Berry stopped the slide and lined up the nose with the centerline. “Okay. Soon.” He had no idea why the engines were still running. He glanced at the altimeter. Three hundred feet above sea level, and the airport was at about thirty feet above sea level. Two hundred seventy feet to touchdown. He looked out the windshield. The runway was about two miles ahead. They were low by normal standards, but nothing about this flight had been normal. The airspeed was slow, but not slow enough for a stall. He grasped the wheel with one hand and pulled off more power from the throttles with the other. “Okay, we’re going in. Going in. Sharon. Linda. Just hold on. Hold on. I’ll touch it down as easy as possible. Sharon, read off the speeds to me the way I told you.”
Crandall looked down at the airspeed indicator: “One hundred sixty knots.”
“Right.” Berry felt he could do it, as long as the fuel lasted another fifty or sixty seconds. As long as he didn’t fall apart within the next minute. He drew a long, deep breath. In front of him, a series of sequence strobe flashers in the bay drew his eyes toward the runway centerline. Very elaborate system. Very nice airport. “Speed.”
“One hundred fifty knots.”
Berry held the wheel steady and felt the huge aircraft sinking slowly from its own weight, down toward the earth.
He heard a sound behind him, the sound of ripping-ripping fiberglass. John Berry kept his eyes on the runway, but he knew what that sound meant.
Sharon Crandall turned and saw the panty hose lying on the floor with the latch still attached to them. She looked up. “No! No!”
19
The president of Trans-United Airlines, the chairman of the board, and government officials looked out from the control tower. The entire emergency and rescue operation was being coordinated below.
Jack Miller stood off to the side, not exactly sure how he had gotten into the control tower, but knowing that there was no longer time to get to the runway. He watched and listened as the operation unfolded around him.
The curious and the morbid were arriving by the thousands, choking the airport access roads and covering the grass boundaries of Route 80. Police in the area of the airport, trained for just such a situation, began clearing a lane for outside emergency vehicles to reach the airport.
Outside the main terminal, and inside along the security corridors, people had begun assembling, even before the news of the radar sighting. Those on the outside stared up at the sky, waiting, on the remote chance that the Straton would return. Those on the inside watched the flight information board or just listened to the public address system for updates. They waited and watched, like wives of sailors once waited and watched, on the quays and from the upper windows of their houses, for sight of the ship that was lost.
Since the radar sighting had been announced, the airport was increasingly jammed with friends and relatives of the passengers on Flight 52. With them stood other passengers and airport employees who had temporarily abandoned their jobs. For everyone outside, all eyes were turned eastward as they followed the huge silver Straton as it swung slowly around to the south. It flew low over the bay, flaps down and landing gear extended, like a gull about to light on a rock.
From the moment the Straton had been spotted on radar, all other air traffic had been diverted to Oakland and other airports, and rapid intervention vehicles-RIVs-had been cutting across the deserted runways, trying to position themselves for any eventuality. Equipment was being massed by RIVs and helicopters at the point where the two pairs of runways crossed. A platform truck from which the officer-in-charge would supervise the operation was brought out to the crossway, complete with field desks and cell phones. Medical supplies, wheelchairs, hundreds of stretchers, water, and burn units were flowing toward the center of the airfield. Aluminum trestles were set up to convert stretchers into examining tables. A unit stood by to identify and mark the dead. Another unit of paramedics, nurses, and doctors was breaking open crates of medical supplies. The entire acre at the juncture of the runways resembled a hastily assembled military bivouac. But as quickly as the emergency services were assembling, they were still not ready to handle a disaster of the potential scope presented by the onrushing Straton.
Edward Johnson and Wayne Metz stood on a small taxiway a few hundred feet from the runway. Around them, on the road and on the grass, stood scores of police, reporters, airport officials, and Trans-United people. About a dozen news cameras stood in the grass, all pointed toward the end of the runway. RIVs sped past, taking up positions on both sides of the runway.
Wayne Metz looked out across the bay and watched silently as the Straton made its turn. His mouth kept forming words, but no sound came out. Never before had he wanted so badly to see one of his insured risks destroyed. He stared as the Straton came out of its turn far east of the runway. “I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe that’s the Straton.”
Edward Johnson watched, fascinated, as the aircraft made its final approach. “It’s the Straton, all right. I don’t know how he did it. I don’t know how he could have recovered from a flame out… but he did, didn’t he?” He had stopped being frightened and had gotten control of himself again. A cold, calculating impassiveness took hold in him, and he watched with grudging admiration as Berry slid the aircraft back toward the runway. “I’ll be damned. Jesus Christ, this guy has his act together. I might sign the son-of-a-bitch for a pilot job with Trans-United. He does a better job than half our overpaid crybabies.”
Metz looked at Johnson as though the man had gone completely out of his mind. But as he stared at Johnson, he knew why Johnson had come so far. Edward Johnson believed that he had not been a participant in what had happened in the communications room. He was now Edward Johnson, vice-president of Trans-United Airlines, and very concerned about the fate of his flight.
Trans-United’s chief pilot, Captain Kevin Fitzgerald, moved closer to the runway than anyone else dared. He stood by himself at the edge of the grass, staring down the long expanse of concrete. He raised his eyes and looked out into the bay, then looked at the head-on silhouette of the Straton. His airplane was coming home. He whispered, “Come on. Come on, you bastard. Hold it.” His voice became louder, “Hold it! You got it! You crazy bastard, it’s yours, it’s yours, it’s yours! You’re in control. In control.”
The police and emergency services crews who had gathered on the grass became excited as the Straton came in over the bay and began dropping toward the runway. Many of those people realized the dangerous position they had put themselves in and began running back toward the hastily assembled disaster-control area, a little farther from the Straton’s target area.
Johnson, Metz, and Fitzgerald, along with most of the firemen, a few reporters, and all the cameramen, stayed dangerously close to the runway.
Johnson turned to Metz. “It’s going to be hard to convince anyone that the pilot of that aircraft is in any way brain damaged.”
Metz shook his head. “Damn it, you can say he was temporarily confused.”
“Right. But if those data-link printouts exist, we have to get to them before the FAA people start crawling around that cockpit.”
“I hope to hell he crashes. I hope the airplane explodes.”
Johnson nodded. He’d never been so ambivalent about anything in his life. “God, Wayne, I hope he makes it and I hope we make it.”
The two men looked at each other for a long moment.
About ten yards away from Metz and Johnson, Fitzgerald stood at the edge of the runway, shouting. “Push down. Push down! That’s it. That’s it. Gently. Gently.”
Some of the firemen, policemen, and reporters began to cheer. The Trans-United people were screaming, “Down! Down! Down!”
All around the airport and, as the word spread, inside the terminal building, people were weeping and hugging each other.
Johnson stood frozen by the scene in front of him, not knowing if his behavior appeared appropriate, and not caring.
Wayne Metz unconsciously grabbed Edward Johnson’s arm. Talking about crashing an airliner was one thing;
