the forward and rear sections. Before he had intervened in the fate of
Flight 246, all of the passengers in those favored seats had been
destined to come out of the crash with comparatively minor injuries or
no injuries at all. He was sure that all of those marked for life were
still going to live, but he was not certain that merely moving the
Dubroveks into the middle of the safety zone was sufficient to alter
their fate and insure their survival. Perhaps, after impact, he would
have to be there to get them through the fire and out of the
wreckage-which he could not do if he was with the flight crew.
Besides, he had no idea whether the crew was going to survive. If he
was with them in the cockpit on impact. . .
He went with Evelyn anyway. He had no choice-at least not since Holly
Thorne had insisted that he might be able to do more than save one woman
and one child, might thwart fate on a large scale instead of a small
one. He remembered too clearly the dying man in the station wagon out
on the Mojave Desert and the three murdered innocents in the Atlanta
convenience store last May, people who could have been spared along with
others if he had been allowed to arrive in time to save them.
As he went by row sixteen, he checked out the Dubroveks, who were
huddled over a storybook, then he met Holly’s eyes. Her anxiety was
palpable.
Following Evelyn forward, Jim was aware of the passengers looking at him
speculatively. He was one of their own, elevated to special status by
their predicament, which they were beginning to suspect was worse than
they were being told. They were clearly wondering what special
knowledge he possessed that made his presence in the cockpit desirable.
If only they knew.
The plane was wallowing again.
Jim picked up a trick from Evelyn. She did not just weave where the
tilting deck forced her to go, but attempted to anticipate its movement
and lean in the opposite direction, shifting her point of gravity to
maintain her balance.
A couple of the passengers were discreetly puking into air-sickness
bags.
Many others, though able to control their nausea, were gray-faced.
When Jim entered the cramped, instrument-packed cockpit, he was appalled
by what he saw. The flight engineer was paging through a manual, a look
of quiet desperation on his face. The two pilots-Delbaugh and First
officer Anilov, according to the flight attendant who had not entered
with Jim-were struggling with the controls, trying to wrench the
right-tending jumbo jet back onto course. To free them to concentrate
on that task, a red-haired balding man was on his knees between the two
pilots, operating the throttles at the captain’s direction, using the
thrust of the remaining two engines to provide what steering they had.
Anilov said, “We’re losing altitude again.”
“Not serious,” Delbaugh said. Aware that someone had entered Delbaugh
glanced back at Jim. In the captain’s position, Jim would have been
sweating like a race-lathered horse, but Delbaugh’s face glistened with
only a fine sheen of perspiration, as if someone had spritzed him with a
plant mister. His voice was steady: “You’re him?”
“Yeah,” Jim said.
Delbaugh looked forward again. “We’re coming around,” he said to
Anilov, and the co-pilot nodded. Delbaugh ordered a throttle change,
and the man on the floor complied. Then, speaking to Jim without
looking at him, the captain said, “You knew it was going to happen.”
“Yeah.”
“So what else can you tell me?”
Bracing himself against a bulkhead as the plane shuddered and wallowed
again, Jim said, “Total hydraulic failure.”
“I mean, something I don’t know,” Delbaugh replied with cool sarcasm.
It justifiably could have been an angry snarl, but he was admirably in
command of himself. Then he spoke to approach control, obtaining new
instructions.
Listening, Jim realized that the Dubuque tower was going to bring in
Flight 246 by way of a series of 360-degree turns, in an attempt to line
it up with one of the runways. The pilots could not easily guide the
plane into a straight approach, as usual, because they had no real