“Ryan?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Kill the ‘captain’ and ‘skipper’ and ‘sir’ crap, okay? My name is Marty. Use it. We’re working this together.”
Ryan met his gaze with the look of a startled owl.
“Okay?” Marty nudged.
“Yes,” Ryan answered, nodding. “Thank you… Marty.”
“Welcome. And for the record, I’m scared shitless as well. Now, you’re one hundred and fifty percent sure you got the right circuit breakers for the leading edge devices?”
“Absolutely certain.”
“Anything else we should be considering or thinking about? Anything we haven’t addressed?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Okay, here we go. I’m going to bring the throttles back incrementally and I want you to start milking the trailing edge flaps out and watch that gauge like a hawk for any asymmetry. Michelle? Can you hear us? Are you ready?”
“We are,” was the response.
The sound of the two huge turbofan engines changing pitch ever so slightly met their ears as the copilot lifted the flap lever out of the detent and brought it backwards a few millimeters at a time. He could hear the hydraulic motors begin to turn the torque tubes driving jackscrews that allowed the flaps to descend into a highspeed slipstream. Both of them were well aware that at two hundred forty knots they were going to overspeed the flaps, even though the entire flap system was sufficiently overbuilt to take such a beating.
“We’re at flaps one, moving to flaps two,” Ryan reported.
“Slowing through two hundred thirty-five knots…” Marty said, “…holding the same pitch angle. Keep the flaps coming… same slow rate.”
“Roger”
“It feels pretty much the same out here,” Michelle reported.
“Okay, slowing through two hundred thirty knots… down to two twenty-five. Flaps, Ryan?”
“About four degrees… I’m having to interpolate on this readout.”
Marty felt a tiny tinge of relief that the leading edge devices in fact had not popped out. Any one of them deploying could have been catastrophic. Obviously Ryan had pulled the right breakers.
“We’re at two hundred twenty-five knots and I’m holding the same pitch angle but we’re starting to drift down in altitude. Keep the flaps coming, Ryan. I’m holding the airspeed and the power right here, and hoping the flaps will give us more lift at a slower airspeed.”
“Coming through flaps five,” the copilot reported. “You feel that buffeting?”
“Yes,” Marty replied, the disturbed air roiling over the Beech fuselage had changed angle slightly and was shaking the tail of the 757. “It’s controllable. Michelle? You agree?”
“We feel the shaking, and we’re starting to put some forward pressure on our yoke. Are you changing your pitch angle?”
“Trying not to, but I’m going to have to pull up a bit more.”
“We’re feeling it shimmy and… and we hear a little metallic screeching, but nothing too alarming.”
“Okay, I’m holding two twenty-five knots and the same pitch angle, flaps are at what, Ryan?”
“About seven percent.”
“Okay, and we’re sinking about three hundred feet per minute. Michelle, I’m going to increase pitch angle by two degrees.”
Gingerly he put back pressure on the 757’s yoke, feeling the nose come up slightly, watching the attitude deviation indicator on the screen in front of him to limit the change.
“Ah, we’re hearing a lot of metal sounds over here and she’s bucking a bit. We’re putting pitch down pressure on our yoke. I think we can take some more.”
“Okay… keep the flaps coming, Ryan. That pitch angle has zeroed our descent… we’re holding altitude. I’m going to try slowing to two-twenty.”
“Flaps coming through ten percent now, ah, Marty,” Ryan reported.
“Pitch attitude is two degrees and…” Marty began, his voice trailing off as the 757 began rolling to the right.
“STOP THE FLAPS!” Marty ordered.
“Yeah…” Ryan replied, “we’ve got an asymmetry. Right side has stopped.”
“Yes. I’m bringing the flap handle back up… please tell me when we’re neutral… when, I mean, the roll moment has stopped.”
“Right there! Stop!”
“Okay.”
“How much flap do we have out?”
“Ah… ah… eleven percent. But I’m just past the flaps ten detent. If I let the handle go, it could move.”
Marty turned to the lead flight attendant holding the iPhone by his ear. “Nancy? Is there any tape of any sort in the galley?”
“I think so.”
“Wait, guys,” Ryan said. I carry duct tape in my flight bag. Here… I’ll tape the lever in place and…”
Suddenly a loud metallic screech and rumble shook the cockpit and the 757 yawed to the right as the voice of the other captain cut through their consciousness from the speaker of the iPhone.
“SHIT!”
A rhythmic bouncing was shaking them as well as another lurch accompanied by a scream from the cockpit of the Beech 1900.
In the Cabin of Regal 12
Lucy felt as if she were descending through the outer circles of hell. She had been watching the Beech fuselage as if her laser-like vigilance could somehow keep Greg safe. It was she who first noticed a dark panel of metal near the front of the ruined fuselage suddenly rise up, shaking violently. The vibrations were followed by a rhythmic bouncing and her heart all but stopped as she saw the structure begin to move, like an injured creature trying to rise where it had fallen. She saw the front end begin to bounce upward, and even being halfway back in the 757 at row 22 she could hear voices yelling in the cockpit as the tail of the parasitic aircraft suddenly rose and the 757 pulsed nose down.
She was losing him. The aircraft would fly up and back and disappear and she didn’t need a pilot’s license to know they would die if that happened with only one wing. He would die! The guy she’d waited a lifetime for who she’d finally found in her early forties was retreating to another dimension in time, like the wrenching scene in her favorite film Somewhere in Time. She hadn’t even realized her right hand was on the window, fingers spread, in a gesture beyond mere words.
The Cockpit of Regal 12
“LOWER YOUR NOSE… MARTY… PLEASE! It’s trying to pull loose…”
Marty had pulsed the yoke forward slightly, relaxing the back pressure to let the 757’s nose drop quickly by several degrees, changing the angle of the airflow over the wings and lessening the pressure on the underside of the Beech fuselage.
“What’s happening over there?” he asked.
“Oh God… pushing! No, Luke, push more! Help me! “
Her voice was vibrating from the shaking violently bouncing the ruined Beech fuselage before the sound of the phone being dropped and banging around the floor of the cockpit.
“Michelle?” Marty tried.
Suddenly the shaking in the 757 stopped, and Ryan looked at the captain with a feral look of disbelief.
“MICHELLE?” Marty yelled, meeting Ryan’s gaze. “Look out there… are they…”
The copilot had already plastered his face to the window.
“Yes! They’re still there! I can’t see much but they’re still with us.”
The sound of the phone being retrieved in the Beech cockpit was followed by Michelle Whittier’s voice, clearly shaken.