Chapter 3 - Ghosts on the Radio
“Northstar 417 Heavy, Seattle Center. We have bad news on the weather front.” The controller’s voice sounded tense, stripped of all routine casualness. “Sea-Tac is reporting microburst activity on short final. A regional turboprop just executed an emergency go-around after losing thirty knots of indicated airspeed at five hundred feet. Runway 16 Left is effectively unusable.”
Mara hit the push-to-talk button on her yoke. “Center, Northstar 417. We don't have the fuel or the hydraulic redundancy for a go-around. Once I point this nose down, I am committed to a landing. What are our divert options?”
“Portland is clear, but you’re thirty minutes out,” Evan whispered, his head sagging toward his chest. “Do we have the fuel?”
Mara checked the totalizer. “Nine thousand pounds remaining. If we turn south toward Portland, we burn five thousand climbing back out of the soup, and we arrive on fumes. If anything goes wrong on approach to Portland, we turn into a glider. We stay in Seattle.”
Evan shook his head weakly. “Landing in microburst conditions without full flaps is suicide, Mara.”
“Then we find another runway,” Mara shot back. She keyed the radio. “Seattle Center, talk to me about military airfields. What about Joint Base Lewis-McChord?”
A new voice suddenly clicked onto the frequency—crisp, authoritative, and unmistakably military. “Northstar 417, this is Colonel Vance Keller, Commander of the 62nd Airlift Wing at McChord Field. We’ve been monitoring your emergency on guard frequency, Commander.”
Hearing that steady military tone sent a rush of cold adrenaline through Mara’s veins. “Colonel, I have an incapacitated captain, an injured copilot, degrading hydraulics, and two hundred sixteen souls on board. Sea-Tac is boxed in by weather. What is McChord’s runway status?”
“Runway 16 at McChord is ten thousand one hundred feet of solid concrete, Commander,” Colonel Keller answered immediately. “We’ve diverted our C-17s to Moses Lake. The entire base airspace is sanitized for you. Our weather is marginal—crosswind gusting twenty-eight knots, heavy driving rain—but we don't have the windshear that Sea-Tac is seeing. And our emergency arrestor cables are raised at both ends if you need them.”
“An arrestor cable won't catch a civilian airliner, Colonel,” Mara said. “We’d shear the landing gear right off the mounts.”
“I know,” Keller replied. “But our fire department is lining both sides of the tarmac with foam trucks. You bring her over the threshold, Lieutenant Commander, and we’ll catch whatever is left of you.”
May you like
Evan managed a ghost of a grin through his pale lips. “Sounds like… the military rolls out the red carpet for their own.”
“Don't celebrate yet,” Mara muttered, checking the heading indicator. “We’ve got twenty-five miles of nasty chop between us and McChord, and our right engine just started fluctuating.”
