John Nance - 16 Souls

“About four degrees… I’m having to interpolate on this readout.”

Marty felt a tiny tinge of relief that the leading edge devices in fact had not popped out. Any one of them deploying could have been catastrophic. Obviously Ryan had pulled the right breakers.

“We’re at two hundred twenty-five knots and I’m holding the same pitch angle but we’re starting to drift down in altitude. Keep the flaps coming, Ryan. I’m holding the airspeed and the power right here, and hoping the flaps will give us more lift at a slower airspeed.”

“Coming through flaps five,” the copilot reported. “You feel that buffeting?”

“Yes,” Marty replied, the disturbed air roiling over the Beech fuselage had changed angle slightly and was shaking the tail of the 757. “It’s controllable. Michelle? You agree?”

“We feel the shaking, and we’re starting to put some forward pressure on our yoke. Are you changing your pitch angle?”

“Trying not to, but I’m going to have to pull up a bit more.”

“We’re feeling it shimmy and… and we hear a little metallic screeching, but nothing too alarming.”

“Okay, I’m holding two twenty-five knots and the same pitch angle, flaps are at what, Ryan?”

“About seven percent.”

“Okay, and we’re sinking about three hundred feet per minute. Michelle, I’m going to increase pitch angle by two degrees.”

Gingerly he put back pressure on the 757’s yoke, feeling the nose come up slightly, watching the attitude deviation indicator on the screen in front of him to limit the change.

“Ah, we’re hearing a lot of metal sounds over here and she’s bucking a bit. We’re putting pitch down pressure on our yoke. I think we can take some more.”

“Okay… keep the flaps coming, Ryan. That pitch angle has zeroed our descent… we’re holding altitude. I’m going to try slowing to two-twenty.”

“Flaps coming through ten percent now, ah, Marty,” Ryan reported.

“Pitch attitude is two degrees and…” Marty began, his voice trailing off as the 757 began rolling to the right.

“STOP THE FLAPS!” Marty ordered.

“Yeah…” Ryan replied, “we’ve got an asymmetry. Right side has stopped.”

“Yes. I’m bringing the flap handle back up… please tell me when we’re neutral… when, I mean, the roll moment has stopped.”

“Right there! Stop!”

“Okay.”

“How much flap do we have out?”

“Ah… ah… eleven percent. But I’m just past the flaps ten detent. If I let the handle go, it could move.”

Marty turned to the lead flight attendant holding the iPhone by his ear. “Nancy? Is there any tape of any sort in the galley?”

“I think so.”

“Wait, guys,” Ryan said. I carry duct tape in my flight bag. Here… I’ll tape the lever in place and…”

Suddenly a loud metallic screech and rumble shook the cockpit and the 757 yawed to the right as the voice of the other captain cut through their consciousness from the speaker of the iPhone.

“SHIT!”

A rhythmic bouncing was shaking them as well as another lurch accompanied by a scream from the cockpit of the Beech 1900.

In the Cabin of Regal 12

Lucy felt as if she were descending through the outer circles of hell. She had been watching the Beech fuselage as if her laser-like vigilance could somehow keep Greg safe. It was she who first noticed a dark panel of metal near the front of the ruined fuselage suddenly rise up, shaking violently. The vibrations were followed by a rhythmic bouncing and her heart all but stopped as she saw the structure begin to move, like an injured creature trying to rise where it had fallen. She saw the front end begin to bounce upward, and even being halfway back in the 757 at row 22 she could hear voices yelling in the cockpit as the tail of the parasitic aircraft suddenly rose and the 757 pulsed nose down.

She was losing him. The aircraft would fly up and back and disappear and she didn’t need a pilot’s license to know they would die if that happened with only one wing. He would die! The guy she’d waited a lifetime for who she’d finally found in her early forties was retreating to another dimension in time, like the wrenching scene in her favorite film Somewhere in Time. She hadn’t even realized her right hand was on the window, fingers spread, in a gesture beyond mere words.

The Cockpit of Regal 12

“LOWER YOUR NOSE… MARTY… PLEASE! It’s trying to pull loose…”

Marty had pulsed the yoke forward slightly, relaxing the back pressure to let the 757’s nose drop quickly by several degrees, changing the angle of the airflow over the wings and lessening the pressure on the underside of the Beech fuselage.

“What’s happening over there?” he asked.

“Oh God… pushing! No, Luke, push more! Help me! “

Her voice was vibrating from the shaking violently bouncing the ruined Beech fuselage before the sound of the phone being dropped and banging around the floor of the cockpit.

“Michelle?” Marty tried.

Suddenly the shaking in the 757 stopped, and Ryan looked at the captain with a feral look of disbelief.

“MICHELLE?” Marty yelled, meeting Ryan’s gaze. “Look out there… are they…”

The copilot had already plastered his face to the window.

“Yes! They’re still there! I can’t see much but they’re still with us.”

The sound of the phone being retrieved in the Beech cockpit was followed by Michelle Whittier’s voice, clearly shaken.

“Oh God! Luke, hold it there. We almost blew off!” Michelle shouted, her voice shaking. “We… I could feel the right gear strut lifting out of your wing and our nose was pulling us up… we pushed hard on the yoke and she settled back in but… it won’t take much more… angle of attack I mean. It was so sudden…”

“Our flaps are out as far as we can get them, Michelle, and I’m at two twenty and now speeding up by ten knots to get back to the same deck angle.”

“Okay… I…”

“Are you all right?”

“NO! God, no, we’re not all right! How the fuck did all this happen, anyway? What did I do to deserve this hell?”

A breaking wave of shame, guilt, and remorse broke over Marty and for a second deprived him of the ability to speak, but Michelle’s voice provided the grace of a reprieve, for the moment.

“Nevermind… that’s not… I’m just deeply rattled over here. We were just lucky a minute ago. That came out of nowhere… no warning. We jammed the yoke forward and thank God it worked… for now.”

“Agreed,” Marty said, his throat even more bone dry now than seconds before. “We’re at two hundred thirty knots. Keep forward pressure on your yoke.”

“Please don’t slow anymore!”

“We won’t.”

“It’s still bouncing out here, far more than before… like the nose is trying to lift again… and making those screeching noises, so it’s not as well seated… the gear strut… as before.”

“Michelle, is your right aileron controllable? If your right wing is producing lift out there, maybe rolling your yoke to the right could settle it back on our wing more. Your call.”

“Already doing it. How long to landing?”

“Ah, ten, maybe twenty minutes,” Marty replied.

Her voice came back markedly different, low and metered and somber.

“Okay, we have to face the facts. This may not work, Marty. Even if we can stay on your wing to landing, you’ll never get a 757 stopped on a slick runway inside of ten thousand feet.”

“That’s a chance we’ll have to take, and the length is twelve thousand, just… the far end is unplowed.”

“They were closing runways behind us. What’s left down there? Which runway?”