Airport. Part 17

THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES later, the taxi containing Inez was crawling tediously along the s...o...b..und, still-plugged Kennedy Expressway. Sitting tensely on the back seat, her fingers working nervously, Inez was wondering how much longer the journey would last.

At the same moment, the airport bus containing the contingent of Flight Two pa.s.sengers swung on to the departure ramp entrance at Lincoln International. The bus, after shaking itself free from the slow-moving traffic nearer town, had continued to make good time; now, the clock above the terminal showed a quarter to eleven.

As the bus stopped, D. O. Guerrero was first to alight.

9.

"BRING ALONG that portable public address system," Elliott Freemantle commanded. "We may be glad of it."

The Meadowood community meeting in the Sunday school hall of Meadowood First Baptist Church was sizzling with excitement which Lawyer Freemantle had skillfully generated. The meeting was also about to move on to Lincoln International Airport.

"Don't hand me any bilgewater about it being too late, or not wanting to go," Elliott Freemantle had exhorted his audience of six hundred a few minutes earlier. He stood before them confidently, impeccable as ever in his elegant Blue Spruce suit and gleaming alligator shoes; not a single barber-styled hair was out of place, and he radiated confidence. The meeting was enthusiastically with him now, and the rougher tongued he was, it seemed, the more they liked him.

He continued, "And don't let's have a lot of footling excuses for not going. I don't want to hear about baby-sitters, mothers-in-law left alone, or stews on the stove simmering, because I couldn't care less; neitherat this momentshould you. If your car's stuck in the snow, leave it there and ride in someone else's. The point is: I'm going to the airport tonight, on your behalf, to make myself obnoxious." He paused as another aircraft thundered overhead. "By G.o.d!it's time somebody did." The last remark had caused applause and laughter.

"I need your support, and I want you thereall of you. Now I'll ask you a plain, straight question: Are you coming?"

The hall resounded to a roar of, "Yes!" People were on their feet, cheering.

"All right," Freemantle said, and the hall had hushed. "Let's get a few things clear before we go."

He had already told them, he pointed out, that legal proceedings must be the basis of any action to gain relief for Meadowood community from its overwhelming airport noise. Such legal proceedings, however, should not be the kind which n.o.body noticed, or which took place in some out-of-the-way, unpeopled courtroom. Instead, they must be conducted in the spotlight of public attention and public sympathy.

"How do we get that kind of attention and sympathy?" Lawyer Freemantle paused, then answered his own question.

"We get it by making our point of view known in such a way that it becomes newsworthy. Then, and only then, can the attention-getting media-press, radio, and televisionfeature our viewpoint prominently, in the kind of way we want."

The press were good friends, he declared. "We do not ask them to share our point of view, merely to report it fairly, whichin my experiencethey always do. But it helps our reporter friends if a cause can engender some drama; that way, they get a better story."

The three reporters at the press table were grinning as Freemantle added, "We'll see if we can stage some drama for them tonight."

While Elliott Freemantle was speaking, he was also observing shrewdly the progress of the legal forms, retaining himself as legal counsel for individual homeowners, which were now circulating through the hall. Many of the formsat least a hundred, he estimatedhad been signed and pa.s.sed forward. He had watched ballpoint pens appear, husbands and wives bend over the doc.u.ments to sign jointly, thus committing each family to payment of a hundred dollars. Lawyer Freemantle did some happy calculation: a hundred completed retainers meant ten thousand dollars for himself. Not a bad fee forso faran evening's work, and in the end the total fee would be a great deal more.

While the forms were still circulating, he decided, he would continue talking for a few minutes longer.

As to what was going to happen at the airport tonight, he instructed his listeners, they were to leave that to him. He hoped there would be a confrontation with the airport's management; in any case, he intended to stage a demonstrationwithin the airport terminalwhich people would remember.

"All I ask is that you stay together and that you raise your voices only when I tell you."

Emphatically, he cautioned, there would be no disorder. No one must be able to say next day that the Meadowood anti-noise delegation violated any law.

"Of course"Freemantle smiled suggestively"we may get in the way and cause some inconvenience; I understand that the airport is extremely busy tonight. But we can't help that." There was laughter again. He sensed that people were ready to go.

Still another aircraft reverberated overhead, and he waited until the sound had died.

"Very well! Let us be on our way!" Lawyer Freemantle raised his hands like a jetage Moses, and mixquoted: "For I have promises to keep, with much ado before I sleep."

The laughter changed to renewed cheering, and people began moving toward the doors.

It was then that he had noticed the portable p.a. system, borrowed from the Meadowood First Baptist Church, and instructed that it be brought along. Floyd Zanetta, the meeting's chairmanvirtually ignored since Elliott Freemantle eclipsed him in attentionhurried to comply.

Freemantle himself was stuffing signed retainer forms into his briefcase. A quick count showed that he had underestimated earlierthere were over a hundred and sixty forms, or more than sixteen thousand dollars' worth of collectible fees. In addition, many who had come forward to shake his hand within the past few minutes, a.s.sured him they would mail their own forms, along with checks, in the morning. Lawyer Freemantle glowed.

He had no real plan as to what would happen at the airport, any more than he had arrived tonight with a fixed idea about how to take over this meeting. Elliott Freemantle disliked fixed ideas. He preferred to improvise, to get situations rolling, then direct them this way or that, to his own advantage. His freewheeling methods had worked once already this evening; he saw no reason why they should not do so again.

The main thing was to keep these Meadowood homeowners convinced that they had a dynamic leader who would eventually produce results. Furthermore, they must remain convinced until the four quarterly payments, which the legal retainer agreements called for, were made. After that, when Elliott Freemantle had his money in the bank, the opinions were less important.

So he had to keep this situation lively, he reasoned, for ten or eleven months and he would do it. He would give these people all the dynamism they could want. There would be need for some more meetings and demonstrations like tonight's because those made news. Too often, court proceedings didn't. Despite what he had said a few minutes ago about legal proceedings being a base, any sessions in court were likely to be unspectacular and possibly unprofitable. Of course, he would do his best to introduce some histrionics, though quite a few judges nowadays were wise to Lawyer Freemantle's attention-creating tactics, and curtailed them sternly.

But there were no real problems, providing he rememberedas he always did in these affairsthat the most important factor was the care and feeding of Elliott Freemantle. He could see one of the reporters, Tomlinson of the Tribune, using a pay phone just outside the hall; another reporter was nearby. Good! It meant that downtown city desks were being alerted, and would cover whatever happened at the airport. There would also, if earlier arrangements Freemantle had made worked out, be some TV coverage, too. The crowd was thinning. Time to go!

10.

NEAR THE AIRPORT'S floodlighted main entrance, the flas.h.i.+ng red beacon of the state police patrol car died. The patrol car, which had preceded Joe Patroni from the site of the wrecked tractor-trailer, slowed, and the state trooper at the wheel pulled over to the curb, waving the TWA maintenance chief past. Patroni accelerated. As his Buick Wildcat swept by, Patroni waved his cigar in salutation and honked his horn twice.

Although the last stage of Joe Patroni's journey had been accomplished with speed, over-all it had taken more than three hours to cover a distancefrom his home to the airportwhich normally took forty minutes. Now, he hoped, he could make good some of the lost time.

Fighting the snow and slippery road surface, he cut swiftly through the stream of terminal-bound traffic and swung onto a side road to the airport's hangar area. At a sign, "TWA Maintenance," he wheeled the Buick sharply right. A few hundred yards farther on, the airline's maintenance hangar loomed towering and ma.s.sive. The main doors were open; he drove directly in.

Inside the hangar a radio-equipped pickup truck, with driver, was waiting; it would take Patroni onto the airfieldto the mired Aereo-Mexican jet, still obstructing runway three zero. Stepping from his car, the maintenance chief paused only long enough to relight his cigarignoring "no smoking" regulationsthen hoisted his stocky figure into the truck cab. He instructed the driver, "Okay, son, push that needle round the dial."

The truck raced away, Patroni obtaining radio clearance from the tower as they went. Once away from the lighted hangar area, the driver stayed close to taxi lights, the only guidein the white-tinted gloomto where paved surfaces began and ended. On instructions from the tower they halted briefly near a runway while a DC-9 of Delta Air Lines landed in a flurry of snow and rolled by with a thunder of reversed jet thrust. The ground controller cleared them across the runway, then added, "Is that Joe Patroni?"

"Yep."

There was an interval while the controller dealt with other traffic, then: "Ground control to Patroni. We have a message from the airport manager's office. Do you read?"

"This's Patroni. Go ahead."

"Message begins: Joe, I'll bet you a box of cigars against a pair of ball tickets that you can't get that stuck airplane clear of three zero tonight, and I'd like you to win. Signed, Mel Bakersfeld. End of message."

Joe Patroni chuckled as he depressed the transmit b.u.t.ton. "Patroni to ground control. Tell him he's on."

Replacing the radio mike, he urged the truck driver, "Keep her moving, son. Now I got me an incentive."

At the blocked intersection of runway three zero, the Aereo-Mexican maintenance foreman, Ingramwhom Mel Bakersfeld had talked with earlierapproached the pickup as it stopped. The foreman was still huddled into a parka, s.h.i.+elding his face as best he could from the biting wind and snow.

Joe Patroni bit off the end of a fresh cigar, though this time without lighting it, and descended from the truck cab. On the way out from the hangar he had changed from the overshoes he had been wearing into heavy fleece-lined boots; high as the boots were, the deep snow came over them.

Patroni pulled his own parka around him and nodded to Ingram. The two men knew each other slightly.

"Okay," Patroni said; he had to shout to make himself heard above the wind. "Gimme the p.o.o.p."

As Ingram made his report, the wings and fuselage of the stalled Boeing 707 loomed above them both, like an immense ghostly albatross. Beneath the big jet's belly a red hazard light still winked rhythmically, and the collection of trucks and service vehicles, including a crew bus and roaring power cart, remained cl.u.s.tered on the taxiway side of the aircraft.

The Aereo-Mexican maintenance foreman summarized what had been done already: the removal of pa.s.sengers, and the first abortive attempt to get the airplane moving under its own power. Afterward, he informed Joe Patroni, as much weight had been taken off as possiblefreight, mail, baggage, with most of the fuel load 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 itone of Patroni's rare concessions to fire precaution, since the smell of aviation kerosene was strongthe 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 gra.s.s-covered, a few yards off runway three zero, near an intersecting taxiwaythe taxiway which the AereoMexican 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 South with Scott, Patroni considered, calculating the possibilities of success. 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 bagseleven 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 sixfoot-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 thinglet'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 pa.s.sed 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 G.o.ddarn 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 s.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sembled ground crewmen, "Okay, you guys; let's get digging!"

Joe Patroni seized a shovel himself and, within minutes, the group was s.h.i.+fting mud, earth, and snow.

When he had used the fuselage interphone to speak to the pilots in their c.o.c.kpit high above, Ingramwith the aid of a mechanicbegan 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 whinepitched 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 s.h.i.+fts, 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 bedwith Mariesoon 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. Coffeeas it was supposed to dohelped 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 lipstickairlines had strict rules against stewardesses applying make-up 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 experiencethe 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 G.o.d'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 close, and put it away. "You almost did in the car, didn't you? Then thought better of it."

"Thought better of what?"

"Oh really, Vernon! Why pretend? We both know perfectly well what it is you're talking about. You want me to have an abortion. You've been thinking about it ever since I told you I was pregnant. Well, haven't you?"

He nodded reluctantly. "Yes." He still found Gwen's directness disconcerting.

"What's the matter? Did you think I'd never heard about abortions before?"

Demerest glanced over his shoulder, wondering if they could be overheard, but the clatter of the coffee shop, the buzz of conversation generally, were all-pervading.

"I wasn't sure how you'd feel."

"I'm not sure either." It was Gwen's turn to be serious. She was looking down at her hands, the long slender fingers he admired so much now clasped in front of her. "I've thought about it. I still don't know."