Angel Flight

by R. D. Kardon

  “I knew there was something odd about those folks,” said Birdie Cummings, an employee of Frobisher Bay Touchdown Services in Iqaluit, which serviced the airplane when it was parked overnight. “Before [Edgemon and the pilots] took off, there was some kind of argument. I couldn’t tell what it was about.”

  The plane took off without incident, and there was no record of mechanical difficulties. The National Transportation Safety Board is also investigating.

  Iqaluit police are investigating the security systems in place at the private terminal, which failed to detect that Edgemon brought a gun on the plane.

  “It is customary for private jets to park away from commercial operators,” said a source at the Government of Nunavut. “The private terminal is not equipped with the same level of security or number of metal detectors as the commercial area is.”

  Investigators learned that Edgemon and Hudson had flown back to Exeter International Airport the year before through the private terminal, so Edgemon may have known she would not be searched for firearms.

  “Everyone associated with Iqaluit Airport is devastated by this event. We can assure the public that they are perfectly safe flying out of the airport. This incident, while tragic, is isolated. This security situation is under review, and we will do whatever is necessary to assure the safety of the flying public,” said the same government official.

  PART IV:

  POST-FLIGHT

  April 2000

  Exeter, Illinois

  Fifty-Three

  Screaming? Maybe howling? Bruce couldn’t come up with a word that accurately described the sound that child made. Bellowing? No, bellowing involved spoken words, right? Less than one week old was probably too soon for words.

  The noise gave Bruce a newfound respect for his son. He marveled at how someone so small could make a ruckus so big. And Heather was so sleep-deprived she slept right through it.

  Bruce scratched at the dried spit-up on the leg of his shorts. He’d lost count of the times little Jacob had puked on them. Time had little meaning since he got home from the angel flight. He’d walked out of one type of bedlam and entered another. His son had demolished the quiet, manageable lifestyle he and Heather had enjoyed.

  He pushed the soft pink earplugs deep into his ears and went to get a moist cloth to wipe his pants. After digging through a jungle of plastic cups, tops, lids, and bottles, he found what he hoped was a clean washcloth. Apparently, it had already been used for—he couldn’t tell. Something that smelled really bad.

  Maybe he should wake Heather. She’d know where to find a clean towel, or she’d do some laundry. No, Bruce had promised to manage the baby while she napped. Heather barely got any sleep anymore between feeding him, changing him, and listening to him cry.

  The joy of parenthood. He wasn’t feeling it.

  Before Bruce was released from the hospital, one of the social workers on staff had talked with him about “coping skills.” The officious counselor suggested ways to think about stressful events that might come up until Bruce could see a regular therapist. But none of those skills prepared him for the onslaught of challenges that came along with having a baby.

  The therapy he got in the hospital was so much bullshit anyway. Those people didn’t know anything. How do you cope when your freight catches fire and explodes, just feet away from you? Repeat, “this too shall pass”? Just shrug your shoulders and get over it? What a crock of shit.

  Bruce had put off calling the therapist. The FAA had already suspended his medical certificate, so he could see a shrink out in the open if he wanted to. But Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? Didn’t only soldiers get that?

  Maybe he’d call tomorrow.

  On the crowded dining room table, the ceramic bowl Heather bought to display a mound of fake plastic fruit was shoved aside to make room for piles of unopened mail, which formed barriers between crusted baby bottles. Most of the letters were medical bills. They only had the bare minimum health insurance. Heather had begged him to increase their coverage, pay a little bit more. “Just to be sure honey,” she’d pleaded.

  But they were young and healthy. And the extra money was needed to buy other things.

  “Our insurance covers pregnancy and delivery. What more do we need?” he’d argued wearily.

  The answer, it turned out, was plenty. He’d seriously misjudged the expense of having a child. The baby stretched their finances to the limit, and it would only get worse until Bruce could return to work.

  Being grounded until the criminal and NTSB investigations concluded, he had no source of income. Far from stressing him further, he was secretly relieved. The last thing he wanted to do was walk onto an airplane.

  In the fridge, Bruce spied two bottles of beer and a Diet Dr. Pepper. The microwave clock read 2:30 p.m. He reached for a beer, then stopped. No. Not yet. When Heather got up, maybe. When he woke her.

  He popped the top of a soda and wandered around their living room. Photos of his parents, her parents, him, her, the two of them lined the walls and display cabinet shelves. Typical young-married-couple stuff. A photo of them on their honeymoon surrounded by something Heather had sewn that read, “Home Sweet Home” hung above their wall-mounted phone. Well, it used to be sweet.

  His kid kept screaming, so Bruce went into the bedroom to see if he could persuade the little guy to stop. Heather was dead to the world, snoring, splayed out on their comforter and partially covered in laundry. Clean? Dirty? Bruce couldn’t tell. He was jealous.

  Jacob’s little fists were balled up, eyes scrunched closed and toothless mouth open wide, his face crimson from effort. Maybe Bruce could give him a bottle. That was it, feed the little critter. His technique was improving, and now he felt more comfortable holding his son in his arms while offering him some expressed breast milk.

  Expressed breast milk. Three words Bruce didn’t ever expect to hear strung together in a sentence, let alone say.

  Bruce scooped Jacob up, careful to support his head, which he wasn’t even sure he had to do anymore, but, hey, for safety, why not? Heather hadn’t provided him with the daily update on proper baby handling procedure. With all that had gone on in the last week, he cut her some slack. The baby, the angel flight with its honest-to-goodness life-threatening events. Combined with the chronic lack of sleep, it was just too much for her.

  He held Jacob close. After only a few minutes, his touch seemed to lower the decibel level of Jacob’s crying, so Bruce figured he was on to something. He rocked the little guy back and forth, like something out of a cartoon. Back and forth. Back and forth. The tighter he held his child, the quieter he got.

  Bruce wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting on the edge of the bed with his baby when Heather grabbed him. She shouted, then began to shriek.

  Jesus. More noise.

  She yanked Jacob out of his arms.

  “What have you done? Call an ambulance. Call it right now.”

  “What?”

  She howled. “Bruce, what did you do? Call an ambulance!”

  Bruce froze. Again. “What? Why?”

  But Heather had pulled their son away and turned her back on him.

  He punched 9-1-1 into his mobile phone. “Baby, what’s the emergency?” he asked innocently.

  Heather made a sound that he’d never heard before, like a warrior ready to attack. She ran back and forth with Jacob in her arms, looking out the window, like she was waiting for something.

  “You could have killed him. You could have . . .” her voice caught, she choked once, and then sobbed, all the while stroking the almost hairless head of her newborn son, who again began to wail.

  Bruce cancelled the call.

  He’d gotten Jacob to finally stop crying, an almost magical feat.

  What was all the fuss about?

  Fifty-Four

  Tris’s small overnight bag felt like it was filled with rocks. She lugged it into her apartment one slow step at a time. Every few seconds she’d stop and breathe. Ea
ch eye blink, swallow, inhale and exhale sapped her small reserve of energy. She was running on fumes.

  When the door opened, there was Orion. The sight of the stout Tuxedo was the first thing that had made her smile in days. He rubbed his face against her shaky legs as she opened a can of food for him.

  Bron’s battered old sofa looked like a feather bed, and Tris didn’t even take her shoes off before she sank into it. The couch smelled faintly of black cherries. The familiar scent, which would have soothed her days before, now pitched her anxiety. Her brain whirred like and old movie projector with scenes, past and present.

  In a strange way, Mike and his ex-had gotten back together in her last moments, his blood and hers commingled on the interior surfaces of the Royal.

  Mike was alive. One of the two bullets had lodged in his spine and was removed during surgery. His parents flew in from Birmingham to be with him, along with a sister Tris hadn’t known about.

  Another secret.

  Tris was off work indefinitely. Neither Bangor police nor the NTSB had given Woody any idea when they would allow the Royal to be flown. Westin Charter’s new airplane was coming on line in a couple of weeks, but it had to pass proving runs with the FAA before Woody could sell trips on it. Her mind raced to who might fly those trips. Bruce was grounded. Probably Woody and Tris, then. Hopefully, she wouldn’t be pressed back into the cockpit too soon. The last place she wanted to be right now was on an airplane.

  Orion jumped up on the couch, flopped over on his side, licked one of his paws, and went to sleep. Seemed like a pretty good idea. Tris pushed each shoe off with the opposite foot, curled up in a deep corner of the old couch, and was out in seconds

  Her mobile phone woke her after only two hours. Not quite ready to get up, she pulled her phone from her pants pocket and flipped it open.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, Tris? Di. What the heck happened? I got your message, and I’m hearing about your flight on the news.” Diana sounded frantic.

  It was unusually quiet in the background. “Hey, Di. Where are you?”

  “The crash pad in Brussels. Please, fill me in.”

  Tris sluggishly sat up and rubbed her eyes.

  “Hello? Tris? Are we still connected?”

  Tris squeezed her eyes shut. “Yes. Right here. Sorry. My body is wiped. I swear I barely know where I am. I’m fine. But Di . . . everyone else . . . it was awful . . . surreal.”

  Diana responded as though she were thinking aloud. “Wow. People shooting each other on airplanes. Next thing you know, they’ll be shooting at us.” The idea of anyone trying to hurt a pilot in flight was so far-fetched even Tris had to chuckle.

  Diana was silent as Tris related the details of the last few days to her. “Imagine my utter shock when we arrived in Iqaluit, of all places, and found Mike’s ex-wife. The one he said he had a perfectly normal break-up with. The one he said was dead. Danny knew. He tried to warn me. If Woody had known—no way he’d have been hired. No way. And if I had known—”

  “Did you want to know?” Diana had a way of slicing through the layers of an issue and piercing its heart.

  “Yes. No. Damn, I don’t know. That guy, he was so . . . engaged. Sat there with me at a restaurant in Burbank and told me the whole saga of his marriage. And listened to my stories about Tetrix, about Bron.” She had to catch her breath before continuing. “Diana, I believed everything he told me. Everything his touch told me. Everything his lovemaking told me. I believed it all. And it was a lie. All of it.”

  “Are you sure, Tris? Are you sure what he felt for you was a lie?”

  Was it?

  “He wanted to move in together,” she said softly. “He asked me before we left on that trip. I was going to say yes. I made him keys, Di.”

  Tris’s pager beeped. All she saw were the numbers 9-1-1.

  She wiped the tears from her face with her pilot shirt. It stank.

  “Di, thanks for calling. I hate to do this, someone’s paging me with an emergency. I’ve gotta go. I’ll call you back.”

  Fifty-Five

  Every few minutes, Tris got up, walked around a bit, then sat back down. Her palms were warm from rubbing them on her thighs, just to feel something, anything, besides the lump in her throat.

  The coffee shop in a far corner of the mall, away from the steady stream of shoppers, was her favorite. Its worn leather club chairs looked so inviting, but Tris squirmed in the one she chose, and couldn’t get comfortable. Hearts in Atlantis sat unopened on the chair’s arm, its boarding pass bookmark peeking out the top.

  She couldn’t get Bruce out of her mind. Poor Bruce. Danny’s emergency call was to tell her about something that happened with the baby. It wasn’t clear what actually occurred. Maybe the baby stopped breathing, or Heather thought he had?

  Turned out Jacob was fine. But the shock of it, another catastrophe on top of everything else Bruce and Heather had been through was unimaginable. When would it stop?

  At least she’d had the chance to talk with Danny, someone who always understood her. She’d experienced the kind of terror no pilot she’d ever known had endured. But he was focused on Bruce and Heather. The couple were starting counseling together. He mentioned how hard it was for them to adjust to parenting. More than once during the call, Tris wondered if this was the kind of conversation Danny would best have with his wife. She’d listened, for Danny’s sake, but could barely process his concerns through her own internal clamor.

  She’d tried to reach Diana again, but her calls went to voice mail. Last night, she’d rifled through her address book, the small wire-bound volume with a picture of the sun on the cover that she’d bought in a souvenir shop in London, longing to see the name of someone she could talk to. Each entry had been painstakingly written in black pen—black pen only, for permanence, as though she were updating her logbook.

  Yet the permanence never extended beyond the ink on the page, not to the friendships, the connections themselves. Reading name after name, then silently moving on to the next, hoping that she’d maintained some meaningful relationship with someone, one that would offer her comfort, or simply a non-judgmental ear.

  Since she started flying, there was never enough time. “Sorry, I’ve got a trip,” became her signature RSVP to every invitation. She’d done this. She was alone, and she’d done it to herself.

  Tris tried to curl up in the chair and focus on her book one more time. Maybe she could force herself to relax. Yes. Right after one more check of her pager.

  There were five missed pages. Woody had been trying to reach her. Damn. Why had she put the pager on vibrate and let it fall deep into her purse?

  The book held her seat while she walked into the main mall to call Woody back.

  “Westin Charter. This is Phyll.” Phyll. Had anyone given her the low-down on what was happening?

  “Hey, Phyll. It’s Tris. Woody’s been paging me?”

  “Oh, quite.”

  “Been a helluva couple of weeks, eh?”

  Phyll said something Tris couldn’t make out, probably talking to someone else in the room.

  “Sorry, love. Did you say something?”

  “Can you give me some idea why Woody wants to talk to me?”

  Phyll hesitated. “I wish I could. But the new airplane’s coming on line next week. Lots of people in and out of here doing interviews.”

  “Pilots?” Tris tried to keep the alarm out of her voice.

  “Yes, I believe so.”

  Woody didn’t ask me to help with the interviews.

  “Let me talk to him please.”

  “Right. But, Tris, how are you?”

  Tris craved the moment she could give a real answer—freaked out, scared, exhausted. And, for reasons passing understanding, I miss Mike. But this was pro forma.

  “Thanks Phyll. I’m all right. I’m fine. Tired. But fine.”

  Phyll must have pressed hold, because the recorded voice proclaiming the virtues of Westin Charter—in a speech
Tris had memorized over the years—chirped away at her.

  “Tris?”

  “Woody. Hi.”

  “I’ll get right down to it. I don’t have a lotta time. So, I’m knee-deep in bullshit from, well, everyone . . . the FAA, NTSB, police in Bangor. You name it. And your buddies at Tetrix call me every day asking me this or that. I guess their guy, the woman’s husband, is raising a stink. Like we could have known anything.”

  Tris let Woody go on. He’d get to the point eventually.

  “I’ve gotta talk to you. In person. Just me and you. Where we go from here.”

  Not at all unexpected. Woody had pretty much left her alone since she was home. But this was aviation. She was the only captain available to take responsibility for whatever Woody needed to offload.

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow. Nine a.m. See you then.” He hung up.

  Tris barely cleared the screen on her mobile phone when it rang again. There was no caller ID displayed, which usually meant Diana was calling from Europe.

  “Di. Good. Thanks for calling me back. I just talked to Woody. He—”

  Diana interrupted. “Look, I know this is a really bad time. But I could use your help.”

  Tris wasn’t sure how much she could help anyone else right now. “Okay.”

  “Tris. I’m grounded,” Diana announced.

  “What? Why?”

  The noise in the background got louder. People laughing and what must have been a juke box playing a song in French.

  “Di, where are you?”

  “Toulouse. I’m off the schedule. They sent my FO back to the barn, but they kept me here. To ice me. Probably while they figure out how to can me.”

  “Why this time? What’s wrong with them?” Tris was flabbergasted.

  Diana gulped so loudly Tris could hear it. “They have a good reason this time.”

  “Because?”

  Diana breathed out noisily. “Because I struck my first officer. I hit him. When he didn’t respond quickly enough to my request for a checklist. I actually hit him.”