16 SOULS Read online

  “Got it. You’re fired.”

  Her head came up slightly in surprise, but she forced her eyes back to the legal pad, an elegant pair of gold-rimmed half-glasses professionally balanced on her nose .

  “Sorry, but I won’t permit you to fire me, primarily because I don’t work for you, I work for the judge,” she said, her voice matter-of-fact and devoid of any emotional ripple.

  “Hey, in Colorado I have the right to fire my counsel! I checked on that.”

  “Yes. You do. But you’ve claimed that you’re indigent and with your wild pushing away of everyone who’s tried to help you, if you insist, I’ll ask the judge to declare that you are of diminished capacity which would mean that you can’t fire anyone. Not that I wouldn’t appreciate being fired,” she added. “but the judge has made it clear he won’t let me withdraw. So, we’re stuck with each other.”

  Her eyes remained on the papers.

  Apparently, Marty thought, she was going to keep her distance by never looking at him.

  “Look at me.”

  “I have no desire to engage in a staring contest, Mr. Mitchell.”

  “Captain.”

  “Okay. Captain Mitchell.” She glanced up, quickly scanned his face and looked at her associates, who were doing their best to look obedient.

  “Alrighty, then!” She said, eyes back on her papers. “Now that we’re past the ‘you’re fired’ nonsense, would you care to tell me why, if you’re determined to spend the rest of your life behind bars by mounting no defense, you don’t simply plead guilty?”

  “Obviously, you wouldn’t understand,” he shot back. “You and the rest of this stupid legal system already think I am guilty.”

  She looked at him now, fixing him with an uncomfortable, emotionless gaze. He could actually feel the loathing.

  “Captain Mitchell, what I do know is that you are technically guilty of the specific charges the DA has filed. You made a conscious decision to do what you did. Your company ordered you not to try it because people would be killed. You did it anyway, knowing the consequences, and they were dead right. People died as a result of your conscious, premeditated decision.”

  “Hey! Regardless of which choice I made, people were likely to die!” he shot back.

  “Understood. Nevertheless, this out-of-control idiot DA wants to ride your conviction to higher office. What happened, unfortunately, can be viewed by criminal law – and a jury – as murder, although the death penalty is not on the table.”

  He began to get to his feet. “Thank you kindly, ma’am, but we’re done.”

  “Sit down, Captain Mitchell.”

  “Screw you, lady.”

  “Wow! Such an irresistible invitation. But I’m no lady, I’m your lawyer, so if gender is a problem for you, get over it. We’ve got bigger issues on our hands.”

  Marty remained on his feet, calculating the path of least resistance. He wanted to leave and slam the door behind him for effect, but something about her attitude was keeping him in place, and that didn’t make sense.

  He turned back to her. “Counselor, I don’t care about your gender. I don’t care if you’re a lesbian, a shemale, or a hermaphrodite on heroin. I don’t need your so-called help and I don’t want it, and, as I said, we’re done here. If the damned judge wants to throw me in jail for contempt, what the hell. I’m already more dead than any corpse you’ve ever encountered.”

  “Why?”

  “What?”

  He could see real anger in her eyes. “Sit your ass down right now, Captain!”

  He should have barked back, but instead he shrugged and pulled out an adjacent chair. “If it pleases your majesty.”

  “Answer the question. Why? Why are you dead? Why do you want to give up? Are you that furious with being prosecuted, or is this some kind of pitiful survivor’s remorse?”

  “What, now you’re a psychologist?,” Marty snapped, “Because, lady, I’ve been rejected by the best.”

  “Wrong answer. Why?”

  “You don’t give up, do you? Don’t you get it? The mere act of criminally prosecuting an airline pilot in the United States for doing his job the best way he could and for using his blanket emergency authority is so horribly assaultive and third-world banal and wrong…there’s just no way to respond other than to say that I will not play your damned game. If America is dead and justice is dead, do what you may. I don’t care. I refuse to play. Clear enough?”

  “Not even close,” Judith responded. “Tell me what happened.”

  “What?”

  She cocked her head slightly and almost smiled as she sat back. “You didn’t understand the question, Captain?”

  “Give me one reason why I should go over everything with you? You’re not even on my side. What did you take this case for, anyway? To make headlines? Are you some sort of an associate on the make in this law firm?”

  “I’m a full partner.”

  “Really? Well then, this must either be some sort of exile for you, or you’ve got an angle. In any event, lady...”

  “Judith.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I have a name, Captain Mitchell,” she sighed in practiced contempt. “You may call me ‘Judith,’ or ‘Ms. Winston, or ‘Counselor.’ You may not call me ‘lady,’ ‘ma’am,’ or for that matter, ‘honey,’ ‘darling,’ ‘sweetheart,’ or ‘babe,’ and no matter how upset you might get, you may never use the ‘C’ word or refer to me as ‘bitch.’ Clear?”

  “Clear enough...Ms. Winston.”

  “Thank you, Captain Mitchell. Now, please, tell me what happened.”

  He snickered. “You don’t know?”

  “Of course I know, in gross terms, but I haven’t heard the full story from my client. So maybe we could rectify that before the next ice age.”

  “And, what? You’re going to get me off?”

  “Probably not. But we’ll see. I’ll do my best.”

  Marty sat forward, almost leering at her, his index finger stabbing the polished surface of the conference room table.

  “And that, Ms. Winston, is my story as well. Plain and simple.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I did my best. And now some slimeball DA wants me in prison. One hundred fifty-three people inside that 757, fourteen on my wing, and most of them made it home because of my decisions.”

  “Not all made it home.”

  “That’s true....” he began, his voice choking off the remaining words. He swallowed hard and fought to re-compose himself. She could hear the deep, ragged breath as he forced his eyes back to hers. “I did my best. I tried my best to save everyone….every one.” His eyes flashed with anger and impatience, his temper rising like an over-stoked fire. “You getting this?” Suddenly he was on his feet again, eyes blazing. “YOU GETTING THIS? I did my goddamned best with the hand they dealt me, and I will NOT be second guessed by someone who wasn’t there!”“

  “You also climbed your jet to the wrong altitude.”

  The words stopped him cold, and Marty sank back into the chair like a deflating balloon, his fingers drumming an absent tattoo on the table before looking up at her, his voice noticeably subdued.

  “Yes, we were at the wrong altitude.”

  “We? Not ‘I’?”

  He shrugged.

  “Then tell me your story. All of it.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Seven Months before – January 21st

  Regal 12

  Captain Marty Mitchell had shifted the phone to his right hand and sighed as he nodded to a female passenger standing nearby and then tried to catch the young gate agent’s eyes. The agent seemed oblivious to his presence and he smiled a conspiratorial smile at her, a collegial attempt to share the pressures of upset passengers and disrupte
d schedules.

  The agent looked up at last and smiled at him.

  The dispatcher on the other end of the phone was taking his own sweet time coming back on the line after Marty had pushed him for answers. But as captain, he’d meant every word, even if he sounded overly demanding. Until they gave him the time he was supposed to have the airplane started and waiting at the “wash-rack”- the deicing hard stand near the end of the ramp - he simply wasn’t going to leave the gate. The snow storm was too intense, and the absolute FAA prohibition about flying with any snow or ice on the wings was a rule he was not about to bend.

  God, he was tired of such battles! Why couldn’t he have been a pilot back when captains had some respect and authority, rather than being treated as disobedient peons every time they had the audacity to make an autonomous decision?

  He watched the young agent dealing with the passengers with a friendly demeanor and a constant smile, obviously enjoying her job. It was a deeply refreshing sight, since too many of Regal’s gate agents were smoldering with discontent over years of incompetent management or past mergers that hadn’t worked out well. Good people, bad system, he thought, wishing for moment he could have flown for a really professional carrier like Delta, or a great company like Southwest or Alaska. Regal was always on the bottom in customer ratings, and they simply refused to spend the money necessary to change it.

  “Captain Mitchell, you still there?” the dispatcher’s voice snapped him back from his thoughts. The voice was pained.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, I dropped everything else to get this, because you asked, but your time for the de-ice rack is eight-twenty. Normally you get that number right before push-back from operations.”

  He ignored the dig. “Any change in the forecast?”

  “Don’t you have the paperwork?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it’s all in there. But...I’ll verbally re-brief it if you insist. It’s just…we’re really busy down here.”

  “No. That’s okay. We’ll be ready. Hope things get quieter for you guys.” He replaced the handset behind the podium and looked around for Ryan Borkowsky, his copilot, who was treating the storm as if it were some sort of fun opportunity.

  He’d noticed Ryan drifting off to one of the nearby coffee stands a few minutes back, presumably to buy his irritatingly predictable triple-shot, skinny, no-whip, one-Splenda mocha and another oatmeal scone. There was a yawning generational gap between the two of them, and it showed clearly in the younger man’s attitude. Borkowsky was one of the small percentage of airline pilots who had signed on because flying was convenient, not because it was a life force. Marty had been startled to hear that he’d never spent time as a kid hanging around airports, pumping gas into light airplanes, or otherwise just being in love with flying. How was that possible? How was it possible to be a pilot and not be in love with flying? The very concept was offensive.

  “So, what’s the story, fearless leader?” Borkowsky’s laconic voice reached him from behind. Marty turned, wincing internally at the unprofessional image before him. Borkowsky’s blue uniform coat was unbuttoned, revealing his slowly exploding girth and a badly wrinkled shirt, and he was munching indelicately on a scone like a hungry horse cropping grass.

  “I wondered where you were,” Marty said, trying to keep his tone friendly, “Then I remembered, they sell scones in the terminal.”

  “You ever lose track of me, that’s where to look. I love these things.”

  Marty suppressed the word “obviously.”

  Twice he’d flown with Borkowsky. He could be engaging and funny and he was obviously a competent airman, but what rubbed Marty the wrong way was his disengaged attitude, as if he was just going through the motions. Far too blasé.

  The thought of their Orlando layover hotel entered Marty’s head and he wondered if he’d be able to drag himself to the 24-hour hotel gym once they got there. After a tense evening like this he’d need a workout.

  The ancient 24 pin printer positioned for the pilots behind the gate podium was chattering again, and Marty waited for it to stop before ripping off the latest opus: a hardcopy of the weather report. Buried in the verbiage was the news that many of the airports in a four hundred mile radius of Denver were closing because of the storm. Salt Lake had been overwhelmed much earlier in the day. Colorado Springs had just closed, their last runway hopelessly behind the snow removal abilities of their exhausted crews, and the storm was marching like a ravenous beast on everything to the east. All the private fields, and even Buckley, the Air National Guard base nearby, were closed, their runways now drifting dangerously with accumulated snow. Denver International itself was down to two operating runways, and if the dispatcher was wrong, they could end up with only one in operation before the evening rush was done. Inbound flights were stacking up in holding patterns in four directions and the disruption to Regal Airlines’ intricate schedule was beginning to get serious.

  The gate agent stepped toward him. “You ready to board ‘em, Captain?” she asked sweetly.

  “Yes, I guess we are. About time to get out of your hair.”

  The copilot was watching her approvingly as the agent turned and left to open the jetway door.

  “So, I guess it’s time for me to go out in the blizzard and do my Eskimo impression,” Ryan said.

  “What?” Marty managed, trying to fit the words with realistic meaning.

  “You know. Put on a parka and kick some tires,” Borkowsky said as he slurped down the last of his mocha and made an unsuccessful attempt to arc the wadded up scone wrapper into the nearest trash can.

  Marty turned away, working to generate his own smile at the passengers as he picked up his brain bag and headed for the jetway. This was no evening for apathy, or a lackadaisical first officer. He made a mental note to double-check everything Borkowsky did.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Seven Months before – January 21st

  Mountaineer 2612

  At the same moment Captain Mitchell was settling into the left seat of Regal Flight 12, the captain of Mountaineer Airlines Flight 2612 stood crammed into Mountaineer’s tiny operations office two concourses distant, wondering why the Durango, Colorado, airport wasn’t on the list of snowed-in airfields. Apparently, the huge storm was moving more to the north and east than to the south, but the blizzard was so all encompassing it was hard to imagine anywhere in the western U.S. being spared the rapidly developing snowdrifts.

  Michelle Whittier finished studying her paperwork and signed the release form. If they could actually get out of Denver, there was no reason they couldn’t get their passengers to Durango – and God knew the struggling little regional airline she flew for needed every dollar that each of those passengers represented.

  Not that many of those dollars were going to Mountaineer’s pilots. Then again, she appreciated the fact that she was still employed and sitting in the captain’s seat. Too many captains – even those with major airlines like Delta and American – had watched their salaries slashed in massive give-backs or otherwise been forced over the years by layoffs to return to the copilot ranks flying for half their previous paychecks. The airline industry seemed determined to destroy itself insidiously by giving away its product in an endless, lemming-like march to lower and lower fares, while killing off any remaining passenger loyalty with nickel-and-dime charges for bags, food, and soon probably even seat belts and emergency oxygen masks.

  In fact, Michelle thought, she was plain lucky little Mountaineer was still in business. Too many regionals weren’t, and too many regional airline copilots were making less than twenty-five thousand a year – some getting by with food stamps. More than a few regional pilots were moonlighting at other jobs just to make ends meet, and even though the long-predicted pilot shortage was already upon them, the owners of too many regional carriers were st
ill paying their pilots the lowest wages they could get by with while trying to stay profitable flying as surrogates for major airlines that were very accomplished at playing one regional off against another.

  In the pilot ranks, it was a shared agony, and there was a stoic tendency to adopt workarounds in support of each other, workarounds borne of sympathy for exhausted moonlighters when they showed up all but brain dead and the other pilot quietly flew solo in order to let the fatigued airman doze most of the way to destination.

  Tonight, Michelle had a green copilot still on probation, but the young man was wide awake, sharp and enthusiastic. That was a relief! They were going to need all the coordination and alertness they could manage.

  “Michelle, good to see you,” one of the ramp guys said, brushing past her to move behind the counter. She waved and was jostled again as another ramp agent came through the door tromping snow from his shoes and complaining with a big smile. The copilot, whose name she had momentarily forgotten, was already outside in the teeth of the storm preflighting the small twin engine turboprop. Michelle checked the paperwork to locate his name, embarrassed she couldn’t retain it for five minutes.

  Luke! Luke Marshall. Okay.

  She had to greet him by name when he reached the cockpit. That was important. There was nothing worse than forgetting a crewmember’s name if you wanted to form a real team.

  The desire for coffee suggested itself, but the thought of pushing through the crowded and anxious energy of the concourse again to reach Starbucks squelched the idea. Better to get to the aircraft and get ready. Provided her little airline could afford another round of deicing fluid and get the attention of the contractor who took care of their deicing needs at the gate, she had a chance of getting out on time.