Becca nodded, gathered what was left of her wits from where they had collapsed around her and glued them back together in her mind. ‘What about the passengers? What should I tell them?’
‘We’ve got to keep the worst from them for as long as we can,’ Reed replied.
‘They can see that ash cloud and they know it could come this way,’ Becca insisted. ‘The longer we’re hanging about up here the more agitated they’re going to get. I can’t just tell them we can’t land, it’s not going to be enough.’
Reed squeezed her shoulder again.
‘Just do what you can to keep them under control Becca, please.’
***
XV
Becca opened the cockpit door and walked out before closing it securely behind her. The internal locking mechanism clicked into place to ensure that no intruder could get inside. Her mind was so full of uncertainties and fears that she hadn’t looked into the passenger cabin as she backed out of the cockpit. She turned and almost walked straight into the first passenger blocking her path.
Becca looked up into the eyes of the man with the pale complexion and lank hair as he snapped in her face.
‘What did they say?’
Becca instinctively glanced past the man toward the rest of the passengers, searching for Chloe. She spotted her several rows back, other passengers also on their feet and craning their necks to see and hear what was happening.
‘If you would like to take your seat sir,’ Becca said, ‘I will be addressing the rest of the passenger cabin about what’s happening and…’
‘No more lies,’ the man snapped, jabbing a finger at her. ‘Tell us the truth this time.’
‘I haven’t lied.’
‘You’re not being honest with us all and we know it,’ the man growled. ‘We have the right to know what’s happening and why we haven’t landed yet.’
Becca felt her professional demeanour slip, the passenger’s attitude riling her more easily now that she knew the dangers they faced. For the most part, it was the job of the professional flight attendant to remain courteous and polite to all passengers, but times had changed. In recent years, she and her colleagues had received training in how to deal with abusive or disruptive passengers, and right now she sensed the need to take control of the situation before the passengers started to question who was really in command of the cabin. She took two paces forward, put herself right in the man’s face, straightened her back and glared into his eyes as she raised her voice enough that everyone could hear it.
‘Well then why don’t you sit down and shut up so that I can tell the other hundred or so passengers on this damned flight what they have the right to know too! Or do you consider this airplane your own private property?’
The lank haired man’s eyes widened in shock and he suddenly blanched, his cheeks flushing red as he backed away from her. His aggression shrivelled and he cowered in embarrassment as he slithered back into his seat like a scolded child. To Becca’s surprise the remaining passengers all re–took their seats with considerable haste, leaving Chloe standing alone in the aisle and staring in wonder at her.
Becca felt a sudden rush of elation flow through her body, light headed and her heart thumping in her chest. She turned to hide an unstoppable smile that crossed her lips as she reached out for a microphone on the wall and switched it on. Her voice was amplified through the passenger cabin’s address system as she spoke into it.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the cabin crew and our pilots I would like to apologise once again for the delay to this flight, and also for the uncertainty over what’s been happening on the ground at Keflavik. As I’m sure you’re all by now aware, there has been a major volcanic eruption nearby on Iceland and for safety reasons many affected airports have been closed to all air traffic. You may recall that this happened once before on Iceland when the volcano Eyjafjallajokull erupted, after fears for aircraft safety when flying close to ash clouds.’
Becca took a breath. Unlike most announcements, this time she had the absolute attention of all one hundred and twelve passengers, their eyes locked on hers and hanging on every word that she said.
‘At this time, we are merely circling above the airport and waiting for clearance to land. Specialist teams on the ground are on their way to check the air quality at the airport and as soon as they give us the all clear, we will descend once again. The pilots have shut down one engine to conserve fuel and give those teams the time they need to complete their work. The weather below us is also a factor and the pilots are currently busy planning a descent that is both safe and is timed to precision to ensure that we are able to land as soon as the air quality teams complete their work. On behalf of us all I’d like to thank you for your patience, and remind all passengers that the cabin crew would also like to get on the ground as soon as possible, as you might be surprised to learn that we don’t find ourselves caught between erupting volcanoes and massive thunderstorms every day either.’ That got a faint ripple of chuckles from some of the passengers. ‘Please remain in your seats and allow the pilots the chance to finish their work and get us on the ground safely. Thank you.’
Becca replaced the microphone, took another breath and then strode down the centre of the aisle as though it were she who owned the airplane, and almost at once she realised that the passengers had bought it. Their heads went down to their books and their children or to look out of the window. Apart from a few admiring glances from them she received no further questions as she reached the galley and saw Chloe waiting for her with one hand raised palm out toward her.
‘Way to go, Captain Becca!’ Chloe whispered, smiling brightly.
Becca high–fived her companion and let the smile spread on her face now, her jaw aching. ‘Let’s keep the troops in their seats and hope this whole thing is over soon.’
‘It’ll have to be,’ Chloe replied, ‘I’m no pilot but I know that we’ve got to be low on fuel by now. How long are they planning on keeping us up here?’
Becca considered telling Chloe the truth, but then thought better of it. Chloe would work better if she too had bought the simple cover story.
‘No more than an hour,’ she replied, trying not to sound resigned. ‘We’ll be landing after that no matter what happens.’
Chloe appeared cheered by the news as she shoved more packs of juice, food and water onto the trolley. ‘I’ll keep them fed and watered and do what I can, but they’re going to get edgy once that sun goes down.’
Becca blinked and looked at her watch. She hadn’t considered the fact that this far north, at this time of year, the sun would set much earlier than in the UK. She moved to peer out of the small galley window and saw the once powder blue sky now turning a vivid gold and yellow, shadows drifting through the galley as the airplane turned in a slow orbit. Even as it did so she saw the towering pillar of ash soaring to incredible heights above them, so immense that it gave her a mild sense of vertigo just looking at it. Despite the fact that the airplane in which she stood was moving at over two hundred miles per hour, it seemed as though they were stationary alongside the vast cloud. The uppermost reaches of the pillar were now stretching across the darkening vault of the heavens above them, and the ash cloud cast a shadow that fell over the clouds toward the eastern horizon perhaps a hundred miles away.
Even as she watched the cloud, its sooty walls bathed in golden light from the lowering sun and the tips of its formations glinting like gold seams in a coal face, a fierce flickering light illuminated the interior of the cloud as though gods within were warring with bolts of fire. The white flares of lighting burst out from the cloud and rippled up and down its length and she heard gasps of shock from the passengers.
‘Get the food out there,’ she told Chloe, ‘give them something else to look at.’
Chloe nodded and hurried out into the aisle with her trolley as Becca stared at the immense cloud. She knew that the ash in that cloud was lethal to airplane engines, and that if it reached much
closer that they would have to divert west or south to avoid it. If that happened they might not even be able to make it back to Keflavik, or would be forced to land before the toxic gases had blown away from the airport.
A voice broke into her wonder and fear.
‘I know that we wouldn’t normally fly this close to an eruption event.’
Becca turned and saw the old man standing near the galley entrance, a gentle smile on his face that was reflected in his rheumy eyes. His perfectly formed moustache glinted in the sunlight sweeping through the galley as the airplane turned, his hands clasped calmly before him and his stance somehow submissive and yet commanding at the same time.
‘We need to stay close to the airport,’ she replied, compelled to reply honestly for reasons she wasn’t sure of.
‘No, we don’t,’ the old man said. ‘An airplane like this can cruise–descend for fifty miles or more from this altitude. We could orbit somewhere else more safely but I sense that the pilots feel the need to stay close to Keflavik. That means we’re not able to divert for some reason, and shutting one engine down for fuel conservation confirms that.’
Becca stared at the old man, unable to deny his logic. He dropped his voice to a whisper, and his words chilled her to the core.
‘Something is preventing us from landing and it’s not that ash. If the cloud hasn’t reached Keflavik at altitude, it won’t have reached it on the ground either as the pillar has not yet collapsed to create the pyroclastic flow that would achieve that. So, what is it?’
Becca knew that she should not say anything but the old guy clearly knew his stuff, even if she had no idea what a pyroclastic flow was. With only herself and Chloe in the passenger cabin to control over a hundred people, she found herself in desperate need of an ally who knew what he was talking about.
‘The eruption released gas,’ she blurted, ‘and it’s poisoned the air at Keflavik and Reykjavik. We can’t land there or we’ll die, and we don’t have any fuel for diversions as there are no other airports large enough to take us.’
The old man considered this for a moment, and then he spoke softly enough that nobody else could hear him.
‘That ash cloud is our greatest threat. When it becomes too heavy for the heat and force of the eruption to support, it will collapse, and it’s already over our heads. When it does collapse we’ll be dead whether we’re in the air or on the ground. We need to land, right now.’
Becca was about to reply when she heard Chloe’s voice shriek through the passenger cabin.
‘Becca!’
***
XVI
Becca dashed out of the galley and came face to face with several passengers, at their head the woman whose child had fallen sick earlier in the flight. Chloe was standing before them with a stricken look on her face, but it was not a fear of some passenger uprising but instead a look of hurt and betrayal.
‘What the hell is this?’ the angry mother demanded of Becca.
Before Becca could respond several cell phones and iPads were shoved into her face, all of them displaying the same images. Her brain struggled to process the multiple reports on the digital news channels, each of them covering a major environmental disaster that had struck the North Atlantic region, but she could read the headlines clearly enough.
Reykjavik falls silent in aftermath of catastrophe!
Iceland struck by major volcanic gas eruption!
Sources report that thousands could be dead!
Toxic gas enshrouds Iceland’s capital!
‘You were lying to us again!’ the mother accused her. ‘You can’t pretend that the pilots didn’t know about this!’
‘Why didn’t you mention anything about the gas cloud?’ demanded another.
‘How come we’re not landing? Is the gas cloud still down there?’
‘Why haven’t we turned back for England?’
Becca raised her hands and tried to calm the crowd now pressing ever closer to her, blocking her only route of escape toward the cockpit.
‘The crew are learning things at the same time as we are,’ she replied, raising her voice to overpower as best she could the questions and demands filling the passenger cabin. ‘We couldn’t reveal everything because we don’t know enough about what’s happening on the ground.’
‘That sounds like a cop out!’ snapped the lank–haired man again as he fought his way toward her and jabbed his own cell phone with one bony finger, his recently withered courage apparently having a new lease of life. ‘That landing attempt the pilots made gave some of our devices a brief period of Internet access, and I was trying to call my wife when I saw this. These news reports are from around the world and they seem pretty damned certain to us!’
Becca felt her heart sink once again. No sooner had she allayed their fears of what awaited them on the ground than the news media had started their assault on the public senses. She could feel the sense of betrayal radiating out from the crowd and even from her only ally, Chloe, who was clearly sore at having been kept out of the loop with the captain.
‘Why are you lying to us?!’ another passenger demanded.
Becca was about to plead for some understanding when through the crowd she saw the little boy who had been sick earlier in the flight. His big brown eyes stared in wonderment at the confrontation, but were also filled with restrained panic and fear as the adults upon whom he relied upon for guidance and comfort began losing their senses and turning to blame and anger, projecting their own fears onto others.
‘Because there are some passengers on this flight who will suffer if the rest of you don’t stop doing what you’re doing right now!’ Becca snapped, gesturing with a nod of her head toward the little boy.
Several of the crowd turned and saw the child watching them, and Becca took advantage of the lull in their assault to press her advantage. She took a step closer to the crowd, relying on a vague understanding of crowd psychology: when people expect you to retreat, catch them unawares and advance.
‘If we let ourselves descend into panic, and start pointing fingers trying to find someone to blame for something that is beyond all of our control, we’ll be doomed long before this airplane lands on any runway. We’re all stuck inside a metal tube flying at hundreds of miles per hour. How many of you think that having a riot up here is a great idea?’
The passengers looked back to her, and once again their faces were somewhat chaste and she saw some of them begin to ease back toward their seats. However, the mother of the little boy scowled in Becca’s direction.
‘Don’t you dare use my child against me when it’s you who is lying to us!’ the woman retorted. ‘He is as much a victim of your lies as the rest of us.’
‘We’re all victims,’ Becca replied. ‘Nobody is to blame for what’s happened and nobody is lying. You’re just twisting my words to suit your own point of view.’
‘As you’re twisting those words to avoid telling us everything,’ the lank haired man accused.
‘And this is why passengers are not told everything,’ Becca said as she gestured to where they stood. ‘Because they crowd the aisles, make demands that cannot be met and blame anyone in sight for a predicament that’s shared by us all and has been caused by a bloody volcano!’
The passenger cabin fell silent. Becca held her ground and waited. The passengers waited. She couldn’t tell whether they were going to all nod their heads in agreement and sit down or rush her brandishing their flight magazines and cell phones as weapons. Then another voice spoke softly from behind her and broke the silence.
‘She’s right.’
Becca looked over her shoulder and saw the old airline pilot standing close by her shoulder, his hands still clasped before him and a calm aura emanating from his every pore.
‘The greatest danger to this airplane right now is all of us,’ the old man added, watching the passengers closely. ‘The more we react to something we cannot change outside this airplane, the greater the chances of something else going
wrong inside it.’
The cabin remained silent, nobody moving. Becca glared at the passengers once again, unable to quell her anger at being forced to shoulder the blame for something she could not possibly have controlled, and bolstered by the old man’s support.
‘Well?’ Becca snapped, her heart hammering in her chest. ‘Are you all waiting for someone to wave a magic bloody wand and put us on the ground?’
Becca threw one arm out to point at the cabin around them and once again the passengers filtered back into their seats. Becca felt unsteady on her feet as she waited until the aisle was clear except for Chloe and the food trolley. She glanced over her shoulder at the old airline pilot and gave him a nod of gratitude. Then she took a breath, stepped forward and grabbed a bottle of chilled water from the trolley. She tore the lid off and took a long pull.
‘You could have told me,’ Chloe said quietly. ‘I can handle this stuff.’
Becca wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
‘Didn’t seem so there now, did it?’ she hissed in a harsh whisper so that the passengers wouldn’t overhear them. ‘Get the trolley up the aisle and feed the cattle before they stampede again.’
With that Becca turned and marched back into the galley, out of sight from the passengers. As soon as she was there she threw one hand out to steady herself against a wall of metal cabinets as she felt a hot flush crash through her. Her breath came in ragged gasps and she felt a black wave of despair looming up, threatening to overwhelm her and drag her down onto her knees.
Breathe.
She realised that she was holding her breath and she released it in a rush, closed her eyes and fought against the oncoming blackness that she knew so well and yet could not conquer even after all of these years. She grabbed for her inhaler and drew down deeply on it to overcome the choking sensation constricting her throat, heard the hiss of vapour being released and the sudden flow of air into her lungs. She drew in a few deep breaths and somehow pushed the wave of panic away, bludgeoned it back down from whence it had come into some deep neural tract where it would no longer bother her.
Altitude (Power Reads Book 1) Page 8