Three seconds of silence.
SANTORELLI: Roy? Somethin’ up?
Two seconds of silence.
SANTORELLI: What’s this? What’re we… Roy, you off the auto pilot?
BLANE: One of their names is Dr. Louis Blom.
SANTORELLI: What?
BLANE: One of their names is Dr. Keith Ramlock.
SANTORELLI: (with audible concern) What’s this on the McDoo? You been in the FMC, Roy?
When Joe inquired, Barbara said, “The 747-400s use digitised avionics. The instrument panel is dominated by six of the largest cathode-ray tubes made, for the display of data. And the McDoo means MCDU, the multi-function control and display unit. There’s one beside each pilot’s seat, and they’re interconnected, so anything one pilot enters is updated on the other’s unit. They control the Honeywell/Sperry FMC, the flight management computer. The pilots input the flight plan and the load sheet through the MCDU keyboards, and all enroute flight-plan changes are also actuated with the McDoos.”
“So Santorelli comes back from the john and sees that Blane has made changes to the flight plan. Is that unusual?”
“Depends on weather, turbulence, unexpected traffic, holding patterns because of airport problems at the destination…But at this point in a coast-to-coast flight—little past the midpoint—in pretty good weather, with everything apparently ticking along routinely?”
Barbara nodded. “Yeah, Santorelli would wonder why they were making flight-plan changes under the circumstances. But I think the concern in his voice results more from Blane’s unresponsiveness and from something unusual he saw on the McDoo, some plan change that didn’t make sense.”
“Which would be?”
“As I said earlier, they were seven degrees off course.”
“Santorelli wouldn’t have felt that happening when he was in the lavatory?”
“It started soon after he was off the flight deck, and it was a gradual, really gentle bank. He might have sensed something, but there’s no reason he would have realized the change was so big.”
“Who are these doctors—Blom and Ramlock?”
“I don’t have a clue. But read on. It gets weirder.”
BLANE: They’re doing bad things to me.
SANTORELLI: Captain, what’s wrong here?
BLANE: They’re mean to me.
SANTORELLI: Hey, are you with me here?
BLANE: Make them stop.
Barbara said, “Blane’s voice changes there. It’s sort of odd all the way through this, but when he says ‘make them stop,’ there’s a tremor in it, a fragility, as if he’s actually in… not pain so much but emotional distress.”
SANTORELLI: Captain… Roy, I’m taking over here now.
BLANE: Are we recording?
SANTORELLI: What?
BLANE: Make them stop hurting me.
SANTORELLI: (worriedly) Gonna be—
BLANE: Are we recording?
SANTORELLI: Gonna be all right now—A hard sound like a punch. A grunt, apparently from Santorelli.
Another punch. Santorelli falls silent.
BLANE: Are we recording?
As a timpani of thunder drummed an overture in the east, Joe said, “He sucker-punched his copilot?”
“Or hit him with some blunt object, maybe something he’d taken out of his flight bag and hidden beside his seat while Santorelli was in the lay, something he was ready with.”
“Premeditation. What the hell?”
“Probably hit him in the face, because Santorelli went right out. He’s silent for ten or twelve seconds, and then”—she pointed to the transcript—“we hear him groaning.”
“Dear God.”
“On the tape, Blane’s voice now loses the tremor, the fragility. There’s a bitterness that makes your skin crawl.”
BLANE: Make them stop or when I get the chance… when I get the chance, I’ll kill everybody. Everybody. I will. I’ll do it. I’ll kill everybody, and I’ll like it.
The transcript rattled in Joe’s hands.
He thought of the passengers on 353: some dozing in their seats, others reading books, working on laptops, leafing through magazines, knitting, watching a movie, having a drink, making plans for the future, all of them complacent, none aware of the terrifying events occurring in the cockpit.
Maybe Nina was at the window, gazing out at the stars or down at the top of the cloud cover below them; she liked the window seat. Michelle and Chrissie might have been playing a game of Go Fish or Old Maids; they travelled with decks for various games.
He was torturing himself. He was good at it because a part of him believed that he deserved to be tortured.