by Levi, Steve;
“Must. No plane has hit a moose since I’ve been here.”
“So the cargo between the pilot and the passengers could be anything of any size of any configuration?”
“Welcome to Alaska. You can see for yourself when we get onboard.”
Noonan thought for a moment, “Can the pilot get from the cockpit to the passengers?”
“Sure. It’s dark because the cargo has covered the windows and not all of the cargo stacks perfectly so you might catch a knee or a shin if you’re not careful. So passengers load from the back of the plane. Insurance reasons. Only here in Anchorage. It’s a whole different matter in the bush. The further you are from the FAA the less you do things by the book. I’ve taken flights in the Aleutians where I was sitting on cargo. Didn’t even have a seat. Cargo pays more than passengers and there’s an old Alaska aviation expression ‘cargo doesn’t talk back.’”
Noonan chuckled. “The Alaskan expression I like is ‘there old pilots and bold pilots but no old bold pilots.’”
“You’ve got that right. In the aviation business you can’t make too many mistakes and live. Which is a very good reason to do things by the book.”
The runway apron was dry as a bone. There was not a speck of dust on the pavement. Noonan stopped Ayanna for a moment and went over to look at the airplane’s tires. Ayanna waited while Noonan did some poking.
“Looking for anything in particular,” she asked when he got back.
“Not really. Planes have to land. Tires are old, not new. If the tires had been new it might have been a lead.”
“What would new tires have meant?”
“I don’t know if they would have meant anything at all. Clues are where you find them. If something is out of the ordinary, it’s worth investigating.”
Ayanna said something which sounded like “hu” or “um.”
“Was it usual for this kind of a plane to be taking cargo? I mean, this is a 737. It’s a passenger plane. It has windows. Cargo 737s don’t have windows.”
“Yes and no,” Ayanna said stopping at the foot of the stairway to the back of the plane. “There is more money in passengers than cargo so the larger companies want to take as many passengers as possible. After the summer, the tourist traffic drops to zero. So the larger companies cut their service to Alaska and consolidate their flights. They are in the business for the passengers. Companies like this one, Unicorn,” she pointing at the plane, “are here year-round. To keep good will with the cargo companies they carry cargo year round even if they could make more money with passengers. They don’t lose money with cargo; they just don’t make as much as they could. They are low in cargo in June, July and August. Unicorn then makes up for the loss by hauling cargo the rest of the year.”
Noonan nodded his head as they climbed the tail staircase. The staircase bounced gently as he ascended. He asked Ayanna if this was unusual.
“There is another yes and no answer when it comes to boarding from the rear. In most cases planes do not use the tail staircase. It’s too cumbersome and most of the time passengers deplane from the front only. Now if passengers have to enter from the rear they go up a mobile staircase we drive out to the plane. It’s more efficient and more stable.”
“When I went to Bethel last year we entered the plane through the back. It was up a staircase with a truck attached but we didn’t go through the tail. We went in what was basically the side of the aircraft.”
Ayanna pointed to the outer side of the 737. “You were basically going in through an emergency exit. It’s unusual these days in large airports. Even in the bush the tail staircase is rarely used. We had to force this staircase open because the front door was locked from the inside. For this trip all of the passengers in Seattle had to enter from the rear because of the bulk head. They entered through a mobile staircase, not these stairs. We had to break the front hatch door open from the inside. Now it’s a crime scene so the hatch is closed off until the forensic people get here.”
The pair went up the tail staircase and into the aisle of the airliner, empty seats disappearing toward the bulkhead at the front. The plane had a flown-in look, as if it had just been cleared of passengers. There were blankets tossed about willy-nilly on the seats, magazines were half in/half out of seat pockets, and the floor was littered with plastic wrapping, paper prayers from the meal trays, as well as some salt and pepper containers along with bits and pieces of paper. Noonan popped one of the overhead compartments and discovered it was full of carry-on luggage.
“It’s almost as if everybody was sucked out of the plane leaving only their luggage and carry-ons,” noted Ayanna as she popped open another overhead compartment to reveal it was full as well.
“Well, wherever they were sucked off to, they went with the clothes they were wearing,” said Noonan slyly, “and they didn’t take their carry-on luggage.”
“Or their make-up,” said Ayanna as she opened a cosmetic case on one of the seats and examined its contents.
Noonan walked down the aisle, stopping occasionally and probing a seat pocket here and an overhead bin there. He pulled the curtain back from the kitchen and looked at the counter. Then he popped open what passed for a refrigerator onboard.
“Nothing looks as though it has been touched,” he said. Then he gingerly pulled the trash can box out from underneath the counter. It was partially full. “Here,” he said as he handed the plastic container to Ayanna. “Have your lab take a look at this.”
“The garbage? Why?”
“To see if you can match any fingerprints. If you can match the flight attendants fingerprints to the trash, you will know they were on board. If you get a strange fingerprint, or even only one set on everything, we’ll know this was a set-up.”
“The matching is going to take some time.”
“Naw, maybe forty minutes. You know the flight attendants’ names and they had to have flight passes to get into secure areas. All those passes required fingerprints. Just get the names of the flight attendants, email their names to SEATAC and you’ll have their prints on line within an hour. By then a good print man will have the prints off those bottles,” Noonan indicated the contents of the garbage container. “All you have to do is confirm a match. If you get one, bingo, it confirms the flight attendants who were supposed to be on board were. If not, you’ve got another problem on your hands.”
“Like terrorists?”
“You won’t be that lucky.” Noonan smiled sadly.
“You mean this is some kind of a scam? Are we back to a ransom you were talking about?”
“It has to be. Unless you believe in space aliens, little green men transubstantiate into airliners and they suck everyone out. . .”
“. . .with their clothes on. Right, Heinz, I’m afraid to say I’m not a believer.”
Noonan leaned back against one of the chairs. “Bring me up to speed on everything you know at this time.”
Ayanna shook her head slowly, her hair slopping about more than bouncing. The very motion gave every indication that in spite of her high spirits, it had been a l-o-n-g night. Noonan knew the feeling.
He had been there before.
Many, many nights.
He called them Naugahyde Nights, the hours spent kind-of/sort-of napping on the Naugahyde furniture in his office waiting.
Waiting for lab results.
Waiting for a fingerprint match out of Washington D. C.
Waiting for a judge’s signature.
Waiting for an interrogation to come to a close.
Waiting for a hunch to play out.
It was waiting for whatever was supposed to happen and hoping it would happen soon. So he didn’t have to go home, get two hours of sleep only to be dragged back to the office.
Just as bad, every Naugahyde Night inevitable came with caveat. No matter how long the wait or how important the matter, there were always a few items to work out. Things that did not fit. Loose ends and holes in the sequence of logic. The Devil was certainl
y in the details.
Noonan could tell Ayanna was tired. Well, in this business you had to get used to it. If she thought she had problems now, she was in for a real surprise. Things were not going to be getting any better any time soon. Noonan gave Ayanna time to collect her thoughts. She was young; she’d learn how to go days without deep sleep and still be professional, competent and composed.
Ayanna settled back against an arm rest. “Well, there’s not much to tell. The plane took off from SEATAC a bit late, about half an hour. Everything was routine until it approached the Juneau area when the plane requested permission to land for a medical emergency. According to the pilot, a woman, one of the passengers was having what she said was described by the flight attendants as ‘mild convulsions.’ Unicorn 739 descended to an altitude below the radar’s horizon as if it were going to land in Juneau and then came back on radar about five minutes later. The pilot stated the passenger had recovered to the extent the trip could continue uninterrupted.”
“I know this is a foolish question,” Noonan said as he rubbed his forehead with the tips of the fingers of his left hand, “but are you sure there wasn’t a plane switch there, as in one plane rising above the radar horizon as another falls beneath it?”
“Again, another yes and no answer.” Ayanna shifted on the airplane seat. “Yes, we looked into the possibility but we discounted it. The plane, which landed in Anchorage, was the same plane, which took off from Seattle. The serial numbers of the aircraft matched. The luggage onboard was loaded in Seattle and the passengers were listed as having boarded in Seattle. The passengers were on the plane when it pulled out of the gate in SEATAC. Considering the time involved, it would not have been possible for the plane to have landed, dropped off the passengers, and taken off again.”
“Improbable but not impossible.”
“Correct. Not impossible. However, there are a number of other problems. First, the plane never landed at the Juneau airport and it could not have landed anywhere nearby. Have you been to Juneau?”
“Actually, no.”
“Well, there are only three things in whole area: steep mountains dropping right to the water’s edge, very small cities and lots of rough water. We’re checking every landing strip within a 30-minute flying radius of Juneau, regardless of its condition. We’re still only talking about three places a plane this size could land – maybe.”
“No help from the Air Force?”
“We don’t know yet. We’ve asked Elmendorf Air Force Base to check with their AWACS. . .”
“AWACS?”
“Airborne Warning and Control System. Those are the big planes you see with the large saucers on top. The saucers are actually downward-looking radars. They can spot and track all aircraft and anything on the ground composed of metal.”
“If they are downward looking then they could tell you if the plane actually landed.”
“Right. If they want to tell us. If their command structure will tell us. See, we civilians are not even supposed to know AWACS exist. So when we called and asked for the AWACS to check its tapes we were asked what AWACS was.”
“Nice.”
“Military intelligence in action. So we just asked if they would ‘look around’ to see if there was anything like downward looking radar and if there was any information we could have. Then we asked the FAA to ask the Air Force. I’m afraid the Air Force won’t tell us diddly. They’ll tell the Pentagon who might tell the FAA who might tell us. Do you know how stupid you feel when you call the FAA and say ‘Hey, we’ve just lost 95 people and can’t find them?’” Ayanna rested the plastic garbage can down on the leading edge of the seat.
Noonan thought for a moment. “What did the FAA say, I mean about the AWACS tape?”
“They said they’d check with the Pentagon but the FAA said it was unlikely AWACS would have any record of the flight. In Southeast Alaska there are so many steep mountains if a plane drops below the mountain level, the downward looking radar can’t track it.”
“You mean if the plane went below the tops of the mountains, the AWACS can’t track it?”
“Probably. I don’t know the specifics on AWACS but I’ll bet they can’t follow a car on the road in the mountains. Too much ground clutter. The mountains probably scramble the image. For a plane, if is moving fast and flying low it will, quite literally, disappear into the ground clutter. It doesn’t mean it crashed; it just disappeared off the scope. So we’re stuck with the time difference. We’d have to calculate how long the plane was off the scope to determine if it could have landed, dropped off passengers and then taken off again.”
“What do you think?” Noonan asked almost uninterestedly as he looked back toward the bulkhead which blocked off the back of the airplane.
“I think anything’s possible.”
“I agree with you.” Noonan began walking down the aisle toward the front the plane. Ayanna watched him for a moment and then followed, the garbage can in tow.
When Noonan got to the front of the seat section he took a close look at the bulkhead. The bulkhead itself was nothing more than a sheet of particle board covered with carpet identical to carpet on the floor of the plane. It had two massive unicorns, one on either side of a doorway, which now stood open. Noonan stuck his head inside the doorway and looked at the back of the bulkhead particle board. It was sturdier on the inside. There were a handful of metal bars forming a webbing pattern on either side of the doorway which ran to the side of the fuselage where the beams were bolted to the aircraft chassis.
As Noonan leaned inside the bulk head area and extended his right hand to test the stability of the metal arms, he heard Ayanna say “Those metal bars are to keep the cargo from coming through the bulk head if the plane hits rough weather.”
“Seem solid enough,” said Noonan as he pulled his hand away. He stepped into the bulkhead area and gave the particle board plug a push. It was solid from plane ceiling to floor making the first bank of seats in the airplane Row 15. “Kind of cuts down First Class seating doesn’t it?”
“There is no First Class seating on Unicorn, Heinz. It’s the economy airline.”
“Good point.”
When Ayanna had said the bulkhead was crammed with cargo, she had not been kidding. The carpeted floor of the passenger section of the aircraft had been removed leaving the brackets and beams of the aircraft fuselage bracing exposed so ropes and wires could be attached to hooks to secure the cargo. The area was dark because all of the window shades had been pulled down. The only light came from behind him and the faint glow of the cockpit windows somewhere, 15 rows ahead of him.
There were a half dozen igloos stacked strategically on both sides of the plane for balance and a pile of plywood sheets was wedged on one side of the craft. Boxes, canvas bags, cartons, and every other description of cargo was neatly and efficiently stacked and roped securely around the cargo containers. Noonan picked his way around the cargo until he found where the door to the walkway was located. While the pilot and cockpit crew could easily get out of the main hatch, the rest of the forward section was filled with cargo, primarily boxes stacked as high as Noonan could reach. There was also a hospital bed strapped to one side of the bulkhead and a motorcycle, complete with full-face helmet padlocked to the crossbar running parallel to the handlebars.
“There’s an odd collection of cargo here. Is it always like this?”
“Not always,” replied Ayanna, her voice muted behind him. After she entered the bulkhead area and came toward him, her voice got clearer. “Every plane coming from Seattle takes a certain amount of cargo. During the winter when the tourist traffic goes way down Unicorn runs almost exclusively cargo. Sometimes the bulkhead is pushed all the way back to the center of the plane. Unicorn is a small airline so it can’t afford to run exclusively on passengers. It runs just enough cargo during the summer to keep its winter customers happy.”
Noonan pointed to the hospital bed. “This doesn’t look like something an industrial client
would want transported by airplane. Wouldn’t a barge be cheaper? Or a truck?”
Ayanna tapped the bed. “Sure, if you didn’t need it tomorrow. Any airline which has cargo space is not too picky about what it carries as long as the customer pays. In the case of the bed,” she reached over and grasped the cargo tag with her left hand, “it’s going to Lime Village. It’s out on the Stony River. If whoever wanted the bed in Lime Village didn’t make arrangements for it to be on the barge this spring, it had to come in by air. There’s no other way in. Except dog sled and I don’t see dogs pulling this puppy,” she tapped the bed, “across the frozen tundra – even if it were taken apart.”
“Wouldn’t it have been cheaper to buy a hospital bed in Anchorage?”
“Maybe. If you could wait a year. Even then the cost would not be a lot less. Lime Village would still be paying the same transportation costs from Seattle to Anchorage–plus the overhead and storage and profit charged locally. It can be expensive. Once they get the bed to Anchorage it goes postal rates, not cargo rates. It saves the village money.”
“Postage?”
“Right. In Alaska you can send anything to anywhere in Alaska through the Post Office, bricks, beds, motorcycles.”
“You mean just like mail?”
“Right. It is mail. It’s got a special name: bypass mail. This bed is coming north from Seattle as cargo. Once it gets to Anchorage someone picks it up in a truck, drives it over to the Post Office where it’s mailed.”
“Then the Post Office flies it out to Lime Village?”
“No, then the Post Office puts it on a truck and drives it right back to the airport where it’s put on a plane flying out to Lime Village as mail. Sometimes it’s the same plane.”
“Why not just send it as cargo? It seems as though there is a lot of shuffling around here.”
Ayanna gave a smile indicating Welcome to Alaska, the land where we do things differently. “Air cargo rates are twice postage rates. It’s cheaper to put the bed on a truck and drive it to the Post Office than to pay cargo rates.”
“Wait a minute,” Noonan scratched his head in amazement. “Hum, if the bed only costs the hospital in Lime Village $300 if it’s sent through the Postal Service, so I am guessing the air cargo company is not carrying the bed for $300? They would be losing money at $300.”
