Turbulence

by Nance, John J. ;

  The female agent met his eyes angrily. “What do you want?”

  “What do you suppose would happen,” the man said, keeping his voice low, “if your airline’s president, not to mention your supervisor, found out you’d treated a VIP the way you just treated this lady?”

  “Mind your own business, sir!” the agent snapped.

  He ignored the retort. “And what do you think would happen to your job if the very important person you sassed like that turned out to be, oh, let’s say, the chairman of the United States Senate Aviation Subcommittee, one of the senators who bailed your industry out a few years ago with a few billion public dollars?”

  Sharon Douglas placed a hand on the man’s arm in a gesture of restraint. “That’s okay. I’m all right.”

  “So who are you, sir?” the agent sneered. “A close personal friend of our chairman, like everyone else claims to be? Or maybe you’re a U.S. senator.”

  “No, ma’am,” he said, gesturing toward Sharon Douglas. “I’m not a senator. But she is. The lady you just insulted happens to be the senior United States senator from Illinois.”

  The agent’s expression slowly melted from arrogant to confused to cautious to alarmed as the man continued. “And after you fall all over yourself trying to apologize, I’d suggest you get your supervisor over here sometime yesterday, just as the senator ordered.”

  “Are … you really a senator?” the agent asked Sharon Douglas, who nodded.

  “Yes, but that shouldn’t make any difference. You shouldn’t be treating anyone the way you just treated me. Now, I’d like my boarding pass.”

  The male passenger had turned sideways and was gesturing at the others in line, and nodding at Jimmy as he spoke in a raised voice. “Senator, this is how this airline treats us all the time, every day. They begged us to come back and buy their tickets a few years ago, and we did, and now they’re back to treating us like pond scum.”

  “Pretty impressive demonstration, I’d say,” Senator Douglas added, watching the wide-eyed agent fumbling with her phone.

  Within seconds, walkie-talkies were coming alive all across the terminal as several red-coated figures turned immediately and beat a path for B-33.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  LONDON, ENGLAND

  6:10 P.M. Local

  Captain Phil Knight slid open the patio door of his friend’s air-conditioned London home and stepped outside, letting the suffocating heat of a late-summer afternoon enfold him. The scent of flowers perfumed the air, but he had no knowledge of horticulture. He merely noted the pleasant aroma in passing as he sipped a frozen daiquiri and studied the cumulus cloud formations lazily floating by overhead. It was understandable how someone could enjoy such surroundings, Phil thought as he looked around the lush little garden in the well-manicured and very private backyard encircled by an eight-foot high cinder-block wall. Someone else, that is. Ever since he’d arrived he’d been trying to suppress the urge to make apologies, beg off dinner, and crawl back to his hotel near Heathrow.

  Phil glanced around, relieved to see Glenn Thomasson still on a phone call in the distance, the man’s posture ramrod straight as he stood in his kitchen holding the receiver.

  Captain Thomasson was a gracious host who’d done nothing to make his far younger American guest feel unwelcome or uncomfortable, but Phil couldn’t shake the feeling of being an interloper. What made it worse was not having a clue why he felt that way.

  He smiled in spite of himself. Captain Thomasson was full of the usual tales pilots tell each other with hands held high in the air in a “there-I-was” formation, and it was entertaining to listen to his animated and strongly embroidered stories. The British captain had logged thirty-eight years in the cockpit and over twenty-eight thousand hours of flight time, first as a copilot and captain for British Overseas Airways Corporation and then as a senior 747 skipper for BOAC’s successor, British Air. He was sixty-six now, hale and hearty, and a divorce who was all too quick to claim a Professor Henry Higgins independence of women—a protest Phil refused to believe.

  Phil Knight had dined with the retired British Airways captain once before, a delightful memory of a leather-trimmed men’s club in the central London area. It had been an evening of swapped stories of airplanes and fishing, capped with brandy and cigars before Thomasson dropped him back at the hotel.

  But this was different. Perhaps it was all the plaques and photos on the walls testifying to Thomasson’s apparently happy years as a commercial pilot that made Phil strangely uncomfortable. Or maybe what was so unsettling was the clear impression that there had never been a time in the past thirty-eight years when Captain Glenn Thomasson had ever doubted his abilities.

  That was the trait in Thomasson he most admired.

  The sound of powerful turbofan engines rumbled over the house, and Phil looked to the south in time to catch a glimpse of a departing Airbus A-340. The four-engine jumbo was climbing slowly, its structure heavy with fuel and passengers, obviously heading for some foreign destination. In the cockpit of the Airbus there would be a pair of pilots for whom the complexities of international flight were second nature, a team with no worries about understanding thick accents, deciphering international rules, or knowing the so-called “secret handshakes” about how to stay safe above the African continent by providing your own air-traffic services. Phil felt a flash of envy, laced with a twinge of regret. It must feel good to be so prepared—so competent. If Meridian had even hinted at how much extra knowledge was required to fly overseas, maybe he would have made a different decision.

  A chill rippled down his back, and he could feel his stomach tighten as its acid content pegged the meter once more. Constant indigestion was part of the price he paid for bidding Meridian’s international routes as a 747 captain. He was working his way to an enormous ulcer, but that couldn’t be discussed with any other human being, let alone another pilot.

  Phil glanced at his watch. Six-thirty P.M. here, and just past noon in Chicago. That leaves me about eleven hours, he told himself. I’ve got eleven hours before the flight leaves and the agony starts again.

  The flight he was assigned to command from London to Cape Town, South Africa, was scheduled to arrive from Chicago at two-thirty in the morning. That meant a 3 A.M. wake-up call and no time to eat before reporting to operations by 4. By then, Meridian’s Heathrow ground handlers would be readying his Boeing 747-400 to take over the Flight Six call sign, while the Boeing 777 that had used that flight number from Chicago prepared to return to the States as Flight Five. Departure for Cape Town would be just after 5 A.M.

  Another shiver, this one sustained.

  Phil turned once again to check on his host, but Thomasson was still on the phone, gesturing in animated conversation in his kitchen. Phil moved back inside to the living room and slid the glass door closed behind him. The air-conditioning felt good, and he lowered himself into a wing-back chair, his eyes still on the distant sky as he unconsciously tensed, thinking about the inbound flight. Like Marley’s ghost dragging stratospheric chains, it was coming to haunt him for letting greed enmesh him in a dangerous charade.

  Phil looked at his watch. Flight Six should be getting ready to leave Chicago right now. Phil could visualize the pilots arriving from their Chicago-area homes and flight planning in Meridian Operations, just as he’d done two days before. Their night over water to London would be easy, with nothing more confusing than a Canadian or British accent to deal with among the fraternity of controllers who carefully watched over the North Atlantic air routes. That would bear no resemblance to the challenge he would face, the part of the job that roiled his stomach and made his head hurt. African airspace was as much a jungle as some of the equatorial landscapes below. Each country insisted on providing its own version of air traffic control in order to collect user fees from the airlines, but the equipment, the training, and the procedures were wildly different and dangerous, and nothing like in the United States. Even when Phil could understand the thic
k-accented versions of English, even when the controllers bothered to answer radio calls, the “system” was completely untrustworthy and the experienced pilots who flew over Africa had developed their own backdoor air traffic control system by calling out their positions constantly and talking to one another on common frequencies in what was sometimes a near-desperate effort to keep from colliding with someone else.

  And, Phil knew, there were informal “rules” for the “IFBP,” the inflight broadcast procedure, as it was called. Garth Abbott, his copilot, knew the rules and the procedures and the frequencies by heart. Meridian, however, had taught Phil almost nothing.

  Phil felt his hand shaking slightly and willed it to stop. The last thing he wanted was for Glenn Thomasson to find him looking anywhere near as upset as he was.

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHICAGO O’HARE AIRPORT

  12:45 P.M. CDT

  Chuck Levy squeezed his wife’s hand tighter and tried to focus on the gauntlet ahead, but the phone call kept replaying in his mind. The voice of the emergency room physician calling from Zurich to tell him his daughter had been in a horrible car wreck and was near death.

  “Who are you again?” he had managed.

  “Doctor Alfred Knof. You must come quickly to Zurich. We are doing everything for Janna. However, I fear there is little time.”

  Janna’s rental car had been overrun by a loaded truck, and the results were gruesome.

  Anna, his wife, had sat bolt upright beside him in bed.

  Chuck shook his head to suppress the memory. There was less than a mile to go to the terminal, and the cabby was asking which airline in a voice so heavily influenced by his native tongue, Chuck had to concentrate hard to make out the question.

  “Oh. Meridian Airlines,” he said.

  “Madidiam?” was the reply.

  “Mer-ID-ian. Meridian. Understand?”

  “Yes, yes. Madidiam.”

  Chuck nodded. There was too much to plan, and the crushing fatigue of the terrible news coupled with the struggle to snap into motion to fly a world away with less than four hours’ sleep felt like the description asthmatic friends had used to explain an asthma attack: like having an elephant on your chest.

  He glanced at Anna. She was squeezing the blood out of his hand as she sat with her eyes shut tight. He could feel her shaking with fear for the fate of their only child. The same elephant, sitting on both of them.

  Think! Chuck commanded himself. Two interminable hours spent on the phone with untrained, uncaring airline reservationists after holding for fifty minutes had drained him as well. No special fares, crowded airplanes, bad schedules, no seats, and no willingness to do anything but peck at a keyboard on the other end. All of it had made the experience a special torture, especially since it tied up their only phone line. He should have paid for call waiting, Chuck scolded himself. He’d called Zurich three times between the airline calls, trying to make sure he hadn’t missed a call from Dr. Knof.

  But nothing had changed. Janna was barely clinging to life, and the prognosis was grim.

  He had to organize his thoughts.

  Okay, we’ve got two bags. We’ll have to wait in line, get the ticket, check the bags, then go to the gate. Must make sure the bags go all the way to Zurich, but is it Meridian or Swissair we’re booked on out of London? There had been so many false starts and possible flight combinations with overbooked flights, he couldn’t remember what they’d finally confirmed.

  Passports? Yes. We’ve got both of them. Thank God I had them renewed last year. Money? No. Need a cash machine. Would that be before security or after? If I screw it up and it’s outside, I’ll have to go back through security again and it’ll take too long. Do it in London.

  It was going to be very, very tight. Getting everything done in the right sequence was critical. They were already behind for the 1:30 London flight.

  It was so depressing, Chuck thought, how many “hoops” the airlines, Meridian in particular, made you jump through to buy their product, even after the federal bailout, even after their near-death experience with frightened passengers staying away in droves following the attacks on New York and Washington. He’d been a salesman all his life, and a good one, but if he’d used the same attitudes with his customers, he would have starved to death by age twenty-five.

  And the expense! Nearly five thousand dollars for two last-minute round trips. There was no way they could afford it, but there was no time to call around for a better deal. He’d have to figure out how to pay American Express later. The airline had acted like a bandit … a criminal. You want to see your daughter before she dies? Just fork over your bank account while we hold your hearts hostage.

  “My daughter’s near death. Is there no discount for this type of disaster?” he’d asked in shock. “I … heard there was a special fare for families with a medical crisis.”

  “Oh, yeah,” the female reservationist had replied. “You’re thinking about the old bereavement fares. But those are only when someone dies, and we cut them out a long time ago anyway for international flights. After all, sir, we’re in business to make money.”

  The O’Hare terminal was looming up in front of them now, and the cabby was slowing. Chuck turned to Anna and gently pressed her hand. “We’re almost at the airport, honey,” he said.

  She squeezed harder in response, her eyes still welded shut, but not tightly enough to stem the constant flow of tears.

  Outside Gate B-33 in the cockpit of Meridian’s Flight Six to London, the captain pulled off his headset and ripped a piece of paper from a notepad, handing it to the first officer in the right seat of the Boeing 777.

  “What’s this?” the copilot asked as he glanced up at the boarding area, visible through the glass wall ahead of B-33.

  “The usual. From Ops. We’re due out at one-thirty, but they say we’ll be on gate hold for at least an hour. And we’ve got that line of storms coming in.”

  “You need a crew duty time analysis, right?”

  “Right. When do our efforts become futile? How late can we be at the end of the runway and still make it to London before violating the maximum time requirements?”

  “You want to hold their feet to the fire? Right to the minute?”

  The captain shrugged. “If we don’t enforce the rules, Meridian won’t.”

  The copilot snorted. “No shit, Sherlock. They’d handcuff us to the yoke if the FAA let them.”

  “Would you mind telling the passengers?” the captain asked.

  The copilot looked at him with an incredulous expression. “You bet, I mind. I hate doing PAs.”

  “Well … so do I. But they’re going to get upset if someone doesn’t talk to them, and since your captain refuses and there’s no flight engineer, I figured …”

  “Captain,” the first officer said, “I think you’ve got me confused with someone who gives a damn.”

  “Okay,” the captain said with a sigh. “Then I’ll talk to them in-flight. I don’t want to upset them.”

  “Too late. They were born upset, and then we give them such wonderful ticket agents to burnish their fine mood. Wait till they sample the food.”

  The captain gave the copilot a quizzical look. “A little sour today, are we, Jeff?”

  “You noticed! How nice. Yesterday I was just disillusioned. Today I’m full-scale disgruntled.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ABOARD VIRGIN AIRLINES FLIGHT TWELVE,

  BOSTON TO LONDON

  OVER THE ATLANTIC

  A degree of calm had finally settled over the first-class galley as the Virgin Airbus A-340 cruised past the halfway point at thirty-seven thousand feet on the way from Boston to London. After serving a sumptuous dinner, dessert, coffee, snacks, and uncounted drinks, the cabin service staff assigned to keep Virgin’s most important passengers happy had finished stowing and cleaning their equipment, and were daring to relax for a while.

  There was little time. The breakfast service would begin in two hours.r />
  The welcome tranquillity of a jetliner at altitude was affecting them all, the white noise of the muted background roar an audible, sleep-promoting sedative in stark contrast to the sudden commotion of a man bursting into the galley interior in obvious distress.

  “Miss! Miss!”

  The three startled flight attendants turned immediately toward the wild-eyed passenger as he stopped and pointed over his shoulder toward first class.

  One of the women came forward immediately. “What’s the matter, sir?”

  “Your first-aid kit. Where is it? My … my …”

  He looked around in confusion and pulled away from her, rushing back out with the flight attendant on his heels.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked as another flight attendant appeared.

  Dr. Brian Logan was moving rapidly up the aisle, stopping at each seat, his eyes darting in all directions as he searched the floor. “She’s … Where is she?” WHERE IS SHE?”

  The lead flight attendant grabbed him by his shoulders from behind and tried to spin him around.

  “Sir! SIR? Calm down, now. Please! Tell me what’s wrong.”

  Logan straightened up and turned on his own, blinking rapidly as he tried to focus on the uniformed woman before him. She could see recognition flare, and feel his body slump as he lowered his head. “Oh, God.”

  She tried again in a gentler voice. “Sir? Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

  A third flight attendant came up from behind with a printout of the passenger list and whispered in the ear of her senior, “His name is Brian Logan. He’s a doctor.”

  The senior flight attendant nodded, keeping her eyes on the distraught physician, who was crying softly.

  “Doctor Logan? Can you sit down and tell me, please, what’s wrong?”

  He nodded and let her guide him back to his seat, and she knelt in the aisle beside him, still holding his arm.