The air conditioning and ventilating system continued to work properly as it purged the airliner of the last traces of smoke, floating dust and odors from the explosion ten minutes earlier. Without taking his eyes off the flight panel, Captain Drew O'Brien spoke to the woman who occupied the copilot's seat. "Get the next chart out. From the case on your right."
"This black case?"
"Yes."
"Okay." Janet Holbrook fumbled with the leather cover, opened it, then took out a stack of charts. She rifled through them silently, once, then twice, before she finally located the next chart in the series. Calm yourself down. Do things slowly, step by step. You won't be any help if you make mistakes. "I found it. I'll tune the next frequency."
O'Brien did not answer. Instead, he moved his eyes from his flight instruments to the white Lear that flew a short distance ahead. "We're too damn low," O'Brien mumbled as he wrestled with the airliner's flight controls to stay lined up with the more maneuverable smaller aircraft. "That insane maniac is going to kill us."
"Watch those hills ahead!" Janet sat up higher in the copilot's seat, her eyes wide as she watched the tree-lined rise in the terrain loom in front of them. She shot a quick glance at the radio altimeter, which showed their height above the ground. A bare 200 feet. She would not have flown anywhere near this low, not even in her single-engine Piper.
"I see the hill." O'Brien began to ease the airliner slightly higher. "Maybe he'll hit the ridge," the Captain said hopefully. But even as he spoke the Lear began to rise also, until it, too, was slightly higher than the elevated terrain. The ridge line flashed beneath them at over 400 miles an hour, which changed the visual images of the trees, the open grassy fields, the dusty country roads into nothing but indistinct blurs of motion and color. "This guy is getting more daring as time goes on. Everytime we cross a hill, he crosses it a little lower." O'Brien glanced at his panel clock. 9:41. They had been at this low-altitude madness for nearly fifteen minutes.
"Maybe someone on the ground will spot us."
"I doubt it." As O'Brien spoke, a truck popped into view as they sped across the next line of trees. "Look." It was a milk truck, its polished stainless-steel body glistening in the mid-morning sun, its blue cab shining brightly. At least it looked like a milk truck. But at this altitude and speed, it came and went too quickly for either of them to be certain. "No one will see us long enough to be sure of what they saw. They'll guess we're a military jet on maneuvers, if they bother to guess at all." O'Brien nodded toward the Lear ahead of them. "This guy has obviously picked this route for a very good reason. It's very rural, there's very little chance of us being spotted. I doubt that he'll take us over any populated areas."
Just then the Lear banked sharply to the left, held its steep angle for a brief moment, then quickly rolled level on a new heading. "Son-of-a-bitch." O'Brien wrestled with the DC-9's control wheel to follow as best he could. He could hear the shouts and squeals from the passengers in the cabin as he frightened them even more with the abrupt maneuvers. "See what I mean?" O'Brien said once the airliner had been leveled and put back in formation behind the Lear again. "Now we're headed south. He's avoiding some area to our right."
"I understand." Janet looked at the horizon, where a slight haziness in the otherwise clear sky showed that a populated area lay off the right wing tip. "Lancaster," she said as she tapped the radio gauge in front of her. The radio she had tuned a few minutes before had come to life. "We're due east of the Lancaster station right now."
"Okay. Mark the bearing and time on your chart. At this altitude we'll lose radio reception very soon. Try to figure where the next station will be if we hold this course. Tune in stations on either side of where you think we're going. That's the only way we can verify where he's taking us."
"Right." Janet picked up a pencil and made a mark on the chart. She resisted the temptation to ask the Captain what good that information would do them. Knowing where they were was not their problem — getting away from a homicidal madman was.
"Captain."
"What?" O'Brien glanced over his shoulder at the man who had entered the cockpit.
"My name is James Westcott. I'm a New York attorney. A group of people in the cabin have asked me to come up. They want to know what, exactly, is going on. They have a right to know."
"They sure do," O'Brien replied, his voice rising. "We all have a damn right to know. I have a right to know!" His reply had ended at nearly a shout. He paused for a moment to calm himself. O'Brien knew it was the man in the Learjet he was angry at, not this passenger. "Didn't the stewardess brief everyone? I passed on the information that..."
"Don't be ridiculous. None of this is acceptable. We've bought a ticket on your airline and we expect to be protected. There must be other alternatives."
"I'm open to suggestions." O'Brien fed continuous inputs into the airliner's control wheel, to keep them in proper formation behind the Lear.
"How can we be sure this terrorist, as you've called him, is telling the truth? How can we be sure there's a bomb onboard? He might be bluffing."
"I've got two dead crew members who'd swear that he isn't." O'Brien regretted his choice of words but he, too, could hardly control his mounting tension. He could imagine how bad things must be in the cabin. At least in the cockpit there were details to be attended with and a general sense — no matter how inaccurate — that control of the flight was still his. In the cabin, the passengers could only sit and wait. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that like it sounded. But we have no alternatives. We've got to assume that if he's managed to plant one bomb, then he's managed to plant two."
"I agree with the Captain," Janet added. She looked with obvious dislike at the passenger standing between her and the Captain.
"Thank you," O'Brien answered sincerely. He was glad that his reasoning made sense to at least one other person besides himself. He wondered if he should also mention the other thought that occurred to him. He decided that he should, that this lawyer was right — the passengers did have a right to know every alternative, no matter how remote or ludicrous. "As I see it, the only chance to escape is to try to land before the Lear pilot realizes what we've done. A fast landing — a crash landing, actually. I've been looking for an airport, even a small one, to see if there was enough time to put it down on a runway before the Lear pilot realized I did. But this guy must be keeping us away from airports on purpose. I imagine that's one of the reasons we've done so many turns."
"I see." The attorney paused, wrinkled his nose, then peeked out the windshield. "What about an open field, a meadow?" he asked. He gestured down at the plush green pasture that loomed ahead. Within a few seconds that meadow had passed beneath them.
"Isn't crash-landing an airplane of this size very risky?" Janet asked. From the tone of her voice both men could tell that she already knew that it was.
"Sure is. We might get away with it, but the odds are low."
"Then I don't think it's an acceptable idea," Westcott said. He spoke as if the idea had not been his originally. "You're saying that if the bomb didn't get us, then the crash landing might."
"Exactly." O'Brien nodded in agreement. He took one hand off the control wheel to wipe away the growing bead of perspiration from his forehead.
"What about air traffic control? Aren't they aware of what's happened to us? Aren't they tracking us on radar?"
"No." O'Brien did not want to take the time to provide this man with a short course in airline flying, but he felt that he had little choice. "Air traffic control called us continuously during the descent, but I had been instructed by the Lear not to answer — the Lear pilot said he was monitoring our frequencies. I couldn't take the chance."
"I see." Westcott made a mental note of that fact. It might come in handy for the eventual lawsuit against the airline. "How about radar?"
"We're too low. Below radar coverage. Air traffic control must think that we've crashed. A collision with the Lear, most likely."
"And they'll conduct a search in the area where we were last seen on radar?" Westcott steadied himself with his hand against the cockpit bulkhead to help ride out the bumps that had begun to bounce the airliner around.
"Yes, that would be my guess."
"By the way," Westcott said. "There are no doctors onboard. None that will admit to it at least. The body of that dead pilot was put in the rear."
"How is that stewardess?"
"The hysterical one? She's calmed down, from what I can tell. The other stewardess is attending to her." Westcott decided to say no more since the behavior of the crew could be a focal point in his lawsuit.
"Okay. Good." O'Brien hadn't known any of the crew on this trip, not even the copilot. That, in itself, wasn't unusual — Trans-American had grown so large in the last several years that it was routine for members of a crew to be total strangers. That, perhaps, had made the death of his copilot Frank and the stewardess slightly easier for him. O'Brien couldn't recall the copilot's last name, and he hadn't remembered the names of any of the three stewardesses after they had first met during check-in for the flight.
But the facts surrounding their hijacking were not so easy to take. All of them were negative. Trans-American Flight 255 would soon be more than a hundred miles from where the search for them would be conducted. It might take days before anyone realized that they hadn't crashed. The Lear pilot had done his homework well on this one. "We're out of options," O'Brien said in a low voice. "Wherever the Lear leads us, we've got to follow. Maybe we'll be able to do something to escape after we land."
"Maybe." James Westcott sounded even less convinced than O'Brien had. "I'll give the stewardess the information you've given me." He wrinkled his nose again, then looked back at the Captain. The bouncing from the turbulence had increased measurably and Westcott swayed from side to side in the narrow cockpit passageway as the airliner yawed continuously back and forth. "I only hope that your airline plans to pay the ransom demand very quickly, so we can get out of this mess."
O'Brien ignored the lawyer's statement. He took a deep breath, then spoke to Westcott without looking back. "Have the stewardess brief the rest of the passengers with the information I've just given you." O'Brien waved his hand to indicate that he no longer wanted to talk. The man behind him had become an unnecessary irritation and, besides, talk itself had become a monumental waste of time. All they could do was follow that madman in the Lear to whatever landing site he had picked out.
<>
"How do you feel?" Takeo Kusaka asked his wife.
"Fine," she responded. "The motion does not upset me."
"Good." Kusaka's own stomach lurched repeatedly from the constant jarring motion the high-speed flight at such a low altitude had inflicted on the airliner. He was glad that his wife, who generally did not enjoy travel of any sort, was taking the discomfort so well. Kusaka turned and glanced again at the young boy across the aisle. He sat hunched forward in his seat and continued to cry softly, his big tears rolling slowly down his cheeks. "This is a very difficult situation," Kusaka said to his wife. "For all of us."
"What does he cry over?" Iva Kusaka asked in a whisper as she noticed the young boy across the aisle.
Kusaka shook his head in sympathy. "He cries with concern for his dog." Kusaka had switched back to Japanese again, in violation of his own rule that the three of them would speak only English on this trip across the United States. "The animal is below, in one of those cages in the cargo area." Kusaka tapped his foot on the floor to indicate where he meant. "He is concerned that the dog will be met with harm."
"I understand."
"The dog has an unusual name. Aquarius. I do not know the meaning of the word."
"I do not know the meaning either." Iva spoke solely in English, to honor the initial request of her husband. "Perhaps it is simply a name."
"No. When I asked the boy, he told me that he, too, was an Aquarius."
"Then it must mean something."
"Yes." Kusaka had slipped back into English. "Remind me to ask again later. To clarify."
"I will."
Kusaka looked beyond his wife and toward his assistant, who occupied the window seat of the row they sat in. "Think how bad this must be for our pilot," he said, in order to acquire his assistant's attention. "It is a most difficult time for him. He must make decisions that will affect us all, yet it is a routine very far from the ordinary."
"Our situation is more difficult," Shojiro Ichiki responded. His voice was slightly too sharp to be in reply to the President of their company. But Ichiki had been gripped by a fear so intense that he hardly knew what he had said. "We must sit and wait. Yet we have no idea what we wait for."
"We wait for a ransom demand," Iva Kusaka answered before her husband could speak. She purposely paused for a moment to methodically adjust the brim of the black hat she wore over her silver-gray hair, then she faced Ichiki again. "But regardless of the demands that the hijackers insist on, we will undoubtedly be the pawns." Iva Kusaka gestured broadly around the cabin of the airliner. "We will be kept safe because, without us, all this is pointless."
"How can you be so certain?"
"She is right," Kusaka answered. He looked closely at Ichiki's thin, owlish face — his fears seemed to have tightened the muscles around his neck and jaw and that made him appear even more gaunt, haggard, drawn. Ichiki's eyes — eyes which darted back and forth in even the best of times — were in continuous motion as he attempted to look everywhere and at everyone simultaneously. "How are you feeling?"
"Not well," Ichiki fondled the airsickness bag in the pouch in front of him. He expected that quite soon he might have to use it. "I am not accustomed to the turbulence." The slight sickly-sweet, pungent odor of vomit permeated the cabin. Others had already succumbed to the unrelenting jolts, and the smell made Ichiki's condition worse.
"Do not fight the sense of motion, attempt to flow with it. Remain relaxed." Kusaka paused to allow his advice to be heeded. "There is nothing for us to do but remain in a tranquil state. There is no use in producing anxiety. It will serve no purpose."
"Others seem not to feel that way." Ichiki gestured to a young man who had gotten up from his seat at the front of the cabin. Kusaka and his wife looked toward where Ichiki pointed.
"Damn it!" the young man shouted. "We can't just sit here! We've got to do something!" The young man stood awkwardly in the aisle, his body swaying from side to side. He turned to face the people in the cabin, but his eyes were aimed high over their heads toward some random spot at the rear of the airliner. "We can't just wait! We've got to do something! We'll die if we don't."
A barrage of responses erupted from the passengers. Some shouted in agreement, others yelled at him to sit down. Several began to cry loudly, or make irrational, angry sounds that were an odd mixture produced by the tidal wave of conflicting emotions that flooded over them.
"Sir! Please sit down!" Stewardess Laura Lingren rushed up from where she had been comforting airsick passengers at the rear of the cabin. She grabbed the young man by the arm. He seemed not to notice her. "Sit down, please! That's what the Captain said we should do." She was nearly in tears herself, and the absurd actions of this man weren't helping her to keep her self-control. "Sit down!" She tried to tug him back toward his seat, but the man would not move.
"Let me handle this."
Laura turned. An elderly man stood in the aisle behind her. His thinning hair was pushed sidewards across his head. His face was round and puffy. He wore a blue-checkered sports jacket and a bow tie. "Sir, you too. Please sit down."
The old man smiled graciously, as if the stewardess had said nothing. "Allow me." He then gently nudged her aside. The old man stepped forward to be next to the young man. A steady stream of words continued to pour out of the young man, but few of the phrases made any sense. The young man appeared to be on the verge of either violence or tears. "Wait. Hold on, buddy. I've got a question for you. Can you hear me? Can you help me out?"
The younger man stopped his ranting. He looked puzzled. "I... didn't hear... who are..."
"You hear me? That's great. What sort of business are you in?"
The younger man slowly shook his head, bewildered. "I don't see..." He paused, ran his hand through his hair, then moistened his lips. "I don't understand. I don't see what difference that can make."
The older man smiled broadly. "Trust me." He patted the young man on the shoulder in a friendly gesture. "Now, what sort of business are you in?"
The young man didn't know what to say. "Real estate," he he stammered.
"Where?"
"Chicago."
"You sell homes?"
"No. Very few homes. Mostly commercial things. Factories, office buildings."
"I see."
"Listen," the young man said, his voice now lower than it had been, "I still don't see what difference this makes. None of this is important."
"My name is Benny Randolf. I'm a musician." Randolf stuck out his hand. He kept it out in front of him until, finally, the real estate man had no choice but to shake hands with him.
"Bishop," the young man replied automatically. He shuffled his feet and began to appear self-conscious as he realized for the first time that all eyes were on him. "Roy Bishop."
"Fine, Roy." Benny Randolf turned his body so both he and Bishop faced the greatest portion of the occupied seats in the cabin. Each of the men held one hand tightly to the aircraft's overhead luggage rail to steady themselves in the jolting, bouncing turbulence. "Roy Bishop here is in real estate," Randolf announced loudly. "Commercial real estate. He says it's not important." Randolf made an exaggerated gesture, a combination of a shrug and a wince. A man sitting in the middle of the cabin laughed. "Is there much of a market for unimportant buildings in Chicago, Roy?" Benny Randolf asked, a look of astonishment on his face. Several others in the cabin began to laugh. "Wait. I'm serious. This is something I've been wanting to know for quite some time." Benny's voice was high-pitched but it carried well through the airliner's cabin, and its tone and timbre added to the effect he attempted to create. "Are these unimportant buildings that you sell — are they old buildings or just short buildings?"
An expectant silence fell over the people in the cabins. Some were quiet because they waited for Benny Randolf to make more of his nonsensical question, while others waited to see what Bishop's response would be. After what seemed an eternity, Bishop raised his hands in front of him. His demeanor had changed completely. His face was bright red. He was self-conscious and embarrassed. "Okay," he said meekly. "I get the point. You're right. I've calmed myself down." He paused for a second, then added softly. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gotten carried away."
"Nothing to be sorry about." Benny slapped him on the back. "We're all in this together. Each of us is frightened. I bet that's what these hijackers are betting on. Let's fool them. Let's keep our wits. It's bound to help, no matter what they have in mind." A few of the people in the cabin quickly shouted their loud and vocal support of what Benny Randolf had said. Others joined in. Soon nearly every one of the seventy-eight passengers on Flight 255 became part of the jubilant, expressive display of their new-found fortitude and courage.
"Great, wonderful!" Benny waved his hands in time with the mounting shouts of support, as if he were the leader of an assembled choir. He added a little dance step as he turned back and forth so he could make eye contact with as many passengers as possible. "Let's keep our wits!" Benny shouted. It had suddenly become the unofficial battle cry of the unwanted war that they were conscripted participants in.
"Let's keep our wits!" a big man with a beard shouted along with the rest. He stood up from his seat in row two, but a big jolt of turbulence nearly knocked him back down again. He managed to grab a seatback to steady himself. "What we need now is a drink!" He began to step cautiously toward the galley.
"Sir! You must sit down!" Laura began to move toward him.
"Wait." Benny grabbed the stewardess by the elbow. "Let me handle this," he whispered.
"But he shouldn't be out of his seat. Not with this turbulence."
"He'll be all right. Trust me." Benny turned from her without waiting for her reply. He waved at the big man. "What's your name?"
"Nat Grisby." With his free hand he rubbed his beard, a gesture that had obviously been designed to show it off. "I'm a photographer. I'm just like your friend. I take unimportant pictures!" He laughed loudly at his own feeble joke. A number of people in the cabin joined in to laugh with him.
"Fine. I think you're right. We should all have a drink," Benny said. There was unmasked authority in his voice. Somehow, Benny Randolf had become the person in charge of the cabin. He stepped forward gingerly. "Let me help you. We'll pass drinks out." Benny glanced back at the stewardess, who nodded her reluctant approval before she turned to go back to the rear of the cabin to attend to her other duties. "But we've got to make the liquor last," Benny said to Grisby, in the tone of another joke. "Not too much to any one person."
"Of course not." Grisby led the way to the galley. As soon as they had stepped around the corner and were out of sight of the passengers, he turned to Benny. His expression had turned serious. "That was one hell of a fine job you did with that young guy. I couldn't think of anything to do with him, except maybe punch him. That would've been a mistake."
"Yes." Benny nodded in agreement. "A definite mistake. We could have had a real panic back there. I was lucky."
"Where'd you learn how to do that?" Grisby stepped up to the galley area. Most of the galley was in shambles, but he quickly found the liquor cabinet below. It had remained untouched by the explosion.
"From being a second-rate musician. I play in lots of less-than-elite clubs. You've got to come up with some way to handle the drunks."
"It also seems to work on people who are drunk with fear."
"I guess." Benny looked over the galley area. The body of the stewardess who had been killed in the explosion lay against the far wall. She was completely covered with the airline blanket. A tiny stream of blood flowed from beneath the corner of the blanket and it ran along the edge of the galley until it disappeared beneath the aluminum trimwork. "Careful of the body," Benny whispered to Grisby.
"Yes. I know." Grisby stepped carefully around the galley. He kept an even greater distance from the body than was necessary. "We were lucky there wasn't more damage."
"We were lucky. She wasn't." Benny pointed at the bulge beneath the airline blanket.
"Maybe." Grisby rubbed his beard, then bent over to lift up the aircraft's liquor box. There was a defeated, anguished look on his face. "We might be the lucky ones," he said in a hoarse whisper. "But only time will tell."
<>
The ground beneath them had flattened considerably. Compared to what they had flown over in Pennsylvania, the terrain below looked no worse than a badly wrinkled shirt. There were small undulations everywhere, but none of them gave more than a brief hint of a rise in the elevation of the ground. Even before Janet confirmed it by her radio crosschecks, Drew O'Brien knew from the features of the land that the area they skimmed over was the Maryland-Delaware peninsula.
"I'm beginning to pick up Salisbury," Janet said. "The radio reception is much better here."
"Sure. Look how flat everything is." O'Brien took a few seconds to eye the terrain on either side of them. Even though they had remained less than 200 feet above the ground, the task of flying the airliner was slightly easier now because there were no hills to contend with, no terrain-induced variable wind patterns. O'Brien was thankful for that. His arms ached and his back was sore from the constant demands of the tension-filled manual flying he had done for the last half hour. He was also glad that the turbulence, too, had lessened. But now he had another consideration to think about, another discomforting thought to reckon with.
"Back to the left, buddy," the radio speaker crackled. "Don't press your luck."
"Bastard." O'Brien gripped the DC-9's control wheel tightly as he fought to keep his anger down. Every time he heard the voice of that madman in the Lear, every muscle in his body automatically became rigid. O'Brien decided to try to keep the airliner in the same relative position it had been, if he could get away with it.
"This is your last chance, hero. If I don't see your wing tip by the count of five, I'm going to press the button. Ready? One, two, three..."
O'Brien wheeled the airliner abruptly to the left as he pushed forward on the throttles. Within seconds he had reestablished himself in the proper position.
"Very good," the radio blared. "I'll see that you get the Distinguished Flying Cross for your cooperative attitude." The man in the Lear laughed across the open microphone. "But I'm getting tired of calling your attention to your sloppy formation technique. Next time, I might get your attention with the proverbial big bang."
O'Brien shook his head in disgust. "I think he's serious. I can't take that chance again."
"Were you doing that on purpose?" Janet motioned with her hands to show what she meant. "I thought you had fallen directly behind the tail of the Learjet by accident."
"No." O'Brien took a deep breath. He didn't want to share the next piece of information with her because it probably meant nothing. But she had been a good copilot so far, and it was probably best to keep her totally informed. "Since we crossed the Chesapeake and the terrain flattened, we no longer had the constant problem of hitting the hills."
"That's true."
"But another possibility occurred to me." O'Brien tapped his finger on the radio altimeter. It read incredibly low, no more than 160 feet. Their height was equal to no more than the 15th floor of an office building — not very high by any standards. Worse, they were traveling forward at nearly two-thirds the speed of sound. "At this altitude, we're below the radio antennas in the area."
"Oh, God. I never thought of that." Janet shot a quick glance out ahead but could see nothing except the endless expanse of the flat farmland crisscrossed by ribbons of fenceline, blacktop and dirt.
"When we came across that big highway ten minutes ago, all I could think of was the sight of a State Police barracks you see on the Interstate — with their antennas sticking up. We'd be shishkebab on a stick."
"And that's why you tried to stay directly behind the Learjet?" Janet had suddenly seen his reasoning.
"Exactly. I wanted that bastard to run interference for us. If we were lucky, he'd hit the tower head and I'd have enough time to veer out of the way."
"Maybe I should sit up closer. Keep looking directly ahead."
"No need. It's a waste of time. At this speed, we'd never see the tower soon enough to avoid it. Probably wouldn't even know what hit us." O'Brien wouldn't have normally spoken so openly — especially with a woman passenger — but from the little time he had spent with Janet he had come away with the impression that she could take whatever was necessary, whatever was the truth. She wasn't like most of the women he had known in his life. "Besides," O'Brien added, "I think our crazy man up ahead has planned this entire affair far too well to have us unintentionally speared out of the sky. He's probably surveyed the route quite thoroughly. He's determined that there are no towers along here. At least I hope so."
"Me, too." Janet gestured toward the Lear, which bobbed and swayed in the mid-morning air current no more than a quarter mile ahead. "For the first time, I hope this guy knows what he's doing."
O'Brien allowed himself a small smile. This unknown woman had remained calm enough to even see the irony of the situation. They had become dependent on this murderer for their salvation. O'Brien remembered reading somewhere that terrorists and kidnappers were known for turning themselves into indispensable allies to their victims, or at least what seemed that way. The Patty Hearst story all over again — except that Drew O'Brien knew damn well what he would do if that madman in the Lear handed him an automatic rifle.
"I guess we're out of options," Janet said.
"Yes." O'Brien realized now how glad he was that he wasn't alone in the cockpit, how happy he was that she had joined him. There was nothing more for them to do from there on but fly the airliner and follow the orders from the Lear. "You say you're a private pilot. Tell me more about that," he asked to pass the time as he continued to wrestle with the airliner's flight controls to stay in the prescribed formation.
"Not much to say." Janet turned in the copilot's seat to face him more directly. She pushed a few loose strands of her short-cropped hair back in place. "I was always interested in flying. I figured I could use it in my work."
"What work?"
"I'm an investment broker. I had delusions of grandeur about winging hither and yon to close important deals. Then, after I started flying lessons, I discovered that there was a world of difference between driving a small airplane around the sky strictly for pleasure and using it for all-weather transportation."
"Right." Something had caught O'Brien's eye out the left side of the windshield. He leaned forward and strained to make it out.
"I found out it would take me years — not to mention the expense — to get an instrument rating and then..."
"Damn!" O'Brien slapped his free hand down against the pedestal between the pilots' seats. "I should've realized. How damn stupid could I be!"
"What?" Janet also leaned forward, but to her everything ahead still appeared the same.
"The coastline!" The indistinct line on the far horizon began to develop shape and substance as it materialized out of the haze. O'Brien peeked at the compass. "On this heading we're going out to sea! Christ!"
Janet looked down at her chart, then at the radio she had tuned. "We're south of Ocean City, Maryland." She looked back up. "Where could he be taking us?" She sounded more frightened now than she had any time before.
"I don't know." A sudden idea flashed into O'Brien's mind and it caused him to wince visibly. "Maybe we should take the chance," he said as he thought out loud, his words tumbling out rapidly. "The beach. I could crash-land at the edge of the water." Out ahead, O'Brien could see the line that separated the land from the sea. "The sand is smooth. If I put us down at the edge of the water, there wouldn't be too much chance of fire."
"It still sounds very dangerous." Janet sat bolt upright and looked along the coastline. "We've got to decide. You've got to decide. Hurry." The beach was nearly beneath them. The expanse of white sand ran perpendicular to their path of flight. "It would take a big turn," she said. She indicated with her hand how far the airliner would have to maneuver to line up with the beach.
"I know." O'Brien bit into his lower lip. He rocked the control column in his hands once, then twice, as he began the motions to turn the DC-9 along the beach. Each time he hesitated, then rolled the wings level before he had changed the airliner's heading by more than a few degrees. He remained in formation with the Lear. Crash landing. Soft sand. Might flip over. Might explode. "No good." O'Brien let the last of the beach slide beneath them. "Too risky." Yet he knew what had nearly compelled him to try, regardless of the risk. The prospect of what lay ahead was unnerving. The view of the boundless Atlantic Ocean in the windshield added another impossible element to the nightmare. He couldn't imagine what the Learjet pilot was up to.
"Where is he taking us?" Janet had also arrived at the same point in her mind. "There's nothing out here. Nothing but water." Her eyes were wide with fear. She looked at O'Brien for the answer.
"Maybe not." O'Brien played with the airplane's controls, more as an excuse for not needing to answer her immediately. "I think he just wants to keep us away from land," he finally said. "To do away with any possibility of us being seen. He'll have us swing back to shore someplace farther south."
"I see. That makes sense."
"You better go back and tell one of the stewardesses. Tell her to make an announcement. The passengers are going to notice the water pretty soon." O'Brien motioned over his shoulder toward the rear, where even now he could make out the increased commotion as the people in the back began to realize that the airliner had headed out to sea. "Hurry. Before they come unglued again."
"Right." Janet maneuvered carefully out of the copilot seat. On her way by she touched O'Brien gently on the shoulder, then turned and left the cockpit.
O'Brien continued to steer the airliner, but his mind began to review other things. The fuel situation. At their very low altitude they burned fuel at an enormous rate. For the moment they had enough, but sometime soon it would present a problem. The second additional factor might become the weather — the farther south they traveled, the worse it would be, as he knew from his preflight planning. O'Brien glanced ahead of them, toward where they flew. The clouds there had gathered together to form a continuous, thick overcast. Soon the overcast would lower and rain would begin. If they continued much farther south before they turned inland, low clouds, wind and heavy rain would become part of the picture.
"They took it pretty well." Janet climbed back into the copilot's seat. "Except for a few people, most seem to have their spirits up. People are moving around the cabin, talking to each other."
"That's good news." O'Brien wondered how long their bravado would last.
"Yes." Janet nodded absently, then gazed out the window.
The two of them lapsed into silence. The minutes passed until, finally, another half hour had gone by. O'Brien turned on the aircraft's radar. He watched as the rain activity ahead of them increased. The first big raindrops splattered on the DC-9's windshield. Shortly, a continuous rain began. Flight visibility dropped steadily until all that could be seen was the water directly below and the white Learjet ahead. The turbulence, which had decreased after they had left the coast, had increased again in the mounting wind and rain.
One hour passed. Each time O'Brien attempted to talk to the Lear pilot on the radio, he was quickly cut off by the man's incessant threats to use the hidden bomb and blow them out of the sky. O'Brien finally gave up and decided to leave the radio transmitter alone. Another thirty minutes dragged by. "I should've put us on the beach," O'Brien mumbled. He was sorry that he hadn't put the airliner down while he had the chance.
"Don't be ridiculous. You had no choice. You did the only thing you could."
"Maybe." O'Brien looked again at the airliner's fuel gauges, as he had every minute or so for the last half hour. The gauges were approaching the bottom of their scales. That meant they could fly for another forty-five minutes, no more. Without overwater navigation equipment there was no way to tell with any certainty how far they were from land, but O'Brien felt he could take an educated guess: they were very far. Too far.
O'Brien cleared his parched throat. He had put off using the next sentence as long as he could, but now he knew that there was no choice. "We've only got forty-five minutes of fuel left. We'll have to ditch in the ocean."
"God help us." Janet's voice was hollow, shaken. The view out the cockpit window was obscured by the heavy rain, but she could still see how much turmoil the seas were in. At their altitude of 300 feet, the details of the frothy whitecaps, the boiling, churning water were the most terrifying things she had ever looked at. She could see the face of death in the sea below. "Is there a chance? Can we ditch and get life rafts in the water?"
"Sure." O'Brien looked directly into her eyes, as a sort of antidote to the lie he had just spoken, the first outright lie he had made since the hijacking began. The DC-9 carried life jackets but no life rafts. In the type of sea beneath them, life jackets alone would keep them alive a short time at most. But they had no choice but to try it, no matter how futile. Ditching while they were still under control was better than falling out of the sky after the engines had failed from fuel exhaustion. "Have the stewardesses get everyone ready. Life jackets on. Everyone briefed on which exit to use."
"Okay." Janet began to pick herself out of her seat, but she heard a click in the radio speaker. She stopped. It was an indication that the Learjet pilot was about to transmit.
"Wake up, folks," the voice on the radio said. "It's time we wrapped this up."
"What does he mean?" She faced O'Brien.
"I don't know. Wait. There's something..." O'Brien leaned forward in his seat. He strained his eyes to see ahead, beyond the white Lear. A dark shadow had appeared on the horizon through the shroud of rain. It was a large mass on the surface of the sea, and it rode slightly to the left of where the Lear was headed. A ship. It grew in size and distinction, like a movie picture being rapidly adjusted into focus. "Look!" There was nothing else O'Brien could say about the startling gray-painted giant that took form in front of the airliner.
He and Janet remained speechless, dumbfounded as the silhouette of an aircraft carrier filled their view from the cockpit of Trans-American Flight 255.