Equal Time Point Page 8

  Britt and Pam were just finishing their dinner when the cockpit interphone sounded again. Pam answered, “Tri Con dial-a-date.”

  Robby said, “You wish, Pam. It’s time to wake up sleeping beauty.”

  “He’s kinda cute. We’re gonna keep him back here with us.”

  “No, you’re not, and you can lay out my slippers and pajamas because I have next break.”

  “Robby, you probably haven’t seen pajamas since second grade.”

  “Second grade was the best three years of my life.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  She walked back to the crew rest seat and gently shook Tony’s shoulder until he opened his eyes.

  “Duty calls, sleeping beauty.”

  He smiled and gave her a thumbs-up. Tony folded the blanket and left it on the seat with the pillow. He found an empty lavatory and splashed water on his face, then went to the galley where Britt fixed him a cup of hot coffee to take to the cockpit with him. She followed him, and when he entered, she waited for him to hand her the empty meal trays that were sitting on the relief pilot’s seat. She offered hot fudge ice cream sundaes, and Charlie and Tony both placed their orders.

  Charlie said, “Robby before you leave I’m going to visit the lavatory. Hold on to the handlebars till I get back.”

  Charlie left the cockpit, and Robby briefed Tony.

  “We’re going direct Tusky now, and the ETA and fuel look good. You’ll need to call Gander shortly and copy our oceanic clearance. We’re still at three three zero and talking to Moncton.”

  “I got the picture, Robby. Thanks.”

  When Charlie returned and strapped in, Robby slid the seat back.

  “Just use my brain bag. The flight plan is on this clipboard, and the plotting chart and plotter are on the other one.”

  Robby stood up and they danced past each other. Tony sat down, fastened the seat belt, and hit the button to move the seat forward.

  Charlie said, “Sleep tight, Robby.”

  “Thanks, boss. Give me a wake-up call about ten minutes early.”

  “You can count on it.”

  Robby left and Charlie asked, “Did you sleep well, Tony?”

  “Yeah, for a little while. It’s pretty noisy back there.”

  “I know. Second and third break are much better. Let’s get the oceanic clearance before we get to Tusky. There’s a special clearance delivery frequency on the flight plan for Gander.”

  Gander control, located in Newfoundland, was the controlling agency for the western half of the North Atlantic.

  Tony found the frequency and dialed it into the number two radio. Charlie reminded him that they were touchy about proper radio procedures. The frequency was crowded, and they listened as several other flights received clearance. Tony waited patiently with his pencil poised over his scratch pad. Finally, there was a break and Tony jumped in.

  “Gander clearance, Tri Con One-One, request oceanic clearance, highest possible is three-five-zero.”

  Gander always wanted to know the maximum altitude capability in case they needed to change the flight level. Tony knew they were too heavy to climb above thirty-five thousand feet. He copied the clearance from the controller and found that there were no changes from the flight plan. He read it back for confirmation.

  “Tri Con One-One, read back is correct, have a good evening.”

  “Nice job Tony. You might want to double check the latitudes and longitudes on the plotting chart to see if we marked all of them correctly.”

  Tony checked them and said, “It looks good. The equal time airports are St. Johns in Newfoundland and Lisbon in Portugal with the equal time point at about 032 west.”

  “Right, I made a fix in the flight plan and named it ETP. It’ll show up on the nav screen when we get close.”

  Tony dialed the number one high-frequency radio to 8906 and dreaded having to try to talk through the static and noise once they began the over water portion of the flight.

  “Tri Con One-One, contact Gander Center on one-three-five decimal two-six, over.”

  “One-three-five decimal two-six, Tri Con One-One, good evening.”

  They were entering their last sector before beginning the Atlantic crossing. Charlie scanned the panels again and saw that the center fuel tanks were almost empty.

  When Allen began another story about his exploits and accomplishments in the sports shoe industry, Molly excused herself and went to the forward galley. Throughout the cabin people were reclining their seats and getting comfortable for the night. She hoped Allen would follow suit if she left him alone for a little while.

  Pam had gone on break, but Molly found Britt and Nancy making ice cream sundaes. Britt said, “Hi Molly, having trouble getting to sleep?”

  “No, I’m just bored, I guess. Did someone request extra dessert?”

  “These are for the pilots. They’re not as irritating as most, so we decided to give them a treat.”

  Molly laughed, “Charlie’s a good guy. I flew with him quite a bit when I was on the line.”

  “Do you ever miss it?”

  “Actually, I do. Back then when I went home I didn’t think much about Tri Con until it was time to go back to work. Now it’s an everyday hassle. Are you taking those to the cockpit?”

  “I am. Would you like to come along and say hello to Charlie?”

  “Sure, let me carry one of those for you.”

  Tony answered the phone and then pushed the unlock button for the door. Britt came in, followed by the tall redhead he had seen in the briefing room. Britt said, “I brought a visitor. I thought you two might enjoy talking to a grown-up for a change.”

  Charlie said, “Hey, Molly, welcome.” He picked up the logbook on the relief pilot’s seat and said, “Have a seat and visit for awhile.”

  “Thanks, Charlie. You sure I’m not interrupting anything?”

  “Of course not, we’re just sitting here watching the autopilot work. Britt, is everyone sleeping back there?”

  “Pretty much. We’ll wake them for breakfast in a few hours.”

  “What’s the story on all those handicapped folks?”

  “They’re all members of an anti-discrimination organization.”

  “Does it present any special problems for you?”

  “Two of them peed in their seats, but other than that, no problem.”

  “I’m sure you handled it with a maximum of delicacy and decorum.”

  “Alice and Shelia quietly administered air freshener. We’ll have the seat cushions changed in Madrid.”

  Charlie asked, “Molly, do they cover that in flight attendant training?”

  “I don’t think so. Sounds like Britt has it figured out, though.”

  Britt said, “I better get back to see what disaster occurs next.”

  She carefully locked the door as she left.

  “Tri Con One-One, contact Gander Radio, frequency eight-nine-zero six at Color, radar service is terminated, over.”

  “Gander Radio on eight-nine-zero six at Color, Tri Con One-One.”

  Molly asked, “What’s Color?”

  “It’s just a navigation fix on the coast of Newfoundland. We’re about to begin the crossing, and they won’t be able to see us on radar any longer.”

  The airplane rolled into a slight turn as they crossed Color and Tony turned the volume up on the HF radio. “Let’s see if I remember how to do this.”

  The high frequency, long range radios were necessary for the ocean crossing, but they were temperamental and subject to atmospheric interference. The signals sometimes carried for thousands of miles and created overlap with several airplanes transmitting at once.

  “Gander Radio, Tri Con One-One, position on 8906, over.”

  “Tri Con One-One Gander, go ahead.”

  “Tri Con One-One, Color at 0336, flight level three-three-zero, estimating 47 North, 050 west at 0349, 47 north, 040 west next, SELCAL is bravo kilo alpha foxtrot, over.”

  The se
lective calling feature allowed air traffic control to transmit a special signal to their airplane only which would cause a blue light to flash and a bell to ding. This relieved Tony from having to monitor the scratchy radio constantly.

  Gander read the position report back, confirming that it was correct, and punched up their SELCAL code, transmitting it. The bell dinged, the blue light flashed, and Tony turned the volume back down. He sighed and said, “That one was pretty easy.”

  Charlie said, “Wait till we get a couple hundred miles out. The HF radio can be a real pain.”

  Molly asked, “What were all those numbers about?”

  “There are no navigation stations and no airways over the ocean. Gander designs what they call North Atlantic Tracks each day based on the winds and weather. The tracks are sixty miles apart, and they can stack airplanes onto them in altitude increments of a thousand feet from 29,000 up to 41,000. The numbers that you heard were latitude longitude fixes that define our track. You can look at our plotting chart here and see the track that we drew. We use GPS to follow the track. We have to give a position report at each fix so they can keep us separated from other airplanes.”

  “Could you give me that in English?”

  “Sure, do you see the magenta line on the big screen in the middle of the instrument panel?”

  “Oh yeah, I do.”

  “If that little symbol that has wings on it stays on the magenta line, everybody is happy.”

  “That’s a much better explanation Charlie.”

  “Any kid with a Game Boy could do it.”

  Tony checked the howgozit at Color and declared, “We’re three minutes ahead, and we’ve manufactured nine hundred pounds of fuel.”

  Molly said, “That’s even better. I was just glad we were on the purple line.”

  They continued to enjoy their ice cream and thirteen minutes later, Tony made the position report at the first oceanic fix. The reports after that would be at ten-degree intervals of longitude and almost an hour apart. The center tank fuel had been expended and the engines were now consuming from the main wing tanks. The electronic controller that scheduled fuel pumps on and off to transfer and maintain balance in the auto mode had woken up the main tank pumps; however, it would only use the forward transfer pumps as long as they were immersed in fuel. The aft inboard sections of the tanks were larger, deeper, and contained the aft inboard transfer pumps.

  Molly and Charlie reminisced about old times and related funny stories to Tony. Several of them featured Colt Adams, who Tony had not had the pleasure of meeting. Molly told them about one of her flight attendants who had the misfortune of encountering a self-important gentleman in the first-class cabin on one of her flights. He had become incensed over some issue that no one even remembered and she was unable to assuage his concerns. He began to loudly ask over and over, “Do you know who I am? Do you have any idea who I am?”

  She calmly picked up the PA and announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a passenger sitting in 3B that does not know who he is. If anyone knows who he is would you please come forward and identify him?”

  Molly said that she summoned the girl into the office in order to personally reprimand her, but in the course of chewing her out, they both started laughing so hard they couldn’t stop. She did not, however, tell her that she had received eight emails from frequent flyers who had witnessed the incident, commending the girl for putting the man in his place.

  Molly finally decided that she should at least attempt a nap, and retired to the cabin. It was after ten o’clock by her body clock, and it had been a very long day. She blessedly found Allen asleep and hoped he would stay in that condition. The flight attendants were taking turns with rest breaks. Bertie was taking hers in the seat beside Mandy and watching her sleep with her teddy bear. Britt had not taken her break but was sitting in her folding seat at the 1L door and reading a magazine.

  Two hundred miles offshore, there was very little to do and even less to see. Charlie and Tony were keeping each other awake by talking about their families and their careers. The sky was clear above with visible stars and no moon. Below, the Atlantic was dark and could not be seen at all. The HF radio frequency was crowded with the litany of position reports from aircraft, some nearby and some thousands of miles away. They had turned the volume down and relied on the SELCAL to alert them if Gander called. They were no longer in range of land-based VHF radio; however, they tuned one radio to 121.5, the international emergency frequency, and the other to 123.45, the air-to-air frequency. Occasionally aircraft would converse with each other on the air-to-air frequency for turbulence reports and sometimes just to pass the time. They turned on the overhead lights in the cockpit, which destroyed night vision, but there was nothing to see outside anyway.

  Charlie was considering calling the galley for coffee when he heard the SELCAL ding and saw the blue light begin to flash. Tony increased the volume and could hear at least three aircrafts transmitting at once in different parts of the northern hemisphere. In a slightly louder, overriding voice he heard, “Tri Con One-One, Gander, over.”

  “Gander, Tri Con One-One, go ahead.”

  “Tri Con One-One, Gander, Climb and maintain flight level three-five-zero. Cross 47 north, 040 west at flight level three-five-zero. Report reaching, over.”

  He looked at Charlie, who gave him a thumbs-up.

  “Gander, Tri Con One-One, out of flight level three-three-zero climbing to flight level three-five-zero. We’ll report reaching.”

  Charlie typed the new altitude into the computer and dialed it up on the altitude select panel to enable it. The throttles slowly moved forward, the nose pitched up and the airplane began to climb at about a thousand feet per minute. Charlie scanned the TCAS (traffic collision avoidance system) screen and saw no other aircraft in the area to worry about. He watched the rate of climb decrease as they approached the new altitude and settle on zero as they leveled out.

  “Looks like the wind is about the same, so it shouldn’t affect our next ETA, Tony.”

  Tony fought his way onto the frequency again and reported, “Gander, Tri Con One-One is level at flight level three five zero, over.”

  Among several other voices, he heard, “Tri Con One-One, Gander, roger level at flight level three-five-zero.”

  When the airplane pitched up to climb, fuel in the main tanks gravitated to the rear. The forward transfer pump became uncovered and the controller sent a signal to the aft pump to do its thing. The signal was routed instead to the dump valves. They opened immediately and began spilling fuel into the night at six thousand pounds per minute. A little less than a minute later, the airplane leveled and the forward pump was once again immersed in jet fuel. The controller recognized the situation and signaled the aft pump back to sleep, thus closing the dump valves.

  Once they were safely cruising at the new altitude, Charlie scanned the panels once again. He saw nothing out of the ordinary and called the galley to request coffee. Britt was glad to have something to break the boredom, and a few minutes later she entered the cockpit with two hot cups.

  “Britt, I thought you would be on break by now,” Charlie said.

  “I’m planning a nap in a little while, before we start the breakfast service. How about you, Charlie?”

  “Yeah, I’ll let you know when to wake Robby.”

  Ray paced his cell and complained until his cellmates threatened to shut him up. He watched the clock on the wall and calculated the flight time over and over. At ten o’clock, he knew the million dollars was gone. There would not be enough time to go through his elaborate scenario. He watched as other prisoners were charged and released with a court date. The paper work dragged on and on.

  If they released him in the next thirty minutes, and he could get to one of his stolen cell phones, he might be able to warn Tri Con and give them the information to avert the disaster. His only other option would be to confess to the sabotage and have the police call Tri Con. That option was quickly reject
ed. Another five minutes ticked away.

  Chapter Eleven

  Radioman Third Class Brian Davis was sleeping like a baby. He was stretched out beneath the sheets of his bottom rack in the forward berthing compartment. The gentle roll and pitch of the ship had put him out like a light less than two hours ago. Now someone was shaking his shoulder and saying, “Roll out of there, Davis, it’s eleven thirty.”

  Brian’s personal living space aboard the ship was seven feet long and two feet high. That was the length of his bed and the distance to the one stacked above him. The sailors referred to it as their rack, similar to the ancient torture device. He opened his eyes and in the dim light of the berthing compartment he could barely see the picture of his girlfriend taped to the rack above his. He was beginning the last year of his four-year US Navy enlistment and wondered once again if he could survive the sporadic sleep patterns of shipboard life. He rolled out of the rack on his knees and then stood up on the swaying deck. Brian had grown up in California and had the sun-bleached blond hair to prove it. He had met his current girlfriend on Virginia Beach, near the amphibious base in Norfolk. He went to his locker and dug out a pair of bellbottom dungarees and a blue work shirt with his third-class petty officer insignia. If he hurried he could stop by the mess deck for mid-rats, the light snacks rationed by the ship’s cook for the late shift change, before reporting to the radio room at eleven forty-five to begin his midnight to four a.m. watch.

  When he remembered that his best friend, Bobby Creel, had the eight to midnight watch, he took his time. He grabbed a couple of donuts and a cup of coffee and decided to take the outside route to the ship’s bridge. There was a fifteen knot breeze blowing when he stepped through the open hatch and onto the main deck, but only because that was the speed of the little ship. The USS Karuk was an ocean-going fleet tug named for an American Indian tribe. The ship was a little over two hundred feet long and was staffed with a crew of eighty-five sailors. The Karuk was en route from Norfolk to the Azores, and would later join the sixth fleet in the Mediterranean, where they would be available to not only tow ships, but to also perform salvage and rescue missions.