© Загородняя И. Б., адаптация, сокращение, словарь, 2018

© ООО «Издательство «Антология», 2022

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PART ONE 6:30 P.M.
8:30 P.M. (CST)

01

At half-past six on a Friday evening in January, Lincoln International Airport, Illinois, was functioning, though with dififculty.

The airport was reeling from the roughest winter storm in six years. The storm had lasted three days. Now, trouble spots were erupting steadily.

A United Air Lines food truck, loaded with two hundred dinners, was lost somewhere on the airport perimeter. A search for the truck had so far failed to locate either the missing vehicle or its driver.

United’s Flight 111 – a non-stop DC-8 for Los Angeles, which the food truck had to service – was already several hours behind schedule. Similar delays, for varying reasons, were affecting at least a hundred flights of twenty other airlines using Lincoln International.

Out on the airfield, runway three zero^[1] was out of use, blocked by an Aéreo-Mexican jet – a Boeing 707 – its wheels were deeply stuck in wet ground beneath snow, near the runway’s edge. Two hours of intensive efof rt had failed to make the big jet moved. Now, Aéreo-Mexican had appealed to TWA^[2] for help. Air Trafifc Control^[3] had limited the volume of incoming trafifc. Despite this, twenty incoming flights were stacked up overhead, some of them were nearing low fuel limits. On the ground, forty planes were preparing for takeoff. But until the number of flights in the air could be reduced, ATC^[4] had ordered further delays of departures.

In the main passenger terminal, chaos predominated. Terminal waiting areas were jammed with thousands of passengers from delayed or canceled flights. Baggage, in piles, was everywhere.

High on the terminal roof, the airport’s immodest slogan, LINCOLN INTERNATIONAL – AVIATION CROSSROADS OF THE WORLD, was completely obscured by snow.

“The wonder was,” Mel Bakersfeld thought, “that anything was continuing to operate at all.”

Mel, airport general manager – lean, tall, disciplined and energetic – was standing by the Snow Control Desk, high in the control tower. He peered out into the darkness. Normally, from this glasswalled room, the entire airport complex – runways, taxi strips, terminals, trafifc of the ground and air – was visible. But tonight only a faint blur of a few nearer lights penetrated the snow.

At the Snow Control Desk near Mel, Danny Farrow – at other times an assistant airport manager, now snow shift supervisor – was calling Maintenance Snow Center by radiophone.

“We’re losing the parking lots. I need six more Payloaders^[5].”

Danny was seated at the Snow Desk, which was not really a desk at all, but a wide, three-position console. Confronting Danny and his two assistants – one on either side – was a battery of telephones and radios. Surrounding them were maps, charts, and bulletin boards recording the state and location of every piece of motorized snow-fighting equipment, as well as men and supervisors. The Snow Desk was activated only for its one seasonal purpose. At other times of year, this room remained empty and silent.

Mel Bakersfeld was aware that conditions were awful. An hour ago, Mel had driven across the airfield. He used service roads, but although he knew the airport layout very well, tonight he had trouble finding his way and several times was almost lost. Mel had gone to inspect the Maintenance Snow Center and then, as now, activity had been intensive. Where the tower Snow Control Desk was a command post, the Maintenance Snow Center was a front line headquarters. From here, weary crews and supervisors came and went, alternately sweating and freezing.

Like the Snow Desk in the control tower, the Maintenance Snow Center was activated for its winter function only. It was a big room above an airport truck garage, and it was presided over by a dispatcher.

The maintenance foreman’s voice came on the radiophone again. “We’re worried about the lost food truck too, Danny. The poor driver could freeze out there. Though if he isn’t foolish, he isn’t starving.”

The UAL^[6] food truck had left the airline flight kitchen for the main terminal nearly two hours ago. Its route lay around the perimeter track, a journey which usually took fifteen minutes. But the truck had failed to arrive, and obviously the driver had lost his way. United flight dispatch had first sent out its own search party, without success. Now airport management had taken over.

Mel said, “That United flight finally took off, didn’t it? Without food.”

Danny Farrow answered without looking up. “I hear the captain put it to the passengers^[7]. Told them it’d take an hour to get another truck, that they had a movie and liquor aboard, and the sun was shining in California. Everybody voted to get out. I would, too.”

Mel nodded, resisting a temptation to take over and direct the search himself for the missing truck and driver. He was glad, a moment later, that he had not interfered. Danny was already doing the right thing – intensifying the truck search. The missing driver must be saved first.

Between calls, Danny warned Mel, “Prepare yourself for more complaints. This search’ll block the perimeter road. We’ll hold up all the other food trucks till we find the guy.

Mel nodded. Complaints were a stock-in-trade^[8] of an airport manager’s job.

With one hand, Danny was using a red telephone; with the other, leafing through emergency orders – Mel’s orders, carefully made for occasions such as this.

The red phone was to the airport’s duty fire chief. Danny summarized the situation.

“And when we locate the truck, let’s get an ambulance out there, and you may need an inhalator or heat, could be both. But better not go until we know where exactly. We don’t want to dig you guys out, too.”

Reaching over Danny’s shoulder, Mel picked up a direct line phone to Air Trafifc Control. The tower watch chief answered.

“What’s the story on that Aéreo-Mexican 707?”

“Still there, Mr. Bakersfeld. They’ve been working a couple of hours trying to move it. No luck yet.”

That particular trouble had begun shortly after dark when an Aéreo-Mexican captain, taxiing out^[9] for takeoff, mistakenly passed to the right instead of left of a blue taxi light^[10]. Unfortunately, the ground to the right, which was normally grass covered, had a drainage problem, and there was still mud beneath the surface. Within seconds of its wrong-way turn, the hundred and twenty ton aircraft was deeply stuck.

When it became obvious that the aircraft could not get out, loaded, under its own power, the irritated passengers were disembarked and helped through mud and snow to buses. Now, more than two hours later, the big jet was still stuck, its fuselage and tail was blocking runway three zero.

Mel inquired, “The runway and taxi strip^[11] are still out of use?”

“Afifrmative,”^[12] the tower chief reported. “We’re holding all outbound trafifc at the gates, then sending them the long route to the other runways.”

“Pretty slow?”

“Slowing us fifty percent. Right now we’re holding ten flights for taxi clearance^[13], another dozen is waiting to start engines.”

“It was a demonstration,” Mel thought, “of how urgently the airport needed additional runways and taxiways.” For three years he had been asking for construction of a new runway to parallel three zero, as well as other operational improvements. But the Board of Airport Commissioners, under political pressure from downtown, refused to approve. The pressure was because city councilmen, for reasons of their own, wanted to avoid new expenses.

“The other thing,” the tower watch chief said, “is that with three zero out of use, we’re having to route takeoffs over Meadowood. The complaints have started coming in already.”

Mel groaned. The community of Meadowood was a constant thorn to himself and an impediment to flight operations. Though the airport had been established long before the community, Meadowood’s residents complained constantly and bitterly about noise from aircraft overhead. Press publicity followed. It attracted even more complaints. Eventually, after long negotiations involving politics and publicity, the airport and the Federal Aviation Administration had agreed that jet takeofsf and landings directly over Meadowood would be made only when essential in special circumstances.

Moreover, it was also agreed that aircraft taking off toward Meadowood would follow noise abatement procedures^[14]. This, in turn, produced protests from pilots, who considered the procedures dangerous. The airlines, however – conscious of the public furor and their corporate images – had ordered the pilots to conform.

Yet even this failed to satisfy the Meadowood residents. Their aggressive leaders were still protesting, organizing, and – according to latest rumors – planning legal harassment^[15] of the airport.

All sorts of problems had gone on for three days and nights since the present snowfall started.

Fifteen minutes ago a note was delivered to Mel by messenger. The note read:

M –

thought should warn u – airlines snow committee (on vern demerest’s urging …why does your bro-in-law dislike you?) fi ling critical report becos runways & taxiways snow clearance (v. d. says) lousy, inef ifcient… report blames airport (meaning u) for flight delays… also claims stuck 707 wouldn’t have if taxiway plowed sooner, better… and where are you – in the drift? climb out & buy me cof fee soon.

luv

t

The “t” was for Tanya – Tanya Livingston, passenger relations agent for Trans America, and a special friend of Mel’s. Mel read the note again, as he usually did messages from Tanya, which became clearer the second time. Tanya, whose job combined troubleshooting and public relations, objected to capitals^[16]. She even asked a Trans America mechanic to remove all capitals from her ofifce typewriter.

The Vern Demerest in the note was Captain Vernon Demerest, also of Trans America. He was one of the airline’s more senior captains, a militant campaigner for the Air Line Pilots Association, and, this season, a member of the Airlines Snow Committee at Lincoln International. The committee inspected runways and taxiways during snow periods and pronounced them fit, or otherwise, for aircraft use. It always included an active flying captain.

Vernon Demerest was also Mel’s brother-in-law, married to Mel’s older sister, Sarah. However, there was little cordiality between Mel and his brother-in-law, whom Mel considered snobbish and arrogant. Others, he knew, held the same opinion. Recently, Mel and Captain Demerest had had an angry exchange at a meeting of the Board of Airport Commissioners, where Demerest appeared on behalf of the pilots’ association. Mel suspected that the critical snow report – apparently initiated by his brother-in-law – was his revenge.

Mel was not greatly worried about the report. He knew they were coping with the storm as well as any organization could. But the report was a nuisance. Copies would go to all airlines, and tomorrow there would be inquiring phone calls and memos, and a need for explanations.

Mel supposed he had better get ready. He decided he would make an inspection of the present snow clearance situation at the same time that he was out on the airfield checking on the blocked runway and the stuck Aéreo-Mexican jet.

At the Snow Desk, Danny Farrow was talking with Airport Maintenance again. When there was a moment’s break, Mel interjected, “I’ll be in the terminal, then on the field.”

He had remembered what Tanya said in her note about having coffee together. He would stop at his own oficf e first, then, on his way through the terminal, he would drop by Trans America to see her. The thought excited him.