Others were reacting now, both to her and to the open hatch on the Beech. Lucy could hear seat belts being snapped off and several yells as unseen people closed in on her even as she struggled to pull the hatch open. Finally, she let her body roll over the seatback, landing her torso painfully on one of the armrests, her feet in the lap of the aisle seat passenger, her body draped over the middle seat. The aisle passenger jumped up to get safely out of the way of yet a second mad person as Lucy scrambled to her feet and then knelt in front of the hatch to pull it out.
Cries of “No!” and “Stop!” made no sense to her… the hatch clearly had to be opened for Greg and the others when they came piling out of the Beech. Couldn’t they see that? Giving the door the most powerful backward jerk she could manage, it finally came away in her hands as she fell back into the arms of a male passenger, the now familiar roar of the slipstream filling the cabin as once more somebody grabbed the hatch and re-seated it, re-locking the window.
“No! No, no, no!” She was shouting at them now. Why couldn’t they understand? “Do you want to leave them out there on the wing? They’re coming!” she screeched, trying to free her right arm to point to the hatch. He was coming across and they had to be ready to pull him in!
But the young man pinning her arms to her side and holding her from behind was speaking steadily in her ear, and she couldn’t mute his voice.
“Stop! Stop, ma’am! Stop struggling. No one’s coming across out there. It’s not possible.”
She tried to turn to see his face. “DIDN’T YOU SEE?”
“See what, ma’am.”
“THEY’VE OPENED A DOOR OVER THERE. My… my fiancé is over there! He’s…”
Other voices filled in the gap in knowledge and the man tightened his hold on her.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry, but they’re throwing out bags over there. That’s all. They’re not trying to come across. They’re just lightening the load.”
Frantic to make them understand she looked to the right in time to catch the sight of a lime green roll-aboard bag being pushed into the slipstream, and she was startled by the speed of its departure aft. She strained to lean down and look closer, but there were only bags and clothes and things coming through. No people.
No fiancé.
And with that, Lucy Alvarez went limp.
Cockpit of Mountaineer 2612
Michelle had failed to tell Marty Mitchell what they were doing until Luke’s cell phone rang.
“Michelle, what the hell’s going on over there?” the Regal captain asked. “My flight attendants are reporting that you’ve opened the left side emergency exit. For God’s sake, don’t let anyone try to cross!”
“No, no! We’re throwing out the baggage to shift the center of gravity…”
“Jesus! You should have warned me. We had a guy open our exit hatch a while ago and got him under control, but when one woman back there saw what was happening, she went for it too! Her husband or fiancé or someone is on your bird.”
“I’m sorry, Marty! I didn’t think to tell you…”
“Is it helping?”
“Yes. At least we think so.”
“Enough that I could slow down some more?”
The silence on Michelle’s end was telling.
“Michelle?” he tried again.
She sighed loudly. “I guess that’s why I stupidly thought I shouldn’t tell you, because you’re busy and… and because we’re not brave enough to go through a moment like that again. Testing how slow, I mean.”
“I understand. We won’t try.”
“At maximum, I think now it will only make a five knot difference. But it’s helped our center of gravity.”
“Don’t worry. We won’t try to slow again.”
She paused. “Who’s the passenger? I’ll pass a message if there’s time.”
“There isn’t,” he said. “We’re starting the approach in five minutes.”
Michelle disconnected the call and handed the cell phone back to Luke, who was standing between the pilot seats.
“Thanks, Luke. Tell everyone to make sure their seat belts are tight… brief the brace position, to the extent they have an extra inch or two to learn forward.”
“I will.”
“We’re about to start the approach.”
He nodded, his face grim, and turned. She could hear him talking to their freezing passengers, trying to be heard over the slipstream’s roar as she sat in the calm of her own internal privacy thinking briefly about this life that might be ending in minutes.
I’ve had a good run, Michelle thought. I probably could have made it to Delta or maybe Alaska Airlines, but… this has been a real privilege, to get to captain anywhere.
Outwardly, she had been irritated with her mother about the pictures of herself in her captain’s uniform posted all over Facebook. But inwardly, she had felt so very proud. It had been a long haul.
Even the memory of an acidic and hurtful rejection years earlier — a sneering “Little girls can’t handle airliners!” put down from a misogynist senior 747 captain she had approached to ask a few questions — faded in importance. She’d already shown his kind what this determined “little girl” could accomplish.
Luke returned and strapped himself in before remembering Michelle’s injured shoulder. There was no way she was going to be able to pull down her shoulder harness on the right side, so he leaned over and did it for her before securing himself in the copilot’s seat.
“Thanks, Luke! And thanks for the exemplary teamwork.’
He looked over at her, his strained youth showing as a jumble of expressions rippled across his face, and he nodded with a judge-like seriousness.
“Thank you… for your exemplary leadership, captain. “You’re… ah… a real inspiration.” His eyes went to the floor and she could see that the question of whether this life had a tomorrow was suddenly consuming him. She heard the small catch in his voice.
“Luke?”
He looked up and over at her again. “Yeah?”
“We make our own reality, and mine is that we’re going to live through this. Okay?”
He nodded mechanically in response, clearly unconvinced.
Michelle fumbled with her left hand for her small flashlight and toggled it on. In the cold, feeble light of the LED she could see the whiskey compass reporting a slow turn to the right. So, this was it. The 757’s pilots were being vectored now to intercept the instrument landing system beacon for Runway 7.
“Keep forward pressure on the yoke, Luke.”
“Will do.”
“And, if it feels like we’re trying to lift off, shove it forward all the way to the stops. Fly it to the end. We don’t have ailerons. Well, we have one… but we’ve got full rudder and elevator. Don’t assume they can’t influence things.”
Cockpit of Regal 12
“Regal Twelve, Approach. Airport ops is advising they still have men and equipment on Runway Seven trying to clear off the two thousand feet of the approach end they had abandoned before. They’ll need ten minutes more to get them off.”
Marty exhaled loudly and glanced at Ryan, who was looking back with a genuinely startled expression.
“Can we do ten minutes more, Ryan?”
“I guess we have to, but it cuts our fuel and balance margins even more.”
Marty nodded. “The hits just keep on coming,” he said pressing the transmit button.