Jake watched the limo pull away, Helen at his side, his hand intertwined with hers. He watched until the taillights disappeared, feeling a strange sense of regret that he didn't understand.
Logan International Airport, Boston
June 16, 1989
Jake and Helen left the first class lounge and boarded the DC-10 at 10:27 AM the day after Celia's wedding. Jake was refreshed and well-rested but Helen was suffering from a nasty hangover. While Jake had been dancing the night away with Celia's relatives, Helen had been swilling down Dom Perignon and white wine. They were dressed in their casual traveling clothes of jeans and T-shirts, both of them with dark glasses on their eyes in the vain hope they wouldn't be recognized.
"You want the window seat?" Jake asked Helen as the flight attendant led them to their assigned places. They were in row one of the first class section, the two seats directly behind the cockpit area.
"No, you take it," she said. "I have a feeling I'll have to make a few trips to the bathroom."
Jake chuckled. "I told you never to mix drinks, didn't I?"
"Oh shut the fuck up," she replied, causing a well-dressed middle-age woman behind them to gasp in shock at the foul language.
Jake settled into the spacious and comfortable window seat, reclining it just a hair and stretching his legs, which were a little sore from all the dancing. Helen simply slumped down. She pulled her seatbelt tight around her middle and then leaned her head against Jake's shoulder.
"You gonna be okay?" he asked.
"Once this flight's over with I will be," she said. "Flying commercial is bad enough. Doing it with a hangover is even worse."
It still amazed Jake sometimes that Helen, though an experienced pilot, was scared of flying on jetliners. Though the two of them had flown first class commercial many times over the past year, on long hauls to New Zealand, Japan, England, and shorter hauls all over the European continent, she was always tense and nervous from the time she entered a large aircraft until the time it touched down at their destination.
"Too many parts in these things," she always said. "Too many things that can go wrong. Incompetent pilots, incompetent mechanics, incompetent air traffic controllers, or incompetent engineering. One little thing goes wrong, it can start a cascade that will bring the whole plane down. And you don't survive crashes in jetliners. Not very often anyway."
Jake had tried using logic with her. He had reminded her that more than ten thousand flights took off from United States airports every day of every year and that there was a spectacular plane crash maybe once every three or four years on average. Those were pretty good odds, about the best you could get in the travel industry. He tried to point out that far more small aircraft crashed — usually with lethal results — than large ones. None of that mattered to Helen.
"I know my mechanic," she said. "I know my air traffic controllers. Most importantly, I know me and my machine. If something goes wrong, it's my fault and I'll take responsibility for my death. Up in a jetliner, I'm nothing but a sheep strapped into a seat and hoping that everyone involved knows what the fuck they're doing."
"You want a drink?" Jake asked her when the stewardess began making her pre-flight rounds (this was one of the advantages of flying first class — you could drink while the coach section was still sitting in the boarding lounge). Drinking a few potent beverages was Helen's usual way of dealing with her fear.
She gave him an evil look. "Don't even mention alcohol to me," she said. "I'll just have to ride this one out. At least if the plane crashes it'll put an end to this damn headache and nausea."
Jake had to agree with this logic. "I guess every cloud does have a silver lining." He then ordered a double bloody Mary for himself.
Helen sat with her eyes closed and Jake sipped his drink while the rest of the plane boarded. It was just enough to give him a pleasant warmth in his stomach. After the plane was sealed up and backed out of the terminal, he opened one of the in-flight magazines and began to flip through it, paying absolutely no attention as the flight attendant went through her litany of safety instructions and demonstrations of the oxygen masks and the life jackets.
When they reached the end of the runway and the captain announced impending take-off, Helen reached over and grasped Jake's hand. Take-off was the part she hated the most, when the aircraft was full of fuel and one of any ten thousand things could go wrong.
The roar of the engines wound up and they began to lumber down the runway, slowly but surely picking up speed. The nose came up and there was a thump as the landing gear left the runway. The ground dropped away beneath them and they banked to the right, a turn designed to keep them from flying over a residential area and bothering the rich people who lived there with engine noise.
There was a whine from beneath them as the gear retracted. The turn leveled out and the nose came down into a less steep angle of descent, making it feel for a few seconds like they were actually descending. Jake glanced out the window to the ground below. He saw freeway interchanges and thousands of rooftops. His eyes, now experienced in the ways of flight, told him they were at about six thousand feet or so, and still climbing.
Suddenly the routine ascent became un-routine. From the right side of the aircraft a peculiar whine began, increasing in pitch until it was almost a scream.
"What the fuck?" Helen said, her eyes flying open, her body suddenly tense.
Jake opened his mouth to offer some soothing words — although the sound was definitely not something he'd ever heard a jet airliner make before — and closed it again when the entire plane began to shake and shudder.
An excited babble erupted from the passengers. There were a few mild screams.
"What's happening?" someone behind them yelled out. "What is that?"
A loud bang erupted from the right side. The plane jolted again and the nose dropped alarmingly. At the same moment, Jake felt the entire aircraft pull severely to the right. The cabin erupted into panicked screams this time.
"Jake! Oh my God!" Helen yelled, her hand squeezing his hard enough to cause pain.
Jake felt a burst of adrenaline go shooting through his body. He looked out his window at the wing and there, he saw the most terrifying thing of his life. The engine mounted to that wing was billowing black smoke and flame, leaving a trail behind it.
Son of a bitch, Jake's mind thought in horrified wonder. I'm going to die in a plane crash. Isn't that the most cliché way for a rock star to go?
Chapter 14a
Posted: 13.04.2007, 17:07:41
Jake's urge to panic was very great as he stared at the smoke and flame billowing from the engine on the right wing, as he felt the seemingly uncontrolled yaw to the right, as he felt the nose of the aircraft starting to drop. Panic seemed a perfectly natural response. Based on the screams of the passengers around him, based on the painful way that Helen was clutching his arm and the terrified whine coming from her lips, it seemed like panic was all the rage. He very nearly succumbed to it.
But then the yaw suddenly stopped, returning strictly forward flight to the vehicle. The nose came back up a little, settling them into a gentle climb. The other two engines continued to roar comfortingly, kicking up a little in noise level, but sounding otherwise normal. Jake took another look at the engine on the right wing just in time to see it enveloped by a cloud of white vapor. This cloud went on for ten seconds or so. When it cleared, the engine was still smoking but was no longer aflame. Slowly, he began to realize that catastrophe was not exactly imminent. Though he understood that something had gone terribly wrong with the aircraft he was in, and though he had never wanted so badly to be on the ground as he wanted it right at that moment, he began to think that maybe things were going to be all right.