He heard Robert MacCabe get to his feet. “If you two are okay, I’m going to go back for a moment.” Robert left the cockpit door ajar and moved back into the cabin with no particular goal in mind other than to escape the tension for a few minutes.
Susan Tash reached out and caught his sleeve as he passed. “What’s going on up there?” she asked. Dr. Graham Tash was looking up expectantly as well, and Robert knelt down to talk to them both.
“Dan’s holding out remarkably well, and the boy, Steve, is doing an outstanding job of flying, but…”
“Do we have a way to land?” Susan asked point-blank.
Robert sighed and smiled fleetingly. “I guess there’s always a way, but it looks to me like young Steven is going to have to actually fly the plane down while Dan talks him through it. In any event, we’re going to have to wait until daylight to find a long enough runway.”
Susan pursed her lips and glanced at her husband’s grim expression before looking back at Robert. “They think they can do it?” she asked.
The veteran reporter searched her eyes, thinking how beautiful she was, before diverting his gaze to her husband and nodding. “I think they do. I think we all do.”
“One hell of a story, eh?” Graham asked.
“Look, I’d…”
Graham raised his hand. “I don’t mean you’re up there for crass purposes, I just mean that if we get through this, it’ll be a rare event to have a professional wordsmith who can appropriately describe it.”
Robert thought for a second and smiled at the doctor, nodding slowly. “That’s gracious of you, Doctor. I actually hadn’t thought of it that way, but you’re right. Gives me an even better incentive.”
Susan squeezed his hand as he stood up. “Thanks,” she said.
When Robert had gone, Graham stood and motioned Susan back toward the galley at the rear of the upper-deck cabin. The flight attendants were all downstairs, and Graham drew her in close against him and pulled the curtain closed, cupping the back of her head with his hand.
“Graham? Are you okay?”
“I don’t know, Suze.” He pulled back and looked her in the eye. “How are you holding out?”
“You tell me first. You look shell-shocked.”
He nodded. “I can’t recall ever being this scared, Honey. I’d… like to tell you I have faith it’s going to be all right.”
She started to giggle, leaving him slightly nonplussed.
“What are you laughing about?”
“Look at the situation. We’re in a giant airliner, without radios, being flown by a blind pilot and a fourteen-year-old boy!”
Graham cocked his head and smiled thinly. “Yeah, I guess…”
“This is beyond ridiculous!” She kept on giggling nervously.
“Are you missing the seriousness of this?” he asked.
She stopped immediately. “No. I’m aware of the seriousness. It’s just so ridiculous to think that there’s any way out of this!”
“What do you mean, Suze?”
“We’re screwed, Baby, that’s what I mean.”
“Wait… wait a minute! We’ve got a fighting chance. You heard what that fellow was saying.”
She cupped his face in her hands. “Baby, I’m not saying we shouldn’t try everything, and I’m not saying there isn’t a chance it’ll work out, but I think you and I better face the reality that we’re probably not going to live through this.”
He was silent for a few seconds as he studied her face, aware that tears were forming now at the corners of her blue eyes.
“Honey…”
“What we ought to do is go find that rest room and make love until we hit. If we’ve gotta go, that’s how I’d like it.”
It was Graham’s turn to laugh.
“What? Good idea?” she said.
“I was thinking a while ago that you’d suggest just that if you were convinced we were going to die.” He looked at her, watching the smile fade into a veil of tears. Susan pulled her husband to her and wrapped her arms tightly around his neck.
“Graham, I love you. Hold me for a few more moments. Don’t talk.”
In the aft area of the coach cabin, a sudden shriek of excitement wafted up from the jagged hole to the baggage bin. Britta jumped up to peer over the edge, and a bag came sailing up at her. She reached out by instinct and caught it.
Dallas’s face popped into view with a toothy, ear-to-ear grin. “That would be the very bag, Ms. Franz!”
“Wonderful!” Britta replied.
“Is Mr. Walters around to fish out his GPS, or do I go through his underwear?”
Britta showed the bag to a worried-looking man standing fifteen feet away.
“You found it!” he said as he came toward her. He took the bag, unzipped it, and pulled the GPS unit from its depths.
Britta pointed the way toward the front of the 747 and the stairway. “Let’s get moving. The captain…” She paused, feeling off balance, the image of the captain’s body curtained off in the small crew rest bed behind the cockpit filling her mind. A cold shudder ran down her back.
The GPS’s owner had noticed. “You okay?”
She nodded. “The pilot,” she corrected herself, “needs this immediately.”
He pulled the unit from its case, punched the On button, and watched the small liquid-crystal screen show a procession of images as it began its search for satellite signals.
Britta motioned him to follow as she led the way to the cockpit. “Dan, this is Britta. We found the GPS unit!”
The copilot swiveled around. “Wonderful! But I’ll need someone to help…”
“I’ve brought him,” Britta interjected. “Mr. Walters? This is Dan Wade, our acting captain.” She gently pushed Walters into the area just behind the central console, where he saw the copilot’s outstretched hand and shook it.
“You’ve heard… my PA announcements, Mr. Walters? You know what we’re facing?”
Walters was shocked at the effort it took for the copilot to talk. “Yes, and the name is John, please.”
“Okay, John. You’re not a pilot?”
“No, Sir. I have a sailboat. I bought this GPS for sailing.”
“You know I can’t see. The young man in the left seat here is Steve Delaney. Steve… has extensive flight simulator experience and is flying us right now. But we need to know… where we are and where we’re going. Can you help?”
“You bet, Captain Wade.”
“Just Dan, please. Is the antenna internal, or do you stick it on a window?”
“It has little suction cups. It goes in the window.”
“Use the side window by the jump seat behind me. The other windows have little heating wires embedded in the glass that block satellite signals.”
Dan could hear John Walters fumbling around in the jump seat Robert MacCabe had vacated. Finally he pushed the antenna onto the window’s surface.
“John, will the unit tell you when it’s tracking enough navigation satellites?”
“Yeah, it sure will. It beeps,” John Walters replied.
“Then can you… put in the… coordinates of the airport we want?”
“Sure. It’ll give us the speed, exact compass heading, miles to destination, and how many minutes.”
“Does it tell you the course to fly?”
“Yes. This one is really designed for airplanes, but I use it on my boat.”
There was a small electronic beep from the vicinity of the jump seat.
“There!” John Walters announced. “It’s tracking.”
“Here’s an aviation map of this area. Can you find the coordinates on the map, then tell me… how far we are from the coast of Vietnam?”
Walters took the map gingerly and unfolded it. For nearly a minute he looked anxious, a demeanor that changed in an instant as he sat up. “I’ve got us. We’re less than a hundred miles from the coast. We’ll be passing about forty miles south of Da Nang and China Beach.”