“So, we are flying east?” Kate asked, breaking the silence.
“God, I hope not!” Jerry said through clenched teeth as he turned to yank his company iPad out of his flight bag. He flipped the cover open and toggled it on, selecting a map program and watched in frustration as a small target in the middle crawled across a blank screen with no map references.
“Dammit! I forgot it has to have an Internet signal for the map.”
“Wait, Jerry… I have a little thing on my… personal droid… that gives a good magnetic compass heading…” Dan lunged for his flight bag, fumbling loudly for the small smartphone he kept stored during international trips. “Give me a minute… the damned thing has to spin up!”
An interphone call chime rang, and both pilots ignored it at first.
“It’s coming online… hold on… if I remember right, the app is purely magnetic with no external connections needed—”
The call chime rang again, and this time the captain looked up at the overhead panel, irritated to be interrupted.
“Would you like me to get that, Captain?” Carol asked softly, well aware both men were highly agitated. She could feel Kate’s wide-eyed fright without glancing at her.
“What? Yeah. Here.” Tollefson punched the intercom button on the center console as he yanked off his headset and all but tossed it at Carol.
“What are you finding?” he asked Dan.
“Just a second… takes the stupid thing a friggin’ eternity to reboot…” He punched a series of commands onto the touchscreen, waiting for what looked like a miniature attitude indicator to appear, which finally swam into view.
“There! Now, let me get this close to the window… the magnetic heading rose is right there at the top, and it’s saying… SHIT!”
“What?”
An almost feral glance from the copilot confirmed it before the words.
“It’s saying east, Jerry! About one-zero-zero degrees. Jesus God, we’ve been flying into opposite traffic without contact!”
“You’re serious? How long, man? And where the hell are we?”
“Captain?” Carol interjected, her voice soft and urgent, her hand still holding the headset against her ear.
“I don’t know, Jerry. I remember feeling like we were in a turn during the blackout, but when the instruments came back up…”
“How the hell could they be lying to us?” Jerry asked, staring again at his forward panel. “This jet’s worth a fortune… I should be able to trust the readings!”
“Captain…” Carol tried again, but Jerry was fighting complete disbelief, staring again at the forward panel as if the answer was about to pop into view.
“Dan, check to see if anything’s offline, and ladies, stand back while he gets out of the…”
“Captain!” Carol, said, this time forcefully enough to get his attention.
“What?”
She held the interphone out. “You’re going to want to hear this. Now!”
Jerry donned his headset once again while locked on Carol’s eyes. “This is the captain. What’s wrong?”
Carol could see the man’s shoulders slump ever so slightly as a look of hopelessness passed across his face like a veil.
“You’re sure? Can you tell what type?”
“What?” Dan demanded as Jerry swung around to his left and pressed his face against the glass.
“What’s going on, Jerry?” Dan demanded as Jerry looked back at him.
“We have company. Probably fighters. One off our left wing. Check your side.”
The copilot complied, filling in the rest of the nightmare. “Oh, crap, I have one here, too.”
“Who do you suppose they are?” Jerry asked.
“I don’t know… just like you said, where the hell are we?”
“God, I wish I knew!”
“We can’t talk to them. Wait, let’s turn up the cockpit lights as far as we can. Don’t want them to think we’re not in control.”
“Do it!”
Dan turned to the two flight attendants. “I need you guys to get back to the cabin! Extra people up here will look like hijackers!”
Once again, Jerry shot the copilot an exactly-when-did-I-lose-control glance as Carol nodded and ushered Kate out of the door.
Jerry had been sitting in a near catatonic state for several very long seconds, and Dan was choosing the words he’d need to break him out of it, when the captain came back to life on his own, rifling through a small handbook.
“What are you doing?” Dan asked.
“Looking for the universal signals for obeying whatever they want us to do!”
“Okay. I know those procedures by heart,” Dan said. “You do realize we’re in deep shit here, right?”
“Our instruments are lying to us!” Jerry replied, a plaintive whine in his voice.
“Let’s just take care of the problem,” Dan shot back. “We haven’t screwed up anything yet,” he said, almost choking on the words. “How’s our fuel?”
“I’ve already checked. We have at least five hours. Dan? Can you think of any reason a passenger would have a portable VHF radio back there?”
“A what?” The copilot thought through the question for what seemed like an eternity before shaking his head. “No. We could ask, but… we’ll panic people.”
“I think we’re already there,” Jerry answered.
“Are there emergency radios in the life rafts?” Dan asked.
“Not any more. Too expensive and not needed. Someone always knows where we are.”
“Right. Like we knew where Malaysia 370 was.”
“Dan, turn the lights up all the way.”
“Got it.”
“He’s shining a flashlight at us… the guy on the left. I think it’s an F-15. Maybe US markings.”
“Our guys, then?”
“Maybe!”
“Then we’re probably still over the UK somewhere.” Dan added.
“He’s shining his flashlight on his helmet and tapping it.”
“That means he’s asking for radio contact, Jerry. Shine your light on the left side of your face, wave your left hand back and forth by your ear, and shake your head no!”
The flashlight teetered on the brink of falling as the captain regained his grip and nervously followed the instructions, both tapping and waving around his ear.
“You getting a response?” Dan asked.
“Yes! He got it, I think. He’s holding the flashlight on himself again and nodding and pointing ahead.”
“Okay, Jerry, he’s going to do the follow-me night intercept maneuver. He’ll get out ahead and a little below, flash his lights, light his afterburner and turn to our right and we follow.”
“Got it.”
“He’ll guide us down to a suitable field. He’s probably talking to Chicago for us.”
“You think they know by now?” Jerry asked.
“Who?”
“Chicago. Our company?”
“Jerry, I think half the world knows by now. There! He’s moving.”
Jerry’s left hand went to the sidestick controller.
“Don’t punch off the autopilot yet… not until he’s crossed from left to right in front of us. I’ll blink our position lights twice, and then you follow him.”
“Okay. Shit, shit, shit!” Jerry muttered. “I have no idea how much trouble we’re in, but this can’t be good!”
“Relax, Jerry. We didn’t do anything wrong.”
Once again the sharp glance to the right, the hard expression betraying irritation, and for some reason Dan couldn’t resist a postscript: “We’ll sort it out on the ground, Jerry.”
The position lights of the F-15 blinked off and on several times to the left and slightly below their altitude before the big fighter began crossing ahead of them, its twin afterburners lighting in two startlingly bright twin streams of flame which looked like they might even lap the nose of the A330. The F-15 pilot completed the crossover and kept moving off to the right at a slight angle as the afterburners went out.