Dallas placed a hand on Steve Delaney’s shoulder. “I’ll look, Steve. You fly.” She strained to look up and shook her head before remembering Dan couldn’t see the gesture. “That screen’s dark, too, Dan.”
“Oh, Lord! Okay, Dallas, I’m going to need you to check the circuit breaker panels.” He relayed the name and position of the circuit breakers that controlled the various navigation and computer equipment, and Dallas checked each one.
“The breakers are all in. I pushed each of them to be sure.”
Dan slumped in his seat again. “I can’t believe this!”
“What?” Steve asked, apprehension audible in his voice.
Dan was shaking his head. “I can’t frigging believe this!”
“Believe what, Dan?” Dallas added.
“What we hadn’t already lost, that lightning strike finished off. We probably lost the transponder as well, so I’ll bet they think we crashed. We really are deaf, dumb, and blind! I don’t have an autopilot, I don’t have navigation radios, I don’t have anything to navigate with, I can’t talk to anyone, the radar’s out.… The only thing we have going for us is the fact the engines are still running and the flight controls still work!”
“So what do we do?” Dallas asked. “How do we find Thailand?”
There was silence from the right seat for several long seconds. “I guess,” Dan began, “with enough fuel — if I can estimate about when we’ll be over Vietnam, we could circle until daylight, then follow the coast around until we find Thailand.”
“You mean, fly visually?” Dallas asked. “Just by looking outside?”
Dan nodded. “With your eyes and my memory and the map… if we could dig out the right map… we could do it.”
“That’s provided we can see the coastline,” Robert said.
“I was thinking, too…” Dan said, “… that if anyone onboard has a radio or a cell phone and we could make contact with… with any air traffic facility…” His voice trailed off.
“Dan,” Dallas said, “even if we find the right airport, how on earth are we going to land? Steve can keep it straight and level, but can the two of you land?”
Steve Delaney shot a silent, anxious look at Dan as the copilot turned his bandaged head to the left. “I’m not sure we’ve got a choice,” he said at last. “First we’ve got to find an adequate airport. All I’d need is one global positioning satellite readout to let us know where we are and where we need to go. Even light airplane drivers have GPS these days, but here we sit, goddammit, in a hundred-and-seventy-five-million-dollar state-of-the-art airliner, and I might as well be navigating with Charles Lindbergh’s equipment.”
Robert MacCabe had been looking at the floor in deep thought. He looked up suddenly and snapped his fingers. “Wait a minute. I’ll bet anything someone on this airplane has a portable GPS, one of those little portable units. They were even selling them in the duty-free stores in Hong Kong. I’ll go ask the passengers.” Robert unsnapped his seat belt and slid out of the jump seat as Dan turned toward him, speaking in the same slightly drugged meter.
“Robert, ah… ask if anyone has a cell phone, okay? Maybe we’ll get a break.”
MacCabe was back within ten minutes. “Dan, this is Robert again. I’m right behind you.”
The copilot turned his head to the left to listen. “Go ahead.”
“We’re out of luck, I’m afraid. We did find a passenger with a handheld GPS, but it’s in the baggage compartment in a checked bag.”
Dan sighed. “Naturally. There’s no way, of course, we can get into the baggage compartments in flight.”
“But,” Robert added, “Britta tells me she knows where we could go through the floor. It’s somewhere behind first class.”
“What?” Dan began shaking his head. “She’s thinking about the floor hatch in first class. That only goes down to the electronics compartment… same compartment we ripped apart back in Hong Kong. That won’t get you to the luggage, and it… ah… definitely won’t get you close to the rear compartment. There’s a huge fuel tank. And there’s the wing structure in the way.”
“I didn’t know that,” Robert said. “Hollywood had me convinced there were kitchens in the belly with doors to the baggage compartment.”
“Yeah, well… those are called lower lobe galleys. Some types of jumbos had them, but not this one. I’m afraid we’re out of business on that idea.”
“Wait a minute,” Dallas said. “You guys listen to yourselves! I don’t believe this! Dan, you need that GPS to get us to a good airport in Thailand, right?”
Dan Wade thought for a few seconds before answering. “It would sure help. It’s… going to be difficult to find our way without some form of navigation, and all we’ve got now are compasses. We can hold any heading, we just don’t know which one to use without something like a GPS. But Dallas, if the only one aboard is in a baggage bin, forget it. I mean, even if we could get in there, we don’t know which bin the bag’s in, forward or aft.”
“Actually,” Robert said, “we do know. The man who owns it saw his bag being loaded in the rear bin coming up a long conveyor belt on the right side.”
“Well,” Dan began, shaking his head slowly, “we know it’s in there, but there’s no way to get to it. It was a good try, anyway.”
Dallas Nielson snapped off her seat belt and stood up, her hands on her hips. “Wait just a damn minute here!” she said. “By the way, Dan, I’m standing right now and looking daggers at you! What the hell do you guys mean, ‘good try’?” She included Robert MacCabe in her sweeping, disapproving glance. “I haven’t seen a try yet, let alone a good try, just a lot of defeatist talking!”
Dan sighed loudly. “Dallas, look. There are no cabin doors to the rear baggage compartment in flight. If that isn’t clear enough for you—”
“Whoa, mister can-do attitude! Are we hauling around a rear baggage bin or did we leave that mother back in Hong Kong?”
The copilot turned farther around in his seat to face Dallas’s voice. “Dallas, I’d like to get that GPS as much as you would, but—”
“I don’t think so! Otherwise, you’d be trying to find a way to solve the problem instead of sitting here trying to justify why it can’t be done.”
“But it can’t be done!”
“Bullshit, Baby! Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”
Dan shook his head with an exasperated sigh “Lady, who in the hell are you, anyway?”
She laughed, short and loud. “I’m no lady, ace, I’m a woman who’s learned a few things about surviving over the years, and lesson one is, you never, ever give up.”
“I really resent that!” Dan snapped. “That’s… that’s the second time you’ve accused me of giving up. I’m not giving up, but I’m not going to sit here in blinding pain and argue about things we can’t change.”
Robert MacCabe leaned forward, his palm up. “Okay, boys and girls, look. This will get us nowhere—”
Dallas ignored him, the volume of her voice rising. “What are you telling me, Dan? You telling me there’s no damned physical way to get to that baggage bin, or just no procedure?”
“I’M TELLING YOU THERE’S NO WAY TO GET IN WITHOUT CHOPPING THROUGH THE FRIGGING FLOOR!”
Dallas let silence fill the cockpit as Dan realized what he’d said.
“Sounds like a plan, Dan. Didn’t I see a crash ax around here?”
Dan Wade stuck his palm out and shook his head. “Oh, no you don’t! NO! You can’t attempt that. You could end up cutting through a control cable.”