Crashers

by Dana Haynes

  Walter said, “Take it slow, you two. I usually have a steeplejack test that scaffolding first.”

  “Got it,” Tommy said.

  He and Kiki were covered neck to foot in the safety suits, complete with sealed gloves. They’d clipped their satellite-phone links to the outsides of their suits.

  He paused at the foot of the ladder and touched Kiki’s elbow. “Listen, this isn’t pretty,” he warned. “It’s a charnel house up there. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before. I puked. Doesn’t mean you will, but you might. Here.” He handed her the bag her suit had been sealed in. “If you have to upchuck, use this.”

  Kiki stuffed the bag into the web belt of her suit. “You sure know how to show a girl a good time.”

  She started scaling the ladder. Tommy followed.

  At the top, Kiki waited to let Tommy catch up. He was breathing heavily, annoyed to be so out of shape. “Sorry.”

  “Well, you got a workout last night,” she said. Tommy blushed. Her tone was light but her green eyes glowed with more than a little trepidation. “You ready?”

  Kiki flicked on her flashlight. Tommy hit his light and led the way in through the emergency door.

  The smell was still bad but not as horrible as it had been in the grassy field. During the drive down I-5, the wind had whipped through the fuselage. Still, blood and viscera gleamed on most surfaces, shiny and tacky. Kiki said, “Oh my,” and stopped just inside the door.

  “You okay?”

  She forced herself to keep her eyes open, forced them to follow the circle of light from her flash. She nodded.

  “All right. Watch your step.”

  Tommy started down the aisle. It was much easier this time; in the field, the plane had rested at an odd angle, the floor pitched thirty degrees counterclockwise. Now it was as stable as the swap-out, which they could see through the shattered windows.

  He ignored the blood-drenched magazines and little pillows, and the bits of gristle that crunched under his feet. Stepping over larger articles of debris, he eased forward, Kiki at his heels.

  Halfway to the front, the scaffolding that held them thirty feet off the floor groaned ominously. They froze. Tommy’s ear jack crackled and Walter Mulroney said, “Are you all right up there?”

  Tommy jostled his mike into place. “Think so.”

  They started moving again. Kiki gasped and Tommy turned. Her flashlight rested on a G.I. Joe action figure. The toy rested on the floor beneath one of the seats. A child’s fist still clutched it, the wrist bones glistening white.

  “The med techs missed that,” Tommy said. “Sorry.”

  Kiki was very close to panicking. Or puking. She forced herself to breathe deeply through her mouth. She made eye contact with Tommy and nodded. They moved forward again.

  Ahead of them was a band of light. The fuselage and the nose cone were near each other, but with a two- or three-inch gap all the way around. They stepped over that gingerly, hearing the scaffolding groan again. Tommy looked through the gap and saw Walter, staring up at them, three floors below.

  Tommy approached the flight deck with an odd sense of vertigo. The last time he’d been here, it had been nose down, everything facing the wrong direction. He shone his flashlight on the galley refrigerator. There was a jumble of footprints on its surface, at chest height. Kiki said, “How in the world did those get there?”

  “They’re mine. Ain’t that weird?”

  He swiveled the light through the galley, stopping at a drawer that was jammed halfway open. “That’s what I thought. See?” He reached in and pulled out a red plastic swizzle stick. “If you get coffee with cream from a stewardess, they don’t give you a spoon.”

  “It’s ‘flight attendant,’ not ‘stewardess.’ And I know what they give passengers. I want to see what the flight crew gets. Did you check Kazmanski’s autopsy?”

  Tommy had, surprised to find the Multnomah County Medical Examiner in his office before seven. “Kazmanski’s stomach turned up positive for coffee with milk. Thoroughly undigested, too. He’d just swallowed it before he died.”

  Kiki shouldered past him onto the ruined flight deck. The windows had been smashed on impact and the smells of the hangar—including the aroma of fresh-cut wood—blocked out much of the stench here. The pilot’s left-hand seat had been torn apart by Tommy’s volunteers on Tuesday, to get to Meghan Danvers.

  The copilot’s seat had been wrenched off its tracks and hung at an odd angle against the flight controls. Viscera glistened on the remains of both chairs. Kiki knelt and played her flashlight slowly across every surface. Tommy stayed standing, his light shining over her head. He kept it steady so that it wouldn’t make the shadows dance.

  Kiki scoured through splattered blood and wads of paper that had escaped three-ring binders. She used a pencil to shift detritus aside. Two minutes later, she held up a shard of porcelain. “You don’t get coffee in nice cups like this, not if you’re a passenger.”

  “So if the flight crew gets better cups . . .” Tommy left the thought dangling.

  Kiki resumed her search. It took another three minutes before she said, “Bingo.”

  A ventilator shaft behind the copilot’s seat had been wrenched partway open. She slipped two gloved fingers through the opening and withdrew a stainless steel spoon.

  It held a brownish residue. She held it under her nose. “Coffee.”

  She stood and turned. Tommy was staring past her at the ruined avionics equipment. “What?”

  Without answering, Tommy tapped several numbers into the satellite phone control box on his belt. “Peter? It’s Tommy. Where are you?”

  “Three stories beneath you,” the voice came back immediately. “It was stupid to go in there, Tomzak.”

  “Good seeing you, too, Pete. Listen, Silverman, the guy from Gamelan? He said the pilots had about three minutes of warning that a reverser had kicked in. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know which monitor that would have shown up on?”

  Peter Kim didn’t try to hide the note of annoyance. “Of course.”

  “So can you pull that monitor out of here and reconstruct what was on it? I mean, is there any way to know which lights were on and which were off, when it was smashed?”

  After a pause, Peter said, “Actually, yes. We can tell if a filament was hot or cold when it broke. Why?”

  “Do it,” Tommy said. “We’ve proven the fuselage is safe. Get someone up here and get that monitor tested. Okay?”

  Peter sighed loudly. “But of course. You’re in charge.”

  42

  DONAL O’MEARA CLIMBED OUT of the stolen Jeep and mopped his neck with the palm of his hand. They had arrived in Boca Serpiente, California. It was going on 9 A.M. and already sweat prickled his brow, discolored a V shape on the front of his T-shirt. “This is like some fucking alien planet,” he groused.

  O’Meara had chosen khaki trousers, hiking boots, and a T-shirt from Goodwill. Daria wore cuffed shorts with hiking boots and a light cotton shirt with epaulets and breast pockets. She wore the tails of the shirt tied off just under her small breasts. She looked perfectly comfortable as the thermometer outside a convenience store hit eighty-six.

  O’Meara pointed to a store that boasted GAS, GRUB AND AMMO!

  “They better have a fucking beer in here, or I’m shooting someone,” O’Meara said.

  Daria studied him over the top of her glasses and beneath the fringe of her bangs. “Didn’t think you could abide American beer.”

  “It tastes like a rat pissed in the can, but it gets any hotter, and I’m not going to give a damn.”

  They entered the convenience store. An air conditioner as old as Daria hacked ineffectually behind a lottery-ticket display and dropped condensation onto the counter. It was maybe two degrees cooler than outside. “Can you at least tell me where we’re going?” she asked, pulling a plastic bottle of water out of a refrigeration case and holding it against her breastbone.

&
nbsp; “You can stop asking,” O’Meara said, his voice muffled because he was half leaning into the open case, the inside of the glass misting with every word he spoke. “We’re there.”

  KEIZER CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

  Susan Tanaka faced the crowd of reporters and their entourages of sound and camera crews. The certain knowledge that pilot error had doomed CascadeAir Flight 818 felt like a deadweight in the pit of her stomach. “All right.” She swallowed. “First question?”

  HOLIDAY INN, PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

  Only one of the local television stations was airing the press conference live. James Danvers sat on the couch in his hotel room, his son perched on his knee, his sister to his left, and his mother-in-law—Meghan’s mom—to his right, listening to every word spoken by Susan Tanaka.

  They were all surprised when they heard a knock at the door.

  VALENCE AIRFIED

  Kiki Duvall and Tommy Tomzak climbed down the wooden ladder, the cartoonishly large boots of their suits sticky with body fluids. They stripped to their underwear, then stuffed the protective garments into a laundry hamper marked HAZMAT. Walter noted that Tommy wore a Star of David on a chain around his neck. With his rough language, Walter had assumed he wasn’t a man of faith.

  Peter Kim was waving to a deliveryman toting a hand truck and three plastic evidence boxes. Pulling up his Dockers, Tommy nodded in that direction. “What’s up?”

  “Shrapnel taken from the survivors at Portland and Salem hospitals. I’m still looking for the HIV.”

  Tommy and Kiki exchanged looks, then stared at the blood-soaked suits they had just doffed. “Wanna run that one past me again?” Tommy asked.

  Peter rolled his eyes. “Hydraulic isolation valve. Relax, you weren’t wading through any blood-borne pathogens. Well, you probably were, but none I know of.”

  Kiki knelt to tie her shoes. “Thanks tons.”

  “Hmm. Find anything?”

  She produced the spoon, tucked into an evidence bag.

  “The significance of which . . . ?”

  She shrugged. “Loose ends. I hate ’em.”

  Walter Mulroney approached with two of his structures crew, both wearing Tyvek. He began instructing them about which avionics controls to remove first, including the panel that should have warned the pilots of the reverser deployment.

  Tommy turned to Peter. “Why are you still looking for that valve thing.” He pronounced it thang. “I thought the reverser problem was the culprit.”

  The engineer sighed irritably. “Loose ends,” he said, moving toward the evidence tables. “I hate them.”

  KEIZER CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

  The questions began with the lawsuits that Bud Wheeler—owner of the farmhouse where the starboard wing had been found—had filed against the NTSB, CascadeAir, Vermeer Aircraft, the pilots’ estates, the Air Line Pilots Association, Patterson-Pate Industries, Portland International Airport, and, most specifically, Peter Kim.

  Susan wasn’t happy to be discussing a case that, she felt, had been the product of Peter’s arrogance. Mercifully, it delayed discussion of the obvious pilot error.

  VALENCE AIRFIELD

  Ray Calabrese arrived from his hotel in Wilsonville exactly as three cars from the FBI’s Portland field office pulled into the muddy parking lot. Everyone climbed out and sprinted through the torrential rain for the safety of the hangar.

  Ray spotted Tommy and Kiki dashing from the wrecked plane to its unwrecked clone. He wondered what was up.

  The agents gathered around Ray. “Talk to security first,” he said. “Get the names of everyone who was here last night. You: dust the pay phone out front and any other phones you can find. You: get me a judge who’ll cut a warrant. I want to be able to search every room in their hotel by noon.”

  His agents scattered.

  Kiki strapped herself into the copilot’s seat of the Vermeer swap-out and pointed to the left-hand seat. “Park it.”

  Tommy parked it.

  Kiki eyed the monitors and banks of equipment before them, deciding which surface of the spoon to tap with. She chose the edge of the ladle. She reached out, tapped the panel nearest her seat. She frowned, shook her head.

  She tapped the next one. Her grin brightened the flight deck, her eyes popping wide.

  “Tommy,” she whispered. “This is it. This is what Kazmanski saw just before everything went haywire. This is the monitor he tapped.”

  Tommy leaned over to his right, squinted at the panel. He said, “Sumbitch.”

  Russ Kazmanski had seen something odd on the monitor of the Gamelan flight data recorder.

  They couldn’t have planned it better if they’d hired a choreographer. Ray marched into the hangar as Tommy Tomzak and Kiki Duvall emerged from the undamaged jetliner and jogged down the portable stairs. Peter Kim, his head down and a plastic bag in his hand, crossed from the other side of the hangar. All four converged in the middle.

  “Tomzak.” Ray nodded. “Something strange has come up. It’s looking like this whole thing is linked to the Irish terrorists, after all.”

  Tommy said, “We found something weird, too. Hey, Peter. What do you got?”

  Peter Kim cleared his throat. He was clearly annoyed about something. Ray had met the slight, intense man only a couple of times, but he always seemed annoyed; just more so now than usual.

  Peter held up a plastic evidence bag marked LEGACY GOOD SAMARITAN HOSPITAL. “I found the hydraulic isolation valve from engine number three. Seems it was lodged in the thigh of a survivor.”

  Kiki said, “What’s wrong with it?”

  Peter’s face grew darker. He held up the bag for the others to see. “Nothing. It looks pristine.”

  Ray glanced at his watch. “Can this wait? I—”

  “If the thrust reversers kicked in by accident,” Peter cut him off, “this device should show scoring, here and here.”

  He pointed to the device.

  Tommy said, “Looks okay to me.”

  “Yes. Which indicates the deployment was not an accident. It was an ordered deployment.”

  Kiki squinted at the device in the bag. “That’s crazy! You’ve gone from assuming the pilots were criminally negligent to just plain criminals. I don’t buy that they’d purposely crash—”

  “Of course not.” Peter’s imperious tone increased a notch. “I’ve already accounted for the other valves from engine number three, and they look perfectly normal, too. And that’s not logical. If you deploy the reverser and only one or two blocker panels descend, the other valves—the ones governing the parts that fail to descend—should show scoring. If it’s an accidental deployment, then the valves governing the blockers that do descend show scoring. For all of the valves to look fine after a partial deployment makes no sense. It means some of the blockers were ordered shut and others ordered to stay open. Engines aren’t made to do that. You couldn’t sit on the flight deck and orchestrate something like that if your life depended on it. Which, of course, in this case, it did.”

  Ray said, “Sabotage?”

  Peter shrugged his narrow shoulders, rippling the otherwise perfect lines of his designer suit.

  Kiki said, “Could the flight data recorder do this?”

  “No,” Peter said. “It records problems, that’s all.”

  But Ray was shaking his head. “Silverman said his company’s recorders are programmed to fix minor faults, if they’ve recorded them before. The Gamelans can learn. And they’re proactive.”

  “Active,” Peter corrected absently, his mind racing. “The opposite of reactive is active.”

  Without any warning, Tommy said, “Shit!” and reached into his shirt pocket for his ear jack.

  HOLIDAY INN, PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

  The Danvers family sat hip to hip to hip, red-eyed, glued to Susan Tanaka’s press conference. Isaiah Grey sat on the bed, watching. He knew what was coming, and he wanted—no, needed—to be here for their questions. And their recriminations.


  Neither Tommy nor Susan had sent him. It wasn’t his job to be the Danvers’ counselor, but he didn’t want the family to be alone when the words pilot error were spoken. As the only pilot on the primary Go-Team, he felt a link to Meghan Danvers. He felt he owed it to her and her family to be here for this.

  “Anything further on a cause for the crash?” an off-screen reporter asked.

  Isaiah watched as Susan Tanaka adjusted her microphones. “Ah, yes. Our Go-Team has made a preliminary finding. I repeat, this is preliminary. There’s much investigating to do yet. According to our work so far—”

  Susan paused, frowned, reached into the pocket of her raisin-colored blazer, and withdrew something. “Ah. Can you hold on a moment, please?” she asked the journalists.

  Isaiah recognized her ear jack, identical to the one in his pocket. Susan placed her legal pad in front of the bouquet of microphones and half turned, speaking into the voice wand.

  James Danvers leaned around his mother-in-law and made eye contact with Isaiah. The baby on Danvers’ leg chirped gleefully. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t—” Isaiah’s comm unit pinged, too. “Hang on.” He slipped his on.

  The Danvers family watched him (live) and Susan (on TV) doing the exact same thing.

  “What’s up?” Isaiah whispered into the voice wand.

  “Isaiah? It’s Kiki. Are you with the Danverses?”

  “Yes.” On the TV screen, Susan Tanaka’s eyes grew wide.

  “Tommy’s talking to Susan right now,” Kiki said. “I hope we stopped you in time.”

  “Stopped?”

  On the screen, Susan pushed back her shoulders, stood a little bit taller, and returned to the press microphones. “Ladies and gentlemen . . .” she started.

  In his ear, Isaiah heard Kiki say, “It was sabotage, Isaiah. Not pilot error. Don’t tell them Captain Danvers did this!”