Free Final Approach by John J. Nance

stopped himself, leaning back over the seat in Joe’s direction. “You did know that the captain on the Airbus was our chief pilot, didn’t you?”
    Joe Wallingford was startled, as was Andy Wallace, who had overheard. “Really?”
    â€œYeah. Dick Timson. Had to fly the trip yesterday because, just before departure, he suspended the captain who was scheduled to fly it out of Dallas to D.C. and Kansas City.”
    With that, the captain moved quickly up the aisle, dodging and greeting passengers before disappearing into the cockpit of the Boeing 727.
    The noise of footsteps on the wooden parquet tiles of the Kansas City terminal had been a constant din all night long. Now it was 5 A.M. central daylight time according to his watch, and once more the door to the room swung open.
    Mark felt strangely calm now, more aware of the plush surroundings each time another grim-faced airline representative entered or left the North America Club, trying to speak in hushed tones while escorting clergymen and physicians to the various collections of pitiful humans within.
    Mark Weiss had dealt with grief before, personally, clinically, and distantly. He was trained, but the training was worthless to him now. He longed for some form of unconsciousness, but had fought every attempt by well-meaning doctors to sedate him. He had let them bandage his cut hands, but no more. Crash or no crash, Kim’s father still hung near death in Dallas, other family members now insulating him against any word of the horror in Kansas City. Kim’s mother was stronger than Mark had expected, taking the news of her daughter’s and grandsons’ deaths in stride and staying at her husband’s bedside. Mark’s brother-in-law had relayed that report an hour ago. No one knew what to do. Should Mark fly to them, or vice versa? What kept yanking his mind around was the continuous thought that he must ask Kim, and the jolting realization of where she was, where he was, and what had happened. Like a computer caught in an endless loop, the nightmare continued.
    â€œMr. Weiss?”
    Yet another sad-eyed man had knelt beside him, this one probably a minister. He didn’t want to be rude, but he didn’t want strangers around him right now. “I’m … okay. Please. Leave … leave me alone a while.”
    The man disappeared as quickly as he had come, dissolving somewhere in the crowd of grieving relatives and friends, some of them sobbing uncontrollably, others in various states of agitation and shock. It had been mass confusion for hours.
    Mark found himself memorizing the boardroomlike features of the club room, the polished chrome chair rails and oak tables, the soft colors and fabrics, a leather-covered couch and silent television in one corner, and the galaxy of small ceiling spotlights someone had turned down to their lowest setting.
    Through the numbness and the mental pain that kept ricocheting back and forth in his head like lightning strikes through a black night, Mark remembered the captain of Kim’s flight … the big fellow he had talked to in the cockpit and who had approached him in tears on the bloody taxiway. They were all victims. But of what? He would have to know. He couldn’t accept this. He had to know.
    It was 6:12 A.M. eastern standard time and still dark when the Washington Monument passed Joe’s window on the right-hand side of the Boeing 727 as they lifted off to the north from Washington National. He glanced down at the infamous Fourteenth Street Bridge as the powerful engines boosted them safely over the structure, remembering with excessive clarity the snowy day in 1982 when a brightly colored Boeing 737 belonging to a now-defunct carrier called Air Florida had limped off the same runway with only 75 percent power and ice on its wings—a flight that ended on impact with the Fourteenth Street Bridge. That had been a brutal accident to investigate in many