John Nance: 16 Souls

The 757 responded obediently, continuing the climb as the controller’s voice returned, apparently dealing with a precautionary emergency.

“Mountaineer Twenty-Six Twelve, do you need the equipment?”

“Ah, negative, approach. We just can’t retract our gear. It’s down and locked.”

Suddenly the stuck mic disappeared and the frequency returned to the normal quiet between transmissions.

“Mountaineer Twenty-Six Twelve, please say fuel remaining and souls on board.”

“We’ve got four thousand pounds of fuel and sixteen souls on board, including the crew.”

“Okay, Twenty-Six Twelve, descend now and maintain nine thousand.”

There was no answer from the other flight, but at the same moment the mechanical voice of the traffic collision avoidance system suddenly rang through the 757’s cockpit.

“Traffic. Traffic.”

Marty squinted at the glass display before him at the yellow tagged target ahead which just as quickly disappeared. The TCAS had fallen silent, indicating, he figured, some sort of radar ghost and not a real aircraft.

“What was that?” Ryan asked.

“Don’t know. I had a target ahead of us for a split second, but I didn’t see an altitude and it’s gone now. Let’s hope it stays gone,” Marty replied, his eyes riveted on the screen in front of him where the vanished target had been.

The controller was still calling for the Mountaineer aircraft without success. “Mountaineer Twenty-Six Twelve, do you read Denver Approach? We’ve lost your transponder. If you hear Denver, turn right now to zero-nine-zero degrees.”

On the flight deck of Mountaineer 2612, Captain Michelle Whittier was working by battery-powered lights as she stuffed a small flashlight in her mouth trying to bring at least one of the aircraft’s generators back on line.

“What the hell happened?” her copilot was asking.

“We lost both generators. I don’t know why. Better get out the checklist.”

“I lost the approach controller, too. Aren’t the radios on your side supposed to still be useable on battery?”

“Yeah… hold on.” Michelle raised the toggle switch to reconnect the left starter-generator, but it snapped off line instantly, just like the right one. Something was badly wrong. “We’ve got some sort of short. Hey, were you using number two radio?”

“Yes. I’ll get his frequency in your radio… yours is on battery, right?”

“Should be. Give me the checklist. Was he trying to give us a clearance when it went off?’

“He said to descend, but it went off before I heard for sure, but I thought he was saying nine.”

“Okay, Luke, you’ve got the aircraft. Fly cross-cockpit on my panel while I try to get him back.”

“Twelve thousand?”

“Yes, maintain our last assigned altitude.”

“I think he was going to clear us to nine. I heard part of nine.”

“Yeah, but he didn’t complete it and we didn’t acknowledge it. Our last assigned is twelve. Maintain twelve.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” the copilot said.

“I’m not getting anything on this radio,” she said.

“I have a cell phone,” the copilot volunteered.

“Yeah, so do I. Good idea. We’ll try that if we can’t get him.”

“They probably still have our skin paint on radar, but the transponder’s off if the generators are off,” the copilot added.

The captain was already pulling out her cell phone and staring at the buttons, wondering just how to call the FAA’s Denver Tracon on a telephone. She punched in “911,” wondering if anyone would believe her.

In the dimly lit electronic nerve center known as Denver Tracon, Sandy Sanchez had turned and motioned for his supervisor the moment it was apparent he’d lost contact with Mountaineer 2612 . There was a small knot of apprehension in the pit of his stomach as he turned to vocalize the problem.

“Yeah, Sandy.”

“Mountaineer Twenty-Six Twelve… I’ve lost his transponder and radio contact, but I think I still have a raw radar return. I tried to turn and descend him but that’s when I lost him.”

“No turn on the skin paint target?”

“Nothing.”

“What’s the plan with Regal Twelve?” Jerry LaBlanc asked, pointing to Regal’s datablock.

“I’m climbing him to eleven.”

“Yeah, but he’s right behind Mountaineer, who may not stay at twelve.”

Someone put a hand on LaBlanc’s shoulder.

“Jerry, we’ve got the Denver police on line twenty-three wanting to know if they should patch through a call supposedly from Mountaineer.”

“A call?”

“Cell phone.”

“Hell, yes! Which line?”

“Punch up two-three and hang on.” The controller turned and motioned to an assistant halfway across the room who spoke urgently into the handset he was holding. Jerry ripped the handset out of the cradle and fingered the right button, listening to a series of clicks before a voice came through.”

“Okay, go ahead.”

“Is this Denver Approach?”

“Yes! Is this Mountaineer Twenty-Six Twelve?”

“Roger that,” Michelle Whittier responded with obvious relief. “Denver, in addition to our gear problem, we’ve now had a dual generator failure and are on thirty-minute-rated batteries and need to get down. Radios are out and transponder’s out.”

“Say heading and altitude,” Jerry ordered.

“Ah… still at twelve and heading three-two-zero. We need to turn for terrain.”

“Standby…” Jerry said, turning back to Sandy. “You want to turn him… her … to zero-nine-zero and descend?”

Sandy started to answer, but he was leaning forward, peering at the datablock for Regal Twelve.

“What the…?”

“What?”

“What the hell is Regal doing?” Sandy Sanchez was stabbing at the transmit button. “Regal Twelve, say altitude!”

Seven Months before — January 21 st

Regal 12

The raw instinct in Marty Mitchell’s mind propelled by decades of experience instantly translated the controller’s tone as an emergency. If a controller was demanding their altitude, something was wrong — and the most likely cause would be a mistake.

Marty’s eyes raked past the altimeter now showing level at 12,000 feet and he glanced at the copilot in an accusatory microsecond. Had they dialed in the wrong number somehow? Time had already dilated for Marty, whose career was on the line for any FAA violation even if his copilot had led him there.

Is 12-thousand right? he questioned himself, vaguely remembering the exchange with the copilot as he raised a finger to keep Ryan from responding and buying further trouble. Marty hit the transmit button himself.

“Regal Twelve is level one-two thousand, as instructed.”

He released the button to listen for the answer, inwardly holding his breath, and wondering somewhere in the periphery of his consciousness what the gray shape rapidly coalescing out of the snow might be. He thought he caught a white light, then a red beacon, and in the space of a second it grew into the nightmare shape of an airplane.

“Regal Twelve, descend immediately to eleven thousand! Acknowledge!”

The controller’s voice was somewhere distant, trumped by the rapidly evolving nightmare before him.

Marty’s hands grabbed the yoke by instinct, shoving violently and automatically snapping off the autopilot as he threw the big Boeing forward into a negative G maneuver trying to dive clear. But the specter was too close and a bit lower he now realized, and before he could even form the intent to yank back on the throttles and the yoke, whatever it was flashed by on the right accompanied by the bone-crushing impact of metal against metal, head-on into to the nose, an impact that threw them forward and then to the left as a flash of fire accompanied by something scraping over the top of the cockpit as the 757’s right wing collided with something big.