When something had crunched through the forward fuselage, Britta had jumped to her feet and raced downstairs from nose to tail, but other than terrified passengers, there was no visible damage. She’d turned at the rear galley to head back toward the front when a hand reached out and grabbed her arm.
“What?” she said none too gently as she turned. Oh. The smart-mouthed kid with the radio. Britta adopted a stern expression and looked him in the eye. “What can I do for you?”
“That guy’s losin’ it!” the boy said as he pointed to the approximate position of the PA speaker. His accent was clearly American.
Britta frowned at him. “He’s doing the best he can.”
“Look, Ma’am, we’re in deep shit if he’s blind without an autopilot.”
“Watch your language, young man! I don’t have time for this.”
“Do you need another pilot up there or don’t you?”
Britta hesitated. Someone so young couldn’t be of any help. Or could he? “Are you saying that you are a pilot?”
He nodded hesitantly. “This is a seven-forty-seven four hundred, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Then I can make it fly.”
Make it fly? Britta thought. That’s not the way a pilot would talk. She leaned over and dropped to her knee, speaking directly to him. “Listen, I don’t mean to put you down, but I have a hard time believing that someone your age has been trained in something this big. Explain how that could be.”
“Look, we almost crashed back there and the pilot says he can’t see. I know enough to do a better job than a blind pilot!”
“How did you learn to fly? How? I need specifics.”
“My dad manages a pilot training simulator company. I can fly all of them. I don’t have a license, but I can fly the seven-forty-seven four hundred simulator.”
“Can you land?”
“Ah… sometimes.”
“‘Sometimes’ isn’t good enough.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t see any other pilots running to the cockpit.”
“What’s your name again?” Britta asked, suppressing her dislike of him.
“Steve Delaney,” he shot back with an acidic tone. “What’s yours?”
She ignored the retort. “I’ll tell the pilot of your offer, Mr. Delaney.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Britta stood up and leaned over him. “Young man, when I say I’m going to do something, you may stake your life on it. I will brief the pilot and see if he thinks your expertise can help. If so, I’ll be back to get you quickly.”
She turned and moved rapidly up the aisle, working to stay upright as the aircraft began shuddering through turbulence.
“We’ve got a lot of lightning ahead, Dan,” Dallas reported, her eyes flicking back and forth between the instruments and the clouds they were entering.
“Oh, God,” Dan said, “I forgot the thunderstorms. Is the radar working?”
Dallas looked at the display screen and shook her head. “No, it’s not.”
“Then we could be in for a rough ride.” He reached up to the overhead panel and fumbled for the switch that controlled the seat belt sign, flipping it off and on twice before reaching for the PA handset and ordering everyone to stay strapped in.
“Are we going back to Hong Kong, Dan?” Robert asked quietly from the jump seat behind the copilot.
“I, ah, don’t know what we’re going to do. There’s… been no time to think about a plan.” Dan turned toward the left seat. “Geoffrey, I need you to keep us level and slowly turn us back to the west. And I need all of you strapped in.”
Geoffrey Sampson was fighting the airplane, overcontrolling on the upside, then on the downside, but slowly getting the hang of it, with Dallas’s help.
“I’m trying, Dan. This is very hard. I seem to be out of phase.”
“I can feel what you’re doing. Hold that input, Geoff! Don’t push down yet. Let it stabilize… there. Now push down. You’re chasing it and getting too tense.” Dan could feel the yoke being pumped first backward, then forward, then backward again, as the 747’s pitch-up, pitch-down response became more pronounced with each circuit.
“I can’t bloody well imagine why I’m tense. Can you?” Geoffrey snapped.
“I’ve got it, Geoff. Please let go for a few seconds,” Dan said.
“Very well.”
Dan took the yoke, instinctively dampening the porpoising effect. “Dallas, am I zero rate of climb and in a right turn?”
“Close,” Dallas replied, noticing the lead flight attendant in the doorway of the cockpit. “Bring the nose down just a hair, and roll a bit left.”
Britta had moved into the cockpit. “Dan, this is Britta.”
He slumped a bit in the seat. “We… were almost there, Britta. Is everyone okay downstairs?”
“I heard your PA. Everyone’s very scared, but no one was hurt. No internal cabin damage.”
He nodded without comment. She could see his right hand holding the control yoke as Robert gave her a quick synopsis. Her eyes grew wider. “How can you fly by hand? I mean, can’t… Mr. Sampson fly for you?”
“He’s trying, but he has no experience.”
“But how about the lady here? She has some experience.”
Dallas Nielson held up her hand. “No! I told you I can read the instruments, but I can’t fly this mother.”
“Geoff, take it back now,” Dan ordered. “Take it and just stay calm with your corrections.”
Geoffrey Sampson’s hands closed around the yoke as he swallowed hard. “Very well.”
“So—” Britta’s eyes were wide with fear as she looked around the cockpit and at the featureless black of night beyond the windscreen, punctuated every few seconds by lightning. The big ship shuddered through a small patch of turbulence, then steadied. “What, ah, what are we going to do?”
Dan sighed. “Britta, we’re in desperate trouble. All our radios are out. We’re deaf, dumb, and blind. We can’t talk to anyone down there, and without the autoflight system, I couldn’t set us up for another approach even if I could find an airport. There’s another ILS at Hong Kong, but we can’t use it even if I could find it. We may… have to ditch. If I can’t do anything else, I… guess we could descend slowly into the water off a coastline somewhere. But we’d have to wait until daylight.”
“But… can you… can we… oh, God!”
Dallas reached out and took Britta’s hand.
The sudden impact of the 747 with a wall of hailstones was preceded by only a few seconds of rough turbulence as the jumbo flew blindly into the side of a thunderstorm cell. Britta and Robert were thrown into each other, and then partially into the air as the entire structure of the big Boeing flexed and lurched through the angry updrafts and downdrafts. Sheets of lightning played out in front of them, accompanied by real thunder audible through the skin of the ship. Dallas grabbed her armrests, then reached out to grab on to Britta. Beads of perspiration showed on Geoffrey Sampson’s forehead as he fought to control the 747, his body straining hard against the seat belt with each lurch.
“Hang on to it, Geoff!” Dan called from the right seat. “Aim for three degrees nose up and wings level, and don’t even worry about altitude or rate of climb.”
“I’m trying!” Geoffrey managed, his voice strained and thin.
“Britta, Dallas, Robert? Are y’all okay?”
“We’re hanging on,” Robert MacCabe answered. Another thunderous impact of hail blotted out all other noises. The bouncing was too severe to read the instruments.
“What… is… the heading?” Dan asked, his voice nearly drowned.
“WHAT?” someone bellowed.
“THE HEADING. WHAT’S… OUR HEADING?”