Accidental Heroes Read online

  They informed her that Captain Connor Gray would be flying deadhead, which meant he would be flying as a courtesy passenger. He would be traveling in the cockpit with her since the flight was full and every passenger seat was sold. The text said only that he had been deactivated and retired due to a medical incident on the ground after his flight to New York two days before. The formalities of his retirement would happen in the coming days. But he was no longer cleared to fly, and after the incident wouldn’t be again. The airline and FAA were strict about grave medical issues. She’d heard of him, as one of the airline’s senior pilots, but they had never met. He was close to retirement age, though maybe not quite there yet, and whatever had occurred must have been serious for them to deactivate and retire him summarily halfway through a trip. She thought about it, and hoped to make his return to home base as pleasant as possible under the circumstances.

  Flying with an unfamiliar copilot was standard fare for any commercial pilot, since the crews were varied and interchangeable. It made no difference to her. Some were easy to get along with, others were less pleasant, but all were skilled pilots on the first-rate airline she worked for. She flew the plane she was given to fly, just like in the military. And after years of training and experience, she could fly anything they handed her with her eyes closed. She loved her job. Flying was in her blood. Her father had been an Air Force pilot and retired as a full colonel.

  Helen had been a fighter pilot for the Air Force in Iraq for several years. She and her husband had both served there, and they had decided that she would leave the Air Force and return to civilian life before his last tour ended. They both had offers from commercial airlines and, for the sake of their children, thought it was time to muster out.

  It had been a big adjustment for her. She had grown up in the military, and everything about civilian life was unfamiliar to her. It was difficult at first with her husband still in the Air Force. He had been killed four months after she left, eight weeks before he was due to fly home.

  She wasn’t bitter about what had happened to him. He’d been shot down and taken prisoner, and he and all of his crew were killed in an incident that had received press and cries of outrage from around the world. He had been decorated posthumously by the president, and the medal he’d been given was on their mantelpiece in Petaluma where she and her children lived, less than an hour outside San Francisco, in a small, slightly dilapidated house. She had been in shock over her husband’s death at first, and it had an unreal quality to it. They both knew the risks, but she never expected it to happen to him, and she had no idea how to manage civilian life without him. She had thought about reenlisting after he died, and going back to the only life she knew in the Air Force, but it wouldn’t be fair to the children. They had wanted them to experience life outside the military, but not without their father. That had never been the plan. Her own father had done everything he could to help her, and stayed with the kids when she was away. A year and a half later, she was still adjusting to civilian life without Jack. It hadn’t been easy for her or the kids. It was much harder than she expected, and infinitely more so as a widow.

  She was forty-two years old, and the Air Force and military life were second nature to her. There was some resistance to her being a female pilot with the airline, but others had broken that barrier before her, and most of the men she flew with respected her for her flying record, particularly those who knew of her tours of duty in Iraq. Flying Airbuses between San Francisco and New York, or internationally, was a piece of cake. She had five days off coming to her when she got back to San Francisco, and had promised to take all three of her children camping. They were just a regular family now, or tried to be, with two sons in middle school and a seven-year-old daughter, even though their father had been a war hero and their mother had been a fighter pilot.

  Helen hadn’t made many friends in the community yet. She had little in common with the other mothers she’d met at school, and she kept to herself or spent her time off with her children. She had to be mother and father to them now, which was double the work with two boys in Little League, and a daughter in Girl Scouts and taking hip-hop dance lessons after school. Helen questioned her decision often, about leaving the military. There were times when she missed it desperately. It had been like leaving the womb. Everything about civilian life had been a shock at first.

  She had found that the only time she was comfortable in her own skin, and felt like she knew what she was doing, was when she was flying. The rest of the time, she felt like a fish out of water. She hadn’t learned to be a civilian yet, but she was trying. She was living day by day. What had happened to Jack had taught her that you couldn’t count on the future, or on anything. Life was a game of chance. She had nothing and no one to believe in now, except herself. And there were times when she felt like she wasn’t enough for her kids—the boys especially needed their father, and all she could do now was her best, which wasn’t always enough.

  * * *

  —

  Nancy Williams lay awake long before the alarm went off, trying to force herself to stay in bed until five. She had gone to sleep knowing what she was going to do the minute she woke up. It had only dawned on her the day before that she might be pregnant. After twelve years of infertility treatments and eight attempts at IVF, she and her husband had finally given up and had filed papers to adopt a little girl in China. She was two years old, and they were going to Beijing soon to pick her up. They could hardly wait.

  And suddenly, the day before, on the flight from San Francisco, it had occurred to her that she might be pregnant, without hormone shots or harvesting her eggs this time. It seemed too good to be true. She had gone to a drugstore near the hotel that night to pick up a test kit. It was sitting on the bathroom sink, waiting for her to use it. She was afraid to be disappointed again. At thirty-eight she had been down this path too many times, and crushing disappointment had become a way of life.

  At five A.M. she couldn’t stand it anymore. Wide awake, she threw back the covers, headed to the bathroom, and told herself she didn’t care. Soon they would have an adopted daughter, so it didn’t matter. Except it did. If humanly possible, they still wanted a baby of their own. She hadn’t even told her husband her suspicions, not wanting to get his hopes up. He was a pilot for the same airline, had flown to Miami the day before, and was coming back to San Francisco that day too.

  She used the test and left it on the sink to work its magic, hopped into the shower, let the hot water run down her face, and got out of the shower faster than she would have otherwise. She had to know, one more time, and when she looked, she let out a scream and held the test in her shaking hand. Two pink lines. She was pregnant, without assistance. It had just happened. All their earlier attempts had been futile. And what were they going to do now about the little girl in China? A thousand thoughts ran through her mind as she sat down on the floor, feeling dizzy, still holding the test kit. She was pregnant at last! Their dream had finally come true.

  * * *

  —

  Joel McCarthy was just getting out of the shower when his cellphone rang. He was rushing, and had overslept by a few minutes. He recognized the number immediately, and his face broke into a broad smile. He was a tall, dark-haired, handsome man, had done some modeling in his youth, and loved his job as a flight attendant.

  “What are you doing up at this hour?” he asked his partner, Kevin. “It’s two in the morning for you.” Kevin was at the apartment in San Francisco.

  “I can’t sleep. All I can think about is Friday.”

  “I know. Me too.” Both men smiled and there was a moment of silence between them. Joel was thirty-four, and his partner was forty, and a doctor. They had met on one of Joel’s flights two years ago and had been together ever since. They were getting married in two days, with a small circle of friends around them, and Kevin’s parents, who were coming up from Los Angeles. Joel ha
dn’t told his ultraconservative parents in Utah, nor his five brothers and sisters, even his one brother who was gay and had never told their parents either. None of them had ever been willing to face the reality of Joel’s life, and expecting them to celebrate his marriage to a man would be too much for them. Kevin would be his family now. Joel loved his own family, but they were unable to accept him. He had spent years in therapy dealing with it, and he was finally at ease in his own life. Marrying Kevin was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to him.

  “My parents arrived tonight,” Kevin told him, sounding euphoric. “My mother is even more excited than we are.” Both Kevin’s parents had welcomed Joel into their family, and his sister and her husband were just as warm. They were the family Joel had always dreamed of.

  They were going to Tahiti on their honeymoon. Kevin was a successful plastic surgeon, and had asked Joel to consider giving up his job, but Joel didn’t want to be dependent on him and was going to continue flying, at least for a while, maybe until they adopted a child or found a surrogate for their own. Joel was already living in Kevin’s apartment, and they were going to start looking for a house to buy when they got back from Tahiti. And they had just gotten a dog. Joel loved all the evidence of domestic life.

  “I’ve got to go, I’m going to be late,” Joel told him when he saw the time. “I love you. I’ll see you tonight. I’ll have dinner ready when you get home.”

  “My parents want to take us out,” Kevin told him quickly.

  “Go back to bed and get some sleep, or you’ll be exhausted on Friday,” Joel said, smiling. All either of them could think of was their wedding. They’d had fun planning it for months.

  “Have a safe flight,” Kevin said before he hung up. He always said that, which touched Joel. He’d never been on a flight that had a problem, but Kevin was nervous about him flying, and was a fearful flier himself.

  Joel was smiling as he put on his steward’s uniform, thinking about Kevin and how lucky he felt to be marrying him. And he was in a great mood when he got in the van with the crew. There were muted greetings of good morning, as everyone kept to themselves at that hour. Joel didn’t know them all, though he had seen most of them on the flight two days before.

  “They’ve switched us to an A321 and added a 757 to make up the difference,” the captain, Helen Smith, said in a matter-of-fact tone, which caused some comment in the group about the equipment change and breaking it into two flights. Most of them were sorry not to be flying the A380, which they all liked, although they would have had more passengers to deal with on the bigger plane, and the A321 would be easier for the flight attendants. “They’re using a New-York-based crew for the 757,” Captain Smith added, as they waited for the copilot to come out of the hotel. She glanced at her watch. He was late.

  Joel and Nancy chatted quietly while they waited. Nancy was elated after what she’d discovered, but tried not to show it. She didn’t want to share the news with anyone until she told her husband. And Joel had been excited all week. This was his last scheduled flight before the wedding.

  There were two very senior female flight attendants in the van, who’d been assigned to first class on the trip out. And Joel assumed they would be again. One of them, Jennifer, was the chief purser. They were competent and experienced at tending to demanding first-class passengers, but made it obvious that they didn’t enjoy it. Nancy had commented on it to Joel on the flight to New York. She could never see the point of staying in the job once you felt that way, and a number of their older colleagues were visibly tired and bitter. They’d done it for too long, and the vagaries of the passengers they dealt with annoyed them. There was an edge to how they spoke to people and an attitude you could sense the moment you saw them. Nancy hated working with women like that. They fulfilled the passengers’ requests, but only to the degree they had to. And she hoped she wouldn’t be working with either of them today. They were conferring quietly about their trips to Hong Kong and Beijing the following month, while the two younger members of the crew, Bobbie and Annette, had been assigned to coach before and probably would be again. Annette was whispering to Bobbie about a date she’d had the night before, and they both laughed as Helen looked at her watch again with a stern expression.

  She glanced over then and noticed the older pilot in the van, and realized it was Connor Gray, the newly retired pilot due to fly home with them. She waited until he looked her way, and then smiled at him. He nodded in response with a somber expression. He had recognized her too, and knew her military history. Helen thought Captain Gray looked subdued and somewhat pale, and whatever his medical issue had been after the flight out, Helen got the feeling that he was depressed about it, which wouldn’t have been surprising with an immediate forced retirement after the incident.

  He said nothing to the rest of the crew, nor to her. And then, finally, the copilot they’d been waiting for jumped into the van with no apology for the delay. He was strikingly handsome with blond movie-star looks, and acted as though he were playing a part. He introduced himself as Jason Andrews and immediately complained about the equipment change, and said he’d been looking forward to flying the A380 since he had recently qualified for it. And then he looked at Helen with a sarcastic expression as the van took off for the airport. “Girls’ flight today?” he commented as Connor Gray glared at him with blatant disapproval for his lack of respect for Captain Smith.

  As the van threaded its way between several trucks, Jason Andrews made it clear that he thought female pilots were second-rate at best. The rest of the crew members were shocked into silence. Helen said nothing and didn’t care. She had met many men like him in the Air Force, who disliked female pilots, and it didn’t faze her at all. He was obviously a smart aleck, full of himself, and was wearing his uniform hat at a rakish angle. When they got out at JFK he made a comment about how “hot” Bobbie was. Bobbie heard him say it and told him she was married as they collected their bags out of the van, and he looked at her with a roguish smile.

  “And the problem is?” he countered to Bobbie, and then focused on Nancy, who was a tall, attractive blonde with a good figure. He seemed to think that all women were easy prey for him, and his for the picking.

  Nancy ignored him and chatted quietly with Joel as they rolled their bags into the airport. The copilot had made no friends on the trip out. The two older flight attendants looked right through him, and Bobbie whispered to Annette that he was a jerk. He had managed to rub everyone the wrong way with his snide comments on the drive to the airport.

  He made another remark Helen didn’t like as they moved to the head of the security line and put their computers, cellphones, and minor belongings in the plastic bins and their rolling bags on the moving belt to be X-rayed.

  “Welcome to the heart of Africa,” Jason said under his breath just loud enough for the others to hear, and anyone standing nearby, as he glanced at the TSA agents around them, most of whom were African Americans.

  “Watch that!” Captain Helen Smith said in a sharp tone that reminded them all of her military background. She was wide awake and quick to call him on it, although she’d been quiet in the van. “You’re part of my crew now, Andrews, until we land at SFO. I can write you up for that remark, or suspend you,” she said bluntly, as a particularly pretty young TSA agent watched the exchange, and had heard the comment. The copilot seemed like a jerk to her too. Bobbie’s assessment of him seemed apt.

  “You must have heard me wrong, Captain,” he said with mock respect.

  “I hope I did. Make sure I don’t hear you wrong again.” He didn’t respond, and followed the rest of the crew as they walked toward their gate. The two planes for the flights to San Francisco, leaving twenty minutes apart, were parked next to each other. The San Francisco crew members were joined by a full crew from New York who had been added for the 757. They were separated quickly, and went to their respective planes. On
the A321, the flight attendants met with Jennifer, the chief purser, once they were on board, to get their cabin assignments, which, as Joel had guessed, were the same as the flight out. Helen, Jason, and the now retired Connor Gray headed for the cockpit to settle in. Jason gave Joel a contemptuous look as he walked past, but he didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. His scorn for Joel was in his eyes.

  Helen sat down in the captain’s seat and turned to talk to Connor Gray for a few minutes. She seemed to relax and warm up once she was in the cockpit. It was home to her. Nothing ever felt as good to her as flying a plane. She had all-American looks, with light brown hair, an intelligent face, and bright blue eyes that took in everything. And Connor looked more at ease and brightened while they talked. He explained to her in a low voice that he’d had a brief cerebral incident, a TIA. The doctors had said it might never happen again but it could. It lasted only a few seconds, during which he didn’t recognize his surroundings, but his career had ended on the spot. If it had happened while he was flying the plane, it could have been disastrous.

  “I’m really sorry,” she said sympathetically and he thanked her. He had enormous respect for her not just professionally, but personally. Like most of the world, he had seen her husband murdered by his captors on TV. It had been horrifying, and something no one could forget. Connor didn’t refer to it, but told her it was an honor to fly with her on his final flight in uniform. She said the same about him and he could see that she was sincere. She seemed like a kind woman in addition to her reputation as a highly skilled pilot.