Number two took hold. Three engines now. An encompa.s.sing roar. Snow streaming behind.

Number one fired and held.

"Disconnect air."

"Disconnected."

The umbilical air hose slipped down. The foreman drove the power cart away.

Floodlights ahead of the aircraft had been moved to one side.

Patroni exchanged headsets with the crewman near the front of the fuselage. The maintenance chief now had the telephone set, and communication with the pilots.

"This's Patroni. When you're ready up there, let's roll her out."

Ahead of the aircraft nose, the crewman with the lighted wands held them up, ready to be a guide along an elliptical path beyond the trenches, also cleared at Joe Patroni's direction. The crewman was ready to run if the 707 came out of the mud faster than expected.

Patroni crouched close to the nosewheel. If the airplane moved quickly, he, too, was vulnerable. He held a hand near the interphone plug, ready to disconnect. He watched the main landing gear intently for a sign of forward movement.

The captain's voice. "I am opening up."

The tempo of the jets increased. In a roar like sustained thunder, the airplane shook, the ground beneath it trembled. But the wheels remained still.

Patroni cupped his hands around the interphone mouthpiece. "More power! Throttles forward all the way!"

The engine noise heightened but only slightly. The wheels rose perceptibly, but still failed to move forward.

"G.o.ddamit! All the way!"

For several seconds, the engine tempo remained as it was, then abruptly lessened. The captain's voice rattled the interphone; it had a sarcastic note. "Patroni, por favor, if I open my throttles all the way, this airplane will stand on its nose. Instead of a stranded 707, we shall both have a wrecked one."

The maintenance chief had been studying the landing gear wheels, which had now settled back, and the ground around them. "It'll come out, I tell you! All it needs is the guts to pull full power." "Look to your own guts!" the captain snapped back. "I am shutting the engines down."

Patroni shouted into the interphone. "Keep those motors running; hold 'em at idle! I'm coming up!" Moving forward under the nose, he motioned urgently for the boarding ramp to be repositioned. But even as it was being pushed into place, all four engines quieted and died.

When he reached the c.o.c.kpit, both pilots were unfastening their seat harnesses.

Patroni said accusingly, "You chickened out!"

The captain's reaction was surprisingly mild. "Es posible. Perhaps it is the only intelligent thing I have done tonight." He inquired formally, "Does your maintenance department accept this airplane?"

"Okay." Patroni nodded. "We'll take it over."

The first officer glanced at his watch and made an entry in a log.

"When you have extricated this airplane, in whatever way," the Aereo-Mexican captain stated, "no doubt your company will be in touch with my company. Meanwhile, buenas noches." As the two pilots left, their heavy topcoats b.u.t.toned tightly at the neck, Joe Patroni made a swift, routine check of instruments and control settings. A minute or so later he followed the pilots down the outside ramp.

The Aereo-Mexican foreman, Ingram, was waiting below. He nodded in the direction of the departing pilots, now hurrying toward one of the crew buses. "That was the same thing they done to me; not pulling enough power." He motioned gloomily toward the aircraft's main landing gear. "That's why she went in deep before; now she's dug herself in deeper still."

It was what Joe Patroni had feared.

With Ingram holding an electric lantern, he ducked under the fuselage to inspect the landing gear wheels; they were back in mud and slush again, almost a foot deeper than before. Patroni took the light and shone it under the wings; all four engine nacelles were disquietingly closer to the ground.

"Nothing but a sky hook'll help her now," Ingram said.

The maintenance chief considered the situation, then shook his head. "We got one more chance. We'll dig some more, bring the trenches down to where the wheels are now, then start the engines again. Only this time I'll drive."

The wind and snow still howled around them.

Shivering, Ingram acknowledged doubtfully, "I guess you're the doctor. But better you than me."

Joe Patroni grinned. "If I don't blast her out, maybe I'll blow her apart."

Ingram headed for the remaining crew bus to call out the men; the other bus had taken the Aereo-Mexican pilots to the terminal.

Patroni calculated: there was another hour's work ahead before they could try moving the aircraft again. Therefore runway three zero would have to continue out of use for at least that long.

He went to his radio-equipped pickup to report to air traffic control.

7.

THE THEORY that an overburdened, exhausted mind can exercise its own safety valve by retreating into pa.s.sive semi-awareness was unknown to Inez Guerrero. Nevertheless, for her, the theory had proved true. At this moment she was a mental walking-wounded case.

The events of tonight affecting her personally, coupled with her acc.u.mulated distress and weariness of weeks, had proved a final crushing defeat. It prompted her mindlike an overloaded circuitto switch off. The condition was temporary, not permanent, yet while it remained Inez Guerrero had forgotten where she was, or why.

The mean, uncouth taxi driver who had brought her to the airport had not helped. When bargaining downtown, he agreed to seven dollars as the price of the ride. Getting out, Inez proffered a ten dollar billalmost the last money she hadexpecting change. Mumbling that he had no change but would get some, the cabbie drove off. Inez waited for ten anxious minutes, watching the terminal clock which was nearing 11 P.M.the time of Flight Two's departurebefore it dawned on her that the man had no intention of returning. She had noticed neither the taxi number nor the driver's namesomething the driver had gambled on. Even if she had, Inez Guerrero was not the kind who complained to authority; the driver had correctly guessed that, too.

Despite the initial slowness of her journey from downtown, she could have reached Flight Two before it leftbut for the time spent waiting for the non-appearing change. As it was, she arrived at the departure gate to see the airplane taxiing away.

Even then, to find out if her husband, D.O., was really aboard, Inez had the presence of mind to use the subterfuge which the Trans America inquiries girl, Miss Young, suggested on the telephone. A uniformed agent was just leaving gate fortyseven, where Flight Two had been. Inez accosted him.

As Miss Young advised, Inez avoided asking a direct question, and made the statement, "My husband is on that flight which just left." She explained that she had missed seeing her husband, but wanted to be sure he was safely aboard. Inez unfolded the yellow time-payment contract which she had discovered at home among D.O.'s shirts, and showed it to the Trans America agent. He barely glanced at it, then checked the papers he was holding.

For a moment or two Inez wondered hopefully if she had made a mistake in presuming that D.O. was leaving on the flight; the idea of his going to Rome at all still seemed fantastic. Then the agent said, yes, there was a D. O. Guerrero aboard Flight Two, and he, the agent, was sorry that Mrs. Guerrero had missed seeing her husband, but everything was in a mixup tonight because of the storm, and now if she would please excuse him...

It was when the agent had gone and Inez realized that despite the press of people around her in the terminal, she was utterly alone, that she began to cry.

At first the tears came slowly; then, as she remembered all that had gone wrong, they streamed in great heaving sobs which shook her body. She cried for the past and for the present; for the home she had had and lost; for her children whom she could no longer keep with her; for D.O. who, despite his faults as a husband, and the failure to support his family, was at least familiar, but now had deserted her. She wept for what she herself had been and had become; for the fact that she had no money, nowhere to go but to the mean, c.o.c.kroach-infested rooms downtown, from which she would be evicted tomorrow, having nothing leftafter the taxi ride and driver's theft from the pathetically small amount with which she had hoped to stave off the landlord... she was not even sure if she had enough small change to return downtown. She cried because her shoes still hurt her feet; for her clothes which were shabby and sodden; for her weariness, and because she had a cold and a fever which she could feel getting worse. She cried for herself and all others for whom every hope was gone.

It was then, to avoid stares of people who were watching, that she began walking aimlessly through the terminal, still weeping as she went. Somewhere near that time, too, the defensive machinery of her mind took over, inducing a protective numbness, so that her sorrow persisted but its reasons, for a while, were mercifully blurred.

Soon after, an airport policeman found her and, with a sensitivity for which police are not always credited, placed her in as obscure a corner as he could find while telephoning his superiors for instructions. Lieutenant Ordway happened to be nearby and dealt with the matter personally. It was he who decided that Inez Guerrero, though incoherent and upset, was harmless, and had ordered her taken to the airport general manager's officethe only place Ned Ordway could think of which was quiet, yet less intimidating than police headquarters.

Inez had gone docilely, in an elevator and along a mezzanine, only half-knowing that she was being taken anywhere at all, and not caring; and after, had sat quietly in a seat she was guided to, her body, if not her mind, grateful for the rest. She had been aware of people coming and going, and some had spoken, but she had brought neither the sight nor sound of them into focus, the effort seeming too much. But after a while, her resiliencewhich is another word for strength of the human spirit, which all possess, however burdened or humblebrought her back to a realization, even though vague, that she must move on, because life moved on, and always had and would, no matter how many defeats it wrought, or dreary or empty as it might seem.

So Inez Guerrero stood up, still not sure where she was or how she had come there, but prepared to go.

It was then that the Meadowood delegation, escorted by Lieutenant Ordway, entered the anteroom to Mel Bakersfeld's office, where Inez was. The delegation continued into the other room, then Ned Ordway had returned to speak with Inez Guerrero, and Mel observed the two of them together briefly before the door to his office closed.

Inez, through her miasma of uncertainty, was also conscious of the big Negro policeman, whom she had a feeling she had seen somewhere before, quite recently, and he bad been kind then, as he was being kind now, leading her with quiet, notquite-questions, so that he seemed to understand, without her ever saying so, that she had to return downtown and wasn't sure she had enough money for it. She started to fumble with her purse, intending to count what was there, but he stopped her. Then, with his back to the other room, he slipped three one-dollar bills into her hand, and came with her outside, pointing the way down to where, he said, she would find a bus, and added that what he had given her would be enough for the fare, with something over for wherever she had to go when she got to the city.

The policeman bad gone then, returning in the direction from which he had come, and Inez did what she was told, going down some stairs; then almost at the big door through which she was to go for the bus, she had seen a familiar sighta hot dog counter; and at that moment she realized how hungry and thirsty she was, on top of everything else. She had groped in her purse, and found thirty-five cents, and bought a hot dog, and coffee in a paper cup, and somehow the sight of those two very ordinary things was rea.s.suring. Not far from the food counter, she found a seat and tucked herself into a corner. She wasn't sure how long ago that was but now, with the coffee gone and the hot dog eaten, awareness which earlier had started to come back, was receding from her once more in a comfortable way. There was something comforting, too, about the crowds around her, the noises, and loudspeaker announcements. Twice Inez thought she heard her own name on the loudspeakers, but knew it was imagination and couldn't be true because no one would call her, or even know that she was here. She realized dimly that sometime soon she would have to move on, and knew that tonight especially it would entail an effort. But for a while, she thought, she would sit here quietly, where she was.

8.

WITH ONE exception, those summoned to the airport general manager's office on the administrative mezzanine arrived there quickly. The calls made to themsome by Mel Bakersfeld, others by Tanya Livingstonhad stressed urgency, and the need to leave whatever they were doing.

The District Transportation Manager of Trans AmericaTanya's boss, Bert Weatherbyarrived first.

Lieutenant Ordway, having started his policemen searching for Inez Guerrero, though still not knowing why, was close behind. For the time being Ordway had abandoned to their own devices the sizable group of Meadowood residents, still milling in the main concourse, listening to Lawyer Freemantle expound their case before TV cameras.

As the D.T.M., Weatherby, entered Mel's office through the anteroom door, he inquired briskly, "Mel, what's all this about?"

"We're not sure, Bert, and we haven't a lot to go on yet, but there's a possibility there could be a bomb aboard your Flight Two."

The D.T.M. looked searchingly at Tanya, but wasted no time in asking why she was there. His gaze swung back to Mel. "Let's hear what you know."

Addressing both the D.T.M. and Ned Ordway, Mel summarized what was known or conjectured so far: the report of Customs Inspector Standish concerning the pa.s.senger with the attache case, clasped in a way which Standishan experienced observerbelieved to be suspicious; Tanya's identification of the man with the case as one D. O. Guerrero, or perhaps Buerrero; the downtown agent's revelation that Guerrero checked in without any baggage other than the small case already mentioned; Guerrero's purchase at the airport of three hundred thousand dollars' worth of flight insurance, which he barely had enough money to pay for, so that he appeared to be setting out on a five-thousand mile journey, not only without so much as a change of clothing, but also without funds; and finallyperhaps coincidentally, perhaps notMrs. Inez Guerrero, sole beneficiary of her husband's flight insurance policy, had been wandering through the terminal, apparently in great distress.

While Mel was speaking, Customs Inspector Harry Standish, still in uniform, came in, followed by Bunnie Vorobioff. Bunnie entered uncertainly, glancing questioningly around her at the unfamiliar people and surroundings. As the import of what Mel was saying sank in, she paled and appeared scared.

The one non-arrival was the gate agent who had been in charge at gate fortyseven when Flight Two left. A staff supervisor whom Tanya had spoken to a few minutes ago informed her that the agent was now off duty and on his way home. She gave instructions for a message to be left, and for the agent to check in by telephone as soon as he arrived. Tanya doubted if anything would be gained by bringing him back to the airport tonight; for one thing, she already knew that the agent did not remember Guerrero boarding. But someone else might want to question him by phone.

"I called everyone here who's involved so far," Mel informed the D.T.M., "in case you or someone else have questions. What we have to decide, I thinkand it's mainly your decisionis whether or not we have enough to warn your captain of Flight Two." Mel was reminded again of what he had temporarily pushed from mind: that the flight was commanded by his brother-in-law, Vernon Demerest. Later, Mel knew, he might have to do some reconsidering about certain implications. But not yet.

"I'm thinking now." The D.T.M. looked grim; he swung to Tanya. "Whatever we decide, I want Operations in on this. Find out if Royce Kettering is still on the base. If so, get him here fast." Captain Kettering was Trans America's chief pilot at Lincoln International; it was he who earlier tonight had test-flown aircraft N-731-TA, before as Flight Two, The Golden Argosyit took off for Rome.

"Yes, sir," Tanya said.

While she was on one telephone, another rang. Mel answered.

It was the tower watch chief. "I have the report you wanted on Trans America Two." One of Mel's calls for a few minutes ago had been to air traffic control, requesting information on the flight's takeoff time and progress.

"Go ahead."

"Takeoff was 11:13 local time." Mel's eyes swung to a wall clock. It was now almost ten minutes after midnight; the flight had been airborne nearly an hour.

The tower chief continued, "Chicago Center handed off the flight to Cleveland Center at 12:27 EST, Cleveland handed it to Toronto at 01:03 EST; that's seven minutes ago. At the moment, Toronto Center reports the aircraft's position as near London, Ontario. I have more informationcourse, height, speedif you want it."

"That's enough for now," Mel said. "Thanks."

"One other thing, Mr. Bakersfeld." The tower chief summarized Joe Patroni's latest bulletin about runway three zero; the runway would be out of use for at least another hour. Mel listened impatiently; at the moment, other things seemed more important.

When he hung up, Mel repeated the information about Flight Two's position to the D.T.M.

Tanya came off the other phone. She reported, "Operations found Captain Kettering. He's coming."

"That womanthe pa.s.senger's wife," the D.T.M. said. "What was her name?" Ned Ordway answered. "Inez Guerrero."

"Where is she?"

"We don't know." The policeman explained that his men were searching the airport, although the woman might be gone. He added that city police headquarters had been alerted, and all buses from the airport to downtown were now being checked on arrival.

"When she was here," Mel explained, "we had no idea..."

The D.T.M. grunted. "We were all slow." He glanced at Tanya, then at Customs Inspector Standish, who so far had not spoken. The D.T.M., Tanya knew, was remembering ruefully his own instructions to "Forget it!"

Now he informed her, "We'll have to tell the captain of the flight something. He's ent.i.tled to know as much as we do, even though so far we're only guessing."

Tanya asked, "Shouldn't we send a description of Guerrero? Captain Demerest may want to have him identified without his knowing."

"If you do," Mel pointed out, "we can help. There are people here who've seen the man."

"All right," the D.T.M. acknowledged, "we'll work on that. Meanwhile, Tanya, call our dispatcher. Tell him there's an important message coming in a few minutes, and to get a Selcal circuit hooked into Flight Two. I want this kept private, not broadcast for everybody. At least, not yet."

Tanya returned to the telephone.

Mel asked Bunnie, "Are you Miss Vorobioff?"

As she nodded nervously, the eyes of the others turned to her. Automatically, those of the men dropped to Bunnie's capacious b.r.e.a.s.t.s; the D.T.M. seemed about to whistle, but changed his mind.

Mel said, "You realize which man we're talking about?"

"I... I'm not sure."

"It's a man named D. O. Guerrero. You sold him an insurance policy tonight, didn't you?"

Bunnie nodded again. "Yes."

"When you wrote the policy, did you get a good look at him?"

She shook her head. "Not really." Her voice was low. She moistened her lips.