Marty Mitchell was right, she mused. It’s a shameful game. But occasionally justice is the imperfect byproduct.
From the witness stand, Marty had fully anticipated that seeing Grant Richardson at the prosecution table front and center was going to be a struggle; and he knew that watching the smarmy bastard sitting back casually with such a smug and self-confident look could upset him. But at Judith’s urging, he’d been preparing himself for this moment for weeks, and an inner calm had genuinely replaced his intense hatred of the man. He looked at Richardson now as somewhat pathetic, especially since the DA had nothing more important to do than personally torture a surviving airline pilot.
Marty could recall almost word for word Richardson’s opening statement, as well as all his questions of his witnesses during the first days of the trial. The DA had been smart in avoiding the vilification of the captain of Regal 12. Instead, he’d cast the accident as a sad series of tragic mistakes, one of which had to be answered with punishment lest people die in the future from another pilot’s negligent and disobedient decisions. Marty knew the jury was curious and not preprogrammed to hate him, and they were being preprogrammed to consider this a simple matter — if A fits B, the only verdict is guilty. He would have to connect with each of them on a profoundly human level to get them to look beyond. In pilots’ lexicon, it was the ultimate checkride with his freedom in the balance. The good part of that, he concluded, was that Marty Mitchell had always been ice-water steady in checkrides, even when the check pilot was an unspeakable ass working relentlessly to rattle him.
For the entire morning and after the lunch recess, Judith followed the usual introduction to the jury by guiding Marty through the details of the flight, the preflight discussion with the dispatcher, the collision and airborne calls with Butterfield, the rapid-fire decisions that had to be made in an unprecedented emergency, and the agony of pushing back against voices that were telling him to condemn the sixteen people on his wing to death.
And finally, as promised, she had turned and asked the questions he had been dying to answer all day, giving him the opening to explain without interruption the last act of the flight.”
“Captain, your first officer testified that when you started a missed approach to Runway Seven, you were low on fuel and the runway was in sight?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you elect to go around?”
“Because,” he said, “I suddenly had a better idea, one that had been staring me in the face as we came down final for Runway Seven, but one I hadn’t figured out until about two hundred feet above.”
“By a ‘better idea,’ what do you mean?”
“One that wouldn’t kill anyone. A way of getting all of us down safely, not just the passengers aboard my Boeing.”
“Would you please describe to the jury what happened from the moment you decided to go around, to the crash?”
Marty Mitchell nodded and took a long look around before beginning, and, to his amazement, the courtroom and all the sounds and sights within began to recede as he commenced speaking, until once again it was the snowy night of January 21st and he was in the cockpit again, the snow streaking past the windscreen, the same fear roiling his stomach as they streaked down final approach far too fast, the remains of Mountaineer Flight 2612 still hanging onto the right wing. He could hear Ryan’s voice, just as before, when Marty ordered him to standby for landing gear extension.
“Five hundred feet to go, Marty. No decision height.”
“Roger.”
“Coming up on two miles to the runway, on speed, one half dot above the glide slope.”
“Roger.”
“Four hundred above and one mile,” Ryan was saying.
“Gear down,” Marty commanded, as Ryan’s hand moved the lever downward, starting the hydraulic sequence that lowered the huge main gear trucks and the nose gear into place.
What had been eating Marty Mitchell finally coalesced, like a blindingly bright flash of crystalline insight. He’d been dutifully following a single idea down a narrow tube and failing to consider or even see any other possibility, but just because a runway was formally declared closed and full of snow didn’t mean it had ceased to exist! What they needed was runway length and some means of slowing down and the absence of a dropoff at the far end.
Jesus! he’d thought, that’s Runway 36 right!
“GEAR UP!” Marty commanded.
“What?” Ryan had asked.
“Going around. Gear Up! Tell the tower.”
For perhaps sixty seconds he held his breath that the change from the shallow descent to a climb hadn’t disturbed the wreckage on the right wing, but he made the pull up very, very smoothly, bringing the power in extremely slowly arresting the descent and gingerly beginning to climb as he held the exact same speed. There was more than enough energy stored in the 230 knot velocity to trade for altitude before the engines came up to full power, but keeping it smooth and the angle of attack constant was absolutely imperative.
He heard Ryan’s expression of befuddlement to the controller but there wasn’t time to worry about it.
“Ryan, tell them we need vectors to the south and then a Category 3 ILS to Runway 36 right.”
“Captain, that runway is closed!”
“Yes, because it’s full of snow, and what do we need? A way of slowing down on the runway, and that’s exactly what a few feet or more of snow will give us! And it’s sixteen thousand feet long with a flat plain beyond.”
“We can’t land on an unplowed runway… can we?”
“We can and we will! At the same speed.”
“But there’s a twenty-knot crosswind on that runway!”
“This aircraft can take it. Tell the tower!”
The obviously stressed voice of the controller acknowledged the request and repeated the same information that the runway was closed and the ILS turned off.
Marty pressed the PA button on the interphone panel.
Folks, this is the captain. We went around because we think there’s a better and far safer way to get us on the ground. We’re going to use a much longer north-south runway. I still need you in brace position, your seatbelts tightly fastened, and to follow the instructions of your flight attendants.”
He pressed the #1 VHF radio button again and hit the transmit button himself.
“Approach, whoever I’m talking to… there’s no time for debate. I need the unplowed snow to slow me down and I need the length, and I need that ILS turned on right this second.”
“Ah, Twelve, roger, we’re doing it. It takes the ILS time to come on line.”
“Approach, it will take about five minutes I figure, for us to come around for a stabilized approach. Give me maximum on the runway lights, approach lights, the rabbit, and the VASI’s, all of it.”
“They may be snow covered, sir.”
“I know that. Please do it. All equipment clear?”
A brief pause marked the controller’s relay of the question which resulted in a quick response.
“Roger, Twelve, the tower advises the runway is clear of everything but snow. Turn right now, one eight zero, climb to and maintain eight thousand.”
“We’ll stay at seven thousand, Approach.”
“Roger… seven thousand. I’ll turn you for the intercept in about five miles.”
Ryan was looking at him with a feral expression and Marty glanced to his right long enough to acknowledge it.