High Wire

Chapter 1\ The sudden jolt and unexpected turbulence caught both pilots momentarily off guard before each reached instinctively for the controls. After a tense moment, when it became clear that the autopilot was still holding, First Officer Edmond Bell cautiously eased his grip and tentatively leaned back in his seat.\ "Can't wait to get this damn night over with," he muttered--just loud enough to be heard.\ In the dark cockpit, Captain Kate Gallagher's face, illuminated by the faint green glow of the instrument lights, was a portrait of concentration. "Five more minutes and it will be," she whispered back.\ Bell shook his head. "With my luck, we'll be up here for another hour, holding, waiting for a clearance to land, then have to go back and try this damn thing all over again tomorrow."\ Kate let the comment pass, as she had so many others that day. After fourteen hours, three landings in bad weather, and a night in a cockpit with an irritable first officer who thought he was Superman, all she wanted was a little time with her daughter, Molly, a warm bath, and her favorite Mozart symphonies to unwind to. But first, there was the business of landing the plane.\ "I'm showing winds of almost sixty knots up here at four thousand feet. Why don't you find out if there's been any change since the last report?" she asked.\ Bell picked up the mike. "Kennedy approach, this is Jet-East 394. We need the latest surface conditions."\ "Jet-East 394, this is New York approach control." The controller sounded as weary as they were. "Sir, the latest observation indicates that the weather has deteriorated further. I'm showing a ceiling of two hundred feet overcast. Wind is from the north at two eight, gusting to three five knots with blowing snow. There is a half an inch of packed snow on the runways, but we haven't had a landing there for almost fifteen minutes, so I have no breaking action to report."\ Bell replaced the mike in its cradle and picked up a chart. Aiming the overhead light at it, he pointed to a number. "That's as low as we can go. You'd better make this one count. The last thing I want to do is go all the way back to Chicago."\ Kate shook her head. She didn't know what the hell this guy's deal was, but the fact that she was a woman certainly hadn't bypassed his attention. Add to the fact that she was barely thirty-four, a full five years younger than he, and in the male-dominated world of aviation you had a problem she could do without.\ A woman, especially one as striking as Kate Gallagher, occupying the captain's chair was still a rare sight. She wore little makeup and bothered even less about her burnt-almond hair, which she wore shoulder length.\ Her skin was not the fair color of her father's Irish ancestors'; it was a shade darker, olive-hued, favoring her mother's Greek heritage. Her eyes, the bluest green of the Caribbean Sea, were the only thing she had inherited from him. Everything else, from her perfectly arched eyebrows to her nose, long and narrow and just the tiniest bit crooked, came from her mother, as did her independence, stubbornness, and fiery temper. It was that particular trait she was feeling most of now. Back on the ground, Kate might have been tempted to give Bell a taste of it. But up here, her sole priority was the safety of the two hundred and eleven passengers and twelve crew members who were anxiously waiting for that moment of relief when the wheels would finally touch the pavement.\ The airport was just to their right and less than fifteen miles away. On a clear night, she would be able to see not only the lights of the two parallel runways, but also Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, and half of New Jersey. But tonight, as they fought their way through one of the worst snowstorms the Northeast had seen in a decade, she could barely see the nose of the aircraft, less than five feet in front of her.\ "Jet-East 394, this is New York approach control. Turn right to a heading of three five zero. Descend and maintain three thousand feet. You are cleared for the ILS, runway three-one-left at Kennedy International Airport."\ Kate punched the Approach button on the glare shield in front of her, and the twin-engine jumbo jet began a shallow, descending turn into the night sky. With a flick of a switch on the yoke, she kicked off the autopilot, and with her clammy hands gripping the controls, Captain Kate Gallagher guided Jet-East flight 394 onto the final segment of its approach into Kennedy International Airport.\ The intensity of the turbulence multiplied almost immediately. Outside, the beam of the landing lights illuminated the falling snow, which looked heavier than either pilot had remembered. With one hand still on the controls and her total attention focused on the instrument panel, Kate tightened her seat belt and felt the restraint of the shoulder harness pull against her body.\ "Better make sure everybody is down," she ordered.\ Bell picked up the interphone. "Are you ready?"\ "Yeah, we're buttoned up," the senior flight attendant said.\ Dorothy Maples was in her fifties, with dark eyes and brunette hair cut page-boy short. She sat on the jump seat at the front of the cabin facing her passengers, smiling and trying hard to hide her apprehension behind her best business-as-usual face. Like everyone else, she was eager to put an end to this very long night.\ The landing gear had already thumped into place and the actuator motors had sounded as they slid the flaps from the trailing edges of the wings and readied the plane for its landing. Preparing themselves for their imminent arrival, the passengers jostled to get a look at the ground below, but all they could see was a wasteland of dense, black clouds intermittently glowing bloodred from the reflection of the flashing beacon light.\ Kate could sense the mounting anxiety in the cabin just behind her. She had been a passenger enough times herself to know what it felt like to be trapped in a sea of seats, waiting until that final reassuring voice comes over the P.A. to inform them that they had arrived safely.\ She adjusted her five-foot-eight frame in the seat and wiped the tiny drops of perspiration from her brow. Just like the simulator, she thought.\ "Localizer captured. Glide slope's alive," Bell announced, as the two needles on the instrument panel moved toward each other and formed a crosshair.\ "Flaps thirty," Kate instructed. Bell moved the lever to its proper position.\ Barely a moment after that, the vertical needle began to move slowly to the right, indicating that the plane was moving to the left, away from its intended course.\ "Localizer," Bell called out immediately, but Kate was already making the correction and turning the aircraft slightly to the right. Seconds later, the needle settled back in the center, then started to move again, this time to the left.\ They were descending now, less than a thousand feet above the ground, in zero visibility and with no room for error.\ "You're off the center line again. Localizer," Bell barked, his eyes darting between the small white needle and the pilot to his left.\ "Come on," Gallagher muttered to herself. "You've done this a thousand times before. Trust the instruments. Just trust the damn instruments."\ The needle began to move again, but did not stabilize. It oscillated from one side of the instrument to the other, like a broken toy. But this was no toy, and this close to the ground, there was no room for child's play.\ "Let's get out of here," Kate said, simultaneously advancing the throttles and pulling back on the yoke. "Initiating go-around. Give me maximum power. Flaps twenty."\ The two Ryan engines began to howl, clawing their way into the black, wintry sky.\ "Kennedy tower, Jet-East 394 is on the go," Bell announced on the mike.\ "Roger Jet-East 394, this is Kennedy tower. Climb and maintain three thousand feet. Contact New York approach on 124.9."\ "We'll go to approach."\ Flying through the turbulence, snow, and clouds, the pilots of Jet-East flight 394 retracted the flaps and gear and climbed to the designated heading and altitude. Once there, they prepared for one more shot at landing before lack of fuel would force them to divert to their alternate airport.\ "You've got the plane. I'm going to make a P.A.," Gallagher said. Bell took over the controls.\ "Ladies and gentlemen, as you can tell, we have aborted the landing. It's strictly a precautionary measure and there's nothing to be alarmed about. We're currently being vectored into position to begin the approach again. We should be on the ground in less than ten minutes."\ "I'm back," Kate said. She reached for the controls but felt some resistance. She looked up. . . . Bell was still gripping them.\ "I've got the plane," she said, looking over at him. But he didn't even acknowledge her and he didn't let go. He just sat there, his hands wrapped around the controls, staring dead-ahead at the instruments.\ What the hell was this, a mutiny? Was he saying that he could do a better job? That she was dangerous? What?\ She had never flown with this character before, so she had no way of reading him. Maybe he'd had a bad experience somewhere along the line, something that convinced him women just weren't suited for the job. Or perhaps, and more probable, he was just an ass. What the hell, she thought, she was no mind-reader and besides, she had no time for this testosterone-triggered bullshit.\ "I've got the plane," she snapped, and jerked the controls slightly to one side.\ Bell silently relinquished control.\ Kate looked over at him one last time with a glare that could melt steel. They were going to get on the ground, shut down the engines, and park the plane. After that, Bell had better pray that God was on his side because she was going to rip him limb from limb. She turned away from him and focused back on the instruments with renewed purpose.\ "Landing gear down. Give me flaps thirty after you get three green," she ordered and Bell did as he was instructed. Kate was back in command.\ They were below fifteen hundred feet again, in the clouds and flying at 170 miles per hour, when the localizer began to twitch again. Kate corrected immediately, but felt a new stiffness in the controls. She looked at the overhead panel and checked the anti-icing equipment. Everything was on. If the unresponsiveness of the controls was not caused by surface icing, then what was going on?\ The localizer needle came back to the center, but like a pendulum it began moving in the opposite direction again.\ Kate wanted to say something, but hesitated. She wasn't going to give Bell the satisfaction. Maybe this was an instrument malfunction, Kate thought. She glanced over at Bell's localizer, then at the standby instruments. All three indicated the same thing: the aircraft was moving erratically off course and she wasn't able to correct it.\ It was an unwritten rule of piloting that a captain never hands over the plane to the first officer or surrenders his or her command in a time of crisis--especially not to someone like Edmond Bell. But as Jet-East 394 descended below five hundred feet, still unstable and off course, Gallagher considered doing just that.\ Maybe Bell was right, she thought. Maybe they all were. Maybe she should just let her co-pilot take over and land the plane. Once they were safely at the gate, there would be more than enough time to lick her bruised ego and figure out just what had gone wrong.\ She was on the brink of handing the controls over to him when the aircraft finally stabilized at four hundred feet. Kate sighed and tried to relax.\ But passing through three hundred feet, the needle began to swing again, this time faster than it had previously. Again, Kate attempted to correct, but the needle continued to move, and by the time the aircraft had reached two hundred feet, it was fully deflected to one side. They were sinking fast, too fast.\ "Go-around. Go-around," Bell shouted, a clear note of panic in his voice.\ Kate had already pressed the small Go-around button on the throttles. "Going around. Max power, flaps twenty," she commanded a second time. "Push the throttles up, way up." Once again, Jet-East 394 struggled to make its way back into the night sky. Then it happened.\ It began with a shallow turn to the right. Kate immediately corrected it by turning the controls in the opposite direction. The plane responded for an instant, then continued to roll slowly back to the right. She applied more pressure, but it wasn't enough. With both hands on the controls, she pushed to turn. Still it wasn't enough. She felt as if something was fighting her--as if Bell had finally decided to take over. But she could see his hands, one still on the throttles, adjusting maximum power, the other reaching for the microphone so he could tell the tower that they had aborted the second approach. He was doing what he was supposed to, they both were. Just as they had done ten minutes ago, just as they had practiced a thousand times before in the simulator. But this was different. Something was wrong, terribly wrong.\ "Push with me," she shouted to Bell, who threw down the mike and grabbed the controls with both hands.\ "What are you doing?" he yelled, but Kate had no time to explain.\ "Terrain, terrain, pull up, pull up," the computer-generated voice warned. A half-dozen red lights began to flash in the pilots' faces.\ There had been no training for this kind of scenario. Kate had two choices: continue the go-around and hope that whatever was causing the problem would correct itself in the next second, or--\ Instinctively she chose the second option, grasped the throttles and pulled them back to idle. The roar of the engines instantly died and Jet-East 394 began to plunge into the darkness.\ "What the hell are you doing? We're gonna crash," Bell shouted, lunging over to force her hands off the throttles. He was too late.\ From the corner of her eye, Kate saw an orange and red flash. An instant later, the controls shuddered in her hands as the aircraft was forced violently upright. The tip of the right wing hit the ground, causing the nose to pitch up and veer in the opposite direction, completely out of control. Within an instant all hell broke loose.\ There was the sickening sound of scraping metal, and vibrant flashes of red, orange, and yellow erupted all around them. Agonizing screams of terror were followed by a sensation of weightlessness, as the aircraft bounced over and over again. The heat, the smoke, the fire . . . and then, blackness.

\ Publishers WeeklyDrawing on his intimate knowledge of the airline industry, first-time author and pilot Majd crafts a compelling aviation thriller that unlocks the cockpit door to a world few authors have explored in depth. The novel opens in the midst of a crisis; with little help from her sexist first officer, commercial pilot Kate Gallagher must land an unresponsive aircraft. Unfortunately, not all of her passengers survive the landing and an investigation ensues. Despite evidence indicating that the crash was due to pilot error, Kate, a feisty single mother, does some probing of her own to support her theory that the plane malfunctioned. In the process, she bumps heads with Michael O'Rourke, a handsome Washington, D.C., special investigator, and uncovers evidence suggesting that the fatal accident may have been the result of sabotage. Majd writes with an assured hand, creating a strong female protagonist who will hold the reader's attention and sympathy throughout. The only elements that detract from this emotionally charged read are Majd's superficial character descriptions (he was "young and tall, with boyishly straight brown hair") and a weak subplot involving a romance between Kate and O'Rourke. Still, this absorbing first novel is a seductive introduction to Majd's series. (Feb. 5) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.\ \ \ \ \ School Library JournalAdult/High School-A book to recommend for its high adventure and for its vibrant depiction of heroism and altruism. Professional familiarity with fly-by-wire technologies, joined with a finely tuned sense of dramatic pacing, contributes to Majd's creation of a technically satisfying and credibly suspenseful rollout title in a new series. As the first female pilot hired by Jet-East airlines, Kate Gallagher has proven herself in the performance hurdles and personal challenges in the male-dominated industry. She finds, however, that her competency is attacked in the aftermath of an emergency crash landing at Kennedy Airport that, though it saved more than 200 lives, resulted in 5 fatalities plus injuries to herself and others. The mitigating factors of extreme snow-and-ice conditions, low fuel state, and an insubordinate flight officer become secondary as Kate begins to suspect that her aircraft was sabotaged. Michael O'Rourke, the National Transportation Safety Board investigator assigned to the crash, finds himself attracted to Kate and is persuaded that future flights are at risk by the mounting evidence of industrial espionage. Majd lightly sketches a romantic subplot between the two; somewhat more substantially explores Kate's role as a single mother; and carefully texturizes her close relationship with her protective, strong-willed Greek mother. The author introduces evil corporate entities that are sufficiently menacing and convincing to support this element of the story, but it is through his skilled presentation of high-tech details of GPS, satellites, simulators, aircraft flight parameters, and computerized interfaces that he will captivate his readership.-Lynn Nutwell, Fairfax City Regional Library, VA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.\ \