The vent in the lavatory continued to send a steady stream of pressurized and heated air into the enclosed space. The pressure leaked out around the edges of the door, but it leaked slowly, slowly enough to keep a pressure of over two pounds per square inch on the door, sealing it shut. The pressure loss was also slow enough so that the atmosphere in the lavatory never rose above 31,000 feet.
John Berry lay crumpled on the floor, breathing irregularly. Five more minutes at the altitude of 31,000 feet would cause him permanent and irreversible brain damage. But the Straton’s autopilot was bringing the airliner down rapidly.
In the tourist cabin, the first-class cabin, the first-class lounge, and the cockpit, the passengers and crew of Trans-United’s Flight 52 had fallen, one by one, into a deep, merciful sleep; the level of oxygen being supplied to their brain cells had dropped too low for too long.
At 11:08 A.M., six minutes after the Phoenix missile had passed through the Straton 797, the airliner reached 18,000 feet. The autopilot noted the altitude and began a gradual recovery from the emergency descent. The speed brakes were automatically retracted, followed by a slow and steady autothrottle power advance to the four engines.
In the cockpit three figures sat slumped over, strapped to their seats. The two control wheels moved in unison, the four throttles advanced, the ailerons made slight and continuous adjustments. The aircraft was flying nicely. But this was no ghost ship, no Flying Dutchman; it was a modern aircraft whose autopilot had taken charge as it was told to do. Everything would be fine, at least for a while.
As the autopilot’s electronic circuitry sensed the proximity of the desired altitude, it leveled out the giant airliner and established it at an altitude of 11,000 feet and a slow, fuel-saving speed of 340 knots. The air-pressurization system had automatically disengaged as the aircraft sank into the thicker atmosphere. The fresh sea breezes of clean Pacific air filled the cabin of Trans-United’s Flight 52.
A few minutes after leveling off, the first passengers began to awaken from their unnatural sleep.
3
Lieutenant Peter Matos flew his F-18 fighter on a straight and level course. Reluctantly, he pushed his radio-transmit button. “Homeplate, this is Navy three-four-seven.” He continued to hold down on the transmit button so he could not receive a reply from the Nimitz until he was ready to deal with it. His mind whirled with conflict. Something was still not quite right. Finally, he slid his finger off the button, which freed the channel so he could receive their reply.
“Roger, Navy three-four-seven. We have also registered the intercept,” Petty Officer Kyle Loomis answered. Matos knew that the carrier had been equipped to monitor the missile, and that the men in electronics Room E-334 had watched the needle that registered the sudden end-of-transmission from the AIM-63X as it had impacted against the target, destroying its transmitter.
“Navy three-four-seven, this is Homeplate.”
The voice in Matos’s earphones was unmistakably that of Commander Sloan. Even though a special encoding voice scrambler was being used to prevent anyone else from monitoring their channel, the deep and measured qualities of Sloan’s voice came through. Matos discovered that he had suddenly braced himself, as if he had run across Sloan in one of the Nimitz ’s below-decks corridors.
“We are receiving conflicting signals,” Sloan said.
Matos sensed a growing anger at the edges of Sloan’s voice. He had never personally experienced a run-in with the Commander, but too many of the other pilots had. Sloan’s wrath was legendary. Don’t get jumpy, Matos said to himself. It’s just an electronic echo that makes him sound that way. Keep your mind on the job.
“Our monitors agree with your report of missile impact. But we’re still monitoring the target drone,” Sloan continued. “Its condition reads as steady. That conflicts with the Phoenix’s readout. Do you have the engagement area in good radar resolution?”
Matos slumped lower in the cockpit seat to the limits that his cinched-up harness would allow. His heart sank with the words, and he could taste the bile from the pit of his stomach. Christ Almighty, Mother of God. He moistened his lips and cleared his throat before pressing the transmit button. “Roger, Homeplate. This is three-four-seven. I’m beginning to get the impact zone in good resolution. Stand by.”
James Sloan had no intention of being put off, even momentarily, by one of his subordinates. “Three-four-seven, execute a radar lock-on with the Phoenix,” he transmitted. “The test missile must have failed before it engaged the target. That would explain why we still read the target drone.”
“Roger, Homeplate.” But Matos knew that the Phoenix had hit something. He had watched the radar tracks converge. He also knew that the Nimitz ’s shipboard radar could not see the impact area. The carrier was hundreds of miles astern of his F-18, which put it out of radar range of the test site. All that the carrier people would be able to tell from the equipment in the electronics room was that there was no longer any radio signal coming from the test missile, and that the target drone continued, inexplicably, to send a loud-and-clear transmission.
Matos huddled over his radar screen. The target had maintained a steady course for a short while after the intercept. Matos turned on two cockpit switches, then made an adjustment to the radar. He could now plot both the target drone and the Phoenix’s altitude losses on his vertical display board. Beyond the target was the faint radar reflection that was the remains of the AIM-63X Phoenix missile. It was visible for half a minute, and Matos tracked it continuously as it fell into the sea. “Homeplate, this is three-four-seven. The test missile has dropped into the ocean. I am now tracking the target drone. I am locked to it in the vertical scan. It is descending. Altitude is approximately fifty-one thousand feet. Descent rate registers as twelve thousand feet per minute.”
“Okay,” Sloan answered, “that’s good. Our readout still shows the target as level at sixty-two thousand. The target’s transmitting equipment must have been damaged by the impact. Maybe the Phoenix just grazed the drone.” With no warhead, Sloan knew that complete destruction would require a full-face hit. “Continue to track, and we’ll consider our shipboard monitors as dysfunctional.”
“Roger.” But something else bothered Matos. The target was not falling very rapidly. His own jet could dive faster than the target was going down. For what should have been a smashed target drone tumbling through the sky, it was not performing as expected.
Data is missing, he thought. The only reason it made no sense was that he was operating without all the information. Garbage in, garbage out, as they said in the computer classes at Pensacola. Don’t jump to wild conclusions. Leave the emotional responses to civilians. Military technicians waited for the data. Technology was really the science of hindsight. When they corrected and analyzed all the material, they would easily discover what had made this test seem so bizarre.
Matos was no longer apprehensive. There was something about rote procedures that was calming and comforting. As long as he stuck to the technician’s routines, then he could push his fears away. The blips on his radar had again become no more than game pieces, and the entire maneuver had taken on the aura of electronic chess.
The impact has distorted the drone’s shape, Matos thought. It’s been bent into some sort of low-drag lifting body. Flattened out into a metal parachute that has already reached its terminal velocity. Wilder things have happened. Matos felt that Commander Sloan’s idea that the test missile had only nicked the target drone was probably right. That would explain how and why the drone’s misleading signals were still being routinely sent to the Nimitz.