16 SOULS

by John J. Nance

  “Y’know, I just don’t believe that!” the man said, his face a study in contempt as he sized up the challenger.

  “Well, sir, you can believe this with absolute certainty. We are legally under the complete command of the captain, and he has ordered all of us to sit down. Failure to comply…”

  The passenger rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah, yadda yadda! I know the spiel. You’ll have me arrested if I don’t sit down.”

  “Yes, sir. Something like that.”

  “Well, buddy boy, I think instead of threatening me for trying to solve the problem, you and the crew should be tearing this plane apart to find enough rope or cable to use.”

  “Sir, we’re not going out there. Stringing a rope or cable would be impossible.”

  “Oh, you’re buying that pilot crap? Fine, you stay in. Find that rope for me and I’ll bundle up in my parka and do it myself.”

  Two other flight attendants had quietly gathered behind him.

  “I’ll inform the captain that you’re volunteering in case he changes his mind. In the meantime, back in your seat. Please.”

  He hesitated, trying to stare down the flight attendant who wasn’t giving a millimeter. Finally, the passenger nodded and slunk slowly down in his aisle seat.

  “I can’t believe the cowardice of you people,” he snarled, jerking his head around to glare at the passengers around him before muttering angrily to himself.

  Such a boor, Lucy thought, comparing her fiancé’s impeccable manners to what she’d just witnessed. A deep feeling of guilt suddenly rose around her like dark smoke.

  Manners? What about her manners? What if she didn’t survive this? She hadn’t even had the courtesy to say goodbye to Greg, she’d been so ticked off at him. He wouldn’t have a clue where she was!

  Lucy pulled her smart phone from her small purse and checked the signal indication, aware she’d forgotten to turn it to flight mode. It was showing two bars, probably enough, and she punched in his number and waited. There was no ringing, but the circuit went instantly to his voicemail, indicating his phone was either not on or not within range of a cell tower.

  Lucy listened to the familiar, warm tones of his greeting, then realized she had to say something into the digital recording.

  “Greg, Honey, I’m…I’m sorry…I was really mad at you and I caught a flight to Orlando and now there’s been a midair collision and…”

  She tried with moderate success to suppress a sob.

  “…and I’m all right as long as we get down safely. Please try to call when you get this. I’m on Regal Flight 12.”

  He was probably still in flight, she figured, and undoubtedly diverted somewhere else because of the storm, but she pulled up her calendar anyway to check on his original arrival time back in Denver, which showed as just after 5 pm. There was an app she’d recently downloaded which could track commercial flights and she triggered it now, keying in his flight number and finding it had arrived on schedule.

  And he didn’t call! He probably had plenty of time before his outbound flight and he didn’t call?

  The emotional racquetball continued, bouncing between anger, guilt, and fear. She’d been furious and essentially stormed out of town, but she hadn’t said a word to him and in the call from New York, she’d been as sweet as ever. He had no way of knowing of her insidiously long slow-burn.

  Maybe his outbound flight was cancelled. Where was he going?

  She’d been so impacted by the news of the lost weekend ahead that she hadn’t paid any attention to whatever he said about location. Wasn’t it Durango?

  That’s right. Durango. And he’s probably in Denver right now and not answering. Something’s going on! He should already be at my place…

  Guilt won the game, then the tears came.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Seven Months before – January 21st

  Regal 12

  “Okay, Captain, I think I have it figured out,” the copilot said, a piece of paper on his lap covered with numbers. Marty had been flying for the past few minutes while Ryan worked on how long they could stay in the air with their remaining fuel.

  “And?”

  “We have less than forty-five minutes. I mean, we wouldn’t flameout at forty-five, but there would be no margins left for a go around, for instance.”

  “Understood. Okay, take her, I’m going to make one more attempt at getting some useful information from Minneapolis and then we’re going to get her back on the phone and try to slow.”

  “Her?”

  “The captain out there…Michelle.” Merely stating her name inflated a lump in his throat.

  Regal Operations was still on the line, but the news was less than useful. Boeing had done their best but there were, as the engineer said, too many variables. Suddenly Marty wanted nothing more than to be rid of the call, and the men and women on other end could sense his mental disconnection.

  “Okay, thanks to all of you. We’ll work it out from here.”

  “Captain? Butterfield here again. May I ask what you’re next step is?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m going to experiment carefully with slowing and configuring. We have to get down within a half hour.”

  “Understood, Captain. I…need to relay to you from the head of the airline and myself that despite your heartfelt concern for the aircraft on your wing and those inside, we cannot take the chance of injuring our passengers with a landing speed that guarantees an accident.”

  “Got it.”

  “So, you’ll be guided by that?”

  “I’ll be guided by my best judgment, sir. This is a major emergency, however it got started, and I am the sole decider, so to speak. Now I need to end this discussion.”

  “Captain…”

  But Marty had already pushed the disconnect button, the bottomless hole in his stomach communicating clearly that regardless of their success or failure, his career was probably over. He turned to the chief flight attendant who had been holding and monitoring the sat phone and his cell phone.

  “Nancy?”

  She held out the iPhone and he scooped it to his ear, aware of the pounding in his chest. He absolutely did not want to know what his blood pressure was reading just now.

  “Michelle? Are you there”

  He turned back to Nancy, his expression needing no words.

  “I hadn’t heard anything from her for the last few minutes, Captain.”

  He nodded, working at the screen to toggle the last number received and holding his breath that the call would go through. Cell systems were polarized to suppress calls from the air, but they had been very lucky and flying just low enough to get the signals to connect around the edges.

  He heard her answer, her cell phone scraping on something before she cleared her throat and answered slowly, painfully, her voice extremely strained.

  “Michelle here.”

  “How are you holding out?” Marty asked.

  She cleared her throat, and he could almost feel her searching for the most useful words.

  “We’re very, very cold over here, but…we’re working on it.”

  “Okay, Michelle, please listen. I have to try slowing and bringing the flaps out. You and your copilot are the only ones who can tell me when to stop, which will be before you sense that she might lift off the wing.”

  “I understand. And I have an idea.”

  “Please tell me.”

  “Our controls are still connected at least to our elevator on the T-tail. I can feel the airstream in the controls. I can also sense that our center of gravity is behind me and that we’re attached to your wing behind the center, still about where the landing gear strut is dug into your wing…which means that if we push the controls forward, we’ll tend to rotate the nose down and hold us in
position without lifting the strut out of your wing surface…or whatever we’re attached to down there. At least I hope that’s right.”

  “I’ll go with your analysis, Michelle. But I’ll narrate everything I’m doing and I expect you to yell ‘Stop’ if it feels like we’re approaching the limit.”

  “I understand. We’ll start pushing nose down pressure as you increase the angle of attack. How much longer?”

  “Two minutes before starting this experiment. We have to land in the next forty minutes.”

  “Okay. Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Just…trying, I guess. Good luck to us all, but I agree you’ve got to slow.”

  Marty handed the phone back to Nancy.

  “I need you to turn on the speakerphone as we start this and keep it close enough to my ear that I can hear her and vice versa.”

  “Got it,” Nancy replied.

  “And, can you get the whole team up here for a second?”

  She nodded and turned to one of her crew, who summoned the others. With six flight attendants squeezed into the door and Ryan still flying, Marty pointed to the right wing and explained what they were going to try.

  “When we land, it may or may not be smooth, and we may end up going off the end of the concrete. Be ready for an emergency evacuation. Be ready for anything.”

  He wasn’t prepared for the number of reassuring hands on his shoulder, and his emotional response caught him off guard, but he choked back his feelings as he toggled on the PA.

  Folks, this is your captain. We will begin our final approach within the next 30 minutes back to Denver International. For the next ten minutes, though, we will be attempting to slow the airplane and change the pitch angle as little as possible to hold the other aircraft on the wing. Even if we could slow to normal approach speed we could not…and I would not authorize any attempt to…open the emergency exit hatch to try a rescue. Everyone’s best bet is to set us down on the runway together. Follow your flight attendant’s orders to the letter – they speak for me. And when they say tighten your seat belt, really tighten it. As I said before, a few prayers would very definitely be in order. Thank you.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Seven Months before – January 21st

  Cabin of Regal 12

  Roger was his name.

  For some reason, Lucy Alvarez made a mental note of it as the agitated passenger worked himself back up to what was probably going to be another outburst.

  She felt sorry for the young woman in the middle seat next to him. Roger had insisted on introducing himself, as if reverting to some form of civilized restraint would erase the first impression of his meltdown.

  Once again he gestured across the middle and window seats ahead to point to the fuselage, and once again – despite trying not too – Lucy followed his gaze, pressing her face against the plastic inner layer of the window and straining in spite of herself to make out the faces looking back. There were no cabin lights in the smaller airplane, but some passengers were using their cell phones, and someone in the window directly across from her turned his phone to his face. Lucy’s heart froze.

  Of course, it couldn’t be her Greg, but the face looked just like him. She fought down the immediate sense of total panic and tried to think, not taking her eyes off the man, who was nodding for some reason and gesturing something she couldn’t make out.

  Lucy pulled out her phone with trembling hands and frantically checked the messages. Nothing from Greg. She checked the little indicator next to her text messages, but none indicated delivered. Once again she tried calling, fumbling with the virtual keyboard to enter his speed-dial number and once again heard the system go straight to voicemail.

  Twenty-five feet away, the man across the wing was still looking at her, but had lowered his phone. Only the outline of his features was visible. That absolutely could not be her fiancé, she reassured herself, but the reassurance was hollow and she fumbled with one of the airport apps to find which flights had left for Durango. Surely the only one he could have caught would have been cancelled.

  There it was. His flight had to have been Mountaineer 2612, Denver to Durango.

  She entered the flight number in the flight tracking app and read, and then re-read, the result. Mountaineer 2612 had departed on time. She shifted to a different display as Greg had taught her to do to monitor a flight’s progress with its altitude and flight track over the ground, and with the bottom dropping out of her world, she realized Mountaineer 2612’s flight track had ended just west of Denver less than ten minutes after departure.

  There was no arrival in Durango, or anywhere else.

  With her hands shaking violently and her heart pounding, Lucy toggled on the flashlight function of the iPhone and shone it on her own face as she faced the window, wondering if he was looking. Greg would have no way of expecting her to be on this flight…at best she would be nothing more than a distraught female face in the window. Her world was now riding on that wing, and the need to get to him, and not just helplessly sit still, welled like a rising tsunami, floating hope and desperation all at once.

  The man named Roger had stood quietly and retrieved a bag from the overhead bin. Lucy had only half noticed, but now she realized he had donned a parka and gloves, and as a host of startled passengers watched, he held up what appeared to be a coil of some sort of wire, smiled, and then physically pulled the adjacent two passengers from their seats. Next to the overwing exit now, and with two alarmed flight attendants running forward to reach him, the man pulled the red cover off the latching mechanism and yanked the lever down.

  Both flight attendants were yelling, but they were too many rows away.

  “STOP HIM! TACKLE THAT MAN!”

  Roger had a look of triumph on his face but in a microsecond it changed to puzzlement as he pulled on the plug-type hatch and was unable to dislodge it. Three male passengers were on their feet now and lunging for him, one sailing over a seatback to grab the big man by his waist at the very moment the sound of air pressure being released in a frightening “thunk” was met with him losing his balance and falling back, the hatch in hand, and the deafening roar of the slipstream from the now open hatch drowned out the startled cries all around.

  The male flight attendant who had confronted Roger earlier soared over the same seat back and grabbed the hatch, struggling over the now-empty middle seat to shove it back in the hole, and with another solid “thunk” borne of slight internal air pressure, the hatch went back in place. He raised the locking level before turning to see the man named Roger restrained by two passengers and a flight attendant as another rushed back from the front of the plane with plastic handcuffs.

  The entire episode had taken little more than a minute, but Lucy realized that for a split second, she had been ready to launch herself out of that hole to get to Greg.

  An off-duty sheriff’s deputy was recruited to watch Roger, who had now been strapped to an empty aisle seat. The other crewmembers were cautiously returning to their respective ends of the aircraft as the PA clicked on, the captain’s voice louder and more urgent than before.

  Folks, real quick, this is your captain. I am the legal authority right now over everyone, and I’m telling you I need complete cooperation and understanding. We cannot, repeat, cannot open a hatch and go get those people. Anyone else who even talks about trying will be arrested and prosecuted. Clear? For those who helped tackle that idiot now in 20D, thank you! The only reason he was able to pull that hatch open by the way is because we’re not pressurized. Don’t touch the doors or the hatches! And 20D? You, sir, are under arrest and will be federally charged when we get back on the ground.

  Once again Lucy pressed her face to the glass, watching the outline of her love framed by the darkened window of the Beech some twenty-five feet away; feeling the most profound leve
l of despair she’d ever experienced.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Seven Months before – January 21st

  Regal 12

  “Approach, Regal Twelve. I assume runway zero seven is still the only one open?”

  “Affirmative, Twelve, and the airport is advising that landing sooner than later would be a good idea. They’re trying to keep ahead of the snowfall with the plows, but this storm is unprecedented.”

  “Understood, Approach. Right now, we need vectors for a north-south track with twenty-mile legs for the next ten or fifteen minutes. We’re going to try configuring and slowing.”

  The controller relayed a heading, and with the cell phone connection to the captain of the wrecked 1900 on speakerphone, Marty took control from the copilot.

  “Ryan, check the leading edge on your side for ice. I checked the left a minute ago and we’re clear, but I am assuming the anti-ice is inop on the right leading edge.”

  The copilot swiveled his head around, face against the side window as he strained to see the right wing.

  “This stuff is too dry to stick, Captain, and I have no idea whether the anti-ice ducting is blown or what.”

  “At least the engine anti-ice is on.”

  There was silence for a few seconds before Marty turned to the right seat, suppressing his roiled and conflicted feelings which were mixing a dark anger for the copilot’s contribution to this disaster, with contrition for his own failure, leavened by appreciation for the younger man’s aeronautical competence under pressure. If they survived, they would sort it all out on the ground. Hell, the NTSB and the airline and everyone up to God would sort it out with dire consequences to be liberally distributed to the offending flight crew, but for right now, the first officer was the best ally in sight. And the younger man was clearly feeling as frightened and hunted and alone as Marty.