16 Souls

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Seven Months before — January 21^st

Regal 12

With the cabin full of anxious, frightened faces Marty had just seen — all pleading for deliverance — the act of selecting the PA position and preparing to speak to them brought its own level of terror. They would be listening to his words, and hearing reassurance, but was it enough? And how much of it would be true?

Marty clicked the mic button, hearing the corresponding sound of the PA transmitter through the open cockpit door.

Folks, this is the captain. I… there’s no way to sugarcoat anything. You know we’ve had a midair collision with another airplane, and you’re all aware by now the fuselage of that airplane has somehow become attached to our right wing, and as far as we know, everyone over there is alive. We are, of course, flyable, or I wouldn’t be talking to you right now. We can land back at Denver, and we’re making preparations right now to do that. Denver has closed all but the runway we used for takeoff because of the snowstorm, so… we’ll get on the ground as quickly as we can. We have a little under two hours of fuel on board, so it won’t take long. My plan right now is to try our best to land carefully and smoothly without letting those folks fall off our wing, but I’ve got to… we have to get some more technical help from our company on airspeeds and such.

Marty felt his finger weaken on the transmit button and let it pop out. Was he lying to them? No, at least not yet, but how the hell could they keep the same angle of attack and slow down? Chances were not good for landing and getting stopped before running out of snow covered concrete .

So far, no lies, he thought. He hated telling lies to passengers.

Once more he pressed the transmit button.

Okay, there are two things you need to know. First, as tempting as it seems, that we could just open a few emergency hatches and bring those people over here, that’s not possible. The wind is going over that wing at just under three hundred miles per hour, and there’s just no way. And I can’t slow us down enough. Worse, anybody exposed to even half that wind in below freezing temperatures would be hideously frostbitten within seconds, even if they weren’t swept off the wing. Now, we WILL need to slow down to land, but if we do it wrong and change the angle of attack… the angle of the airflow over the wing… we may lose them. I’ll try to keep you informed, but in the meantime, stay seated, stay calm, and a few prayers wouldn’t hurt… mainly for those folks on our wing.

He replaced the microphone and glanced at the copilot, who was grimly hanging onto the controls and doing a surprisingly good job of holding their heading and altitude at 9-thousand.

“You okay for a few more minutes, Ryan? I need to talk to the company.”

He was nodding. “Yeah. I’m getting used to her now. We’re gonna slow for landing, right?”

“We’ll do the best we can, Ryan.”

“Okay. Captain, I don’t know if our trailing edge flaps will still work, but we can’t even try the leading edge devices,” Ryan said, his eyes riveted on the instruments. “They’ve got to be mangled on the right side, that leading edge.”

Marty considered the incongruity of the F/O’s flaky, lackadaisical attitude as they left Denver and this sudden burst of cogent analysis. It was as if someone else had slipped into the right seat. Even the panic was gone, or markedly subdued.

“Good point,” Marty replied.

“When you’re ready to configure, we’ll need to deactivate the leading edge devices through the circuit breakers, and they’re right behind me, I think.”

“Got it.”

“And… one more thing, Captain. If the flaps are screwed up, the flap asymmetry protection may not work, so we’ll need to milk them down a few increments at a time and make sure they’re coming out exactly the same.”

“Absolutely. Hang onto her… I’ll be on the sat phone. Then we’ll brief what we’re going to do.”

Ryan nodded, his eyes glued on the instruments.

Two flight attendants had moved into the back of the cockpit and Marty turned to face them.

“Can you wait?”

“We’ve… yes, I guess so,” one of them said. “but everyone back there is using a cell phone.

“Let them. Can’t harm a thing, regardless of the propaganda they teach!” Marty said as a cockpit chime announced an inbound satellite call from Chicago operations.

In the coach passenger cabin of Regal 12 cellular phones had broken out like a rash in almost every row, some passengers powering them on with success and locking up a signal, and others looking with frustration only at red “no service” warnings. Text messages were streaming from the aircraft like contrails as wives and husbands and lovers and passengers of all ages rushed to reassure parents and loved ones below that they were going to be okay.

Twenty feet away in the unheated, freezing interior of Mountaineer 2612, the same attempt was already underway by three of the passengers as the copilot returned to the cockpit.

“We may have lost one… a man toward the back… I couldn’t get a response and his head is at a strange angle. Three others are still unconscious but look okay, and people are… are…”

“Asking questions?”

He was nodding. “I told them to get on any coats they had and just wait, that we’re trying to figure it out.”

“Good.”

“Dear God, Captain, what are we going to do?”

Michelle shook her head, the hollow in the pit of her stomach a black hole. They were all freezing to death with no way to get inside the bigger aircraft, and barely attached somehow to the bigger wing, completely unable to communicate.

“Luke, did you see my cell phone? I remember now I was talking to the controller on it.”

He shook his head, his shoulders hunched against the cold soaking the thin white shirt he was wearing. She’d kept her black flight jacket on but he was struggling to pull his on now as he glanced at her feet, and remembered his pocket flashlight. It was already a painful maneuver to lean forward in the mess of the cockpit and try to look at the floor, but the cold made it far worse, and she could see his torso shaking slightly, the leather jacket laid on his seat.

“Luke, get your jacket on first.”

“It’s okay… I’m already down here.” He pushed his body forward, along her left leg, trying to get his head under the dash panel.

“See it?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“Damn.”

“I have a cell phone. Want that one?”

“Yes. But get your jacket on.”

He complied finally, zipping it up against the deepening chill. It was already well below freezing in the fuselage, the battering, frozen wind sucking out all remaining heat with every passing second.

Luke fished out his cell phone and handed it to Michelle, who punched it on and once again dialed 911.