Seabright didn't let anything show, not on the outside, just noted inwardly, in a little wrenched portion of his stomach, that this man thought he was dying. It was in his eyes. They stared back at him, pleading: Why me? Why me?
Seabright gave him a thin-lipped smile, then took Ali by the arm, led her to the window by the central bulkhead, and ran through the possibilities.
'What's his name?'
'Weber. German businessman. Travelling on his own.'
'Does he have any previous medical history?'
She shook her head. 'He says not. My guess is maybe high blood pressure — when he got on he had a florid complexion, was puffing and wheezing. But then we all were. It was hot.'
'There's no evidence of heart failure?'
'I'm a flight attendant, Captain,' she answered quickly, then cursed herself for letting it come out like that. 'Sorry. What I meant to say was, all I know is what I got from the training courses. I don't think there's any evidence of that. On the other hand, I've never seen anything like this before. One minute he was fine, a little red in the face, the next he's complaining of a headache, right out of the blue, pushing the button and asking for an aspirin. Before I could get it to him, this happens. It was just pouring.'
'Yes.' He could see that for himself. 'But it's slowing down now, isn't it?'
'Not much. He's been bleeding for thirty minutes now. I let it go on for a while without bothering you. But you saw the state he's in. He's lost a lot of blood. And he's still losing it. There's nothing…' She looked furious with herself. 'There's nothing I know how to do. Or anyone else we have on board, for that matter.'
'No.'
She looked at him and he knew what she was thinking: This was why you had a captain.
He ran through the options. His calmness, his reassurance, was as important to her as to the sick man behind him.
'I'll see if there's a diversion we can make. We're not exactly within spitting distance of a great hospital out here. Moscow might be the best bet, and that's maybe two hours out or more.'
'He can't go on like that for two hours.'
'This is a nosebleed, Ali. It has to stop sometime.'
She said nothing for a moment, just stared at him with an expression he found infuriating, as if there were something here he ought to understand better.
'Yes, sir. Just a nosebleed.'
Seabright wanted to get away from this, wanted to get back to the closed, secure cockpit and not look at the agony in her face.
'Is there something else?'
She didn't answer.
'Ali?'
'It's stupid. It's crazy.'
He could get bored by this, he thought. And he could get angry too. His forehead was throbbing. His temper was bubbling beneath the surface.
'If you've got something to say, say it.' She hesitated, not wanting to appear foolish. 'He's not the only one.' 'What?'
'When he started ringing for the aspirin he wasn't the only one. I've got three back in economy with nosebleeds. Not so bad as this. But bad enough, enough to scare them. Scare me. And more than I can count screaming about headaches. What's going on, sir?'
Seabright couldn't take this in. It made no sense. 'It's the crowd thing,' he said. 'They see one person doing it, they just follow.' Even as he said it, he knew it was feeble. 'No.' She wasn't just scared, she was angry too, and somehow this seemed to be directed at him.
'When it started, some of these people couldn't even see each other, sir. And it happened all at the same time. As if someone pressed a button or something and we all started hurting. And the blood too. Hell, I've got a headache.' She gazed straight into his face. 'Haven't you? Sir?' 'I have now,' Seabright lied quietly. Then thought about all the things he'd read and never really absorbed, about how an individual received more radiation in a three-hour plane journey at 37,000 feet than during an entire month working inside a nuclear power station. The German's face came back to him: big red gouts of blood, clotting, full of mucus, pouring down his face. But there was nothing in the records about a spontaneous event like this. Nothing he could remember.
He felt a sudden need to be back up front. 'You know what to do, Ali. Keep me posted.'
Then he marched back to the cockpit, not too quickly, not showing anything that any of the people in business or first, most of them looking a little more grim than usual today, could even begin to think of as panic.
You can't see inside a person's head, he thought, and added, as a postscript: Thank God for that. Because right then he was seeing exactly what would be waiting for him once he opened the security door.
He smiled at the front-row passengers in first, two sleek-looking Japanese moguls in dark silk suits, sipping their champagne, picking at little plates of caviar, both sweating uncomfortably. Then he pushed open the door, closed it quickly behind him, and stared at Jimmy Mulligan.
The little Irishman was slumped up against the yoke, just conscious, aware enough to look back at him with the same scared eyes he'd seen two minutes before. His face was red with blood, still pumping down onto his white short-sleeved officer's shirt, a steady liquid stream, thick and livid.
'Couldn't move,' Mulligan mumbled, his voice a drunken slur. 'Sorry, sir.'
Seabright stepped back through the door, picked up a half-full champagne bucket and a couple of cloth napkins, returned, and placed them in Mulligan's lap, then leaped into the left-hand seat and strapped on the shoulder harness.
'Clean yourself up, Jimmy. Get some water on your face.'
Seabright punched up the moving map display. He'd give it fifteen more minutes before making a decision, and if there was time, then Moscow it would be. But just in case, he pulled up the database of local airports, a string of names he didn't recognize. In a little under forty minutes they could be down somewhere that was supposed to have the facilities to handle this kind of emergency. If he was willing to take the risk on a backwoods airfield and a medical system that was probably primitive even by Russian standards.
He stared ahead, out of the wide-view screen of the cockpit, watching the empty land roll slowly underneath them, not a city, not even a small town in sight anywhere. And not a cloud either. It was so sunny and clear he felt he could see straight off the edge of the earth.
'Sir?'
Seabright had let his mind go blank, and mentally chided himself for the slip. Too much to do, too much to think about. He knew all the symptoms of the cockpit malaise that let your head drift off into nowhere just when the going got tough.
To his relief, Mulligan looked better. He wasn't slumped in his seat any more, his hands seemed steady. The bleeding was stopping. He'd be okay. Maybe the same thing was happening with the stricken German back in business.
"There was a call,' Mulligan said, and his eyes were still scared. Seabright wondered why he'd not seen that. 'Air Force One put out a Mayday. I got half of it, then I must have blacked out.'
'Shit.'
Seabright dialled the frequency and tried to listen through the white noise screaming through the speakers. There was half a voice there, then it stopped. From what little he heard, he could detect a low note of growing terror in the pilot's voice. They weren't the only ones trapped in this invisible storm in the sky.
'Air Force One,' Seabright yelled, 'we have your Mayday and will relay. What's the problem?'
The white noise diminished a little.
'Damned if I know,' said a shaky voice through the din. 'But we're losing systems here, we're losing everything, and…'
The sea of electronic screams came back.
'Sir!'
He'd almost forgotten about Mulligan. This situation was so bizarre.