Текст книги "Treasure"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 32 страниц)

Fifteen minutes later the jetliner crossed over an uninhabited section of Iceland's southern coastline and headed inland. The landscape below became a montage of gray rock and white snow. He lowered the flaps and reduced speed until the Boeing 720-B was flying at 352 kilometers an hour.

He reengaged the auto pilot on a new radio frequency transmitted from a beacon placed on the Hofsjokull, a glacier rising 1,737 meters from the center of the island. Then he set the altitude so the aircraft would impact 150 meters below the peak.

Methodically he smashed and disabled the communication and direction indicators. He also began dumping fuel as a backup in case a flaw somehow marred his carefully conceived plan.

Eight minutes to go.

He dropped through the trapdoor into the hell hole. He already wore a pair of French paraboots with thick, elastic soles. He hurriedly removed a jumpsuit from the duffel bag and slipped into it. There had been no room for a helmet so he pulled on a ski mask and stocking cap.

Next came a pair of gloves, goggles and an altimeter, which he strapped to one wrist.

He clipped the harness snaps and checked the straps for snugness. He wore a piggyback rig where the reserve sat on his shoulder blades and the main chute fit into the small of his back. He relied on a ram air canopy, a square air foil that is more flown than jumped.

He glanced at the dial of his watch. One minute, twenty seconds. He opened the escape door and a rush of air swept through the hell hole. He studied the sweep second hand on the watch and began counting down.

When he reached zero he launched his body through the narrow opening feet first, facing in the direction of flight. The velocity of the airstream struck him with the icy force of an avalanche, crushing the breath from his lungs. The plane soared past with a deafening roar. for a brief instant he felt the heat from the turbine's exhaust, and then he was away and falling.

Face down in a stable arched and spread position, knees slightly flexed, hands spread in front, Lemk looked down and saw only blackness. No lights burned on the ground.

He assumed the worst; his crew had failed to reach the correct rendezvous point. Without a defined target zone he could not gauge his wind drift or direction. He might land kilometers away, or worse, impact in the middle of jagged ice with serious injury and never be found in time.

In ten seconds he had already dropped nearly 360 meters. The needle on the luminous dial of his altimeter was crossing into the red. He could not wait any longer. He pulled the pilot chute from a pouch and threw it into the wind. It anchored to the sky and strung out the main canopy.

He heard the chute open with a satisfying thump, and he was jerked into an upright position. He took his penlight and aimed the narrow beam over his head. The canopy blossomed above him.

Suddenly a small circle of lights blinked on about one Mile away to his right. Then a flare went up and hung for several seconds, just long enough for him to judge wind direction and speed. He pulled on the right steering toggle and began gliding toward the lights.

Another flare went up. The wind held steady with no fluctuation as he neared the ground. He could clearly see his crew now. They had laid out another line of lights leading to the previously lit circle. He jockeyed the steering toggles and made a 180-degree bank into the wind.

Lemk prepared to strike the ground. His crew had chosen the terrain well. The balls of his feet made contact with soft tundra, and he made a perfect stand-up landing in the center of the circle.

Without a word, he unsnapped the harness and walked outside the glare of the lights. He looked up at the sky.

The aircraft with its unsuspecting crew and passengers flew straight toward the glacier that gradually rose, closing the gap between ice and metal.

He stood there watching as the faint sound of the jet engines died and the blinking navigation lights melted into the black 4 night.

Back in the galley, one of the flight attendants tilted her head, listening.

"What's that tinny noise coming from the cockpit?" she asked.

Gary Rubin, the chief steward, stepped into the aisle and faced toward the bow of the plane. He could hear what sounded like a continuous, muffled roar, almost like rushing water in the distance.

Ten seconds after the imposter's exodus, the timer on the actuator set the hydraulic arm in motion, closing the hatch in the hell hole and cutting off the strange sound.

"It stopped," he said. "I don't hear it any more."

"What do you suppose it was?"

"Can't say. I've never heard anything quite like it. for a moment I thought we might have suffered a pressure leak."

A passenger call light came on and the flight attendant brushed back her blond hair and stepped into the main cabin.

"Maybe you better check it out with the captain," she said over her shoulder.

Rubin hesitated, remembering Lemk's order not to bother the flight crew except for a matter of importance. Better safe than sorry. The welfare of the passengers came first. He lifted the intercom phone to his ear and pressed the cockpit call button.

"Captain, Chief Steward here. We've just experienced a weird noise forward of the main cabin. Is there a problem?"

He received no reply.

He tried three times, but the receiver remained dead. He stood there at a loss for several moments, wondering why the flight cabin did not respond. In twelve years of flying, this was a new experience for him.

He was still trying to fathom the mystery when the flight attendant rushed up and said something. At first he ignored her, but the urgency in her voice got through to him.

"What . . . what did you say?"

"We're over land!"

"Land?"

"Directly beneath us," she said, eyes blank with confusion. "A passenger pointed it out to me."

Rubin shook his head doubtfully. "Impossible. We have to be over the middle of the ocean. He probably saw lights from fishing boats. The captain said we might spot them during our descent for the meteorology study."

"See for yourself," she pleaded. "The ground is coming up fast. I think we're landing."

He stepped over to the galley window and looked down. Instead of the dark waters of the Atlantic there was a glimmer of white. A vast sheet of ice was slipping under the aircraft no more than 240 meters below. It was near enough for the ice crystals to reflect the strobe flashes from the navigation lights. He froze, uncomprehending, trying to make some sense out of what his eyes told him was true.

If this was an emergency landing, why hadn't the captain alerted the main cabin crew? The "Fasten Seat Belts" and "No Smoking" signs had not been turned on.

Almost all of the U.N. passengers were awake, reading or engaged in conversation. Only Hala Kamil was sound asleep. Several representatives from Mexico, returning from an economic mission to the World Bank headquarters, were huddled around a table in the tail section. Director of Foreign Financing Minister Salazar talked in grim undertones. The atmosphere around the table was dampened by defeat. Mexico had suffered a disastrous economic collapse and was going through technical bankruptcy with no monetary aid in sight.

Dread flared within Rubin, and the words rustled from his mouth: "What in hell is going on?"

The flight attendant muttered as Her face paled and her eyes widened.

"Shouldn't we begin emergency procedures?"

"Don't alarm the passengers. Not yet anyway. Let me check with the captain first."

"Is there time?"

"I don't know."

Controlling his fear, Rubin walked quickly, almost at a jog, toward the cockpit, faking a bored yawn to divert any curiosity at his rapid step.

He whipped the curtain closed that shielded the boarding entryway from the main cabin.

When he tried the door. It was locked.

He frantically rapped his knuckles against the door. No one answered from inside. He stared dumbly at the thin barrier that blocked the cockpit, his mind an incredulous blank; and then, in a flash of desperation, he lashed out his foot and kicked in the door.

The panel was built to open outward, but the blow smashed it against the inner wall. . Rubin stared into the cramped space of the cockpit.

Disbelief, bewilderment, fear, they swirled through his mind like a flood hurtling down a shattered dam.

One swift glance took in the slumped form of the men, Oswald's head on the floor, face up, ever, staring sightlessly at the cabin roof. Lemk had seemingly vanished.

Rubin stumbled over Oswald's body, leaned across the panel-staring through the wind The massive summit of the Hofsjokull loomed beyond the bow of the plane no more than ten miles away The flickering n lights silhouetted against the rising ice, the uneven surface with ghostly shades of gray and green.

Driven by panic, the steward climbed into the pilot's seat and firmly clutched the control column.

He pulled the wheel toward his chest.

Nothing happened.

The column refused to give.

Glancing at the panel, he observed that it showed a slow but steady increase in altitude. He yanked at the wheel again, but harder this time. It gave slightly. He was stunned by the unyielding pressure.

There was no time to think straight. He was too inexperienced to realize he was trying to override the automatic pilot with brute strength when only twenty-five pounds of pressure was required to overpower it.

The sharp, cold air made the glacier appear near enough to reach out and touch. He pushed the throttles forward and hauled back on the control column again. It gave sluggishly, like the wheel of a speeding car that lost its power steering, and inched back.

With agonizing slowness the Boeing lifted its nose and swept past the icy peak with less than a hundred feet to spare.

Down on the glacier, the man who had murdered the bona fide Flight 106

pilot, Date Lemk, in London and taken his place, peered into the distance through a pair of night glasses. The northern lights had faded to a dim glow, but the uneven rim of the Hofsjokull still showed against the sky.

The air was hushed with expectancy. The only sounds came from the two-man crew who were loading the flights transmitter beacon into the hull of a helicopter.

Suleiman Aziz Arnmar's eyes became accustomed to the darkness, and he could make out the broken ridges scarring the wall of the ice floe.

Ammar stood like a statue, counting the seconds, waiting for the small speck of flame that would mark the crash of Flight 106. But the distant fireball did not materialize.

Finally Ammar lowered the glasses and sighed. The stillness of the glacier spread around him, cold and remote. He pulled off the gray-haired wig and threw it into the darkness. Next he removed a pair of specially handcrafted boots and took out the four-inch risers in the heels. He became aware of his servant and friend, Ibn Telmuk, standing beside him.

"Good makeup job, Suleiman, I wouldn't recognize you," said Ibn, a swarthy type with a curly mass of ebony hair. "The equipment loaded?"

Ammar asked.

"All secured. Was the mission a success?"

"A minor miscalculation. The plane somehow cleared the crest. Allah has given Miss Kamil a few more minutes of life."

"Akhmad Yazid will not be pleased."

"Kamil will die as planned," Annnar said confidently. "Nothing was left to chance."

"The plane still flies."

"Even Allah can't keep it in the air indefinitely."

"You have failed," said a new voice.

Ammar swung and stared into the frozen scowl of Muhammad Ismail. The Egyptian's round face was a curious blend of malevolence and childish innocence. The beady black eyes gazed with evil intensity over a heavy mustache, but they lacked the power of penetration. Bravado without substance, a facade of toughness, pulling a trigger was his only skill.

Ammar had had little choice in working with lsmail. The obscure village mullah had been forced on him by Akhmad Yazid. The Islamic idol hoarded his trust Re a miser, rationing it out only to those he believed possessed a fighting spirit and a traditionalist's devotion to the original laws of Islam. Firm religious traits meant more to Yazid than competency and professionalism.

Ammar professed to being a true believer of the faith, but Yazid was wary of him. The assassin's habit of talking to Moslem leaders as though they were mortal equals did not sit well with Yazid. He insisted that Ammar carry out his death missions under the guarded eye of Ismail.

Ammar had accepted his watchdog without protest. He was a master at the game of deceit. He quickly reversed Ismail's role into that of a dupe for his own intelligence purposes.

But the stupidity of Arabs was a constant irritation to Ammar. Cold, analytical reasoning was beyond them. He shook his head wearily and then patiently explained the situation to Ismail.

"Events can happen beyond our control. An updraft, a malfunction in the automatic pilot or altimeters, a sudden change in the wind. A hundred different variables could have caused the plane to miss the peak. But all probabilities were considered. The automatic pilot is locked on a course toward the pole. No more than ninety minutes of air time is left."

"And if someone discovers the bodies in the cockpit and one of the passengers knows how to fly?" Ismail persisted.

"The dossiers of all on the plane were carefully examined. None indicated any pilot experience. Besides, I smashed the radio and navigation instruments. Anyone attempting to take control will be lost.

No compass, no landmarks to give them a direction. Hala Kamil and her U.N. bedfellows will vanish in the cold waters of the Arctic sea."

"Is there no hope for survival?" asked Ismad. "None," said Ammar firmly.

"Absolutely none."

Dirk Pitt relaxed and slouched in a swivel chair, stretching out his legs until his six-foot-three-inch body was on a near horizontal plane.

Then he yawned and ran his hands through a thick mat of wavy black hair.

Pitt was a lean, firm-muscled man in prime physical shape for someone who didn't run ten miles every day or look upon the exertion and sweat of bodybuilding as a celestial tonic against old age. His face wore the tanned, weathered skin of an outdoorsman who preferred the sun to the fluorescent lighting of an office. His deep green, opaque eyes radiated a strange combination of warmth and cruelty while his lips seemed eternally locked in a friendly grin.

He was a smooth article who moved easily among the rich and powerful, but preferred the company of men and women who drank their liquor straight up and liked to get their hands dirty.

A product of the Air Force Academy, he was listed on active status with the rank of Major, although he had been on loan to the National Underwater & Marine Agency (NUMA) for nearly six years as their Special Projects Director, Along with Al Giordino, his closest friend since childhood, he had lived and adventured in every sea, on the surface and in the depths, encountering in half a decade more wild experiences than most men would see in ten lifetimes. He had found the vanished Manhattan Limited express train after swimming through an underground cavern in New York, salvaged a few passengers before being sent to the bottom of the Saint Lawrence River with a thousand souls. He had hunted down the lost nuclear submarine Starbuck in the middle of the Pacific and tracked the ghost ship Cyclops to her grave under the Caribbean. And he raised the Titanic.

He was, Giordino often mused, a man driven to rediscover the past, born eighty years too late.

"You might want to see this," Giordino said suddenly from the other side of the room.

Pitt turned from a color video monitor that displayed a view of the seascape one hundred meters beneath the hull of the icebreaker survey ship Polar Explorer. She was a sturdy new vessel especially built for sailing through ice-covered waters. The massive boxlike superstructure towering above the hull resembled a five-story office building, and her great bow, pushed by 80,000-horsepower engines, could pound a path through ice up to one-and-a-half meters thick.

Pitt placed one foot against a counter, flexed his knee and pushed. The motion was honed through weeks of practice and with the gentle roll of the ship for momentum. He twisted 180 degrees in his swivel chair as its castors carried him some meters across the slanting deck of the electronics compartment.

"Looks like a crater coming up."

Al Giordino sat at a console studying an image on the Klein sidescan sonar recorder. Short, standing a little over 162 centimeters in stockinged size-eleven feet, broadened with beefy shoulders in the shape of a wedge, he looked as if he were assembled out of spare bulldozer parts. His hair was dark and curly, an inheritance from Italian ancestry, and if he had worn a bandanna and an earring he could have moonlighted as an organ-grinder. Dry-humored, steadfast and reliable as the tides, Giordino was Pitts insurance policy against Murphy's Law.

His concentration never flickered while Pitt, feet extended as bumpers, came to an abrupt stop against the console beside him.

Pitt watched the computer-enhanced sonograph as the ridge of a crater slowly rose to a crest and then made a steep descent into the interior void.

"She's dropping fast," said Giordino.

Pitt glanced at the echo sounder. "Down from 140 to 180 meters. "

"Hardly any slope to the outer rim."

"Two hundred and still falling."

"Weird formation for a volcano," said Giordino. "No sign of lava rock."

A tall, florid-faced man with thick graying brown hair that struggled to escape from a baseball cap tilted toward the back of his head, opened the door and leaned in the compartment.

"You night owls in the mood for food or drink?"

"Peanut-butter sandwich and a cup of black coffee sounds good," Pitt replied without turning. "Leveling out at 220 meters. "

"A couple of doughnuts with milk," Giordino answered.

Navy Commander Byron Knight, skipper of the survey vessel, nodded.

Besides Pitt and Giordino, he was the only man with access to the electronics compartment. It was off limits to the rest of the officers and crew.

"I'll have your orders rustled up from the galley."

"You're a wonderful human being, Byron," Pitt said with a sarcastic smile. "I don't care what the rest of the navy says about you."

"You ever try Peanut butter with arsenic?" Knight threw at him over his shoulder.

Giordino watched intently as the arc of the formation spread and widened. "Diameter almost two kilometers."

"Interior is smooth sediment," said Pitt. "No breakup of the floor."

"Must have been one gigantic volcano."

"Not a volcano."

Giordino faced Pitt, a curious look in his eyes. "You have another name for a submerged pockmark?"

"How about meteor impact?"

Giordino looked skeptical. "A meteor crater this deep on the sea bottom?"

"Probably struck thousands, maybe millions of years ago, at a time when the sea level was lower."

"What led you up that street?"

"Three clues," Pitt explained. "First, we have a well defined rim without a prominent outer upsiope. Second, the subbottom profiler indicates a bowl-shaped cross section. And third" he paused, pointing at a stylus that was making furious sweeps across a roll of graph paper.

"The magnetometer is having a spasm. There's enough iron down there to build a fleet of battleships."

Suddenly Giordino stiffened. "We have a target!"

"Where?"

"Two hundred meters to starboard, lying perpendicular on the crater's slope. Pretty vague reading. The object is partly obscured by the geology."

Pitt snatched the phone and rang the bridge. "We've had a malfunction in the equipment. Continue our heading to the end of the run. If we can make the repair in time, come around and repeat the track."

"Will do, sir," replied the watch officer.

"You should have sold snake oil," said Giordino, smiling.

"No telling the size of Soviet ears."

"Anything from the video cameras?"

Pitt glanced at the monitors. "Just out of range. They should pick it up on the next pass."

The initial sonar image that appeared on the recording paper looked like a brown smudge against the lighter geology of the crater's wall. Then it slipped past the sidescan's viewing window and disappeared into a computer that enhanced the detail. The finished picture came out on a special large high-resolution color video monitor. The smudge had become a well defined shape.

Using a joystick, Pitt moved a pair of crosshairs to the center of the image and clicked the button to expand the image.

The computer churned away for a few seconds, and then a new, larger, even more detailed image appeared on the screen. A rectangle automatically appeared around the target and showed the dimensions. At the same time another machine reproduced the color image on a sheet of glossy paper.

commander Knight came rushing back into the compartment. After days of tedium, cruising back and forth as though mowing a vast lawn, staring for hours on end at the video display and sidescan readings, he was galvanized, anticipation written in every line of his face.

"I was given your message about a malfunction. You have a target?"

Neither Pitt nor Giordino answered. They smiled like prospectors who have hit the mother lode. Knight, staring at them, suddenly knew.

"Good God above!" he blurted. "We've found her, really found her?"

"Hiding in the seascape," said Pitt, pointing to the monitor while handing Knight the photo. "The perfect image of one Alfa-class Soviet submarine."

Knight stared, fascinated, at both sonar images. "The Russians probed all around this section of the sea. Incredible they didn't find her."

"She's easy to miss," said Pitt. "The ice pack was heavier when they conducted their search. They couldn't maintain a straight track.

Probably skirted the opposite side of the upslope, and their sonar beams only showed a shadow where the sub was lying. Also, the unusually heavy concentration of iron under the crater would have thrown off their magnetic profile."

"Our intelligence people will dance on the ceiling when they see this."

"Not if the Reds get wise," said Giordino. "They'll hardly stand idle and watch us repeat our 'Seventy-five snatch of their 'Golf' class sub with the Glomar Explorer."

"You suggesting they haven't swallowed our story about conducting a geological survey of the seafloor?" Pitt asked with deep sarcasm.

Giordino gave Pitt a sour look indeed. "Intelligence is a weird business," he said. "The crew on the other side of these bulkheads has no idea of what we're up to, yet Soviet agents in Washington smelled out our mission weeks ago. The only reason they haven't interfered is because our undersea technology is better and they want us to lead the way to their sub."

"Won't be easy to deceive them," agreed Knight. "Two of their trawlers have been shadowing our every move since we left port."

"So have their surveillance satellites," added Giordino.

Pitt said, "All reasons why I asked the bridge to run out our last track before coming about for a closer look."

"Good try, but the Russians will pick up our track rerun."

"No doubt, except once we pass over the sub we go on and Turn onto the next lane, continuing as before. Then I'll radio our engineers in Washington to complain of equipment problems and ask for maintenance instructions. Every couple of miles we'll rerun a lane to reinforce the ruse."

Giordino looked at Knight. "They might buy it. It's believable enough."

Knight considered that. "Okay, we won't hang around. This will be our last look at the target. Then we continue on, acting as if we've found nothing."

"And after we've finished this grid," Pitt said, "we can start a new one thirty miles away and fake a discovery."

"A nice added touch," Giordino said approvingly. "Drop a red herring across our trail."

Knight smiled wryly. "Sounds like a good script. Let's go for it."

The ship rolled and the deck canted slightly to starboard as the helmsman brought her around on a reverse course. Far behind the stern, like an obstinate dog on a long leash, a robot submersible called Sherlock automatically refocused its two movie cameras and one still camera while continuing to send out probing sonar waves. Presumedly named by its designer after the fictional detective, Sherlock revealed detailed features of the seafloor previously unseen by man.

Minutes ticked by with the slowness of hours until at last the crest of the crater began slipping across the sidescan. The Polar Explorer's course towed Sherlock along the plunging slope of the crater's interior.

Three pairs of eyes locked on the sidescan recorder.

"Here she comes," Giordino said with the barest tremor of excitement.

The Soviet submarine nearly filled the port side of the sonograph. She was lying on a steep angle with her stern toward the center of the crater, her bow pointing at the rim. The hull was upright and she was in one piece, unlike the U.S. submarines Thresher and Scorpion, which had imploded into hundreds of pieces when they sank in the 1960s. The slight list to her starboard side was no more than two or three degrees.

Ten months had passed since she went missing, but her outer works were free of growth and rust in the frigid Arctic waters.

"No doubt of her being an 'Alfa' class," said Knight. "Nuclear-powered, titanium hull, nonmagnetic and noncorrosive in salt water, latest silent-propellor technology, the deepestdiving and fastest submarines in both the Soviet and U.S.

navies."

The lag between the sonar recording and the video view was around thirty seconds. As if watching a tennis match, their heads turned in unison from the sonar as they stared intently at the TV monitors.

The sub's smooth lines slid into view under the camera's lights and were revealed in a ghostly bluish-gray hue. The Americans found it hard to believe the Russian vessel was a graveyard with over a hundred and fifty men resting inside. It looked like a child's toy sitting on the bottom of a wading pool.

"any indication of unusual radioactivity?" asked Knight.

"Very slight rise," answered Giordino. "Probably from the sub's reactor."

"She didn't suffer a meltdown," Pitt surmised.

"Not according to the readings."

Knight stared at the monitors and made a cursory damage report. "Some damage to the bow. Port diving plane torn away. A long gouge in her port bottom, running for about twenty meters."

"A deep one by the looks of it," observed Pitt. "Penetrated her ballast tanks into the inner pressure hull. She must have struck the opposite rim of the crater, tearing the guts out of her. Easy to imagine the crew struggling to raise her to the surface as she kept running across the center of the crater. But she took in more water than she could blow off and lost depth, finally impacting about halfway up the slope on this side."

The compartment fell into a momentary silence as the submarine dropped astern of the Sherlock and slowly faded from view of the cameras. They continued to gaze at the monitors as the broken contour of the sea bottom glided past, their minds visualizing the horrible death that stalked men who sailed the hostile depths beneath the sea.

for nearly half a minute no one spoke, they hardly breathed. Then slowly each shook off the nightmare and turned away from the monitors.

The ice was broken. They began to relax and laugh with all the spontaneous enthusiasm of saloon patrons celebrating a winning touchdown by the home team.

Pitt and Giordino could sit back and take it easy for the rest of the voyage. Their part in the search project was over. They had found a needle in a haystack. Then slowly Pitts expression turned serious and he stared off into space.

Giordino knew the symptoms from long experience. Once a project was successfully completed, Pitt suffered a letdown. The challenge was gone, and his restless mind quickly turned to the next one.

"Damn fine job, Dirk, and you too, Al," Knight said warmly. "You NUMA people know your search techniques. This has to be the most remarkable intelligence coup in twenty years. "

"Don't get carried away," said Pitt. "The tough part is yet to come.

Recovering the sub under Russian noses will be a delicate operation. No Glomar Explorer this time. No salvage from highly visible surface ships. The entire operation will have to be carried out underwater-"

"What the hell is that?" Giordino's eyes had returned to the monitor.

"Looks like a fat jug."

"More like an urn," Knight confirmed.

Pitt stared into the monitor for a long moment, his face thoughtful, his eyes tired, red and suddenly intense. The object was standing straight up. Two handles protruded from opposite sides of a narrow neck, flaring sharply into a broad, oval body that in Turn tapered toward the base buried in the silt.

"A terra-cotta amphora," Pitt announced finally.

"I believe you're right," said Knight. "The Greeks and Romans used them to transport wine and olive oil. They've been recovered all over the bottom of the Mediterranean."

"What's one doing in the Greenland Sea?" Giordino asked no one in particular. "There, to the left of the picture, we've picked up a second."

Then a cluster of three drifted under the cameras, followed by five more running in a ragged line from southeast to northwest.

Knight turned to Pitt, "You're the shipwreck expert. How do you'read it?"

A good ten seconds passed before Pitt replied. Then at last he did, his voice was distant, as though it came from someone in the next compartment.

"My guess is they lead toward an ancient shipwreck the history books say isn't supposed to be here."

Rubin would have traded his soul to abandon the impossible task, remove hands slick with sweat from the control rolumn, close tired eyes and accept death, but his sense of responsibility to the flight crew and passengers drove him on.

Never in his wildest nightmares did he see himself in such a crazy predicament. One wrong physical movement, a slight error in judgment and fifty people would find a deep, unknown grave in the sea. Not fair, he cried in his mind over and over. Not fair.

None of the navigation instruments was fullctioning. All communications equipment was dead. Not one of the passengers had ever flown an aircraft, even a light plane. He was totally disoriented and hopelessly lost. Inexplicably the needles on the fuel gauges wavered on "Empty."