Blue Skies. Robyn Carr

off your shoes. Extend your arms. That a good trip?”

      “Not bad.”

      Nikki saw these same people at least once a week. Did they really think she was packing a weapon or bomb? She had wondered aloud once why they didn’t just move on to the next stranger in line when they saw she drew the random pick. It might give them a better chance of actually catching someone with something to hide. Virginia had replied that they just did it by the book.

      While she was being wanded, Nikki watched as a very nervous man who seemed awfully protective of his briefcase went straight through the check while they detained and wanded a woman in her eighties. Nikki wondered why security didn’t just adopt the JDLR method. Just Doesn’t Look Right. But no. They kept checking little old ladies and pilots they talked to every week.

      “Have a good flight, Nick.”

      “Thanks, Virg. You have a great day.”

      Another man with a briefcase, in a hurry and obviously disgruntled by the long security process, rammed into her and almost knocked her off her feet. He had both height and heft and smelled like a mixture of booze and perspiration. “’Scuse me,” he muttered. Then, seeing she wore a pilot’s uniform, he asked, “Any idea what time the nine o’clock flight’s leaving for Denver?”

      “Nine o’clock?” she ventured.

      “That’d be a first,” he grumbled, taking off down the concourse.

      So much for the respect offered to pilots in days of yore.

      Crowds didn’t part for aircrews anymore, either, and Nikki stuck close to the wall to keep from getting knocked over again. Up ahead she spotted Dixie at the coffee kiosk and went to join her. “Hey,” she said. “I didn’t expect to run into you.”

      “Our inbound flight from San Diego is runnin’ late. I should be servin’ Bloody Marys over Albuquerque right now. Want a coffee?”

      “Thanks. I’m a few minutes early. I’ll meet you right over there,” she said, pointing toward her gate.

      Nikki crossed the concourse and sat in the almost empty gate area, watching the passengers. They were people in ragged jeans and flip-flops. Young families who would be trying to board with car seats, Cadillac-size strollers and half the nursery. Ah—and a pilot. Not one of those distinguished gentlemen of the past, this captain was about thirty-five years old, forty pounds overweight, no hat, scuffed shoes, loose tie and coffee stains on his shirt. He hadn’t had a haircut in a while, either. What a wreck. His appearance didn’t exactly inspire confidence.

      Dixie handed her a cup of coffee and took the seat next to her.

      “Remember the old days?” Nikki said. “When flight attendants showed up in high heels and pilots were like rock stars?”

      Dixie took the lid off her paper cup and blew on the hot coffee. “And now they’re just like rock heads?” Nikki turned her head to smile at her friend. “Present company excluded, of course.”

      “Remember when people dressed up to go on an airplane ride?” Nikki persisted. “They wore their Sunday best and behaved like they were in church. Even the hijackers were polite! They didn’t want to hurt anyone—they just wanted to go to Cuba or someplace where you couldn’t get a scheduled flight.”

      Dixie tilted her head and looked askance at Nikki. “Back in the days when flight attendants were Stews, had to weigh in before each flight, and were fired if they got married?”

      “Okay, it wasn’t flawless, but—”

      “And the airplanes didn’t have carts and the Stews carried their five-course meals on trays, up and down the aisles in their straight skirts and high heels and precious little hats?”

      “Well…”

      “And don’t let us forget about girdles. Any decent woman wore a girdle then.”

      “Everyone?”

      “It was required. And if you weren’t bosomy enough, a little padding could be issued with the uniform.”

      “Nah-uh!” Nikki protested.

      “Yes, ma’am. Got to have your girls right up there on your chest so Mr. Passengerman could appreciate the flight. And you better not bend over to pick up an olive off the floor because Mr. Well-Mannered Traveler would definitely put his hand right up your skirt.” She blew on her coffee again. “He probably threw that old olive on the floor to start with. Mmm-mmm, those were some fine old days.”

      “You have to admit that the passengers were a lot less rude and demanding,” Nikki said. “With the occasional exception.”

      “And the pilots were a lot more accommodatin’. They used to carry bags and pay for dinner, and…Well…They were much more accommodatin’.” Dixie smiled suggestively.

      Nikki grinned back at her. Dixie had been accommodated quite a few times. And vice versa. “So were the Stews,” she said.

      “Coffee, tea or me?” her friend replied, smile dazzling, lashes fluttering. All of Dixie sparkled. She could easily have been one of those airline beauties back in the sixties. Five-eight, blond, blue-eyed, slender as a reed except for “her girls,” which were full and high and elegant. She had the kind of looks that had men crossing the room to ask if she was attached.

      A very pregnant flight attendant pulled an overnight bag on its rollers toward a podium on the other side of the concourse.

      “Now, there’s something else you wouldn’t have seen twenty-five years ago,” Dixie pointed out. “In fact,” she said, looking Nikki up and down, “it would’ve seemed pretty unladylike to ask to fly the plane.”

      “My God, she looks ready to pop!”

      “She told a little fib about her due date. She can’t afford to go on maternity leave, she needs the overtime. Her husband was activated reserve—Navy—gone to Kuwait. The family took a huge pay cut.”

      Almost everything about the industry had changed, all right. Back in the glamour days there was no real competition. Enter deregulation of the airline industry and the entrance of low-fare carriers. The large and established airlines found it increasingly difficult to compete. The new entrants, often nonunion start-ups, had low costs, but the big guys had been around long enough so that with every union contract, the cost of labor went up, then up, then up some more. The cost of fuel kept rising, but competitive pricing meant ticket prices plummeted, and the business traveler took advantage, went global.

      Before long the big airlines were making almost half their profit from the last-minute business traveler whose company paid the premium price. As for the rest of the travelers, they were no longer just the well-to-do. After deregulation it was cheaper to fly from New York City to Miami for the weekend than to go to a good restaurant and see a Broadway musical. It was frequently more expensive to travel by bus. Now the people waiting to board the airplanes were not wearing their hats and gloves, politely waiting for their flight, but clad in beach clothes or ragged jeans, complaining loudly about the degradation of the service.

      The major airlines were losing millions a year, a month, some losing millions a day as they tried to compete with the start-ups. The start-ups would fail and disappear, but that did not put the money back in the coffers of the legacy carriers, and another start-up would appear with bargain-basement tickets, starting the whole process all over again.

      Then the unfathomable happened.

      

      Everyone remembered where they were that morning. Buck was hosing down tarmac outside the largest hangar at Burgess Aviation when one of the young maintenance techs came running, yelling for him to come to the office and see the TV. Carlisle was in New York on an overnight, due to fly out later that day. Dixie was in D.C., on the treadmill in the hotel’s fitness center, watching CNN. At first, she thought she was seeing an Aries plane and she ran to the nearest phone and called Aries dispatch.

      And