by R. D. Kardon
They were quiet for a long time. The thought of leaving Deter and Ross unscathed burned like acid. Her own self-respect was at stake. How could she let them get away with it? It was flat-out wrong.
Danny waved his hand. “Forget them, Tris. Get your type rating and move on. It’s your ticket out.”
A dog howled outside her patio door. She nodded slowly to Danny. He was right. She could tell nothing but the absolute truth, and still, the whispers, the comments, the wariness would follow her forever. Deter and Ross would get ‘spoken to,’ and go on with their lives. And she’d be destroyed. No one would trust her again.
Training was so close. She’d get the type rating. Get qualified to be a captain, and then move up or get out.
As if he read her mind, Danny asked, “When do you go to school for your type?”
“I leave a week from Sunday.”
“When’s your ride with the FAA?”
“My type ride is May third,” she answered immediately. This was the date she’d been focused on since she received her training schedule.
“Any chance they would cancel it on you?”
“Why?”
Danny sighed. “Tris, have you been listening? You’ve gotta get that type before those guys turn on you!”
“Maybe they could, I guess, but Ann-Marie told me they’ve already paid the training center. They’d lose the money if they canceled.”
“Who is riding with you? Someone at the facility?”
She huffed. “Ross. Can you believe it?”
“Ross? You know, that’s actually good. You’ve got some dirt on him, something you could use if you needed it.”
Tris swallowed hard.
“Look,” Danny said, “I’m not saying you should actually do it, but you know why he pulled himself off of that leg, don’t you.” It was more a statement than a question.
“Probably his BAC. He probably figured he’d be above the minimum.” And then she remembered that moment in the conference room in Lux. Ross freaked out about talking to Zorn.
“It’s not that he didn’t fly or that he was drunk or his blood alcohol level. Well, it is, but it’s more than that. He’s afraid of Zorn finding out he didn’t fly! But why? Who cares?” Again, the behavior of the pilots at Tetrix flummoxed her.
Danny nodded. “Who knows. These guys are just different, no figuring them out. But Ross isn’t going to mess with you. And he also heard the, uh, comment Deter made. He’s probably glad that it happened. He wants the spotlight anywhere but on him.”
Danny’s voice suddenly became more purposeful. “You got two choices, Tris. You can tell the chief pilot, or the boss, the whole deal—the c-word, Ross coming to your room, you flying the leg. But if you do, there will be consequences. For Deter and Ross for sure. But for you, too.”
He spoke as he would as PIC. “Get the type. Just get the type. Hold out a few more weeks, until you pass your training. Once you have the type rating, it’s yours. They can’t take it away.”
So much to consider. All Tris wanted to do was sleep.
Danny walked over and sat on the edge of her chair. He leaned in and put his arm around her, and drew her close to him. But her body felt like a puzzle piece being forced into a place it didn’t fit. She moved outside the reach of his arms.
“What’s wrong, Flygirl?”
She shook her head. As much as she needed his support, she could not give him what he wanted right now. Why couldn’t he understand that? Did she have to hurt him again?
“Danny, I don’t think I can stand their crap another day.”
He rose to his full captain stance and threw his shoulders back. “Oh yes, you can. This sucks. But it’s what happens, you know, when there are no rules. You gotta get that type. What would all this crap be worth if you didn’t?”
Get through training. Pass her check ride.
“But what if I can’t? You know…” What if she froze up, couldn’t handle the V1 cut, failed again? It would be humiliating, especially in front of Ross. She was so tired, tired of fighting, tired of taking blows.
“You mean the check ride. What if it were…like at Clear Sky.”
She nodded. “They won’t give me a second chance. If I don’t pass, they’ll fire me.” And then she thought of an even worse possibility. “Or I’ll be stuck there. A co-pilot forever.”
“Just guard your six, keep your head down. You can do it. You have to do it.”
It was too much.
She changed the subject. “I’m starving. I’ll call for a pizza. Would you mind picking it up?”
“Sure. Mario’s?”
“Yup. Extra cheese half pepperoni. As usual.” She smiled. Danny grabbed his keys and left.
Tris moved over to her comfortable old couch. She reached for the blue Trimline phone she’d had since her fourteenth birthday. Last June, almost a year ago, she picked up the receiver and heard Danny crying on the other end. He struggled to find the words to tell her.
“Just let me read what the policeman wrote down, ok,” he’d said. It was 3:06 a.m., and she was confused. What was Danny even talking about?
Between sobs, she heard his voice. “The decedent’s car was headed east on Albemarle. After impact from the defendant’s car it came to rest in the strip mall on the northeast corner of Albemarle and Vaughn.” Tris knew the location. It was the way to Bron’s crash pad.
“What’s this about, Danny?” She asked, still half-asleep.
He sounded like he was hyperventilating for several seconds before he could continue. “It was Bron’s car, Tris. Bron’s car was hit. He was on his way to the pad. And he died.”
Tris touched the phone’s cord and ran her finger along the knotted curls in the plastic. How many times had Bron straightened it out? He’d sit on the couch, exactly where she sat now, and patiently twist it this way and that. It was always tangled again the next day.
Forty-One
ROSS’S FINGERS PLAYED a virtual drum solo on the steering wheel of the Cutlass. When it started to vibrate, he stopped.
He reached the turn to the hangar and pulled over. He had forty minutes until he had to show for the trip. Plenty of time for a cigarette.
Ross slid a Marlboro Light out of the pack he’d bought a couple of days ago. Devon wasn’t home so he could smoke if he wanted to.
He’d stayed in last night because of today’s trip with Zorn. They were overnight to Los Angeles and back tomorrow. His first trip since the clusterfuck in Luxembourg.
When he walked in the door after the Ball Buster, he almost thought he was in the wrong house. He kept expecting to hear the tick-tick-tick of Buddy’s paws on the tile floor. He still couldn’t believe she’d taken the dog.
Devon had waited until he was deep into the Europe trip to announce she’d left him. Sly of her. He wondered how long she’d been planning it. The timing was perfect. He was on the backside of the trip when it made no sense for him to come straight home, to try and talk her out of it.
She and James were on their way to her daddy’s ranch while he was thousands of miles from home trying to reach her. Just when he was about to ring a neighbor to make sure his family was still alive, she’d answered her phone.
Those fucking Europe trips. They dragged him away from everything familiar, shook him up, and put the lives of strangers in his hands while his life—his real life—fell apart.
Ross’s cigarette burned down, a line of ash teetering off of the filter. He stubbed it out in the ashtray and slid another out of the pack. He placed it between his lips and sucked in as he pushed the car’s cigarette lighter against the open end.
When Devon had first dropped her bomb, he’d panicked and wanted to get to Montana. If he called Zorn, explained the situation, said Tris could finish the trip, he’d have to explain why. The questions, the rumors, the gossip that would create. And for what? To fly a thousand miles away from home in the opposite direction from where he was to argue with Devon from a shorter distance? With her father close
by? No way.
Ross had another fifteen minutes to get to the hangar. He took a long pull on his cigarette to steady himself. His phone rang last night right on the tick of thirty-six hours. Zorn had called Ross himself to tell him about today’s trip and asked him to be early so that they could talk about Luxembourg.
Luxembourg. He tried to fill in the missing pieces. He’d made a great landing in Vienna the day before. He remembered that. But everything that happened later was fuzzy. The next morning, after several cups of coffee, he vaguely recalled a bar. Maybe two bars? There were women, lots of smoke, and polka music.
Like every pilot, he knew the “bottle to throttle” rules and wasn’t going to try and massage them just to fly to Luxembourg. He’d have passed the eight-hour rule, no problem. But there was that damn .04 BAC regulation. If his blood alcohol was above .04 and they got randomly tested, or—God forbid—something happened, an accident, or incident that required the crew to be tested, he’d be toast.
Ross tried to be responsible. When he called Deter to explain why he didn’t think he should fly, Deter understood. Say what you wanted about him, and Ross had said plenty over the years, but when Deter learned about Devon, all he wanted to do was help. As much as Ross and everyone else joked about Deter and his military countenance behind his back, Deter had commanded men on active duty. Surely he could manage this problem.
Deter suggested they put Tris in the right seat on the Luxembourg leg. Why not? She was qualified, and she was there. They talked about the paperwork. The company manifest was no problem. Nobody really looked at those after a trip, Deter had reasoned.
But the flight plan had to name the pilot-in-command. If he couldn’t fly the leg, Ross couldn’t be PIC on the flight plan, which had already been filed. They’d have to change it.
“I’ll change it at the airport,” Ross had told Deter. “I’ll put your name on it.”
“Yeah, what’s the worst that can happen? And if Zorn ever finds out, just say you were sick. Guys do it all the time,” Deter said matter-of-factly.
“Right. Ok. I’ll take care of it,” Ross had promised. He figured he’d have plenty of time to make the change. Zorn would never notice the switch.
But he forgot, and then the passengers had shown up early. The crew had to rush and get the flight off the ground. It wouldn’t have mattered, as long as nothing went wrong. Nothing ever went wrong. Right up until the moment it did.
Deter almost came out of his socks when the authorities showed up at the terminal in Luxembourg asking for “PIC Lawrence Ross.” The men were from the local airport authority. Speaking with the PIC was standard procedure when emergency vehicles were deployed.
Turned out the Luxembourg officials simply called the PIC contact number they found on the flight plan. Ross had used the office number back at Exeter, which he had been doing for years whenever he flew Tetrix planes. And, predictably, Ann-Marie took the call and forwarded it to Zorn. From there, the situation took on a life of its own.
Ross realized that even if he’d amended the flight plan, he’d still have to explain to Zorn why he didn’t fly. He could say he was upset about Devon, but he knew Zorn wouldn’t buy it. They complained about their wives to each other all the time and could still fly.
All the times they’d gone out on the road, so many nights they stumbled back to their rooms. But Ross was always ready to go when the bell rang. Until Luxembourg. He’d convinced himself that if Zorn found out, he’d be considered a liability. It would just take an anonymous tip to the FAA for them to check Ross’s driving record. His career would be over.
But he could spin this with Zorn. He hadn’t realized it before, but Deter provided the perfect cover. Hell, it didn’t even matter who flew the leg. Deter’s fuck-up was way worse than his.
Which left him here, pounding the steering wheel with his right hand, throwing the remains of cigarette number three out the window with his left. He started the car and headed toward the hangar. By the time he made his way into the parking lot, he had his Tetrix mask firmly in place. Eyes blank, reactions stunted.
He had to keep his job. No way Devon would come back if he didn’t. Fueled by nicotine-induced courage and some volatile information, Ross was ready.
Forty-Two
THE SECOND ROSS opened the door to the pilot area, there Zorn stood with a stack of papers in hand. Zorn had probably monitored his track from the parking lot. Christ, those window walls turned the lot into a fishbowl.
“Hey man,” Ross offered in his typical, easygoing manner. It was a performance that had never been so important to maintain.
Zorn didn’t buy it. “Shit man. And I mean shit. You’re swimming in it.”
Ross lowered his gaze and navigated to his cubicle. Slowly, he put his briefcase down. He pretended to notice two messages on his desk, scrawled in Ann-Marie’s handwriting on the time-honored pink form. Ross knew this ploy—it was Zorn’s way of teasing out anything Ross might feel responsible for, making him play defense. But Ross was running his own game. First, he needed to find out what Zorn already knew.
“Is that so? Can we possibly talk about this somewhere private?”
Zorn looked like a police detective about to interrogate a suspect. “Let’s go into the smoking lounge. I don’t want people to see me talking to you in my office or the conference room. Best to keep it quiet. For now.” Ross chuckled involuntarily, immediately wishing he hadn’t. Zorn shot him a hard look.
Ross grabbed some coffee and a pack of Famous Amos cookies before walking to the cigarette-infused conference room. He turned on the lights and inhaled the remnants of a recent smoke. How Ross wished he had one now; he had to focus. He knew how quickly Zorn could turn on him. Just ask RJ. The poor guy was still having trouble finding a job.
Seconds later, the door cracked open, and Zorn entered carrying the stack of papers he’d had in his hand when Ross first saw him. He clutched a pad under his arm and a pen in his mouth. His left hand held a Diet Coke and a bag of M&M’s.
“Hey, ok, let’s get going,” Zorn said as he put down his load on the small, oval table. His gut spilled over the top of his belt when he sat.
“Larry, what the fuck happened? You were flying pilot from Vienna to Luxembourg, right?”
“No, that was Deter’s leg.” So far so good.
Ross leaned back in his chair and looked into the distance behind Zorn at the bare wall painted in commercial off-white. He could see scuff marks by the plastic trim which met the brown Berber carpet, probably made by the cleaning crew smacking into it with their vacuum.
“Well, you guys had a gear problem. You were flying around out there for quite a while. And then, what, you declared an emergency?” Zorn looked down at a sheet of shiny thermal fax paper.
“It was an emergency. We couldn’t get the gear down.”
“Well, you rolled the trucks, so the airport authority had to investigate. I guess they pulled the flight plan and called the PIC’s number.” He thumbed through his stack of papers and pulled out another document. He nodded. “Yours, since they asked for you when Ann-Marie answered. And it was the first I’d heard of any problems.” He looked up at Ross. “Why was that? You had a SAT phone on the plane. And you could have had the handler send a message.”
This was going way better than Ross imagined. Zorn’s ego was bruised. He didn’t like being the last to know. If all Zorn was going to do was chastise him about failing to give him a head’s up, Ross had already won.
“There was a lot happening during that leg. We had no time to call.” Ross sounded like he was the aggrieved party. “I mean, really, what would you have done?”
Zorn rustled the documents in front of him with his brows creased and chin lowered. He was just yanking Ross’s chain to remind him that he’d have handled the whole thing differently, that if it were him, the gear lights would have come on the first time. It was crap, but that was Zorn.
“Our money man was one of your passengers,” Zorn said as if
Ross didn’t already know. “I mean, Emerson’s the CEO, but your passenger Robert Christianson’s even more important to us. He’s Willett’s direct boss.” Zorn glared at Ross. “And Willett’s mine.”
“And?” Ross wondered where this was going.
“Well, Willett called me and said that Christianson wants a meeting with him as soon as possible. He didn’t want to wait but Willett’s out of town for a few days. What’s he gonna say?”
“Look, everything happened just the way I told you when I called you from Lux,” Ross said, elated Zorn wasn’t angry at him. “And the way Deter told you,” he said deliberately.
“I haven’t talked to him. He’s on vacation for a few days. Started during the blackout.”
“Well, then I’m not sure what else I can tell you, man.”
“Yeah, I hear you. I get it. Look, next time something like that happens, you’ve gotta call me. I sure as shit didn’t love getting a call from the Luxembourg airport officials, for chrissakes.” He smiled warmly at Ross for the first time since the conversation started. “I’m glad you were there. No one I’d want more to be up there. Except for me, of course.” Both pilots laughed.
Ross forced himself to breathe normally, in and out, in and out. That was the only way to control his emotions. Because out there, somewhere, was the record of a flight plan with his name on it, when there was a very good reason why there shouldn’t be.
Ross thought they were done and moved to get up and prepare for the Gulfstream trip.
“So, how did it go with the girl while all this was happening? What was she doing?” Zorn shifted the thrust of the conversation as he reclined in his chair and took a long drink from the red and white can.
“Not sure what you mean.”
“Well, could she handle it? How did she do in a stressful situation? You know, things being what they are, tight financially and all, at some point, if I have to make some hard decisions…” Right. The budget. It was always the budget. “And we’re just about to send her to training. We paid full boat for her course on the Astral.”