Metz called out. “I have to finish this business with you and report to my people.”
Johnson turned his head. “Right.” He turned back to Miller. “Do me a favor. Go to the employees’ lounge-no, to the executives’ lounge-and while things are still fresh in your mind write a full report of everything that happened before I arrived. Make sure the times and actions tally with our estimates, of course. When you finish, report back here and give the report to me and me only.”
Miller nodded.
“Did you fill in the Straton’s updates?”
Miller nodded again.
“Good. When you come back you can resume your duties here in the communications room. See you later.” He stepped back, then closed and bolted the door just as the data-link bell sounded. “Oh, Christ!”
The data-link began to print.
Metz wiped his face with a handkerchief. “That was too close.”
Johnson was visibly shaken. “Wayne, just keep out of this. I understand what’s got to be done, and I don’t need any help from you. In fact, you can leave.”
“I’m going nowhere until that aircraft is down.”
Johnson walked over to the data-link and sat down. He glanced out into the dispatch office, then quickly pulled the message off and put it in his lap.
Metz looked down and they read it at the same time.
FROM FLIGHT 52: IMPERATIVE YOU HAVE QUALIFIED PILOT BEGIN TO GIVE ME INSTRUCTIONS ON FLIGHT CONTROLS-NAVIGATION- APPROACH-LANDING. BERRY.
Johnson nodded. “He’s very sharp.” He turned to Metz. “Wayne, do you feel anything for this poor bastard? Can’t you admire his guts?”
Metz looked offended. “Of course I can admire him. I’m not completely inhuman. But… didn’t you once say that you were in Vietnam? Didn’t you ever see a commander sacrifice a few good men to save the whole unit?”
“Enough times to wonder if the good men weren’t worth the rest of the unit. Enough times, too, to wonder if it wasn’t the commander’s own ass he was trying to save.” Johnson looked up through the glass panels, then down at the keyboard. “I’m going to give Berry a course change that will put them on a heading for Hawaii.”
“Why?”
“Because he’ll never find Hawaii. He’ll run out of fuel in about six hours. He’ll go down at sea looking for Hawaii.”
“Can’t you do something more positive?”
“Too tricky. We’ll try this.”
Metz suspected that Johnson saw a fine-but to him meaningless-line between actually giving information that would cause the Straton to crash and information that would result in its crash several hours from now. “But he’ll keep transmitting. We can’t stay in this goddamned room and guard this machine for six hours.”
“No, we can’t. After he takes up the new heading and stays on it for a while, I’ll short out the data-link with a screwdriver through a rear access panel. Then we’ll call in a technician and leave. The link won’t be fixed for hours.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’ll take over an hour just to get a technician here. Hours, sometimes days, to get parts. These machines are special technology. Never used for vital communications-so it takes a while to get them fixed.”
“What if Berry, when he loses contact, turns from the Hawaii heading and heads back toward the coast?”
Johnson shook his head. “He won’t. We’ll tell him that the air-and-sea rescue units will be intercepting him on his new heading, and that the military and civilian airports in Hawaii are expecting him. He won’t want to throw that chance away.”
Metz nodded. “Can’t he change channels on his data-link?”
“They tell me the different channels are for the relay stations only. There’s a computer somewhere that automatically sends all the Trans-United messages to this unit.” Johnson pointed at the data-link machine in front of him.
“I see,” said Metz, although he didn’t see, not exactly. It was, as they said in business school, all PFM-pure fucking magic-and the details of how and why didn’t interest him in the slightest. Metz looked up at the Pacific chart. In a vast expanse of blue, a few green dots represented the islands of Hawaii. He spoke to Johnson as he stared at the map. “What if he finds Hawaii?”
“With the heading I give him, he won’t come close. He’ll be lost, alone, with no radio, a damaged aircraft, no idea of how to fly the aircraft, no fuel reserve, and no one looking for him. If he survives all that, Mr. Metz, he sure deserves to live.”
Johnson began to type the new heading.
John Berry watched the small piece of one-way glass in the cockpit door.
The passengers of Flight 52 moved up the staircase of the Straton like fish or birds on some perverse and incomprehensible migration. Or, thought Berry, like air and water that moves according to the laws of physics to fill a sudden vacuum. They filled the lounge and wandered aimlessly over the thick blue carpet, around the brightly upholstered furniture-men, women, and children-ready to seep into the next empty place that they could fill. Berry felt comforted by this analogy. It denied the possibility that they were acting according to a plan, that they were looking for the cockpit.
Berry made a quick count of the passengers in the lounge. About fifty now. If they all suddenly moved toward the door of the cockpit, and if one of them pulled it open rather than pressed against it, then he, Sharon, and Linda could not stop them from flooding the cockpit.
He thought again of the autopilot master switch. Anything was preferable to the nightmare of sharing the cockpit with dozens of them.
He noted McVary, sitting in a lounge chair facing the cockpit door, staring hard at it. Berry placed his fingers around the nub of the broken latch. He had very little to grab. He pulled the door shut a few more inches, but it sprang open again.
Berry turned and scanned the cockpit for something that would secure the door, but could find nothing. There was a way to do it, he was sure, but his thoughts, which had stayed so calm for so long, were beginning to ramble; fatigue was dulling his reason. “Damn it! Sharon, we’ve got to keep this door closed.”
She turned in her chair and looked at the door. Forms and shadows passed by the opening between the edge of the door and the jamb. “Why don’t I go into the lounge and put my back to the door? I’ll take the fire extinguisher. They won’t be able-”
“No! Forget it. We’ve had enough heroes and martyrs already. If we go…” he looked at Linda Farley, sitting quietly in one of the extra cockpit chairs “… we all go together. No more sacrifices. No splitting up. We’re not losing any more of us.”
Crandall nodded, then turned back and stared out the windshield.
For a long time there was a silence in the cockpit, broken only by the dull murmur of electronics and the soft, susurrant sound of someone brushing by the door.
The alerting bell sounded.
Berry moved beside Crandall’s chair, and they both looked down at the video display.
TO FLIGHT 52: WE HAVE ACCURATELY DETERMINED YOUR POSITION. CLOSEST AIRPORT HAWAII. TURN AIRCRAFT TO HEADING OF 240 DEGREES FOR VECTOR TO HAWAII. AIR AND SEA RESCUE WILL INTERCEPT YOU ON NEW HEADING. AIRPORTS IN HAWAII WAITING FOR YOU WITH EMERGENCY EQUIPMENT. ACKNOWLEDGE. SAN FRANCISCO HQ.
Sharon Crandall clutched Berry’s arm. “They know where we are.” She turned her head to him and smiled. “We’ll be in Hawaii…” She looked up at him. Something was wrong. “John…?”
Berry shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I don’t know.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m not sure.” He reread the data-link’s display screen. “I’m not comfortable with this.”
“Comfortable?” She looked at him for a few seconds. She tried to keep the edge of annoyance out of her voice as she spoke. “How in God’s name can we be comfortable with anything out here? What are you saying?”