Mayday by Nelson DeMille, Thomas H. Block Read Free Book Online Page B

dragging more metal and flesh with it. Its energies spent, the Phoenix continued for only a short
     distance before it faltered and fell, end over end, twelve miles down into the Pacific Ocean.
    The first sound that John Berry heard was an indistinct noise, as if a high shelf stacked with rolls of sheet metal had been
     knocked over. He felt the aircraft bump slightly. Before he could even raise his head from the basin, he heard a rushing noise,
     a roar, that sounded like someone had opened the window of a speeding subway train. He straightened up quickly and froze for
     a second until his senses could take in all the stimuli. The flight was steady, the water was still running in the tap, the
     lights were on, and the rushing sound was lower now. Everything seemed nearly normal, but something—his pilot’s instincts—told
     him he was flying in a dying aircraft.
    Outside, in the cabin, the enormous quantity of internal pressurized air began to exit through the gaping holes in the Straton’s
     fuselage. All the small, loose objects onboard—glasses, trays, hats, papers, briefcases—were immediately propelled through
     the cabin, and were either wedged behind something stationary or sucked out the holes.
    The passengers sat quietly for a long second, completely unable to comprehend what had just happened. There was no point of
     reference in their minds for it. The normal reactions of screaming, quickened heartbeat, adrenaline flow, fight or flight,
     were absent. They reacted with only silence and stillness amid the noises of rushing air.
    Like a growing tidal wave, the escaping air was gathering momentum.
    A baby was sucked out of its uncomprehending mother’s arms and hurled along over the heads of the passengers and out the starboard
     hole and into the nothingness of space.
    Someone screamed.
    Three unaccompanied children, a boy and two girls, in seats H, J, and K, aisle 13, near the starboard hole, had not fastened
     their seat belts and were picked up by the howling wind and sucked out, screeching with terror.
    Everyone was screaming now as the sights and sounds around them began to register on their consciousness.
    A teenaged girl in aisle 18, seat D, near the port-side aisle, her seat dislocated by the original impact, suddenly found
     herself gripping her seat track on the floor, her overturned seat still strapped to her body. The seat belt failed and the
     seat shot down the aisle. She lost her grip and was dragged down the aisle by an invisible and extreme force. Her long blonde
     hair was pulled taut and her skirt and blouse were stripped from her body. Her eyes were filled with horror as she continued
     to fight against the unseen thing that wanted to take her. She dug her nails into the carpet as the racing air pulled her
     toward the yawning hole that led outside.
    Her cries were unheard by even those passengers who sat barely inches away from her struggle. The noise of the escaping air
     was so loud that it was no longer decipherable as sound, but seemed instead a solid thing pounding at the people in their
     seats. The events in the cabin took on a horrific aura of pantomime.
    Some of the bolts that held other damaged seats to their tracks began to fail. Several gangs of seats broke loose in sequence
     and rammed into rows of seats ahead, some of the seats tumbling over the tops of other seats as they rushed toward the hole.
     A gang of four seats, the passengers still strapped in, wedged into the smaller entry hole, partly blocking the hole and causing
     more suction at the larger exit hole on the starboard side. At the starboard hole, a gang of loosened seats seemed to pile
     up like paratroopers nervously bunching up, waiting for their turn to jump. Another flying seat loosened the logjam and one
     after the other they all shot out into space, the passengers strapped in them screaming, kicking, and clawing at the air.

    John Berry, unaware of what was happening outside, turned the handle of the