Читать книгу Аэропорт / Аirport - Артур Хейли - Страница 8

Inside his car, Mel Bakersfeld shivered. Was the shivering the reminder from the old injury of his foot?

The injury had happened sixteen years ago off the coast of Korea when Mel had been a Navy pilot flying fighter missions from the carrier Essex. He had a kind of instinct… In a dogfight with a MIG-15, Mel’s Navy F9F-5 had been shot down into the sea.

He managed a controlled ditching, but his left foot was trapped by a jammed rudder pedal. Somehow, underwater, his foot came free. In intense pain, half-drowned, he surfaced. Later he learned he had severed the ligaments in front of his ankle, so that the foot extended from his leg in an almost straight line.

He had the same kind of instinct now.

Mel was nearing runway one seven, left. Without ceasing, since the storm began, the miles of runways had been plowed, vacuumed, brushed, and sanded by a group called a Conga Line. He saw it now.

His arrival was noticed. He heard the convoy leader notified by radio, “Mr. Bakersfeld just joined us.” He had come out to inspect the snow clearance as a result of the adverse report by Vernon Demerest’s Airlines Snow Committee. Clearly, everything was going well.