Final Approach

by John J. Nance

  “I’m very sorry, sir. I’m …”

  Weiss dropped his hand. “Please go. Please get out of here.”

  Jerry began to turn, but Weiss caught him by the shoulder again.

  “Tell your boss I will remember their display of concern. I will remember.…” He dropped his arm.

  Weiss dropped his eyes to the ground, and Jerry turned with a crimson face and beat a hasty retreat, his stomach knotted and a lump in his throat, tossing the flowers in the backseat as he got behind the wheel in utter dismay.

  Mark Weiss watched the young man go as his mother-in-law clung to him, sobbing softly. Kim’s father was recovering from his heart attack, but the shock of his daughter’s and grandsons’ deaths had been too great, and his doctors refused to let him leave the hospital.

  The tears and pain of friends and relatives, the human togetherness in grief, was what they all needed now. Since Mark and Kim had come from Dallas—grown up in Dallas—there had been no hesitation regarding the burial site. Missouri had been their home for only a few years, and there were few attachments there, except for the house. The bitter loneliness of facing that empty dwelling lay ahead, and it was something Mark dreaded. It had been a home. Now it was just a house, and one he could never live in again without them. He would have to pack and store their possessions and put the house on the market as soon as possible. Exactly where he would go was an open question, but in the meantime, he intended to use the time in Dallas to advantage to look into North America’s operations and its people, starting with the captain.

  A large man at the back of the crowd suddenly caught his eye as the fellow turned to move away, apparently trying to be unobtrusive. Mark was startled, but recognized him instantly, and gently handed over his mother-in-law to a friend as he moved toward the departing figure, catching up with him at the curb.

  “Captain Kaminsky?”

  Pete Kaminsky turned slowly, embarrassed, his head bowed and his face glistening.

  “I … didn’t want you to see me,” he said slowly, “I just needed to come. To be with you folks.” With his shoulders hunched over and a pair of worn leather gloves kneaded slowly by his fingers, Mark thought him the saddest man he had ever seen. As deeply in pain as he.

  “You didn’t need to come, Captain, but I appreciate it more than you know.” Mark spoke the words softly, matching Kaminsky’s tones. “How are you? How are you doing?”

  Pete looked up, a hollowness to his eyes that Mark understood all too well. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Yes it does.”

  “No!” The word was a sharp report, his head shaking from side to side emphatically. “I’ve tried to go to as many as I could. All my passengers … their funerals. I owe everyone at least that.” He grimaced and shut his eyes, his teeth showing through drawn lips. “Although a lot of good that does them now.”

  There was a cold, concrete bench a few feet away, and Mark guided Kaminsky to it, forcing him to sit.

  “This was not your fault. My family’s death was not your fault in any way. Don’t you understand that?”

  Those haunted eyes again. “I was in command, Dr. Weiss. I was responsible. I …” Pete dropped his head again, a grimace on his face, his eyes squinted shut, fighting for control, and finally looking up again.

  Lord, Mark thought, the man is in real agony—and in need of help.

  “I should be over there. Not them. I promised you,” Pete said. “I sat there, I sat there and said …” He waved his arm off toward the north, “‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘We’ll take … very good care of them,’ I said. I can’t forget that.”

  “Pete, are you married?”

  He was looking down again. “I lost my wife to cancer over ten years ago. We never had kids.”

  “Where is home?”

  “Kansas City.”

  “And you’re all alone up there?”

  Pete Kaminsky looked up at Mark Weiss and tried to smile. “Dr. Weiss, please don’t worry about me. Please.” He got to his feet suddenly, readjusting his overcoat and hesitating for a second as Mark extended his hand, taking it finally, his handshake uncertain. “I’ve got to go. If there’s anything I can do …” Pete’s voice trailed off, and Mark filled the void.

  “I’ll be back up there next week. I’d like to get together.”

  “That’s all right, I …”

  “No, I’m serious.” Mark handed him a piece of notepaper and a pen. “For your phone number.”

  Pete Kaminsky hesitated, then took the paper and quickly wrote down the number before handing it back without a word.

  “Pete, you mustn’t take this on yourself.”

  He nodded unconvincingly, turned, and left, making his way to what had to be a rental car as Mark moved back toward the graves and the family members. Kim and the boys had been in such a hurry to get to Dallas. And in the end, Dallas was where they would stay.

  As he walked back toward the group, a sleek Boeing 737 soared overhead, climbing out of Love Field into the cold, blue Texas sky bound for some distant destination, filled with trusting passengers. But for the first time in years, Mark Weiss refused to notice.

  14

  Monday, October 22

  Dr. Mark Weiss sat fulminating in a window seat aboard the 6 A.M. nonstop from Dallas to Washington National, his eyes narrowed and hard, his attention riveted on two passengers in the first-class cabin ahead whose conversation he had overheard in the boarding lounge. He didn’t know their names, but their words had told the story: they were defense attorneys for North America’s insurance carrier, carelessly discussing their efforts to fight the growing number of damage suits being filed against North America, efforts that would involve investigations into the lives of any surviving family who became a plaintiff. Mark had not thought of filing a lawsuit as yet. It had seemed obscene. But ten minutes of listening to the two lawyers changed his mind.

  The weekend had been an exercise in stress and emotional upheaval following the Friday funeral. Friday night the enormity of losing his family had crashed in on him, leaving him in the deepest well of gloom and despair of his life, and only the need to know what had killed them seemed to justify going on. The night had crawled by, a slow-motion agony.

  Saturday morning he pulled himself together and headed toward North America’s terminal at DFW Airport, intent on asking quiet questions about Captain Timson. He was within a mile of the terminal when he heard a radio report of the Wilkins news conference and the charges of military sabotage by electronic interference. Mark pulled to the side of the road in deep thought, the idea of questioning pilots about Timson suddenly pointless. If radio interference had killed Kim and the boys, what was the point of digging into Dick Timson’s background?

  Yet, those were only allegations, and he needed to keep busy. Mark put the car back in gear and continued toward the airport.

  As a psychologist and a skilled interviewer, he gained the confidence of four separate pilots during the day, one a personal friend of Timson’s, another a former copilot. By midafternoon he had an emerging portrait of the captain as a hunted, frightened personality masquerading as a firm disciplinarian in full and confident control, though he was a skillful pilot in the cockpit. From his work with other airlines, Mark knew the danger signals which prefaced human error in the cockpit, and Timson was beginning to fit the profile.

  Mark spent Sunday with Kim’s family, a desultory day of quiet talks and occasional tears. He had already made his reservation to fly to Washington on Monday morning, determined to press Joe Wallingford of the NTSB to let him get closer to the investigation. With what he had learned Saturday, there were things Wallingford needed to know—even if it turned out the Air Force had caused the crash.

  Barbara Rawlson had made the long-awaited call from Kansas City to Joe’s home late Saturday morning. “Joe, you were right. We found it!”

  “Where I figured?”

  “Just about. It took a lot of digging around in the junkyard to find where the
burned luggage had been dumped. They’d already piled a lot of other garbage over it, but when we finally started sifting through the charred bags, there it was, inside the remains of someone’s suitcase, with a piece of the rib that apparently snagged it still jammed into the mounting bracket. How on earth did you know?”

  “The idea literally woke me up, Barb. Remember the antenna coupler we thought was a smoking gun? I suddenly realized that if it could be dragged out of the 737 and deposited in the wreckage of the Airbus, the cockpit voice recorder could have been dragged out of the Airbus the same way and left with the 737 wreckage. I knew you’d looked at everything in the structural wreckage, though, so the idea didn’t make much sense until I remembered the bags, and how we usually cart them off as quickly as possible. When I started looking at the way the planes hit—and remembered the missing bracket and the scars in the A320’s tail you showed me—I was almost certain.”

  “Well, you nailed it, Joe! That’s where it was.”

  “Wonderful. Come home. Bring the box.”

  “On my way,” she replied, in a stronger voice than she’d used in a week. Joe was pleased with the strength, and her recovery.

  Barbara and the two staff members she had taken with her arrived back at NTSB headquarters Saturday night, delivering the CVR box to the chief lab technician, who spent all day Sunday digging out the tape, checking it, and copying certain channels of it onto backup reels and cassettes. By 11 A.M. Monday the first copy was placed on Joe’s desk just as Dr. Mark Weiss arrived outside his open door. Mark stayed out of view, respectfully at first, waiting for the lab chief to finish briefing Wallingford and trying not to eavesdrop, but in the carpetless hallway, he couldn’t help but overhear the conversation within. When the lab chief had left and he entered the office, Joe was holding the audio cassette, and Mark was painfully aware of what it contained.

  “Mr. Wallingford? Excuse me for just dropping in. I’m Dr. Mark Weiss. We met at the hospital in Kansas City last week. I’m the one who wanted to join the investigation.”

  “Oh. Certainly, Doctor, come in. Sit down, please. What brings you to town so soon?”

  Joe noticed Mark looking at the cassette in his hands, but given his intense interest, identifying it might not be wise. Without comment Joe slipped the cassette into his desk drawer, looking back at Mark with a subdued, friendly expression, acutely aware of what the psychologist had lost. “What can I do for you?”

  Mark told him about his probing of the North America pilots. “I’m convinced that Timson was under intense pressure, and the people I talked to indirectly confirmed what I told you in Kansas City about his being scared for his job and very insecure, though he masked it effectively with stern forcefulness. The point is that such pressure, and lack of self-assurance, are often some of the major warning signs of an impending human-error accident, especially where authority figures and managers are concerned.” He outlined his professional experience with airline pilots under stress, watching for any crack in Joe’s resolve to keep him out of the official probe. Unfortunately, there was none.

  “This is tough, Doctor.”

  “Mark, please.”

  “Okay Mark. This is tough, because I know you’re qualified, but we do have psychologists on staff, and even one on the Board.” Joe moved forward in his chair. “And in fact, with what we learned on Friday, human error probably played no role in this. Nevertheless, Andy Wallace, whom you’ve met, is a human-performance expert who needs to hear these things you’re telling me, but he’s back in Kansas City this morning to do a more in-depth interview of Captain Timson.”

  “Oh? When is that scheduled?”

  “Around one, I believe, their time.”

  “Will that be public record?”

  “Sure, in a few weeks, when we get it filed. Actually, I can get you a copy probably within a week. I’ll be happy to help you with anything that’s officially releasable.”

  Mark looked him in the eye with an intensity Joe found disturbing. Had the man not lost so much, Joe thought, I’d really resent his pressure. “Mr. Wallingford, I …”

  Another investigator interrupted them, asking Joe to step into the hall for a quick conference on an unrelated matter. Mark was left alone in the office while Joe’s voice echoed from the hallway, then mixed with two pairs of footsteps and receded into the distance.

  The tape was inside the top drawer. He could pocket it and be gone in an instant make a quick copy somewhere, and return it later, sheepishly, apologizing for acting on impulse. There were probably no laws other than petty theft governing such a thing, and the answer to what had happened to Kim and the boys might—just might—reside in the timbre and the meter and the tonal qualities of the voices on that tape, elements which he would never pull out of a written transcript.

  Mark stood up, only marginally in control. He reached over and nudged the drawer, and as expected, it gave, moving a few millimeters as he struggled with himself. He was a professional and a principled individual who valued his reputation. But he valued his family more, and the need to know was overwhelming. But if he took that tape …

  The sound of footsteps and voices made the decision for him. They were too close. There was not enough time. Quietly he nudged the drawer back in place and sat down, a few seconds before Joe Wallingford swung back through the door with an apology and sat down.

  “You were saying, Doctor, when we were interrupted?”

  Mark nodded. “Just this. Please keep me in the loop. Don’t write me off just because of my family. I can be very useful to you.”

  There was no thought in Joe’s mind of throwing some platitude back at the man. He was probably correct.

  He shook Joe’s hand and left, the urgency of a rapidly emerging plan swimming through his thoughts, the need to check into a hotel and use a phone becoming a burning priority.

  Mark reclaimed his small bag from the guard in the main lobby and took a cab to the Hyatt, checking into a room on the twelfth floor.

  Andy Wallace would be interviewing Timson in midafternoon, and since the transcript of that interview would be available within a week, everything Timson said could be examined in detail. Wallace had not heard the cockpit tape—no one had, except, perhaps, the technician who delivered it. He had overheard Joe lamenting the fact that it had arrived after Andy left for the airport. So if Andy couldn’t tell Timson what was on it, and Timson couldn’t hear it, and no transcript existed, then with the copilot gone, there was a small window of opportunity for a very specific, if risky, test.

  Before leaving the eighth floor, Mark had leaned into an office at random and asked for the name of the NTSB lab technician. Phil Baker, he was told, which was exactly what he needed to know.

  Mark entered the hotel room and went straight to the phone. He opened his bag and took out a small cassette recorder and a telephone suction-cup pickup, which he carefully attached to the receiver before punching the record button and phoning the front desk.

  “Could you tell me the date and the time, please?”

  The desk clerk complied cheerfully, if in a puzzled tone of voice, and Mark thanked her and hung up, lifting the receiver then to dial the number of Truman Hospital in Kansas City, asking for room 940-E.

  When the call from Washington was over, Dick Timson replaced the handset in room 940-E with a puzzled look on his face which changed ever so slightly to the shadow of a smile.

  “Who was that, Dick?” Louise Timson asked quietly.

  He looked at her at last. “Strange call, and a lucky break. So the controls were screwed up! I told the copilot to take it. I said, ‘My stick’s not responding. Take it Don, take it.’”

  His wife sat up, alert, looking puzzled. “You remember that now?”

  “No.” He shook his head slowly, a confused look clouding his eyes as he fought to concentrate. “I don’t remember saying that, but if it’s on the tape, I better remember saying that.”

  “I don’t understand.” Her voice was strained as s
he sat down on the edge of his bed.

  He looked her in the eye for a few seconds, not really seeing her, but pleading silently for an understanding he had never let her provide. “Why … why can’t I remember, Louise? It’s tearing me up.”

  “Because you’ve been through a terrible trauma and a skull fracture. Forgetting is normal.”

  She said the words firmly, then turned and left the room, upset and not wanting him to see. She was used to her husband being fully in control, and it scared her to see him searching.

  Dick Timson sighed at her departure. He was getting somewhat used to his wife’s sudden exits. In Dick Timson’s estimation, his wife had always been flighty and unreliable and overly emotional. This was nothing unusual. He leaned back and closed his eyes, another wave of apprehension washing over him. Would they let him retire honorably? Or would he be faced with the same dilemma so many pilots found themselves facing as companies and jobs collapsed during the deregulation wars: and what do you do for a living? How could he possibly answer that if he didn’t have North America?

  Louise Timson was in an agony of her own, standing outside the room where Jill and Jimmy Manning continued their slow recovery from the disaster wreaked by her husband’s airplane. She had stood there many times in the past week, never going in, but deeply moved, the enormity of the accident still sinking in. It was all a nightmare she couldn’t quite believe, but it wouldn’t go away. Whenever she awoke, it was still there: her husband’s plane had crashed, and hundreds of lives had been permanently changed, and she could do absolutely nothing to change that reality.

  The playing of the CVR tape was set for 2 P.M., and Joe was straining at the traces to get to it. He had wanted to listen to the tape by himself first, but the day’s frantic pace had prevented it. He would have to wait like the others.

  Andy had called from Kansas City just as Joe tried to leave his office. The Timson interview, he said, had produced nothing new, but he had been contacted by the FAA’s tower controller, Carl Sellers, when he got back to his hotel. Sellers had been listening to the media’s excited coverage of the Wilkins allegations and the military’s denials that the radar tracking unit had been turned on.