Читать книгу Аэропорт / Аirport онлайн | страница 2

“They might be—if we could find the truck.”

“You haven’t located it yet?”

“Listen, do you birds in the penthouse have any idea what it’s like out on the field? Maybe you should look out the windows once in a while.”

Mentally, Mel Bakersfeld filtered out most of the exchange, though he was aware that what had been said about conditions away from the terminal was true. And removing snow from the airport’s operating area was equal to clearing seven hundred miles of highway.

The maintenance foreman’s voice came on the radiophone again. “We’re worried about that truck too, Danny. The driver could freeze out there.”

Mel said, “That United flight took off, didn’t it? Without food.”

“I hear the captain told the passengers it’d take an hour to get another truck, that they had a movie and liquor aboard, and the sun was shining in California. Everybody voted to get the hell out. I would, too.”

Mel nodded, resisting a temptation to direct the search himself. Action would be a therapy. At the same time, Danny was already doing the right thing – intensifying the truck search. The missing driver must be saved first.

Between calls, Danny warned Mel, “We’ll hold up all the other food trucks till we find the guy.”

Mel nodded. There would be a flood of protests when other airlines realized their food trucks were not getting through.

With one hand, Danny was using a red telephone; with the other, leafing through emergency orders—Mel’s orders for occasions such as this. The red phone was to the airport’s duty fire chief.

“And when we locate the truck, let’s get an ambulance out there. But better not go until we know where exactly. We don’t want to dig you guys out, too.”

The sweat was gleaming on Danny’s balding head. Mel was aware that Danny disliked running the Snow Control Desk and was happier in his own department of airport planning, discussing aviation’s future. Such things were comfortably projected well ahead, with time to think. Just as there were people who lived in the past, Mel thought, for Danny Farrows, the future was a refuge. But, unhappy or not, now Danny was coping.