Final Approach

by John J. Nance

  “Need my help?”

  She shook her head. “Not this time. They finally surrendered.”

  Barbara turned away to greet a late-boarding passenger as Jean reached behind her to pull the folding cockpit door shut for a private discussion.

  “Pete, I’ve got a problem with number three main tire.”

  “Oh?” The captain looked startled. They had been sitting together in the cockpit for nearly ten minutes. Why had she waited this long to say something about a maintenance problem?

  “I found two deep cuts on my walk-around and called maintenance. This character comes out with a disgusted attitude, takes a quick look, and says, ‘Honey, you’d better learn something about tires, there’s nothing in the world wrong with this one,’ and walks off. I followed him back to the maintenance office to talk to the supervisor, and it turns out this jerk is the supervisor.”

  Pete shifted in his seat, trying to find a diplomatic way to reply, but Jean raised her hand to stop him.

  “I know what you’re going to say, I already know. If the damn supervisor won’t agree it needs changing, we haven’t got a leg to stand on. I just wanted you to know what happened so if the tire blows out on us, you’ll know why.”

  Pete nodded and shifted his gaze out the windscreen, noticing Mark Weiss as he stood on the other side of the heavy plate-glass window, looking lonely. Suddenly Pete felt lonely, too. Lonely and old.

  “There was a time, Jean, when all a captain had to do was tell them once to change it, and it would be changed. Period.”

  “I know. I read. Even with a wing missing we couldn’t ground the airplane without management approval. We don’t control a damn thing anymore.”

  Pete Kaminsky felt an unfamiliar wave of anger welling up in his stomach at the invasion of his cockpit by the reality of the tawdry shell his once-proud company had become. He drew himself up and half-swiveled toward Jean, his right index finger raised in the air and a feigned, half-maniacal look on his face.

  “The hell we can’t control things, Jean. I may have to let this airplane be pushed back on time, but like I told the man, we aren’t flying anywhere until we decide it’s safe!”

  The sound of the gate agent closing the Boeing 737’s forward entrance door punctuated his words.

  2

  Friday, October 12 Kansas City International Airport—Kansas City, Missouri

  Thunder from somewhere above the airport almost covered the crisp sound of the airline reservationist’s voice. Flight 255, she confirmed, was on time. Kell Martinson thanked her and punched the disconnect button, turning off the speaker and the remote microphone—the odd image of an otherwise perfectly sane man talking to his car’s sun visor flickering across his mind as silence returned to the cushioned interior of the Riviera.

  On the other side of the windshield the sheets of rain had decreased to a mere downpour, but the junior U.S. senator from the state of Kansas was still having trouble making out the moving shapes of buses and rental-car shuttles through the rain-smeared glass as they darted back and forth in front of him on the semicircular airport drive, each pursuing some appointed round at the North America terminal. Officially he was supposed to be at his family’s old farmhouse near Salina, Kansas, not splashing through a traffic jam at the Kansas City Airport. Since he wasn’t officially there, he couldn’t afford to be seen, which was why he couldn’t meet his inbound administrative assistant at the gate when her flight arrived in fifteen minutes. His face was too familiar to midwesterners. She would have to find him at the curb.

  Feeling warm and insulated in his own high-tech cocoon, its windows opaque from the falling rain, Senator Martinson sat there for a moment in thought—his still-youthful face bathed in the greenish glow of the Riviera’s computerized dashboard. He loved this car, but he’d really bought it for the touch-sensitive computer screen system—a consistent purchase, he felt, for a pilot-senator from an aviation state like Kansas, who was already a well-teased lover of electronic gadgets. Cynthia Collins, the legislative aide who would be arriving shortly, delighted in needling him about his “toys”—as much, he suspected, as he enjoyed her taunting. She had labeled his new Riviera a “Star Wars” car, and greeted the installation of his mobile speakerphone with the suggestion that he should go all the way and have the cellular equipment surgically implanted. His suggestion in response had caused her to blush—while hurriedly closing his office door.

  Now the thought of Cynthia sitting in a darkened airliner cabin at that exact moment, quite possibly engaged in unprofessional thoughts about him, filled his mind. Her flight would have already started its descent—dropping right into the middle of the thunderstorms making up a squall line moving east across the Kansas-Missouri border. That realization shook him out of his reverie. The fury of that advancing cold front had worried him for the last two hours as he drove beneath it into Kansas City from Wichita, nearly two hundred miles to the southwest. Cynthia Elizabeth Collins—who permitted the diminutive “Cindy” when they were alone—was not a confident flyer, and her flight would be bumpy tonight.

  Kell put the car in gear and left the terminal drive, deciding to wait out the remaining quarter hour somewhere within view of the runway. It seemed a bit silly, but no pilot in love with flying ever tired of watching airplanes land, and he was no exception. Kell drove past the airport hotel and headed toward the ramp operations area along Burns Street, intending to park close to the fence near the general aviation ramp where he had arrived in private airplanes many times in past years. The sight of an airline-crew shuttle bus approaching the security gate just ahead gave him another idea, however, and as the bus driver activated the automatic gate with a radio control, Kell cut his headlights and glided up behind it, shadowing the lumbering bus as it moved through. A bit dangerous, he thought. It would be embarrassing to get caught, but at least leaving the area would be no problem—the gate opened automatically for departing cars. Wichita’s airport had the same system.

  Once inside, Kell broke off to the right, keeping out of the bus driver’s rain-splattered mirrors as he found a parking place along Ottawa Avenue, a spot with a commanding view of Runway 19. He switched off the engine, childishly proud of beating the security system, yet aware that if he could do so with such ease, so could a terrorist or saboteur.

  To his right, a giant Air Force C-5B sat on the air cargo ramp, bathed in lights, its huge cargo doors open, loading or unloading something important, Kell figured. He could see security guards around the nose of the 747-sized airplane, and large trucks were parked at the far end. Strange, he thought, to see the Military Airlift Command’s largest transport at Kansas City’s commercial airport. Kell made a mental note to ask what was going on when he got back to Washington, just out of curiosity. He had access to such information as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

  With a start he looked at the security guards more closely, wondering if he was too close for their comfort. If they were Air Force security police, they had no sense of humor when it came to unauthorized cars, even those driven by unauthorized senators. The C-5B was at least 800 yards away, however, and none of the security team seemed to be looking his way.

  Kell read 10:06 P.M. on his watch as he reached to the glove compartment to pull out a hand-held scanner radio from within, punching the digital VHF frequency of Kansas City approach control into the control pad—a frequency copied from one of his aeronautical charts earlier in the day. The sound of a pilot’s voice filled the car’s interior almost instantly.

  “Kansas City approach, North America 255 with you, out of 19,000 now for one-zero thousand.”

  Perfect timing! The flight was Cindy’s.

  Kell looked across the runway into the murky night sky with a happy rush of anticipation at the thought of spending the next two days in her arms. Cindy his aide; Cindy his lover.

  “North America 170, roger, taxi to Runway 19, altimeter 29.23.”

  Captain Pete Kaminsky pushed the two thrust levers
forward, careful not to exceed a reasonable power setting for taxiing as he manipulated the nose wheel steering tiller located next to his left knee.

  He glanced at Jean as she extended the wing flaps to the takeoff setting and began reading the before-takeoff checklist, waiting for his responses. Such routines were vital in preventing human error, Pete thought, but they became too familiar as well. He remembered the chilling cockpit voice tape from a Delta 727 takeoff crash in Dallas a few years back—the pilot’s voice confirming the flaps were set for takeoff when in fact they were still up. Someone had answered without looking.

  “Takeoff warning horn?”

  “Checked.”

  “Speed brake lever?”

  “Detent.”

  Airline pilots officially never made mistakes, but Pete could remember dozens he’d committed over the years. There was a private little ritual he had begun in Vietnam long ago while trying to survive as a fighter pilot in the F-4. It was a quiet, private incantation at the end of each flight, an implied thank-you to a higher power: “Well, I cheated death again!” Pete chuckled out loud, startling Jean. In airline flying you weren’t so much cheating death as cheating human nature. The phrase, he knew, should be: “Thank God I got through another one without doing anything stupid that I have to admit to.”

  The smell of more fresh coffee brewing in the forward galley of the 737 wafted through the vent in the closed cockpit door, a warm and cozy aroma in contrast to the wild and inhospitable night outside. The wind had picked up again, and the taxiway surface in front of them was wet and glistening, the bright lights of the Boeing illuminating the soaked grass and taxiway signs more effectively than they lit the tarmac. Pete suddenly noticed a cardboard box on the taxiway ahead, and began edging the 737 to one side to avoid sucking it into an engine. Off to the right a ghostly row of air cargo buildings lurked in the mist, along with the incongruous sight of an Air Force C-5 filling the north end of the ramp. Off to the left stretched an expanse of mowed grass, battered down by the heavy rain of the previous hour. And all around them, as the radar showed all too clearly, was an angry swarm of thunderstorm cells.

  “Kansas City tower, Central West 1880 with you at the marker.”

  In the darkened interior of the Kansas City air-traffic-control tower, Carl Sellers turned his attention to the approaching flight, this one a commuter, a small twin-engine turboprop Metroliner checking in on final approach. Carl could see the rotating beacons of the aircraft in the distance as he keyed the microphone.

  “Central West 1880, cleared to land. Winds two-four-zero at one-six knots, gusts to two-zero.”

  “Cleared to land.”

  Carl looked at another round of lightning flashes, then at the wind gauge, and over to the airport windshear detector display, noting that none of the warning lights was on. Strange, he thought. A night of wild weather like this usually tweaks at least one of the windshear detectors. Maybe it isn’t as wild out there as it looks.

  “Kansas City tower, North America 170. Looks like a large cardboard box has blown onto the taxiway just behind where we are now. You might want to get someone out to pick it up before an engine eats it.” Pete felt a twinge of worry. The FAA was violating pilots for any comments not absolutely required while the aircraft was in motion under 10,000 feet. But this was business. It should be permissible.

  “Thanks 170, we’ll take care of it.”

  Sellers picked up the phone to the airport police and explained the box, pleased that a squad car almost immediately headed onto the taxiway to get it.

  Standing by the glass at Gate 14, Mark Weiss stiffened for a moment at the sight of a squad car racing past the terminal and onto the taxiway, seemingly chasing after his family’s flight with blue-and-red lights flashing. From his vantage point he could see the 737 as it reached the end of the inside taxiway and turned 90 degrees toward the approach end of the runway—traditionally called the “hammerhead.” As he’d promised, the captain began pivoting the jet around to the left, apparently looking at the weather with his radar. As Mark watched, the squad car stopped short of the hammerhead and began sweeping the taxiway with its searchlight.

  The telltale signature of a major storm cell approaching—the intense splotch of red inside a larger area of yellow on the digital color radar—gave Pete Kaminsky all the justification he needed to keep Flight 170 on the ground for a while.

  “Tower, North America 170. We’ve finished our look at the weather and I think we’ll hold our position for a little while if we’re not in anyone’s way.”

  The voice came back in their headsets without hesitation.

  “No problem, 170.”

  Jean pointed to another spot of red showing on the radar scope off to the south. “That one’s going to be in our way on climb out if we don’t get a left turn.”

  Pete nodded. He had seen that type of display many times before. Sometimes they even developed a little hook on the end—the unmistakable signature of a tornado.

  “I’d expect some possible shear, don’t you think?” Jean was pressing her nose to the right cockpit window, watching the landing lights from the Metroliner now about a mile out.

  “Looks likely. That thunderstorm cell’s no more than 3 miles to the northwest.”

  As Pete spoke, the lights of the small commuter bobbled downward, then up slightly, the red position light on the left wingtip indicating the pilots were beginning to fight with gusty winds. The cylindrical shape of the small craft was not yet visible, but the lights marked its passage as it came over the threshold of Runway 19 and dropped suddenly, the nose coming up at a sharp angle, left wing down, then up, the sound of increasing power audible even in the 737 cockpit.

  “Jesus!”

  Jean and Pete reacted as one, both willing their fellow airman back into control, watching with relief as the lights stabilized and settled to the runway in a smooth landing.

  “Lord,” Pete said, breaking the tense silence. “They looked like they were going to lose it.”

  In the tower, Carl Sellers had not been looking at the Metroliner. He had been straining with the field glasses to see the cardboard box in the police car’s searchlight as the officer swept the taxiway. The call from the Metroliner captain was a surprise that didn’t fully register.

  “Uh, tower, Central 18 … uh, Central West 1880. That, ah … it’s gusty out there on final.”

  Carl couldn’t see the near panic on the faces of the two young pilots, the captain in his early twenties, with less than two-thousand hours of flying time and more than the normal level of adrenaline. He couldn’t tell they had neither the experience nor the training to recognize what they had just encountered, nor the presence of mind to put the right words forward to describe it. All he had was the phrase “gusty out there on final.”

  “Roger, Central West, understand. Thanks for the report. Call ground control when clear, 121.8. Good night.”

  “Roger” was the only response, followed by a blinding streak of light somewhere behind the slowing Metroliner, a huge lightning bolt accompanied by a nearly instantaneous bone-rattling thunderclap, which shook the tower windows with a vengeance. As the echo of the thunderclap died down, Carl could hear the instrument landing system alarm sounding.

  “I think it got the ILS shack.” The voice of the ground controller in the tower alongside Carl Sellers was followed by the airport police officer calling on his car radio in a voice nearly an octave higher than normal: “Ground, airport 16, that almost got me! I think it hit the ILS shed right in front of my position.”

  The controller had already acknowledged the officer’s call sign as Carl reached for the phone to alert their standby maintenance technician. At that moment, another bolt hit to the south of the airport, and still another to the north as the tie line from the radar room—RAPCON—rang again.

  “Carl? Shipping you North America 255 with a call at the marker. He’s nine out for Runway 19.”

  “Thanks.” Carl managed the reply, racing
his mind to stay up with the increasing pace, marginally aware that someone was asking something of him from his left.

  “What?”

  “Could you alert maintenance, I’ve got a problem with airport squad car 16 out there?”

  “Right.”

  “Tower, North America 170, that lightning strike was right along 19 and that cell is moving overhead. I recommend you wave off our inbound company.” Pete Kaminsky’s voice was unknown to Sellers, but his concern was clear. But “waving off” an inbound flight exceeded his authority. He could report the conditions, but if the runway was clear and operable, to land or not was the pilot’s prerogative. Even if he saw a tornado moving across the field, the rules said he couldn’t formally shut down the runway.

  “Hello?”

  The voice on the end of the phone startled Carl for a moment. He had momentarily forgotten whom he was calling.

  “Maintenance?”

  “Well, I’m off duty, but yes, it’s me.”

  “ILS is in alarm and I think we just took a lightning strike on the shack. I need you out there.”

  “Which runway?”

  The answer was forming in his mind but had not yet crossed his lips when the radio speaker crackled to life again.

  “Kansas City tower, North America 255 at the marker and in the rain, ILS seems inoperative but we’ve got the field.”

  Carl hit the transmit button, holding the phone to one side for a second. “Roger 255, ILS is in alarm, you’re cleared visual, cleared to land Runway 19, winds two-four-zero at one-six, gusts to two-five. A Metroliner reported gusty winds on final several minutes ago. Altimeter 29.23.”

  The words had tumbled out with impressive speed and efficiency. All they should have been told, they had been told. But there was something more. There was something in the back of his head that he should have said. What was it?