Skyhammer (6 page)

“Pretty chilly out there this morning,” Boyd tried.

Pate nodded. “Looks good out West, though.” He pushed the first half of the flight papers over to Boyd. “We better get to
it.”

Boyd set quietly to the task of checking the route, weather, and fuel load, wondering what had brought this change about.
Was Pate sorry? More likely he only worried now that Boyd might report his tirade. That had to be it, Boyd decided. The bastard
was sucking up, hoping to change his mind. It wouldn’t work, of course. He’d turn Pate in as soon as it was practical to do
so. After all, it was his duty. But for the time being, he’d play along, let Pate think he had a chance. If he kept up the
good behavior.

“You might think about putting on a little more gas,” Pate said. “Liable to be weather over the mountains with that frontal
system.”

Boyd nodded. Significant weather over the mountains in winter was unlikely, but he’d throw Pate a bone, do as he suggested.

“Another thousand pounds?”

“That oughta do it.”

Finished, Pate assembled the documents into a neat stack and then ran a staple through the stack. “Look, I’ve gotta go mail
something,” he told Boyd. “I’ll meet you at the plane.”

“Okay. What about the walk-around?” The walk-around was, after all, the first officer’s job.

Pate had started to turn away, but he turned back again and let his eyes meet Boyd’s a second time. They were more hazel than
brown, Boyd noticed. And only guarded now, not angry. “I’ll do it.” Pate smiled, a forced, half-smile, not a genuine one,
but enough to hint again there might be repentance on his mind. Boyd watched him cross the room, carrying both his bags. Pate
even
looked
better, he realized. His shoes were polished up, and his uniform was clean, as if he had taken time to brush off the lint
and press his slacks.

Boyd turned back to the counter. Outside the window behind the agent’s desk a New World 737 was making a slow taxi across
the ramp. Above its blue tail Boyd could see another jetliner climbing into the flat gray sky. He smiled at the agent’s frown.

“Jeez, you look like an ad for New World this morning,” Frank Sloan said. “How’s it goin’, Redman?”

Pate had opened the door into the stairway that led up to the concourse. Frank Sloan was on the other side. A Westar captain
for fourteen years, Sloan was a copilot again now, too. He looked old, beaten, his jowls sagging. His eyes peered wearily
from behind tired lids. Knowing what Sloan was going through, Pate couldn’t bear to look at him. He glanced down for a place
to set his flight kit. He could feel Sloan studying him, though, wondering what was not right about him this morning. So Pate,
straightening up, extended his hand, accomplished a smile.

“Hey, Frank. How ’bout yourself?”

Sloan let out a quiet laugh. “Just tryin’ to make it, Emil. How’s Katherine?”

“Doing okay.” Pate cleared his throat to cover the tightness in his voice.

“Well, you’re looking awful good,” Sloan said. “Keeping the weight off, unlike me.”

“Thanks,” Pate said. He waited then, feeling like a man in an elevator watching for the right floor so he could get off. Sloan’s
voice seemed odd, far away. There was no force to it, no enthusiasm, only tired sadness. It shriveled Pate’s gut to see Sloan
so run down. He looked up at the top of the stairway, resisting the urge to tell Sloan that things would soon get better.

“You all right?” Sloan asked.

Pate made himself look at Sloan again, and smile. “Good as can be expected. Hey, I do gotta git, Frank. Sorry, pardner. Have
a good one, okay?”

“Sure thing.” Sloan frowned at him, but nodded as if he understood. “You too, Redman.”

In the hallway beyond Operations, Pate set his bags down again and waited for a minute to regain his composure—though he didn’t
need to, he realized. Amazingly, his mind had already regained tranquility. Not even in Viet Nam, in those seconds before
the wallop of the catapult sent his Phantom hurtling off the deck of the
Kitty Hawk
—when the trick was to stop all thought—had he felt so calm. It was as if he could shut himself into a vacancy, a kind of
bubble that rolled as he moved, muting everything around him. Now, as he climbed the stairs to the steel security door that
opened onto the passenger level, the bubble climbed with him.

The concourse was bustling with travelers. The constant buzzing clatter of their voices echoed down the concourse like the
sound of bees inside a pipe. A blurred, unintelligible voice announced an arrival. There was a chaotic insanity to it all,
he thought, walking past the concession alcoves. Faces rapt with meaningless purpose. The look of cattle. Intent on nothing.
Bystanders. He moved among them like a being from another dimension. He was such a being, he realized.

He went into the men’s room and peed, watching other men glance at his uniform in the mirror over the lays. Only briefly curious.
They were closed inside their bubbles, too.

At the foot of the stairs, alone, he lit a cigarette and thought: Am I clear on this?

A question to be avoided, he decided. He would never be
clear
on it, and so it didn’t matter. He was clear on what mattered. He put out the half-finished cigarette and picked up his bags
and went through the outer door to the ramp.

The gate areas had been bladed and de-iced, but a bitter north wind was gusting across the tarmac, swirling up fine clouds
of snow crystals and streaking the pavement with white. He turned left and walked the fifty yards or so to Gate 15. The MD-80
sat waiting, its streamlined form low to the tarmac, the gate’s jetbridge snug against its forward entry door, a dusting of
snow whitening the top of its fuselage. He checked the number painted on the ship’s nosegear door: N63109NW. It corresponded
with the one on the flight plan.

Setting both his bags at the base of the metal stairway that led up to the jetbridge, he pulled his overcoat collar up against
the wind. Then he got his flashlight from the inside pocket of his kit. The wind blew icy air around him as he squatted at
the nosewheel to examine the strut, but suddenly his head filled with a chaos of sensation, memories of all the times he’d
examined the plane he was about to fly, the twenty thousand times he’d hunkered down over a nosewheel, the smell of tarmac,
lubricant, rubber,
airplane
. He had always liked doing the walk-around, he thought. But not now, on this cold, gray day with a mean wind blowing snow
across a bleak ramp in a place he hated. What did it even matter? He looked up at the plane above him. It did matter, though.
He wasn’t going to quit being what he was, doing what he did.

No cracks were visible in the strut’s steel tubing, no evidence of hydraulic fluid leaking from the shocks. He probed the
wheel well with the beam of his flashlight, even humming to himself part of a tune he could not quite remember. Maybe something
his grandmother had hummed. He went down the left side of the jet to the leading edge of the wing. A three-car baggage train
was parked there, the handlers busy with the luggage. Pate nodded a greeting and, stooping slightly, stepped in under the
wing to examine the main gear and brakes on that side.

After he had walked the perimeter of the wing, inspecting the high-lift devices on its leading and trailing edges, he walked
back along the slender fuselage to the tail to inspect the engines. The APU was running, its exhaust roaring from vents in
the upper side of the tailcone, and he held his fingers to his ears.

He peered into the engine intake at the fan blades, and then he examined the lower surface of the cowling. It was streaked
with a windblown film of oil and runway grime, but showed no evidence of fresh leaks. He went around the tail and checked
the other engine, then continued up the left side of the airplane, mirroring his previous inspections.

When he was finished, he walked away from the nose of the plane so that he could take it in as a whole and single object.
This he always did, wanting to see the machine he was going to fly. Otherwise, it was easy to forget that all the separate
parts worked together, in concert. Today, he could not help also thinking what a graceful, wonderful thing an airplane was.
Even the old Waco he’d learned in, with its squared-off wings and the pistons sticking out all over its blunt nose like warts—even
that plane had been beautiful to look at.

But the plane he looked at now was painted up too slick and sophisticated—too much like Farraday—the dark, glossy blue stretching
to below the windows, where an arctic white stripe sliced above the corporate gray underbelly. And on the tail, the New World
logo—white globe with blue continents—hung like a garish moon. Boyd probably loved it.

Cold suddenly, Pate walked back to his luggage and stowed his flashlight. He picked up both bags and carried them to the base
of the jetbridge and entered the key code into the jet bridge’s outside door. So far everything had gone well. It had been
just like Boyd to pull rank, reminding him his job included the walk-around—providing him with the perfect reason to board
the plane from the outside. Pate turned and looked back at the terminal once more, at the big windows of the concourse, where
silhouettes stood or moved like shadows behind the plate glass. Where all the security devices meant to stop him hadn’t even
gotten the chance.

The flight attendants were in the back as Boyd came into the galleyway. He could hear them banging cupboard doors. Pate was
already in his seat, the log book open on his lap. Boyd still hadn’t locked anyone in to taking his line for the rest of the
month, but he’d gotten another captain interested, telling him the layover in L.A. was superb. He hadn’t mentioned Pate. His
reason for wanting the trade, he’d explained, was a family matter.

Boyd shoved his suitcase into one of the first-class overheads and then stepped through the cockpit doorway. Pate didn’t look
up. Boyd took off his overcoat and cap and put them on the hook behind his seat. Then he hoisted his kit over the left-hand
seat and lowered it into the well. He didn’t much care for MD-80’s. The cockpit was so cramped, the passageway partially blocked
by the folded jumpseat. And then there was the center pedestal—where the engine throttles were located—which you had to step
over to get into either seat. It was like clambering between the front seats of a compact car, so before he sat down, Boyd
made sure he hadn’t left his earpiece in his coat pocket. Then he made a check of the rows of circuit breakers on the rear
wall and overhead panel, verifying that none were tripped. Pate would’ve already done this, but it was procedure to doublecheck,
and Boyd had decided his performance would be flawless this trip.

“Anything in the book?” he asked.

Without a word Pate handed him the log. There were three open items that had been deferred by maintenance personnel. They
were all minor nuisances, but none was critical to the safety of the flight.

Boyd stowed the log in its metal holster and then adjusted his seat, sliding it forward and lowering it a notch, bringing
his eyes in line with the row of reference marks on the windscreen’s pillar. He made sure his emergency oxygen mask was hung
properly and functioning. Then he set the number two VHF’s frequency. A recorded message relayed current weather conditions
and runway information. Boyd reset his altimeter and then reached into his flight kit and pulled out the toy Garfield cat
the librarian had given him. It had suction cups for feet.

“Good luck charm,” he explained. But Pate only stared at it a moment, then went back to his preflight tasks. Defiantly, Boyd
attached the stuffed creature to the lower left corner of his windshield.

“You married?” Pate said suddenly.

Boyd was startled. Then he had to suppress a smile. Pate was trying so hard it made him want to laugh. He might even get a
full apology out of him before the trip was over. “You kidding?” he said. “With all that sweet stuff buzzing around back there?”
He nodded toward the cabin, then added, “Guy’d be nuts to be married. No, I’ll put a few more notches on the shaft first.
How about you?”

Pate did not look up. “Divorced.”

“Yeah?”

Pate looked at his watch. “We’re running late.”

A touchy subject, apparently. So be it, Boyd thought. They had work to do anyway. He finished his checks while Pate radioed
for clearance and copied the controller’s instructions onto the flight plan, then read them back for verification. The clearance
agreed with their flight plan. Pate placed the document at the base of the main instrument panel, on the center console, where
Boyd could see it. Then he radioed New World’s maintenance controller and requested aircraft de-icing. The snowshowers had
started again, so they would need it.

“Let’s get the checklist,” Boyd said.

Pate pulled the card from its pocket atop the glareshield and flipped it over to the “Before Start” checklist. Immediately
he began reading each item aloud, waiting for a response from Boyd before continuing to the next.

By the time they had finished, the passengers were beginning to board. Pate glanced at his watch again. Boyd checked his.
Just over fifteen minutes remained until scheduled blockout.

A minute later, one of the flight attendants leaned into the cockpit. “Captain Pate,” she said.

Pate turned to look at her, as if alarmed, it seemed to Boyd. Then he faced forward quickly again. “Ain’t a captain no more,
Mariella,” he said.

“Sure you are, Emil.” She gave Boyd a forced smile. “I’m your number one. Mariella Ponti.” She was late thirties, pretty,
with short dark hair, blunt cut with bangs, and sharp brown, care-worn eyes. She had flown with Emil Pate plenty of times,
she told Boyd. “At Westar,” she added, briefly watching Boyd for a reaction. Another tough case, Boyd thought, but he didn’t
care. She was too old for him anyway, and married—he’d noted the ring on her left hand.

“Anyway, Emil,” she said now, tapping Pate’s shoulder. “You’re just out of your seat. You’ll get it back.”