console. “They want an acknowledgment.”
“Tell them to hold their fucking horses.” Berry hit the second switch, then the third, and finally the last. He sat very still but could feel nothing in the seat of his pants to indicate any transfer of fuel, any shift in center of gravity. Maybe the autopilot was compensating. It probably was. “Finished. Is that all?”
Crandall typed the acknowledgment, then read the next message as it came through. “Last step… a covered switch… labeled… fuel valve emergency power… engage the switch… then fuel transfer… will be done… automatically… it will take… two or three more minutes.”
Berry found the switch. Not only was it covered by a special guard, but the guard was fixed in place by a thin strand of safety wire. Clearly, this switch was not used very often. “Are you sure?”
“I’ll read it again… a covered switch labeled fuel valve emergency power. Engage the switch…” She paused. “John, please hurry. We’re almost into the storm.”
Somewhere in the deepest recesses of Berry’s mind a warning flashed for a thousandth of a second, like a subliminal message on a video screen. He could not see it, though he sensed it for a passing moment, but did not believe what he thought it said. For to believe it was to admit to something he could not possibly handle. Without another thought, John Berry snapped the safety wire with his thumb and lifted the guard.
He pushed the emergency power switch into an engaged position.
Within the span of a microsecond, an electrical signal went to each fuel valve on the Straton’s four jet engines. Before John Berry had even taken his hand off the switch, the valves had already begun to choke off the flow of fuel to all four of the engines.
Mayday
13
Lieutenant Peter Matos had never fired a shot in anger, but now he was to fire one in sorrow. His first kill would be an unarmed American civilian transport.
Matos edged his F-18 twenty-five yards astern of the transport’s towering tail and one hundred fifty feet above it. He snapped his manual gun sight into place and looked through it.
Shredded clouds flew by his canopy and over the wide expanse of the silvery Straton, causing alternating overcast and bright glare in the gun sight. Matos rubbed his eyes. These were not optimum conditions for a close-in shot.
He looked out toward the horizon. The dark, ugly storm clouds rolled toward him like a high surf sweeping up the beach. In front of the storm were several thin layers of clouds, and he would pass under them within a minute. Then and there, under the heavy veil of gray, he would strike. “Okay, okay, let’s go,” he said to himself, and pushed forward on the control stick, then hit the transmit button. “Navy three-four-seven beginning the attack.”
“Roger.”
Matos snapped back the safety cover and put his finger over the missile’s firing button.
The target proved more difficult to align this time. The increasing turbulence caused the two aircraft to sway and bounce, and the bull’s-eye danced in circles around the center of the airliner’s high dome.
They were under the cloud cover now, and the light was subdued but consistent. He stared through his gun sight. Several times he almost pushed the button, but the Straton would sway out of his bull’s-eye. He glanced up. He was only a few minutes from the front of the storm. If the Straton got into the black clouds, his chances of holding a trail formation were zero. “Homeplate! I have turbulence. Can’t hold it steady!”
Sloan’s voice cracked in his ears like a whip. “Shoot the goddamned missile!”
For an irrational moment Matos thought of ramming the Straton’s high dome. He went as far as to give a slight forward impulse to his control stick, and the motion carried his fighter closer to its target. Suddenly, he pulled back on the stick and backed off. What held him back was not a fear of death but something he had seen, with a fighter pilot’s highly developed sense of peripheral vision, from the corner of his left eye.
As he slid back and above the Straton, he looked down at the airliner’s left wing. The flow of hot exhaust gases from the Straton’s number-one engine had stopped. Then the number-two engine cut out. Matos looked quickly to the right and saw that the two star-board engines had also stopped producing power. He jammed his thumb on the transmit button. “Homeplate! Homeplate! The Straton is flaming out! I say again, the Straton is flaming out!”
Sloan’s response was quick, and his voice was as excited as Matos’s. “Are you positive? Where are you? Can you see it clearly?”
Matos composed himself. “Yes. Yes. I’m right on its tail. No vapor trails. Flame out.” He watched as the Straton began its slow, powerless descent toward the sea. “It appears that the autopilot is still flying it. Its speed remains at three-forty. The rate of descent is increasing. It’s dropping. Going down.”
“Stay with it, Matos. Stay with it. I want you to see it hit the water.”
Even the scrambler, thought Matos, could not mask the vengeance in Sloan’s voice. “Roger, Homeplate.” Matos had already begun his descent to follow the dying airliner. He could see that it was still steady on its 131- degree heading, and its glide would take them both directly into the thunderstorms. Matos slammed his hand on the dash panel. “Shit!”
“Situation report,” said Sloan tersely.
“Roger. Rate of descent is twenty-one hundred feet per minute. The airspeed has slowed to two-ninety. The wings are level and steady. It still appears that the autopilot is engaged.” He broke the transmission, then hit the button again. “Homeplate, there are thunderstorms just ahead. I may lose them shortly.”
“Matos, you son-of-a-bitch, your mission is to keep that fucking aircraft in sight until it crashes. I don’t give a
