Airport (54 page)

At the thought of what was going to happen within the next few minutes–whatever the outcome–once more an icy fear, a sense of premonition, came to Gwen. Once more she conquered it. Reminding herself of her responsibilities to the crew, and to the other passengers–who were oblivious of the drama being played out in their midst–she escorted Mrs. Quonsett the remaining distance to her seat.

The passenger Guerrero glanced up quickly, then away. The small attaché case, Gwen saw, was still in the same position on his knees, his hands holding it. The man from the aisle seat next to Mrs. Quonsett’s–the oboe player–stood up as they approached. His expression sympathetic, he moved out to let the old lady in. Unobtrusively, Gwen moved in front of him, blocking his return. The aisle seat must remain unoccupied until Gwen moved out of the way. Gwen’s eyes caught a flicker of movement through the chink she had left in the doorway curtain. Vernon Demerest was in position and ready.

“Please!” Still standing in the aisle, Mrs. Ouonsett turned pleadingly, tearfully to Gwen. “I beg of you–ask the captain to reconsider. I don’t want to be handed over to the Italian police…”

Gwen said harshly, “You should have thought of that before. Besides, I don’t tell the captain what to do.”

“But you can ask him! He’ll listen to you.”

D. O. Guerrero turned his head, took in the scene, then looked away.

Gwen seized the old lady’s arm. “I’m telling you–get into that seat!”

Ada Quonsett’s voice became a wail. “All I’m asking is to be taken back. Hand me over there, not in a strange country!”

From behind Gwen the oboe player protested, “Miss, can’t you see the lady’s upset?”

Gwen snapped, “Please keep out of this. This woman has no business here at all. She’s a stowaway.”

The oboist said indignantly, “I don’t care what she is. She’s still an old lady.”

Ignoring him, Gwen gave Mrs. Quonsett a shove which sent her staggering. “You heard me! Sit down and be quiet.”

Ada Quonsett dropped into her seat. She screamed, “You hurt me! You hurt me!”

Several passengers were on their feet, protesting.

D. O. Guerrero continued to look straight ahead. His hands, Gwen saw, were still on the attaché case.

Mrs. Quonsett wailed again.

Gwen said coldly, “You’re hysterical.” Deliberately, hating what she had to do, she leaned into the section of seats and slapped Mrs. Quonsett hard across the face. The slap resounded through the cabin. Passengers gasped. Two other stewardesses appeared incredulous. The oboist seized Gwen’s arm; hastily she shook herself free.

What happened next occurred so swiftly that even those closest to the scene were uncertain of the sequence of events.

Mrs. Quonsett, in her seat, turned to D. O. Guerrero on her left. She appealed to him, “Sir, please help me! Help me!”

His features rigid, he ignored her.

Apparently overcome by grief and fear, she reached toward him, flinging her arms hystericafly around his neck. “Please, please!”

Guerrero twisted his body away, trying to release himself. He failed. Instead, Ada Quonsett wound her arms around his neck more tightly. “Oh, help me!”

Red-faced and close to choking, D. O. Guerrero put up both hands to wrench her away. As if in supplication, Ada Quonsett eased her grasp and seized his hands.

At the same instant, Gwen Meighen leaned forward toward the inside seat. She reached out and in a single even movement–almost without haste–she grasped the attaché case firmly and removed it from Guerrero’s knees. A moment later the case was free and in the aisle. Between Guerrero and the case, Gwen and Ada Quonsett were a solid barrier.

The curtain across the doorway from the first class cabin swept open. Vernon Demerest, tall and impressive in uniform, hurried through.

His face showing relief, he held out his hand for the attaché case. “Nice going, Gwen. Let me have it.”

With ordinary luck the incident–except for dealing with Guerrero later–would have ended there. That it did not was solely due to Marcus Rathbone.

Rathbone, until that moment, was an unknown, unconsidered passenger, occupying seat fourteen-D across the aisle. Although others were unaware of him, he was a self-important, pompous man, constantly aware of himself.

In the small Iowa town where he lived he was a minor merchant, known to his neighbors as a “knocker.” Whatever others in his community did or proposed, Marcus Rathbone objected to. His objections, small and large, were legendary. They included the choice of books in the local library, a plan for a community antennae system, the needed disciplining of his son at school, and the color of paint for a civic building. Shortly before departing on his present trip he had organized the defeat of a proposed sign ordinance which would have beautified his town’s main street. Despite his habitual “knocking,” he had never been known to propose a constructive idea.

Another peculiarity was that Marcus Rathbone despised women, including his own wife. None of his objections had ever been on their behalf. Consequently, the humiliation of Mrs. Ouonsett a moment earlier had not disturbed him, but Gwen Meighen’s seizure of D. O. Guerrero’s attaché case did.

To Marcus Rathbone this was officialdom in uniform–and a woman at that!–impinging on the rights of an ordinary traveler like himself. Indignantly, Rathbone rose from his seat, interposing himself between Gwen and Vernon Demerest.

At the same instant, D. O. Guerrero, flushed and mouthing incoherent words, scrambled free from his seat and the grasp of Ada Quonsett. As he reached the aisle, Marcus Rathbone seized the case from Gwen and–with a polite bow–held it out. Like a wild animal, with madness in his eyes, Guerrero grabbed it.

Vernon Demerest flung himself forward, but too late. He tried to reach Guerrero, but the narrowness of the aisle and the intervening figures–Gwen, Rathbone, the oboe player–defeated him. D. O. Guerrero had ducked around the others and was heading for the aircraft’s rear. Other passengers, in seats, were scrambling to their feet. Demerest shouted desperately, “Stop that man! He has a bomb!”

The shout produced screams, and an exodus from seats which had the effect of blocking the aisle still further. Only Gwen Meighen, scrambling, pushing, clawing her way aft, managed to stay close to Guerrero.

At the end of the cabin–like an animal still, but this time cornered–Guerrero turned. All that remained between him and the aircraft’s tail were three rear toilets; light indicators showed that two were empty, one was occupied. His back to the toilets, Guerrero held the attaché case forward in front of him, one hand on its carrying handle, the other on a loop of string now visible beneath the handle. In a strained voice, somewhere between a whisper and a snarl, he warned, “Stay where you are! Don’t come closer!”

Above the heads of the others, Vernon Demerest shouted again. “Guerrero, listen to me! Do you hear me? Listen!”

There was a second’s silence in which no one moved, the only sound the steady background whine of the plane’s jet engines. Guerrero blinked, continuing to face the others, his eyes roving and suspicious.

“We know who you are,” Demerest called out, “and we know what you intended. We know about the insurance and the bomb, and they know on the ground, too, so it means your insurance is no good. Do you understand?–your insurance is invalid, canceled, worthless. If you let off that bomb you’ll kill yourself for nothing. No one–least of all your family–will gain. In fact, your family will lose because they’ll be blamed and hounded. Listen to me! Think.”

A woman screamed. Still Guerrero hesitated.

Vernon Demerest urged, “Guerrero, let these people sit down. Then, if you like, we’ll talk. You can ask me questions. I promise that until you’re ready, no one will come close.” Demerest was calculating: If Guerrero’s attention could be held long enough, the aisle might be cleared. After that, Demerest would try to persuade Guerrero to hand over the case. If he refused, there was still a chance that Demerest could leap forward, throw himself bodily onto Guerrero and wrest the case free before the trigger could be used. It would be a tremendous risk, but there was nothing better.

People were easing nervously back into their seats.

“Now that I’ve told you what we know, Guerrero; now
you
know that it isn’t any good going on, I’m asking you to give me that case.” Demerest tried to keep his tone reasonable, sensing it was important to keep talking. “If you do as I say, I give you my solemn word that no one in this airplane will harm you.”

D. O. Guerrero’s eyes mirrored fear. He moistened thin lips with his tongue. Gwen Meighen was closest to him.

Demerest said quietly, “Gwen, take it easy. Try to get in a seat,” If he had to leap, he wanted no one in the way.

Behind Guerrero the door of the occupied toilet opened. An owlish young man with thick glasses came out. He stopped, peering short-sightedly. Obviously he had heard nothing of what was going on.

Another passenger yelled, “Grab the guy with the case! He’s got a bomb!”

At the first “click” of the toilet door, Guerrero half turned. Now he lunged, thrusting the man with glasses aside, and entered the toilet which the newcomer had vacated.

As Guerrero moved, Gwen Meighen moved too, remaining close behind him. Vernon Demerest, several yards away, was struggling fiercely aft, down the still crowded aisle.

The toilet door was closing as Gwen reached it. She thrust a foot inside and shoved. Her foot stopped the door from closing, but the door refused to move. Despairing, as pain shot through her foot, she could feel Guerrero’s weight against the other side.

In D. O. Guerrero’s mind the last few minutes bad been a jumbled blur. He had not fully comprehended everything that had occurred, nor had he heard all that Demerest said. But one thing penetrated. He realized that like so many of his other grand designs, this one, too, had failed. Somewhere–as always happened with whatever he attempted–he had bungled. All his life had been a failure. With bitterness, he knew his death would be a failure too.

His back was braced against the inside of the toilet door. He felt pressure on it, and knew that at any moment the pressure would increase so that he could no longer hold the door closed. Desperately be fumbled with the attaché case, reaching for the string beneath the handle which would release the square of plastic, actuating the clothespin switch and detonating the dynamite inside. Even as he found the string and tugged, he wondered if the bomb be had made would be a failure also.

In his last split second of life and comprehension, D. O. Guerrero learned that it was not.

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T
HE EXPLOSION
aboard Trans America Flight Two,
The Golden Argosy
, was instantaneous, monstrous, and overwhelming. In the airplane’s confined space it struck with the din of a hundred thunderclaps, a sheet of flame, and a blow like a giant sledge hammer.

D. O. Guerrero died instantly, his body, near the core of the explosion, disintegrating utterly. One moment he existed; the next, there were only a few small, bloody pieces of him left.

The aircraft fuselage blew open.

Gwen Meighen, who, next to Guerrero, was nearest the explosion, received its force in her face and chest.

An instant after the dynamite charge ripped the aircraft skin, the cabin decompressed. With a second roar and tornado force, air inside the aircraft–until this moment maintained at normal pressure–swept through the ruptured fuselage to dissipate in the high altitude near-vacuum outside. Through the passenger cabins a dark engulfing cloud of dust surged toward the rear. With it, like litter in a maelstrom, went every loose object, light and heavy–papers, food trays, liquor bottles, coffeepots, hand luggage, clothing, passengers’ belongings–all whirling through the air as if impelled toward a cyclopean vacuum cleaner. Curtains tore away. Internal doors–flight deck, storage, and toilets–wrenched free from locks and hinges and were swept rearward with the rest.

Several passengers were struck. Others, not strapped in their seats, clung to any handhold as the wind and suction drew them inexorably toward the rear.

Throughout the aircraft, emergency compartments above each seat snapped open. Yellow oxygen masks came tumbling down, each mask connected by a short plastic tube to a central oxygen supply.

Abruptly the suction lessened. The aircraft’s interior was filled with mist and a savage, biting cold. Noise from engines and wind was overwhelming.

Vernon Demerest, still in the aisle of the tourist cabin where he had held himself by instinctively seizing a seatback, roared, “Get on oxygen!” He grabbed a mask himself.

Through knowledge and training, Demerest realized what most others did not: The air inside the cabin was now as rarefied as that outside, and insufficient to support life. Only fifteen seconds of full consciousness remained to everyone, unless oxygen was used at once from the aircraft’s emergency system.

Even in five seconds, without the aid of oxygen, a degree of lessened judgment would occur.

In another five seconds a state of euphoria would make many decide not to bother with oxygen at all. They would lapse into unconsciousness, not caring.

Airlines had long been urged, by those who understood the hazards of decompression, to make pre-flight announcements about oxygen equipment more definite than they were. Passengers should be told, it was argued:
The instant an oxygen mask appears in front of you, grab it, stick your face into it, and ask questions after. If there is a real decompression, you haven’t a single second to spare. If it’s a false alarm, you can always take the mask off later; meanwhile it will do no harm.

Pilots who took decompression tests were given a simple demonstration of the effect of oxygen lack at high altitudes. In a decompression tank, with an oxygen mask on, they were told to begin writing their signatures, and part way through the exercise their masks were removed. The signatures tailed off into a scrawl, or nothingness. Before unconsciousness occurred, the masks were put back on.