Marty could hear a brief exchange from the right seat between the copilot and ATC regarding another heading change. His right hand trembled as it held the satellite phone handset, and a sort of roaring started in his mind, as if everything he was facing was accelerating toward some critical mass.
He forced himself to take a breath and answer a bunch of well-meaning suits who obviously had no clue what he was saying.
“Mr. Butterfield...all of you...I know you’re trying to help, but if we can’t answer my question about slowly bringing the flaps out, then answer this, please. Let me ask you some stuff based on a no flap emergency landing, cause I know we’ve got test data on that.”
“Yes, we do.”
“Captain,” another voice interjected, “we’ve run the numbers for a no flap landing given the one remaining runway they’re telling us is still open at Denver, Runway Seven. Your approach speed – what I guess you pilots call your bug speed – will be one hundred eighty-two knots. With full braking and full reverse and touchdown on or before the numbers, you can just barely stop before the overrun. And, as I’m sure you know, the overrun on that runway ends in a hundred foot downslope.”
Marty bit his lip as he watched Ryan struggling with the airplane and ran the statement from Operations through his head.
“Okay, but at that airspeed, one hundred eighty-two knots ... what will my angle of attack be?”
“You have to slow her down for landing, Captain. I don’t think there’s a choice about that. You can’t stop in the available runway otherwise.”
“What pitch – what angle of attack or what nose-up pitch angle – would I be using with the gear down and flaps fully retracted in level flight, at one hundred eighty-two knots, versus the angle of attack I’m using right now at two hundred forty?”
More silence from Operations before a new voice answered.
“Captain, you’re...you say you’re maintaining two hundred and forty knots right now?”
“That’s right. I’ve slowed her down from two fifty. And I don’t dare slow any more without risking all the lives in that wrecked Beech on my wing. I have no damned way of knowing what speed would cant my wing up high enough to cause the slipstream to lift them off the wing and kill them.”
“Captain, Bill Baxter here at Boeing again. I’ve got a team working on it right now.”
“Thank you, Mr. Baxter. You understand what I’m asking?”
“Yes...but we’re going to have to grab for original engineering test flight data. We don’t measure things by angle of attack, or nose-up deck angle, as you know.”
“Okay. Please keep this line open and let me know the moment you’ve got something I can use.”
“Captain, Paul Butterfield here. We’ll keep the line open of course, but about your speed. I need to emphasize that you’re going to have to slow her down.”
“Mr. Butterfield, do you want me to describe the faces of the passengers in that ruined airplane on my wing?”
“Captain, your passengers’ lives depend on...”
“Hey! I’m well aware of my responsibilities, okay? I just picked up some new passengers I hadn’t planned on.”
“I’m just reminding you, sir, that you can’t safely land at that airspeed.”
“Don’t you think I fucking know that?”
There was dead silence in response for several seconds before Marty forced himself to speak. “I’m sorry. I apologize for the profanity but...I’m the one who has to make the final decisions up here.”
He pulled the handset away before Butterfield could respond and turned to motion Nancy, the lead flight attendant, back in the cockpit, to monitor the sat phone as a distant warbling reached their ears.
For several seconds it was confusing: another cockpit warning apparently corking off and he should know what it meant. But he couldn’t recall – until the realization dawned that the noise was the ringtone for his cell phone.
The last goddamned thing I have time for! Marty thought, planning to ignore it even as the insistent sound continued. But there was something in the back of his mind screaming at him that this was somehow important, and even in the jaws of the tidal wave of worries trying to engulf him, Marty ripped the phone from its belt holster and punched it on.
“Yes?”
The voice was distant, and female, and very hesitant, like someone coming out of a deep sleep realizing they’d dialed a wrong number.
“Ah...is this...the captain of...I don’t know what your flight number is, but...”
“Who the hell is this?” he demanded.
“Ah...I’m...the pilot of the airplane on your right wing.”
The roaring in Marty Mitchell’s mind reached a crescendo as her words finally registered.
“I’m sorry...I wasn’t expecting...”
“I’m...Michelle Whittier.”
“You’re the captain?”
“Yes, if there’s anything left to be captain of.”
“I’m Marty Mitchell. Captain as well.”
“You guys hit us. I think one of my people may be dead. Everyone else is okay...although we’re freezing over here.”
“I’m so sorry! I have no idea what happened. I’ll get us down as quick as I can, Michelle.”
“You think that’ll work?”
“Has to.”
“I mean, we’re really moving around out here...my left wing is gone and my right wing may be structurally broken, and we’re being buffeted big time by the wind. I’m not even sure this is all real.”
“I get that. Look, I think your right main gear strut is what’s keeping you on our wing.”
“We’ve got to be creating huge drag for you.”
“Some, yes.”
“And when you slow and configure for landing...”
“I’m not going to slow. I can’t risk a higher deck angle.”
“Ah...Marty, is it?”
“Yes.”
“Marty, how...I mean, how can you land if you don’t slow? How fast are you going...are we going...right now?”
“Two forty. I’m going to try to milk the flaps down to decrease the deck angle as I slow, and hopefully the diminished force of the slipstream will also help keep you there.”
“I’m sorry to point out the obvious, Marty,” she added, “but we can’t fly if we fall off. You know that of course.”
There was a rising tide of emotion suddenly choking off his ability to speak, but he forced himself past the paralysis.
“Yeah. I wish we could bring you across the wing and inside.”
“So do I, but we don’t have any ropes, and unless…”
“We’ll get you down, Michelle.”
“I…of course I hope so. Hope so.”
“I’ll need your help.”
“Right. Anything. Sure,” Michelle replied, each word an attempt to reinforce the previous.
“We’re on vectors right now waiting for our company to get back to me with some of the figures for landing, and we’re down to Runway Seven at Denver, and I need to start experimenting to see if we can milk the flaps out. That’s when I’ll need feedback from you on any movement which might indicate we could lose you.”
“What do you mean?” she asked
“Any sudden grinding, or lifting, or shaking, or any indication she might be coming loose.”
A long pause and an audible exhale filled his ear until her weary voice returned.
“Marty, I’m not sure we would get any warning. We...the fuselage... could just fall off without any, ah...precursors, y’know? It’s constantly shaking right now.”
“Got it. We’ll proceed extremely slowly.”
“I’ll let you get busy but...I guess, call back when you need to.”
“Okay. My phone captured your number.”
“Marty?”
“Yes.”
“Ah...look, please do your best. I’ll admit I’m terrified. I mean, I know you will but, we’re in your hands, y’know?”
“Yes, I know.”
Who am I kidding, Marty thought.
There was no one to help. It was as if she was hanging onto his hand and dangling off the edge of a cliff, and yet he was holding on for dear life himself, screaming for help that would never come, grip loosening, voice hoarse – her Gwen Stacy to his Peter Parker.
He had to clear his throat to answer, and the words felt more like a fraud than a promise.
“We’ll get you down safely, Michelle. I’m not letting you go.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Seven Months before – January 21st
Newsroom, The Denver Post
With the post-deadline newsroom all but deserted in a major blizzard, there was essentially no one for a part-timer like Scott Bogosian to check with on his way out the door. Scott had fulfilled his duty to call the paper’s aviation beat reporter and hand off the breaking news, but she was engaged in mortal combat with a nasty version of the flu and her obviously worried husband was stiff-arming any interference.
“I wouldn’t wake her up for an interview with Jesus,” he snapped. “Whatever the story is, it’s yours.”
Scott grabbed his parka and lifted the beat reporter’s handheld scanner from her desk before heading for the parking structure, unclear where he was racing to. The Broomfield police – in fact the entire matrix of police and fire departments in the Denver-Boulder area – had picked up no trace of a fallen airliner, and the bits and pieces of radio communication he’d heard on the scanner were offering the alternate conclusion that there was no regional twin on the ground because it was somehow being carried on the wing of a larger jet. Not really possible, but…
The snow was blowing horizontally, at least in the downtown canyons, as he literally skidded his aging Volvo onto Colfax, already chiding himself for not replacing a set of slick tires that were far too low on tread. With money an increasingly rare commodity in his solitary life, tires that had the grace to just remain inflated automatically won his loyalty. Other things like food and rent and the occasional bottle of Jack Daniels came first.
Scott guided the Volvo gingerly up the slick ramp onto the Interstate, engaging his mental autopilot as he struggled to visualize what was happening overhead. With no other location logically competing for his presence, the course to Denver International Airport was a given. But precisely what should he do on arrival? That would take more thought, and there was the not-so-insignificant question of whether he could even make it there. The snow was piling up fast and there was only one plowed lane left to navigate on I-25 – and probably the same on I-70 leading to Pena Boulevard, the 10 mile highway from the Interstate to the terminal that was always spring-loaded for closure in a storm like this.
The handheld scanner, programmed for aviation frequencies, was spewing staccato bursts of radio traffic as Denver’s approach controllers worked to clear the skies for Regal 12.
Thanks to the warmth of the car’s interior, the storm beyond the windshield seemed completely surreal, and the other-worldly aspect of the snow streaking by horizontally just added to the disconnect from reality.
So far, there were no named individuals in peril in the frozen night, just flight numbers and evolving facts. And while his mind gave ritual voice to the prayer that all affected would get down safely, there was still a guilty rush associated with something like this. He hated to admit it, but it was true. The thrill of grabbing his hat – if he’d had one – and racing out to cover something big ahead of everyone else was, in truth, every reporter’s primordial wet dream.
Scott’s childhood image of newspapermen dated from the previous century. No matter that he didn’t own a trench coat or carry a hatband that said “PRESS” or have to find a pay phone to read his story to a copy desk, it all fit nicely into the old-school fantasy images he’d had as a kid of someday being a real newspaper reporter. Even classmates had rolled their eyes at him. They’d get into trouble doing something their parents had forbidden, and Marty would be there with a note pad to chronicle the whole thing. It was when he started actually publishing his reports in a makeshift mimeographed newspaper that life at Kennedy Elementary got really lonely, and no amount of claiming to be a reporter versus a snitch would repair things. Virtually no one was surprised when he landed his first real newspaper job.
True, the stereotyped image had faded – tattered, in fact – and the reality over the last forty years had been startlingly less magnificent than his starry-eyed dreams. But there had been the occasional victory, the occasional scoop as an investigative reporter who never quit – a reputation he valued. And the breaking news rush was still there when he launched on a mission that was his to complete. Tonight was such a moment.
Scott swerved suddenly to avoid a jackknifing semi, barely getting the old Volvo under control and back into the groves of previous tires after the trucker pulled off to the side.
The face of a firefighting acquaintance at Denver’s airport crossed his mind.Whatever happened at DIA in the next few hours, the firefighters would know about it and be there. If Josh Simmons by some stroke of luck was on duty tonight, it would be a great help.
The radio calls had quieted markedly as the airborne traffic diminished, but the Approach Control frequency suddenly came alive again.
“Regal Twelve, say your intentions.”
“To get everyone home alive, Approach,” was the immediate reply, somewhere between a curative attempt at humor and evidence of a distracted airman.
Several seconds elapsed before the pilot continued. “Denver, Regal Twelve should be ready for the approach in about twenty minutes. We’ve got to do some controllability checks up here.”
“Roger, Regal. Please be advised Denver International is doing their best to keep the runway open for you and they are currently plowing, so they need a five minute warning when you’re ready for the approach to get the equipment out of the way.
“Roger that, Denver.”
Another transmission filled the void, this one used for ground control at the airport.
“Airport Twenty, Denver Ground.”
“Airport Twenty.”
“What’s the runway status?”
“Ground, we’ve got six plows deployed and we’re two thirds down Runway Seven at this time, but it’s coming down too fast. Frankly, we’re losing the battle. We need to get that bird on the ground asap.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Seven Months before – January 21st
Passenger Cabin - Regal 12
Normally, when Lucy Alvarez scored a window seat and the extra leg room of the emergency exit row, it felt like a small lotto win. One hour into the aborted flight of Regal 12, however, 22F had truly become the seat from hell.
It had taken Lucy less than a minute after the collision to regain focus and gaze out the window, directly into the windows of Mountaineer 6212. At first, everything was essentially black. But as Lucy’s eyes adjusted to the garish scene, every flash of the Regal 757’s red beacon illuminated anxious faces staring back at her, eyes pleading, lips mouthing words she could only imagine.
The captain’s explanation of why there was no way to reach them and bring them across that gap to the safety of the Boeing’s cabin made sense, but the logic was drowned out by the scream in her mind that those poor people had to be saved. No way could she just sit there and watch them die.
Both pilots, one after another, had come back and leaned in front of her to get a better view of the unfolding nightmare. Most of her fellow passengers had remained reasonably calm, but a tall, broad-shouldered man in his mid-fifties wearing a baseball cap and a
checkered flannel shirt – the occupant of seat 21F just in front of her – had been doing a slow burn, muttering and becoming increasingly agitated. Suddenly he jumped to his feet and began pacing the aisle, arms flailing, gesturing wildly to the emergency exits; searching for allies who felt the same despair that was eating Lucy alive. But the man was frightening her, and she couldn’t trust him to be her voice. When he looked straight at her, she quickly diverted her eyes, partly out of embarrassment.
“Hey! Y’all! Are we gonna sit here like sheep and let those folks out there die? Come on, people, they’re less than twenty-five feet away from the window! There’s got to be some rope or cable or something we can use.”
“And do what?” a younger, owlish looking male had looked up at him and asked. “You heard the captain. It’s like a hurricane out there and even if we could weather the cold, there’s no way to attach a line or a cable even if we had one.”
“Hell, son, I’ve worked in Deadhorse in the winter,” the man replied. “Don’t be a pussy. There’s nothing on that wing you couldn’t handle in a parka,” he added, gesturing to the overhead. “They’ve got life rafts and all sorts of other equipment in this airplane and all we need is thirty feet of stout line and the determination to do something other than sit here. If we can get a line to them, we can bring them all across. Then it don’t matter if the damned thing falls off.”
One of the male flight attendants had approached quietly and now put a hand on the pacing man’s shoulder. Lucy could see the apprehension in the flight attendant’s eyes – the passenger was a half foot taller – and he turned on the crewmember now with a snarl.
“What do you want?”
The flight attendant’s voice was level and calm, his words precise.
“Sir, I have to ask you to sit back down and fasten your seatbelt. We all want to go get those people, but it is not possible.”
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