Four Past Midnight

'Neither did I,' Albert said.

'In any case, there couldn't have been a landing and take-off while we were sleeping,' Brian told them. 'You can fly a plane on autopilot, and the Concorde can land on autopilot, but you need a human being to take one up.'

'We didn't land, then,' Nick said.

'Nope.'

'So where did they go, Brian?'

'I don't know,' Brian said. He moved to the pilot's chair and sat down.

6

Flight 29 was flying at 36,000 feet, just as Melanie Trevor had told him, on heading 090. An hour or two from now that would change as the plane doglegged further north. Brian took the navigator's chart book, looked at the airspeed indicator, and made a series of rapid calculations. Then he put on the headset.

'Denver Center, this is American Pride Flight 29, over?'

He flicked the toggle ... and heard nothing. Nothing at all. No static; no chatter; no ground control, no other planes. He checked the transponder setting: 7700, just as it should be. Then he flicked the toggle back to transmit again. 'Denver Center, come in please, this is American Pride Flight 29, repeat, American Pride Heavy, and I have a problem, Denver, I have a problem.'

Flicked back the toggle to receive. Listened.

Then Brian did something which made Albert 'Ace' Kaussner's heart begin to bump faster with fear: he hit the control panel just below the radio equipment with the heel of his hand. The Boeing 767 was a high-tech, state-of-the-art passenger plane. One did not try to make the equipment on such a plane operate in such a fashion. What the pilot had just done was what you did when the old Philco radio you bought for a buck at the Kiwanis Auction wouldn't play after you got it home.

Brian tried Denver Center again. And got no response. No response at all.

7

To this moment, Brian had been dazed and terribly perplexed. Now he began to feel frightened - really frightened - as well. Up until now there had been no time to be scared. He wished that were still so ... but it wasn't. He flicked the radio to the emergency band and tried again. There was no response. This was the equivalent of dialing 911 in Manhattan and getting a recording which said everyone had left for the weekend. When you called for help on the emergency band, you always got a prompt response.

Until now, at least, Brian thought.

He switched to UNICOM, where private pilots obtained landing advisories at small airports. No response. He listened ... and heard nothing at all. Which just couldn't be. Private pilots chattered like grackles on a telephone line. The gal in the Piper wanted to know the weather. The guy in the Cessna would just flop back dead in his seat if he couldn't get someone to call his wife and tell her he was bringing home three extra for dinner. The guys in the Lear wanted the girl on the desk at the Arvada Airport to tell their charter passengers that they were going to be fifteen minutes late and to hold their water, they would still make the baseball game in Chicago on time.

But none of that was there. All the grackles had flown, it seemed, and the telephone lines were bare.

He flicked back to the FAA emergency band. 'Denver, come in! Come in right now! This is AP Flight 29, you answer me, goddammit!'

Nick touched his shoulder. 'Easy, mate.'

'The dog won't bark!' Brian said frantically. 'That's impossible, but that's what's happening! Christ, what did they do, have a fucking nuclear war?'

'Easy,' Nick repeated. 'Steady down, Brian, and tell me what you mean, the dog won't bark.'

'I mean Denver Control!' Brian said. 'That dog! I mean FAA Emergency! That dog! UNICOM, that dog, too! I've never -'

He flicked another switch. 'Here,' he said, 'this is the medium shortwave band. They should be jumping all over each other like frogs on a hot sidewalk, but I can't pick up jack shit.'

He flicked another switch, then looked up at Nick and Albert Kaussner, who had crowded in close. 'There's no VOR beacon out of Denver,' he said.

'Meaning?'

'Meaning I have no radio, I have no Denver navigation beacon, and my board says everything is just peachy keen. Which is crap. Got to be.'

A terrible idea began to surface in his mind, coming up like a bloated corpse rising to the top of a river.

'Hey, kid - look out the window. Left side of the plane. Tell me what you see.'

Albert Kaussner looked out. He looked out for a long time. 'Nothing,' he said. 'Nothing at all. Just the last of the Rockies and the beginning of the plains.'

'No lights?'

'No.'

Brian got up on legs which felt weak and watery. He stood looking down for a long time.

At last Nick Hopewell said quietly, 'Denver's gone, isn't it?'

Brian knew from the navigator's charts and his on-board navigational equipment that they should now be flying less than fifty miles south of Denver ... but below them he saw only the dark, featureless landscape that marked the beginning of the Great Plains.

'Yes,' he said. 'Denver's gone.'

8

There was a moment of utter silence in the cockpit, and then Nick Hopewell turned to the peanut gallery, currently consisting of Albert, the man in the ratty sport-coat, and the young girl. Nick clapped his hands together briskly, like a kindergarten teacher. He sounded like one, too, when he spoke. 'All right, people! Back to your seats. I think we need a little quiet here.'

'We are being quiet,' the girl objected, and reasonably enough.

'I believe that what the gentleman actually means isn't quiet but a little privacy,' the man in the ratty sportcoat said. He spoke in cultured tones. but his soft, worried eyes were fixed on Brian.

'That's exactly what I mean,' Nick agreed. 'Please?'

'Is he going to be all right?' the man in the ratty sport-coat asked in a low voice. 'He looks rather upset.'

Nick answered in the same confidential tone. 'Yes,' he said. 'He'll be fine. I'll see to it.'

'Come on, children,' the man in the ratty sport-coat said. He put one arm around the girl's shoulders, the other around Albert's. 'Let's go back and sit down. Our pilot has work to do.'

They need not have lowered their voices even temporarily as far as Brian Engle was concerned. He might have been a fish feeding in a stream while a small flock of birds passes overhead. The sound may reach the fish, but he certainly attaches no significance to it. Brian was busy working his way through the radio bands and switching from one navigational touchpoint to another. It was useless. No Denver; no Colorado Springs; no Omaha. All gone.

He could feel sweat trickling down his cheeks like tears, could feel his shirt sticking to his back.

I must smell like a pig, he thought, or a

Then inspiration struck. He switched to the military-aircraft band, although regulations expressly forbade his doing so. The Strategic Air Command practically owned Omaha. They would not be off the air. They might tell him to get the fuck off their frequency, would probably threaten to report him to the FAA, but Brian would accept all this cheerfully. Perhaps he would be the first to tell them that the city of Denver had apparently gone on vacation.

'Air Force Control, Air Force Control, this is American Pride Flight 29 and we have a problem here, a big problem here, do you read me? Over.'

No dog barked there, either.

That was when Brian felt something - something like a bolt - starting to give way deep inside his mind. That was when he felt his entire structure of organized thought begin to slide slowly toward some dark abyss.

9