Blind Panic (6 page)

“I will consider very seriously what you have said, David," said Gyorgy Petrovsky. “I will give you my response as soon as I can.”

“Listen,” said the president, “I want you to know that whatever we’re discussing here, it doesn’t affect our personal friendship.”

“Of course not. I understand what pressure you are under. But you also have to see the situation from my point of view. Oh—before I forget, let me show you the latest picture of
our
two villains.”

He took a color photograph out of his inside pocket and passed it over. Doug Latterby intercepted it and placed it in President Perry’s hand.

“It’s okay,” said President Perry, handing it back. “I already know what these two bastards look like.”

Gyorgy Petrovsky stiffened, and stared at President Perry in bewilderment. Then, without another word, he turned and stalked out of the Oval Office, followed hurriedly by his aides and deputies.

“What’s wrong, Doug?” asked President Perry, turning around.

“The photograph, Mr. President. I think you kind of missed the emphasis on
our.
That wasn’t Khlebnikov and Zamyatin. That was President Petrovsky’s children.”

AMA Flight 2849, Atlanta to Los Angeles

“Cabin crew—fifteen minutes to landing,” Tyler said over the intercom. He was sitting in the copilot’s seat now, with headphones on. “Holy shit,” he added. “I never thought in a million years that I’d ever get to say that.”

Captain Sherman cleared his throat. “Maybe you should have switched off your intercom before you shared that little nugget with two hundred and nine unsuspecting passengers.”

“
Shit
, sorry! Beginner’s jitters, I guess.”

“Well, I’m sure glad they didn’t hear
that
.”

The 747-400 dipped and swayed in the crosswinds. Up ahead of them in the darkness, Tyler could see the sparkling lights of the Southern California coast scattered all the way across the horizon.

“EO system set?” asked Captain Sherman.

“Check,” said Tyler.

“Pressurization set? Humidifier off. Set the airfield altitude so that the plane is depressurized on landing. One hundred twenty-eight feet above sea level, in this case.”

“Erm…check.”

“Set the HSIs to radio navigation mode.”

“Check.”

“Set auto brakes. Wouldn’t want to touch down safely but find we can’t stop, would we? Don’t think the residents of Inglewood would appreciate it too much.”

Tyler pulled a pretend-scared face, but Captain Sherman couldn’t see him, and in any case he wasn’t really pretending.

“Cabin signs and exit lights on. Ignition on. Fuel system set for landing. Fuel heat off. QNH set. Check hydraulics. Landing flaps set at twenty-five degrees.”

Tyler had to blink the perspiration out of his eyes, and every muscle in his shoulders and upper arms was locked with tension. He was seriously beginning to believe that he couldn’t do this, even if his own life and the lives of more than two hundred other people depended on it. All the movie stunts he performed were meticulously calculated, worked out to the very last millimeter by people who knew exactly what they were doing, and if he suspected that the risks were unacceptable, he simply wouldn’t do them. But with this stunt, he didn’t have any choice. He had to do it. And he had no opportunity to rehearse it, either.

“Now I want you to locate the flight-management system," said Captain Sherman. “There are two buttons on the glare shield, marked LNAV and VNAV. Take out the Jepp map for LAX. Set it on a hundred-mile scale using the EFIS control panel. When it’s time to land, you’ll get a yellow FM message on the middle screen.”

Tyler fumbled over setting the Jeppesen map, and the lights of Los Angeles seemed to be frighteningly close already.

“There’s a knob on the control display unit between our seats. You got it? Twist it until the little numbers go down to one hundred feet above field elevation—two hundred twenty-eight feet.”

“Okay…done it.”

“Now announce, ‘Cabins secured for landing.’”

Tyler could see LAX now, its runway lights tilting as they made their final approach.

“Press the LOC and G/S buttons on the glareshield," said Captain Sherman. “All three CMD lights should go on.”

“Yeah, right. Roger, they have.”

The engines screamed as the 747 descended at two hundred fifty knots toward Runway 7L.

“Flaps thirty,” said Captain Sherman. “Turn on the auto brakes.”

“
Fifty
,” said the radar altimeter in a flat, mechanical voice. “
Thirty
.”

For a long moment Tyler was sure that the four-hundred-ton aircraft was flying too fast and too high and they were going to miss the runway altogether. He had prayed only a few times in his life before—prayed and really meant it—but as the 747 sped above the runway at a height of less than ten feet and still hadn’t touched its wheels to the ground, he whispered, “
Save me, God.
”

There was a jarring jolt, and the plane bounced off to the left. Then there was another jolt, and then another, and then the 747’s eighteen tires started squealing as if they were a chorus of slaughtered pigs. The plane’s throttles reversed with a thunderous roar, but Tyler could see that it was veering toward the left-hand side of the runway.

It was still seventy-five feet away from the threshold, however, when it finally came to a halt. Captain Sherman turned blindly toward him and said, “That’s it, Mr. Jones. You’ve done it. Cake.”

“Hey, come on,” said Tyler. He was trembling with relief, as if he had been holding up a hundred-pound barbell for an hour and had just been allowed to put it down. “I don’t think I could have managed it without this automatic landing gizmo.”

“You’re right,” said Captain Sherman. “I certainly wouldn’t like to belittle what you just did, but without ALS you would have probably killed the lot of us.”

“Oh,” said Tyler. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“No offense intended, Mr. Jones. Just being realistic.”

Outside on the runway, on both sides of the aircraft, they had been joined by fire trucks and ambulances with flashing red lights. The cabin crew had opened the doors and deployed
the emergency chutes, and the first of the passengers were sliding down to the runway.

A sandy-haired man in white shirtsleeves appeared in the cabin doorway, accompanied by the senior flight attendant. He smelled strongly of D&G aftershave. “Captain Sherman? My name’s George O’Donnell, assistant operations manager. The tower informed us about your vision difficulty.”

Captain Sherman didn’t turn around. “It is not ‘vision difficulty,’ Mr. O’Donnell. I’ve been struck blind, somehow, and so has my crew. This gentleman very bravely assisted us to bring the bird down.”

George O’Donnell reached across and shook Tyler’s hand. “It’s deeply appreciated, sir. Believe me, AMA will be showing you their gratitude.”

“Don’t worry about that,” said Tyler. “All I want to do is get out of here.”

“Well, we’d prefer it if you didn’t just yet. Not until all of the passengers have been deplaned. We don’t really want them to see the flight crew being assisted off the aircraft because they’ve gone blind. Who knows what kind of legal mess we’d have on our hands if
that
happened.”

“With all respect, Mr. O’Donnell,
I’m
not blind, and I just want to get the hell off of this plane.”

“I realize that, sir. But there are media people around, and we wouldn’t want you talking to them before we’ve had a full debriefing.”

“You mean before you’d had the chance to make absolutely sure that this wasn’t AMA’s fault? Or if it
was
AMA’s fault, how you’re going to explain it away?”

“There’s no need to take that attitude, sir. Like I say, we’re deeply grateful for what you’ve done. You’re a hero. But it’s my job to think about the airline’s reputation and to make sure that passengers continue to choose AMA with complete confidence.”

He laid his hand on one of Captain Sherman’s epaulets and said, “We have a paramedics team waiting for you and
your crew outside, Captain. Just as soon as the passengers are clear, they’ll be taking you to the Doheny Eye Institute out at Lincoln Heights for a thorough checkup.”

Tyler took off his headphones, unbuckled his seat belt, and stood up. “You can tell the captain and his crew to wait for the all-clear, Mr. O’Donnell, but I don’t work for you and I’m leaving now and going home.”

He was at least four inches taller than George O’Donnell, and probably thirty pounds heavier. George O’Donnell lifted both hands and said, “Okay…have it your way. But I would still ask you please not to talk to the media. We don’t want to create any kind of hysteria, do we?”

“
Hysteria?
” Tyler retorted. He was still shaking. “You weren’t on this plane when they told me that the pilot and his crew had gone blind. You don’t even know the meaning of the word ‘hysteria.’”

George O’Donnell said, “Okay, let’s not have any trouble here,” and stepped out of his way. Tyler turned back to Captain Sherman and said, “I really hope you guys get your sight back, Captain. I’ll call the eye clinic tomorrow, find out how you’re doing.”

“Thanks,” said Captain Sherman. “And thanks again for saving all of these people.”

“That’s okay,” Tyler told him. “I wasn’t in a hurry to die, either.”

He was just about to go back to coach class and retrieve his bag when a distorted voice came over the radio.

“Tower to AMA 2849! Tower to AMA 2849! Evacuate that heavy fast as you can! We have incoming, out of control!”

Captain Sherman picked up his headset. “Say again?”

“Get everybody out of that aircraft as quickly as possible! We have a private jet coming in from the southwest, approximately two hundred seventy knots. It’s locked on Runway 7L and it’s losing altitude fast, but we can’t raise the pilot.”

Without hesitation Tyler took hold of the navigator’s arm and heaved him bodily out of his seat. He pushed him out of the flight cabin door, and then he grabbed the copilot.
George O’Donnell and the senior flight attendant were helping Captain Sherman to unbuckle his harness.

The first-class lounge was almost empty, except for one or two passengers who were gathering the last of their luggage together, but along the aisle from coach class there was still a line of thirty or forty passengers who were being shepherded by the flight attendants toward the emergency chute. None of them were panicking or pushing. Now that they felt they were safely on the ground, everybody was chattering and joking. “Haven’t been down a slide since I was eight years old!”

A warm wind was blowing into the cabin from outside, tainted with the smell of aviation fuel and diesel, and the red fire truck lights were still flashing.

Tyler shouted out, “Listen up, everybody! Listen! You need to get out of this plane real fast! There’s another plane landing on the same runway!”

The senior flight attendant shouted out, too. “Forget about taking your shoes off! Just get out of here as quick as you can!”

There were screams and shouts of alarm, and the passengers started to jostle one another. Tyler pulled the navigator and the copilot toward the exit.

The navigator said, “God, don’t push me—I can’t see!” But Tyler pushed him all the same, and he somersaulted down the emergency chute, followed by a fat woman in a bright pink jumpsuit and a businessman still clutching his briefcase. Two elderly Japanese tourists tumbled down after them.

Tyler looked back to see if Captain Sherman was close behind. The pilot was feeling his way unsteadily down the spiral staircase from first class, clinging to the handrail to prevent himself from falling. George O’Donnell was close behind him.

Tyler was about to go to the foot of the stairs to help him when he heard a piercing whistle noise, and then a deafening explosion, which echoed from one side of the airport to the
other. Somebody out on the runway was screaming, and somebody else was shouting, “
Oh my God! Oh my God!
”

Tyler pushed his way back to the exit, where the last four or five coach-class passengers were being hurried down the emergency chute. The red-haired flight attendant who had first woken him was there, along with a young black flight attendant with cornrow hair.

“What was that?” asked the red-haired attendant, and she was white-faced with fright. “Was that a
plane?
”

Tyler leaned outside, shielding his eyes with his hand. Less than a hundred yards away, he saw the fiery framework of a twin-engined private jet, rolling toward them on blazing tires. It had exploded on touchdown, but it was still trundling along the tarmac at sixty or seventy knots like a burning funeral wagon.

Tyler grasped both flight attendants tightly by the hand and pitched himself out of the doorway. In a tangle of arms and legs they slithered down to the bottom of the emergency chute, and firefighters helped them onto their feet.

“
Run!
" the firefighters shouted at them, and Tyler and the girls all ran across the runway, away from the 747, as fast and as hard as they could. Even the firefighters turned and ran now.

Captain Sherman and George O’Donnell were still standing in the 747’s open doorway when the private jet crashed into its inboard port engine. There was another thunderous bang as the first of the 747’s fuel-tanks exploded, and a huge dragon’s tongue of orange fire licked up into the night.

Tyler stopped running and turned around. By now he and the two flight attendants were nearly three hundred yards away from the 747, but they could still feel a wave of heat against their faces. The plane’s fuel tanks blew up, and fiery chunks of aluminum spun up into the night like Catherine wheels.

Exhausted, sweating, gasping for breath, Tyler slid himself down against a taxi stand sign, and the two flight attendants
sat down beside him. Together they watched as fire engulfed the 747 from nose to tail. They were too winded to speak, and in any case the noise from the burning aircraft was overwhelming. There was a series of smaller bangs as oxygen tanks exploded and the tires burst, followed by the crackling and popping of windows. Five fire trucks jetted thousands of gallons of white foam all over the aircraft’s carcass, and foam tumbled across the runways in the early-morning wind as if it were frolicsome ghosts.

Up above them helicopters from the police and fire departments circled the 747, their floodlights crisscrossing through the thick black smoke. Shortly after five thirty
A.M.
, with a terrible groan, the aircraft sagged in the middle and collapsed onto the runway.

A Latina paramedic came bustling over to check that Tyler and the two girls were unhurt. She had very wide hips, but Tyler thought that she had a comfortingly beautiful face, like a Madonna. Then a tired-looking Federal Aviation official approached Tyler for his home address, so that he could question him later for the FAA’s official inquiry. He was followed by another manager from AMA Airlines, with a gray buzz cut and rimless eyeglasses.

“Did Captain Sherman manage to get out?” Tyler asked him.

The manager’s eyeglasses caught the first light of the morning sun. “Sorry,” he said. “So far we believe there were eleven fatalities altogether. Captain Sherman, I regret to tell you, was one of them.”