The Savannah Project (Jake Pendleton series)

by Chuck Barrett

  Beth snuggled close to Jake in the chill of the damp night air.

  He put his arm around her. “I’ve never seen Pat like this before. He’s mentioned a couple of things about his past before, but usually he’s very private.”

  “He’s just had too much to drink,” she said. “He’ll feel it tomorrow.”

  The ferry pulled into the dock next to the Westin.

  “I’ll make sure he gets to his room okay.”

  The elevator took them to the sixteenth floor, the top floor of the hotel. Dropping Beth off at their room, he walked McGill down the hall to his room. McGill fumbled with his keycard, finally making a clean swipe and unlocking the door. Jake stayed long enough to make sure McGill was coherent enough to get ready for the day tomorrow.

  “Pat, are you going to be alright? Can I get anything for you before I go?”

  Jake had known his boss had a past he didn’t like to talk about. Now he was starting to understand that part of McGill, although he really wasn’t sure what to say to him.

  McGill looked at him. “Thanks for being a good friend. I’m fine—just too much to drink is all.”

  “Pat, since you knew O’Rourke and all, do you think you should recuse yourself as investigator-in-charge?”

  “Nonsense, Jake. How was I to know that someone I met nearly thirty years ago would be on that airplane? Besides the investigative procedure is the same regardless of who’s on board.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right. It really shouldn’t matter one way or the other.”

  McGill smiled. “You better get back to Beth before she gets jealous. I think she’s on to us.”

  They laughed and Jake walked out.

  He stood outside the door until he heard McGill lock the deadbolt. As he walked down the hallway toward his room his mind had questions. Why was McGill so upset about someone he knew such a long time ago? This O’Rourke sounded like a pretty bad guy, but why did McGill hate him so much?

  At his door, he slid his keycard into the lock, saw the expected green light and heard the click of the release of the door lock. He opened the door—the room was dark except for the light coming in through the sliding glass door. In the darkness he could see the shadowy silhouette of Beth sitting on the bed.

  He closed the door behind him—locking the deadbolt.

  “Alright, Are you naked?”

  A man swiftly moved from the bathroom and placed the barrel of a silenced pistol next to Jake’s right temple.

  With a heavy Irish accent he said, “Not a sound. I want you to know something about a man named Laurence O’Rourke.”

  CHAPTER 18

  The next morning, the Go Team assembled in the conference room shortly before seven a.m. Carol had prearranged breakfast for them. Six silver platters were brought in by the hotel servers.

  McGill pushed his meal away and drank only coffee. Jake grinned, an expected repercussion from McGill’s excess the night before.

  McGill stood. “I want to start this by apologizing for my lack of tactful behavior last night. The fact is we’re working a crash where someone I once knew was onboard. My past relationship has no bearing on how we do business or conduct this investigation. We have procedures and we’ll follow them. I’ll follow them. Any questions or comments before we move on?”

  Jake wasn’t listening. He was troubled about the stranger in his room last night—the first time he’d ever had a gun pointed at him. The man put the gun away after Jake and Beth agreed to listen quietly.

  Beth was angry at him for not calling security after the man left. But, if what the man said was true, Jake would need time to investigate the man’s allegations covertly.

  Covertly and carefully.

  Breakfast was cleared away. McGill unlocked and opened the conference room doors for the group members awaiting the seventhirty briefing.

  During the briefing Jake relayed to the assembly that he had scheduled a call with Donna Greene, the NTSB investigator in Texas. She was to make an early morning visit to the FBO but because of the time zone difference, her briefing to Jake would be around or slightly before noon.

  “I will be meeting today with a representative at the Gulfstream plant to check out the facility they’ve donated for the wreckage,” Jake said.

  “The Air Traffic Control group should meet at the Savannah Air Traffic Control Tower (ATCT) by ten a.m. for data collection,” he added. “This group will review data logs and radio transcripts of the accident, then the hearing with the air traffic controller will follow around ten forty-five.”

  Dave Morris gave a quick briefing and his group left for the accident scene.

  Ben Lewis’ group sat at a table with a stack of manuals and specifications on the Challenger 604. After a quick overview of the material, Ben took his group to the accident scene.

  Larry Kirkland made arrangements for delivery of information on the pilots’ logbooks, duty logs, and pilot certificates and ratings. The National Weather Service information was already on site and ready for review.

  McGill excused himself to make a quick statement in the press briefing room as the investigation of the crash of N319CB got started.

  Jake scanned the room, nearly empty. Kirkland was on the phone and Carol Martin was loading paper into a copy machine. He glanced at his watch, it was already after eight o’clock—he had to hurry. He was due at the Savannah air traffic control facility by nine o’clock but had business at the Gulfstream aircraft facility first.

  As he walked to his car, he couldn’t shake the image of the silencer next to his head or the words that the strange man said.

  CHAPTER 19

  Early morning fog clung to the ground. Thicker near the river and marsh than inland. The forecast called for clearing skies by noon and then clear skies for the remainder of the week with high temperatures around seventy. He turned the black Mustang rental car into the main entrance at the Gulfstream Aircraft Corporation. He mused that Carol Martin had arranged for the Mustang knowing his affinity for sports cars, but knowing Carol, she paid the same rate as a standard vehicle. He was still distracted by the late night visitor but knew he must concentrate to push it out of his mind. At least for the next few hours.

  The guard at the gate checked his credentials and issued him a pass, which he placed above the dashboard in the corner of the windshield. He gave Jake a small map of the Gulfstream complex, then showed him how to get to the empty hangar.

  A Gulfstream representative met him at the hangar. “We haven’t used this hangar for quite a while and won’t need it for a few months, but the boss man wants me to find out how long the NTSB anticipates needing it.”

  Jake replied, “I’m sure the IIC will release the wreckage back to the operator within a few weeks at the most.”

  He and the representative discussed the security requirements and check-in procedures for NTSB personnel and vehicles.

  Twenty minutes later he made the two-minute drive from Gulfstream to the Savannah air traffic control facility. He announced his arrival into the speaker at the gate.

  The red brick building served as the administrative area and housed the TRACON and the air traffic control tower. The building was of newer construction and well maintained, unlike most of the other FAA Air Traffic Control facilities he had visited. He was accustomed to visiting FAA facilities in worn and dilapidated condition due to lack of proper maintenance and upkeep.

  He walked toward the building and noticed a black Harley Davidson Fat Boy motorcycle parked in the lot with a fly rod case attached to a pack on the sissy bar. On the front of the motorcycle was a small tag with a fly fishing graphic in the center and the words “Bite Me” written beneath it. He wondered what type of fly-fishing there was in Savannah.

  The Quality Assurance and Training Specialist, or QATS as the FAA calls it, greeted him at the front door and escorted him down the hallway to the conference room.

  The ATC group was already seated at the conference table awaiting his arrival. Seated aro
und the table were the National Air Traffic Controller’s Association’s Aviation Safety Inspector, a representative from the FAA Air Traffic Safety Oversight Service, the Savannah facility’s air traffic manager, and an FAA Airways Facility representative.

  The air traffic manager informed Jake that the FAA attorney was interviewing the air traffic controller involved in another office prior to the hearing.

  “I called yesterday and made a request for data extractions, statements, certified ATC recordings, certified transcripts, notes, outages, and the like—how are we doing on all that?” Jake asked.

  The manager replied, “We have everything you asked for except the information from Jacksonville Center.” He was referring to the Jacksonville Air Route Traffic Control Center that overlies Savannah ATCT and TRACON airspace. “It will be this afternoon before that data is available. I had one of my staff specialists drive to Hilliard to pick it up.”

  “How long will that take?” Jake asked.

  “It’s a good two-and-a-half-hour drive each way so we better allow for approximately six hours.”

  “That’s considerably longer than I wanted to wait for the data. Any way we can just get a courier to deliver it?”

  “It’s too late for that now, he’s probably half way there.”

  “I guess the Jacksonville Center data will have to wait until tomorrow, then.”

  The QATS brought over a stack of data and explained to Jake and his group the details. The group read over the statements and the outage log, noting only one pertinent outage, the primary radar site. He gave a brief introduction to the group about Savannah TRACON and ATCT. “Savannah has an automated radar tracking system, the ARTS IIE, with both primary and secondary radar displayed on the air traffic controllers’ scopes. However, yesterday morning, the Savannah primary radar was taken down for four hours.”

  Jake interrupted, directing his question to the Airways Facility technician. “Explain to me why the primary radar was taken out of service.”

  “The primary radar was due for its PM’s, preventive maintenance, and a couple of days ago we got an alarm,” the technician replied. “We’ve had to do a couple of resets in the last few days, so we figured it was better to take it down yesterday for three or four hours than risk it failing today.”

  “Why is that?” Jake asked.

  The manager replied for the technician, “St. Patrick’s Day is a high traffic volume period for Savannah. It’s busier than most holidays. The aircraft start trickling in a couple of days before the holiday and then there’s a huge rush in the day before and out the day after St Patrick’s Day. As a matter of fact, with the low visibilities this morning, they’re up to their assholes in alligators right now—very busy. I don’t like to have any equipment outages during St. Patrick’s Day week.”

  The QATS continued, “The ATCT is equipped with digital bright radar indicator terminal equipment, D-BRITE, which provides radar information from the approach control to the tower for purposes of aiding in identifying and sequencing of aircraft. The weather at the airport was marginal visual flight conditions, but due to the low ceilings, instrument approaches were required. The winds were quite strong from the west and runway two-seven was the only runway being used for both takeoffs and landings—”

  “Okay, let’s listen to the tapes,” Jake said.

  The QATS turned on the tape player, noting that the actual recording started two minutes prior to when N319CB checked in on frequency. As the group listened to the recording, Jake jotted down a couple of notes, as did the rest of the group. The tape ended two minutes after the last transmission.

  When the QATS switched off the tape player, Jake asked, “There were a couple of moments of static, what was that?”

  “It could have been some interference from another site or, more likely, an aircraft transmitting on the same frequency, just too weak to understand,” the Airways Facility technician said.

  “Why wouldn’t we be able to understand it if it was another aircraft?”

  “Well, roughly speaking,” the technician continued, “the frequency is 125.3 MHz and we have a twenty-watt transmitter/ receiver located here at Savannah. It’s twenty watts because we are a terminal and we don’t want our transmissions to interfere with any other facility also using 125.3. But it is possible for an aircraft to have line of sight with Savannah and be talking to another facility using the same frequency. The aircraft’s radio though, doesn’t have enough power to transmit clearly over that same distance so all we hear is static.”

  “Is that the only time you get the static?” Jake asked.

  The technician shook his head. “No, there are a multitude of instances that can give us the same result. Sometimes bad weather, like thunderstorms in the area, can cause static. Some aircraft have lousy radios and are extremely difficult to understand. Some handheld radios don’t have enough power to modulate until they are much closer to our site, the same with some older radios. Sometimes even the aircraft’s angle to the site with direction of flight will influence signal. And, just like with our radar, we have blind spots or weak spots that are the results of geographic phenomena that we just can’t explain. There really is no way to determine the source of those carrier signals unless we can actually hear the voice modulation.”

  Jake nodded. “Well, that’s all I have for now. Does anyone else have any questions?” No one raised an issue so Jake looked at the manager. “I guess we’re through with this group for now. Is the controller ready?”

  “I’ll check and the rest of us will get out of your hair,” the manager said. “I’ll send him right in.”

  ”Good, I’m quite interested in his perspective of the accident.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Gregg Kaplan walked out of the briefing room with Cook and the lawyer sent down from the FAA Regional Office. He’d interviewed with the NTSB once before but never with an FAA attorney and it wasn’t something he wanted to do ever again. The lawyer had briefed him on what to expect at the NTSB hearing and interview. The lawyer had been rude and disrespectful, especially when, against the attorney’s advice, Kaplan chose his NATCA Facility Representative to be his representative during the interview with the NTSB. Some investigators had been known to rake the controllers over the coals. His previous encounter with an NTSB investigator had not been a good one and he hoped this one would be better.

  Kaplan and Cook walked into the conference room and sat down.

  Jake introduced the individuals in the room and then said, “My name is Jake Pendleton. I work for the NTSB, Atlanta Field Office, and I’m the lead for the air traffic control portion of the investigation into the crash of N319CB. I want to put your mind at ease, this should be short and relatively painless. This is not going to be an inquisition as you may have been led to believe. That’s not my style.

  “I’ll start with some basic background stuff then move into questions that are related to the accident. If any of us ask anything you don’t understand, please don’t hesitate to ask for clarification, we want you to be as comfortable as the situation will allow. Do you have any questions before we get started?”

  Kaplan shook his head. “None that I can think of.”

  “Let’s get started,” Jake said. “When were you hired by the FAA?”

  “March 5, 1990.”

  “Did you have any prior air traffic control experience?” “None.”

  “Did you attend the FAA Academy?”

  “No, I was a direct hire to Savannah under the Veteran’s Rehabilitation Act.”

  “How long were you in the military?”

  “Eight years, from 1982 until 1990.”

  “What branch?”

  “Army.”

  “What did you do in the Army?”

  “Special Forces Airborne Division.”

  “I’m impressed. You had to stay in good shape for Special Forces, I bet.”

  “Oh, yeah. It was a very strict routine, and very difficult.”

  “What abou
t now? Do you do the same kind of routine?”

  “I have a very strenuous exercise regimen of running and weight lifting. Nothing like the Army, though. I have no health issues at all other than just getting older.”

  Jake smiled. “Don’t we all. What about sleep? Do you have trouble sleeping?”

  “Not really. I usually get a good six to seven hours every night.”

  “What about last night? Did you have trouble last night?”

  Kaplan smiled. He couldn’t tell the investigator about his “good cop, bad cop” adventure with Annie. “Actually, I slept like a baby.”

  “I saw your work schedule, you work shift work,” Jake said. “Do you get fatigued from shift work?”