Turbulence

by Nance, John J. ;

  She heard him take a long, ragged breath at one point, his lips almost against her ear. “We have some time, Carol. I won’t be able to fly for a while.”

  She pulled back to look at him, her eyes glistening with guilt and sorrow. “I’m sorry, Garth. I’m so sorry …” Her hand went to her mouth, and he took it away gently and kissed her.

  “We have a lot to sort out, you and I,” he said. “And apologies are due from both us. But … I’ve already had a little counseling, so to speak, talking with the doctor through the pain of that bizarre, weird situation out there in the middle of the night and for weeks afterward. The man’s optimism is infectious, and that changes your point of view, you know?”

  She nodded, unconvinced.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “even though it was hideously frustrating not being able to call and tell you I was all right, it also gave me time to think, and I realized there’s probably a lot you’ve been trying to tell me for the last few years that I haven’t heard.”

  “Garth …” She tried to interrupt, but he raised a finger to quiet her.

  “No … just hear me out. Seldom are things what they seem. That 747, for instance, was a flying house of mirrors filled with passenger anger that we at Meridian had created ourselves, but every time I thought I’d figured out who was right and who was wrong and who was the enemy, it all changed. Same thing with Onitsa. And same thing with us. I love you, Carol. We’ve got a second chance to sort out what we want, and I think we should seize it, and start with taking the time to listen to each other. What do you think?”

  For the first time since he’d come in the door he felt her relax, her smile genuine and spontaneous this time, as the tears flowed and her lips found his in earnest.

  HEADQUARTERS BUILDING,

  MERIDIAN AIRLINES,

  CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

  SIX MONTHS LATER

  Phil Knight’s lawyer led the way to a small conference room and closed the door as Phil sat down and took off the dark glasses he’d hoped would obscure his identity. Fortunately, neither the media nor any angry Meridian employees had shown up to harass him, and for that he was grateful. After having been hounded for months and vilified in the newspapers and in the weekly news magazines, he could hardly believe they were leaving him alone.

  “You okay, Phil?” the lawyer for the Air Line Pilots Association asked.

  “Yeah,” Phil said flatly, unsure anymore what the phrase even meant. How could he ever be “okay” again? All he knew was how to be an airline pilot, and now that was gone. The union had made brave noises about reinstatement and scheduled the statutory hearing he was about to attend, which was the only method a fired union pilot could use under the Railway Labor Act to petition for reinstatement.

  But he knew it was useless. They were acting out of their contractual duty to defend him, but their hearts weren’t in it. Every decision he’d made had been adjudged wrong or stupid or worse, and most of the pilots agreed. Landing in Nigeria, leaving a copilot he thought was dead in order to save over three hundred people, all of it was colored by the collective decision that Phil Knight did not have the right stuff to be an airline captain, and thus the facts had been conveniently assembled to fit the conclusion.

  There was no participation in the field of blame for Meridian. They would battle the various lawsuits and public vilification by merely pointing to the professionally mummified head of Phil Knight and proclaim they had been hoodwinked themselves. If the system had failed in any way, they would say, it was only in failing to detect the fact that Phil Knight was a fraud who should have never been allowed in a commercial cockpit.

  The toll on his wife and kids had been fearsome, their faith in him shaken, their faith in the system lost. If they had a chance as a family now, it would be elsewhere, moving away to a more modest home while he tried to find aeronautical work flying for some midnight check carrier or, perhaps, an overseas airline. The two-hundred-thousand-dollar-per-year paychecks and the unlimited passes for his family and the pride of being a major airline captain were gone forever.

  “Phil, before they get started, maybe we should go over this again,” the ALPA lawyer prompted.

  He shook his head. “Nothing to go over. This is a waste of your time.”

  The trek into the hearing room was an agony. There was a cloth-covered table facing him, behind which sat the vice president of operations, the chief pilot, the chief of training, and several other senior captains. He might as well have been a Navy captain who’d lost his ship and was being brought before a panel of furious admirals. The principles were similar, the conclusion equally foregone.

  The give-and-take was predictable, the anger from those who would judge the appeal of his firing barely hidden behind a facade of pretended equanimity.

  “No, sir,” Phil answered at one point. “I do not believe my decisions were in error as a matter of regulations, but if they were … and I know no one wants to listen to this … I was a product of my training, or the lack of it. No one told me the things I was expected to just somehow know.”

  ALPA had brought in a clever slate of expert witnesses to back up the technical correctness of his emergency landings, given the incomplete state of the Meridian regulations on what to do and when to do it. Meridian had countered by fielding its own witnesses to contradict, indict, belittle, and neutralize every point in his favor, yet halfway through, Phil found himself indulging in a glimmer of hope that minds could be changed. His spotless record as a domestic captain was laid out in detail, including the testimony of a longtime friend and former copilot who had braved the disgust of the other pilots to speak for him.

  But the end of the favorable witnesses and the ameliorating statements came too soon, and he could see the faces of his judges beginning to harden again, a realization that obscured the sound of the door opening behind him.

  “Excuse me, am I too late?” a male voice asked from behind. The tones were vaguely familiar, but Phil didn’t turn.

  “Who are you?” the hearing examiner asked, obviously taken aback.

  The man moved to the forward table and began handing out papers to the various members of the panel, then turned to hand copies to the company’s lawyers before stopping to nod to Phil Knight, who finally looked up. Phil felt his heart sink even farther as the man smiled and turned to the hearing examiner, his left arm still in a sling.

  “I’m Dr. Brian Logan,” he said as the door behind them opened once again. “And I’m here with one of your people, Meridian First Officer Garth Abbott, who just came in.”

  The examiner sighed and nodded and gestured to the witness chair. “We did have you on the witness list, Dr. Logan, along with Mr. Abbott, but we were about to give up on you both.”

  “I apologize on behalf of both of us,” Logan said. “Mr. Abbott was waiting for me, and my flight from Boston was late.”

  Brian held an index finger in the air to keep the floor.

  “Before we get started, I want this hearing board to know precisely why I’m here. You all know that I’m suing your airline for millions because one of your crews denied my wife and son medical help on one of your flights. You also know that I’ve been personally vindicated of the charges that your airline worked hard to bring that I’d murdered Garth Abbott, who’s now standing behind me here very much alive. So you know there’s been a lot of bad blood between us, and you also know … because I said it publicly in the press … that I wanted Phil Knight fired, and that was the one thing you did rather promptly. Well, Garth Abbott and I are here to make damn sure the blame for all the stupidity that happened aboard Flight Six falls where it’s due. But I’m going to shock you, because that doesn’t mean I’m here to place blame. I’m here to share the blame with the captain, with all the furious passengers, and with you, as the leaders of a very flawed, very culpable system that failed utterly to prepare this man for his job as an international pilot.”

  He paused, letting the words sink in.

  “In oth
er words, gentlemen, we’re here to support Captain Knight’s appeal for reinstatement.”

  “When do they announce their decision?” Brian Logan asked as he reached in to shake Garth Abbott’s hand through the open passenger window of his wife’s van.

  “Two weeks to a month. I’ll call you when I know.”

  The van moved off with a parting wave from Garth, and a late-model sedan pulled up in its place, the driver reaching over to open the passenger door for him. He climbed in and turned to the elegantly dressed woman behind the wheel.

  “I appreciate your coordinating all this, Janie,” he said. “Picking me up at the airport and waiting and everything. That’s above and beyond.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “I also want to thank you for calling me in the first place and suggesting this.”

  “So how’d it go in there?” she asked as she steered the car toward the nearby freeway entrance to head for O’Hare.

  Brian had almost finished his narration of what had transpired as they pulled up to the American Airlines terminal and she put the car in park.

  “If your flight’s on time, you’ve got forty minutes.”

  He was hesitating, his hand on the door release, his eyes on the driver.

  “You ever come to Boston?”

  She smiled, a radiant, lovely smile that warmed him in ways he hadn’t felt since losing Daphne.

  “I love Boston, but I seldom get an invitation.”

  He could feel his smile spreading involuntarily.

  “Would you like one?”

  “Depends on who issues it,” she said, cocking her head and sending a cascade of dark, wavy hair into motion.

  He took his right hand off the door and reached across to gently take her right hand from the wheel and squeeze it.

  “Would you consider coming to Boston sometime soon and let me show you the town?”

  “I would consider it, yes,” she said, squeezing back before removing her hand from his and replacing it on the steering wheel. “Just give me a call, if you’re so inclined.”

  Brian Logan nodded. “Okay, I will.”

  “Did you put them to rest?”

  “Sorry?”

  “The ashes of your wife and child. You had them with you in that briefcase on the flight.”

  Brian’s jaw dropped slightly as he looked at her. “How did you know?” he asked at last.

  She smiled back. “I figured it out.”

  He nodded then. “Yes. Daphne loved the ocean. I rented a boat.”

  “That’s best.”

  “Thank you again,” he said, opening the door somewhat awkwardly as an irritating recorded voice from a set of speakers along the drive intoned dire consequences for anyone lingering in the unloading zone.

  “You did the right thing today, Brian,” Janie said through the open door.

  He nodded and lifted himself out, closing the door before leaning back in the open window.

  “I don’t know if what I said in there today will help Phil Knight, but I can tell you it’s already helped me. And I have you to thank, Janie.”

  She smiled at him as he pushed away from the window with his good arm and waved before moving rapidly into the crowd.

  Janie Bretsen watched him go, letting her eyes linger on the automatic doors of the terminal that had swallowed him. Taking a deep breath, she shifted her gaze to the traffic ahead, her smile broadening as she put the car in gear.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Every novel I write leads me on a wild and unpredictable journey of research, and Turbulence was no exception. Problem is, there are always too many good folks to thank for help along the way, and some of those must remain nameless because of perceived worries about discussing their job with a writer, however much an integral part of professional aviation he might be. Therefore, I want to express “in the blind” my great appreciation to those guys and gals in both the hard-working ranks of the air traffic control world, and the operational side of the airline industry, who helped so much with a very difficult and squeamish subject: the precipitous deterioration of airline service and the correspondingly dangerous increase in passenger air rage.

  But this page is about thanks.

  As always, the evolution of this story began with editorial and developmental assistance from my wife, Bunny Nance.

  In New York, special appreciation to friends at Putnam and Berkley, David Highfill, Leslie Gelbman, and Phyllis Grann, for being wonderful and steadfast partners.

  My eternal thanks, as well, to my longtime agent and friend Olga Wieser of the Wieser and Wieser Literary Agency in New York.

  Here in the Pacific Northwest, the woman who shouldered the demanding task of line-editing, polishing, and shaping this work deserves special mention and thanks. Patricia Davenport, who wields a master’s in English with the rectitude and authority of the best of senior grammarians, also happens to be my business partner, president of my professional speaking division, and my world-class in-house editor.

  My great appreciation as well to our world-class staff, Operations Administrator Gloria Liu, Executive Assistant Lori Carr, and Administrative Assistant Sherrie Torgerson, all of whom keep us on track in the face of continuous challenges.

  And thanks to Theo Onuoru in Little Rock, Arkansas, and Tom Nomakoh in Oakbrook, Illinois, for assistance with Gen. Onitsa’s background.

  And most of all, my thanks to you, my reader, for your humbling loyalty and enthusiasm, even when I keep you up all night.

  As the song says, I do it for you!

  JOHN J. NANCE

  University Place,

  Washington

  (www.johnjnance.com)

  About the Author

  John J. Nance is the author of thirteen novels whose suspenseful storylines and authentic aviation details have led Publishers Weekly to call him the “king of the modern-day aviation thriller.” Two of his novels, Pandora’s Clock and Medusa’s Child, were made into television miniseries. He is well known to television viewers as the aviation analyst for ABC News. As a decorated air force pilot who served in Vietnam and Operation Desert Storm and a veteran commercial airline pilot, he has logged over fourteen thousand hours of flight time and piloted a wide variety of jet, turboprop, and private aircraft. Nance is also a licensed attorney and the author of seven nonfiction books, including On Shaky Ground: America’s Earthquake Alert and Why Hospitals Should Fly, which, in 2009, won the American College of Healthcare Executives James A. Hamilton Award for book of the year. Visit him online at www.johnnanceassociates.com

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2002 by John J. Nance

  Cover design by Andy Ross

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-2798-4

  This edition published in 2016 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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