“Roger. I have to release the missile to cut down on weight and drag.”
“Negative. That’s no longer possible. Too much air-and-sea traffic in your area now. We don’t want another… Do you understand?”
“Roger.” Matos thought that the possibility of hitting an aircraft or ship was very remote-absurdly remote-but without functioning radar he could not be sure, and with the way his luck was running he’d probably hit the tanker. But the damned missile was adding to his fuel problems. “Roger, I’ll hold the missile.” Matos locked his radio on and sat back. There were too many glitches today, too many goblins in the electronics. This was all possible, but not probable. Yet it had happened. This was the stuff that accidents were made of. Fifty percent human error, fifty percent equipment failure. How would they classify this monumental screwup? A little of both, and a lot of bad luck.
Matos worked his radar for a few minutes, but the results were negative. He alternated his attention between scanning the tops of the churning black clouds for aircraft and glancing down at his sinking fuel gauges. It was ironic, he thought, that he should wind up with the same problem that finally killed the Straton. Running out of gas. That was pure stupidity. He never should have let it go that far.
Thirty-one thousand feet. Peter Matos had used every trick he knew to keep the fuel flow as low as possible. Someday he’d learn to think about fuel first and everything else afterward. He remembered his flight instructor at Pensacola: Gentlemen, even the best fighter-bomber in the world can only go in one direction when the fuel runs out.
But even if the worst happened, he would be picked up at sea. He tried to settle down into a calm state of mind and anticipate the coming problem instead of reacting to them as they came.
He thought of Sloan briefly. There was no percentage in going to Captain Diehl and confessing. Sloan might be difficult to deal with, but he was all Navy. He anticipated problems and put the wheels in motion to take care of them before they became insoluble. He was cunning and even somewhat dishonest in his methods, but whatever he did, he did for his country, for the Phoenix program, for national security. And in the final analysis, no matter what else he did, James Sloan took care of his men.
John Berry sat motionless in the captain’s chair. An instant before the failure of the Straton’s four jet engines registered on the instrument gauges, it registered on John Berry’s senses, and he knew exactly what was happening to them. He felt the aircraft yaw slightly to the left, then felt the deceleration forces against his body.
Sharon Crandall shouted, “John! What’s happening? What’s happening?” The panel in front of her was a sudden mass of blinking lights and bouncing needles. The engine gauges in the center of the panel unwound rapidly.
A loud warning horn blared from somewhere in the panel and the cockpit was filled with its ominous, deep-pitched sound.
Linda Farley opened her mouth, and her long, piercing scream drowned out the sound of the horn.
In the lounge, the passengers began losing their precarious balance and fell to the floor or crashed against the bulkhead of the cockpit. Deep bellowing cries, punctuated by shrill screeching, penetrated the cabin.
Berry’s ears were filled with noise, and his eyes blurred from the blinking colored lights in front of him. For a few seconds, he was stunned. His stomach churned from the sinking sensation of the sudden descent. He felt his heart speed up and his mouth went dry. It was only the full realization of what they had done to him, and the anger it produced, that brought him back to his senses. He slammed his fist on the glare shield in front of him. “Bastards! Goddamned sons-of-bitches!”
His eyes ran wildly over the center instrument panel. Nearly every needle and light on the electronic display was active, but the messages they sent him were too complex to comprehend. He could see that the aircraft had lost all engine power. “Flame out in all four” was the expression, he remembered. He was also able to see that their electrical energy was falling off as each of the engine’s generators dropped out of the circuit. Berry took a few long, deep breaths and steadied his hands. He reached up and pushed the fuel valve emergency power switch back to its previous position, then reset the four fuel valves.
Crandall turned in her seat and shouted above the noise of the screaming girl and the blaring horn. “John! We’re going down! Put the switches back! Put them back! Please hurry!”
Berry looked up and yelled, “They’re back. Calm down. Just sit there. Linda! Be quiet.” Berry looked down at the panel and waited for some sign from it, or for some physical sensation that would indicate that the engines were producing power again. But nothing happened. Whatever he had done by moving the switches could not be undone by putting them back.
Crandall’s voice was choked with sobs. “John… John… do something… We’re going to crash…”
Berry was alternating between periods of trying to disassociate himself from his impending death and trying to find a way to avoid it. He made an effort to sort out the messages that the lights and instruments were telling him, but couldn’t keep his thoughts straight. Valve power. Fuel. Generator. He knew what was wrong, but he had no idea of what to do about it. It was only the image of a man in San Francisco typing out his death warrant that kept him from giving up.
Most of the cockpit lights had gone out when the generators shut down, but a few remained on, dimly powered by the aircraft’s batteries. Suddenly, the cockpit became darker and Berry heard a new noise that completely obliterated all the others. He turned and looked at the windshield. The Straton had entered the edge of the first thunderstorm, and the roar of rain and hail hammered against the windows and the roofline. The hail was so violent he thought the windshield might shatter. “Hold on! Hold on!” he shouted, but he knew no one could hear him.
The Straton began to bounce wildly, then slid dangerously to the right. The nose of the aircraft pitched up and down at the same time that its wings rolled on its axis and its tail yawed left and right.
Berry thought the aircraft might break apart if the violent, unstable flight condition kept up much longer. He saw Sharon Crandall hunched forward in her chair, holding on to the armrests. Linda Farley couldn’t get a grip on her chair and was lifted up and dropped, held down only by her lap belt.
The autopilot made the corrections in the flight and the Straton began to steady out, except for the bouncing caused by the air turbulence as it continued its powerless descent.
Berry tried to catch his breath and steady his shaking body. He turned back to the panel and scanned the small display of emergency instruments, which were all that remained after the generators failed. He was searching for anything that might spark his memory and set in motion a sequence of thoughts that would tell him what he must do. Circuit breakers. Berry thought that maybe the panel of circuit breakers on the right would be a clue-maybe one of the breakers was out. He flipped off his seat belt, stood up, and moved aft. He knew he had not much more time before the Straton hit the ocean.
Cutting through the sounds of the weather, the blare of the warning horn and the screaming from the lounge, he heard a voice shouting a single word over and over. He looked over at Sharon, who was turned in her seat, gesturing wildly at him. Her mouth kept forming a single word. Autopilot.
Berry looked back at the center instrument panel between the two seats. The amber disengage light now glowed brightly in the darkened cockpit. “Oh, God.” With the generators dropped off the circuits, he knew the autopilot was not getting the proper power to stay engaged. The last chance that they had for staying in control until the ditching was now gone. He shouted to Crandall, “Hold the wheel! Hold the wheel!”