Critical Incident, Chapter Two

~II~


“What the hell are you doing?”

Trey sat up in bed and saw that it was his wife Corinne who was yelling at him.

“What the hell are you doing?” she repeated, her blonde, curly hair shaking with rage. “You bastard!”

Trey couldn’t figure out what she was yelling about. He turned, and recognized that he was in his own bed at home. Danni, their cat, was curled up in one of the two wingback chairs that were lit by the rising sun coming through the windows of their bedroom. Everything seemed normal, until Trey looked beside him and saw Air Marshal Sarah asleep under the covers. Sarah Collins was asleep in his bed.

“How could you do this to me?” his wife screamed.

Trey saw the tears running down his wife’s face. He was speechless. It felt like he couldn’t talk at all. He tried to explain, but no words would come out. Corinne just stood there and cried. A loud buzzing began to drown out her sobs. She turned, and he saw the blood on the side of her head from the car accident.

“I’m sorry honey. I can explain. It’s not what you think.” Trey began speaking to her now, but she couldn’t hear him over the loud buzzing. He met her brown eyes and saw the hurt in them. He wanted so much to make that hurt go away. The damn buzzing!

Trey realized it was the alarm clock.

It was early. Trey turned off the alarm. He sat up in bed and tried to wipe the dream out of his eyes. He recognized he was in a hotel room, and quickly remembered he was in Kansas City. He wasn’t at home in bed, but the rest of the dream still seemed real. He lay back in bed and held his head in his hands. His thoughts drifted from Sarah to Corinne, his late wife. He tried to take in the dream, remember her as if she were still alive, freeze her image in his mind, but he couldn’t. The dream was already starting to fade.

The alarm went off at his bedside again. He had hit the snooze button. He turned it off, climbed out of bed, and staggered to the bathroom. His head ached, and he needed caffeine. He was too lazy to use the coffee pot in the room. He would have to try for some later in the lobby.

Trey always set three alarms when he flew a.m. trips. He used the room’s alarm clock, his cell phone alarm, and a wake-up call, because he found he slept easier knowing there was less chance he would oversleep and miss his lobby time in the morning. He turned on the shower as the phone rang with his second wake-up call. “I’m up,” he said out loud to the recording at the other end of the line. He hated early mornings. He turned off his cell phone alarm before it had a chance to go off, noting with a twinge of sadness that no one had called or left a message. After almost a year, he still found himself looking to see if his wife had called. Old habit, he thought, but he still felt the ache inside. He missed her calls.

After a quick shower and shave, Trey ironed his shirt and threw on his uniform. His thoughts drifted again from Corinne to Sarah. He packed up his suitcase and was out the door. He stepped off the elevator and walked to the lobby, noting he had ten minutes before the van was scheduled to leave for the airport. Enough time for coffee. He glanced around the lobby, but he was the only one present. He half hoped he would see Sarah. As he poured a cup from the pot near the front desk, he saw three flight attendants enter the lobby. Right behind them was Tom Snyder, his first officer

“Coffee’s here if anyone wants any.”

“Thanks. Where you guys headed today?” It was one of the flight attendants, a matronly woman with silver hair, dressed in a well-starched oxford button down uniform shirt.

“Chicago and back, Nashville, and then finally Indianapolis. How about you?”

“We’re with you all the way. I’m Marjorie Hibberd, flying the A position. This is Sylvia Larson, your B, and this is Wendy Arnold, flying C.” Trey shook hands as he introduced himself to the other two flight attendants, who were much younger and more attractive than Marjorie. Sylvia was the stereotypical flight attendant, blonde, big hair, tight shorts and nothing upstairs. She was breaking a donut in half to share with Wendy, a petite brunette with olive skin and little makeup, nor a need for it.

“Trey West. Nice to meet you all. This is Tom Snyder,” Trey indicated to his FO, a tall, thin, balding man with an adam’s apple that looked like a golf ball had got lodged in his throat. Tom was busy collecting his guitar case that had fallen off the back of his roller bag suitcase.

Everyone laughed at Tom, who looked like Charlie Chaplin as he fumbled with each of his three bags in attempt to get them to all balance on the back of his roller bag.
“Hi,” he managed to stammer as he struggled with his things.

“Is he new?” Marjorie whispered to Trey, while Wendy and Sylvia giggled.

“No, though you wouldn’t know it by watching him!”

The hotel van pulled up outside the lobby and the five flight crew members walked outside with their bags. It was five a.m. and still dark out. The van driver loaded their bags and headed out for the short trip to the airport.

The flight crew breezed through security, except for Trey, who set off the metal detector with his name tag and had to be wanded. Trey was one of the few pilots that still wore the metal nametag, but it was a thing of pride with him and he refused to take it off even if it meant additional security screening. To him, it was the principle of the thing. It was part of his uniform. If the TSA agents wanted the hassle of extra work having to wand a pilot, then have at it.

Trey found it ludicrous that the TSA agents were wanding him for weapons or for something he might use to take over the aircraft with. “I’m the pilot, for Pete’s sake,” he had commented one time during a wand down. “I can take over the aircraft with just my two hands! I am already in charge of the aircraft! What more could I want?” That had gotten him in even more trouble. He wouldn’t say that today. He quietly stood with his arms outstretched as they passed the wand over him, front and back. They engaged in mundane conversation, but he wouldn’t talk to them; they were trying to smell his breath for alcohol. He wasn’t worried about alcohol on his breath; his last drink had been with Sarah Collins almost fourteen hours ago, but he didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of screening him in that way.

Finally, he passed through security, found the departure gate and the rest of his crew, and the operations agent let them down the jetway to the aircraft. Trey remained in the jetway while Tom entered to fire up the aircraft systems and the three flight attendants boarded and stowed their bags.

“Would you like any coffee?” Marjorie asked as she set up the front galley.

“I’d love some. It’s my one vice; the only thing that gets me through these a.m. trips.”

Trey stowed his gear and set up his cockpit as the ops agent began boarding the passengers. It was a light load; only 57 people. They’d be buttoned up and in the air right on time at 6:00.

“Got a couple of FAM’s to bring down before we start boarding, Captain.”

“Okay,” Trey replied, “Bring them on down.”

When Trey turned around after checking some last switches in the cockpit, his eyes lit up.

“Hi Trey.”

Standing in the cockpit doorway was Sarah Collins. She had a grin from ear to ear.

“Sarah, how are you?” Trey broke out in a matching smile. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m working, silly! I’m working this flight to Midway.”

“You’ve got to be kidding! Did you know last night you were working my flight?”

“No! Not until I walked on the airplane this morning. I never thought to ask you where you were headed today. This is quite a treat. I get to see you in action!”
Sarah showed Trey her Federal Air Marshall badge as a formality, and then introduced her partner, Brian Welch, who looked every inch the part of the ex-marine that he was, with a buzz cut and a cheap blue sport coat over a gray golf shirt. Brian ended all of his sentences with sir, or ma’am, but Trey wasn’t fooled. He wouldn’t want to be some guy on the wrong side of the law meeting this guy in a dark alley.
“I’m sure you know the drill, Trey. There’s no specific threat for this flight; nothing out of the ordinary. Brian and I will be sitting up front, and we’ll let the flight attendants handle any passenger problems in their own way. As you know, we’re here to prevent access to the cockpit. But if the flight attendants need our assistance, we will be glad to provide it.”

“Sounds like the standard spiel. Sarah, this is Marjorie, the A flight attendant.”

The two women shook hands, and then Marjorie went back to tell the other two flight attendants about the FAM’s. Air Marshal Welch began stowing his gear in the second row of seats. Trey and Sarah continued talking in the forward galley. She had just a medium sized leather shoulder bag and the black purse she had had last night at the bar. She looked very professional in her navy blue pant suit, with her hair in a tight pony tail. Trey thought she looked great.

“I really enjoyed last night,” Sarah volunteered, reaching out and placing her hand on Trey’s forearm.

“I did too.” Trey remembered the touch from last night.

There was a moment of awkward silence.

“Maybe we can do it again sometime,” Trey said shyly.

“I’d really like that.”

“Me too.”

The ops agent came back down the jetway with the first of the pre-board passengers, an elderly woman in a wheelchair.

“I guess I better grab my seat,” Sarah remarked to Trey.

“Okay. I’ll try to visit some more with you when we get to Chicago Midway.” Trey turned to climb back into his seat in the cockpit.

“Trey?”

Trey turned back. “Yes, Sarah.”

“Your nametag. ‘E. A. West III’. What’s the E. A. stand for?”

“That’s my embarrassing little secret. No one but my mother knows, and she’s not telling!”

“Okay, I’ll take the challenge. I’m gonna get you to tell me one of these days!”
Sarah headed for her seat, but turned back again.

“One more thing, Trey. Don’t forget your landing gear.”

“Okay,” Trey said with a laugh. “Now go sit down or I’ll have to call security because you’re trying to delay the flight.”

Sarah smiled and took her aisle seat on the second row back, across from her partner.

Trey wanted to chat more with Sarah, but he had a plane to get ready for takeoff. He returned to his seat and finished his checks.

Twenty minutes later, the Boeing 737-700 lifted off the runway, climbing easily in the cool morning air of early May. It would be different next month, when the June heat would start to reduce the aircraft’s performance. But for now, the cool weather made the flight smooth. The sun rose outside first officer Tom’s window as the two pilots climbed to a cruise altitude of 37,000 feet. Trey turned on the autopilot and leaned his seat back.

“How was the bar last night?” Tom inquired.

“Not bad. Good food anyway. Not many crews though. Saw Bob Hargrove down there.”

“I don’t know him. Is he San Antonio based?”

“Dallas. Lives in east Texas. Pretty nice guy; you’d like flying with him.”

The conversation ended, and the cockpit grew silent except for the noise of the wind on the windscreen. Trey and Tom had flown all month together and had exhausted most of the common topics between crewmembers: Family, background, union stuff, and the latest gossip. It was not unusual for the rest of the hour-long flight to go quietly except for the reading of the checklist. The two pilots just stared out the window and fell into their own thoughts. The quiet was okay with Trey. It gave him a chance to think about the dream he’d had earlier that morning.

Trey thought about his wife. He missed her. His dreams of her were few and far between, and he usually treasured them as the only jewels of her he had left. But this time it was different. It had only been a dream, but it had hurt. She had been crying. The hurt wasn’t as bad as it had been upon awakening. But it hung around like a dull ache, a homesick feeling in the pit of his stomach.
As he monitored the gauges of the 737, Trey shifted his thoughts of the dream to the image of Sarah in bed next to him. Where had that come from? Trey thought he knew the answer, but was surprised with himself. For the first time since his wife’s death, he found he was attracted to another woman. He had a stack of flight attendant phone numbers next to his bed at home, but just hadn’t felt remotely interested in them. Now, he felt differently. He realized he wanted to spend more time with Sarah. But how? She lived in Fort Worth. It wa¬s several hours north of San Antonio, but he could manage it. He was getting way ahead of himself. How did he know she felt the same way? Trey had a weird feeling, and then recognized it. He felt just like he did in the sixth grade when he had a crush on Becky Thomas. It felt silly, Trey thought, but it also felt good.

The weather was nice all the way to Chicago, and in an hour they landed. Trey got on the wheel brakes right after touchdown because Midway’s runway 31 Center was only 6500 feet long, one of the shortest in the system. They cleared the runway and pulled into gate B3. After finishing the post flight checklist, Trey jumped out of the cockpit hoping to say goodbye to Sarah, but the first several rows of passengers had already deplaned. Trey stepped into the jetway and found Sarah waiting for him. He tried to hide his rush to find her.

“So … where does the rest of the day take you?” Trey asked in a tone that sounded a little too nonchalant.

“We’re working an ATA flight to Newark and laying over there.”

“I go back to Kansas City and then do two more to Indianapolis—”

“C’mon Sarah, we don’t have much time to make the next flight!” Sarah’s partner sounded agitated as he waited, farther up the jetway.

“Well rats. Trey, I have to run. I hope to see you around the system!”

“Me too.” There was a pause. “Sarah?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, nothing. I hope the rest of your day goes well.”

“You too.” Sarah seemed just the slightest bit disappointed. She hesitated to leave, but Trey said nothing more, so she turned away. She looked back with a smile and waved as she walked up the jetway in the midst of the rest of the deplaning passengers. Seconds later she was gone.

Trey went back to the cockpit, slumped into the seat, and pouted until right up to push time for the next flight. He was mad at himself for not having the guts to ask the question he had been dying to ask all morning: For her phone number. Now she was gone. The first opportunity he had felt ready to respond to, and he had let it slip away. He just sat dejectedly for a while. Finally, he ran through his pre-flight checks, saying a silent prayer.

“If it’s meant to be, I’ll see her again.”

The plane boarded up and the ops agent threw in the load sheet with the weight and balance numbers. While Tom took the load sheet and began calculating the takeoff speeds, Marjorie threw in a beverage napkin with the passenger count on it.
“137; a full boat,” she said.

“Thanks, Marjorie,” Trey answered. Talk to you in the air.”

Marjorie backed up to close the cockpit door. “Oh, one more thing.” She threw something else down on the center instrument console. “That’s for you, Captain West.” She slammed the cockpit door and was gone.

Trey looked down. On the center console was a business card. He picked it up.



Department of Homeland Security
Transportation Security Administration
Sarah A. Collins
Federal Air Marshall
South Central Region, Fort Worth Texas


He turned the card over. On the back there was a hand written number.
(214) 555-0806

Trey smiled.