“Ah… is this… the captain of… I don’t know what your flight number is, but…”
“Who the hell is this?” he demanded.
“Ah… I’m… the pilot of the airplane on your right wing.”
The roaring in Marty Mitchell’s mind reached a crescendo as her words finally registered.
“I’m sorry… I wasn’t expecting…”
“I’m… Michelle Whittier.”
“You’re the captain?”
“Yes, if there’s anything left to be captain of.”
“I’m Marty Mitchell. Captain as well.”
“You guys hit us. I think one of my people may be dead. Everyone else is okay… although we’re freezing over here.”
“I’m so sorry! I have no idea what happened. I’ll get us down as quick as I can, Michelle.”
“You think that’ll work?”
“Has to.”
“I mean, we’re really moving around out here… my left wing is gone and my right wing may be structurally broken, and we’re being buffeted big time by the wind. I’m not even sure this is all real.”
“I get that. Look, I think your right main gear strut is what’s keeping you on our wing.”
“We’ve got to be creating huge drag for you.”
“Some, yes.”
“And when you slow and configure for landing…”
“I’m not going to slow. I can’t risk a higher deck angle.”
“Ah… Marty, is it?”
“Yes.”
“Marty, how… I mean, how can you land if you don’t slow? How fast are you going… are we going… right now?”
“Two forty. I’m going to try to milk the flaps down to decrease the deck angle as I slow, and hopefully the diminished force of the slipstream will also help keep you there.”
“I’m sorry to point out the obvious, Marty,” she added, “but we can’t fly if we fall off. You know that of course.”
There was a rising tide of emotion suddenly choking off his ability to speak, but he forced himself past the paralysis.
“Yeah. I wish we could bring you across the wing and inside.”
“So do I, but we don’t have any ropes, and unless…”
“We’ll get you down, Michelle.”
“I… of course I hope so. Hope so.”
“I’ll need your help.”
“Right. Anything. Sure,” Michelle replied, each word an attempt to reinforce the previous.
“We’re on vectors right now waiting for our company to get back to me with some of the figures for landing, and we’re down to Runway Seven at Denver, and I need to start experimenting to see if we can milk the flaps out. That’s when I’ll need feedback from you on any movement which might indicate we could lose you.”
“What do you mean?” she asked
“Any sudden grinding, or lifting, or shaking, or any indication she might be coming loose.”
A long pause and an audible exhale filled his ear until her weary voice returned.
“Marty, I’m not sure we would get any warning. We… the fuselage… could just fall off without any, ah… precursors, y’know? It’s constantly shaking right now.”
“Got it. We’ll proceed extremely slowly.”
“I’ll let you get busy but… I guess, call back when you need to.”
“Okay. My phone captured your number.”
“Marty?”
“Yes.”
“Ah… look, please do your best. I’ll admit I’m terrified. I mean, I know you will but, we’re in your hands, y’know?”
“Yes, I know.”
Who am I kidding, Marty thought.
There was no one to help. It was as if she was hanging onto his hand and dangling off the edge of a cliff, and yet he was holding on for dear life himself, screaming for help that would never come, grip loosening, voice hoarse — her Gwen Stacy to his Peter Parker.
He had to clear his throat to answer, and the words felt more like a fraud than a promise.
“We’ll get you down safely, Michelle. I’m not letting you go.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Seven Months before — January 21st
Newsroom, The Denver Post
With the post-deadline newsroom all but deserted in a major blizzard, there was essentially no one for a part-timer like Scott Bogosian to check with on his way out the door. Scott had fulfilled his duty to call the paper’s aviation beat reporter and hand off the breaking news, but she was engaged in mortal combat with a nasty version of the flu and her obviously worried husband was stiff-arming any interference.
“I wouldn’t wake her up for an interview with Jesus,” he snapped. “Whatever the story is, it’s yours.”
Scott grabbed his parka and lifted the beat reporter’s handheld scanner from her desk before heading for the parking structure, unclear where he was racing to. The Broomfield police — in fact the entire matrix of police and fire departments in the Denver-Boulder area — had picked up no trace of a fallen airliner, and the bits and pieces of radio communication he’d heard on the scanner were offering the alternate conclusion that there was no regional twin on the ground because it was somehow being carried on the wing of a larger jet. Not really possible, but…
The snow was blowing horizontally, at least in the downtown canyons, as he literally skidded his aging Volvo onto Colfax, already chiding himself for not replacing a set of slick tires that were far too low on tread. With money an increasingly rare commodity in his solitary life, tires that had the grace to just remain inflated automatically won his loyalty. Other things like food and rent and the occasional bottle of Jack Daniels came first.
Scott guided the Volvo gingerly up the slick ramp onto the Interstate, engaging his mental autopilot as he struggled to visualize what was happening overhead. With no other location logically competing for his presence, the course to Denver International Airport was a given. But precisely what should he do on arrival? That would take more thought, and there was the not-so-insignificant question of whether he could even make it there. The snow was piling up fast and there was only one plowed lane left to navigate on I-25 — and probably the same on I-70 leading to Pena Boulevard, the 10 mile highway from the Interstate to the terminal that was always spring-loaded for closure in a storm like this.
The handheld scanner, programmed for aviation frequencies, was spewing staccato bursts of radio traffic as Denver’s approach controllers worked to clear the skies for Regal 12.
Thanks to the warmth of the car’s interior, the storm beyond the windshield seemed completely surreal, and the other-worldly aspect of the snow streaking by horizontally just added to the disconnect from reality.
So far, there were no named individuals in peril in the frozen night, just flight numbers and evolving facts. And while his mind gave ritual voice to the prayer that all affected would get down safely, there was still a guilty rush associated with something like this. He hated to admit it, but it was true. The thrill of grabbing his hat — if he’d had one — and racing out to cover something big ahead of everyone else was, in truth, every reporter’s primordial wet dream.
Scott’s childhood image of newspapermen dated from the previous century. No matter that he didn’t own a trench coat or carry a hatband that said “PRESS” or have to find a pay phone to read his story to a copy desk, it all fit nicely into the old-school fantasy images he’d had as a kid of someday being a real newspaper reporter. Even classmates had rolled their eyes at him. They’d get into trouble doing something their parents had forbidden, and Marty would be there with a note pad to chronicle the whole thing. It was when he started actually publishing his reports in a makeshift mimeographed newspaper that life at Kennedy Elementary got really lonely, and no amount of claiming to be a reporter versus a snitch would repair things. Virtually no one was surprised when he landed his first real newspaper job.