16 Souls

CHAPTER EIGHT

Seven Months before — January 21^st

Regal 12

The raw instinct in Marty Mitchell’s mind propelled by decades of experience instantly translated the controller’s tone as an emergency. If a controller was demanding their altitude, something was wrong — and the most likely cause would be a mistake.

Marty’s eyes raked past the altimeter now showing level at 12,000 feet and he glanced at the copilot in an accusatory microsecond. Had they dialed in the wrong number somehow? Time had already dilated for Marty, whose career was on the line for any FAA violation even if his copilot had led him there.

Is 12-thousand right? he questioned himself, vaguely remembering the exchange with the copilot as he raised a finger to keep Ryan from responding and buying further trouble. Marty hit the transmit button himself.

“Regal Twelve is level one-two thousand, as instructed.”

He released the button to listen for the answer, inwardly holding his breath, and wondering somewhere in the periphery of his consciousness what the gray shape rapidly coalescing out of the snow might be. He thought he caught a white light, then a red beacon, and in the space of a second it grew into the nightmare shape of an airplane.

“Regal Twelve, descend immediately to eleven thousand! Acknowledge!”

The controller’s voice was somewhere distant, trumped by the rapidly evolving nightmare before him.

Marty’s hands grabbed the yoke by instinct, shoving violently and automatically snapping off the autopilot as he threw the big Boeing forward into a negative G maneuver trying to dive clear. But the specter was too close and a bit lower he now realized, and before he could even form the intent to yank back on the throttles and the yoke, whatever it was flashed by on the right accompanied by the bone-crushing impact of metal against metal, head-on into to the nose, an impact that threw them forward and then to the left as a flash of fire accompanied by something scraping over the top of the cockpit as the 757’s right wing collided with something big.

There was another momentary flash of flame on the right and then nothing.

The noise and shuddering and cacophony of warnings going off in the big Boeing’s cockpit left him nothing to do but react with an aviator’s muscle memory, his hands and feet all over the controls urging the 757 back to some form of stable flight, his eyes taking in the fact that somehow both engines were still running, and somehow they were still flying, though the big jet was yawing horribly to the right even with almost full left rudder. Something was pulling down on the right wing as if they’d lost half their lift on that side. The yoke was almost all the way over to the left, the rudder almost full to the left, and it felt like he was millimeters away from losing control.

“WHAT HAPPENED?” the copilot was shouting, clearly panicked. “WHAT HAPPENED?”

Marty checked the altitude and airspeed. They were still flying, but only barely. He goosed the right engine up in power almost to the limit, feeling a bit of relief in the control forces required to stay airborne. The speed had crunched down from the 250 knots to around 200 knots, but the big bird felt like it was wallowing, and he let the speed creep back up to 250, noting somewhere in the back of his mind the more stable feel at the higher speed.

“Midair!” was all Marty could manage.

“THERE’S… THERE’S SOMETHING ON OUR RIGHT WING!”

“Calm down, Ryan! Tell me what you… you’re seeing.”

The copilot was swiveled around in the right seat, straining against his seat belt to look out the side window. “THAT’S ALL I CAN SEE!”

Intercom call chimes were ringing but Marty dared not let go of the controls.

“Ryan, pull yourself… together… answer the, uh, intercom. I have to know…”

“OKAY!”

“…know… what’s back there. What’s going on. How bad are we hit?”

His own words sent another chill down his back. Wasn’t that the phrase the doomed crew of a Boeing 727 used seconds after hitting a light plane over San Diego years ago… a disaster no one survived?

“Ah… Ryan… you may have to go back and look yourself.”

The copilot was nodding vigorously enough to register in his peripheral vision, and his eyes were huge when Marty glanced at his face. Slowly, Ryan reached over and fumbled with the interphone panel before remembering to pick up the handset.

“Y-yes?” he stammered.

The 757 shuddered sickeningly for a second and then stabilized, as if something was still happening on the right wing. He glanced at the Master Caution light and realized his ears had been popping. The cabin had been breached and they were depressurizing. Must get the oxygen masks on, he thought, before remembering they were only at 12,000 feet. That could wait.

Marty tried to force himself to calm down and think. He had it under control for the moment. Both engines were running. He had her fairly level, even if his left leg was beginning to shake against the force he was using to hold the left rudder in.

Trim! He remembered, holding back the urge to pull his right hand off the yoke and motor the control for the rudder trim full left. Gingerly he transferred all the force to his left hand, realizing the control forces weren’t that excessive. Full left rudder trim was helping his leg now, but not much else.

Marty glanced at the center panel to read the warnings that had popped up automatically on the computer display screen. Thank God the hydraulic systems were not part of the list, he thought. All flight controls appeared intact. But whatever airplane had been out there they had hit and he was sure whoever those poor people were, they were spiraling to their deaths at that very moment. How his 757 was still airborne was already the stuff of luck, and that luck might not last.

What the holy hell was he doing at our altitude? Marty’s mind was screaming, the thought sending another arctic chill through his spine as he connected the approach controller’s attempts to reach the Mountaineer commuter, the phantom TCAS warning that had disappeared, and worst of all, the controller’s last urgent call asking their altitude.

Oh, God! Did we screw up?

The controller’s voice was still in his ear, demanding they descend immediately, as if he already knew about the collision.

Marty worked his finger back to the transmit button on the top of the control yoke as he fought to maintain control.

“Denver Approach… Regal Twelve… declaring an emergency! We’ve hit someone up here. Midair collision. We think there’s damage to our right wing but we’re still flying. We’re trying to assess the damage.”

A few telling seconds elapsed before the controller’s voice returned, quieter, tense, and focused. “Roger, Regal Twelve. You need an emergency return to Denver?”

“Yes. Affirmative. We may… need to do a controllability check, but… yes.”

There was a flurry of motion to his right and Marty realized Ryan had dropped the receiver and was half out of his seat, obviously intent on getting out the door to the aft cabin.

“What, Ryan?”

“Ah… ah, they… they’re telling me… I got to see this for myself, but…”

“What?”

“A PLANE’S STUCK ON OUR WING!”

“WHAT?”

“A plane. Whoever we hit. They’re… they’re out there on the right wing. She says they can see people in the windows.”

“That’s not possible!” For a split second they looked at each other, the copilot half out of his seat and clearly panicked, Marty in complete disbelief with time dilating and seconds feeling like minutes as the momentary glimpse of the other aircraft flashing by replayed in his mind.

“Go! Get back there and assess it.”

“Right.” Ryan resumed the uncoordinated scramble to get the cockpit door to open, all but tumbling out into the alcove by the forward galley. One of the flight attendants shot into the cockpit as soon as he was out, and Marty could feel the panic in her voice before he even glanced at her ashen face.

“Captain! We’ve… got a plane full of people stuck on our wing!”

“Anyone hurt?”

“I don’t know… it looks pretty mangled up.”

“In our airplane?”

“Oh… no. Oh God! What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to make an emergency landing. Get the cabin prepared.”

“Can we bring them in our cabin?”

“What?”

“Those people?”

“Get… get the cabin prepared for an emergency landing. NOW!”

She nodded and turned, then realized she hadn’t uttered an answer and leaned back in, wild eyed. “Yes, sir.”

Ryan was back almost as fast, breathing hard, standing between the seats as if he was afraid to resume his position in the copilot’s chair.

“What’ve we got?”

“I’ve… I don’t believe it. It’s a Beech 1900, on our right wing, over the right engine. We’re leaking fuel like a sonofabitch… he’s gashed a huge chunk of the top of our wing… and his wing and engine on the left are gone, mostly, but the fuselage is intact and, Captain, the people inside I think are okay, or at least alive.”

“The fuselage is stuck?”

“It’s… I don’t know how to describe it… the remains of his left engine cowling are there, the prop and actual engine are gone, but the landing gear on the right side… best I can tell, it’s just jammed into our wing. I think it’s the only thing holding him there.”

“So, he’s not going to fall off?”

“I don’t know. He’s rocking around in the airflow and it’s like our slipstream is trying to lift him off. I… I think we’re getting lift from his right wing, the way its cocked up. But if they fall off… they can’t fly like that.”

“Okay.”

“Can we fly?”

“We are flying.”

“I mean, can we get us both down okay?”

Marty looked around, recognizing the all but feral panic in the young man’s eyes.

“We’ll do out best, Ryan.”

“I mean… I mean… Captain, there are people alive out there!’