by Ward Larsen
The tip of the right wing had broken off and was basking in full sun at the edge of the clearing. The left wing had separated completely—one of the few details he remembered from last night—and although Davis couldn’t see it from where he stood, he knew it had been accounted for. Also not connected were the engines. The ARJ-35’s twin turbofans were mounted aft, beneath the T-tail in a classic regional jet design. Both powerplants had separated on impact and pitched into the undergrowth. This was not by chance. Because jet engines are heavy, the most dense parts on any aircraft, engineers intentionally design fracture points in the mounts to allow them to separate in the event of a severe deceleration, thereby minimizing damage to the fuselage body and all that is precious within. Marquez, like Davis, would know where to find them—at the forward reaches of the debris footprint.
This was one of the things Davis had grown to appreciate about his discipline. For all the apparent chaos and randomness, when airplanes hit the ground, they break apart with striking uniformity. A professor somewhere had once devised a model that predicted with 90 percent accuracy, or so he claimed, where any given subsection of an aircraft would end up after a crash. Davis thought it might be true, at least under laboratory conditions.
The problem was the other 10 percent. When a long metal tube careens through the air at hundreds of miles an hour, enough variables are introduced to implode any semblance of certainty. There are mechanical issues and weather, air traffic that ranges from jumbo jets to turkey vultures, and what safety specialists refer to as “human factors.” This last variable was always the most difficult to derive from wreckage. It was also the most common primary cause. Everything from old-fashioned screwups to intentional acts of terrorism. Marquez had concerns about something in the cockpit, where the two most vital humans in this tragedy were seated in the critical moments thirty-six hours ago. As far as Davis was concerned, everything remained on the table.
He took one last look at his wide-angle panorama. In the surrounding jungle were a hundred yellow flags hanging limp in the stagnant air, makeshift headstones to mark the fragments of TAC-Air Flight 223. In time every piece would be mapped, photographed, identified, and ultimately moved to a final resting place. He saw fifteen men and women already working the site and a dozen soldiers guarding the perimeter. Guarding against who or what Davis couldn’t say.
He drained his Coke and started off toward the site. The Motrin hadn’t kicked in yet, and with the equatorial sun nearing its apex, brewing and pounding, Davis squinted as he left the protection of the shade. It was time to see the seat Jen should have been sitting in.
It was time to kill questions with answers.
SEVEN
Davis walked across the clearing, but it felt more like a swim, the air viscous and heavy. As he approached the wall of jungle, he encountered a soldier with a cigarette dangling from his lips. The smoke rose unbothered, a perfect straight line to the sky, and the young man smiled, causing Davis to think that his promise of a case of rum had swept through the ranks like wildfire.
He smiled back, as if to say, Enjoy.
Closing in on the wreckage, Davis got his first look in the light of day, and he was immediately struck by one thing—in a departure from most high-energy crashes, there was little evidence of fire. He saw a few singe marks, one wing root blackened by soot, but nothing like the usual inferno. No melted plastic panels or molten pools of aluminum. No trees or grass gone up like tinder. Fire required three things—fuel, air, and ignition. There was always ignition in a high-speed impact, tearing metal and arcing wires, and air was a given. So Flight 223 had gone down low on fuel. Possibly out of fuel. He made a mental note to check the flight plan, fuel truck logs, and estimated flight time. Somewhere in that chain, the aircraft had gotten critically low on Jet-A.
He arrived at the midpoint of the fuselage, where the hull was fractured, and Davis leaned his head inside much as he had last night. The bodies in the passenger cabin had been removed, a scant ray of light in his otherwise bleak day. Davis was sure the remains had been recovered with decorum, or at least all the decorum possible when working in the middle of a primeval jungle. If anybody was up to that job, it was the soldiers around him. All military units took casualties, and those in Colombia had seen their share. Narco-terrorists, paramilitary groups, the occasional border skirmish. Marquez and his squad would know how to deal with the aftermath of traumatic death.
Looking aft into the cabin Davis noted two smaller, secondary breaks in the ceiling that weren’t obvious from outside. Just behind the last row of seats was the foot of a bulkhead, and behind that nothing but ferns and uprooted brush. This was the point where the tail had separated, the aft fifteen feet of jet coming to rest somewhere upstream in the impact sequence.
Owing to the dense canopy overhead, little light penetrated to the forest floor, and someone had strung a line of battery-powered work lights all along the shattered ceiling. The whole interior world was canted at roughly a ten-degree angle to port, which wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Davis had worked before in completely inverted hulls, forced to wade over spilled carry-on luggage and crumpled beverage carts.
Comfortable with the general layout, he steeled himself to go inside. Davis had one leg through the jagged gap when someone said, “You want this one, Señor?”
Davis turned and saw the smiling soldier. He was holding out a cheap fabric respirator, the kind a house painter would use when spraying a bedroom wall. It was probably the only protective gear he was going to be issued. No gloves or booties. Certainly no hard hat or biohazard suit.
“Yeah, that’s not a bad idea. Thanks.”
He took the mask and snapped the white cup over his face. Davis stepped into the cabin carefully, planning each footfall and handhold onto the bones of what looked solid. A fall into jagged metal or razor-edged shards of composite could ruin your day, and of course it was always good form to avoid trampling evidence. He saw personal effects scattered across the floor. A half-knitted sweater and a pink tube of lip gloss—or was it lipstick? He’d never known the difference. A romance novel with the bookmark still in place, a story that would never reach its end.
There was never a question of where he would go first. Row 7 was all the way in back, adjacent to the gaping hole where the tail had once been. The A and B seats were on the port side, and across the narrow aisle was the C seat. Set tight against the starboard window, 7C was the only seat in the row from which a body had been recovered.
According to the seating chart, Jen had been assigned the center B seat, and Davis felt an inner tightening as it came into view. The upholstery looked almost pristine, the seatback straight and unbent. Just as Marquez had said, the seat belt was unfastened. Unfastened. That was the tenuous thread from which his hopes had been hanging. Yet now Davis saw a second indicator that Jen had not been here at the moment of impact—seat 6B, directly in front, displayed minimal damage. His daughter weighed in at one hundred and twenty pounds—as she often reminded him, exactly half his own weight. In a crash as severe as this one, even a small unrestrained body would have hurled forward with devastating force. Assuming a typical thirty-G deceleration, without the constraint of a seat belt, a one-hundred-and-twenty-pound body became a projectile weighing nearly two tons. Davis, however, saw no sign of damage to the seat in front, no dents or misshapen frame.
He went down onto his hands and knees, and studied the bases of the seats. Each pair of port seats were anchored by six bolts, three forward and three aft on the frame. Davis pushed and pulled on Row 6 and found the aft anchors slightly loose. This was the classic signature of occupied seats that had pitched forward in a sudden deceleration, yet held fast because an engineer somewhere had done his calculations perfectly. Davis checked the aft anchors on Row 7 and did not find a similar looseness—a third indicator that this pair of seats had not been occupied at the moment of impact.
He pushed up off the tilted floor and, just as his spirits were rising, his gaze was
seized like a magnet to metal. It was the smallest of details, barely noticeable amid the chaos and ruin. Hanging a few inches out of the seatback pocket facing 7B was a delicate white earbud. He hesitated, then reached carefully into the pocket and felt blindly. Searching for what he hoped would not be there.
Davis felt something and pulled it clear, and what he saw capsized his tiny lifeboat of hope. In his hand, stylish in its tiger-striped protective sleeve, was the iPod Touch he’d given to Jen last year for Christmas.
* * *
Ten minutes later Davis stood statuelike near the remains of the jet, Jen’s iPod in his hand. He was staring at the device as if it were a lost relic, some kind of great archaeological find, when Colonel Marquez arrived. The Colombian stopped in front of him and said something, but Davis didn’t hear. Marquez said it again.
“What is that?”
Davis blinked, then met the colonel’s gaze. “It’s an iPod … you know, for playing music.”
“Where did you find it?”
“In the seatback pocket at 7B.”
“Your daughter’s,” Marquez said.
Davis nodded.
The colonel let out a long breath as a pair of workers walked past. One held some kind of electronic device with a wand, its beeping tone guiding him into the brush. Even after the man disappeared behind the evergreen wall, the machine’s chirp remained steady. Like a distant digital heartbeat.
“Then there can be no doubt,” said Marquez. “She was in that seat.”
As he’d been doing for the last ten minutes, Davis tried to think of an escape, a logical argument against the idea. There wasn’t one. “Yeah,” he said, more to himself than to Marquez, “she was definitely there.”
Davis sat down on a log, a freshly snapped timber fully one foot thick that had come to rest where the port wing should have been. He wondered how much longer he could keep this up—one minute clinging to the idea that Jen had survived, and the next proving otherwise. He knew he was filtering every sight and sound and smell, first and foremost, through the lens of his daughter’s fate. But in that process, what was he blotting out? What was he not seeing? Somewhere in the distance the chirping increased in frequency, rising until it became a staccato buzz. Something new had been located, most likely a piece of metal from an engine cowling or a separated wing flap, some fragment of marginal significance. It didn’t matter.
How much longer can I go on?
Marquez sat next to him and put his hands on his knees. It was a markedly fraternal move, and after a moment’s contemplation, he said, “You were once a military pilot?”
“Yeah, USAF. F-16s most of my career.”
Marquez nodded. “Lucky you. I was doomed to fly A-37s, a version of your Air Force’s old primary trainer. I am told it was referred to there as a two-ton dog whistle. A poor country like mine cannot afford the best, but we trained hard, and fought when the order came. I lost my share of friends to crashes over the years, and many times I was involved in the investigations that followed. That was hard to do.”
“I’ve lost friends too.”
“I’m sure. But losing a daughter … that is a very different thing. Fighter pilots assume a certain amount of risk. It is expected some will pay the ultimate price.”
“What are you trying to say?”
Marquez cocked his head. “I think being so close to this inquiry—it will be difficult for you. I need help, expertise, and I am not sure you can give it. Perhaps it would be better if you went back home to grieve.”
Davis shot back a hard look. “Is this your idea of a motivational speech? My daughter was on that aircraft, but counting the crew there were twenty-three other people involved. Each of them has a family and friends, decent people who are feeling exactly what I’m feeling right now. In the next few days they’ll be identifying bodies, making funeral arrangements, and calling long-lost brothers to deliver the bad news.” Davis paused for a moment, then continued in level tone, “There is nobody on your team who will kick as much metal and stay up as late as I will to find out what the hell happened. If you want to send a message to Washington or throw me back in that cell, go ahead and try. But understand that I’ll fight you every inch of the way. In my opinion, neither of us has time for that right now.”
The colonel stared into the distance, his face a tight mask. He was not used to being challenged. “You know where she is,” he finally said.
Davis didn’t reply. In the pause, the jungle suddenly came alive with the sound of unseen birds scattering and squawking. A feral screech echoed as some creature in the distance succumbed to nature’s way. It was a short-lived drama, and soon everything returned to what it had been. Steady beeping. The brush of wind through treetops.
Marquez nodded over his shoulder, toward the thickest stand of forest. “Your daughter was thrown clear when the tail broke off. It pains me to say it, but she is one thousand meters behind us in the swamp.”
Again, Davis said nothing.
“As investigators we are bound by facts, however regrettable they might be. I have three people searching that area as we speak. It might take a day, or even a week … but we will find her.”
“Find them,” Davis countered. “There are two girls out there. And yes, you might find them. But I’m not convinced by your facts. Not yet. Until I am, I’m going to keep looking elsewhere.”
A long silence ensued at the impasse. Davis turned the iPod in his hand, staring at it as if it were a talisman of some kind.
Marquez rose slowly, and when Davis followed suit, they exchanged resolute stares.
“I’ll help you with this investigation,” Davis said. “But don’t ever question my motives.”
“Very well,” said Marquez. He backed away a step, and asked, “Have you seen the cockpit yet?”
“No.”
“I think it’s time you did. I should warn you, the bodies are still in place.”
“Nothing I haven’t seen before.”
“There you are wrong.” With that, the colonel began walking to the forward edge of the fuselage.
Davis fell in behind him.
* * *
As was his custom, Martin Stuyvesant sat in the first row of the bus, and through the front window he saw the sign he’d been waiting for: AKRON, 5 MILES. He sighed a vagabond’s sigh. Would this place be different from all the others?
Of course not.
Stuyvesant was not a happy man. His stomach had been acting up and he was desperately tired. The burn in his gut, he supposed, was an ulcer, but he’d be damned if he was going to see any doctor about it. Ulcers were what you got when you had too many worries, and God knew, Stuyvesant had more than his share. He was effectively homeless, and drank more than he should. He also suspected he might be getting too reliant on the pain medication a friend had given him, but the old knee injury from high school wasn’t letting up, and life on the road was as demanding as ever. Then there were his finances. He was nearly broke again, left with no choice but to tap friends and strangers “for the very last time.” Everyone knew it was a lie. It had been that way as long as he could remember, walking through life with his hand out. Stuyvesant never hesitated when it came to begging for cash—he’d essentially made a career of it—but he needed a fresh angle.
If all that wasn’t bad enough, a new problem was brewing, one he’d only learned about this morning. Somewhere in Colombia, deep in the godforsaken jungle, events were playing out that could land him in a great deal of trouble. Trouble of the criminal variety. There was never a good time for complications of that nature, but the timing couldn’t have been worse. Stuyvesant had made a great many mistakes in his tempestuous life, yet this one he’d thought long dead and buried. One phone call had proved how wrong he was. Like a zombie, the most hideous crisis imaginable had mutated, stirred, and risen from the dead.
Feeling the familiar burn, he reached into a pocket, retrieved his last two antacid tablets, and stuffed them in his mouth. The bus veered onto the fi
rst Akron exit, and at the bottom of the off-ramp the brakes hissed as the big machine stopped at a red light. Stuyvesant spotted a man on the curb. Roughly his age—early fifties—he was limping as he ambled along with a cardboard sign that read: WILL WORK FOR FOOD, GOD BLESS.
Stuyvesant watched him sidle along the row of cars in the adjacent lane, pausing for a moment near each window. The man looked like Stuyvesant felt, old and weary, yet his clothes were more tattered, and his hygiene decidedly more repulsive. Stringy hair, yellow teeth, a week’s growth of beard. Here was a man, Stuyvesant thought, who’d lost his self-respect. It was the eyes, however, that really drew his attention. They were cast downward, almost in supplication. That’s where you’ve got it wrong, he thought. You should look them in the eye, show them you’re proud in spite of your circumstances.
The light turned green, and as the bus accelerated Stuyvesant had an epiphany. He saw the driver’s lunch cooler just behind his seat, resting in an open cardboard box.
“Excuse me,” he said, leaning forward to be in the man’s field of vision. “Would you mind if I took the flap from your box?”
The driver glanced at Stuyvesant, then at his lunch. “Uh … sure, help yourself.”
Stuyvesant pulled the box over, removed the plastic cooler, and none too carefully ripped off a good-sized section of cardboard. He then put everything back as it had been, minus one brown corrugated flap. To the woman seated next to him, who was watching most suspiciously, he said, “Do you have a black marker I could borrow?”
She hesitated, but then opened her purse and after some digging pulled out a black Sharpie.
“Perfect! Thank you!”
Stuyvesant put some thought into his message, and after settling on the wording he scrawled it in thick block letters. Pleased with himself, he returned the marker to his bewildered seatmate, and then critiqued his creation at arm’s length.
