Somewhere to the rear, Britta heard the squawk of a shortwave radio. She moved on down the aisle, spotting a teenage boy with the red-and-white-striped badge of an unaccompanied minor clipped to his shirt. He was trying to plug in an earphone to silence the speaker of a handheld scanner.
“I’m sorry, Sir, you’ll have to put that away now,” Britta told him gently, unprepared for his response.
The boy yanked the earpiece from his ear and glowered at her. “This can’t hurt the instruments,” he said.
She knelt beside him. “The rules on this airplane require us to have all radios, even this one, turned off until we’re in flight. Okay?”
“It’s an aviation scanner, okay? Buzz off!” the boy snapped, stuffing the earpiece back in his ear.
Britta felt the 747 turn to the left. The final announcement for takeoff would come any second. She reached up and caught the wire, yanking it back out of his ear.
“OW-W! That hurt!”
Britta metered her voice to a low growl of authority. Her slight German accent intensified the intimidating effect. “You turn the radio off now, or you’ll permanently lose it.”
The boy glared at her, but the possibility that she could carry out the threat forced him to snap off the switch. “Okay. Jeez.”
“What’s your name, young man?”
“Steve Delaney.”
“You need to learn some manners, Steven Delaney.”
He started to speak, but she held up a finger, and he thought better of it.
Britta stood and left the boy sulking. She turned toward the rear galley at the exact moment the captain jammed on the brakes, throwing her into the aisle. She pulled herself up immediately and took inventory, brushing her skirt, smoothing her hair, and trying to smile at the shaken people around her. All the passengers had been seated safely, but two of the other flight attendants had also been thrown to the floor, and she could see Bill Jenkins in the distance standing up and dusting himself off near the forward galley. The sound of cascading items hitting the floor in the rear galley had reached her ears, and she walked back quickly to check on the mess. Pete Cavanaugh’s voice returned to the PA.
Folks, sorry about that sudden stop. Another aircraft illicitly cut in front of us on the taxiway here, and I had no choice.
In the cockpit of Meridian Flight 5, Pete Cavanaugh was shaking his head as Dan Wade pressed the Transmit button. “Hong Kong Ground, Meridian Five. We had to panic stop for a business jet that pulled in front of us. Where did he come from?”
An American-accented voice cut in before the ground controller could reply. “Sorry about that, Meridian. We thought you were going to hold for us.”
“Who is this?” Dan asked.
“Global Express Two-Two-Zulu.”
“Thanks a lot, Two-Two-Zulu! We had the right of way here, and we weren’t even aware you were on the air patch.”
“Well, no harm done.”
“Tell that to our passengers and flight attendants!” Dan snapped, noting Pete’s right hand raised to calm him down.
“Enough, Dan!” Pete said.
“Meridian Five, caution please for the emergency departure ahead of you,” the tower controller said.
“Who is he?” Dan replied on the radio, anger still audible in his voice.
“We’re an air ambulance medivac flight, Meridian,” the Global Express pilot interrupted. “Again, we’re sorry.”
Dan shook his head. “That’d be a great thing to happen to you in your last six months before retirement, Pete. Crush a forty-million-dollar bizzjet with a hundred-seventy-five-million-dollar Boeing.”
Pete chuckled. “You’re right. That’s not how I’d like to be remembered. Dan, check with our folks downstairs and make sure everyone came through that okay.”
Dan was reaching for the intercom handset as the chime rang with Britta on the other end.
“No one’s hurt, but would you two please not do that again real soon?”
“Sorry. I know we’ve got white-knucklers aboard.”
“Always!” Britta added. “I know the passengers are spooked when I can’t hear your PAs over the clicking of the rosary beads.”
Dan laughed. “Yours or the passengers?”
“Mine. And I’m not even Catholic.”
Britta replaced the intercom handset and rolled her eyes at her aft galley crew as they picked up the last of the spilled items. Pete’s voice was on the PA again.
Well, folks, again I apologize for that brief brake test. They work, by the way. We have a red-faced air ambulance pilot to thank for that, but I figured if we didn’t stop, I’d have to explain to someone why we’d compacted him down to the size of a roller skate. It was a bit like a minnow challenging a whale.
We’re at the end of the runway now and ready to go, and… the tower’s telling us to hold a few minutes for clearance. So, while I’d like the flight attendants to take their seats for departure, understand we may be sitting here up to four minutes or so. Good to have you with us tonight. We’ll be talking to you briefly after departure.
Pete sighed as he looked at the approaching storm now showing up on the 747’s radar as a line of angry red splotches fifteen miles out. “I hate it when they hold up our takeoff clearance.”
“Probably for that air ambulance,” Dan said. “Probably going in the same direction. That’s a U.S. call sign he’s using.”
“I’m astounded,” Pete replied, studying the approaching thunder-heads in the distance, “that anyone would be using something as ritzy and expensive as a forty-million-dollar Bombardier Global Express for an air ambulance. That’s the six-thousand-mile-range rival to the Boeing Business Jet and the Gulfstream Five. Looks a little like the Canadair Challenger. Same manufacturer, in fact.”
“Here comes our takeoff clearance, Pete,” Dan said, holding his earpiece with one hand and copying the clearance with the other before reading it back to the controller. He nodded to the captain as he changed to the tower frequency.
“Hong Kong Tower, Meridian Five, ready to go.”
The slightly accented voice issued the takeoff clearance. Pete pushed up the throttles and guided the 375-ton aircraft onto the runway. Dan ran through the last items on the checklist and clicked on the landing lights.
“All ahead full, Danny. Steady as she goes.”
Dan shook his head, pretending disgust.
“‘All ahead full’? Jeez, you Navy guys! The proper terminology, Captain, Sir, is ‘Power set, N1 checked, autothrottles engaged.’”
There was another burst of lightning to the southwest as the huge aircraft began moving forward, the airspeed indicators coming to life as both pilots let their eyes scan around the cockpit, verifying all was normal.
“Airspeed alive both sides, eighty knots,” Dan called.
“Roger,” Pete replied, his eyes roving over the instruments once more before returning to the runway, which seemed to be moving lethargically beneath the nose as the 747 approached flying speed.
“Vee one, and rotate.”
Pete Cavanaugh pulled back gently on the yoke, lifting the 747’s nose into the air, increasing the wing’s angle of attack until lift exceeded weight and the big bird rose gracefully from the concrete. The slight shudder of the sixteen wheels of the main landing gear extending on their struts could be felt rather than heard in the cockpit.
“Positive rate, gear up,” Pete commanded.
Dan reached for the gear handle, speaking the requisite words—“Roger, gear up”—as he raised the handle to the Up position.
This was the crystalline moment Dan loved so well, the moment of transition between ground and air, when the laws of aerodynamics took over the job of physical support of the jet. He’d become a pilot for this very moment: the feel of mighty engines and the roar of the slipstream, all converging on the reality of sustained flight on an invisible highway of air. Flying was a thrill in even a single-engine airplane, but to levitate a leviathan — a metallic eggshell longer than a football field and heavier than a house — was a magic he could never quite comprehend. Every liftoff was a philosophical wonder that left a broad smile on his face.