being sucked out by tankers. Then there had been a second attempt to blast the airplane out, again with its own jets, which also ended in failure.
Chewing his cigar instead of smoking it — one of Patroni’s rare concessions to fire precaution, since the smell of aviation kerosene was strong — the TWA maintenance chief moved closer to the aircraft. Ingram followed, and the two were joined by several ground crewmen who emerged from the shelter of the crew bus. As Patroni surveyed the scene, one of the crewmen switched on portable floodlights which were rigged in a semicircle in front of the airplane’s nose. The lights revealed that the main landing gear was partially out of sight, embedded in a covering of black mud beneath snow. The aircraft had stuck in an area which was normally grass-covered, a few yards off runway three zero, near an intersecting taxiway — the taxiway which the Aereo-Mexican pilot had missed in the dark and swirling snow. It was sheer bad luck, Patroni realized, that at that point the ground must have been so waterlogged that not even three days of snow and freezing temperatures had been sufficient to harden it. As a result, the two attempts to blast the airplane free with its own power had merely succeeded in settling it deeper. Now, nacelles of the four jet engines beneath the wings were uncomfortably close to ground level.
Ignoring the snow, which swirled about him like a scene from
There was still a worthwhile chance, he decided, of getting the airplane out by use of its own engine power. It would be the fastest way, if it could be done. If not, they would have to employ giant lifting bags — eleven altogether, made of nylon fabric — placed under wings and fuselage, and inflated by pneumatic blowers. When the bags were in place, heavy-duty jacks would be used to raise the aircraft’s wheels, then a solid floor built under them. But the process would be long, difficult, and wearying. Joe Patroni hoped it could be avoided.
He announced, “We gotta dig deep and wide in front of the gear. I want two six-foot-wide trenches down to where the wheels are now. Coming forward from the wheels, we’ll level the trenches at first, then slope ’em up gradually.” He swung to Ingram. “That’s a lot of digging.”
The foreman nodded. “Sure is.”
“When we’ve finished that part, we’ll start the engines and pull full power with all four.” Patroni motioned to the stalled, silent aircraft. “That should get her moving forward. When she’s rolling, and up the slope of the trenches, we’ll swing her this way.” Stomping with the heavy boots he had put on in the truck, he traced an elliptical path through the snow between the soft ground and the taxiway paved surface. “Another thing — let’s lay big timbers, as many as we can, in front of the wheels. You got any at all?”
“Some,” Ingram said. “In one of the trucks.”
“Unload ’em, and send your driver around the airport to round up as many as he can. Try all the airlines, and airport maintenance.”
The ground crewmen nearest Patroni and Ingram hailed others, who began scrambling from the crew bus. Two of the men rolled back a snow-covered tarpaulin on a truck containing tools and shovels. The shovels were passed around among figures, moving and shadowy outside the semicircle of bright lights. The blowing snow, at times, made it difficult for the men to see each other. They waited for orders to begin.
A boarding ramp, leading to the forward cabin door of the 707, had been left in place. Patroni pointed to it. “Are the flyboys still aboard?”
Ingram grunted. “They’re aboard. The goddamn captain and first officer.”
Patroni looked at him sharply. “They been giving you trouble?”
“It wasn’t what they gave me,” Ingram said sourly, “it’s what they wouldn’t. When I got here, I wanted ’em to pull full power, the way you just said. If they’d done it the first time, I reckon she’d have come out; but they didn’t have the guts, which is why we got in deeper. The captain’s made one big screwup tonight, and knows it. Now he’s scared stiff of standing the ship on its nose.”
Joe Patroni grinned. “If I were him, I might feel the same way.” He had chewed his cigar to shreds; he threw it into the snow and reached inside his parka for another. “I’ll talk to the captain later. Is the interphone rigged?”
“Yeah.”
“Call the flight deck, then. Tell ’em we’re working, and I’ll be up there soon.”
“Right.” As he moved closer to the aircraft, Ingram called to the twenty or so assembled ground crewmen, “Okay, you guys; let’s get digging!”
Joe Patroni seized a shovel himself and, within minutes, the group was shifting mud, earth, and snow.
When he had used the fuselage interphone to speak to the pilots in their cockpit high above, Ingram — with the aid of a mechanic — began groping through icy mud, with cold numbed hands, to lay the first of the timbers in front of the aircraft’s wheels.
Across the airfield occasionally, as the snow gusted and limits of visibility changed, the lights of aircraft taking off and landing could be seen, and the whine-pitched roar of jet engines was carried on the wind to the ears of the men working. But close alongside, runway three zero remained silent and deserted.
Joe Patroni calculated: It would probably be an hour before the digging would be complete and the Boeing 707’s engines could be started in an attempt to taxi the big airliner out. Meanwhile, the men now excavating the twin trenches, which were beginning to take shape, would have to be relieved in shifts, to warm themselves in the crew bus, still parked on the taxiway.
It was ten-thirty now. With luck, he thought, he might be home in bed — with Marie — soon after midnight.
To bring the prospect nearer, also to keep warm, Patroni threw himself even harder into shoveling.
11
In the Cloud Captain’s Coffee Shop, Captain Vernon Demerest ordered tea for Gwen, black coffee for himself. Coffee — as it was supposed to do — helped keep him alert; he would probably down a dozen more cups between here and Rome. Although Captain Harris would be doing most of the flying of Flight Two tonight, Demerest had no intention of relaxing mentally. In the air, he rarely did. He was aware, as were most veteran pilots, that aviators who died in their beds of old age were those who throughout their careers had been ready to cope instantly with the unexpected.
“We’re both unusually quiet,” Gwen said in her gentle English voice. “We scarcely said a word coming into the terminal.”
It was just a few minutes since they left the departure concourse, after announcement of the one hour flight delay. They had managed to snare a booth near the rear of the coffee shop, and now Gwen was looking into the mirror of her compact, patting her hair into place where it flowed superbly from beneath the smart Trans America stewardess cap. Her dark, expressive eyes switched briefly from the mirror to Vernon Demerest’s face.
“I wasn’t talking,” Demerest said, “because I’ve been thinking; that’s all.”
Gwen moistened her lips, though not applying lipstick — airlines had strict rules against stewardesses applying makeup in public. In any case, Gwen used very little; her complexion was the milk and roses kind which so many English girls seemed born with.
“Thinking about what? Your traumatic experience — the announcement we’re to be parents?” Gwen smiled mischievously, then recited, “Captain Vernon Waldo Demerest and Miss Gwendolyn Aline Meighen announce the approaching arrival of their first child, a … what? … We don’t know, do we? We won’t for another seven months. Oh well, it isn’t long to wait.”
He remained silent while their coffee and tea was set before them, then protested, “For God’s sake, Gwen, let’s be serious about this.”
“Why should we be? Especially if I’m not. After all, if anyone’s worrying, it ought to be me.”
He was about to object again when Gwen reached for his hand under the table. Her expression changed to sympathy. “I’m sorry. I suppose it really is a bit shattering — for both of us.”
It was the opening Demerest had been waiting for. He said carefully, “It needn’t be shattering. What’s more, we don’t have to be parents unless we choose to be.”
“Well,” Gwen said matter-of-factly, “I was wondering when you’d get around to it.” She snapped her compact closed, and put it away. “You almost did in the car, didn’t you? Then thought better of it.”
