John Nance - 16 Souls

Cockpit of Mountaineer 2612

Michelle had failed to tell Marty Mitchell what they were doing until Luke’s cell phone rang.

“Michelle, what the hell’s going on over there?” the Regal captain asked. “My flight attendants are reporting that you’ve opened the left side emergency exit. For God’s sake, don’t let anyone try to cross!”

“No, no! We’re throwing out the baggage to shift the center of gravity…”

“Jesus! You should have warned me. We had a guy open our exit hatch a while ago and got him under control, but when one woman back there saw what was happening, she went for it too! Her husband or fiancé or someone is on your bird.”

“I’m sorry, Marty! I didn’t think to tell you…”

“Is it helping?”

“Yes. At least we think so.”

“Enough that I could slow down some more?”

The silence on Michelle’s end was telling.

“Michelle?” he tried again.

She sighed loudly. “I guess that’s why I stupidly thought I shouldn’t tell you, because you’re busy and… and because we’re not brave enough to go through a moment like that again. Testing how slow, I mean.”

“I understand. We won’t try.”

“At maximum, I think now it will only make a five knot difference. But it’s helped our center of gravity.”

“Don’t worry. We won’t try to slow again.”

She paused. “Who’s the passenger? I’ll pass a message if there’s time.”

“There isn’t,” he said. “We’re starting the approach in five minutes.”

Michelle disconnected the call and handed the cell phone back to Luke, who was standing between the pilot seats.

“Thanks, Luke. Tell everyone to make sure their seat belts are tight… brief the brace position, to the extent they have an extra inch or two to learn forward.”

“I will.”

“We’re about to start the approach.”

He nodded, his face grim, and turned. She could hear him talking to their freezing passengers, trying to be heard over the slipstream’s roar as she sat in the calm of her own internal privacy thinking briefly about this life that might be ending in minutes.

I’ve had a good run, Michelle thought. I probably could have made it to Delta or maybe Alaska Airlines, but… this has been a real privilege, to get to captain anywhere.

Outwardly, she had been irritated with her mother about the pictures of herself in her captain’s uniform posted all over Facebook. But inwardly, she had felt so very proud. It had been a long haul.

Even the memory of an acidic and hurtful rejection years earlier — a sneering “Little girls can’t handle airliners!” put down from a misogynist senior 747 captain she had approached to ask a few questions — faded in importance. She’d already shown his kind what this determined “little girl” could accomplish.

Luke returned and strapped himself in before remembering Michelle’s injured shoulder. There was no way she was going to be able to pull down her shoulder harness on the right side, so he leaned over and did it for her before securing himself in the copilot’s seat.

“Thanks, Luke! And thanks for the exemplary teamwork.’

He looked over at her, his strained youth showing as a jumble of expressions rippled across his face, and he nodded with a judge-like seriousness.

“Thank you… for your exemplary leadership, captain. “You’re… ah… a real inspiration.” His eyes went to the floor and she could see that the question of whether this life had a tomorrow was suddenly consuming him. She heard the small catch in his voice.

“Luke?”

He looked up and over at her again. “Yeah?”

“We make our own reality, and mine is that we’re going to live through this. Okay?”

He nodded mechanically in response, clearly unconvinced.

Michelle fumbled with her left hand for her small flashlight and toggled it on. In the cold, feeble light of the LED she could see the whiskey compass reporting a slow turn to the right. So, this was it. The 757’s pilots were being vectored now to intercept the instrument landing system beacon for Runway 7.

“Keep forward pressure on the yoke, Luke.”

“Will do.”

“And, if it feels like we’re trying to lift off, shove it forward all the way to the stops. Fly it to the end. We don’t have ailerons. Well, we have one… but we’ve got full rudder and elevator. Don’t assume they can’t influence things.”

Cockpit of Regal 12

“Regal Twelve, Approach. Airport ops is advising they still have men and equipment on Runway Seven trying to clear off the two thousand feet of the approach end they had abandoned before. They’ll need ten minutes more to get them off.”

Marty exhaled loudly and glanced at Ryan, who was looking back with a genuinely startled expression.

“Can we do ten minutes more, Ryan?”

“I guess we have to, but it cuts our fuel and balance margins even more.”

Marty nodded. “The hits just keep on coming,” he said pressing the transmit button.

“Approach, Twelve. Okay, but no more than ten minutes. Can you keep us in a series of gentle right turns until we can rejoin the approach localizer in ten minutes?”

“Roger, Twelve. Turn right now to two five zero, turn rate your discretion, and maintain seven thousand.”

“Two five zero and seven thousand. And… are they sure of that time estimate?”

“Twelve, they’re trying to get the equipment off the runway right now.”

“You’re using the word ‘trying.’ Are they having a problem doing so?”

A telling hesitation from the approach controller raised alarms in Marty’s mind. “Don’t tell me something’s broken down on the runway?”

“Twelve, Approach. I haven’t heard about any breakdown, but those plows don’t move too fast. I’m not sugarcoating anything for you, sir. The estimate should hold.”

“Roger, Approach. It has to, or fuel is going to become critical almost immediately.”

Seven Months before — January 21 st

Aircraft Rescue and Firefighters’ Station #1, Denver International Airport

Clad in his yellow protective coveralls and already wearing his boots, Josh Simmons lowered his cell phone and turned back to Scott Bogosian.

“You’ve got a decent reputation with us, Scotty. The chief says he remembers that great article you did on us years back, so, you may ride along, Glad to have you.”

“Thanks.”

“Get in that gear I laid out on the chair there, and we’ll roll in about five minutes.”

Scott struggled to don the oversized overalls and boots and clambered up the side of the behemoth fire fighting machine built especially for airports, plopping himself in the back seat of the cab. He’d never been inside a so-called Crash Tender before, but the specialized machines had been described as a fire truck on steroids — capable of speeding over rugged terrain with a huge load of water and fire suppressant, the floor of the cab some four feet off the ground. Within minutes, the other members of the crew were aboard and the diesel engine roared to life as the firehouse door lifted on what could have been Prudhoe Bay in the dead of a winter storm.

Scott turned to the firefighter seated beside him.

“You know the details of what’s apparently happened here?”

“Yes, sir. A midair collision and somehow the little airplane is on their wing, or something. We’re calling this a red alert. Most of our precautionary landings are called amber alerts — not to be confused with saving kidnapped kids — but we call them as red when there’s a real possibility of death or injury. We’re stationing ourselves and three other trucks along Runway Seven.”