Sean replied crisply, ‘Roger, AirBox Twelve, cleared to land, three six right.’
In front of Carrie now were the lights of the airport, and the white marker lights that outlined all nine thousand feet of their runway. Compared with what she’d had to deal with during her Navy career, flying S-3 Vikings off and on aircraft carriers, the airport runway looked huge, as big as the county. There was plenty of room to land, and with light winds and a clear night it should be routine. Now, try landing on a couple of acres of steel, rolling and heaving and pitching, with no room for error, no room for anything going wrong — though, of course, things do go wrong and maybe that was the real reason she was shuttling packages at midnight across CONUS and not ferrying passengers to London during the daylight and working for a real airline—
Her co-pilot said, ‘Five hundred feet, on airspeed, and sinking seven hundred feet per minute. Looks good, Carrie.’
She blinked her eyes. Damn woolgathering.
‘Yep.’
One last scan of the instruments: everything looked good, airspeed at 135 knots on glide slope, flaps down, wheels down and locked, the yoke in her hands trembling just a bit as she imagined she could feel the entire vibration of the cargo jet, letting her know through the sense of touch and her other senses what was going on. And what was going on was a nice, normal landing, and…
Here we go, she thought.
The last few seconds, it seemed like the runway surface was on a giant elevator, rising right up, fast and fast and fast, and—
Slight bang.
Main gear down and…
Nose gear down.
Sean next to her, calling out the decreasing airspeed as she reversed the engines: ‘One hundred knots, eighty knots,’ and Carrie applied the brakes, and ‘Sixty knots.’
Good. Now they were at taxiing speed, no longer an aircraft, just a big old bus on the ground, and in her earphones Memphis Tower said, ‘AirBox Twelve, switch to ground control, point nine, on Yankee one.’
‘Memphis, ground,’ Carrie said, toggling the radio switch on the yoke. ‘AirBox Twelve is clear on Yankee one.’
A different voice now: ‘AirBox Twelve, proceed to ramp AB12.’
‘Roger.’
Now the jet felt heavy and slow, like an overweight Greyhound bus, waddling its way into the Port Authority terminal. With gravity now in control and working its magic touch, Carrie felt like she was driving a luxury car whose power steering had just cut off.
She made the left turn, headed to the processing terminals up ahead. She switched on the number two radio on the center console, allowing her now to talk to the AirBox dispatcher.
‘AirBox center, this is AirBox twelve,’ she called out.
‘Evenin’, Twelve,’ came the soft twang of the dispatcher working tonight. Hank something-or-other.
‘Where do you want us tonight?’
‘Ramp four,’ came the reply.
‘Ramp four it is, thank you kindly,’ she said.
A chuckle. ‘Not a problem, Splash.’
Her hands tightened on the nose-wheel-steering tiller bar. She could sense Sean stiffen up in his seat, decided not to say anything about that crack. Okay. Carrie turned and said, ‘Got that? Ramp four.’
Sean had the post-flight checklist already in hand. ‘Ramp four, boss. And we’re five minutes ahead of schedule. The General will love that. Get a jump on getting all those letters and packages on their merry way.’
‘It’s what we do, Sean. It’s what we do.’
Now that they were nearing the ramp, fatigue started setting in, especially around Carrie’s shoulders and hips. With only one other crew member, there wasn’t much down time flying from San Jose to Memphis, and with most of the cabin space back there taken up with cargo there also wasn’t much room to walk around. There were rumors that General Bocks was considering expanding his reach to the Pacific Rim countries, which made perfect business sense, but Carrie knew that something would have to change before she’d be up to make that kind of grueling flight.
There. Halted and everything else was on auto, and in a matter of minutes she and Sean had de-planed, carrying their heavy kit bags full of manuals and charts. Both were now wearing the uniform caps of AirBox. Sean didn’t seem to mind the uniform — he had flown C-141 Starlifters for the Air Force and was still in the Reserves — but it was too Air Force for Carrie’s taste. She preferred the old Navy flight suit, which reminded her of something…
They walked to the entranceway leading to the inside of the AirBox terminal system. Around them workers in AirBox jumpsuits were hustling to unload their flight, and Carrie spared a glance back to where the scissors-cargo unloaders were sidling up the fuselage. With the way they worked, the damn plane would be empty in less than twenty minutes. A hell of a system. Still had to give the General credit, though the damn penny-pinching during the last quarter had been a royal pain in the ass. Everything from reduced fuel burn and landing reserves to the per diem being cut back — there were struggles going on out there, and she hoped the General would win this one without too much of a fight. She really needed to fly, and with her record she really needed the job.
Then she spotted another man out there in the unloading crew, with a jumpsuit that looked cleaned and ironed. This guy wasn’t manhandling pallets of freight off the MD-11. He was standing there, holding something in his hand, wearing a set of earphones that connected to the wandlike piece of equipment in his grasp. Every now and then he went over to one of the passing pallets. The other crew members ignored him.
Sean saw where she was looking and said, ‘Homeland Security on the job again.’
‘Yeah, but it still gives me the creeps.’
‘What’s the matter? Afraid we slipped a suitcase nuke into Memphis, on its way to Manhattan?’
‘Nothing to joke about,’ Carrie said, and she walked across the tarmac, her co-pilot at her side. She knew she had been snippy but she was tired and she was in no mood for jokes about terrorism.
As they climbed up the stairs to the main floor of the freight terminal, she said, ‘Sean, see you in a bit.’ Sean looked over, a bit surprised.
‘What’s up?’
‘Got to see a man about something.’
‘Where?’
‘Dispatch.’
He frowned. ‘Be careful.’
Carrie smiled at him. ‘There are old pilots, there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots, and I’m not feeling too bold. Just a tad cranky. But I’ll be careful.’
‘Thanks,’ he said, and added: ‘I like flying with you, Carrie. Don’t screw anything up.’
‘I won’t.’
Sean went on, while Carrie kept walking down the hallway, noticing with her mom’s eyes how untidy parts of the building were beginning to look. Despite the cheery commercials on television and the media’s continuing love affair with the General and his somewhat unorthodox way of doing business, AirBox was barely hanging on. And when you’re hanging on from a cliff by your fingernails, worrying whether your hair was combed was way the hell down on your list of concerns.
Down the hallway, up two flights of stairs, and she was outside the dispatch center. There was a row of light orange plastic chairs — and why in hell did these chairs always have to be light orange? Why not blue? Or yellow? — and she took one, placing her kit bag down by her feet. In front of her was a door marked Dispatch with a keypad by the doorknob, and she waited. She should have been checking out with Sean. She should have been getting ready to get home and spend some time with Susan before her daughter went off to school. She should have been doing something else instead of sitting here, but instead she waited.
Carrie hoped that she wouldn’t have to wait long.