ATC RULES AND PROCEDURES 6 страница

Mel said grimly, "Meadowood will have to suffer." Community meeting or not, there was nothing he could do to eliminate overhead noise for the time being. The most important thing at the moment was to reduce the lag in operations. "Where's Joe Patroni now?"

"Same place. Still held up."

"Can he make it for sure?"

"TWA says so. He has a phone in his car, and they've been in touch."

"As soon as Joe gets here," Mel instructed, "I want to be notified. Wherever I am."

"That'll be downtown, I guess."

Mel hesitated. There was no reason, he supposed, why he need remain at the airport any longer tonight. Yet again, unaccountably, he had the same sense of foreboding which had disturbed him on the airfield. He remembered his conversation earlier with the tower watch chief, the line of waiting aircraft on the ramp apron outside. He made a spontaneous decision.

"No, I won't be downtown. We need that runway badly, and I'm not leaving until I know positively that Patroni is out there on the field, in charge."

"In that case," Danny said, "I suggest you call your wife right now. Here's the number she's at."

Mel wrote it down, then depressed the receiver rest and dialed the downtown number. He asked for Cindy, and after a brief wait, heard her voice say sharply, "Mel, why aren't you here?"

"I'm sorry, I was held up. There've been problems at the airport. It's a pretty big storm..."

 

"Damn you, get down here fast!"

 

From the fact that his wife's voice was low, Mel deduced there were others within hearing. Just the same, she managed to convey a surprising amount of venom.

Mel sometimes tried to associate the voice of Cindy nowadays with the Cindy he remembered before their marriage fifteen years ago. She had been a gentler person then, it seemed to him. In fact, her gentleness had been one of the things which appealed to Mel when they first met in San Francisco, he on leave from the Navy and Korea. Cindy had been an actress at the time, though in a minor way because the career she had hoped for had not worked out, and clearly wasn't going to. She had had a succession of diminishingly small parts in summer stock and television, and afterward, in a moment of frankness, admitted that marriage had been a welcome release from the whole thing.

 

Years later, that story changed a little, and it became a favorite gambit of Cindy's to declare that she had sacrificed her career and probable stardom because of Mel. More recently, though, Cindy didn't like her past as an actress being mentioned at all. That was because she had read in Town and Country that actresses were seldom, if ever, included in The Social Register, and addition of her own name to the Register was something Cindy wanted very much indeed.

 

"I'm coming downtown to join you just as soon as I can," Mel said.

Cindy snapped, "That isn't good enough. You should be here already. You knew perfectly well that tonight was important to me, and a week ago you made a definite promise."

"A week ago I didn't know we were going to have the biggest storm in six years. Right now we've a runway out of use, there's a question of airport safety..."

"You've people working for you, haven't you? Or are the ones you've chosen so incompetent they can't be left alone?"

Mel said irritably, "They're highly competent. But I get paid to take some responsibility, too."

"It's a pity you can't act responsibly to me. Time and again I make important social arrangements which you enjoy demolishing."

Listening, as the words continued, Mel sensed that Cindy was getting close to boiling point. Without any effort, he could visualize her now, five feet six of imperious energy in her highest heels, clear blue eyes flashing, and her blonde coiffed head tilted back in that damnably attractive way she had when she was angry. That was one reason, Mel supposed, why, in their early years of marriage, his wife's temper outbursts seldom dismayed him. The more heated she became, it always seemed, the more desirable she grew. At such moments, he had invariably let his eyes rove upward, beginning at her ankles---not hurriedly, because Cindy possessed extraordinarily attractive ankles and legs; in fact, better than those of most other women Mel knew---to the rest of her which was just as proportionate and physically appealing.

 

In the past, when his eyes had made their appreciative assessment, some two-way physical communion sprang into being, prompting each to reach out, to touch one another, impulsively, hungrily. The result was predictable. Invariably, the origin of Cindy's anger was forgotten in a wave of sensuality which engulfed them. Cindy had an exciting, insistent savagery, and in their lovemaking would demand, “Hurt me, goddam you, hurt me! "At the end, they would be spent and drained, so that picking up the skein of a quarrel was more than either had the wish or energy to do.

 

It was, of course, a way of shelving, rather than resolving, differences which---Mel realized, even early on---were fundamental. As the years passed, and passion lessened, accumulated differences became more sharply accented.

Eventually, they ceased entirely to use sex as a panacea and, in the past year or so, physical intimacy of any kind had become more and more occasional. Cindy, in fact, whose bodily appetites had always needed satisfying whatever the state of mind between them, appeared in recent months to have become indifferent altogether. Mel had wondered about that. Had his wife taken a lover? It was possible, and Mel supposed he ought to care. The sad thing was, it seemed easier not to be concerned.

Yet there were still moments when the sight or sound of Cindy in her willful anger could stir him physically, arousing old desires. He had that feeling now as he listened to her excoriating voice on the telephone.

When he was able to cut in, he said, "It isn't true that I enjoy demolishing your arrangements. Most of the time I go along with what you want, even though I don't think the things we go to are all that important. What I would enjoy are a few more evenings at home with the children." "That's a lot of crap," Cindy said, "and you know it."

He felt himself tense, gripping the telephone more tightly. Then he conceded to himself: perhaps the last remark was true, to an extent. Earlier this evening he had been reminded of the times he had stayed at the airport when he could have gone home---merely because he wanted to avoid another fight with Cindy. Roberta and Libby had got left out of the reckoning then, as children did, he supposed, when marriages went sour. He should not have mentioned them.

But apart from that, tonight was different. He ought to stay on at the airport, at least until it became known for sure what was happening about the blocked runway.

"Look," Mel said, "let's make one thing clear. I haven't told you this before, but last year I kept some notes. You wanted me to come to fifty-seven of your charitable whingdings. Out of that I managed forty-five, which is a whole lot more than I'd attend from choice, but it isn't a bad score."

"You bastard! I'm not a ball game where you keep a scorecard. I'm your wife."

Mel said sharply, "Take it easy!" He was becoming angry, himself. "Also, in case you don't know it, you're raising your voice. Do you want all those nice people around to know what kind of a heel you have for a husband?"

"I don't give a goddam!" But she said it softly, just the same.

"I do know you're my wife, which is why I intend to get down there just as soon as I can." What would happen, Mel wondered, if he could reach out and touch Cindy now? Would the old magic work? He decided not. "So save me a place, and tell the waiter to keep my soup warm. Also, apologize and explain why I'm late. I presume some of the people there have heard there is an airport." A thought struck him. "Incidentally, what's the occasion tonight?"

"I explained last week."

"Tell me again."

"It's a publicity party---cocktails and dinner---to promote the costume ball which is being given next month for the Archidona Children's Relief Fund. The press is here. They'll be taking photographs."

Now Mel knew why Cindy wanted him to hurry. With him there, she stood a better chance of being in the photographs---and on tomorrow's newspaper social pages.

"Most other committee members," Cindy insisted, "have their husbands here already."

"But not all?"

"I said most."

"And you did say the Archidona Relief Fund?"

"Yes."

"Which Arcbidona? There are two. One's in Ecuador, the other in Spain." At college, maps and geography had fascinated Mel, and he had a retentive memory.

For the first time, Cindy hesitated. Then she said testily, "What does it matter? This isn't the time for stupid questions."

Mel wanted to laugh out loud.

Cindy didn't know.

As usual, she had chosen to work for a charity because of who was involved, rather than what.

He said maticiously, "How many letters do you expect to get from this one?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Oh, yes, you do."

 

To be considered for listing in The Social Register, a new aspirant needed eight sponsoring letters from people whose names already appeared there. At the last count Mel had heard, Cindy had collected four.

 

"By God, Mel, if you say anything---tonight or any other time..."

"Will the letters be free ones, or do you expect to pay for them like those other two?" He was aware of having an advantage now. It happened very rarely.

Cindy said indignantly, "That's a filthy allegation. It's impossible to buy your way in..."

"Nuts!" Mel said. "I get the canceled checks from our joint account. Remember?"

There was a silence. Then Cindy asserted, low-voiced and savagely, "Listen to me! You'd better get here tonight, and soon. If you don't come, or if you do come and embarass me by saying anything of what you did just now, it'll be the end. Do you understand?"

"I'm not sure that I do." Mel spoke quietly. Instinct cautioned him that this was an important moment for them both. "Perhaps you'd better tell me exactly what you mean."

Cindy countered, "You figure it out."

She hung up.

 

ON HIS WAY from the parking area to his office, Mel's fury seethed and grew. Anger had always come to him less quickly than to Cindy. He was the slow-burn type. But he was burning now.

He was not entirely sure of the focus of his anger. A good deal was directed at Cindy, but there were other factors, too: His professional failure, as he saw it, to prepare effectually for a new era of aviation; a seeming inability to infuse others any longer with his own convictions; high hopes, unfulfilled. Somehow, between them all, Mel thought, his personal and professional lives had become twin testaments to inadequacy. His marriage was on the rocks, or apparently about to go there; if and when it did, he would have failed his children, also. At the same time, at the airport, where he was trustee for thousands who passed through daily in good faith, all his efforts and persuasion had failed to halt deterioration. There, the high standards he had worked to build were eroding steadily.

En route to the executive mezzanine, he encountered no one he knew. It was just as well. If he had been spoken to, whatever question had been put, be would have snarled a heated answer. In his office, he peeled off the heavy outdoor clothing and let it stay on the floor where it fell. He lit a cigarette. It had an acrid taste, and he stubbed it out. As he crossed to his desk, he was aware that the pain in his foot had returned, increasingly.

There was a time---it seemed long ago---when on nights like this, if his wounded foot pained him, he would have gone home, where Cindy would have insisted he relax. He would have a hot bath first, then after, while he lay face downward on their bed, she would massage his back and neck with cool, firm fingers until pain ebbed out of him. It was unthinkable, of course, that Cindy would ever do the same thing again; but even if she did, he doubted that it would work. You could lose communication in other ways besides the spoken word.

Seated at his desk, Mel put his head in his hands.

As he had done on the airfield earlier, he shivered. Then, abruptly in the silent office, a telephone bell jangled. For a moment he ignored it. It rang again, and he realized it was the red alarm system telephone on a stand beside the desk. In two swift strides he reached it.

"Bakersfeld here."

He heard clicks and more acknowledgments as others came on the line.

"This is Air Traffic Control," the tower chief's voice announced. "We have an airborne emergency, category three.

 

 

 

KEITH BAKERSFELD, Mel's brother, was a third of the way through his eight-hour duty watch in the air traffic control radar room.

 

In radar control, tonight's storm was having a profound effect, though not a directly physical one. To a spectator, Keith thought, lacking an awareness of the complex story which a conglomeration of radarscopes was telling, it might have seemed that the storm, raging immediately outside, was a thousand miles away.

The radar room was in the control tower, one floor down from the glass-surrounded eyrie---the tower cab---from which ATC directed aircraft movement on the ground and immediate local flying. The radar section's jurisdiction extended beyond the airport, and radar controllers reached out to bridge the gap between local control and the nearest ATC regional center. The regional centers---usually miles from any airport---controlled main trunk airways and traffic coming on and off them.

In contrast to the top portion of the tower, the radar room had no windows. Day and night, at Lincoln International, ten radar controllers and supervisors labored in perpetual semidarkness under dim moonglow lights. Around them, tightly packed equipment---radarscopes, controls, radio communications panels---lined all four walls. Usually, controllers worked in shirtsleeves since the temperature, winter or summer, was maintained at an even seventy degrees to protect the delicate electronic gear.

The pervading tone in the radar room was calm. However, beneath the calmness, at all times, was a constant nervous strain. Tonight, the strain had been added to by the storm and, within the past few minutes, it had heightened further still. The effect was like stretching an already tensioned spring.

Cause of the added tension was a signal on a radarscope which, in turn, had triggered a flashing red light and alarm buzzer in the control room. The buzzer had now been silenced, but the distinctive radar signal remained. Known as a double blossom, it had flowered on the semidarkened screen like a tremulous green carnation and denoted an aircraft in distress. In this case, the aircraft was a U.S. Air Force KC-135, high above the airport in the storm, and seeking an immediate emergency landing. Keith Bakersfeld bad been working the flatface scope on which the emergency signal appeared, and a supervisor had since joined him. Both were now transmitting urgent, swift decisions---by interphone to controllers at adjoining positions, and by radio to other aircraft.

The tower watch chief on the floor above had been promptly informed of the distress signal. He, in turn, had declared a category three emergency, alerting airport ground facilities.

The flatface scope, at the moment the center of attention, was a horizontal glass circle, the size of a bicycle tire, set into a tabletop console. Its surface was dark green, with brilliant green points of light showing all aircraft in the air within a forty-mile radius. As the aircraft moved, so did the points of light. Beside each light point was a small plastic marker, identifying it. The markers were known colloquially as "shrimp boats" and controllers moved them by hand as aircraft progressed and their positions on the screen changed. As more aircraft appeared, they were identified by voice radio and similarly tagged. New radar systems dispensed with shrimp boats; instead, identifying letter-number codes---including altitude---appeared directly on the radar screen. But the newer method was not yet in wide use and, like all new systems, had bugs which needed elimination.

Tonight there was an extraordinary number of aircraft on the screen, and someone had remarked earlier that the green pinpoints were proliferating like fecund ants.

Keith was seated closest to the flatface, his lean, spindly figure hunched forward in a gray steel chair. His body was tense; his legs, hooked underneath the chair, were as rigid as the chair itself. He was concentrating, his face strained and gaunt, as it had been for months. The green reflection of the scope accentuated, eerily, deep hollows beneath his eyes. Anyone who knew Keith well, but had not seen him for a year or so, would have been shocked both by his appearance and his change in manner. Once, he had exuded an amiable, relaxed good-nature; now, all signs of it were gone. Keith was six years younger than his brother, Mel, but nowadays appeared a good deal older.

The change in Keith Bakersfeld had been noticed by his colleagues, some of whom were working tonight at other control positions in the radar room. They were also well aware of the reason for the change, a reason which had evoked genuine sympathy. However, they were practical men with an exacting job, which was why the radar supervisor, Wayne Tevis, was observing Keith covertly at this moment, watching the signs of increasing strain, as he had for some time. Tevis, a lanky, drawling Texan, sat centrally in the radar room on a high stool from where he could peer down over the shoulders of operators at the several radarscopes serving special functions. Tevis had personally equipped the stool with castors, and periodically he rode it like a horse, propelling himself by jabs of his hand-tooled Texan boots wherever he was needed at the moment.

During the preceding hour, Wayne Tevis had at no point moved far away from Keith. The reason was that Tevis was ready, if necessary, to relieve Keith from radar watch, a decision which instinct told him might have to be made at any time.

The radar supervisor was a kindly man, despite his mild flamboyance. He dreaded what he might have to do, and was aware of how far-reaching, for Keith, its effect could be. Nevertheless, if he had to, he would do it.

His eyes on Keith's flatface scope, Tevis drawled, "Keith, old son, that Braniff flight is closing on Eastern. If you turn Braniff right, you can keep Eastern going on the same course." It was something which Keith should have seen himself, but hadn't.

The problem, which most of the radar room crew was working at feverishly, was to clear a path for the Air Force KC-135, which had already started down on an instrument landing approach from ten thousand feet. The difficulty was---below the big Air Force jet were five airline flights, stacked at intervals of a thousand feet, and orbiting a limited airspace. All were awaiting their turn to land. A few miles on either side were other columns of aircraft, similarly stacked and, lower still, were three more airliners, already on landing approaches. In between them all were busy departure corridors. Somehow, the military flight had to be threaded down through the stacked civilian airplanes without a collision occurring. Under normal conditions the assignment would test the strongest nerves. As it was, the situation was complicated by radio failure in the KC135, so that voice contact with the Air Force pilot had been lost.

Keith Bakersfeld thumbed his microphone. "Braniff eight twenty-nine, make an immediate right turn, heading zero-niner-zero." At moments like this, even though pressures built to fever pitch, voices should stay calm. Keith's voice was high-pitched and betrayed his nervousness. He saw Wayne Tevis glance at him sharply. But the blips on the radar screen, which had been uncomfortably close, began separating as the Braniff captain obeyed instructions. There were moments---this was one---when air traffic controllers thanked whatever gods they acknowledged for the swift, alert responses of airline pilots. The pilots might beef, and often did subsequently, at being given sudden course changes which required tight, abrupt turns and shook up passengers. But when a controller gave the order "immediate," they obeyed instantly and argued later.

In another minute or so the Braniff flight would have to be turned again, and so would Eastern, which was at the same level. Even before that, there must be new courses for two TWAs---one higher, the other lower---plus a Lake Central Convair, an Air Canada Vanguard, and a Swissair just coming on the screen. Until the KC-135 had come through, these and others must be given zigzag courses, though for brief distances only, since none must stray into adjoining airspaces. In a way, it was like an intricate chess game, except that all the pieces were at various levels and moving at several hundred miles an hour. Also as part of the game, pieces had to be raised or lowered while they still moved forward, yet none must come closer than three miles laterally or a thousand feet vertically from another, and none must go over the edge of the board. And while all of it happened, the thousands of passengers, anxious for their journeys to end, had to sit in their airborne seats---and wait.

In occasional moments of detachment, Keith wondered how the Air Force pilot, in difficulty and letting down through storm and crowded airspace, was feeling at this moment. Lonely, probably. Just as Keith himself was lonely; just as all life was lonely, even with others physically close beside you. The pilot would have a co-pilot and crew, in the same way that Keith had fellow-workers who, at this moment, were near enough to touch. But that was not the kind of nearness which counted. Not when you were alone in that inner room of the mind, where no one else could enter, and where you lived---apart and solitary---with awareness, memory, conscience, fear. Alone, from the moment you were born until you died. Always, and forever, alone.

Keith Bakersfeld knew how much alone a single human being could be.

In succession, Keith gave fresh courses to Swissair, one of the TWAs, Lake Central, and Eastern. Behind him he could hear Wayne Tevis trying to raise the Air Force KC-135 on radio again. Still no response, except that the distress radar blip, actuated by the KC-135 pilot, still blossomed on the scope. The position on the blip showed the pilot was doing the right thing---following exactly the instructions he had been given before the radio failure happened. In doing so, he would be aware that air traffic control could anticipate his movements. He would also know that his position could be seen by radar on the ground, and trusted that other traffic would be routed out of his way.

The Air Force flight, Keith knew, had originated in Hawaii and come non-stop after mid-air refueling over the West Coast, its destination Andrews Air Force Base, near Washington. But west of the Continental Divide there had been an engine failure, and afterward electrical trouble, causing the airplane commander to elect an unscheduled landing at Smoky Hill, Kansas. At Smoky Hill, however, snow clearance of runways had not been completed, and the KC-135 was diverted to Lincoln International. Air Route Control nursed the military flight northeast across Missouri and Illinois. Then, thirty miles out, West Arrivals Control, in the person of Keith Bakersfeld, took over. It was soon afterward that radio failure had been added to the pilot's other troubles.

Most times, when flying conditions were normal, military aircraft stayed clear of civil airports. But in a storm like tonight's help was asked---and given---without question.

In this darkened, tightly packed radar room, other controllers, as well as Keith, were sweating. Yet no hint of pressures or tension must be betrayed by controllers' voices when speaking with pilots in the air. The pilots had plenty to concern themselves with at any time. Tonight, buffeted by the storm, and flying solely on instruments with nil visibility outside their cockpits, demands upon their skill were multiplied. Most pilots had already flown extra time because of delays caused by heavy traffic; now they would have to stay even longer in the air.

From each radar control position a swift, quiet stream of radio orders was going out to hold even more flights clear of the danger area. The flights were awaiting their own turn to land and every minute or two were being joined by new arrivals coming off airways.

A controller, his voice low but urgent, called over his shoulder. "Chuck, I've got a hot one. Can you take Delta seven three?"

It was a controller's way of saying he was in trouble and had more than he could handle.

Another voice, "Hell!---I'm piled up, too... Wait!... Affirmative, I got it." A second's pause. "Delta seven three from Lincoln approach control. Turn left; heading one two zero. Maintain altitude, four thousand!"

Controllers helped each other when they could. A few minutes from now the second man might need help himself.

"Hey, watch that Northwest; he's coming through from the other side. Christ! it's getting like the Outer Drive at rush hour."... "American four four, hold present heading, what's your altitude?... That Lufthansa departure's way off course. Get him the hell out of the approach area!"...

Departing flights were being routed well around the trouble area, but arrivals were being held up, valuable landing time lost. Even later, when the emergency would be over, everyone knew it would take an hour or more to unravel the aerial traffic jam.

 

Keith Bakersfeld was trying hard to maintain his concentration, to retain a mental picture of his sector and every aircraft in it. It required instant memorizing---identifications, positions, types of aircraft, speeds, altitudes, sequence of landing... a detailed diagram, in depth, with constant changes... a configuration which was never still. Even at quieter times, mental strain was unceasing; tonight, the storm was taxing cerebral effort to its limit. A controller's nightmare was to "lose the picture," a situation where an overtaxed brain rebelled and everything went blank. It happened occasionally, even to the best.

 

Keith had been the best. Until a year ago, he was one whom colleagues turned to when pressures built to unreason.

Keith, I'm getting swamped. Can you take a couple? He always had.

 

But, lately, roles had changed. Now, colleagues shielded him as best they could, though there was a limit to how much any man could help another and do his own job, too.

 

More radio instructions were needed. Keith was on his own; Tevis, the supervisor, had propelled himself and his high stool across the room to check another controller. Keith's mind clicked out decisions.

Turn Braniff left, Air Canada right, Eastern through a hundred and eighty degrees.

It was done; on the radar screen, blips were changing direction.

The slower-moving Lake Central Convair could be left another minute. Not so, the Swissair jet; it was converging with Eastern. Swissair must be given a new course immediately, but what? Think fast! Forty-five degrees right, but for a minute only, then right again. Keep an eye on TWA and Northwest! A new flight coming in from the west at high speed---identify, and find more airspace. Concentrate, concentrate!

 

Keith determined grimly: He would not lose the picture; not tonight, not now.

There was a reason for not doing so; a secret he had shared with no one, not even Natalie, his wife. Only Keith Bakersfeld, and Keith alone, knew that this was the last time he would ever face a radarscope or stand a watch. Today was his last day with air traffic control. It would be over soon.

It was also the last day of his life.

"Take a break, Keith." It was the tower watch chief's voice.

Keith had not seen the tower chief come in. He had done so unobtrusively, and was standing by Wayne Tevis, the radar supervisor.

A moment earlier, Tevis had told the tower chief quietly, "Keith's all right, I reckon. For a few minutes I was worried, but he seemed to pull together." Tevis was glad he had not had to take the drastic action he had contemplated earlier, but the tower chief murmured, "Let's take him off a while, anyway"; and, as an afterthought, "I'll do it."