Flying Too Close to the Sun by George Jehn (novels for beginners .txt) 📕

guy continued. “Tonight you’re in luck. Our flights have been running late anyway due to the lousy weather. So, I’m not going to bitch—too much.”

.     .     .

Juni finished the conversation with Christina and hurried to his car, noting more of the blind fingers of vapor embracing the area with each passing moment. He ran a final check and had everything. Driving to a nearby supermarket dumpster he grabbed a cardboard carton, then drove to the yacht club. He waited the few precious moments he allotted for this purpose, while nervously tapping the steering column with cigarette-yellowed fingers, hoping someone with a key would roll up. Just then a car entered the lot and Juni removed the large empty carton from the trunk, pretending to struggle with it. The other fellow noticed and held open the gate. Juni thanked and followed him inside. Then once alone, he tore off a small piece of the box, jammed open the small dead bolt and tossed the carton into the trash. He hurried to slip #42 where a small wooden boat christened Pride of the Navy was berthed. He jumped aboard and as the boat listed to starboard he peered into the tank to ensure there was enough fuel and then hurried back to the hotel.

.     .     .

Per the usual routine, Christina piloted the first flight to Boston, while Woody flew the middle two segments, meaning she would fly the final leg. Although delayed en route earlier, they had arrived in New York close to schedule and while filling out the paperwork for the Boston leg, the operations agent notified Christina the Boston weather had deteriorated.

“Is it still above landing minimums?”

“Barely. The visibility is down to a half, variable three-eighths of a mile.”

“I’d rather be safe than sorry, so we’ll take an extra three thousand pounds of fuel in case of holding. I’d hate to return because we didn’t have enough.”

“Roger. I’ll take care of that, captain” the man crisply replied.

With a nod of her head, she motioned Erik into the hallway.

“This could be it.”

“I’m scared shitless.”

“Me too,” she said wringing her hands. As the embers of anxiety burned, she remained concerned about a crippling seizure. “You remember all the details?”

“I think so.”

“Let’s go over it once more while we walk.”

After passing security, Erik whispered, “What about the flight data recorder?”

“What about it?”

“We missed this, but there are different types. I’m not certain which is installed on this plane? I don’t know what flight parameters other than speed, flap settings and the like it registers. Would a cargo door opening show up?”

Christina stopped dead in her tracks, turned and looked at him with a sense of alarm that darkened the blue of her eyes. She finally spoke. “I, I don’t know.” A moment later she added, “I think we can get around the problem if you pull the recorder’s circuit breaker before any of the others and then reset them in reverse order, with the exception of the generator control circuit breaker. Reset that one last. This way if anyone examines the flight recorder, the difficulty with the generator will be the only problem that shows.”

“I don’t think that’ll work because if it’s a new one it would show a time gap when the recorder wasn’t functioning.”

“Shit. You’re right. How the hell did we miss that?” she said, shaking her head. “We’ll just leave the recorder alone and to roll the dice, hoping it has one of the older models that won’t show a door opening on the ground. Had I thought of this I could have found out ahead of time which type is installed.”

“We weren’t supposed to take any more chances. You wanna call this off?”

“If we told him, Juni would probably shit-can the whole thing. If it has the new type, we’re screwed,” a solemn Christina added. “But these are old planes and I pray it doesn’t. Let’s go with that.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“So do I.”

The combination of dusk and fog had smothered the daylight when they arrived in the Boston area, with the visibility still hovering right around half a mile. Other than having to execute an instrument approach almost to touchdown, the landing on runway 15 Right was routine. While taxiing, the tower reported the visibility had dropped even lower to one-half, variable one-quarter of a mile in fog, still adequate for takeoff.

.     .     .

Bill Francis, the diminutive and balding Boston tower operator checked with his supervisor, Tony Heinz a career Air Traffic controller with over thirty years on the job under his sizeable belt, and then turned off the motion sensors surrounding the airport perimeter, as called for in the Mass Port Authority and TSA security procedures. This system had been installed for some time, but thus far there had been nothing but false alarms and plenty of those, usually caused by seagulls. It was not a well-kept secret some tower personnel furtively turned them off as one of their first orders of business so as not to be disturbed by bogus warnings, but the timid Francis was different. He didn’t want to risk his job over this or any other item as he had been in serious trouble a short time ago while routing planes on ground control. He had granted a clearance for one jet to cross runway 4 Left while another was landing on the same runway. It was only the pilot’s last minute evasive action by aborting the landing that averted a potential catastrophe. Francis said coordination between two controllers was the problem, but he was the only one placed on probation for a year. This meant if he screwed up, made even a minor error during that time, he’d be fired. So, he did everything exactly by the book because he had a wife and two children to support. The regulations stated if the visibility increased beyond a half-mile he had to again check with Heinz and turn the sensors back on if ordered to do so.