16 SOULS

by John J. Nance

  “Can you wait?”

  “We’ve...yes, I guess so,” one of them said. “but everyone back there is using a cell phone.

  “Let them. Can’t harm a thing, regardless of the propaganda they teach!” Marty said as a cockpit chime announced an inbound satellite call from Chicago operations.

  In the coach passenger cabin of Regal 12 cellular phones had broken out like a rash in almost every row, some passengers powering them on with success and locking up a signal, and others looking with frustration only at red “no service” warnings. Text messages were streaming from the aircraft like contrails as wives and husbands and lovers and passengers of all ages rushed to reassure parents and loved ones below that they were going to be okay.

  Twenty feet away in the unheated, freezing interior of Mountaineer 2612, the same attempt was already underway by three of the passengers as the copilot returned to the cockpit.

  “We may have lost one...a man toward the back...I couldn’t get a response and his head is at a strange angle. Three others are still unconscious but look okay, and people are...are...”

  “Asking questions?”

  He was nodding. “I told them to get on any coats they had and just wait, that we’re trying to figure it out.”

  “Good.”

  “Dear God, Captain, what are we going to do?”

  Michelle shook her head, the hollow in the pit of her stomach a black hole. They were all freezing to death with no way to get inside the bigger aircraft, and barely attached somehow to the bigger wing, completely unable to communicate.

  “Luke, did you see my cell phone? I remember now I was talking to the controller on it.”

  He shook his head, his shoulders hunched against the cold soaking the thin white shirt he was wearing. She’d kept her black flight jacket on but he was struggling to pull his on now as he glanced at her feet, and remembered his pocket flashlight. It was already a painful maneuver to lean forward in the mess of the cockpit and try to look at the floor, but the cold made it far worse, and she could see his torso shaking slightly, the leather jacket laid on his seat.

  “Luke, get your jacket on first.”

  “It’s okay...I’m already down here.” He pushed his body forward, along her left leg, trying to get his head under the dash panel.

  “See it?”

  “No. I’m sorry.”

  “Damn.”

  “I have a cell phone. Want that one?”

  “Yes. But get your jacket on.”

  He complied finally, zipping it up against the deepening chill. It was already well below freezing in the fuselage, the battering, frozen wind sucking out all remaining heat with every passing second.

  Luke fished out his cell phone and handed it to Michelle, who punched it on and once again dialed 911.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Seven Months before – January 21st

  Denver TRACON (Terminal Radar Control Facility)

  A highly focused group of controllers and supervisors had closed ranks around Sandy Sanchez, one of them quietly asking whether he wanted to be relieved. After all, the supervisor thought to himself as the controller looked around at him with an uncomprehending stare, Sanchez had been the controller working both flights when the accident occurred. Most of his mind, he figured, was probably preoccupied with whether or not he’d screwed something up and caused the collision.

  That’s sure as hell how I’d feel! the supervisor thought.

  “No!” Sandy replied, turning back to the screen as if interrupted by an idiot. “I’m fine.”

  “I just thought you might be worried about...”

  “I said I’m fine! Okay? I didn’t make any mistakes here today,” Sandy fired back, noting the odd look on the supervisor’s face. He was a man who normally triggered deference if not respect wherever he went in Denver Air Traffic Control, but the discipline required to withhold the question “Are you sure?” was almost more than he could manage. The book said replace him, but he decided backing off was the best move.

  Two of the assisting controllers were on various phones at the same time: a tie-line to the tower, one to airport operations, and another to Denver Center. Sandy Sanchez was still talking to Regal 12 by radio and vectoring him carefully around to the northeast, setting up a slow turn to the south and then to the west for landing on Runway 25 as fast as possible. Departures had been suspended during the emergency.

  Jerry LaBlanc had been standing to one side, holding open the line to Denver International’s operational control center as the group there directed the losing battle against the worsening blizzard. He lowered the receiver now, holding the mouthpiece against his leg as he looked for an opportunity to get the others’ attention.

  “Guys...” he began, realizing it would take more. One by one he reached for the shoulders of those around the seated primary controller, Sandy Sanchez, and they all paused their conversations, one of them tapping Sandy on the shoulder as well.

  “What, Jerry?”

  “The winds have shifted, 20 knots now from the east and we’re going to have to change to Runway Zero-Seven. But...they’re not going to plow anymore between Bravo Four and Golf intersection. They’ve got nine thousand feet of plowed surface left.”

  Sandy whirled back to his scope. “Shit!” he said, studying the scope for the best way to reverse course and maneuver Regal 12 back to the west toward the mountains, giving him a wide enough berth to make a shallow turn in for landing on a truncated Runway 7.

  Another ten or fifteen minutes in the air!

  He relayed the news to Regal 12, not expecting the response.

  “No problem, Approach. I was going to need more time anyway. I...have to figure out how to land this thing. I can’t slow her down.”

  “Ah...roger, Twelve. Do you want vectors for the new runway or...do you need to hold? State your intentions.”

  “To get everyone home alive, Approach. Just stand by, please.” There was an edge to the pilot’s voice, as if he was reaching his pressure saturation point. “I’m working with our company on another phone.”

  “Roger, Twelve. Maintain zero...no, turn right when able to one five zero degrees and descend to eight thousand.”

  “Right turn to one five zero and eight thousand, roger.”

  The blip that represented the combined radar hits and transponder from Regal 12 began to shift its trajectory to the south as directed while the speed block remained constant, and Sandy watched with growing internal alarm. He was only a private pilot but he understood that in the thin air of a mile above sea level, which was Denver, airplanes flew faster over the ground for any given indicated airspeed than at lower altitudes. Damage or no damage, they couldn’t keep shoving that 757 along at just under three hundred miles per hour and expect to land anywhere. Let alone a 9,000 foot slippery runway.

  “What’s he doing?” Jerry LaBlanc asked quietly, his face next to Sandy’s as another controller picked up the telephone handset and punched on an incoming call.

  “I don’t know, man, but he says he can’t slow down yet.” Sandy looked up, momentarily hopeful. “What’s the ground roll distance on a 757 landing at two hundred fifty on a contaminated runway?”

  Jerry was shaking his head. “Not possible. You’d need the dry lake bed at Edwards in California, and even then, your tires would probably explode.”

  The third controller broke in, his eyes wide.

  “Guys! I’ve got Mountaineer on the phone again!”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Present Day – August 14th, 7:05pm

  Summit of Longs Peak

  Like a moviegoer struggling to reconnect to reality moments after a gripping film has ended, Marty Mitchell looked up and around, blinking, momentarily confused at the lengthening shadows on the mountaintop around him, and the
incredible contrast to a 757 cockpit.

  He was aware of being slightly cold, but that reality was fighting the high definition memory of his first hour with Judith Winston months before, that moment when he’d told the story of Regal 12 in such stomach-churning detail. With the National Transportation Safety Board investigators, it had been clinical and technical. With her, it had been emotional, and to a far greater extent than he’d planned.

  Marty’s physical presence on the mountaintop and what he’d come here to do were mere footnotes to the intensity of that memory. It had been incredibly important to make her understand – to make her see – and he felt the burning intensity of that desperate need again as his sight returned inward.

  She had tried to keep her composure, Marty recalled, but clearly the flint-hard lawyer had been shaken by his words. He could tell by the way she had shifted uncomfortably in her plush boardroom chair, her hand tugging absently at a tendril of hair as she asked with feigned detachment, “So, what were your options?”

  “I wasn’t sure at first. I was in denial, y’know? The jet was still flying…and both engines were running…but I had this…this thing on my right wing and there was no precedent, no training for what to do about that. My jet, the 757, was sluggish and yawing to the right...I could essentially feel the presence of that fuselage in my controls.”

  “Did the airline help? You called them for help, right?”

  “They were trying, but they’re only set up for routine emergencies, and this was anything but routine. And to make matters worse, the captain of the aircraft we rammed pulls out a cell phone to talk to the controllers, and then…then, goddammit, she calls me!”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Judith Winston had asked.

  He’d paused, grasping for the words.

  “How can I make you understand? One moment it’s a thing out there, a problem I can deal with almost in the abstract, even if my mistake created that problem. I can deal with numbers and abstracts and emergencies. But then her damned voice was in my ear.”

  “Pardon?”

  “The other pilot. The controller asked for my cell phone. He should have asked me if it was okay to pass it on, but he didn’t, and suddenly it rings with a frightened woman on the other end, a fellow pilot stranded on my right wing with fifteen others. Suddenly her life is a personal albatross around my neck. She’s totally dependent on what I do, what I decide, and worse, I got her into this by ramming her! I didn’t need that level of pressure! It was hard to even think, the magnitude and gravity of all of it was so profound already. But the moment that happened...the moment a live person invaded my command space…it made it personal and unbearable.”

  “But…why? I’m struggling to grasp why it made a difference?”

  “Because, dammit, that could have been me out there, terrified and barely hanging on and totally out of control! I couldn’t keep from being an empath! I felt her terror, and I caused it.”

  “So, you’re saying that affected your ability to make the right decision?”

  Marty had met the lawyer’s eyes, uncaring that his were probably glistening with tears as he shook with anger.

  “There was no right decision. That’s the goddamned point! But even if there had been, who am I to decide, y’know? Who am I to decide who lives and dies? Those people on my wing, they have names and families and...and suddenly it wasn’t just a number. It wasn’t just souls on board anymore. And I couldn’t un-ring that bell.”

  He had let himself submerge back into the narrative of that horror.

  “Okay, where was I?”

  “You were talking to your company and trying to figure out how to land,” she offered.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Seven Months before – January 21st

  Regal 12

  “Standby, Ops,” Marty barked into the satellite handset. “Just...please standby a second.”

  Somehow he was going to have to slow the pace down. Everything was cascading, and he didn’t need raw instinct to know that was how pilots made fatal decisions – including the one that had probably started this whole nightmare.

  Once more he felt his stomach contracting to the size of a singularity at the thought that they’d climbed to wrong altitude and were the ones at fault, but he had to shove that aside.

  Marty turned to the copilot, who was deep in concentration holding onto the controls in the right seat.

  “Ryan, can you hang on a bit longer?”

  “I’ve got her, Skipper. But the controller wants your cell phone number.”

  For some reason, the request hit him like a stomach punch, the same effect as a control tower asking a pilot to call them after a potential violation.

  Marty nodded and toggled the transmit button, passing his phone number to the controller, then punching up the PA.

  Folks, this is the captain again. Your two pilots are working hard, but if there are any other airline pilots aboard, or anyone with big jet experience, we could use some extra eyes up here. Just ring your call button.

  There was no time to explain it to the flight attendants, but they were savvy enough to figure it out anyway. Marty punched off the PA, surprised that he didn’t hear a single call chime from the cabin. Most airline flights were awash in off duty pilots, but then again, who’d be voluntarily non-revving on a night like this?

  Okay, think! We have to work out the sequence for flap extension, and I need to know if the speed brakes are useable.

  The satellite phone was still in his lap and Marty pulled it back to his face.

  “Sorry! There a lot of moving parts up here. Where were we?”

  “You tell us, Captain,” someone in the ops center replied. “We’ve got about ten of us on the line here to help you as well as our maintenance and performance people and a Boeing engineer.”

  Marty was rubbing his eyes and nodding, before recalling that they couldn’t see the gesture.

  “All right, my main problem is keeping that Beech fuselage on the wing. If we dislodge them, if they fall away, they die. There’s no question about that. Worse, I have no way of knowing how secure they are on our right wing. I mean it looks like the strut of the right main landing gear is literally embedded in our right wing. Maybe it’s so well stuck that I couldn’t blow them off if I tried, but I’m very worried that any increase in our angle of attack, even if accompanied by a significant decrease in airspeed, could lift them off. And it could happen too fast to stop, which means I really can’t experiment beyond a certain point. Everyone there understanding all this?”

  “We’re hearing you, Captain,” someone answered.

  “Okay...I’m astounded that we haven’t lost a hydraulic system, but so far so good. My biggest worry is whether we can milk down the flaps, extend them very, very cautiously, while slowing, and keep the same angle into the wind. The more flaps I can get down, the lower my pitch angle has to be for any given speed. That’s why I need to know what the performance figures say about maintaining the same angle of attack at slower airspeeds with the flaps out at different settings. My pitch angle right now is almost zero.”

  There was a very loud silence on the other end for what seemed like minutes before one of the engineers responded.”

  “Captain, there are really no easily accessible figures for that in our manuals. Boeing? Do you guys have anything to help?”

  “Yeah, well…aside from telling you this sort of situation can’t happen and that you can’t do what you’re doing and stay airborne with wreckage on your wing, all I can tell you is that we’re in no man’s land. We can dig up test figures and parameters and all that but…zero pitch, did you say, Captain?”

  “Yes.”

  “See, I couldn’t even predict that with the graphs and charts I have.”

  A quick discussion ensued on the other end
culminating in the completely useless information that no one really knew what to do.

  Obviously, Marty thought, they were struggling to help, but appreciation was overshadowed by a long-ago disaster over Iowa when a United Airlines DC-10 had lost all hydraulics to an engine explosion. The crew of United 232 desperately needed help from their operations experts, but there was simply no data for a total hydraulic failure and now he knew exactly how Captain Al Haynes had felt.

  “Really, gentlemen?” Marty said, trying unsuccessfully to keep the frustration out of his voice. “Come on. I need analysis. I mean, if we got the flaps down to five degrees, and I keep the same airspeed, the flaps would give me additional lift and I could lower the nose a bit to compensate. But if, as we bring the flaps out, I slow the airplane to keep the same angle of attack, producing equal lift with a slower airspeed and more flaps, how far can I slow?”

  “Captain, we’ll work on it. We just don’t know.”

  “So I have to play test pilot up here?”

  A new voice broke in.

  “Captain Mitchell, Paul Butterfield here in Central Operations. I’m the head guy tonight. We’re doing and will do everything humanly possible to answer your questions, but we’ve got no basis for that particular answer. As you can imagine, that’s not something we normally need to calculate.”

  “Okay, I get that,” Marty said, “but please do your best as fast as you can. In less than an hour I’m going have to just experiment.”

  “No...we don’t want you playing test pilot up there, any more than you have to.”

  “Then, gentlemen, get me the figures so I know what I’m doing. Of course, this might all be a moot discussion. I may not be able to physically extend the flaps at all.”