Crashers
Page 22
“Want to be a pilot?” Walter asked.
Ricky said, “I am a pilot.”
Walter smiled. Most pilots considered themselves born that way. “We’re going to need outlets for a dozen computers, not to mention all the power tools. Will that be a problem?”
Ricky said, “We got enough power strips for that, and UPS had us put in three data drops. You can surf the Net right from the workstation.”
Walter’s fears of a podunk airfield with 1950s technology evaporated. “Outstanding. We’re also going to set up a microwave relay from your tower, if that’s okay.”
He glanced outside. The control tower was a simple wooden box on stilts. It could have doubled as a fire-watch facility in a national forest or a spotlight guardhouse at a prison.
“Power’s no problem,” Ricky said. “UPS says you got the hangar for as long as you need. We don’t got a lot of luxuries or nothing but there’s a Coke machine and a candy machine in the office. And a couple restaurants around here deliver. My sister owns one. Best enchiladas in town, guaranteed. We also—”
He paused, eyes going wide, feeling the ground vibrate beneath his muddy boots.
Walter felt it, too, and smiled. “That’s no earthquake, son. That’s CascadeAir Flight Eight One Eight.”
The first of the mammoth trucks turned into the airfield.
37
ISAIAH GREY SAID, “AH, roger that, ATC. We’ve got a yellow light. Holding at the line for your word. Over.”
A crackle of static, then a woman’s voice: “Confirmed November Tango Sierra Bravo One. Hang tight. We’ll get you guys airborne in a minute. ATC out.”
Hayden, the pilot who’d flown the swap-out—and Ray Calabrese—from LAX to PDX sat in the copilot’s chair. Kiki Duvall sat in the fold-away seat behind Isaiah. Her teeth were working her lower lip and she was pulling absently on the frayed cuff of her jeans. Normally, Kiki loved to fly. But cruising in an exact duplicate of the jet whose shattered corpse she had so recently helped to examine was an unnerving experience.
“I didn’t realize you could fly these big commercial jobs,” she said, speaking up to be heard by Isaiah, who wore a headset.
“If it’s got wings, I can fly it,” he replied over his shoulder. “You ready to rock?”
The plane inched toward the painted stripe, its waiting position. Isaiah tapped the brake, bringing the plane to a full stop, and a loud thump-thump sounded from within. The men jumped, eyes alert.
“Relax, boys,” Kiki said. “Something just fell over, amidships.”
The copilot, Hayden, began to unbuckle his seat belt. “More than something. I heard two thumps, ma’am.”
“Hmm.” Kiki was staring out the window absently. “One thing fell. You just heard it twice.”
He stopped before exiting the flight deck and smiled down at the seated woman. “Come again?”
Kiki sighed. “One thing fell. It’ll be about halfway back to the tail. It’s not metal. Rubber or plastic, maybe. We heard it land twice.”
Hayden stepped out of the flight deck. Isaiah adjusted his voice wand and said, “Portland ATC, this is November Tango One. Be advised that copilot has exited the flight deck to check on a noise. Expect him back up here in thirty seconds. . . . Roger, tower. Thanks. November Tango One out.”
The copilot returned with an odd, artificial smile painted on his face. Isaiah restrained his own grin. “Well?”
“Ah, a flashlight was stowed badly in an overhead bin. It bounced free.” He retook his seat and turned to Kiki. “It’s waterproof, rubber coated, not metal. It was just what you said and right where you said. You mind me asking how you knew that, ma’am?”
“I’ll tell you if you stop calling me ma’am. It’s Kiki.”
“Hayden,” he responded.
“Glad to meet you. Sound travels through the air. But it also travels through metal. Aluminum is a particularly good medium for sound. Even better than air. That means sound travels first through the skin of an aircraft, then through the air in the fuselage and the wood of the cockpit door. When the flashlight hit the deck, we heard the thump through the skin of the plane first. I knew it wasn’t metal because the thump lacked that resonant quality. And I did a little calculation in my head, figuring out how far apart the thumps were, to gauge how far back the thing landed.”
Hayden gaped. “How the hell did you learn something like that?”
Kiki blushed, enjoying the act of showing off. “I was a sonar officer on a nuclear sub. Want to know how to tell a Russian boomer from two whales making love?”
“Not really, no. Since when do they allow women on board subs?” Hayden asked.
“Since me. Well, me and four others. We were the freshman class. And we were only allowed to serve on the big, nuclear boomers. Attack subs don’t have enough room for mixed housing.”
Hayden exchanged impressed grins with Isaiah. “I’ve practically lived half my life inside jets and I never knew that thing about sound traveling through walls.”
Isaiah inclined his head, hearing something over his headset, then toggled his Send switch. “Ah, roger that, tower. We’re cleared and rolling. Thanks for the hospitality. November Tango One out.”
He turned to Hayden and jerked his thumb back to Kiki. “And you wondered why I took this job.”
GAMELAN INDUSTRIES, BEAVERTON
Dennis Silverman was putting the finishing touches on the false data for the flight data recorder when his phone rang. “Dennis? Walter Mulroney here.”
Dennis smiled and kicked back, his feet up on his cluttered desk. “Mr. Mulroney. Hey, how’s it going?”
“Good. We’ve moved the fuselage to a hangar at the Valence Airfield and most of the detritus will be here by sunset. I just heard from Susan Tanaka. We’ll debrief here, tonight. Any chance the data from the FDR will be ready?”
“You bet.” Dennis sucked apple juice through a straw punched through the top of a waxy box. “We’ve got better data than I hoped. The Gamelan should explain a lot of things tonight.”
“Really?”
“Trust me. I can make this box tell me anything I want,” Dennis said. He meant it literally.
BOEING PLANT, GRESHAM
One of the searchers from the fuel-soaked field arrived around 6 P.M. and presented the three thin, twisted pieces of metal, each in its own sealed evidence bag.
“Excellent,” said Peter Kim. “Partial thrust-reverser deployment, as predicted. Good old-fashioned pilot error.”
“We’ve swept three adjacent fields,” the searcher said. “We haven’t found even half of the engine.”
Peter nodded. “I suspect some of it hit the fuselage. Have you found the hydraulic isolation valve yet?”
The man frowned. “I don’t think I know what that is.”
“Here.” Peter walked him over to the massive workbench. A team of engineers from Boeing, Patterson-Pate, and Peter’s own crew had engine number four almost completely stripped down. Peter picked up a piece of metal approximately the size and shape of a desk stapler. “Hydraulic isolation valve. This has to open before the reversers can deploy the blocker doors. The blocker doors check the airflow and reroute it, slowing down the plane. Here, see this?”
He held up the valve and pointed to a thin wire at the top. “This triggers a signal to a monitor on the flight deck. One of the pilots should have seen that. With a partial deployment, they could have cut power to that engine and flown fine on the other three until they could stow the reversers again. You find me this valve and we’ll have the smoking gun. After that, we’ll write our reports and head on back home. Case closed.”
The searcher said, “Yes, sir,” and left.
ATLANTA, GEORGIA
The tropical depression that had beaten the crap out of Georgia finally skipped off the eastern seaboard and began lumbering toward New England and Canada. Power was quickly restored to much of Atlanta.
At the apartment with the Red Fist of Ulster’s answering machine, phone se
rvice was finally back in operation.
MULTNOMAH COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER’S OFFICE, PORTLAND
“Can you take a look at something?”
Tommy Tomzak was taking a break in the outer office of the ME’s building, watching traffic glide past the front window. His hands were cramping up and his lower back vibrated with a dull, red ache from leaning over gurneys. He’d have killed for a sauna or a couple of laps in a pool, and he realized that he hadn’t looked to see if their hotel offered either amenity. He was leaning against the back of a couch in the waiting room, sipping his sixth cup of coffee, his mind flitting from the cadavers awaiting his attention to the FBI consultant, to Kiki Duvall. He wondered what she was up to today, wondered if either of them would be free for dinner.
He wondered how she’d react if he asked. He wondered if he’d really ask her. Was there any point in pursuing a relationship that had already gone south once before?
He checked the wall clock. A little after 6 P.M. At 8, this crash would be forty-eight hours old.
He thought about the autopsies in Kentucky. About finding enough of a dismembered thigh to do a DNA test on the pilot. The muscle was far too ruined by jet fuel for a drug test. But was there something he’d missed? Hadn’t someone written a paper about—
“Ahem.” The voice of Laura, the ME’s black-clad daughter, snapped him out of his reverie. “I said, can you take a look at something?”
Tommy smiled ruefully. “Sorry. My brain’s slowly leaking out my ears. ’Sup?”
She waved off the apology with a good-natured pop of her bubble gum and led him to her dad’s office. She plopped herself down in the rolling chair, facing the MacBook Air. Tommy parked his butt on the edge of the desk and watched her hands flash across the keyboard.
Simple outline drawings of male and female forms appeared on the screen, one after another. Each contained a scale accounting for height and weight. Each had a designation based on their seat selection aboard the aircraft. Each showed one or more bright red marks for entry wounds and bright blue marks for exit wounds. Yellow lines—some straight, most curved—linked the wounds. Where limbs were missing, the body parts were marked in dotted outlines.
The images flashed onto the screen, stayed for about five seconds, then were replaced by the next. Tommy watched, sipping his coffee.
Laura said, “See it?”
Tommy snapped out of it. “Um . . .”
The girl rolled her black-lined eyes. “The pattern?”
“Ah . . .” For a split second, Tommy thought about salvaging his ego by lying. “Nope. Sorry.”
She started the sequence again.
“What am I looking for?”
“Watch the curve of the yellow lines and the progress of the seat numbers. Okay?”
She ran it again. Tommy concentrated on the screen. He brushed a curved hank of hair away from his gray eyes. He set down the cup. He folded his arms and rested his chin in one hand. The body language was designed to make him look and feel less like a doofus.
Laura said, “See it?”
“Ah. Well. No.”
She sighed. “It’s a pattern.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, yeah.”
Tommy still didn’t see any pattern. “Can you link this program with any kind of . . . I don’t know, slide-show software or something? Anything that will demonstrate the pattern better?”
She popped a bubble. “I can do better than that. I can overlay the images, especially if you get me an overhead view of the jet. I could superimpose all of it into one dynamic image.”
“Done.” Tommy slid his ear jack out of his pocket and reached for the controls on his belt. “Arachnia, huh?”
The girl blushed, pleased that Tommy had remembered.
38
IN ONTARIO, CALIFORNIA, DARIA Gibron and Donal O’Meara caught a Greyhound east on Interstate 10. Dressed in jeans and matching UCLA T-shirts, they looked like a romantic couple. They switched buses, vectoring north and east on the 15, curving around San Bernardino.
Donal never spoke. Daria asked no questions.
The temperature began to fall a bit, but there was enough heat and dust in the wind to suggest that tomorrow would be a scorcher.
STATE HIGHWAY 99E, OREGON CITY
Ray Calabrese wondered if the small Asian American woman in the designer jacket and skirt was practicing for the time trials at Daytona. She kept the rented Nissan at thirty miles over the speed limit whenever she could, and she handled the car as if she’d passed the Bureau’s Automobile Pursuit Course at Quantico with flying colors.
“So where are we going?” Ray asked as they zoomed out of the downtown core that looked like it had been frozen in the early 1960s. They were on a winding four-lane highway parallel to the Willamette River. Fir trees towered over the roadway—green up close, the farther ones turned black by the night. On the opposite shore, lights shone from the windows of shiny new mansions.
“Valence,” Susan said. She kept both hands on the wheel. “We’ve moved the Vermeer to a hangar on loan from UPS.”
“This seems like a funny route.”
Susan just shrugged. She’d pored over a Triple A map the night before and was convinced that this route would shave five minutes off the drive time.
“Your IIC doesn’t like me much,” said Ray.
“You come on a little strong, Agent Calabrese.” She scooted the Nissan past an SUV, hitting eighty.
“I’m just here as an adviser.”
“Ha!” She cast a quick glance his way. “Sorry, but you all but handed Tommy his hat and told him not to let the door hit him on the butt on his way out. Tommy can be forgiven for being defensive; you’re on offense.”
They were quiet for a while. Ray hadn’t expected the land outside Portland to be so forested, so pretty. He’d been looking for sprawling suburbs, he guessed. But passing from Oregon City into unincorporated Clackamas County had been like passing through some kind of magic portal: before, there had been urban-style development; now, there wasn’t.
“Besides,” Susan said. “There’s something else.”
“What’s that?”
She blew past a log truck. “I mean, there’s something else about you. Something on your mind. You’re in a bad mood, sure, but not just a bad mood. You’re worried. Or maybe scared.”
Ray studied her. Susan’s hair was expertly cut. Her clothes were tasteful and expensive. She wore a diamond engagement ring and a platinum wedding ring, and both looked like antiques. Her almond-shaped eyes reminded Ray of Daria. He said, “You’re good with people, aren’t you?”
Susan said, “Yes.”
“You married?”
She knew that he was deflecting her question, but she went with the flow. “Fifteen years, this August.”
“And he doesn’t mind you bopping all over the country every time a plane drops out of the sky?”
Susan said, “Kirk is a pilot. United. Every time one of my Go-Teams figures out what downed a jet and we order the companies to fix something so it doesn’t happen again, I’m doing it for Kirk.”
Ray grinned. “He’s a head pilot?”
“Yes.”
“Do they call him Captain Kirk?”
Susan laughed, the notes high and musical. “He’s heard that once or twice, yes.” She drove for a while, slowed down as the town of Canby drew near. “I called him last night. He knew Meghan Danvers, the Vermeer’s pilot. They’d met at a couple of training sessions over the years. He liked her, said she was a pro.”
“So you’re hoping it wasn’t pilot error.”
“Yes.” Susan’s voice held no equivocation, no doubt. “Absolutely. I’m always pulling for the pilots. I admit that. But don’t misunderstand. Our report will reflect the evidence. If it’s pilot error, we’ll say so.”
Ray settled back in his seat, glad that their speed was down to forty. “Don’t worry about it, Ms. Tanaka. This wasn’t pilot error. It was a god-damn low-life terrorist.”
“No, but it’s them.”
“You’re sure?”
I have to be, Ray thought. If it’s not them, then Daria is risking her life for nothing and I’m screwing around on the wrong end of the West Coast.
“My asset is sure,” he said. “Me, too.”
VALENCE AIRFIELD
Walter Mulroney rubbed his hands together like a little kid ogling a Christmas tree. “Excellent,” he said. “The carpenters are here.”
The UPS hangar was abuzz with activity. They hadn’t unloaded the major pieces of the Vermeer from the flatbeds yet, but much of the smaller detritus was showing up, and crews were sorting fat plastic bins of shrapnel and personal belongings.
The three cranes were being backed off their carriers, their reverse beepers blaring. Hired security guards were keeping out all the roustabout fliers and mechanics who tend to hang around airfields everywhere, but Ricky Sanchez and a handful of airfield staff had been let in to watch. They couldn’t have enjoyed Disneyland any more, but every now and then they glanced at the devastated cadaver of the jetliner and remembered that this was no lark. Sanchez’s friends had each made the sign of the cross the first time they caught sight of Flight 818.
A couple of dozen long folding tables had been set up along one wall and Susan Tanaka was busy helping technicians set up computers with Internet links. Several telephones were also being set up. Tommy Tomzak had called ahead from Portland and had asked for a projector hooked up to a Mac with PowerPoint software. Susan didn’t know what for, but she’d asked one of her assistants to get the equipment.
Ray Calabrese stood in an isolated corner, arms folded across his chest. He’d taken off his jacket and his Glock 9 hung from his hip in a leather scabbard holster. No one spoke to him.