John Nance - 16 Souls

Marty was leaning forward and examining the tank readings himself.

“We have nine thousand in the left main. So, we’re not going to flame out.”

“No, but we have no idea how much we can burn out of the left main tank before we get in major control issues keeping the wings level. I mean, nine thousand pounds on the right along with all the drag and yaw, I don’t want to eat too far into the nine thousand on the left.”

“It’ll be okay.”

“Captain! We really need to get her on the ground inside fifteen minutes. And that’s assuming whatever additional leak there is — if there is one — doesn’t suddenly get worse.”

“I got it, Ryan. But if we have to feed from the left tank, we will.”

“Captain…” he began, sighing loudly and tilting his head down as he bit his lip deciding what to do. He snapped his head in Marty’s direction with the suddenness of a rifle shot. “I’m not comfortable being in that position! We don’t know where the point might be of loss of lateral control, and the limitation is twenty-five hundred pounds max imbalance. Two thousand five hundred pounds! We’ll suck up that much halfway through a missed approach.”

Marty sat in thought for a few beats, wondering why he felt such a flash of anger at being countered. That was precisely what a copilot was supposed to do. But what he wasn’t supposed to do, Marty thought, was screw up the altitude and cause a midair! Maybe that was the source of the anger… the copilot’s role in this disaster.

No, Marty realized . It’s my resentment over Butterfield’s call. Ryan is right. The window for getting the 757 on the ground is shrinking fast.

He turned to the copilot. “You’re correct and I apologize. And I think we’re about as ready for the approach as we’re going to be.” Marty let the words roll of his tongue as casually as he could, but he felt like a fraud. He was anything but the big, calm, thoroughly in command captain with ice water in his veins. He was thinking erratically, acting on impulse, and frightened beyond the nightmares of the meek.

Marty closed his eyes for a second, reaching for as much inner strength as he could find. He had to concentrate on what had to be done, not the mistakes already made.

Okay. It’s time.

His finger found the transmit button on the control yoke.

“Denver Approach, Regal twelve. We’re ready for vectors a long, twenty mile turn in to the ILS for Runway Seven.”

“Roger, Regal Twelve,” the controller responded. “Turn right now to a heading of three five zero, maintain seven thousand.”

“Right to three five zero and seven thousand.”

In the Cabin of Mountaineer 2612

It had been a hard decision to send Luke Marshall to the back of the cabin with a crash axe to get to the cargo compartment, but with her shoulder at the very least dislocated, Michelle couldn’t do it herself. It was painful enough to keep forward pressure on the control yoke to keep raising the tail and holding the nose down on the 757’s wing.

It could be nothing more than her imagination, she thought, but the bouncing of the Beech fuselage seemed to have dissipated as it’s center of gravity slowly shifted forward with every bag thrown out or emptied.

There had been no protests from the passengers over the impending loss of their checked baggage and all the contents, and three of them had jumped up to help Luke either shove the bags through the opened emergency exit hatch, or open each one and throw the contents out into the brutal slipstream roaring past the open portal. The main problem had been the reaction of passengers across the wing in the 757 who had completely misinterpreted what was happening when the exit hatch was pulled on the Beech fuselage. Regal 12’s passengers had watched in panic, wondering if the Mountaineer passengers were going to try to cross the no man’s land of the wing anyway, braving 230 knots of wind with no handholds.

Regal 12 Cabin

How much time had passed was a mystery Lucy Alvarez had no interest in solving. Every second was a living hell of praying, hoping, begging and pleading with any deity who might listen to take pity and save her lover. He was so close, and yet so very far away, and no matter how many times she waved her lighted cell phone screen in the window, Greg hadn’t understood or responded. His phone remained off and unresponsive to her continuous stream of messages and texts. It hadn’t occurred to her to ask the pilots to relay a message to him, but suddenly there was a flurry of moving flashlights in the cabin of the stricken Beech and to her utter shock, some sort of emergency exit hatch she hadn’t noticed was suddenly opened, the hatch itself pulled back into the aircraft.

Logic played no role in Lucy snapping off the seatbelt and launching her body half way over the seatback of the empty window and middle seats ahead of her, her hands grasping for the same door latch the now restrained Roger had used. She fumbled with it frantically, her leverage all wrong for operating a latch meant to be pulled down by someone kneeling in front of the door, not leaning horizontally, but her hands finally solved the mystery and she felt the latching mechanism retract. But, she still couldn’t pull the hatch out of its seal against the residual cabin pressure left in the 757.

Others were reacting now, both to her and to the open hatch on the Beech. Lucy could hear seat belts being snapped off and several yells as unseen people closed in on her even as she struggled to pull the hatch open. Finally, she let her body roll over the seatback, landing her torso painfully on one of the armrests, her feet in the lap of the aisle seat passenger, her body draped over the middle seat. The aisle passenger jumped up to get safely out of the way of yet a second mad person as Lucy scrambled to her feet and then knelt in front of the hatch to pull it out.

Cries of “No!” and “Stop!” made no sense to her… the hatch clearly had to be opened for Greg and the others when they came piling out of the Beech. Couldn’t they see that? Giving the door the most powerful backward jerk she could manage, it finally came away in her hands as she fell back into the arms of a male passenger, the now familiar roar of the slipstream filling the cabin as once more somebody grabbed the hatch and re-seated it, re-locking the window.

“No! No, no, no!” She was shouting at them now. Why couldn’t they understand? “Do you want to leave them out there on the wing? They’re coming!” she screeched, trying to free her right arm to point to the hatch. He was coming across and they had to be ready to pull him in!

But the young man pinning her arms to her side and holding her from behind was speaking steadily in her ear, and she couldn’t mute his voice.

“Stop! Stop, ma’am! Stop struggling. No one’s coming across out there. It’s not possible.”

She tried to turn to see his face. “DIDN’T YOU SEE?”

“See what, ma’am.”

“THEY’VE OPENED A DOOR OVER THERE. My… my fiancé is over there! He’s…”

Other voices filled in the gap in knowledge and the man tightened his hold on her.

“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but they’re throwing out bags over there. That’s all. They’re not trying to come across. They’re just lightening the load.”

Frantic to make them understand she looked to the right in time to catch the sight of a lime green roll-aboard bag being pushed into the slipstream, and she was startled by the speed of its departure aft. She strained to lean down and look closer, but there were only bags and clothes and things coming through. No people.

No fiancé.

And with that, Lucy Alvarez went limp.