Havana, Baby!

(Revised 11/19/2023)-- Minor adjustments to tie into Still Alive.

We've received high marks for aviation-related stories, so another follows which continues the narrative of Brandi and Robin Grant from A Walk Changed Everything, which should be read first. Don't worry, this story isn't as complicated as their first.

Unlike in general aviation, when air traffic controllers and airline pilots interact, call signs and flight numbers are used instead of the registration numbers painted on the aircraft. Some call signs are simply the name of the airline, while others have alternatives. The formerly named US Airways used the call sign "Cactus," and ValuJet used "Critter." Others include "Brickyard" and "Speedbird." That's why, in this story, the call signs don't match the company names.

Fixes, waypoints, and published procedures are all-caps in the published materials, and are spelled as such in our story, like "GABEE SEVEN departure."

As always, any tail number we use in a story was verified to be unused and unregistered with the FAA. If it becomes registered after the date of publishing, it is purely coincidental.

All characters engaging in adult activities are over the age of eighteen.

We hope you enjoy: Havana, Baby!

Mark Wright Book 4
An Excerpt

Two men sipped Karak tea. One drew on a hookah stem, but the other abstained.

" Bab-aqa, tell me if I understand."

The elder understood spoken or written English far better than his ability to speak it. The younger found it amusing how his friend often employed loan-words when describing his work.

"You found a device in an elevator which recorded what I just heard?" asked the younger man.

"No. I was repairing the elevator not powered. Safety. I work to replace brake temperature sensor. I hear men talking. Voices through doors near next shaft. Floor above elevator I am fixing. Korke elevators very quiet. Always. Record device was this."

He tapped his cellphone.

"They laugh and speak loud. Man says he meets five and ten or more to go to Al Bahbijn. To make plan against NATO. They say time and day."

Wright knew the elder man was structuring numbers similar to how he'd speak them in his own tongue. He was being told fifteen or more men, the leadership of various cadres, would be congregating in one place.

"When?" Wright asked.

"Day two tens and one in month seven."

The twenty-first of July was less than ninety days away.

Jassim Kahn related all the details he had heard before the adjacent elevator spirited the source of the information away.

"Thank you,  bab-aqa. I must return to work now. I have much planning to do."

"You go. We meet soon."

Both stood. Kahn grasped Wright's shoulders. " Ella al-liqaa."

"Until we meet again" was one of few phrases Mark understood and could say in Kahn's language. He repeated it.

Minutes later, Wright climbed onto the motorcycle he'd borrowed. The hour-long ride allowed him to spawn options to end the existence of various enemies.

Yeah. It's finally time , he thought. I'll end them all.

BRANDI GRANT
Sunday, March 1, 2020 9:40am

I checked my notes before I spoke to ensure I knew the name of the individual who'd be sitting in the right seat for the next four days.

"Good morning from the flight deck. Captain Brandi Grant along with First Officer Mack McGarry and the four absolutely fantastic attendants in the cabin want to welcome you aboard InterAir Flight 417 to Denver International. We're currently number seven in line for takeoff, which means we'll be airborne in about fifteen minutes. We ask you to remain in your seat with your seat belt fastened, and we appreciate your patience. The forecasted weather will likely favor us, so we're still looking at a smooth flight with an on-time arrival. We'll give an update if anything changes."

First Officer McGarry groaned ruefully in the right seat as I replaced the interphone in its place.

"What? What'd I say?"

"Sterile cockpit," he cautiously observed.

"As long as the plane isn't moving and we're not in the middle of a checklist, a little conversation is permitted," I said.

"Don't you worry about jinxing us? I've always thought it a bad idea to predict an on-time arrival when doing a pre-departure PA. It's just begging for trouble," he answered. "It was pretty pro, though, how you delivered it without a single uhhh ."

The postscript to his comment tickled me with the humorously exaggerated and stereotypical pilot-pause throaty groan.

"Yeah, sometimes optimism can bite me, but I think it helps. You've probably read as many company reports and news articles as I have about incidents involving unruly passengers. I won't say something I don't believe to be possible. I won't outright lie, but, in my humble opinion, it's better to give people a positive outlook. If it doesn't work out, they can be as peeved as they want when we land instead of being irked before we even depart."

"Good point. I'll keep that in mind."

We sat silently for several minutes as we continued to move forward in the queue at Lambert Airport.

"Spark 417, you're now number three," advised the tower controller.

"Roger. We're ready, Spark 417," I responded in my role as PM meaning pilot monitoring.

The assignment of our roles was only slightly more efficient than a simple coin toss. It was purely based on the fact that I had most recently been the PF, or pilot flying. Of course, as captain, I could override the role for any reason, but I seldom would. It'd only been a year since I held the same position as my first officer, and it irked me when four-bars would capriciously deny me loggable landings. Mack McGarry deserved his as much as I did, and I had no reason to trump him.

"Flaps?" I continued to read down the pre-takeoff checklist.

"Five, set and indicated."

"Stab trim?"

"Minus two."

"Crosschecked and confirmed. Checklist complete," I concluded and stowed the laminated card.

Eight minutes later, we heard, "Spark 417, runway one two right, line up and wait."

I acknowledged the call.

On most Boeing 737s, only the captain's seat has a ground steering tiller, so I positioned the craft on the centerline myself.

"Your airplane," I advised my first officer and heard his acknowledgment.

"Spark 417, caution, wake turbulence from departing triple seven. Winds calm. Runway one two right, cleared for takeoff."

I acknowledged the call.

"Thrust forty," my FO said after pushing the throttles forward.

"Stabilized," I said once both engines' N1 indications matched.

"Takeoff thrust," he said as he pushed the TOGA button twice and released the brakes.

"Takeoff thrust," I repeated with my hand under his but lower on the thrust levers to confirm they obeyed the autothrottle's commands.

"Eighty knots," I said when the airspeed tape reached the mark, followed shortly by "one hundred."

"Continuing."

"V1 … rotate," I said a few moments later.

I raised my right hand to knock his left off the levers because he didn't remove it per procedure on the V1 call-out.

I watched the flight director's pip move a little too aggressively above the artificial horizon, but he acted immediately and appropriately to prevent a tail strike.

"Positive rate," I announced.

"Gear up."

I moved the lever.

"In transit," I said, observing the triangle of lights change from green to red, then extinguish a few seconds later. I moved the lever to the proper detent. "Gear up and off."

"Flaps zero," he requested shortly afterward.

I set them as requested.

"Flaps zero … indicated."

"Spark 417, contact departure," the tower controller radioed.

"Contacting departure. Have a great day, Spark 417," I responded.

I pressed the button to swap frequencies.

"Saint Louis departure, Spark 417, two thousand, climbing per the SID."

"Spark 417, radar contact. Delete altitude restrictions. Climb and maintain one-one thousand … eleven thousand … cleared direct LIISA, then on course. Expect higher with Center."

I read back the change and added, "Thanks for the shortcut, Spark 417."

Scrolling over three intermediate route waypoints in the FMC to LIISA, I pressed Direct/Execute then dialed 11,000 into the altitude window on the glare shield.

"FMC updated," I said to Mack.

He reached up to the mode control panel and engaged the autopilot. The plane gently banked right. The favor by the departure controller had shortened our flight from 720 nautical miles to 690 thus at least five minutes shorter.

Once we'd climbed above 10,000 feet, we both released our shoulder harnesses. I chimed the cabin to let the crew know we'd crossed the critical altitude.

"Alright, Denver, here we come," Mack said agreeably.

"So, on the takeoff⁠—"

"I know, I know. A bit too quick raising the nose."

"Yeah. Feels like we're a little more tail-heavy than the load sheet shows, and you reacted perfectly. I'm talking about your hand staying on the throttles when I called V1."

He sighed frustratedly. "Yeah. It's an old habit I can't seem to break."

"What does our ops manual say?"

"At V1, we're committed to the takeoff even if something goes wrong," he correctly stated. "At my prior carrier, we got yelled at if we took our hand off the throttles until four hundred feet above the ground."

"Same with mine, so I'll offer you the suggestion a line check captain offered to help me break it."

"Oh? What's that?"

"If you do it again during this rotation, I'll snap one of your fingers," I said with just enough levity in my delivery he'd know I was speaking metaphorically.

"Oh, this went dark fast!" He laughed.

We completed the last of the cruise-climb checklist which ended with a review of the remaining segments of the flight and the charted arrival procedure.

"We got lucky with the amended clearance," he observed when he noted the ETA on the FMC indicated an earlier time than scheduled.

"I'll send an ACARS message to dispatch to see if we need to slow down. We don't want to expend fuel unnecessarily and get there early if it means we'll idle on the ramp in Denver waiting for a gate."

After receiving an affirmative response from a company dispatcher and reducing the airspeed a smidgen, I initiated some casual conversation.

"So, Mack, answer the obligatories," I suggested. Every pilot knew the meaning.

"A little over twenty-five hundred hours total time, about seven hundred in 737s with the company."

"What'd you fly before?"

"I earned most of my time working up to my ATP in Beech 1900s doing cargo runs."

"Oh? Whereabouts?"

"The Caribbean. Other than being grounded during hurricane season a few times per year, I hopped islands from Barbados to Puerto Rico."

"That's rough," I groaned sarcastically. "I flew close to six hundred hours in 1900s. I'd give my eye teeth to fly one again."

"Seriously? No way. Huh-uh. I'd never go back."

"Don't get me wrong. I love flying the big iron. But there was something about the 1900 which brings back fond memories. I remember a flight I was operating between Des Moines and Urbana. Iowa to Illinois. I was in stratus clouds during the entire cruise and the air was so smooth I couldn't tell the plane was even moving. I swear, even though I heard the engines running at cruise torque, it felt like I was parked and chocked on a foggy ramp somewhere, so I'd nudge the yoke just to feel some sort of movement. It was deliriously smooth. It was almost a religious experience."

"Yeah, the Beech was a fine little gal in the righ⁠—um, oh … sorry. A smooth-running plane in the right conditions. The weather around the islands was seldom like that, so your flight sounds like a good time."

"Don't worry about it. I'm not that PC. This, too, might be a little personal, but is Mack your true given name?"

He laughed lightly. "No. My real name is Franklin, but, for some reason, it never stuck. The only time anyone addresses me by that name is if one of my parents is angry with me. In my earlier life, it also happened when classmates teased me when they heard the roll call on the first days of school."

Our conversation was easygoing, which wasn't always to be expected. At an airline employing more than three thousand pilots divided almost evenly between captains and first officers, the odds of a cockpit crew being paired together multiple times are fairly slim. Other than assignments with familiar line check pilots for training or recertification, it hadn't happened to me in more than a year.

Sometimes crews meld well, sometimes they don't. In my time as a first officer, I'd placed only three captains on my do not pair list. One was a misogynistic prick who later wound up being terminated because of his behavior. The rumor was, during the flight which got him fired, he called one of the FAs a particularly vulgar name. Her name was Connie, but he thought it funny to replace the O with a U when speaking it. The second was a woman who ranted the entire time about politics and union disagreements, and the third was a captain who soured when I pointed out he'd selected the wrong approach plate on his electronic flight bag. I considered the latter the most egregious because advising of a significant oversight is expected of a first officer to improve safety, and since he couldn't handle such a minor reminder, I didn't want to fly with him again.

The company is also very careful to avoid green-on-green crew assignments, the term describing the pairing of a low-time FO with a new captain. While I had thousands more hours total time in the 737 than Mack, his experience as a first officer was far greater than mine as a captain, which meant I could be assured he knew his job well and could count on him if things got dicey.

Our approach into Denver was uneventful, and Mack's landing was just a tad bumpy. Considering the surface crosswinds were brisk and gusty, it was certainly good for par. I taxied our passengers to the gate, and the front door was opened only two minutes behind schedule.

The shutdown checklists were completed, and the marshal signaled we were secured and on ramp power.

"Comfy flight, Mack," I said, offering him a fist bump which he returned.

"We're on mountain time now, right?" he asked.

"Yeah. Thirteen hundred on the dot, and our pushback is at forty past."

"I'll go do the walk around, then check if the attendants need help in the back."

"I'm going to jump out to the terminal and see if I can find a grab-and-go if anything looks good. Can I get you something?"

"That's very kind. If you spot any, a peach Snapple would be great. Otherwise, a Diet Mountain Dew?"

"You bet. I'll be back in ten," I said, leaving my seat.

I followed the last of the passengers out of the jet bridge and went to a nearby shop where I found a selection of salads on display in a refrigerated case. I selected a grilled chicken Caesar and two Snapples. Returning to the gate, I printed the information for our departure to DFW. I was back on the deck in ten minutes where Mack detached the sheet from the stack which held the flight plan and began punching the route into the FMC as I had earlier that morning.

While he was occupied with the task, I removed the yellow highlighter from my headset bag and reviewed the NOTAMs, weather info, and all the tons of data which typically added little value but was an FAA-mandated overload, nevertheless. I then briefed Mack with the relevant information.

The ramp agent came to the flight deck with final weights, balances, and fuel quantities. He advised some USPS pallets were being held up by a broken-down tug. The ground folks were trying to get the cart to the plane with an estimated delay of fifteen minutes.

"Dagnabbit ," I muttered then nodded my understanding to the agent.

"What's wrong?" Mack asked.

"Push is delayed. There's a mail cart behind a dead cargo tug and we have to wait for it."

"Crap. Told ya. You jinxed us."

I nodded. "I'll let you make the PA."

"Good afternoon, all. Neither rain, nor snow, nor dead of night shall keep the mail from moving, but apparently a cargo tug will. Yeah, we're waiting on the good ol' US mail, folks, then we'll get underway. Captain Grant and I will do our absolute best to get you to Dallas as safely and quickly as we can."

"You're pretty good at that, yourself," I offered.

Thankfully, the estimated delay was pessimistic. We were pushed back only ten minutes behind schedule.

Once at cruise, I ate my late lunch, eschewing the same airline-provided options which had been served for three weeks straight. Yeah, I paid for the salad instead of taking the free offering, but I'd eaten enough stuffed manicotti already.

"What do I owe you?" Mack asked when I handed him his bottle of peach tea.

"Four bucks, but don't worry about it. We can even up at the end of the rotation."

Aside from dodging some towering cumuli, we made it into DFW with relative ease at 4:45pm, only seven minutes late.

We had an hour before the leg to Hobby Airport in Houston where the crew of six would overnight.

ROBIN
St. Peters, Missouri
Sunday, March 1, 2020 7:45pm

I smiled when the FaceTime alert appeared on my iMac's screen. I clicked the icon.

"Hey, sweetie!" I said to the woman smiling on the other end of the call.

"Hey yourself, handsome. How's your day been?"

"Productive. I've probably put a good four thousand words down today."

"Four thousand, huh?"

"Yep."

"Who says they're good ?" she said with a humorous, teasing grin.

"Har har ," I mockingly guffawed. "How about you? Judging by the time, no delays?"

"Nothing significant. It was a really smooth day considering how short some of the turnarounds were. I'm counting my blessings now because severe weather season is around the corner."

"Boeing should simply make indestructible airplanes, then it wouldn't matter. You could fly right through the stuff," I joked.

"If only! I'm going to need to cut this call short, babe. The crew is meeting downstairs for dinner. It'd be rude if I show up late, and I want to change out of my uni."

"Ooh," I cooed. "Can I watch?"

She laughed sweetly. "Jeez! You want to be a peeping Tom?"

"Can I? Can I ?" I begged like a horny teenage boy. After all, she made me feel like one again.

Much to my enjoyment, she removed her uniform. She approached the camera she'd propped on the desk, turned slowly, and swayed her beautiful panty covered butt.

"Damn ! Why can't Apple make iPhone cameras VR capable?" I whined.

She then pulled the pins out of her hair and let it fall while making eyes at me. She put on a simple sweatshirt followed by a pair of jeans. She showed me the back pockets quite provocatively.

"You're so gorgeous, Brandi." I sighed when she picked her phone up. "I can't wait until you're home so I can kiss that fine booty."

"You're too sweet," she said with a happy smile. "I love you, Rob."

"I love you, too, baby. Enjoy dinner. I'll probably be up late working, so give me a call later if you have any energy left."

"I shouldn't. We have an early departure tomorrow. We all need to be at the airport at about five o'clock. Is that okay?"