DIVISIBLE MAN--ENGINE OUT & OTHER SHORT FLIGHTS, page 4
Rosemary II gave me a look meant to shame me. “It’s Christmas, Will. Everybody knows everybody.”
“What about a detour? Can’t they get around the pile-up?”
“It’s Christmas, Will,” Pidge said, piling on. “Granny and all the fucking uncles are taking the detour. It’s a knot. That’s why Earl called Andy for a police escort.”
I turned to Pidge.
“You know the rules, Pidge. Angel Flight or not, the pilot cannot allow the need to infect his judgment.”
“Her judgment, dumbass,” she punched at my shoulder. “Yeah, I know the fucking rules.”
But you’re doing this anyway, I thought. This is not good.
Pidge busied herself with her flight kit, but it was a ploy. The way she had everything organized told me she had already filed a flight plan and finished the preflight.
“How much gas are you taking?” I asked.
“All of it,” she said.
“Well,” I said grimly. “You will need it. Because when you can’t get into Marshfield, you may have to fly to Nebraska to find a place to land.”
* * * * *
I didn’t want anything to do with this.
My holiday delivery had been made. My work here was done. I didn’t want to be around to see this emergency unfold. A big part of me feared Pidge was about to do something monumentally stupid.
I decided to finish my coffee and get out of the way.
Just as soon as I helped Pidge load her things in the plane.
“What are you doing?” she asked when I joined her on the walk to the ramp.
“Helping you load up.”
“Then why am I fucking carrying all this shit?”
“Because you’re pilot-in-command of this dumbass idea.”
We walked to the airplane without continuing the conversation. Shining and damp, the Mojave sat on the ramp looking the way all airplanes look to me—like a glorious creature restrained. Like its landing gear and wheels represented chains locking her sleek body to the earth.
Pidge pulled down the door which served as a stair and climbed in. I waited on the ramp. While she thumped through the cabin toward the cockpit, I pressed my hand against the aluminum skin of the airplane. I closed my eyes and tried to feel something meaningful while my hand traded heat for cold with the airplane. I tried to feel the future—as if a touch could join me to this flying machine and tell me everything would be okay. Or tell me it would not.
I strained to hear machine whispers. I searched the insides of my eyelids for a vision of wheels touching down on damp pavement after a challenging but safe flight. The airplane protected its mysteries and revealed no prescient secrets to me. I broke the bonding touch, leaving the question unanswered.
I was about to take up the weather argument with Pidge when the distant sound of sirens cut through the fog. I recognized the warble of an Essex PD cruiser, but it harmonized with off-key notes from a second unit. Both grew louder, and the fog on the other side of the hangar soon throbbed with flashing heartbeats of blue and red.
The sirens abruptly stopped, and the lights grew brighter, eventually rounding the buildings. Andy nosed her cruiser up against the hangar. A large, square rescue squad ambulance pulled up behind the airplane.
An EMT hopped out and hurried to the back of the unit. The driver, another EMT, rounded the front fender and walked toward me. Andy came up close behind him.
“Are you the pilot?” the driver asked.
I thumbed toward the cabin and said, “She is. In the cockpit.”
The driver glanced back at his unit, at the drama unfolding behind the rear doors. Then he leaned toward the aircraft door to look for Pidge.
“She’s not really going to do this, is she?”
“She won’t do anything unsafe, if that’s your question,” I answered a bit defensively. Andy correctly read my tone as unhappy and bounced a worried look in my direction.
The first EMT hustled up with a heavy case in hand. “This goes in the cabin with the kid.”
“How much does it weigh?” I asked.
“About seventy pounds,” he said. He strained against the weight. I leaned into it and grabbed one side of the case. Together we heaved it up into the cabin.
“I got it,” I said, and I pushed it behind the last seat. I automatically estimated its effect on the aircraft weight and balance, considering that Pidge had loaded full fuel. The calculation grew more critical when the co-driver produced two more heavy, hardshell cases. I helped load them. I leaned in the cabin and called up to Pidge to give her the numbers for a revised weight-and-balance estimate.
By the time I stepped back onto the ramp, both EMTs had gone to the rear of the ambulance. I watched them help a nurse pull a gurney with folding legs from the back of the unit. An IV bag hung above the figure on the gurney.
So small.
The child had been wrapped in blankets for protection against the cold. She lay almost entirely hidden. Even with the blanket bulk, she looked tiny. A lock of brown hair peeked from her wrap. Someone, a civilian, a woman with worry etched deep in her skin, hurried to tuck the blankets around the child and over her face as the gurney rolled.
Andy looked at me with pain shading her green eyes.
“Oh, this is not good,” I muttered to the only person listening. Me.
The cluster of attendants rolled the gurney up to the Mojave.
“That won’t fit,” I said of the stretcher on wheels. People think all airplanes have the interior dimensions of an airliner. “She’ll have to be carried up and she’ll have to be in a seat. We can recline it, but she’ll have to be strapped in.”
After a split second of hesitation, they set about untangling the child. The nurse detached the IV bag and readied herself to carry it alongside the girl. The EMTs rearranged the blankets, then slid their hands under the girl and effortlessly lifted her. One tucked the girl’s head against the other’s shoulder to ensure she would not be bumped against the door frame.
“Take the back seat on the left,” I instructed them. I hurried up into the cabin ahead of them and positioned myself in the seat across the aisle.
The EMT carried the child up the steps embedded in the door. Hunched over, he squeezed into the cabin and swung her into the seat. I leaned over and grabbed the seatback mechanism, reclining it two notches. Any farther and it would interfere with the door.
The nurse entered the cabin with the IV bag. She looked around for somewhere to hang it. The smooth moldings in the cabin roof offered no anchor points.
“Andy!” I called out. “Go get a wire coat hanger from Rosemary II!”
A minute later Andy handed a coat hanger through the open cabin door. The nurse passed it to me. I did a little bending, then jammed it into the plastic molding above the seat. The nurse fixed the IV bag in place, then set about unpacking portable monitors from the hardshell cases. She meticulously unwound leads and made connections. After several minutes, two of the complex devices beeped and filled their screens with data.
After ensuring that the IV tubes were not pinched or obstructed, the nurse backed out of the cabin to let the co-driver and me out. The mother barely allowed us to clear before she hurried up into the cabin to be with her daughter.
I touched the nurse on the sleeve and beckoned her toward the tail of the airplane.
“This looks bad,” I said in the lowest possible voice. It was a question. The expression on the nurse’s face telegraphed her answer.
“She should have been at the clinic three days ago,” she said. “Her condition has become…aggressive. We agreed to drive her but to be honest, especially in this fog…” she shook her head. “Can the pilot really get us there?”
I looked at the mist floating all around us. “If it’s like this in Marshfield, no. And she can’t bring you back here. She’s going to have to fly on to find someplace above minimums to land. This is a very bad idea.”
“This is the only idea,” the nurse said. “I hate to put it that way. I know how these things work. If I were you, I wouldn’t make the flight.”
“And what’s her outcome if we call it off?”
“I refuse to answer that.”
“Okay.”
I gave her a pat on the shoulder, and she hurried back to the stairs to take her place in the cabin. I backed away with Andy.
Pidge appeared in the cabin doorway. She reached down for the straps on the door.
“Wait!” I called out. I turned to Andy.
Her eyes told me she saw this coming.
“I guess this proves I’ll do anything to avoid the big dinner tonight,” I said.
She put her hands on either side of my face and planted a kiss.
“I know.”
I broke away from wanting another kiss and hurried to the cabin door.
“You’re going to need a hand,” I told Pidge. I expected a smart-ass reply, but she simply nodded, then worked her way up to the pilot’s seat.
I hunched my way into the cabin and took a knee beside the mother, who sat directly across the aisle from the child. The nurse had taken the seat behind the pilot’s seat, facing aft toward her patient.
I put a hand on the mother’s arm.
“Ma’am,” I said. “You need her to arrive in Marshfield quickly and safely.”
She nodded at me. Her eyes were wet.
“That pilot up front may not look like it, but she’s the best there is. But this flight is going to be tough, and as good as she is, she’s going to need help. We also need all the fuel we can carry. We’re loaded up and we’re going to pick up ice. You have a tough choice. You can go along, which means I have to get off. Or I can take the co-pilot’s seat and increase the chances of getting her there. But if I do that, it has to be without you. Because we can’t both go. We’ll be overloaded.”
It was a flat-out lie.
The woman’s face quivered and wrinkled. Tears spilled. “But—but she’s my—she’s my baby!”
I took her hand. She had more to say but couldn’t get the words out. She knew the potential dark side of this decision, of leaving her child. I knew it, too. I knew I might be stealing a mother from her child’s final moments. But I also knew there was little chance we were going to land this flight in Marshfield.
“Let us do this for her. Like she was our own,” I said.
* * * * *
Pidge ignited the right engine while I secured the door. On the way back up the aisle I gave the nurse a reassuring nod, entirely false. By the time I strapped in the co-pilot’s seat, Pidge had the left engine running. She let the Mojave roll at once. We wheeled around on the ramp and rolled for a departure on Runway 13. As we taxied, I saw Andy standing beside her cruiser, holding the mother by the shoulder as the woman shook, sobbing.
I gave Andy an apologetic thumbs-up while working the radios to copy our IFR clearance. ATC cleared us direct and added the latest weather from Marshfield, as if to make a point. I read back their instructions and received an immediate release, with a request to report airborne on Center frequency.
You can know an airport intimately, but when low visibility steals your orientation, even the most familiar taxiways and runways become alien environments. Pidge and I strained to see the yellow taxi line that took us toward the runway. At the Hold Short line, I worked through the pre-takeoff checklist while Pidge performed each check. During the run-up, she took an extra minute to listen to the engines with her eyes closed.
“Zero-zero takeoff,” I said through the intercom. We’d been through this before, recently, in a snowstorm, but this time our roles were reversed. This time Pidge sat in the command seat. She would fix her attention on the instruments while I maintained a visual orientation to the runway, holding us on the centerline with the rudder pedals until I called for her to rotate.
We finished the pre-takeoff checklist. Pidge back-taxied into position on the runway. I made the departure announcement over the silent radio frequency for Essex County. Pidge lined us up and slowly worked the throttles forward while holding the brakes. The engines sang. The airframe shuddered. When the manifold pressure reached twenty inches, she let the brakes go and pushed the throttles to the stops. The Mojave surged forward.
We both held the control yoke. I firmly worked the pedals, guiding the nosewheel down the runway centerline.
“Power check,” Pidge called out.
“Suction,” Pidge called out.
I fixed my eyes on the runway ahead. I barely saw the white lines below the nose as we raced forward into the blinding mist.
“Airspeed’s alive,” Pidge called out.
The runway lights ticked past us, ever faster. I watched the needle swing on the airspeed indicator.
“Rotate!” I called, giving us an extra five knots for comfort.
Pidge pulled the yoke and the Mojave leaped free of the runway. My world, the world over the nose, went white. Pidge glued her eyes to the instruments.
“Blue line. Gear up,” she said. I pulled the handle and monitored until the light said all three wheels were tucked in.
“Positive rate,” I reported as the airspeed indicator needle marked our climb speed.
I switched to the air traffic control frequency. “Chicago Center, Angel Flight One One Kilo with you, climbing to six thousand.”
* * * * *
The cruise portion of the flight unfolded uneventfully. It may have been the Angel Flight call sign, or it may have been the utter absence of other aircraft on the frequency, but we seemed to get priority treatment from air traffic control. Direct routing put us close to Marshfield in less than an hour, far faster than an ambulance.
Not fast enough.
Just as we began our descent, the nurse touched my shoulder. I turned around and she met my eyes with a dark expression.
“She’s not doing well. Not at all. How much longer?”
Pidge had accepted vectors for an instrument approach into Marshfield. We chose runway 16, which is fifteen hundred feet longer than the only other option. The best instrument approach into Marshfield could only lower us to within 400 feet of the ground. I didn’t think the visibility in any direction was much more than 400 feet. On top of everything, we were accumulating ice. The surface temperature at Marshfield hovered above freezing, putting the freezing level just above the ground. If we were lucky, we might shed ice once we reached minimum descent altitude, but we’d be collecting it throughout the approach.
I looked back at the nurse. She didn’t have headphones on, so I pulled mine off to avoid shouting over the intercom into Pidge’s ears.
“Close. Another ten minutes,” I said. She shook her head as if that might not do. I found myself trying hard not to look at the bundle wrapped up in the rear seat. As the nurse drew a deep breath and started to turn away, I caught her arm. “That’s if we break out. It doesn’t look good.”
“Then what?”
“We try again,” I said. “But it means picking up a lot of ice. We can’t keep trying indefinitely.”
She let it sink in.
“It might not matter,” she said. She delivered a pointed look, then turned back to her charge.
I put the headphones back on.
“What’s the story?” Pidge asked.
“Not your concern,” I said.
“Fuck that,” Pidge answered. “I’m taking us down to two hundred. Fourteen forty MSL.”
Instrument pilots flying a blind approach follow strict procedures. The ironclad rule is to descend to the prescribed altitude. If you do not see the runway environment or find yourself in a position from which you can land safely, you execute the missed approach procedure. You don’t descend one inch below the prescribed Minimums. Period. No other option exists.
Except the very dangerous practice of busting Minimums. Pidge just announced her intention to do exactly that, cutting our safety margin in half.
“I’ll put us there. Needles crossed. You find our way out of this fucking muck,” Pidge added.
“Affirmative.”
* * * * *
We tracked inbound on the approach course. The one blessing hidden in this mass of stagnant, cold, wet air was an absence of turbulence. Except for the steady song of the engines, we might have been sitting in someone’s living room. The Mojave rode through the air like a skater on glass.
I called out the final approach fix and dropped the landing gear. Pidge configured for the descent, adjusting speed, trim and attitude. The moving map display showed us dead center on course. The crossed needles on the navigation instruments told us we were aligned precisely on the glide path. Shades of darkness in the fog indicated the day had grown old.
“Five hundred above Minimums,” I called out to Pidge.
Her hands moved the controls microscopically.
“Four hundred above Minimums.”
Nothing but white in every direction.
“Three hundred.”
Airspeed nailed.
“Two hundred. Final gear check. Three green.”
“One hundred.”
Steady. On course. Needles perfectly crossed.
“Minimums.”
My eyes darted between the windshield and the altimeter.
“Minus one hundred.”
Nothing. Nothing but white. Not even the hint of a light.
“Minus two hundred!”
“Anything?” Pidge demanded. I felt her flinch on the yoke to arrest the descent.
“Nothing! Missed approach!”
She powered up slightly but held the altitude for a second. Any other time, I would have criticized her. Instead, I grabbed the extra second and frantically searched ahead and directly below. For an instant, I thought I saw a runway light. Then another. But it did us no good.
Pidge went to full throttle for the Missed Approach climb. I retracted the gear and called out the speed. I contacted Minneapolis Center and reported the bad news. They asked our intentions. I said we would try again.
“She’s starting to handle like a pig,” Pidge said. I glanced at the ice building on our windshield frame and on the wings. Pidge hit the deicing boots. Pieces flew into the slipstream, but not all of them.
