saw now a hydraulic platform rising up toward him with two rescue workers on it.
Berry realized he couldn’t quite reach the hole in the fuselage, and he conveyed this to the firemen below by turning toward the rising platform and nodding his willingness to come down. The platform came up to a level position with the wing, and one of the rescue workers held on to a safety rail while reaching out to Berry with his other hand. Berry grabbed the rescue worker’s hand and jumped onto the platform.
Before the platform began to descend and before either of the rescue workers could react, Berry broke the man’s grip and dove off the platform into the hole in the side of the fuselage.
He found himself on the floor amid the pulverized and twisted wreckage. A few bodies lay in the swath of destruction, and Berry could hear a few people moaning. He pitied these men, women, and children who had lived through the terror of the explosion and decompression, then the oxygen deprivation, followed by the crash landing and smoke inhalation. It occurred to him-no, it had always been there in his mind-that he should have just pushed the nose of the airliner into the Pacific Ocean.
But he hadn’t done that, so he had left himself with some unfinished business.
The two rescue workers on the platform were shouting to him to come out. “Hey, buddy! Come on out of there! It could still blow. Come on!”
Berry glanced back at them standing in the sunlight and yelled, “I’m going up to the cockpit to get my wife and daughter!”
The Straton listed to the right and was pitched slightly upward. Berry made his way up the left-hand aisle toward the spiral staircase.
The windows were covered with foam, and the farther he got from the two holes in the fuselage, the darker it got and the heavier the smoke became. He heard people moving around him, and he felt someone push past him in the dark. It was strangely silent, except for an eerie sort of growl coming from somewhere close by. Berry thought it could be a dog.
He had given up on Barbara Yoshiro and Harold Stein a long time ago, but he had to give it a try. He shouted, “Barbara! Barbara Yoshiro! Harold Stein! Can you hear me?”
There was no reply at first, then someone, a male, close by in the dark, said, “Here.”
“Where? Mr. Stein?”
“Weah. Mista. Heah.”
“Damn it! Damn it! Shut up!” Berry felt himself losing control, and tried to steady his nerves. He was fairly certain that Yoshiro and Stein were either dead or unconscious, and beyond his help.
He continued on in the dark, crouching lower because of the smoke. Finally, he found the spiral staircase and grasped the handrails, discovering that the whole unit was loose. He took a few tentative steps up the stairs, then stopped and glanced back toward the shaft of sunlight passing through the holes in the midsection. He tried to see if any of the rescue workers had followed him, but all he could see was one of the brain-damaged wraiths stumbling around, his hands over his eyes, as if the light were blinding him.
Berry took another step up, and the spiral staircase swung slightly. “Damn…” He shouted up the stairs, “Sharon! Linda!”
A voice shouted back, “Shaarn. Linaah!”
Berry took a deep breath and then another step, then another, carefully making his way up the swaying staircase, shouting as he went, “Sharon! Linda!”
And each time he was answered with “Shaarn! Linaaah!”
He could hear people now at the bottom of the stairs, and also people in the lounge at the top of the stairs. Smoke from the cabin was rising up the staircase and, he guessed, out the open emergency door in the cockpit, so it was as if he were standing in a chimney. He found a handkerchief in his pocket and put it over his face, but he felt nauseous and dizzy again, and thought he might black out.
This was more than heroics, he thought. For one thing, he knew he couldn’t live with himself if he survived by getting down the chute and they died in the cockpit, so close to safety. Also, there was the matter of the data-link printouts, which would prove that he wasn’t crazy when he told the authorities that someone had given him instructions that would put the Straton into the ocean. And then there were his feelings about Sharon Crandall…
He took another step up the staircase. A shadow loomed at the top, and a hand from below grabbed his leg. A voice shouted, “Shaarnn!” Someone laughed. A dog growled.
He was back in hell.
Edward Johnson and Wayne Metz stepped out of the rapid intervention vehicle a hundred yards from the massive Straton, which was surrounded by yellow fire trucks that looked small by comparison, and Johnson was reminded of carrion-eating beetles around a dead bird.
Johnson surveyed the evacuation site-the aluminum trestles and stretchers, the gurneys, empty wheel-chairs, ambulances pulling away. He found a woman with a clipboard who looked official, and he identified himself as the senior vice president of Trans-United, which he was, and which he wanted to continue being, which was why he was here; he had to control the situation to the extent possible, and with any luck, the man named Berry would be dead, and so would the flight attendant, and the data-link printouts would be sitting in the collecting tray in the cockpit. If none of that was true, Johnson knew he’d have to make some tough decisions and do some unpleasant things.
The woman with the clipboard identified herself as Dr. Emmett of the airport Emergency Medical Service.
Johnson asked her, “Doctor, how many people have you pulled out?”
Dr. Emmett replied, “We haven’t pulled any out. Some came down that chute. Twenty-two, to be exact.”
Johnson glanced at the yellow chute in the far distance.
Dr. Emmett continued, “The rescue workers will enter the aircraft shortly. Then we’ll have our hands full.” She thought a moment, then said, “Unless, of course, they’re all dead from smoke inhalation… which is possible since we’ve seen no one inside trying to get out, and no one has deployed any other emergency chute.”
Johnson nodded and asked her, “What’s the condition of the people you’ve got here?”
Dr. Emmett hesitated, then said, “Well, they all seem to have suffered some physical trauma… bleeding, contusions, and such, but no burns. All seem to have experienced smoke inhalation-”
“Their mental state, doctor,” Johnson interrupted. “Are they mentally well?”
Dr. Emmett considered a moment, then replied, “No. I thought at first it was just shock and smoke inhalation-”
Johnson interrupted again and said, “They experienced a period of oxygen deprivation when”-he pointed to the hole in the distant fuselage-“when that happened.”
She nodded. “I see.”
“Have you noticed any people who look mentally… normal?”
“I don’t think… Some of them are unconscious and I can’t-”
Johnson said, “We know there were at least three people who were not affected by the loss of oxygen-a man, a female flight attendant, and a young girl. There may also be another female flight attendant-Oriental-and another male passenger who is not… brain damaged.” He looked at Dr. Emmett and asked her, “Have you seen anyone like that?”
She shook her head. “No. No women in flight-attendant uniforms for sure, and no young girls. About ten men, but…” She glanced at her clipboard and said, “We’ve taken identification from those who had ID on them-”
“The men were named Berry and Stein.”
Dr. Emmett scanned her list, then shook her head. “No… but there was one man in a pilot’s uniform… name tag said McVary… He was not well.”
Johnson nodded to himself as his eyes scanned the people in the stretchers around him.
Dr. Emmett said, “Another gentleman was asking about those people.”
Johnson turned back to her and described Kevin Fitzgerald, right down to his tan.
Dr. Emmett nodded.
Johnson asked, “Where is that gentleman now?”
She shrugged and motioned around at the controlled chaos spread up and down the runway. “I’m sure I have other things to worry about.”
