Turbulence

by Nance, John J. ;

  Folks, this is Brian Logan, one of your fellow passengers. There’s something you need to know.

  The lead flight attendant had been fluffing pillows and doing what appeared to be busywork at the front end of the first-class cabin, all the while carefully avoiding McNaughton’s eyes. She turned suddenly at the sound of Dr. Logan’s voice on the PA, her eyes darting in all directions as she broke into a run toward the coach cabin.

  In first-class window seat 3-A on the opposite side of the cabin, Janie Bretsen came bolt upright.

  The crew has been lying to us for hours. The nonsense about the Queen was a lie, there’s been no bad weather anywhere close …

  Judy Jackson came flying past Robert MacNaughton’s seat and shot through the curtains. He could hear her footsteps receding into the next cabin and hear her shouting as Dr. Logan continued on the PA.

  … the airport isn’t traffic-jammed, and all along they’ve been trying to hide the fact that …

  The sound of something striking the PA handset was followed by the unmistakable noise of its falling to the floor as heated shouts filtered through in the background. Janie was off duty, but now she came to her feet and moved aft. Over the speakers she heard a sudden grunt and an audible scuffle, as Logan tried to wrest the handset from whoever had taken it.

  … you … WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW … is … LET GO!.… they had a problem with the … engine … AND THEY DIDN’T WANT TO TELL US! ARE YOU GOING TO PUT UP WITH THIS?

  Once more the handset was yanked from. Brian’s control and Judy Jackson’s voice came over the speakers, out of breath but determined.

  Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for that outburst. One of our passengers seems to be having emotional problems.

  The outboard engine on the right side was running now, and two more cabin chimes rang out as the 747 began taxiing, the gentle motion swaying the plane to the right.

  MacNaughton looked over his shoulder and strained to see something through the privacy curtain, but decided not to interfere. He’d been somewhat unsure of the physician’s stability. Perhaps this wasn’t the time to get involved.

  Angry voices and the sounds of a mild struggle were working their way forward until Brian Logan burst backward through the curtains, herded by a phalanx of flight attendants led by a furious Judy Jackson.

  “SIR! If you don’t get your butt in that seat and strap in, I’ll have the captain return to the gate and have you removed in handcuffs!”

  “Go ahead, damn you,” he was saying, his voice low and threatening. “I’m already suing this lousy company for murdering my wife and unborn son. I’ll just add another twenty or thirty million to the claim.” He turned around to take his seat.

  “Do what you like when you’re off my aircraft, but if you don’t …”

  Brian Logan whirled back around, an index finger pointed in Judy Jackson’s face. “Don’t you dare presume to order me around,” Logan growled.

  “SIR! SIT … DOWN … OR WE’RE GOING BACK!” Jackson turned to one of the other flight attendants and pointed toward the cockpit. “Get up there, grab the interphone, and stand by to inform the cockpit about this. Watch for my signal.”

  The younger woman moved aft immediately, using the parallel aisle-way to avoid coming within Brian’s reach.

  The doctor stood for a second, surveying the forces arrayed against him. Five of the crew had appeared to back up their leader, including, apparently, the off-duty flight attendant, and all of them were staring at Logan.

  Brian glanced at Robert MacNaughton, who shook his head ever so slightly and motioned palm down for Logan to sit. Slowly the physician gave in and eased himself all the way into the chair.

  Judy Jackson’s eyes flamed with anger, but caution sparked by the volatility of the man held her back.

  “I don’t want to see you out of that seat again, sir,” she said.

  “It’s Doctor Logan, and I’ll damn well do as I please.”

  “I don’t care what your title is. If you touch any crew equipment, or crew member, or interfere or ignore our orders again, you’re going to be arrested and removed, charged, tried, convicted, and imprisoned. Keep in mind we carry armed sky marshals, and if they decide to jump on you, you’ll spend the next ten years in jail if you survive … probably in the U.K., where they have no tolerance for infantile misbehavior. Understand?”

  “Are you through?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  He leveled his index finger at her again, his voice low and threatening. “Woman, you lie to us again about anything else, and you’re going to have me backed by three hundred angry passengers.”

  “Don’t you threaten me, either,” she said, swallowing hard enough to betray her nervousness and moving quickly aft through the curtains, well aware there were no armed officers flying on Meridian’s international flights.

  Janie Bretsen had been standing near her first-class seat watching the exchange. When Judy Jackson turned to leave, Janie followed hot on her heels, cornering her in the business-class galley.

  “What on earth was that all about, Judy?” she asked, gesturing back over her shoulder.

  “What do you mean?” Judy said without turning.

  “Well, I mean is it a full moon or something? We had a load of furious people on the Chicago-to-London leg, too. What set the doctor off?”

  Judy turned suddenly, looking Janie up and down and frowning at her appearance. “We look a little less than stellar this afternoon, don’t we, Miss Bretsen, ma’am? You sure you’re in compliance with what the manager of in-flight services would approve?”

  “What are you talking about?” Janie responded.

  Judy snorted and gestured to her. “Never mind. I guess former management is entitled to look haggish.”

  “Hag … what?”

  “What do you want, Janie? I’m busy.”

  “I can see. I … saw that whole exchange and wondered if you’d like me to help in any way?”

  “What, we can’t handle it without the services of a supervising flight attendant?”

  “Judy, cut it out! That suspension is ancient history, and you deserved what you got. You’re being childish.”

  Judy moved a step closer, poking a finger at Janie’s chest. “Bretsen, let’s get this straight. I’m in charge of this cabin and this crew. You are no longer in a position of authority in this company, even though we all know you’re a company stooge. They threw you on here to pretend to be legal and to spy.”

  “What? You know better than that. But now that you mention it, if you don’t have a legal crew, why are we going?”

  “With your carcass aboard we’re technically legal, as you know. But you are not one of my girls and I do not need your help, and I wouldn’t take it if I did need it. Go hibernate and stay out of my way.”

  “Never change, do you Judy? Same old snitty, combative attitude, and the same utter lack of customer skills.”

  “Sit down, Bretsen! Or do I have to have you arrested, too?”

  Janie sighed and pointed upward as the two-chime pre-takeoff warning sounded in the cabin. “Are you going to inform the captain about what happened, or should I?”

  “No one talks to my cockpit but me. Capiche?”

  “They need to know, Judy.”

  “Get the hell out of here!” Judy snapped, pointing forward. Janie retreated through the curtains, reaching her seat just as the engines came up to full power and the heavily loaded 747 began its takeoff roll.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  IN FLIGHT,

  ABOARD MERIDIAN FLIGHT SIX

  11:54 A.M. Local

  Phil Knight engaged the Boeing 747’s autopilot as they climbed through eight thousand feet and London Center turned them to the south. He watched now as the sophisticated auto-flight system gently leveled the big jet at thirty-seven-thousand feet and the auto-throttle system adjusted the engine thrust to cruise power with an equally gentle touch.

  The captain glanced to the right, verifying that t
he copilot still had the laminated checklist in his lap. In the hours since their sharp exchange at Heathrow, the only communication had been required call-outs. Phil Knight knew he’d overreacted. That had been the wrong place and time to confront the copilot’s snobbery, but he hadn’t figured out how to repair the damage. The copilot might have been asking for it, but Phil was supposed to be the leader, and he knew he should have been more careful. His explosion had just made things worse.

  “Cruise check,” Phil said.

  Garth Abbott looked up and nodded. “Roger. Altimeter?”

  “Two-nine-nine-two.”

  “Pressurization?”

  “Set. Cabin’s at seven thousand.”

  They ran through the remainder of the challenge-and-response checklist without additional comment.

  “Cruise check complete.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You bet,” Garth replied, hesitating a moment and wondering what that meant. Knight never thanked a copilot for anything. Must’ve been a slip, he thought.

  Brenda Roberts had been fairly bouncing up and down in the window seat on takeoff. Now she turned to her husband with wide-eyed excitement and grabbed his collar to pull him closer.

  “Jimmy! You’ve got to see this! Wow!”

  “What, darlin’?”

  “The Parliament building, and … and Big Ben … and that’s got to be the Thames River. Remember I showed you that picture?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, baby, there it is in person!”

  Jimmy released his seat belt and leaned on her knees to peer out the window, wondering if one of the crew was going to come swooping down on him for not having his seat belt fastened.

  It didn’t matter, he decided, if they embarrassed him. He loved seeing Brenda so excited.

  “Boy, howdy, darlin’, that is the real thing, isn’t it?”

  She nodded, her head bobbing up and down too fast for her cascade of hair to follow, leaving her with a wild and windblown look that always made him lustful.

  But there was nowhere to take her to carry out such a mission just now, so he suppressed his body’s suggestion, his eyes following her finger as she pointed to something new.

  “Is that Stonehenge, Jimmy?” She turned to him all bright eyed and smiles, and he beamed back, trying to see what she’d spotted.

  “Can’t tell. It’s somewhere in south England, I think.”

  Her nose was back at the glass. “It looks like the pictures, but it’s awfully small.”

  “Someday, we’ll just have to take a trip over here and stay for a while.”

  She turned again, positively aglow, and threw her arms around his neck, almost hugging the breath out of him.

  “I love you so much, Jimmy Ray!” she said, pulling away just as suddenly to look him in the eye. “Thank you for making my dreams come true!”

  “Now, you won the contest, darlin’.”

  “But you, you big Texas lug, were the good ole boy what said, ‘Hell, yes, let’s go!” She kissed him deeply, leaving him slightly flustered and embarrassed, even after all their years together. Then she turned to the window again and squealed.

  “DOVER! Jimmy, that’s got to be Dover!”

  Garth Abbott watched England fall away from the 747 and let his mind drift home. Flying with Phil Knight was difficult enough, but it paled in comparison now with the anxiety Garth was feeling about his wife. He’d hoped the routine of takeoff and climb and cruise would help shove the burning doubts to some smaller, containable section of his mind. But it hadn’t worked, and now he just wanted to be alone somewhere, anywhere, for a few minutes.

  “I’m … thinking about going back to get some coffee and stretch, Phil. Do you mind?”

  Phil Knight glanced to the right, expressionless. “No. Go ahead.”

  “When I come back, you want anything to drink?”

  He shook his head no as he looked down to inspect the security screen, verifying no one was in the small hallway behind the cockpit. He punched through the various cameras showing each cabin of the multilevel airliner before returning to the first scene.

  “Everything seems calm down there, and the hall is clear. You can leave.”

  Garth released his seat belt and got up, grabbing his hat before disappearing out the heavily reinforced cockpit door and carefully re-securing it just as Paris Control ordered a frequency change.

  “Roger, Paris,” Knight said. “One-twenty-four-point-five.”

  “No, Meridian, that was one-two-four-point-zero-five. Readback?”

  “Okay, one-two-four-point-zero-five.”

  “Oui. Bonjour.”

  “Good day,” Phil replied, dialing in the new frequency. He made the check-in call to the controller and sat back, feeling his stomach knot up again as he thought about the terrible accents he’d have to decipher ahead. It just wasn’t fair. English was supposed to be the international language of aviation, and he’d depended on that fact when he decided to bid for the international division. He’d never taken a foreign language in school. He had no ear for them. But why hadn’t he been warned that the version of English half the controllers in Europe and Africa spoke was essentially gobbledygook? Why didn’t Meridian teach their pilots that fact?

  The copilot, of course, had no trouble at all, which was galling. Phil could feel himself flushing slightly at the memory of having to admit on the first trip that he couldn’t make out what they were saying. Abbott had pretended to be gracious, helping with the translations and taking over the calls himself, but Phil was sure that the copilot was counting the hours until he could spread the news of Phil’s incompetence around Meridian’s international division.

  Phil glanced around toward the cockpit door, glad to see it still closed. He wished he could order the copilot to go take a seat in first class and not come back for hours, but the rules were clear: a pilot on a two-person crew could only be out of the cockpit for physiological reasons, and now there were a host of additional rules and procedures to make sure no one but the flight crew ever gained access to the cockpit, rules which made entering and leaving a necessary pain. He’d have to put up with the copilot’s presence, though the trip would be a lot more enjoyable without Abbott and his withering disdain now made worse since they’d openly clashed.

  “You don’t deserve to be a captain” that smug look of Abbott’s always seemed to be saying. “You don’t know what you’re doing out here.”

  Phil looked down at his flight bag and pulled out the wallet he always carried, flipping it open now to the pictures of his family. His wife, Doris, and their three sons stood smiling on the beach in the Bahamas where he’d taken them on vacation. A celebration, really. He’d just received the captain’s bid to the 747 and the international division, and that had been grounds for celebration. Fifty thousand dollars more a year, although Uncle took thirty percent of it. But at last he was at the top of his profession. All his career he’d wanted to break out of domestic flying and see some of the world and call himself a senior 747 international captain. But until then, twenty-five years as a Meridian pilot had mainly consisted of driving Boeing 727s and later 737s around the Midwest to all the familiar airports. He’d made captain ten years back with moderate effort. He was already intimately familiar with domestic flying, the controllers all spoke English, he never flew into an airport he didn’t know backward and forward, and his copilots were always respectful.

  So why in the world did I leave? he asked himself.

  Phil looked out the left window at a collection of towering cumulus in the distance to the east, wondering whether he could see the Swiss Alps. He reached down and fumbled for a map of Europe and extracted it from the case, unfolding it on his lap. He knew very little about European geography, but he had tried to memorize where the different countries were.

  No, we’re too far north for that to be Switzerland. It’s Germany, I guess.

  He imagined he could already see the spine of the Swiss Alps in the distance, but he
’d have to cross-check the instruments to know for sure.

  Another small wave of envy rippled across his mind, and he tried to suppress it. Abbott would know every feature out there, and loved to point them out. The copilots on the international runs were walking travelogues. They looked down their noses at anyone who had less experience, and they hated veteran domestic captains who suddenly bid the international runs to make more money. Phil felt that smoldering disdain on a daily basis.

  His mind snapped back to the exchange at Heathrow, and he winced at losing control. Of course, Abbott deserved it, and maybe it had been the right time to clear the air, let the younger man know that the captain was fed up with his attitude.

  No, I should have kept quiet, he thought, his mind nevertheless ringing with a litany of Abbott’s advice over the previous weeks:

  “Excuse me, Phil, but down here they normally have you turn right.”

  “Phil, sorry to interrupt, but in my experience …”

  “Hey, Phil, I think it’s this airport over here.”

  Teamwork, indeed. Every flight felt like a final exam that he’d flunked just by showing up.

  The seat next to Brian Logan was empty, and Janie had reached the end of her endurance of solitude. The two-chime warning that they’d climbed above ten thousand feet was minutes behind them but the seat-belt light was still illuminated, yet Janie could stand it no longer. She had always met frustration and anger with motion. Pacing, walking, running, traveling—anything but sitting and stewing over Judy’s insulting behavior exacerbated by her fatigue. She quietly maneuvered herself out of the seat and into the aisle, straightening her skirt and tucking in her blouse before sliding into 3-C next to the physician, who looked over, somewhat startled.

  “Hi,” she said, smiling at him and meeting his gaze. She could see his features soften a bit as she held her right hand out somewhat awkwardly over the armrest.

  “I’m Janie Bretsen.”

  His right hand enfolded hers, tentatively at first, then with slightly greater pressure and she could feel a smoothness, neither soft nor callused—a powerful hand, nonetheless capable of great precision.