Skyhook

by John J. Nance

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. So how far above you were those clouds, Captain? I assume you know the regulations for visual flight.”

  “The clouds were more than the required five hundred feet above me,” Arlie shot back, his voice hardening. “And, yes, I know the regs, as I’m sure you do, Inspector Harrison. Under FAR part ninety-one point one fifty-five, the rules for visual operation are that the requirement for cloud clearance when flying in visual conditions at or below twelve hundred feet is a minimum of five hundred feet below, one thousand feet above, and two thousand feet lateral clearance, with a nighttime visibility requirement a minimum of three statute miles, all under the new Class G airspace. I miss anything?”

  “No … other than how it was that you could have been so close to the water in deteriorating conditions and still think you were in compliance with the FARs when it was dark and you admit you couldn’t see anything.”

  “What? I certainly did not admit—or say—that I couldn’t see anything, until I entered that fog bank at the last second. That was unanticipated. I had full legal visibility until then.”

  “Well, Captain,” Harrison continued, “you say you think you lost a propeller blade, but isn’t it possible the clouds were just pressing you down and you kept descending and didn’t realize how low you were until you dug a wing into the water?”

  “Hell, no!” Arlie Rosen snapped upright in the bed, wincing at the pain in his head as he fixed the FAA inspector with his eyes and leveled a slightly shaking finger at him. “Get this straight, Harrison. I was doing precisely what I said I was doing, where, when, why, and how I said I was doing it! Who the hell do you think you are to come in here and throw some cockamamy accusation at me without the slightest foundation to back it up?”

  Harrison chuckled and began closing the small steno pad he’d been holding. There were no notes on the page.

  “Good offense is always the best defense, eh, Rosen? Don’t worry. I’ll get the facts if you were scud-hopping, as I believe you were.”

  “Scud-hopping?”

  “I’ve seen it a thousand times. Overly cocky airline pilot in a private plane pushing the visual limits. You were in a seaplane, after all, and the FAA’s nowhere around, and you want to get to your destination, and you don’t give a damn how low the clouds overhead are as long as you can stay airborne and see the water below.”

  “That is absolutely not true! Not to mention the fact that if you’re so damned experienced, you know that pilots who do that do it because they aren’t instrument-rated and have no alternatives. I had an alternative!”

  “Yeah, well, I understand you have to cook up a good cover story for your insurance company, but it won’t wash with the FAA.”

  “What?” Arlie said, his face reflecting shock.

  April moved toward the bed and into the line of fire between her father and the FAA inspector, her palm out to the man in a stop gesture. “That’s enough out of you, sir! Get the hell out of this hospital room.”

  “Miss Rosen, I wasn’t talking to you,” Harrison replied, his eyes on Arlie.

  “You watch your tone with my daughter, buster,” Arlie said. “And, like she said, get the hell out of here.”

  George Mikulsky had stood up in obvious confusion, his eyes wide as he tried to figure out how to disengage himself as quickly as possible from the extreme discomfort of the mess his FAA companion had made of the interview. But Harrison moved to the end of Arlie’s bed, physically blocking Mikulsky, his finger leveled at Arlie Rosen.

  “Hey, chew on this, Captain Rosen. I don’t give a damn how big an aircraft you fly or how many hours you’ve logged sitting in an overstuffed armchair eating first-class meals and pretending it’s real pilot time, nor do I care about your obscenely inflated paycheck. But here’s a news flash, hotshot. You still have to comply with the rules, or we take your license away. And you want to know what I think?”

  Arlie shook his head. “Not bloody likely, asshole!”

  “Dad …” April cautioned, but it was obviously too late.

  “Yeah, good, let’s start with the name calling,” Harrison sneered. “Very mature response for a thirty-thousand-hour cappie making five times what he’s worth.”

  “Five times … Okay, you rancid, pontificating little windbag. This is a jealousy thing with you, isn’t it? What the hell happened, United turn you down for a pilot job twenty years ago, so you joined the FAA?”

  There was a momentary waver in Harrison’s expression, but he stifled it quickly. “I looked up your records, Rosen. You’re an alcoholic. You were drinking, weren’t you?”

  “WHAT?!” Arlie yelped.

  “I understand you were in United’s alcoholic program a few years back.”

  “That was ten years ago, and I honorably completed that program!”

  Harrison walked toward the door, turning back as he opened it.

  “Oh, I’m sure you filled all the squares, Rosen. But we all know there are dropouts. It’s painfully obvious you were flying that Albatross last night drunk as a skunk and scud-hopping to boot. When I find the proof that you were drinking and flying—and I will—we’ll get your reckless tail permanently grounded.” Harrison moved through the door, his back turned.

  “Come back here you little son of a bitch!” Arlie bellowed at Harrison as he tried to swing out of bed and found his legs trapped by the tightly tucked sheets. “I’m gonna have your ass fired, Harrison!” he yelled through the door at Harrison’s back as George Mikulsky retreated after him.

  “Dad! Calm down!”

  “Goddammit! Goddammit!” He was shaking with fury, his face beet red.

  “That’s not helping!”

  “I can’t believe that little shit! THAT WAS OUTRAGEOUS!”

  “Dad! Your language is outrageous!”

  “Where’s the damned phone? Get me that phone, April. I’m gonna call the entire congressional delegation and have that bastard cashiered!”

  “Dad! Take a deep breath and think this through.”

  “What? Why?”

  “You told me yourself, never antagonize an FAA inspector.”

  “Me antagonize? You were right here!”

  “Dad, please!”

  The door was opening again and the noise riveted Arlie’s attention as he tensed for another round, but a wheelchair entered instead with Rachel Rosen aboard.

  “Mom!” April said as she ran to hug her. Rachel returned the hug, her eyes on the murderous look in her husband’s eyes.

  “What’s going on here?”

  “It’s …” April began, but Arlie blurted out the basics of the acidic exchange with the FAA.

  “Good grief, Arlie, they control your license!” Rachel said.

  “Dammit, you think I don’t know that?” he replied through gritted teeth.

  Rachel left the wheelchair and walked somewhat unsteadily to her husband’s side, gathering him to her breast until he hugged her back and stopped snarling.

  April watched the seamless move with admiration. Her mother always knew precisely what to do to calm him down, while issuing orders with a flick of her eyes, which she did now in April’s direction. April understood instantly. Rachel wanted a sedative for her husband and a strategy session in the corridor as soon as possible. Damage control was obviously going to be necessary, and April silently raised her cell phone and mouthed “Gracie,” eliciting an affirmative nod from her mother.

  EIGHT

  TUESDAY, DAY 2 UNIWAVE FIELD OFFICES ELMENDORF AFB, ALASKA

  Lindsey White struggled to hide the fact that her stomach was churning and concentrated instead on the neatly arranged bric-a-brac adorning Joe Davis’s impeccable desk. She hated confrontations, and it had been difficult to maintain the facade of rock-solid conviction as he ranted, begged, bullied, and finally whined against the news that tonight’s acceptance test flight had to be canceled.

  At last he ran out of words and plopped himself back in his suitably impressive desk chair with a look
of defeat.

  Almost.

  “Lindsey, how can you sit there for … for five minutes—”

  “Ten.”

  “Okay, ten minutes, then, and say absolutely nothing?”

  “You were doing the talking.”

  “Well, hell. I had to. Somebody has to talk or it’s not a conversation.”

  She shook her head.

  “There,” he said, coming forward in his chair and pointing at her with his index finger as he sighted along it with one eye. “You’re doing it again.”

  “What?”

  “You know I hate long silences, so you stay quiet knowing I’ll keep talking until I talk myself into whatever you want.”

  “Pretty efficient method, isn’t it? Especially when I’m right and you know it.”

  Joe shook his head and looked out the windows bordering the south side of his office as he scratched absently at his stubbly chin. He wasn’t a bad fellow, Lindsey thought, just scared of his own shadow. He’d been a very sharp electronics engineer for Uniwave, advancing project after project and promoted as a reward each time, until they’d elevated him to a job at least one level above his maximum capability. A small half-full jar of Maalox sat on his credenza, and what little hair he had left was rapidly going to gray. Joe, she knew, was now a full hostage of the high pay, benefits, and stock options of his position, and since the possibility of losing all that was his greatest terror, any suggestion from the corporate leaders in North Carolina attained Ten Commandment status in his mind. He had, Lindsey was fond of saying, achieved a status of profitable agony.

  Joe sighed finally. It was a long and exhausted sound of capitulation, made worse by a very small whimper inserted at the far end of the coda.

  “All right, Lindsey, I’ll make the call.”

  “Good.”

  “But you’d better stand outside and be ready to jump back when my severed head comes rolling out the door.”

  “I’ll just put your hat on it and send it home to Betty in a box. With a little formaldehyde and a big Mason jar, you’ll make a great conversation piece.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Hey! Your metaphor.”

  “Cole really thinks another twenty-four hours will do it?” Joe asked, returning to Ben Cole’s conviction that failing to cancel the planned evening acceptance flight would be tantamount to murder/suicide.

  “He hopes so. But as I said—”

  Joe waved her off. “Yeah, yeah. I know. No guarantees.”

  “Joe, this is the small voice from Morton Thiokol in ’eighty-six, trying to tell the grand pooh-bahs of NASA not to launch the Challenger.”

  “Yeah, I get it, Lindsey.”

  “I hope so, Chief. Because this is one of those O-ring alerts you ignore at everyone’s peril.”

  Lindsey stood and left the office, pulling the door closed behind her, aware that Joe Davis had begun punching in the North Carolina headquarters number like a condemned man mounting the gallows.

  Less than 150 feet away on the second story of the high-security-project building, Dr. Ben Cole clapped a hand on the shoulder of one of his team and tried to smile.

  “I want to keep everyone working until we lift off this evening.”

  “So, you’re still going to fly tonight?” the man asked.

  “No, he’s not,” Lindsey White’s voice replied from the hallway as she walked up, explaining Joe Davis’s agonized acceptance of the twenty-four-hour delay.

  “Thank God,” the same team member said, noting the relief in Ben Cole’s eyes as he returned to the lab, leaving Ben and Lindsey in the hallway.

  She shoved her hands into the pockets of the faded letter sweater she was wearing and cocked her head, looking into his tired eyes.

  “You okay, Ben?”

  He nodded with more energy than he had. “Now I am! The delay’s approved?”

  “Yep.”

  “You’re truly a woman of your word, Lindsey.”

  She laughed. “Well, I couldn’t let you climb on that aircraft feeling doomed.”

  “Did he put up much of a fight?”

  She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Not a subject for polite company.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now, the real question is, are you making any progress?”

  Ben had been leaning against the door frame to the lab but he pulled his lank body back to a standing position and shrugged as he glanced at his watch. “I honestly don’t know, and I guess I’m still summoned to the meeting at six?”

  She nodded. “Unavoidable, unless he cancels.”

  “I think, with the extra time and that manual T-handle, I can guarantee we won’t get hurt physically, but I’m going to need every minute between now and tomorrow evening to make sure the system will pass the test.”

  “But you can do it, you think? Realistically? Or … are you still guessing?”

  Ben sighed. “Yeah, I’m still guessing. It’s in there somewhere, and now … I’ve got to think how to best use the extra time.”

  One floor away, Joe Davis replaced the telephone handset and wiped the perspiration from his brow. The chairman had been none too happy, but far less furious than Joe had expected, and the one-day delay had been approved.

  “Get it right the first time, Joe,” Will Martin had cautioned.

  The phone rang again, this time with the chief test flight mechanic.

  “Joe, we’ve got a big problem with that modification you wanted.”

  Joe Davis sat back and began rubbing his eyes. “Yeah?”

  “This is a civilian aircraft, and we can’t put a modification in like that—a physical modification—without bringing in our FAA liaison for approval.”

  “What the heck are you talking about?” Joe asked. “The aircraft is on an experimental certificate. We can do anything we want. We’re a secret black project, for God’s sake.”

  “Joe, remember the exemption they gave us? It’s usually pro forma, but we have to have our FAA lady sign it off to be legal. We can’t bypass the rules.”

  “Well, then just yank our FAA chick in here and have her sign it off.”

  “Hey, Joe, a little respect, okay? That ‘chick’ is a very capable woman.”

  “Yeah, a very capable female you’ve been trying to lay for six months now, right, Bill?” Joe Davis snapped, aware his sarcasm would hit home. Bill Waggoner was married, but clearly in lust with the female maintenance inspector.

  Waggoner’s voice dropped to a frosty, cautious register. “I resent that accusation, Joe.”

  “Well, sorry the truth hurts, old boy. What’s her name? Sandra?”

  “Yes.”

  “Just get Sandra in and get it approved.”

  “I can’t do that. She’s in Oklahoma City for training for a week.”

  “Then get a substitute.”

  “Jeez, Joe, there are no substitutes with the required top secret clearances and need to know! You, of all people, should know that.”

  Joe nodded to himself, doubly irritated at the rebuke. “Oh, yeah. Look, if we could get Sandra to a scrambled, secure line out at Tinker Air Force Base down in Oklahoma City …”

  “No, Joe. She’s a straight shooter. No way would she sign off on a physical modification without personally inspecting it.”

  The explosion had been slow in coming, but it gathered now to a thunderclap riding the pressure and frustration of the last few hours.

  “Goddammit, Waggoner! We pay you to come up with solutions. You want the plane to go down?”

  “Of course not. What a stupid thing to ask.”

  “Then install the friggin’ disconnect so we can keep them safe, and we’ll get it formally approved when Miss Sandra comes back.”

  More silence.

  “Bill?”

  The sound of someone clearing his throat on the other end of the line was the only response at first.

  “Bill, answer me, dammit!”

  “This is for the record, Joe. Neither I, nor anyone wor
king for me and under my control, is going to finish installation of that T-handle disconnect or any other physical modification without the appropriate FAA approval. That’s not negotiable. I have a fiduciary—”

  “You’ll do exactly what I tell you to do, Waggoner!”

  “No, Joe, I won’t. I’m a licensed mechanic with responsibilities that run beyond you and Uniwave. You want to fire me? Fine. But I’ve read my contract very carefully, and I know precisely who has the appropriate security clearances and who I can talk to to protest an illegal order, so don’t try threatening me.”

  “You want to collapse this company? Is that what you’re up to?”

  “You know better than that, Joe.”

  “Godammit, Waggoner! I should fire your ass.”

  “Go right ahead. I’ll be in General MacAdams’s face within the hour with a full explanation.”

  More silence as the standoff intensified, broken finally by the capitulation Joe knew was inevitable.

  “All right, leave it unfinished,” Joe said quietly, wondering how on earth to tell Lindsey White and Ben Cole without losing the final acceptance flight. Perhaps there was another way, he thought. The emergency disconnect was for the sole purpose of making Lindsey and Ben Cole feel better, but the extra twenty-four hours would give Cole time to solve his problems without needing the manual disconnect. Therefore, the backup disconnect was unnecessary. There was no need to discuss it—or highlight its absence.

  The brief pang of moral conflict was no match for the engine of Joe Davis’s drive for economic and corporate survival. It was a small, manageable risk at best, and he could live with it.

  NINE

  TUESDAY, DAY 2 SHILSHOAL MARINA BALLARD, WASHINGTON

  Gracie O’Brien parked her silver 1982 Corvette in the marina parking lot and turned off the engine as she listened impatiently to the fellow law associate on the other end of her cell phone. The call had lasted all the way from 4th and Broad in downtown Seattle to her parking place, and he was still droning on.

  Twenty minutes of jabbering for two minutes of content! Gracie grumbled.