16 Souls

CHAPTER FOUR

Seven Months before — January 21^st

Regal 12

Captain Marty Mitchell had shifted the phone to his right hand and sighed as he nodded to a female passenger standing nearby and then tried to catch the young gate agent’s eyes. The agent seemed oblivious to his presence and he smiled a conspiratorial smile at her, a collegial attempt to share the pressures of upset passengers and disrupted schedules.

The agent looked up at last and smiled at him.

The dispatcher on the other end of the phone was taking his own sweet time coming back on the line after Marty had pushed him for answers. But as captain, he’d meant every word, even if he sounded overly demanding. Until they gave him the time he was supposed to have the airplane started and waiting at the “wash-rack”- the deicing hard stand near the end of the ramp — he simply wasn’t going to leave the gate. The snow storm was too intense, and the absolute FAA prohibition about flying with any snow or ice on the wings was a rule he was not about to bend.

God, he was tired of such battles! Why couldn’t he have been a pilot back when captains had some respect and authority, rather than being treated as disobedient peons every time they had the audacity to make an autonomous decision?

He watched the young agent dealing with the passengers with a friendly demeanor and a constant smile, obviously enjoying her job. It was a deeply refreshing sight, since too many of Regal’s gate agents were smoldering with discontent over years of incompetent management or past mergers that hadn’t worked out well. Good people, bad system, he thought, wishing for moment he could have flown for a really professional carrier like Delta, or a great company like Southwest or Alaska. Regal was always on the bottom in customer ratings, and they simply refused to spend the money necessary to change it.

“Captain Mitchell, you still there?” the dispatcher’s voice snapped him back from his thoughts. The voice was pained.

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I dropped everything else to get this, because you asked, but your time for the de-ice rack is eight-twenty. Normally you get that number right before push-back from operations.”

He ignored the dig. “Any change in the forecast?”

“Don’t you have the paperwork?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s all in there. But… I’ll verbally re-brief it if you insist. It’s just… we’re really busy down here.”

“No. That’s okay. We’ll be ready. Hope things get quieter for you guys.” He replaced the handset behind the podium and looked around for Ryan Borkowsky, his copilot, who was treating the storm as if it were some sort of fun opportunity.

He’d noticed Ryan drifting off to one of the nearby coffee stands a few minutes back, presumably to buy his irritatingly predictable triple-shot, skinny, no-whip, one-Splenda mocha and another oatmeal scone. There was a yawning generational gap between the two of them, and it showed clearly in the younger man’s attitude. Borkowsky was one of the small percentage of airline pilots who had signed on because flying was convenient, not because it was a life force. Marty had been startled to hear that he’d never spent time as a kid hanging around airports, pumping gas into light airplanes, or otherwise just being in love with flying. How was that possible? How was it possible to be a pilot and not be in love with flying? The very concept was offensive.

“So, what’s the story, fearless leader?” Borkowsky’s laconic voice reached him from behind. Marty turned, wincing internally at the unprofessional image before him. Borkowsky’s blue uniform coat was unbuttoned, revealing his slowly exploding girth and a badly wrinkled shirt, and he was munching indelicately on a scone like a hungry horse cropping grass.

“I wondered where you were,” Marty said, trying to keep his tone friendly, “Then I remembered, they sell scones in the terminal.”

“You ever lose track of me, that’s where to look. I love these things.”

Marty suppressed the word “obviously.”

Twice he’d flown with Borkowsky. He could be engaging and funny and he was obviously a competent airman, but what rubbed Marty the wrong way was his disengaged attitude, as if he was just going through the motions. Far too blasé.

The thought of their Orlando layover hotel entered Marty’s head and he wondered if he’d be able to drag himself to the 24-hour hotel gym once they got there. After a tense evening like this he’d need a workout.

The ancient 24 pin printer positioned for the pilots behind the gate podium was chattering again, and Marty waited for it to stop before ripping off the latest opus: a hardcopy of the weather report. Buried in the verbiage was the news that many of the airports in a four hundred mile radius of Denver were closing because of the storm. Salt Lake had been overwhelmed much earlier in the day. Colorado Springs had just closed, their last runway hopelessly behind the snow removal abilities of their exhausted crews, and the storm was marching like a ravenous beast on everything to the east. All the private fields, and even Buckley, the Air National Guard base nearby, were closed, their runways now drifting dangerously with accumulated snow. Denver International itself was down to two operating runways, and if the dispatcher was wrong, they could end up with only one in operation before the evening rush was done. Inbound flights were stacking up in holding patterns in four directions and the disruption to Regal Airlines’ intricate schedule was beginning to get serious.

The gate agent stepped toward him. “You ready to board ‘em, Captain?” she asked sweetly.

“Yes, I guess we are. About time to get out of your hair.”

The copilot was watching her approvingly as the agent turned and left to open the jetway door.

“So, I guess it’s time for me to go out in the blizzard and do my Eskimo impression,” Ryan said.

“What?” Marty managed, trying to fit the words with realistic meaning.

“You know. Put on a parka and kick some tires,” Borkowsky said as he slurped down the last of his mocha and made an unsuccessful attempt to arc the wadded up scone wrapper into the nearest trash can.

Marty turned away, working to generate his own smile at the passengers as he picked up his brain bag and headed for the jetway. This was no evening for apathy, or a lackadaisical first officer. He made a mental note to double-check everything Borkowsky did.