“The really big thing, however, which most airport planning hasn’t caught on to yet is that we’re moving toward the day when air freight business will be bigger than passenger traffic. Not long ago, hardly anybody wanted to work in air freight departments; it was backroom stuff; passenger business had the glamour. Not any more! Now the bright boys are heading for air freight. They know that’s where the future and the big promotions lie.”
Tanya laughed. “I’ll be old-fashioned and stick with people.”
A waitress came to their table. They ordered coffee, Tanya cinnamon toast, and Mel a fried egg sandwich.
When the waitress had gone, Mel grinned. “I guess I started to make a speech. I’m sorry.”
“Maybe you need the practice.”
“I’m not president of the Airport Operators Council any more. I don’t get to Washington as much, or other places either.”
Curiously, it was a speech of Mel’s which had brought them together to begin with. At one of the rare interline meetings which airlines held, he had talked about coming developments in aviation. Tanya had been there and later sent him one of her lower case notes:
great. mind suggestion? it would all be better if more abt people, not facts…
As well as amusing him, the note had caused him to think. It was true, he realized—he had concentrated on facts and systems. He revised his speech notes, shifting the emphasis as Tanya suggested. The result was the most successful presentation he had ever made. It gained him an ovation and was widely reported internationally. Afterward he had telephoned Tanya to thank her. That was when they had started seeing each other.
“So, why does your brother-in-law dislike you?”
“I guess he knows I’m not overly keen on him.”
“He is taking Flight Two to Rome tonight.”
Mel smiled. “The Golden Argosy?” Mel was aware that Trans America Flight Two—The Golden Argosy—was the airline’s prestige flight. He also knew that only the line’s most senior captains ever commanded it.
At an adjoining table, a woman said loudly, “Geez! Look at the time!”
Instinctively, Mel did. Getting up from the table, he told Tanya, “Don’t go away. I have to make a call.”
There was a telephone at the cashier’s counter that he used. Danny Farrow’s voice said, “I was going to call you. I just had a report on that stuck 707. You knew they had asked TWA for help? TWA has sent for Joe Patroni.”
“If anyone can get that airplane moved tonight,” Mel conceded, “it’ll be Joe.”
“Oh, a bit of good news—we found that United food truck. The driver was unconscious under the snow. But they got an inhalator on him, and he’ll be all right.”
Tanya was still at the table when Mel returned, though preparing to go.
“I’m coming, too.”
As Mel paid their check, two Trans America ticket agents entered the coffee shop. One came across.
“Excuse me, Mr. Bakersfeld… Mrs. Livingston, the D.T.M.’s looking for you. There is a stowaway—on Flight 80 from Los Angeles.”
Tanya appeared surprised. Aerial stowaways were seldom a cause of great concern.
Mel walked with Tanya from the coffee shop into the central lobby and stopped at the elevator.
“Drive carefully out there,” she cautioned.
“Your stowaway sounds interesting. It’ll give me a reason to see you again tonight.”
They were close together. As one, each reached out and their hands touched. Tanya said softly, “Who needs a reason?”
In the elevator, going down, he could still feel the warm smoothness of her flesh, and hear her voice.
4
Joe Patroni was on his way to the airport from his home. At the moment, the Italian-American, who was airport maintenance chief for TWA was halted in a traffic tie-up.
Legends had grown up around Joe Patroni.
Joe took a job as an airline mechanic, became a lead mechanic, then a foreman with a reputation as a top-notch troubleshooter. His crew could change an engine faster than an airplane manufacturer said it could be done; and with absolute reliability.
A contributing reason for his success was that he never wasted time on diplomacy. Instead, he went directly to the point, both with people and airplanes. He also had a total disregard for rank, and was equally forthright with everyone.
On one occasion, Joe Patroni walked off his job and, without prior consultation, rode an airplane to New York. He carried a package with him. On arrival, he went by bus and subway to the airline’s Olympian headquarters where he strode into the president’s office. Opening the package, he deposited an oily, disassembled carburetor on the presidential desk.
The president, who had never heard of Joe Patroni, and whom no one ever got to see without prior appointment, was apoplectic until Joe told him, “If you want to lose some airplanes in flight, throw me out of here. If you don’t, sit down and listen.”
The president sat down and listened. Afterward, he called in his engineering vice-president who ordered a mechanical modification affecting carburetor icing in flight, which Patroni had been urging unsuccessfully for months.
Soon Joe was promoted to senior supervisor, and a few years later was given the important post of maintenance chief at Lincoln International.
On a personal level, it was said that Joe Patroni made love to his wife, Marie, most nights, the way other men enjoyed a pre-dinner drink. In fact, he had been thus engaged when the telephone message came from the airport.
The same rumor continued: Patroni made love the same way he did everything else—with a long, thin cigar. This was untrue, at least nowadays. Marie, having coped with several pillow fires during their early years of marriage had forbidden any more cigars in bed. Joe complied with the edict because he loved his wife. He had reason to. When he married her, she was probably the most popular and beautiful hostess in the entire airline system, and twelve years and three children later she could still hold her own with most successors.
Another thing about Joe Patroni was that he never panicked in emergencies. Instead, he quickly assessed each situation. In the case of the mired 707, instinct told him there was time to finish what he was doing. Soon after, Marie raced to the kitchen in her robe and threw sandwiches together for Joe to eat during his twenty-five-mile drive to the airport. He nibbled on a sandwich now.
Being recalled to the airport after performing a full day’s work was not a new experience, but tonight the weather was worse than any other occasion he remembered. Traffic was moving at a crawl, or not at all. Both his own car and the one immediately ahead had been stationary for several minutes.
Five minutes went by. Ahead, Joe Patroni could see people getting out of cars and walking forward.
Someone shouted, “There’s been an accident. It’s a real mess.”
A large, dark shadow ahead proved to be a massive tractor-trailer unit on its side. The cumbersome eighteen-wheeled vehicle was spread across the road, blocking all traffic movement.
Two state police patrol cars were at the scene. They were questioning the truck driver, who appeared unhurt.
“All I did was touch the goddam brakes,” the driver protested loudly.
A tow truck, amber roof-beacon flashing, approached, moving slowly, on the opposite side of the obstruction.
Joe Patroni shoved forward. He puffed on his cigar, which glowed redly in the wind, and prodded the state trooper sharply on the shoulder. “Listen, son, you’ll never move that with one tow truck.”
“First, mister, there’s spilled gasoline around here. You’d better get that cigar out.”
Patroni ignored the instruction, as he ignored almost all smoking regulations. He waved the cigar toward the overturned tractor-trailer. “What’s more, son, you’d be wasting everybody’s time, including mine and yours, trying to get that hunk of junk right side up tonight. You’ll have to drag it clear so traffic can move, and to do that you need two more tow trucks.” He began moving around, using his electric lantern to inspect the big vehicle from various angles. As always, when considering a problem, he was totally absorbed.
Ten minutes later, working with the police officers, Joe Patroni had virtually taken charge. Helping to clear the blocked highway, he calculated, was the fastest means of getting there.
5
As Mel drove out of the terminal, wind and whirling snow slammed savagely against the car’s windshield.
Mel snapped his mike button down. “Ground control from mobile one. I’m at gate sixty-five, proceeding to runway three zero, site of the stuck 707.”
It took a quarter of an hour to reach the intersection where runway three zero was blocked by the Aéreo-Mexican 707. He stopped the car and got out.
Mel identified himself, then asked a man nearby, “Who are you?”
“Ingram, sir. Aéreo-Mexican maintenance foreman.”
In the past two hours, old-fashioned boarding ramps had been trundled from the terminal and passengers guided down them. The captain and first officer remained.
“Had the engines running twice. But she won’t come free. Just seems to dig herself in deeper. Now we’re taking off more weight, hoping that’ll help.”
Mel shivered. What was it? It was true, wasn’t it?—for the briefest instant he had had a premonition. He should ignore it, of course. Except that once, long ago, he had had the same feeling…
Back in his car Mel held the transmit button down. “This is mobile one, Danny. I’m going to the Conga Line.”
The Conga Line, prime mover of the airport snow-fighting system, was on runway one seven, left. In a few minutes, Mel thought grimly, he would find out for himself if there was truth, or merely malice, in the critical report of Captain Demerest’s Airlines Snow Committee.
6
Captain Vernon Demerest of Trans America had had a succession of affairs with beautiful and intelligent young women. One of them was a vivacious, attractive, English-born brunette, Gwen Meighen, to whose apartment Vernon Demerest was headed now. Later tonight, the two of them would leave for Rome on Trans America Flight Two. At the Rome end of the journey, there would be a three-day layover for the crew, which they could spend together. The idea excited him.
Another thing which had pleased him this evening was the Airlines Snow Committee report. The critical report had been solely Demerest’s idea. He made certain that the widely circulated report would cause a maximum of embarrassment and irritation to Mel Bakersfeld.
Captain Demerest stopped the car smoothly and got out. He was a little early.
Today’s flight to Rome would be an easy one. The reason was that he was flying as a line check captain. Anson Harris, almost as senior as Demerest himself, had been assigned to the flight and would occupy the command pilot’s left seat. Demerest would use the right seat—normally the first officer’s position—from where he would observe and report on Captain Harris’s performance.
Despite the fact that captains checked each other, the tests, both regular and special, were usually serious, exacting sessions. The pilots wanted them that way. Too much was at stake—public safety and high professional standards—for any mutual back-scratching, or for weaknesses to be overlooked.
Yet, Demerest treated any pilot he was assigned to test, junior or senior to himself, in precisely the same way—like a schoolboy summoned to the headmaster’s presence. When Demerest’s own time came they would give him the meanest, toughest check ride he had ever had, but Vernon Demerest turned in a flawless performance which could not be faulted.
This afternoon Demerest prefaced his check session by telephoning Captain Anson Harris at home. “It’ll be a bad night for driving. I like my crew to be punctual, so I suggest you allow plenty of time to get to the airport.”
Anson Harris, who in twenty-two unblemished years with Trans America had never been late for a single flight, was so outraged, he almost choked.
He arrived at the airport almost three hours ahead of flight time instead of the usual one hour.
“Hi, Anson.” Vernon Demerest dropped into an adjoining seat at the counter. “I see you took my good advice.”
“Good evening, Vern.”
“We’ll start the pre-flight briefing twenty minutes earlier than usual,” Demerest said. “I want to check your flight manuals.”
Thank God, Harris thought, his wife had gone through his manuals only yesterday, inserting the very latest amendments.
“You’re not wearing a regulation shirt.”
For a moment, Captain Harris could not believe his colleague was serious. Most pilots bought the unofficial shirts and wore them. Vernon Demerest did too.
“It’s all right. I won’t report on your wearing a non-reg shirt here. As long as you change it before you come on my flight.”
All right, he would change his unofficial shirt for a regulation one. He would probably have to borrow one. When he told them why, they would hardly believe him.
Demerest’s thoughts returned to the present.
Gwen was in the shower. When he went to her bedroom door, she called out, “Vernon, is that you?” Even competing with the shower, her voice—with its flawless English accent, which he liked so much—sounded exciting.
“I’m glad you came early,” she called again. “I want to have a talk. You can make tea, if you like.”
7
Inside his car, Mel Bakersfeld shivered. Was the shivering the reminder from the old injury of his foot?
The injury had happened sixteen years ago off the coast of Korea when Mel had been a Navy pilot flying fighter missions from the carrier Essex. He had a kind of instinct… In a dogfight with a MIG-15, Mel’s Navy F9F-5 had been shot down into the sea.
He managed a controlled ditching, but his left foot was trapped by a jammed rudder pedal. Somehow, underwater, his foot came free. In intense pain, half-drowned, he surfaced. Later he learned he had severed the ligaments in front of his ankle, so that the foot extended from his leg in an almost straight line.
He had the same kind of instinct now.
Mel was nearing runway one seven, left. Without ceasing, since the storm began, the miles of runways had been plowed, vacuumed, brushed, and sanded by a group called a Conga Line. He saw it now.
His arrival was noticed. He heard the convoy leader notified by radio, “Mr. Bakersfeld just joined us.” He had come out to inspect the snow clearance as a result of the adverse report by Vernon Demerest’s Airlines Snow Committee. Clearly, everything was going well.
8
Less than five years ago, the airport was considered among the world’s finest and most modern. Now travelers and visitors at Lincoln International saw principally the main passenger terminal—a brightly lighted, air-conditioned Taj Mahal and still admired it. Where the deficiencies lay were in operating areas – runways and taxiways. They were dangerously over-taxed. Only last week Keith Bakersfeld, Mel’s brother, had predicted grimly, “Someday there’ll be a second’s inattention, and one of us will bring two airplanes together at that intersection.”
Mel had pointed out the hazard frequently to the Board of Airport Commissioners and to members of City Council, who controlled airport financing. As well as immediate construction of more runways and taxiways, Mel had urged purchase of additional land around the airport for long term development. There had been plenty of discussion, and sometimes angry argument, as a result.
As well as the airport’s future, Mel’s personal future was at stake.
Only a short time ago, Mel Bakersfeld had been a national spokesman for ground logistics of aviation, a rising young genius in aviation management. Then, abruptly, a single event had wrought a change, and the future was no longer clear.