Britta had been assisting Susan. She looked up now and smiled. “Thanks, Mr. Barnes. If you’ll help, I need to check on the cockpit.”
Rick knelt and watched the captain for signs of life, trying to appear unruffled.
“Okay,” Susan Tash said, “you can spell me on this next cycle. Two… three… four… five…” She was pumping Pete Cavanaugh’s chest and counting. She transitioned back to his mouth and motioned Rick Barnes into position over the captain’s chest, holding up a finger for him to wait.
“Now,” she said as she straightened up.
“What do I do?” Rick asked.
Susan looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “You don’t know CPR?”
“It’s been a long time since I had the training,” he lied, but she’d already swept him aside to resume the chest-pumping and counting. “Two… three… get the flight attendant… four… five… back here… or get another… six… ready to take over for me.”
Rick got to his feet as Susan transferred back to the captain’s mouth. He was marginally aware of a male voice on the PA, asking for pilots again. Why? Wasn’t one enough? They were still flying, so obviously there was at least one pilot left.
“Would you please go!” Susan snapped.
“Yeah. Sorry.” Rick walked quickly to the stairway leading to the main deck as a male flight attendant hit the top step and froze, recognizing the CEO.
“Mr. Barnes. Are you a pilot?”
Rick snorted and shook his head as if insulted. “No. But I need one of you flight attendants to take over the CPR for that lady in yellow up there.”
Bill Jenkins spotted the captain on the floor. He pushed past Rick Barnes none too subtly and ran to Susan Tash’s side. “I’m Bill Jenkins, one of the flight attendants. What happened to him?”
She shook her head. “Some sort of explosion. We’ve lost him, Bill.”
Bill Jenkins looked at the cockpit as Britta came out. He was wholly unprepared for the quick briefing she gave him.
“Did you find any pilots down there?” Britta asked her stunned coworker.
Bill shook his head. “I repeated the announcement three times and in Mandarin as well. No one.”
Britta rubbed her head. “There’s got to be someone. Try again. Ask for anyone with any aeronautical training, licensed or unlicensed, current or not.”
Bill stepped carefully past Pete Cavanaugh’s body to find the PA as Britta knelt to help Susan. Graham Tash had returned as well and was picking up the defibrillator paddles.
On the main deck below, a murmur of worried voices blended with the background noise of the engines and slipstream. The passengers looked at one another with startled expressions and tried to discern what might be happening.
Bill Jenkins’s voice cut through the noise, triggering complete silence as everyone strained to hear a reassurance that all was well.
Instead they heard another plea for anyone with aeronautical training to ring the Call button, a request urgent and frightening enough to bring several passengers to their feet, looking around in shock, unsure what to do.
Those who stood were pounced upon immediately by flight attendants. “Are you trained as a pilot, Sir?” “Can you fly, Ma’am?” “Are you responding to the PA?” were questions fired at high speed with high hopes, but only one had the right answer.
“Excuse me,” a tall, distinguished man asked, “some chap asked for anyone with any aeronautical training to come forth and I do have a bit.”
Another call chime rang in the coach, and Alice Naccarato responded.
“Hey, Miss?” a voice called out.
Alice stopped and turned, looking past a teenage boy to an ashen-faced man in a window seat.
“Yes, Sir?”
“Not him. Me,” the teenager said.
Ah, yes. Alice thought. The kid Britta warned me about.
“I’m Steve Delaney, and I know I’m just an unaccompanied minor, but I know about flying and you need a pilot, right?”
“You’re a pilot, Steve?”
“I can handle it.”
“But are you a licensed pilot?”
“No, but…”
“Have you ever flown a real plane this size?”
“No.”
“Have you ever flown a real plane of any size, Steve?”
“No.”
Alice smiled thinly. The last thing Dan needed in the cockpit was some adolescent amateur with an attitude.
“Steve, I appreciate your responding, but we just had an experienced pilot come forward, and I think we’d better go with him.”
“Yeah, I know the routine.”
“I’m sorry,” Alice sighed, and stood. The boy scowled and looked away.
In the cockpit the interphone call chime caused Dan to reach too rapidly for the handset, lacerating his knuckles before he could pull it out of the cradle.
“Cockpit.”
“Dan? This is Bill. I’ve found an older guy with Korean-vintage flight experience down here.”
“Good. An Air Force type?”
“British, actually. Not military aviation, though. Korean War-vintage. He says he took civilian flying lessons back then. His name’s Sampson.”
Dan snorted to himself. Just my luck! “Thanks. Send Mr. Sampson up.”
In seat 28G, Julia Mason had already decided to do more than sit and worry. After all, over the previous month, the forty-five members of her tour group had come to expect her to have all the answers. Well into her sixties, she took pride in being firmly in charge and refusing to accept head-patting answers from crew members.
Julia rose quickly from her aisle seat and strode to the middle galley, finding one of the younger flight attendants, a brunette with beautiful dark eyes and a perfect olive complexion, who gave Julia a briefing she wished she hadn’t asked for: The captain was dead, something had exploded in front of them, and the copilot was flying.
“My Lord, that’s awful. But shouldn’t that copilot be telling us something on the public address system?” Julia asked, trying to recover her composure.
“Ma’am, all I know is what I just told you.” The flight attendant’s response was gentle but firm, triggering Julia’s instincts to bore in.
“What’s your name, Dear?”
“Nancy,” the flight attendant replied, her eyes focused on the other passengers.
“Now, Nancy, surely we’re going back?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Well, that’s simply not good enough, is it? Won’t you get on that interphone and find out? See, I’ve got forty-five people expecting me to know. What do I tell them?” Julia realized her voice was shaking.
Nancy shook her head. “Ma’am, as soon as we know anything, you’ll know it. Please go back and sit down now.”
“Absolutely not. Not until I have some information to give to my people.”
“Ma’am—”
“My name is Julia, Nancy.”
“Julia, look, I’m… I’m worried too, because—”
“Bottom line, Nancy, is you’re a crew member and supposed to be in charge. Now. What can we expect to happen next?”
The flight attendant shrugged and pursed her lips, tears betraying the tension. She fought for control, but it was a losing battle. “I… I don’t know, but… I…” She flailed the air with her right hand as she struggled for composure. “Frankly, I’m scared, and I would appreciate… very much… your leaving me alone right now.”
Julia felt her resolve evaporate as she looked at the young woman, forty years her junior, feeling the same apprehension that they were in uncharted territory. Julia moved forward to enfold the young woman in a motherly embrace.