Eddie Deakin had himself under rigid control, but he was a boiling kettle with the lid jammed on, a volcano waiting to blow. He sweated constantly, his guts ached and he could hardly sit still. He was managing to do his job, but only just.
He was due to go off duty at two a.m., British time. As the end of his shift approached, he faked one more set of fuel figures. Earlier he had understated the plane’s consumption, to give the impression that there was just enough fuel to complete the journey so that the captain would not turn back. Now he overstated, to compensate, so when his replacement, Mickey Finn, came on duty and read the fuel gauges there would be no discrepancy. The Howgozit Curve would show fuel consumption fluctuating wildly, and Mickey would wonder why; but Eddie would say it was due to the stormy weather. Anyway, Mickey was the least of his worries. His deep anxiety, the one that held his heart in the cold grip of fear, was that the plane would run out of fuel before it reached Newfoundland.
The aircraft did not have the regulation minimum. The regulations left a safety margin, of course; but safety margins were there for a reason. This flight no longer had an extra reserve of fuel for emergencies such as engine failure. If something went wrong, the plane would plunge into the stormy Atlantic Ocean. It could not splash down safely in mid-ocean: it would sink within a few minutes. There would be no survivors.
Mickey came up to the flight cabin a few minutes before two, looking fresh and young and eager. “We’re running very low,” Eddie said right away. “I’ve told the captain.”
Mickey nodded noncommittally and picked up the flashlight. His first duty on taking over was to make a visual inspection of all four engines.
Eddie left him to it and went down to the passenger deck. The first officer, Johnny Dott, the navigator, Jack Ashford, and the radio operator, Ben Thompson, followed him down the stairs as their replacements arrived. Jack went to the galley to make a sandwich. The thought of food nauseated Eddie. He got a cup of coffee and went to sit in number 1 compartment.
When he was not working he had nothing to take his mind off the thought of Carol-Ann in the hands of her kidnappers.
It was just after nine p.m. in Maine now. It would be dark. Carol-Ann would be weary and dispirited at best. She tended to fall asleep much earlier since she got pregnant. Would they give her somewhere to lie down? She would not sleep tonight, but perhaps she could rest her body. Eddie just hoped that the thought of bedtime did not put ideas into the heads of the hoodlums who were guarding her....
Before his coffee was cold, the storm hit in earnest.
The ride had been bumpy for several hours, but now it became really rough. It was like being on a ship in a storm. The huge aircraft was like a boat on the waves, rising slowly, then dropping fast, hitting the trough with a thump and climbing again, rolling and tossing from side to side as the winds caught it. Eddie sat on a bunk and braced himself with his feet on the comer post. The passengers began to wake up, ring for stewards and rush to the bathroom. The stewards, Nicky and Davy, who had been dozing in number 1 compartment with the off-duty crew, buttoned their collars and put on their jackets, then hurried off to answer the bells.
After a while Eddie went to the galley for more coffee. As he got there, the door of the men’s room opened and Tom Luther came out, looking pale and sweaty. Eddie stared at him contemptuously. He felt an urge to take the man by the throat, but he fought it down.
“Is this normal?” Luther said in a scared voice.
Eddie felt not a shred of sympathy. “No, this is not normal,” he replied. “We ought to fly around the storm, but we don’t have enough fuel.”
“Why not?”
“We’re running out.”
Luther was scared. “But you told us you would turn back before the point of no return!”
Eddie was more worried than Luther, but he took grim satisfaction in the other man’s distress. “We should have turned back, but I faked the figures. I have a special reason for wanting to complete this flight on schedule, remember?”
“You crazy bastard!” Luther said despairingly. “Are you trying to kill us all?”
“I’d rather take the chance of killing you than leave my wife with your friends.”
“But if we all die, that won’t help your wife!”
“I know.” Eddie realized he was taking a dreadful risk, but he could not bear the thought of leaving Carol-Ann with the kidnappers for another day. “Maybe I am crazy,” he said to Luther.
Luther looked ill. “But this plane can land on the sea, right?”
“Wrong. We can only splash down on calm water. If we went down in the mid-Atlantic in a storm like this, the plane would break up in seconds.”
“Oh, God,” Luther moaned. “I should never have got on this plane.”
“You should never have messed with my wife, you bastard,” Eddie said through his teeth.
The plane lurched crazily, and Luther turned and staggered back into the bathroom.
Eddie stepped through number 2 compartment and into the lounge. The cardplayers were strapped into their seats and hanging on tight. Glasses, cards and a bottle rolled around the carpet as the aircraft swayed and shuddered. Eddie looked along the aisle. After the initial panic the passengers were calming down. Most had returned to their bunks and strapped themselves in, realizing that was the best way to ride the bumps. They lay with their curtains open, some looking cheerfully resigned to the discomfort, others clearly scared to death. Everything that was not tied down had fallen to the floor, and the carpet was a litter of books, spectacles, dressing gowns, false teeth, change, cuff links, and all the other things people kept beside their beds at night. The rich and the glamorous of the world suddenly looked very human, and Eddie suffered an agonizing stab of guilty conscience: were all these people going to die because of him?
He returned to his seat and strapped himself in. There was nothing he could do now about the fuel consumption, and the only way he could help Carol-Ann was make sure the emergency splashdown went according to plan.
As the plane shuddered on through the night, he tried to suppress his seething anger and run over his scenario.
He would be on duty when they took off from Shediac, the last port before New York. He would immediately begin to jettison fuel. The gauges would show this, of course. Mickey Finn might notice the loss, if he should come up to the flight deck for any reason; but by that time, twenty-four hours after leaving Southampton, off-duty crew were not interested in anything but sleep. And it was not likely that any other crew member would look at the fuel gauges, especially on the short leg of the flight, when fuel consumption was no longer critical. He loathed the thought of deceiving his colleagues, and for a moment his rage boiled up again. He balled his fists, but there was nothing to hit. He tried to concentrate on his plan.
As the plane approached the place where Luther wanted to splash down, Eddie would jettison more fuel, judging it finely so they would almost have run out when they reached the right area. At that point he would tell the captain that they were out of fuel and had to come down.
He would have to monitor their route carefully. They did not follow exactly the same course every time: navigation was not that precise. But Luther had selected his rendezvous cleverly. It was clearly the best place within a wide radius for a flying boat to splash down, so even if they were some miles off course, the captain was sure to head there in an emergency.
If there was time, the captain would ask—angrily—how come Eddie had not noticed the dramatic loss of fuel before it became critical. Eddie would have to answer that all the gauges must have got stuck, a wildly unlikely notion. He ground his teeth. His colleagues relied on him to perform the crucial task of monitoring the aircraft’s fuel consumption. They trusted him with their lives. They would know he had let them down.
A fast launch would be waiting in the area and would approach the Clipper. The captain would think they had come to help. He might invite them aboard, but failing that Eddie would open the door to them. Then the gangsters would overpower the F.B.I, man, Ollis Field, and rescue Frankie Gordino.
They would have to be quick. The radio operator would have sent out a Mayday before the plane touched water, and the Clipper was big enough to be seen from some distance, so other vessels would approach before too long. There was even a chance the Coast Guard might be quick enough to interfere with the rescue. That could ruin it for Luther’s gang, Eddie thought; and for a moment he felt hopeful—then he remembered that he wanted Luther to succeed, not fail.
He just could not get into the habit of hoping that the criminals would get what they wanted. He racked his
