Airport / Аэропорт. Артур Хейли
Читать онлайн.| Название | Airport / Аэропорт |
|---|---|
| Автор произведения | Артур Хейли |
| Жанр | |
| Серия | Abridged & Adapted |
| Издательство | |
| Год выпуска | 0 |
| isbn | 978-5-9909598-6-6 |
The injury had happened sixteen years ago off the coast of Korea when Mel had been a Navy pilot flying fighter[58] missions. Through the previous twelve hours he had had a premonition of trouble coming. Next day, Mel’s Navy F9F-5[59] had been shot down into the sea.
He managed a controlled ditching[60], but though unhurt himself, his left foot was trapped by a blocked rudder pedal. With the airplane sinking fast – an F9F-5 had the floating characteristics of a brick – Mel used a survival-kit hunting knife to slash desperately, wildly, at his foot and the pedal. Somehow, underwater, his foot came free. In intense pain, half-drowned, he got to the surface.
He had spent the next eight hours in the sea before he was picked up. Later he learned he had cut off the ligaments in front of his ankle.
In time, Navy medics repaired the foot, though Mel had never flown – as a pilot – since then. But at intervals the pain still returned, reminding him that long ago, as on other later occasions, his instinct for trouble had been right. He had the same kind of instinct now.
Handling his car cautiously, Mel was nearing runway one seven, left. This was the runway which, the tower chief had indicated, Air Trafifc Control would seek to use when the wind shifted.
At the moment, on the airfield, two runways were in use: one seven, right, and runway two five.
Lincoln International had five runways altogether. The longest and widest of the five was three zero, the runway now blocked by Aéreo-Mexican. This runway was almost two miles long and as wide as a short city block.
Each of the other four runways was half a mile or so shorter, and less wide.
Without ceasing, since the storm began, the miles of runways had been plowed, vacuumed, brushed, and sanded.
The sight was spectacular. Giant columns of snow cascaded to the right in arcs of a hundred and fifty feet. The arcs shimmered from the added color of twenty revolving beacons – one on the roof of each vehicle in the group.
Airport men called the group a Conga Line. It had a head, a tail, a body, and it progressed down a runway with the precision of choreography.
A convoy leader was the head. He was a senior foreman from airport maintenance and drove an airport car – bright yellow, like all other equipment in the Line. The leader had two radios and remained permanently in touch with the Snow Desk and Air Traficf Control. By a system of lights, he could signal drivers following – green for “speed up,” yellow for “maintain pace,” red for “slow down,” and flashing red for “stop.” He was required to carry in his head a detailed map of the airport, and must know precisely where he was, even on the darkest night, as now.
Then came a Snowblast, in echelon with the plows, six hundred roaring horsepower strong. A Snowblast cost sixty thousand dollars and was the Cadillac of snow clearance. With mighty blowers it swallowed up the snow which both plows piled, and hurled it in a herculean arc beyond the runway’s edge.
In a second echelon, farther to the right, were two more plows, a second Snowblast. After the plows and Snowblasts came the graders. The graders towed revolving brushes. The brushes swept the runway surface like monstrous yard brooms.
Next were sanders which spread sand out evenly. The sand was special. Elsewhere around the airport, on roadways and areas which the public used, salt was added to the sand as a means of melting ice. But never for aeronautical areas. Salt corroded metal, shortening its life, and airplanes were treated with more respect than cars.
Last in the Conga Line was an assistant foreman in a second car. His job was to insure that the line stayed unbroken. He was in radio touch with the convoy leader.
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