Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

Raiford’s tolerance for routine was at capacity, too. Traffic came and went steadily, and the unusually good spring weather coast to coast kept delays to a minimum. There were no backups to deal with, incoming or outgoing. It was the sort of day a controller worked by rote, the sort of day that dulled sharp edges of concentration, the sort of day mistakes were made.

At other stations in the tower cab, a ground controller found time to glance intermittently at one of the morning newspapers; another, who was waiting to come on duty, was reading an old John D. MacDonald mystery, and a third, who was on a break, was in the process of losing $58 to a co-worker at gin. The rest were conducting business in workmanlike fashion, talking quietly to pilots through their microphoned headsets and constantly updating their data on who was where and where they were going. An FM radio station was playing soft rock, stuff from the Bee Gees’ old Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.

Raiford spent a few minutes absently watching people-movers roll like determined ants between the elegant main terminal and the gray, utilitarian mid-field terminal, where most of the jet flights arrived and departed. He hated the mid-field building and its boxy, lifeless lines, so totally unimaginative in the shadow of the grand and graceful original terminal building created by architect Eero Saarinen in the early 1960s. Dulles was a showplace then. Now it was just another busy airport. Raiford considered the transformation a near-tragedy.

As he glowered at the mid-field building, he saw a fuel truck move under the left wing of the ConPac 811. Given the winds aloft, Raiford understood the need for more fuel.

But he would never understand, thinking about it for days and weeks thereafter, why his attention was drawn abruptly back to the 811 about twenty minutes later. Maybe it was nothing more than a sense that the flight, already late, should be on its way. Or a premonition. Or neither. In any event, he was looking at Flight 1117 when the engine under the right wing coughed a cloud of smoke. Raiford considered calling the crew, but he decided against it. There was no recurrence, and if anything were seriously wrong, it would show up on the cockpit instruments.

He felt confident the ConPac crew could handle its job without him.

On the flight deck of the 811, the crew didn’t see the smoke, but there was a bump when Number Two engine started. Dodds turned to Peck, but the captain was busy watching the digital readouts monitoring the engine’s performance. The instruments told him nothing.

“Damned if I know what it was,” Peck confessed. He moved his headset mike to his lips and made voice contact with the ground-crew chief outside. “Ev, take a look at Number Two’s intake and make sure it’s clear, will you, please?”

“Yes, sir,” the chief said. He backed up the full length of the cord tethering him to the 811 communications system and hopped up on a baggage trolley for a better view. “Looks fine, Captain,” he reported. “But if she’s off, the mechanics are two minutes away.”

“None of the baggage carts bumped us about the same time we turned her over?”

“No, sir. Traffic was clear three, four minutes ago.”

“Thanks, Ev.” Peck turned to Dodds. “Might’ve been a backfire, but keep an eye on it during run-up.”

Back in the passenger compartments, none of the nine cabin attendants and only two of the passengers noticed anything unusual about the start-up of Number Two engine. Everyone else was too busy storing carry-ons and finding seat assignments to notice.

Harry Jacobs, an assistant counsel to the Senate Commerce Committee, came aboard with only a briefcase, which he tossed under the seat in front of him. He was settled in and buckled up when Number Two turned over, and he felt the engine kick. It registered with him, but as a curiosity, not as an alarm, and he made a mental note to ask the head steward about it. But within minutes, Jacobs’ attention was diverted by a stewardess who insisted on knowing if he wanted a complimentary soft drink or a three-dollar cocktail after takeoff. The jolt was quickly forgotten.

Eight rows back, Cloriss Colburn, a widow and a retired clerk from the Social Security Administration, settled into her window seat. She was headed for Laguna Beach to visit her son. Cloriss had traveled extensively in the early 1960s with her husband, but he’d suffered a stroke at an appallingly young age, and she’d spent the next twenty-two years working and caring for her invalid spouse until his death in 1990. This was her first trip on an airplane since 1968, her first ever on a jet.

If Cloriss felt the jolt when Number Two started, it made no impression on her. But she saw the same black smoke Barry Raiford noticed from the tower. It curled under the trailing edge flaps and dissipated in the breeze. Cloriss had spent years of travel watching old piston engines belch smoke. Now the sight of the smoke brought back old memories.

She considered it perfectly normal.

Jackson Peck reached over the throttles and activated the second radio in his stack.

“Dulles Clearance, ConPac Eleven-seventeen is ready to copy,” he told the controller who would give him his assigned altitudes and routing across the country. Although he had filed a flight plan with the standard routing for the trip, air traffic control could alter those plans for reasons of weather, traffic, or (sometimes, he thought) sheer perversity. No pilot ever was sure of the route approved for him until he got his formal clearance.

“ConPac Eleven-seventeen, you’re cleared as filed. After departure, climb and maintain ten thousand; expect flight level three-niner-zero ten minutes after departure. Departure control is one-two-six-point-one. Squawk five-three-zero-five.”

Peck finished jotting down the instructions. As he read them back, he set his ship’s transponder on 5305. The codes assigned to the flight as it crossed the country would give traffic-control radar a constant readout on the jet’s identity, speed, position, and altitude.

“Eleven-seventeen, readback is correct,” the controller said. “Contact ground on twenty-one-point-niner when you’re ready to roll, and have a good one.”

Peck keyed his mike twice in acknowledgment as he turned to Dodds. “How about it, pardner? We ready to get this stage on the trail?”

Dodds gave him thumbs up, and Peck activated the radio set to 121.9. The ground controller offered the 811 captain his choice of Runway 30, a 10,001-foot strip close to his parking position, or Runway 19-Right, an 11,501-foot strip an eight-minute taxi away. Either choice involved a stiff crosswind, but it was load factor, not winds, that dictated Peck’s decision. Another day, with a lighter load, he would have chosen Runway 30 to save the time and fuel he would eat up taxiing around to 19R. But with the passengers and freight he was hauling, the extra 1,500 feet of runway on 19R was a safety cushion too appealing to dismiss.

In the end, a different decision would have saved only one life, but that was not a subtle distinction to the man whose life it was.

For Howard Kisparich, that morning in April was the culmination of a commitment. Kisparich had passed his private-pilot check ride at nearby Manassas Municipal Airport two weeks earlier, and he was giving himself the week’s vacation he considered his reward. It was a promise he’d made to himself after he took the hook.

The previous December, Kisparich had accepted the free twenty-minute introductory ride Cessna offered would-be pilots, and he’d signed up for training, understanding finally as he wrote a check for $3,800, that truly, there is no such thing as a free ride. He promised himself then if he got his license, he would take a week away from his law practice and do nothing but fly, logging maybe twenty hours or more to sharpen his skills. The first nice week after the license was it, and this was that week.