Airport (48 page)

“Attention please,” Tanya was saying in her clear, unaffected voice, now audible in every comer of the terminal. “Will Mrs. Inez Guerrero, or Buerrero, please come immediately to the airport general manager’s office on the administrative mezzanine of the main terminal building. Ask any airline or airport representative to direct you. I will repeat…”

There was a click in Mel’s telephone. Lieutenant Ordway came on the line.

“We want that woman,” Mel told him. “The one who was here–Guerrero. We’re announcing…”

“I know,” Ordway said. “I can hear.”

“We need her urgently; I’ll explain later. For now, take my word…”

“I already have. When did you last see her?”

“In my outer office. When she was with you.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“Only that this may be big. I suggest you drop everything; use all your men. And whether you find her or not, get up here soon.”

“Right.” There was another click as Ordway hung up.

Tanya had finished her announcement; she pushed the “off” button of the microphone. Outside, Mel could hear another announcement begin, “Attention Mr. Lester Mainwaring. Will Mr. Mainwaring and all members of his party report immediately to the main terminal entrance?”

“Lester Mainwaring” was an airport code name for policeman.” Normally, such an announcement meant that the nearest policeman on duty was to go wherever the message designated. “All members of his party” meant every policeman in the terminal. Most airports had similar systems to alert their police without the public being made aware.

Ordway was wasting no time. Undoubtedly he would brief his men about Inez Guerrero as they reported to the main entrance.

“Call your D.T.M.,” Mel instructed Tanya. “Ask him to come to this office as quickly as he can. Tell him it’s important.” Partly to himself, he added, “We’ll start by getting everybody here.”

Tanya made the call, then reported, “He’s on his way.” Her voice betrayed nervousness.

Mel had gone to the office door. He closed it.

“You still haven’t told me,” Tanya said, “what it was you found out.”

Mel chose his words carefully.

“Your man Guerrero, the one with no luggage except the little attaché case, and whom you think might have a bomb aboard Flight Two, took out a flight insurance policy just before takeoff for three hundred thousand dollars. The beneficiary is Inez Guerrero. He paid for it with what looked like his last small change.”

“My God!” Tanya’s face went white. She whispered, “Oh, dear God… no!”

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T
HERE WERE TIMES
–tonight was one–when Joe Patroni was grateful that he worked in the maintenance bailiwick of aviation, and not in sales.

The thought occurred to him as he surveyed the busy activity of digging beneath, and around the mired Aéreo-Mexican jet which continued to block runway three zero.

As Patroni saw it, airline sales forces–in which category he lumped all front office staff and executives–comprised inflatable rubber people who connived against each other like fretful children. On the other hand, Patroni was convinced that those in engineering and maintenance departments behaved like mature adults. Maintenance men (Joe was apt to argue), even when employed by competing airlines, worked closely and harmoniously, sharing their information, experience, and even secrets for the common good.

As Joe Patroni sometimes confided privately to his friends, an example of this unofficial sharing was the pooling of information which came to maintenance men regularly through conferences held by individual airlines.

Patroni’s employers, like most major scheduled airlines, had daily telephone conferences–known as “briefings”–during which all regional headquarters, bases, and outfield stations were connected through a continent-wide closed-circuit hookup. Directed by a head office vice-president, the briefings were, in fact, critiques and information exchanges on the way the airline had operated during the past twenty-four hours. Senior people throughout the company’s system talked freely and frankly with one another. Operations and sales departments each had their own daily briefing; so did maintenance–the latter, in Patroni’s opinion, by far the most important.

During the maintenance sessions, in which Joe Patroni took part five days a week, stations reported one by one. Where delays in service–for mechanical reasons–had occurred the previous day, those in charge were required to account for them. Nobody bothered making excuses. As Patroni put it: “If you goofed, you say so.” Accidents or failures of equipment, even minor, were reported; the objective, to pool knowledge and prevent recurrence. At next Monday’s session, Patroni would report tonight’s experience with the Aéreo-Mexican 707, and his success or failure, however it turned out. The daily discussions were strictly no-nonsense, largely because the maintenance men were tough cookies who knew they couldn’t fool one another.

After each official conference–and usually unknown to senior managements–unofficial ones began. Patroni and others would exchange telephone calls with cronies in maintenance departments of competing airlines. They would compare notes about one another’s daily conferences, passing on what information seemed worth while. Rarely was any intelligence withheld.

With more urgent matters–especially those affecting safety–word was passed from airline to airline in the same way, but without the day’s delay. If Delta, for example, had a rotor blade failure on a DC-9 in flight, maintenance departments of Eastern, TWA, Continental, and others using DC-9s, were told within hours; the information might help prevent similar failures on other aircraft. Later, photographs of the disassembled engine, and a technical report, would follow. If they wished, foremen and mechanics from other airlines could widen their knowledge by dropping over for a look-see at the failed part, and any engine damage.

Those who, like Patroni, worked in this give-and-take milieu were fond of pointing out that if sales and administration departments of competing airlines had occasion to consult, their people seldom went to one another’s headquarters, but met on neutral ground. Maintenance men, in contrast, visited competitors’ premises with the assurance of a common freemasonry. At other times, if one maintenance department was in trouble, others helped as they were able.

This second kind of help had been sent, tonight, to Joe Patroni.

In the hour and a half since work began in the latest attempt to move the stranded jet from alongside runway three zero, Patroni’s complement of help had almost doubled. He had begun with the original small crew of Aéreo-Mexican, supplemented by some of his own people from TWA. Now, digging steadily with the others, were ground crews from Braniff, Pan Am, American, and Eastern.

As the various newcomers had arrived, in an assortment of airline vehicles, it became evident that news of Patroni’s problem had spread quickly on the airport grapevine, and, without waiting to be asked, other maintenance departments had pitched in. It gave Joe Patroni a good, appreciative feeling.

Despite the extra help, Patroni’s estimate of an hour’s preparatory work had already been exceeded. Digging of twin trenches, floored by heavy timbers, in front of the airliner’s main landing gear had gone ahead steadily–though slowly because of the need for all the men working to seek shelter periodically, to warm themselves. The shelter and the warmth, of a sort, were in two crew buses. As the men entered, they beat their hands and pinched their faces, numb from the biting wind still sweeping icily across the snow-covered airfield. The buses and other vehicles, including trucks, snow clearance equipment, a fuel tanker, assorted service cars, and a roaring power cart–most with beacon lights flashing–were still clustered on the taxiway close by. The whole scene was bathed by floodlights, creating a white oasis of snow-reflected light in the surrounding darkness.

The twin trenches, each six feet wide, now extended forward and upward from the big jet’s main wheels to the firmer ground onto which Patroni hoped the airplane could be moved under its own power. At the deepest level of the trenches was a mess of mud beneath snow, which had originally trapped the momentarily strayed airliner. The mud and slush now mingled, but became less viscous as both trenches angled upward. A third trench, less deep, and narrower than the other two, had been dug to allow passage of the nosewheel. Once the firmer ground was reached, the aircraft would be clear of runway three zero, over which one of its wings now extended. It could also be maneuvered with reasonable ease onto the solid surface of the adjoining taxiway.

Now the preparatory work was almost complete, the success of what came next would depend on the aircraft’s pilots, still waiting on the Boeing 707’s flight deck, high above the current activity. What they would have to judge was how much power they could safely use to propel the aircraft forward, without upending it on its nose.

Through most of the time since he arrived, Joe Patroni had wielded a shovel with the rest of the men digging. Inactivity came hard to him. Sometimes, too, he welcomed the chance to keep himself fit; even now, more than twenty years since quitting the amateur boxing ring, he was in better shape physically than most men years his junior. The airline ground crewmen enjoyed seeing Patroni’s cocky, stocky figure working with them. He led and exhorted…
“Keep moving, son, or we’ll figure we’re gravediggers, and you the corpse.”… “The way you guys keep heading for that bus, looks like you’ve got a woman stashed there.”… “If you lean on that shovel any more, Jack, you’ll freeze solid like Lot’s wife.”… “Men, we want this airplane moved before it’s obsolete.”

So far, Joe Patroni had not talked with the captain and first officer, having left that to the Aéreo-Mexican foreman, Ingram, who had been in charge before Patroni’s arrival. Ingram had passed up a message on the aircraft interphone, telling the pilots what was happening below.

Now, straightening his back, and thrusting his shovel at Ingram, the maintenance chief advised, “Five minutes more should do it. When you’re ready, get the men and trucks clear.” He motioned to the snow-shrouded airplane. “When this one comes out, she’ll be like a cork from a champagne bottle.”

Ingram, huddled into his parka, still pinched and cold as he had been earlier, nodded.

“While you’re doing that,” Patroni said, “I’ll yak with the fly boys.”

The old-fashioned boarding ramp which had been trundled from the terminal several hours ago to disembark the stranded passengers was still in place near the aircraft’s nose. Joe Patroni climbed the ramp, its steps covered in deep snow, and let himself into the front passenger cabin. He went forward to the flight deck–with relief, lighting his inevitable cigar as he went.

In contrast to the cold and wind-blown snow outside, the pilots’ cockpit was snug and quiet. One of the communications radios was tuned to soft music of a commercial station. As Patroni entered, the Aéreo-Mexican first officer, in shirt-sleeves, snapped a switch and the music stopped.

“Don’t worry about doing that.” The chunky maintenance chief shook himself like a bull terrier while snow cascaded from his clothing. “Nothing wrong with taking things easy. After all, we didn’t expect you to come down and shovel.”

Only the first officer and captain were in the cockpit. Patroni remembered hearing that the flight engineer had gone with the stewardesses and passengers to the terminal.

The captain, a heavy-set, swarthy man who resembled Anthony Quinn, swiveled around in his port-side seat. He said stiffly, “We have our job to do. You have yours.” His English was precise.

“That’s right,” Patroni acknowledged. “Only trouble is, our job gets fouled up and added to. By other people.”

“If you are speaking of what has happened here,” the captain said, “
Madre de Dios!
–you do not suppose that I placed this airplane in the mud on purpose.”

“No, I don’t.” Patroni discarded his cigar, which was maimed from chewing, put a new one in his mouth, and lit it. “But now it’s there, I want to make sure we get it out–this next time we try. If we don’t, the airplane’ll be in a whole lot deeper; so will all of us, including you.” He nodded toward the captain’s seat. “How’d you like me to sit there and drive it out?”

The captain flushed. Few people in any airline talked as casually to four-stripers as Joe Patroni.

“No, thank you,” the captain said coldly. He might have replied even more unpleasantly, except that at the moment he was suffering acute embarrassment for having got into his present predicament at all. Tomorrow in Mexico City, he suspected, he would face an unhappy, searing session with his airline’s chief pilot. He raged inwardly:
Jesucristo y por la amor de Dios!

“There’s a lotta half-frozen guys outside who’ve been busting their guts,” Patroni insisted. “Getting out now’s tricky. I’ve done it before. Maybe you should let me again.”

The Aéreo-Mexican captain bridled. “I know who you are, Mr. Patroni, and I am told that you are likely to help us move from this bad ground, where others have failed. So I have no doubt that you are licensed to taxi airplanes. But let me remind you there are two of us here who are licensed to
fly
them. It is what we are paid for. Therefore we shall remain at the controls.”

“Suit yourself.” Joe Patroni shrugged, then waved his cigar at the control pedestal. “Only thing is, when I give the word, open those throttles all the way. And I mean all the way, and don’t chicken out.”

As he left the cockpit, he ignored angry glares from both pilots.

Outside, digging had stopped; some of the men who had been working were warming themselves again in the crew buses. The buses and other vehicles–with the exception of the power cart, which was needed for starting engines–were being removed some distance from the airplane.

Joe Patroni closed the forward cabin door behind him and descended the ramp. The foreman, huddled deeper than ever into his parka, reported, “Everything’s set.”

Remembering his cigar was still lighted, Patroni puffed at it several times, then dropped it into the snow where it went out. He motioned to the silent jet engines. “Okay, let’s light up all four.”