Beck and Miley had tried to make sure that Beck could get out of Miley's hotel room without being noticed, but both of them knew deep down that everyone in Brazil working for Cash Airlines knew about their one-night stand, or would soon know about it thanks to their coworkers. After Miley had finally shooed Beck away, she cleaned herself up once again, and put on her uniform. She spent some time adjusting her blouse and her pants and her shoes, and she knew that she was doing that because of what she and Beck had done the night before.
Miley checked out of her hotel just more than an hour before midnight, and she took a taxi to the airport. She passed through the security checks in the terminal area quickly because of her status as a flight crew member, and she headed straight for the plane that would be under her command for this flight. Through the terminal's windows, she could already see the distinctive humped shape of the Boeing 747, with a deep purple underside and a big dollar sign on the tail, the livery of Cash Airlines. It was quite probably the same 747 that she had flown into Brazil almost two weeks before now.
Cash Airlines currently had ten 747s in service, with eight flying on regular, scheduled routes, and two others reserved for high-capacity charters. But due to the sheer amount of US soccer fans heading for Brazil for the World Cup, the administration had taken a third 747 out of regular service just for this charter to Brazil. The three jumbo jets were now sitting in various cities in Brazil, ready for the inevitable exodus of Americans and quite possibly a few fans of other nationalities out of the country.
Miley deposited her baggage, blazer, and cap in the cockpit of the plane, and then she took out a large flashlight, headed out of the cockpit, and went onto the tarmac. There, she turned on the flashlight and shone its beam on the 747's nose landing gear.
Miley Stewart was performing a ground inspection. It was standard operating procedure for every airline in the world, Cash Airlines included. Ground inspections were done by flight crews to check for possible damage inflicted on their aircraft during the hours between arrival and departure. There were numerous word-of-mouth accounts of pilots performing ground inspections and spotting potential problems on the ground, where they could still be easily remedied. And while these ground inspections had sometimes caused delays, pilots would be quick to say that it was better to be delayed and alive, rather than on time and dead.
Miley walked a path under the plane that took her to its landing gear, engines, and basically its entire underbelly. When she was finally done with the inspection, Miley found everything she saw to her liking. There were no dents that weren't there before, leaks that had sprung after their arrival, or any loose objects on the tarmac that could affect the plane's flight. She nodded her approval to the ground maintenance guys, and she turned off her flashlight and made the long trip back to the cockpit.
When Miley entered the cockpit of the 747, she found a woman sitting in the first officer's seat. "Fancy seeing you here, Alex," she said to the woman.
The woman turned around and said, "Fancy seeing you here, Miley." Alex Russo—full name Alexandra Margarita Russo—was a native of New York City, and had joined Cash Airlines at just about the same time that Miley did. Alex had more experience flying the 747 than Miley had, but somehow she had only three bars on her shoulders instead of the four that she clearly deserved. There were rumors that Alex was "underachieving," but however such a thing could be possible in the airline industry, Miley didn't know, and didn't want to know.
"So you're my first officer tonight?" Miley asked as she took the captain's seat in the cockpit, the one on the left side.
"No, I'm just here to push some buttons and throw some switches, and then I'll be out of your hair already," Alex replied in her usual, uniquely sarcastic way. "Of course I'm your first officer tonight, Miles. Why do you think I'm here?"
Miley just laughed at Alex. She knew that the woman always talked like she had a point to prove. "So how's the pre-flight going?" she asked.
"It's coming along," Alex replied as she input a set of numbers into the plane's navigational computer. "Initial navigation waypoint set," she said.
"Are you sure you got the coordinates right?" Miley asked.
"Of course they're the right coordinates, Miley," Alex replied, a little too forcefully in Miley's opinion. "I did the math myself three times. They're good enough for the computer, so they're good enough for me."
"Don't be too hard on me, Alex," Miley said. "I just don't want us to end up like Mike Hotel 370."
"Don't jinx us, Miles."
"All right. I'm gonna shut up now and help you with the checklist. Whereabouts are you now?"
"Trimming the flaps."
As the two of them went through the pre-flight checklist, Miley asked, "Who's gonna be on the third seat?"
"Last time I checked," Alex replied, "Adrian Carr's our flight engineer for tonight." Adrian Carr had a reputation for being slowpoke tardy lazyhead who wouldn't move from where he was if it wasn't to save his ass. The only reason that Miley could think of was the reason why Carr was still with the airline was the fact that he was damned good at being a flight engineer. "All we can do is wait," Alex continued.
"True that," Miley said, with a grin on her face.
Just after Miley had said that, though, someone entered the cockpit once again, but it wasn't Adrian Carr. Miley and Alex turned to face the new arrival. "Sonny, what are you doing here?" both of them blurted out at the same time.
Allison Jade "Sonny" Munroe—of West Appleton, Wisconsin—was yet another pilot that had lots of experience with the 747, and deserved four bars on her shoulders instead of the three that she currently had, in Miley's opinion. Sonny sat down on the flight engineer's seat, looked at them like they were both drooling fools, and replied, "I'm your number three."
"What happened to Carr?" Alex asked. "Overslept once again?"
"No, worse," Sonny replied. "He went down with some kind of tropical bug that no one has supposedly seen before. He caught a fever the day before yesterday, and he was busy redecorating his hotel room brown the day after that. Erwin, Clara, and I just dropped him off at the hospital before going here. There's something about what he caught that makes it just not the same with the usual suspects."
"Yeah, well, hopefully he gets better," Miley said. "No, I'm serious. If what he has is as serious as you're making me think it is, then I really do hope that he recovers from this."
Yet another person entered the cockpit, but this time it was a man, and he was wearing a prune-colored vest over his white shirt and black slacks that clashed brutally with his red hair. He handed over a clipboard with at least ten sheets of paper to Miley and said, in a British accent, "Three hundred fifty-eight passengers and eighteen crew onboard, Captain, for a total of three hundred seventy-six souls. Most of them appear to be disappointed American soccer fans." He put emphasis on the word soccer.
"How about you, though, Ron?" Miley asked him. "What's your take on England's World Cup campaign?"
Ronald "Ron" Weasley let out a chuckle that could be considered bitter. "England never had any chance, Miles," he replied. "The BPL's got too many international players, and we English haven't been developing our own talent. Looks like we'll just have to wait four more years for that second World Cup trophy."
"Don't worry about it, Ron," Miley said. "I'm sure you'll get your second soon. Who knows, maybe that will be between good ol' England and the US of A."
"Oh, now that is high fantasy, Miley," Ron told her. "The United States will only make it to a World Cup final after someone scores seven goals against Brazil."
"Oh, wouldn't that be something," Miley said. "Someone scoring seven goals against Brazil. As if!"
"As for you, Sonny," Ron said, turning to face the flight engineer, "you owe me a favor." And then Ron left the cockpit, taking care to lock it behind him.
"Congonhas Tower, this is Cash Forty-eight Ninety-Two, requesting permission to take off."
"Roger that, Cash 4892," the Brazilian air traffic controller replied. You are cleared for takeoff on runway 17 right as number two behind Varig 737."
"Copy that, Congonhas, runway 17 right, number two behind Varig."
The Cash Airlines 747 moved onto the threshold of runway 17R, stopping behind a Boeing 737 bearing the livery of the Brazilian airline Varig. The 737 was one of the most popular twinjets in the entire world, and it was decidedly dwarfed in size by the fellow Boeing product just behind it.
"Can you imagine what would happen if we accidentally ran over those guys?" Alex Russo asked what could be considered a rhetorical manner.
"It's gonna be absolute carnage," Miley Stewart replied. "I don't even wanna be thinking about it." It could be considered a morbid conversation, but they both knew that it was just to calm their nerves.
The Varig 737 in front of them began its takeoff roll, and just a few moments later it was already a rapidly shrinking white dot in the night sky of Sao Paulo. The Cash Airlines 747 could have taken off almost immediately after the 737, but there were procedures in which aircrews had to wait for the previous plane's wake turbulence to dissipate before taking off themselves. And while Miley had a feeling that a 737's wake turbulence really wouldn't do much to the 747, rules were rules.
Finally, after ten minutes—supposedly sufficient time for all that turbulence to have dissipated—Congonhas finally granted Cash Airlines Flight 4892 permission to begin its takeoff roll. Miley moved her right hand from the control yoke to the engine throttles. Alex's left hand went over Miley's right as the captain brought the engines up to takeoff power. Behind them, the 747's four Pratt and Whitney engines roared to life.
"Congonhas, Cash 4892 rolling."
Alex then settled her eyes on the airspeed indicator, while Miley kept her eyes looking at the end of the runway, which was as yet still far off in the distance. Alex then began calling out their airspeed in ten-knot increments. At 190 knots, she said, "V-1."
"Rotate," Miley called out in reply, and she pulled back the control yoke. The nose of the jumbo jet began to lift up into the sky, but most of the plane's landing gear was still in contact with the runway. Soon enough, though, Miley heard the slight hint of landing gear going down the runway subside, and eventually vanish. She felt a pulling sensation in her navel that went away when the landing gear finally went silent. Once she was sure that the plane was fully in the air, she called out, "Gear up!"
Alex raised the landing gear lever to the RETRACT position. The lights indicating that the landing gear was fully extended went out one by one, and then they were all extinguished. "Gear up," she repeated.
"Flaps up."
"Flaps retarded."
Miley breathed out. It was twelve hours from Sao Paulo to Los Angeles; twelve hours before she could finally leave behind her memories of the events in Brazil. She had no idea that these twelve hours were almost the last hours of her life.
A/N: As always, leave a review if you liked it, and leave a review even if you didn't like it. Praise and criticism is both highly appreciated!