John Nance - 16 Souls

“Five hundred feet, just over a mile. I’ve got some fuzzy lights ahead and the snowfall is decreasing.”

“Roger.”

“Three hundred feet. Half a dot high on the glide slope. Two hundred feet above, landing lights coming on.”

Ryan left hand had been resting on the landing lights and he snapped them on now, revealing a torrent of snow streaming past the windscreen.

“Approach lights in sight,” Ryan added, “…slightly to the left! One hundred feet”

Marty’s focus had been on the projected green numbers and lines in the combiner, but with the landing lights came the streaking snow and the faint glow of a sequenced line of strobes called the rabbit, as well as the white runway lights which were broadening and moving toward them like outstretched arms, the dark of the runway between them, suddenly illuminated by something that made no sense at first.

Two lights, just ahead, right in the middle of his intended touchdown and nowhere near the runway lights or any other rational explanation except that maybe there was still a snow plow on the runway and they were aiming right for it at over two hundred thirty knots!

Marty was still crabbing to the right and had just begun to push the left rudder while holding the right wing down, but suddenly the entire picture changed.

“Fifty feet, over the threshold,” Ryan said.

Time dilated in Marty’s mind, his left hand translating the only rational action which was to roll the aircraft back to the left enough to let the right main gear pass over what he could see now was slightly to the right of the runway centerline. He pulsed the yoke back slightly as he rolled left, with no time to explain to anyone, and when the lights of whatever was below had flashed beneath them with no feeling of impact, he began to move the yoke back, unprepared for the heavy gust of wind that was suddenly raising the right wing and rolling him much further left than he’d panned. A quick pulse to the right with the yoke wasn’t enough, and with growing horror he felt the left wingtip drag onto the runway surface, the drag pivoting the 757’s fuselage left as the left main gear crunched onto the runway partly sideways, followed by the right main gear, and now it was a frantic attempt to kick the aircraft back to the right and keep the right wing from contacting the runway, but every attempt to regain control was too little too late as the aircraft went fully sideways, rolling to the right, the right wing now skidding along the surface, the sound of tearing metal and impossibly confusing gyrations lasting for an eternity and exceeding anything he could influence as his world skidded along the snow covered surface shedding parts.

Marty’s consciousness returned to the courtroom. There were no sounds around him, all eyes looking in his direction, and his words still effectively echoing around the heads of everyone present.

He could see his attorney standing quietly by the defense table, watching him with a slightly stunned expression, and he was greatly relieved when she shook herself into motion and stepped forward.

“Thank you, Captain. I have a few more questions.”

He swallowed hard and nodded at her.

“When all the motion had ceased, what do you recall?”

He exhaled and shook his head. “It was pitch black and very cold and I heard sirens everywhere. We were on our right side… the cockpit section… and I didn’t know the fuselage had broken in two. Ryan was knocked out, but I could see he was breathing. I had no idea who was still with us, where anyone was, and I guess I blacked out before they pulled us out of the wreckage.”

“Captain, if no headlights had appeared in front of you, would the crash have happened?”

Richardson had shaken himself into action as well and was on his feet to object.

“Objection. Speculation.”

“Overruled, counsellor,” the judge replied. “I think this man is perhaps the most qualified individual in all Christendom to answer that. The witness may answer.”

“No, we would not have crashed. It was going to be a hard landing, but I could have kept it under control, and even if the Beech fuselage had detached at that point, they had a long, flat surface ahead in which to safely decelerate. So we would all have been okay.”

“So, Captain, the presence of those headlights was a material factor?”

“Yes. If I hadn’t needed to avoid that snowplow, or whatever it was, I would have been able to safely align the aircraft with the runway as I had started doing, and then using the snowpack to decelerate us.”

“Did your selection of 36 Right mean that there was an alternative to the two choices Mr. Butterfield had considered?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Mr. Butterfield, according to his testimony, said that there were essentially two choices that he had heard from you. One was to slow the aircraft to normal or near normal landing speed so as to be able to land on Runway Seven and stop before the drop-off to the east, and the second choice was to maintain your speed in the hope that the Beech fuselage and the occupants would not fall off the wing.”

“Yes.”

“So, in both your sat phone conversations with Mr. Butterfield, your choice was either to slow or maintain speed, but landing on Runway 7 was the only choice, correct?”

“That’s right. My idea about landing on Runway Three Six Right provided a third potential solution, and I knew it was the key to getting all of us down without anyone dying. I had been fixated… bore-sighted, so to speak… about landing on Runway Seven. So… yes, I made the decision to reject the course of action Butterfield wanted me to reject, if that makes sense.

“So you did not , in fact, knowingly do anything to cause the death of anyone.”

Richardson was on his feet again, this time sounding almost wounded.

“Objection, Your Honor, if that isn’t leading the witness, I don’t know what is!”

“Sustained. Counselor, rephrase the question.”

“Yes, Your Honor. Okay, Captain Mitchell, in choosing to land on Runway Three Six Right, did you knowingly do anything to cause the death of another human being?”

“Absolutely not!”

“No further questions.”

It was disturbing, Judith thought that Grant Richardson asked to delay his cross examination of Marty Mitchell. Obviously the defendant was going to be available the remainder of the trial, but it was the unknown strategy behind his request that concerned her.

Gonzales had approved a fifteen minute recess as Marty left the stand, yet it seemed like a mere heartbeat before everyone was back. There was only one remaining witness on Judith’s list, but this one, she figured, would be a considerable surprise to the jury, and indeed, the eyes of every juror went to the door of the courtroom as an attractive woman walking hesitantly with a cane moved with obvious pain and deliberation toward the front.

“Your Honor,” Judith said, “the defense calls Captain Michelle Whittier to the stand.”

Hyatt Regency Lounge

The small gathering in the hotel bar just after 6 pm consisted of Marty Mitchell and his legal team, and was supposed to have included the captain of Mountaineer 2612. But after testifying, Michelle Whittier had been thoroughly exhausted and begged off, her ride home provided by a chauffeured town car with Judith’s heartfelt appreciation.

“She’s in the middle of physical therapy, and as you saw, she’s struggling.”

“I thought she was wonderful,” Marty said.

Judith nodded in agreement. “She may not have contributed anything to the legal analysis, but she connected with the jurors big time. You agree, Joel?”

“Completely,” he responded. “All sixteen humans on that Beech were saved by this man’s refusal to just follow orders, and there was one of them in the flesh in that courtroom, a brave woman who would be dead and buried except for Captain Mitchell’s perseverance. In essence, what this jury needs to feel is that a vote to convict Marty here is a statement to that young woman that she should have been abandoned and killed. That’s powerful. Richardson took a hit with her, and you noticed his cross examination was respectful and essentially useless. To ask the jurors to reward Marty for saving her life and that of all the others by throwing him in prison is unspeakably horrific. By the way, was she the worst injured?”