The Lion's Game (10 page)

He took the steps slowly, but two at a time. He stopped when he was chest-level to the upper deck and peered into the big dome of the 747. There were sets of seats paired along both sides of the dome, eight rows in all, for a total of thirty-two seats. He couldn’t see any heads above the big, plush seats, but he could see arms draped over the rests of the aisle seats. Motionless arms. “What the hell ... ?”

He continued up the staircase and stood at the rear bulkhead of the dome. In the center of the dome was a console on which lay magazines, newspapers, and baskets of snacks. Late afternoon sunlight filled the dome through the portholes, and dust motes floated in the sunbeams. It was a pleasant scene, he thought, but instinctively he knew he was in the presence of death.

He moved up the center aisle and glanced left and right at the passengers in their seats. Only about half the seats were occupied, and they were mostly middle-aged men and women, the type you’d find in Business Class. Some were reclined backwards with reading material on their laps, some had their service trays open and drinks sat on the trays, although McGill noticed that a few glasses had tipped and spilled during the landing.

A few passengers had headphones on and appeared to be watching the small individual television screens that came out of the armrests. The TVs were still on, and the one closest to him showed a promo film of happy people in Manhattan.

McGill moved forward and turned to face the passengers. There was no doubt in his mind that all of them were dead. He took a deep breath and tried to clear his mind, tried to be professional. He pulled the fire glove off his right hand and reached out to touch the face of a woman in the closest aisle seat. Her skin was not stone cold, but neither was it body temperature. He guessed she had been dead for a few hours, and the state of the cabin confirmed that whatever had happened, had happened long before preparations to land.

McGill bent over and examined the face of a man in the next row. The face was peaceful—no saliva, no mucus, no vomit, no tears, no tortured expressions ... McGill had never seen anything quite like this. Toxic fumes and smoke caused panic, horrible suffocation, a very unpleasant death that could be seen on the faces and in the body contortions of the victims. What he was seeing here, he concluded, was a peaceful, sleep-like unconsciousness, followed by death.

He looked for the cuffed fugitive and the two escorts and found the handcuffed man in the second from last row of the starboard side seats, sitting in the window seat. The man was dressed in a dark gray suit and though his face was partly hidden by a sleeping mask, he looked to McGill to be Hispanic or maybe Mideastern or Indian. McGill never could tell ethnic types apart. But the guy sitting next to the cuffed man was most probably a cop. McGill could usually pick out one of his own. He patted down the man and felt his holster on his left hip. He then looked at the man sitting by himself in the last row behind these two and concluded that this was the other escort. In any case, it didn’t matter any longer, except that he didn’t have to lead them off the aircraft and put them in a car; they were not going to Gate 23. In fact, no one was going anywhere except to the mobile morgue.

McGill considered the situation. Everyone up here in the dome was dead, and since the entire aircraft shared the same internal atmosphere and air pressure, then he knew that everyone in First Class and Coach was also dead. This explained what he’d seen and not seen below. It explained the silence. He considered using his radio to call for medical assistance, but he was fairly certain no one needed assistance. Still, he took the radio off its hook and was going to transmit, but he realized he didn’t know quite what to say, and he didn’t know how he would sound yelling through his oxygen mask. Instead, he keyed the radio button in a series of long and short squelch breaks to signal that he was okay.

Sorentino’s voice came over the radio and said, “Roger, Andy.”

McGill walked to the rear lavatory behind the spiral staircase. The door sign said VACANT, and McGill opened the door, assuring himself that no one was in there.

Across from the lavatory was the galley, and as he turned away from the lavatory, he saw someone lying on the floor in the galley. He moved toward the body and knelt. It was a female flight attendant, lying on her side as though she were taking a nap. He felt her ankle for a pulse, but there was none.

Now that he was certain that no passengers needed aid, McGill went quickly to the cockpit door and pulled on it, but it was locked, as per regulations. He banged on the door with his hand, and shouted through his oxygen mask, “Open up! Emergency Service! Open up!” There was no response. Nor did he expect any.

McGill took his crash ax and swung at the cockpit door where the lock was. The door sprang in and hung half open on its hinges. McGill hesitated, then stepped into the cockpit.

The pilot and co-pilot sat in their seats, and he could see their heads tilted forward as if they’d nodded off.

McGill stood there a few seconds, not wanting to touch the pilots. Then he said, “Hey.
Hey
. Can you hear me?” He felt slightly stupid talking to dead men.

Andy McGill was sweating now, and he felt his knees trembling. He was not a queasy man, and over the years he had carried his share of burned and dead bodies out of various places, but he had never been alone in the presence of so much silent death.

He touched the pilot’s face with his bare hand. Dead a few hours. So, who had landed the aircraft?

His eyes went to the instrument panels. He’d sat through a one-hour class on Boeing cockpits, and he focused on a small display window that read AUTOLAND3. He had been told that a computer-programmed autopilot could land these new-generation jets without the input of a human hand and brain. He didn’t believe it when he’d heard it, but he believed it now.

There was no other explanation for how this airship of death had gotten here. An autopilot landing would also explain the near-miss with the US Airways jet, and would probably explain the lack of reverse thrust. For sure, McGill thought, it explained the hours of NO-RAD, not to mention the fact that this aircraft was sitting at the end of the runway, engines still running, with two long-dead pilots.
Mary, mother of God
... He felt sick and wanted to scream or vomit or run, but he stood his ground and took another deep breath.
Calm down, McGill
.

What next?

Ventilate
.

He reached above his head for the escape hatch, activated the lever, and the hatch popped open, exposing a square of blue sky.

He stood a moment, listening to the now louder sound of the jet engines. He knew he should shut them down, but there seemed to be no risk of explosion, so he let them run so that the air exchange system on board could completely purge itself of whatever invisible toxin had caused this nightmare. The only thing he felt good about was the knowledge that even if he’d acted sooner, it wouldn’t have changed anything. This was sort of like the Saudi Scenario, but it had happened while the aircraft was still aloft, far from here. There had been no fire, so the 747 hadn’t crashed like the Swissair jet near the coast of Nova Scotia. In fact, whatever the problem was had affected only human life, not mechanical systems or electronics. The autopilot did what it was programmed to do, though McGill found himself wishing it hadn’t.

McGill looked out the windshields into the sunlight. He wanted to be out there with the living, not in here. But he waited for the air conditioning systems to do their job and tried to remember how long it took to completely vent a 747. He was supposed to know these things, but he had trouble keeping his mind focused.

Calm down
.

After what seemed like a long time, but was probably less than two minutes, McGill reached down to the pedestal between the flight seats and shut off the four fuel switches. Nearly all the lights on the console went off, except those powered by the aircraft’s batteries, and the whine of the jet engines stopped immediately, replaced by an eerie silence.

McGill knew that outside the aircraft, everyone was breathing easier now that the engines had shut down. They also knew that Andy McGill was okay, but they didn’t know that it was he, not the pilots, who had shut down the engines.

McGill heard a noise in the dome cabin, and he turned toward the cockpit door and listened again. He called out through his oxygen mask, “Anybody there?” Silence. Spooky silence. Dead silence. But he
had
heard something. Maybe the ticking of the cooling engines. Or a piece of hand luggage had shifted in the overhead compartment.

He took a deep breath and steadied his nerves. He recalled what a medical examiner once told him in a morgue. “The dead can’t hurt you. No one’s ever been killed by a dead man.”

He looked into the dome cabin and saw the dead staring back at him. The coroner was wrong. The dead can hurt you and kill your soul. Andy McGill said a Hail Mary and crossed himself.

I was getting antsy, but George Foster had established a commo link through Agent Jim Lindley down on the tarmac, who in turn was talking directly to one of the Port Authority cops nearby, and the PA cop had radio contact with his Command Center, who in turn had contact with the Tower, and with their Emergency Service units down on the runway.

I asked George, “What did Lindley say?”

“He said that an Emergency Service person has boarded the aircraft and the engines are shut down.”

“Did the Emergency Service guy radio a situation report?”

“Not yet, but he broke squelch to signal that everything was okay.”

“He broke squelch and they could hear that outside the plane? What did that guy have for lunch?”

Ted and Debbie laughed. Kate did not.

George drew an exasperated breath and informed me,
“Radio
squelch. The guy has an oxygen mask on, and it’s easier to signal with squelch breaks than to try to talk—”

“I know,” I interrupted. “Just kidding.” You don’t often get a great straight man like George Foster. Certainly not on the NYPD where everyone was a comedian, and every comedian wanted to be top banana.

Anyway, my act was wearing thin here at the steel door of Gate 23. I suggested to George, “Let me go outside and establish personal liaison with Lindley.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

George was torn between having me in his sight and getting me out of his sight, out of his face, and out of his life. I have that effect on superiors.

He said to everyone, “As soon as the Emergency Service guy gets our people off the aircraft and into a Port Authority car, Lindley will call me, and then we’ll go down the stairs and onto the tarmac. It’s about a thirty-second walk, so hold your horses. Okay?”

I wasn’t going to argue with this guy. For the record, I said, “You’re in charge.”

Debra Del Vecchio’s radio crackled. She listened, and informed us, “The Yankees tied it in the fifth.”

So, we waited at the gate while circumstances beyond our control caused a minor delay in our plans. On the wall was a tourist poster showing a night view of the illuminated Statue of Liberty. Beneath the photo in about a dozen languages was Emma Lazarus’ words, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

I learned that by heart in grade school. It still gave me goose bumps.

I looked at Kate, and we made eye contact. She smiled, and I smiled back. All things considered, this was better than lying in Columbia Presbyterian Hospital on life support systems. One of the docs told me later that if it weren’t for a great ambulance driver and a great paramedic, I’d be wearing a toe tag instead of an ID bracelet. It was that close.

It does change your life. Not outwardly, but deep inside. Like friends of mine who saw combat in Vietnam, I sometimes feel like my lease ran out, and I’m on a month-to-month contract with God.

I realized that this was about the time of day I’d taken three bullets on West 102nd Street, and the first-year anniversary was three days ago. The day would have passed unmarked by me, but my ex-partner, Dom Fanelli, insisted on taking me out for drinks. To get into the spirit of the occasion, he’d taken me to a bar on West 102nd Street, a block from the happy incident. There were a dozen of my old buds there, and they had this big pistol range target of an outlined man labeled JOHN COREY, with three bullet holes in it. Cops are weird.

Andy McGill knew that everything he did or failed to do would come under microscopic scrutiny in the weeks and months ahead. He’d probably spend the next month or two testifying in front of a dozen state and Federal agencies, not to mention his own bosses. This disaster would become firehouse legend, and he wanted to be certain that he was the hero of that legend.

His mind went from the unknown future to the problematic present. What next?

He knew that with the engines shut down, they could be started again only by using the onboard auxiliary power unit, which was beyond his training, or by using an external auxiliary power unit that would have to be trucked out to the aircraft. But with no pilots to start the engines and taxi the airliner, what they actually needed was a Trans-Continental tug vehicle to get this aircraft off the runway and into the security area, out of sight of the public and the media. McGill put his radio to his face mask and called Sorentino. “Rescue One, this is Rescue Eight-One.”

McGill could barely hear Sorentino’s “Roger” through his head gear. McGill said, “Get a company tug here, ASAP. Copy?”

“Copy Trans-Continental tug. What’s up?”

“Do it. Out.”

McGill exited the cockpit, walked quickly through the dome and down the spiral staircase to the lower deck, then opened the second exit door across the fuselage from the one he’d entered.