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