Final Approach

by John J. Nance

  He loved the chess analogy. It had kept professional life in perspective during some dark days, when miscalculation born of not being from the world of aviation had nearly trapped him.

  There were dangers, though. Even pawns like Farris could turn on you if you let them. The very move you fail to consider will always be the one that gets you. Chess was like that, and so was the job of associate administrator, and he was a master at both.

  Bill Caldwell realized he had been drumming his fingers loudly on his rather plain desktop and willed himself to stop, getting up suddenly and aiming his athletic body toward the door as he double-checked his watch. He had a meeting in ten minutes four floors below, and as usual, he wanted to time it to the second. He liked the fact that people around 800 Independence could set their watches by his precise movements. If Bill Caldwell said he’d arrive at a given time, you could bank on it, and that slightly unnerved everyone, giving him the upper hand—keeping him one move ahead.

  As Caldwell walked out of his office on the ninth floor, Beverly Bronson walked into Dean Farris’s office one floor below, her teased auburn hair cascading over broad shoulders draped by a soft chiffon blouse which clung to and emphasized what the males in the NTSB were sure was the most magnificent female figure in U.S. government service. Miss Bronson had been appointed by parties unknown on the Hill to a job in NTSB public and governmental affairs, and had proven good at congressional liaison. It was her job to protect the image of the Board, especially in front of the congressional committees that controlled its budget. She was also amazingly adept at keeping track of NTSB gossip: what the troops were doing, who was sleeping with whom, and who might be secretly talking to the outside world about NTSB internal business. Her success in that area had earned her the suspicion of nearly everyone on the eighth floor—except Dean Farris.

  10

  Tuesday morning, October 16

  The group of worried men in the boardroom of Rogers Drilling in downtown New Orleans had been filling the air with tobacco smoke and nervous profanity for the past hour. Now they were listening in silence as Forrest Rogers called the fishing camp one more time, the clock now showing 8 A.M. The weary voice on the other end came through the speakerphone tinged with a Cajun accent and the distinctive rhythm of bayou country. The man assured them that Walter Calley had not shown up, and yes, as he had already promised them, he would call the moment the errant electronics engineer arrived—if he did.

  Rogers launched a felt-tip pen at the far wall. “Goddammit! Where the hell is he?”

  “Forrest, that tape’ll be here in a few hours, I suspect. You said he sent it Sunday?”

  “Said he did.”

  “Okay. Let’s all calm down. We don’t know what Walter has or hasn’t done.”

  Rogers whirled on him. “What he’s apparently done somehow, Edward, is murder the man it took us damn near two decades to get into the U.S. Congress, and by the by, he killed about a hundred other folks at the same time! I don’t know how, but the son of a bitch killed Larry Wilkins, the white man’s one true hope in this screwed up country! That good enough for you? I still say we call the FBI.”

  “Hold on, damn it!” A meticulously groomed man in the far corner of the room held up his hand, and the others listened respectfully. “The last gawdammed thing we’re going to do is call the very bunch of mindless hounds who’ve been trackin’ and doggin’ every move of every conservative organization since Bobby Kennedy declared war on the South … since before most of you boys were shavin’ age. Now, maybe Mr. Calley’s gone and lost his mind and become a mass murderer, and maybe he hasn’t. Maybe he knows something. He told you—you said it, Forrest, I didn’t—that he had good reason for what he did, and he wanted to explain, right?”

  “Yeah,” Rogers said, “yeah, Bill, and he also admitted he persuaded Larry to fly to Kansas City.”

  “But we don’t know why, now do we? Until we hear his tape, or hear him explain, we don’t know why. Could be someone else killed Larry and they’re after Calley to shut him up.”

  Forrest Rogers paused, then looked the man in the eye. “I figure at least that’s what Walter thinks, the way he sounded. But what we do know, Bill, is this: Larry Wilkins was murdered, if not by Walter, then by somebody else. Walter told me that himself.”

  “Okay.” Bill nodded and smiled. “Okay, so that’s what we do in the meantime.” He turned to a sandy-haired young man sitting at the long table. “Jess? You arrange to have Larry’s office issue a press release or hold a press conference this afternoon, an’ announce that they’ve got proof positive it was an assassination. Get all the networks and news people in a frenzy. Have ’em say the details will be revealed in a couple of days, and then either we’ll turn over the idiot himself if he did it, or relay what he knows to the world. Hell, we may just have us a martyr here, and I think Larry would have wanted it that way—if he had to go in the first place, of course. He’s not the first one gave his life to get this country back in control.” Bill sat down heavily and looked at the group. “An’ boys … he won’t be the last, either.”

  Forrest Rogers looked startled. “We can’t turn him over to the FBI!”

  “What do you mean, Forrest?”

  “With what he knows about all of us, Larry’s promises and agenda, and who supports us around this town. Walter, remember, was an important part of the campaign team. He was up there at that factory because Larry asked him to be there. You told me that. I didn’t know he was spying. Anyway, if he got really scared and was facing murder charges, he’d probably start talking, and the public—they’d be so infuriated we’d never get anyone else elected.”

  Bill stayed silent for a few seconds, looking straight at Forrest Rogers without changing expression. “What are you recommending?”

  “Christ, I don’t know. But we can’t just throw him to the wolves, can we?”

  Walter Calley punched the small light on his digital watch and read 8:05 A.M. The air in the Camaro was stale, covered as it was with hay, but worming his way back inside had been the only method he had of staying warm. There were extra clothes in the trunk, but no blankets.

  He had stayed flat on his belly in the open loft of the barn until sundown, silently watching through the open doors, noting the helicopter that flew back and forth over the area for several hours before noon and the police cars that roared up the road and then back again, none of them spotting the telltale tire tracks leading into the pasture.

  In midafternoon a sheriff’s deputy had turned into the field. Walter had quietly cocked his gun as the young man got out and walked to the barn to look in. He had prayed the deputy would see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing, and his prayer was answered. The thought of having to actually shoot someone was horrifying, but he could not let himself be captured. The lawman had returned to his car and motored off to the west, oblivious of the firepower that had followed his every move near the barn. Walter saw him stop and approach another barnlike structure in another field, moving with equal disinterest and lack of caution. After sundown Walter had returned to the car for a fitful night.

  If I’m not found before tomorrow, he had decided, I’ll take off cross-country on foot. He had been trained well in the Army how to “E and E”—escape and evade. This was his neck of the woods after all, and the fishing camp couldn’t be more than 40 miles.

  Carefully and slowly he rolled down the driver’s window and hauled himself through the hay to the surface, stopping and listening at intervals, expecting to hear the collective click of a dozen revolver hammers as his head came into filtered daylight in the ruined old barn.

  Instead, the sedate sounds of distant birdcalls on a frosty morning meadow greeted him, shafts of sunlight slicing through the musty interior. After pulling what he needed from the trunk, he covered the car completely once more with hay and took up his position in the loft again to wait out the daylight, taking stock of his meager supplies. Fortunately he’d brought some water and snack foods—an old habit.
He could last several days on those alone, and by wearing several layers of clothes for warmth and using the stars for navigation, he should be able to make ten miles or so a night. The police and FBI would be looking for a Camaro, not a midnight evader: one man traveling by foot in the darkness. He had a fighting chance.

  At the same moment, 600 miles to the north in Kansas City, NTSB investigator Nick Gardner smiled a slightly perverse smile as he snapped off the small, plastic radio in his hotel room, having just heard a local news station play the Kansas City control-tower recording from Friday night. The FAA and NTSB would go crazy looking for the source of the leak, and he was it.

  The original audio tape—a reel from a machine in the tower which slowly recorded all radio activity to and from the tower’s radios—was still in the possession of the control-tower chief, who would undoubtedly appear before his scandalized superiors shortly clutching that tape to show it had not been stolen. That would confuse FAA headquarters for at least a few hours. But the tower chief had made an official duplicate for the NTSB investigators to examine, and Nick, as chairman of the air-traffic-control group, had surreptitiously copied that one, slipping the cassette to a local radio news reporter Monday night in the airport hotel parking lot. There would be no way to prove which dub had been copied, and Nick was counting on that uncertainty to keep himself employed.

  “I want the world to hear for themselves that the controller never mentioned—never mentioned, mind you—the possibility of windshear while the Airbus was on its first approach,” he had told the reporter, who promised to give the tape to the national media as well. He would have liked to explain why he knew the FAA so very well, but the explanation would have make him seem biased and unreliable as a source.

  I am biased, he thought, but not unreliable. But if I tell the reporter I’m a former air traffic controller myself, he won’t trust me. For over a decade he had worked the scopes, almost destroying his life, the lousy excuse for FAA management making the high-pressure job impossibly stressful. In the face of failing health, chain-smoking, chronic migraine headaches, and dangerous blood-pressure levels, he had been granted medical retirement just two months before the illegal PATCO controllers strike—which was the only reason he had been employable by the NTSB, all the PATCO strikers having been barred from other government positions. Nick’s great escape had proven a perfect solution, but he couldn’t forget his past, or the things within the air-traffic-control system that still cried out for change.

  By 10 A.M. in Washington, all three television networks and a host of radio networks had played the tape, and by 11 A.M.—as Gardner knew would happen—accusations, recriminations, and frantic phone calls were erupting in reaction. Once again, an FAA-controlled tape had found its way into the public domain.

  By 11:20 A.M. in his Washington office, NTSB Chairman Dean Farris had replaced the receiver with his ears red and his blood pressure rising. FAA Associate Administrator Bill Caldwell’s accusations were infuriating. How the hell could Caldwell be sure it wasn’t his own FAA people in Kansas City who released the tower tape? There was no justification, he had sputtered at Caldwell, for concluding that the NTSB team had leaked the tape to the media. And in any event, it probably didn’t matter.

  Farris had punched Wallingford’s cellular phone number with poorly contained fury, calculating a high probability that he was responsible and jumping at the chance to ream him out.

  “Joe? What do you know about the leak of the tower tapes?”

  There was momentary silence on the other end, and Farris interpreted it darkly.

  “Nothing. I just heard about it a few minutes ago.”

  “You know that came from our people, don’t you? That was the NTSB’s copy they played.” Farris tossed it out as a statement of fact, listening carefully for the tone of the reply, which was that of an offended man.

  “What? Where did you get that idea, Mr. Chairman?”

  “The FAA accounted for their tape. Have you accounted for yours?”

  “Nick Gardner is in charge of the ATC group. I’m looking for him now, but he wouldn’t—”

  “Bullshit, Joe. Under your loose control, I’m surprised you haven’t asked the media in as a formal party to the investigation.”

  There was silence, and with perverse satisfaction, Farris could imagine Joe Wallingford counting to ten—which, in effect, he was.

  “Mr. Chairman, that was uncalled for … not to mention an insult.”

  “If the shoe fits, Joe.”

  “It does not.” Joe realized he was squeezing the phone in anger.

  “Perhaps. In the meantime, the FAA is convinced we did it, and they’re madder than hell. On top of that, the media is hammering away at sabotage on every network. They’re convinced someone murdered Larry Wilkins and took all those passengers with him, and Caldwell is saying he’s all but convinced the flight-control system of the A320 was sabotaged by radio waves from the ground! I’m sitting in the middle of mass hysteria. I need you back here now.”

  Joe thought he’d misunderstood. Farris couldn’t be ordering him to fly home. “What?”

  “I want you to head back here this afternoon.”

  “I’m in the middle of the field investigation.” This is unbelievable, Joe thought. The man has no concept of what we do out here.

  “Joe, follow orders, for Christ’s sake. Get back here. Leave Andy Wallace in charge. He can handle it. First thing when you get back, I want you to go up to Caldwell and explain what happened with the tower tape—if you can, that is. You say Nick’s people didn’t do it?”

  “That’s my assumption.”

  “Good. You go tell Caldwell.”

  Joe punched the disconnect button on his phone as he fumbled for the list of phone numbers to the cellular phones carried by the rest of his team. He located Nick’s at last, punching in the numbers and waiting for his voice, which came on line with the first ring.

  The conversation was quick. Yes, he had heard the broadcast. No, he hadn’t leaked the tape, and for that matter, no one had ever had unsupervised control of the NTSB’s tape. In short, the tower had to be responsible. The tower personnel were lying.

  “Nick, you are certain? I’m going to be defending us to Farris and to the FAA.”

  “I’m certain,” he replied.

  There was a 3 P.M. departure to Washington, and Joe reluctantly booked himself on the flight before beginning the process of turning the reins over to Andy. There were too many things to do—too many loose ends. Talk to all the group chairmen, check the progress of wreckage removal and the search for the CVR, review the witness interview progress, check in with Barbara, and then worry through two more pages of “to do” items on his legal pad. He had rushed out of his room mentally going over it all when two men from Airbus caught him in the hotel foyer, their faces gray and serious, their mood funereal.

  “We would have gone to Ms. Rawlson, but since she’s in the hospital …”

  “I understand.”

  André Charat from Airbus had been assigned to Barbara’s systems group, and the other man, Robert d’Angosta, was an Airbus technical support representative from Toulouse, France. Joe directed them to the conference room, mildly apprehensive and on guard.

  Charat began, clearing his throat and talking to his shoes. “We are very concerned, Mr. Wallingford, that the technical realities of the 320’s flight-control system be clearly understood.”

  “By the entire team, I assume?”

  “Yes, and most importantly, by you. You are the decision maker.”

  “Hey, now, I’m only in charge of the field investigation,” he began. Charat raised his hand and waved Joe to a verbal halt.

  “You set the pace, Mr. Wallingford. You need to know.”

  Joe had noticed d’Angosta holding a leather portfolio. He opened it at Charat’s nod and began spreading electrical-system diagrams on the table as Charat launched into an abbreviated but precise explanation of the flight-control computers in the A3
20 and why the probability that all of them could fail simultaneously so as to cause an uncommanded pitch down was almost to the threshold of impossible.

  “You would stand a better chance of winning the lottery,” he said at last, watching Joe for a reaction and looking him in the eye for the first time.

  “How about EMI? Electromagnetic interference? Possible?”

  “Yes …,” Charat began slowly, shifting his gaze to the table, remembering the thousands of hours of discussions with FAA people, airline executives, and even French aviation authorities, all nervous over a new technology, “but it’s only possible if you have a monstrously powerful transmitter very, very close, as close as 300 feet, and even then the worst that could happen is some sort of momentary instability. Since there are no such powerful radar or radio sources anywhere close to Kansas City Airport, that means this simply isn’t a valid possibility.”

  “Have you seen the flight-data-recorder readouts?”

  “Yes. Your Walt Rogers provided those a few hours ago. Mr. Wallingford, those readouts prove our point, don’t you see?”

  Joe was surprised, and Charat noticed, nodding before the word was out of Joe’s mouth: “Why?”

  Charat shifted in his chair, his right hand gesturing in an intricate pattern as if grasping an invisible control stick, an accomplished mime describing the control inputs while his left hand simulated the airplane responding to those commands. “Because, the readout shows that the flight controls—in this case the elevator—was operating in a positive manner. First nose down, then a steady nose up. No transient computer failure, electrical short, or stray radio-induced signal would have let the elevator operate in such middle ranges. If there had been a control failure to the down position, the elevator surface would have slammed to full nose-down deflection and stayed there. Since here it was operating short of that—as we can see from that readout—that proves that only one thing could have caused this accident.”