My friend Dr. Suzanne Minarcine is writing a thriller set in the male-dominated world of airline pilots. Whoa. I thought the movie industry was bad! Turns out, we girls face the same obstacles wherever we go. What to do about it? I think her protagonist Rebecca has a solution.

Alaska

Chapter 1

There it was. The runway appeared in front of her eyes. A skinny strip of grey in the middle of white, looking more like a stray spaghetti noodle than the runways she routinely saw in the lower 48. Snow covered the roads and the mountains. Did people drive cars up here? She only had 4000 feet, not even a mile, to get this 60,000-pound behemoth landed and stopped.

Rebecca called for the landing gear. Three green, no red. Good. No one wants to land gear up, especially in a remote spot and until today, Rebecca had only flown into and out of airports where people drove cars, not snow machines. Flaps 20 and she held the airspeed steady at 140 miles per hour as she continued the descent into Anaktuvuk Pass for Runway 2. She marveled again at the snow that covered everything and the mountains that completely surrounded the airport. She had one chance to get in, and with water on the end of the runway, overshooting the gravel runway could be deadly. Her payload of kerosene would keep the village warm until the next time a plane could get in. She wondered whether the prop wash of the four R-2000 engines would stir up the gravel.

She eased the plane onto the runway, cut the throttles, and practically stood on the brakes to stop the plane’s forward momentum. Get it stopped, now!

“Nice landing.” Roger had not spoken 10 words during the entire flight from Fairbanks but now he needed to tell her where to go. “Taxi over to the right side of the ramp. We’ll off-load their fuel then head over to Beaver. We need to get in and out before dark. These airports don’t have lights.”

“Got it.” Rebecca added enough power to move the airplane forward. When an aircraft weighs about the same as 10 elephants, it takes a lot of energy to get it moving. She used differential power to help turn the plane on the ground and wondered what made her love this airplane as much as she did. Only a few qualified DC-4 pilots were still around and most were too old to fly the 60 years old airplane. Roosevelt’s Air Force One had been a DC-4.

Rebecca loved the sound of the radial engines and the romance of the old aircraft. This plane had four radial engines with fourteen cylinders in each engine and the cylinders sometimes looked like they were on fire when they were given full takeoff power. The plane carried 3500 gallons of fuel and 56 gallons of oil, it could fly for hours without refueling. The movie “Always” made her cry every time, though Holly Hunter flew a Douglas A-26 fire bomber instead of a Douglas DC-4. Rebecca especially loved the scene where the dead Richard Dreyfuss gave Holly permission to find a new love. Oh well. Back to the business at hand.

Rebecca looked around and couldn’t believe her eyes. The snow-covered houses looked like they could collapse under the weight of the snow. A small village had built up around the airport, their central source for fuel delivered by Brooks Fuel every two or three weeks when the weather allowed. She couldn’t see any cars but most homes, if you could call them that, had a snow mobile. They called them snow machines. The natives used these to go out hunting and bring back their prey. They lived off hunting and fishing.

Back on the ground in Fairbanks, Rebecca shut down two of the engines and maneuvered the plane into its parking spot. The ramp rats had gone home. She placed the “Remove Before Flight” flags on the pitot tubes that would measure the plane’s airspeed inflight and inserted the gear lock into the nosewheel. The ramp rats started work this morning at zero three hundred by putting heating blankets on each engine so the 56 gallons of oil will circulate when it the time came to crank the engines and fly. They guys didn’t have much to do besides getting the plane ready to fly.

She opened the rear door, threw down the ladder and climbed out of the plane into a ridiculously cold minus fourteen degrees. She looked at her surroundings. A beautiful DC-3 sat in one corner of the ramp, its tail covered with snow. Rebecca wondered for a moment whether it could even be considered airworthy and safe to fly. How long since its engines had been started? As she continued to survey the ramp and saw a Twin Bonanza with snow almost all the way up to its windows. Its wingtips peeked out of the snowdrifts. Rebecca could tell a T-Bone just by looking at the cockpit windows and the door to the fuselage. She wondered how long it had been since it had been flown. She loved T-Bones but the below zero temperature was just too much and she could always reminisce inside.

She made her way over to the office, a small, rundown building that was little more than a shack sitting on a desolate part of the airport. It had been dark when they left this morning and she hadn’t noticed the snowdrifts completely covering one side of the building, all the way up to the roof. I guess that’s one way to have some privacy.

There were various fuel trucks and another building that looked like it has seen better days. The faded sign on the side of the building said “Brooks Fuel.” She wondered how she had missed the sign. Oh yeah, it had been dark. She took a deep breath and opened the door and a burst of hot air hit her in the face and nearly knocked her over. The place looked just as dismal inside as it did on the outside, and maybe worse today than the day she had arrived. The bookcases were sagging under the weight of old magazines and notebooks, and trash cans overflowed. The lights were dim and the furniture appeared to have seen better days. This could be a great backdrop for a horror movie, Rebecca thought yet again.

Rebecca went inside and was almost knocked over by the heat. Coal heat. She could smell it and she could see coal dust around the furnace. She pulled off her jacket, snow boots, then her snow suit. A couple of sweatshirts and a pair of sweatpants came off until she only wore the jeans and sweater she had put on this morning.

“How did it go?” Deb asked without looking up from her typewriter.

“Good,” Roger interjected before Rebecca could respond. “Beaver and Anaktuvuk Pass both have fuel now. They should be good for a couple of weeks.”

“I meant how did Rebecca do. Can she fly?”

“She did okay, for a girl.”

Rebecca bit her tongue before she replied. “Any landing you can walk away from is a good one,” she said as she grabbed a Coke out of the refrigerator.

“You don’t want coffee or hot chocolate?” Deb asked. “Ignore Roger. He still thinks women belong in the kitchen.”

“Or the bedroom!” Steve shouted from the other room. The other guys laughed.

“You can go back to the condo now,” Roger said. “Steve will drive you. He’s already gone grocery shopping and you can eat anything that is in the condo.”

That night, Rebecca checked her email. Then she called her son, Gabe. As hard as she had worked to make the divorce an easy transition for Gabe, Kevin had done his best to be oppositional. Showing Gabe the divorce papers and allowing him to read them exceeded the boundaries of good parenthood. Kevin resented Rebecca’s choices and especially her aviation opportunity. He frequently accused her of sleeping her way into the cockpit but he was absolutely wrong. She’d fought her way up through the ranks and refused to compromise her ethics for a shortcut.

“Gabe? It’s Mom.”

“Oh hey, Mom. How’s Alaska?” She breathed a sigh of relief that Gabe seemed happy to hear from her. She described the snow and the dead bear that adorned the railing outside of her bedroom, and it didn’t take long before Gabe started laughing.

“I wish you were home, Mommy.”

“Me, too, Baby. You know I had to come up here and make some money.”

“Yeah, but Dad says you could always get a normal job with all your education. He says you are just running away.”

“I’m so sorry, Sweetie. I hope you know that isn’t true. Flying is what I do and pretty soon I will have a regular job.”

“Dad quit flying so why can’t you?” Rebecca sighed and bit her tongue to avoid saying something she would regret. She so desperately wanted to be a successful co-parent. Why wouldn’t Kevin want the same thing?

“I know you’re frustrated and you miss me, Baby, and I miss you terribly. I’ll be home soon.” She reassured Gabe of her love and ended the call.

Rebecca had given up her luxurious life in the corporate world four years ago to follow her dream and she had never looked back except for when she talked to Gabe. Flying was her passion but there were times she really missed the five-star hotels and the good shoes. There was nothing like slipping on a pair of Louboutins to walk into the office and command a meeting Now she would be holding a different kind of command. An intense sadness pulsed through her veins but she couldn’t regret her decision.

Before she could wallow in her moment of self-pity, her phone rang again. Who is calling now? Who calls anyone at 10:00 p.m.?

“Rebecca? Hi. I’m John Stevens. I understand you’re coming to work at Premier Jets but you’re waiting on a class date. I saw you at your interview but didn’t get a chance to talk to you.”

What the heck? Do they greet all of their new pilots this way? Who is this guy to call her so late? While 6:00 p.m. was just time for dinner in Fairbanks, back in Chicago it had to be at least nine or ten. He saw me?

“Hi, John, yes. Human resources to look for a call in March for either an April or May class date.”

“Well, we’ve had an opening for the February class and everyone thinks you’d be a good fit to come on now, if you’re available. Your background check is completed and everything checks out.”

Rebecca checked her calendar and didn’t hesitate in her reply. This was her ticket out of Alaska. She’d give Roger another week and that would give her time to get home for a few days. “Yes! Thank you.” Rebecca reminded herself to modulate the excitement. Maybe she shouldn’t look too eager?

“Perfect. Look for an email from Human Resources tomorrow with the details. We don’t usually call first but I wanted to give you a heads-up and introduce myself. I’d also like to offer my assistance in helping you find a place to stay during training.”

“Wow, thanks. That’s really kind of you. I appreciate that.”

“It will be cold so you want to bring warm clothes.”

Rebecca couldn’t help but laugh. “I’m flying out of Fairbanks, Alaska, right now. It can’t get any colder than this.”

“Probably now. I’d love to hear more about this gig.”

“It has been fun but it’s too long for a phone call. Thank you for calling. I look forward to the email.”

Rebecca appreciated the phone call but wondered if this was their standard operating procedure. She thought she’d call Mike, her on-again/off-again boyfriend, and share the news. He answered on the first ring.

“Babe! What’s up? Are you coming home so I can ravage your gorgeous body?”

“Ha. Well, yes, but I have news. I just got a call from an instructor at Premier Jets. They’re moving up my class date.”

“An instructor called you and not human resources? Isn’t that weird? Who was this guy that called?”

She knew he would act like this. Mike’s jealousy was his worst trait and it was one of the reasons for the off-again.

“John Stevens. He was really nice. He offered to help me find a place to stay during training. I’m giving notice in the morning and will fly back the first of next week. Can you pick me up at the airport?”

“Of course I will. Just tell me the time. We might even make it all the way home before I rip off all your clothes. It has been too long.”

“Oh Mike, be serious. I’ll send you a message and will see you no later than Monday.”