Solomon & Lord Drop Anchor (20 page)

“Roger that, six-four-zero. We’ve got you on
radar and we’re dispatching rescue vehicles.”

“Tony, I can’t keep the nose down,” Ryder
said. “I’m having a real nose-up moment here.” His voice was
cracking.

“More power, Larry.”

Dozier pulled both throttles back. “C’mon
baby,” he coaxed her. “Level, level, level.”

The aircraft picked up speed and the nose
came down.

“You’re gonna have to back off some more,”
Kingston said. “We’re going too fast.”

“Without flaps or slats, I can’t slow it down
without stalling,” Dozier said, sounding desperate.

It’s not hopeless, Kingston told himself, but
he knew the odds were against them. At over two hundred knots,
they’d likely break up on impact.

Dozier eased up on both throttles.

Too much.

A puff of smoke, a sputter, a cough.

“Oh, shit!” Ryder shouted. “Number one
quit.”

They were flying on one engine. Dozier
immediately increased the power, but it was too late. The number
three engine smoked, choked, and stalled. They coasted in total
silence, the huge aircraft a glider.

“Okay, fellows,” Tony Kingston said. “We’re
taking her in.”

For several seconds there was nothing but the
sweet, sad rush of the slipstream past the windshield. Then the
left wing dipped, and the plane rolled hard, the wings virtually
perpendicular to the ground. Loose papers flew across the cockpit.
Without the lift from the wings, they had only a few seconds before
they would plunge nose down into the ground.

Tony Kingston fought the yoke, his cramped
arms futilely trying to right the plane. He heard screams from the
cabin, just as in his nightmares. Next to him, his copilot
whispered a prayer.

Kingston wanted to draw out the last moments,
to arrange his thoughts, pull up memories from the recesses of his
mind. But there was no time. He saw her then, her face flashing by,
beautiful but heartbroken, and for the briefest moment, he felt a
stabbing pain, knowing of her anguish when she heard the news. He
said it then, knowing the cockpit voice recorder would pick it up,
and she would hear him or at least read the words. He told her he
loved her.

A few jumbled images raced through his
senses: his father, long buried; a cold Minnesota lake where he
swam as a child with his sister; and then the black-and-white
grainy videotape of the two men walking along the jetty in Kuwait
just before the bomb hit.

What did they say to each other? Why didn’t
they run?

* * *

IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE ELEVENTH
JUDICIAL CIRCUIT IN AND FOR DADE COUNTY, FLORIDA

CASE NO: 96-00136 CA 04 (11)

GLORIA LAUBACH,

individually and as Personal

Representative of the Estate

of HOWARD J. LAUBACH,

deceased,

Plaintiff,

vs.

ATLANTICA AIRLINES,

a Delaware corporation,

Defendant.

_______________________ /

COMPLAINT FOR DAMAGES FOR
WRONGFUL DEATH

Plaintiff GLORIA LAUBACH, individually and
as personal representative of the estate of Howard J. Laubach,
deceased, sues Defendant ATLANTICA AIRLINES (hereinafter
“ATLANTICA”), a Delaware corporation, and alleges:

1. This is an action for wrongful death
brought pursuant to the Florida Wrongful Death Act.

2. ATLANTICA is a common carrier engaged in
the business of transporting fare-paying passengers on regularly
scheduled flights in aircraft owned, leased, operated, man aged,
maintained, and/or controlled by ATLANTICA and its agents and/or
employees. As a common carrier, ATLANTICA is obliged to provide the
highest degree of care to its passengers.

* * *

14. At all times material hereto, ATLANTICA
was the owner, lessee, and/or operator in control of a certain
DC-10 aircraft, a dangerous instrumentality, bearing registration
number N1809U, which was used to transport passengers as a common
carrier.

15. Plaintiffs decedent was a paying
passenger on board the subject aircraft, a flight in domestic
transportation between New York City and Miami, Florida, and was
one of 288 persons killed when the aircraft crashed in the Florida
Everglades on December 27, 1995.

16. ATLANTICA, through its agents and
employees, breached the duty of care owed to decedent by
negligently failing:

a. To furnish an airworthy aircraft;

b. To properly navigate and operate the
aircraft;

c. To properly train its flight crew as to
the procedures in the event of loss of flight controls;

d. To properly inspect, overhaul, and
replace worn-out and unsuitable components;

e. To provide sufficient security to prevent
the placement of bombs or other explosive devices on the subject
aircraft;

f. To operate the aircraft in a safe and
competent manner, thereby resulting in the fatal crash in
question.

* * *

27. As a proximate result of the crash,
ATLANTICA is liable to PLAINTIFF for damages as follows:

a. Pain and suffering of the decedent prior
to death;

b. Pain and suffering of the survivors,
beneficiaries, and heirs;

c. Loss of society, companionship, guidance,
and services of the decedent;

d. Loss of support;

e. Lost net accumulations, lost value of
life, and funeral expenses.

WHEREFORE, PLAINTIFF demands judgment
against ATLANTICA AIRLINES, INC. for compensatory damages, plus
interest and costs in an amount in excess of two million dollars
($2,000,000.00), and further demands trial by jury.

Respectfully submitted,

Albert M. Goldman, Esquire

“…
Nine scorpions in a
bottle.”

—Description of the Supreme Court of the
United States by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Associate Justice,
1902-1932.

ON THE NIGHT BEFORE HER INTERVIEW at the
Supreme Court of the United States, Lisa Fremont did not know if
she could go through with it. She wanted the job all right—what
newly minted lawyer wouldn’t?—but then, the thought of corrupting
the position, of using it to repay an old debt, was antithetical to
everything she thought she had become.

But have I really changed? Am I Lisa
Fremont, magna cum laude from Stanford Law or Angel from the Tiki
Club in the Tenderloin?

Until today, she thought she could handle it.
But that was before she visited the Court to get the feel of the
place. What she felt was reverence, a sense of awe, even piety.

I got goose bumps for God’s sake! How do I
explain to someone like Max that marble statues and musty law books
and the weight of history give me goose bumps? He only gets excited
when the Dow Jones jumps.

Using his own key, Max Wanaker had breezed
into her apartment just after 6 P.M. He kissed her hello,
poured himself a Scotch, and made her a Gibson, heavy on the vodka,
light on the vermouth. Then he loosened his tie and tossed his
Armani suit coat over a chair. He kicked off his black Italian
loafers, polished to a high gloss.

Lisa wore a cropped stretch lace camisole and
high-cut briefs, both white with satin trim, under a soft pink
chenille bathrobe that made her golden red hair glow a buttery
copper under the track lighting. She had put on the robe when Max
turned the air-conditioning down to sixty-five. It didn’t matter if
it was her apartment or his hotel suite, everything was always done
to Max’s specifications. Now, in early autumn in Washington, D.C.,
there was a manmade cold front settling into the living room.

In more ways than one.

They hadn’t gone out to dinner. Too risky.
Not because Max’s wife, Jill, might discover them. Jill was
blissfully alone in Miami, well aware of Max’s long-term
relationship with Lisa.

No, the risk was bigger now. There could be
no connection—no nexus, to use the legal term—between Atlantica
Airlines and her. If there were, and it became known, she’d be no
use to Max, and his big plans would be blown.

If I can go through with it at all.

For a moment she wondered what Tony would
have done, but that was easy. Tony Kingston was the Eagle Scout,
the 
Top Gun
 navy pilot, a yes ma’am, no ma’am, guy
who didn’t jaywalk, litter, or cheat on his taxes. But Tony was
gone, and now the plaintiffs’ lawyers said he’d been negligent.
Lying bastards! Vultures picking at the flesh of the dead. A part
of her wanted to help Max tank the case just to shut them up, but
she realized that was irrational, and hadn’t she spent all these
years locking her brain into a lawyer’s sense of logic and
reason?

After dinner, she told Max she didn’t think
she could do it, and they argued until 2 A.M.

“An ethical problem?” Max asked incredulously
as he paced around her small living room. “Three years of planning,
and now you have an 
eth-i-cal prob-lem
.” He dragged out
the words, as if trying a strange new phrase in Tagalog or
Punjabi.

“Yes, Max, I realize that’s a foreign concept
to you.”

He stopped pacing long enough to absorb the
insult, then ignored it. “Are you worried about being
disbarred?”

“It would be one of the shortest legal
careers in history,” she said, ruefully. “I could go to jail,
too.”

“So that’s it!
You 
are
 afraid.” He laughed, the told-you-so,
condescending chuckle he used when the joke was on someone else. “I
remember a time when you could walk, buck naked, into a party of
drunken investment bankers and show no fear. You could control
every man in the place with your wits and your poise, and now
you’re afraid of what, being subpoenaed by some two-bit G-twelve
assistant attorney general who drives a Chevy?”

Vintage Max, measuring a man by his net
worth.

“If he drove a Porsche,” she said, “would he
be more worthy of respect?”

Max glared at her, a black-eyed scowl that
could terrorize a corporate VP or send a secretary home in tears.
In the old days, Lisa was intimidated by him, too. Not anymore.

“What are you going to do, Max, fire me? Too
late. I’ve got tenure. I know where the skeletons are buried.”

“Not all of them,” he said with a coldness
that sent a shiver up her spine.

They stood looking at each other, Max Wanaker
and Lisa Fremont, former lovers and current coconspirators. He was
frowning, his gray mustache turning downward. He was handsome and
dark-complexioned with salt-and-pepper hair swept back and moussed.
A jogger and tennis player in his younger days, Max was starting to
put on a little weight around the middle. Too many business
dinners, too much booze.

She remembered the way he looked when they
first met, ten years ago. Why did it seem like another lifetime? He
had been thirty-nine, and she was seventeen.

Jesus, it was another lifetime.

She knew how much she had changed. But what
was different about Max? Not . just his graying hair. In those
days—before Atlantica—he was on his way up. Big dreams, boundless
energy and optimism. He’d scratched and clawed until the dreams
came true. So why was he so unhappy now? There was the crash of
Flight 640 three years ago and the lawsuit, of course, but she knew
there was more, and lately, Max wasn’t talking.

She poured him another Scotch, hoping to
mellow him out. “I went to the Court today, just to look around.
Jesus, Max, you walk through these giant bronze doors with scenes
of ancient Greece and Rome molded into them. Then there are marble
statues and busts everywhere. Lady Justice, Moses, Confucius …”

“Confucius?” he said, puzzled.

“I went into the library. All hand-carved
wood, giant arches, a quiet, peaceful place. It’s almost holy, like
a church or a cathedral.”

“Exactly!” he agreed, smiling now. “That’s
what they want you to think. Like all those churches you hauled me
to in Italy. Why do you think they built them like that? For the
glory of God. Hell, no! They did it to scare the shit out of the
peasants. You walk into a church, what’s the first thing you do?
You lower your voice, you whisper. Same thing in your fancy Court,
right? The judges are the priests— they even dress like priests—and
everyone else is a peasant. They want to scare you into thinking
you’re on hallowed ground, that they’re doing sacred work.
Hypocrites! They don’t want you to know what they’re doing under
the robes.”

Lisa walked to the window, looking past her
balcony into Dumbarton Oaks Park and the creek beyond. Max had
chosen the apartment, but unlike the old days, he wasn’t paying for
it. At least not on the books. Two years ago, when she was still in
law school, he began erasing the paper trail—the canceled checks,
airline passes, credit card receipts—that would link her to him. It
was his idea that maybe one day she’d be able to help him in a way
no one could know about. It sounded crazy at first, just as crazy
as taking a money-losing air-freight forwarder with three aging jet
props and turning it into Atlantica Airlines, poster child of
deregulation and booming international air carrier … until the
disastrous crash of Flight 640.

“You’re very persuasive, Max,” she said, at
last. “You should have been a lawyer.”

Max laughed. “No way, baby! That’s why I
spent a hundred grand on you.”

“I don’t think I’ll get the job,” she said,
softly. “I think Justice Truitt will look at me and see I don’t
belong there.”

Or is that what I want? The easy way out,
sparing me the hassle of refusing to do Max’s dirty work.

“That’s where you’re wrong. You belong
anywhere you want to be. You’re the most powerful woman I’ve ever
known.”

“I learned from you,” she said.

“No! You had the power as a
seventeen-year-old but didn’t know it. All I did was mark the trail
for you. You climbed it all by yourself.” He studied her for a
moment, and she averted her eyes, her shyness a childhood trait. He
smiled. “Anyway, don’t worry. The judge will take one look at you
and want to adopt you.”