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“No, braking is reported poor.”

  “How’s your fuel?”

  “We’ll have ten to fifteen thousand at touchdown, most in the left main.”

  A long sigh and a long silence from Minneapolis marked the calm before the storm, and Butterfield didn’t disappoint.

  “Captain Mitchell, you’re in charge…it’s your decision…but we own the airplane and the liability, and, Captain, I have no choice but to relay to you what this company all the way to the chairman of the board desperately wants, and that’s to take no chances with the lives of the passengers on our airplane. That may sound incredibly harsh, but nothing here is an easy judgment. And, in the final analysis, who’s to say that fuselage won’t stay attached? After all, the intensity of the airflow will be diminishing as you slow at the same rate you’d have to increase your angle of attack.”

  “Who’s to say? I’m to one to say…me and the other captain over there who would be dead now if I’d slowed any more. Bottom line? I will not kill those people, sir. I’m remaining at 230.”

  “Captain, I’m telling you…”

  “No, Mr. Butterfield. You’re not telling me anything of use. What you’re trying to do is intimidate me to slow down. Perhaps you, and I guess the CEO, and everyone else, think that if I follow your orders, I can wash my hands of the moral responsibility for the results. But we all know that’s bullshit! You’re trying to make this horrible choice for me, and I cannot let you do it, because I know what will happen. Okay?”

  “I can’t legally order you...”

  “No, you can’t. But you can relay all you’ve said as a de facto order, and that’s what you’ve made crystal clear: do what we tell you! It’s pretty much the way Regal treats all its pilots. So okay, I understand your position. But it’s my call.”

  “I’m not going to refute or endorse your characterization, Captain. Look, I’m not the bad guy here. None of us are. But you need to understand that your actions will have consequences.”

  Marty forced a sarcastic laugh into the receiver, making sure it was loud enough to register on the other end.

  “How about that! My actions have already had consequences! So will this conversation if things go poorly. Keep your fingers crossed, Mr. Butterfield, because in truth what I’m going to do up here is go with a calculated risk, versus an execution. Goodbye, sir. I assume you’re wishing me luck, but I’m disconnecting now in order to land.”

  He jabbed the disconnect button and felt a surprisingly unexpected calm, the decisional agony resolved. So now, even before the deed was done, it was done – and his career undoubtedly would go with it.

  Marty turned to the copilot, wondering why Ryan was balancing his smartphone with a calculator displayed on the screen.

  “How’re you doing, Ryan?” he asked suspiciously.

  “We’ve got a problem,” Ryan answered, far too focused to be aware of the irony.

  “Just one?” Marty replied with a snort.

  “We must be burning fuel faster than I calculated.”

  “What are you seeing?”

  With his left hand firmly on the control yoke, Ryan looked at the captain..

  “We should have eight thousand pounds total remaining in the center tank, but we only have five!”

  “How is that possible?” Marty asked. “I know we’re burning a hell of a lot more fuel down low and with the appendage on the right wing, but you had that figured, right?”

  Ryan looked at him with deep concern bordering on true panic. “The center tank may be leaking, too.”

  “Okay, we have five, but how much in the left main?”

  “We can’t use that fuel! It’s counterbalancing the Beech fuselage.”

  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.

  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.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Seven Months before – January 21st

  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.