Chapter Two #4
Brian sighed, a whisper that fluttered the net.
“We checked the weather reports. They were calling for rain, but nothing we couldn’t handle.
Nothing out of the ordinary.” He was quiet for a few moments, and then swore under his breath.
“Wet season is supposed to be over. It’s May!
Goddamn global warming. I don’t know where the hell that storm came from.
Seemed like a full-out cyclone. The wind was too strong, and we changed course to land and wait it out.
And then… Hell, I can’t believe the rain came down that fast.”
Brian almost seemed to be talking to himself now. When he didn’t go on, Troy asked, “But planes fly in rain all the time, right?”
“Yes.”
“So what was different?”
After a few moments, Brian said, “Huh? Sorry.”
“It’s okay. You should rest.” The net brushed against him, and Troy jumped a little before adjusting it. It was claustrophobic in the blackness to have the net on his head and around him, but he could hear mosquitoes whining. He was usually catnip to the little fuckers, so the net had to stay.
“No, I’m fine.” Brian cleared his throat. “In torrential rain, when a high volume of water falls too quickly, a film develops on the wings and fuselage. It becomes like…waves almost.”
“Okay. Why is that bad?”
“The friction builds, dragging on the aircraft. The wings lose lift.” His elbow brushed Troy’s. “I guess you can’t see what I’m doing with my hands. Anyway, it’s a bad thing.”
They sat in silence in the utter darkness, the humidity stifling, the buzz of insects making Troy’s skin crawl despite the net. It was all so much. He hated it, and his heart raced, and he was going to freak the fuck out. He’d tried to be calm before, and now he was going to lose his shit.
“Keep going,” he begged Brian. “About the wings. Or anything! Just talk. Please?”
“Yeah. Okay.” Brian leaned his shoulder against Troy’s a little more. “I was telling you about the wings losing lift?”
“Right.” Troy clung to the distraction, to the low melody of Brian’s voice in the blackness.
“So when there’s too much friction, the lift is compromised, and the stall speed increases. The engines flamed out. We dove but couldn’t restart them.”
“But why would you dive? Isn’t that just bringing us closer to crashing?”
“It’s like… Imagine you’re driving uphill and your car stalls. If you keep trying to go up, you won’t get anywhere. There’s no momentum. No speed. You need to go downhill. The velocity restarts the stalled engines. Assuming the flameout wasn’t due to fuel starvation.”
“Huh. Okay, that makes sense. But it didn’t work?”
Brian sighed. “The engines might have ingested too much water. I can’t say for sure. But the bottom line is that the engines were gone.”
“So basically we were fucked.”
“Yeah. Without the rain and wind, we could have tried gliding to the airport.”
“Glide? I mean, I know it was a small jet, but seriously?”
“You’d be amazed what aerodynamics can do.
Transat two-thirty-six heavy glided across a big chunk of the Atlantic to the Azores in 2001.
Three hundred people on board. They had a fuel leak, and the pilot soared her in.
Some of the best damn flying in history.
Granted, they fucked up the fuel transfer, but hindsight’s twenty-twenty.
They saved all the souls on board.” He was silent a moment.
“That’s what matters,” he added quietly.
Troy thought of Paula and didn’t have a clue what to say. He fidgeted in the oppressive darkness, fiddling with the net. He cast about for something to say or ask. Anything other than: Just how fucked are we? “What does that mean, when they call a plane ‘heavy’? Is it just like, literally big?”
“Huh?” Brian sounded distant again.
No. Troy needed him here. He asked again, “Why do they call some planes ‘heavy’? Is it just big?”
“Right. It’s a plane capable of a hundred and thirty-six tons MTOW or more. Sorry. Maximum takeoff weight. So yes, when a plane is designated ‘heavy,’ it’s literally heavy.”
“Okay, so why do they say that?” Please keep talking. I can’t take the quiet.
“Because of the wake turbulence. If a smaller plane got too close, it could flip over. ATC—air traffic control—makes sure a heavy jet gets a wider berth, and other pilots hear the call sign ‘heavy’ and know to stay clear. Does that make sense?”
“Right, I get it. You know a lot about flying.” He laughed softly. “Duh. Which is obviously good since you’re a pilot and all. You must really love it, huh?”
Brian was silent so long Troy thought he might have fallen asleep or gone catatonic again. But he finally answered, “I did.”
Troy frowned. “You don’t anymore?”
Brian sat rigid, and Troy could practically feel the waves of tension coming off him. “I want to. That probably doesn’t make sense.”
“No, it’s cool.” Time to change the subject. “Hey, why is it a ‘cyclone’ over here, but a ‘hurricane’ in the States?”
“Dunno.” Brian seemed to relax a bit and took another drink. “As far as I know, it’s the same thing.”
“Have you ever seen one whip up that fast?”
“Not anything close to this level. But with climate change, all bets are off. Weather has always had fluctuations, but it used to be much more predictable.”
Troy briefly stretched his legs out beyond the net and smoothed the foil wrapper of a protein bar on this thigh, making it crinkle in the darkness. His damp sweats stuck to him.
How is this real life? How is this my life?
He tried to choke it down, but he had to ask, “We’ll be okay, right?”
“Absolutely.” Brian repeated it with more force. “Absolutely.”
Troy could almost believe him when he sounded like that—large and in charge, Troy’s mom would have called it. He breathed through the pang of longing for her and tore a strip from his wrapper, circling it around his finger. “Okay.”
“Besides, we’ve got one thing going for us most people in this situation wouldn’t.”
“What’s that?”
“From what I hear, you’re a pretty popular young man. A rescue crew of teenage girls will probably show up in the morning.”
The laugh wasn’t huge, but it was warm and good. “The paparazzi will be close behind. It’s impossible to keep those fuckers away.”
“I’m going to land an exclusive interview and be able to retire. Too bad there’s no camera in that pack. I could sell shirtless desert island pics and make a mint.”
Brian’s tentative teasing was like a warm blanket wrapped around Troy. They were hungry and banged up and probably going to die alone in the Pacific, but they were together. As the night wore on, they kept talking to fill the darkness, and Troy could breathe easier.
And that was something.