Ken Taylor had pulled the call button in spite of the terse warning from the flight attendant not to do so. He was at the very back of the giant 747---the cheap seats that his company always seemed to acquire at a deep discount.
Something had occurred at the front of the airplane. The first class passengers had been flushed from their upscale seating. There had been screams---male and female. The plane had briefly shuddered and lost altitude---then recovered. He had heard the unmistakable sharp report of the SIG .357---the air marshal's issue weapon---several times.
After several minutes, a grim faced man came down the aisle toward him accompanied by one of the younger flight attendants. He slammed the call bell above Ken's head off with his fist.
"Didn't you get the fucking word?" The man, said, pushing his identification in front of Ken's face; it indicated that he was an NYPD detective, a sergeant.
Ken offered him his own ID from the wallet on his lap that he had previously removed from his rear pant's pocket. "Sergeant I apologize for bothering you. I am a Lieutenant Colonel, USMC reserve---and I'm a military pilot with nearly thirty years of multi-engine flying experience. Something serious appears to have happened up front. I'm just offering my services to the flight crew if needed. I heard the weapons fire."
The police detective relaxed his scowl but maintained a grim countenance. "Colonel, I think you'd better come with me." Ken unfastened his seat belt, following the young flight attendant as the detective followed closely behind.
As Ken entered the curtain to First Class he surveyed a scene of unspeakable carnage. A flight attendant lay dead across three seats in the middle section---her throat slashed. A young Marine gunnery sergeant was carrying the body of a member of the flight crew and laying his obviously inert body across another bank of seats.
Another young man in a cheap suit and close cropped hair occupied a third bank of three seats. The decease air marshal, Ken assumed. As he approached the flight deck a man, he assumed a doctor, nurse or EMT was feverishly working on another member of the flight crew. This 747 had three officers on the flight deck; the youngest, probably this man would normally be the flight engineer. There was a pile of three male bodies in front of the front right seats by the door neither clean shaven nor wearing suits. The hijackers, he presumed.
Ken realized the man futilely attending to the stricken crewman was a doctor, a Pakistani. He had obviously been administering CPR for some time. There was no evidence of success. Greeting the man in Urdu, the national language of Pakistan but then switching to English, the official language of Pakistan, Ken asked for the prognosis. The young doctor shook his head. At that moment the gunny brought another body back from the flight deck to the first class cabin. Not good, Ken thought to himself---not good at all.
The flight deck was spattered with blood in all directions; there were drying blood pools on the floor. The senior flight attendant, a striking woman who he judged to be in her late thirties---or a well maintained forty---was seated in the right seat, talking on the radio. He assumed she was notifying the airline company of what had happened.
He remembered her name as Melanie; he had noted it when he boarded. As a ten year divorced man coming up on the big 50, dating a forty year old woman was almost cradle robbing. She was his type; she was a tall leggy brunette with a great smile but also a look that said---"don't fuck with me." He loved strong women who told you what they expected---in or out of bed.
At the moment bedding down the long and lanky Ms. Melanie was the farthest thought from his mind. He needed to assess the situation. It did not look promising. The automatic flight and landing system or LAS visual displays were smashed beyond recognition. Someone had unscrewed and partially severed the wires on one of the auto pilot control boxes. He surmised that the auto pilot would probably hold the last heading, airspeed and altitude entered, but could not be used to fly the plane.
The old familiar, "antique" flight instruments were still installed in this older aircraft; it was essentially an analog cockpit with electro-mechanical instruments; the newer models had digital displays---eight TV screens. This bird had had some digital displays added---all smashed---but had retained the old style instrumentation.
Ken found comfort in that fact, since that is what he was used to depending on in the C130 Hercules. Still there were over 970 lights, gauges and switches on this flight deck. Digitalization on newer models had cut that number by 70%. All of the old stuff still appeared to work.
He had bootlegged a few hours with an Air Force buddy in a KC135---the Air Force version of the venerable 707 but in an aerial refueling configuration. He'd also flown the KC10 with the same friend, legitimately a Jumbo Jet. He had thousands of hours and tens of thousands of landings in the four engine turbo prop C130. He also knew that even for an experienced 747 pilot, landing the giant machine manually was an emergency procedure. He fully realized that he was about to take the controls of something that was much more than just a very big version of a C130.
The Captain had been an old timer; he'd kept track of his flight progress on paper---not fully trusting the computers. The old ADF and VOR were still installed and appeared to be functioning. Examining the blood spattered map the dead pilot had left him he guessed that they were generally South of Pittsburgh approximately 150 miles. Columbus or Cleveland would be up ahead, but farther away. It would be Pittsburgh then.
He found the paper bound book of approach charts next to the seat—thank God for old timers. He turned on all of the radios that had been shut off and turned on the transponder and tuned it to 7700. It was customary to use 7600 for a hijacking and 7700 for an in-flight emergency. The hijacking was over; the emergency was just beginning. The young air marshal had succeed and failed. The airplane was still in the air---but it had no crew---just Ken.
Melanie paused in her discussion with her flight operations and turned toward him. "Hi Melanie, I'm Ken. I assume you're talking to flight ops. Have you contacted center yet?"
She shook her head---she had not.
"Melanie." Ken smiled slightly, trying to will his most calm and confident visage. "I hope you can stay up here with me for a while. Please handle your flight ops people for me and relay---I don't have time to talk to them. I need to get in touch with Pittsburgh center, get some clear air space below us and get this big puppy safely on the ground. Are you good to go?"
