Final Approach

by John J. Nance

  “Okay.”

  “But your fourth proposition …” She looked at Joe, who shrugged, and at several others in the room, who were equally unsure what to say. “I guess that just flies in the face of what we expect of a pilot, you know? What could cause an experienced captain like this one to make such a mistake?”

  “I have no idea. I’m just following the logical implications that if the captain’s control stick was the source of the nose-down input, then either a malfunction of the stick or a malfunction of the human controlling it must be present. That takes in, of course, a wide range of possible behaviors, but human failure would, it seems to me, be one of the possible mechanisms of failure.”

  Joe was nodding. “Your logic is impeccable, Senator. Upsetting, but impeccable.”

  “Of course, you have possibility number two and the fluctuation you mentioned, Joe,” Barbara added.

  Susan had been leaning back, an elbow propped on the arm of the chair, her chin resting in the palm of her hand. She moved forward now and sighed, examining the table before looking at Joe across the wooden surface. “Joe, maybe it’s just me, but I’m more confused now than ever. We’re back to control failure, control interference, or pilot mistake. That’s where we were when we came in the door forty-five minutes ago!”

  Several were nodding as Joe answered, his right hand gesturing palm up. “I … I can tell you I’m somewhere between disappointed and stunned. I didn’t expect the diatribe against the copilot, but having said that, I’m not sure it’s material. The fact that the copilot eventually took control, though too late, indicates that the key to this entire crash is what happened at the left side control stick. Mistake or malfunction or accidental interdiction? It could be any one of them, especially with that curious noise on the tape. And with the hysteria out there about the radar unit, if we can’t prove it wasn’t on …”

  One of Andy Wallace’s staff members had raised a hand, or more precisely, an index finger. “Have you considered the possibility that if the copilot had taken over sooner, he might have saved them? There’s quite a period of time between his asking, ‘Captain, what are you doing?’ and seizing control.”

  “I don’t follow you,” Joe told him.

  Susan was nodding, and cut in. “What I believe he means is if the copilot saw a problem, why didn’t he act sooner? Did that broadside tongue-lashing from the captain intimidate him? Surely it isn’t standard practice to treat copilots that way. Since this is the chief pilot, I’d say we’ve got some questions here concerning why he is intimidating his copilot, and whether that’s accepted cockpit style for North America crews.”

  “That is, if the copilot was intimidated,” Joe added. “There’s one other inconsistency that’s bothering me. Dick Timson, the captain, told Andy and me in our first interview with him in the hospital that he had been flying the airplane all the way down. Obviously that’s not true.”

  “When was that interview, Joe?” Susan asked.

  “The Monday following the crash.”

  “Oh. You probably shouldn’t put any significance on that contradiction. With a head injury, he could easily be misinterpreting his memories. He could be telling you what he tried to do all the way to impact.”

  He adjourned the meeting then and took Nick Gardner aside, telling him of Bill Caldwell’s demand. “He wants that tape of the tower radio transmissions, Nick. Take it up there this afternoon, would you?”

  Joe was startled to see a wide-eyed look of surprise on Nick’s face, and he resisted putting a sinister interpretation on it. Gardner recovered quickly. “I’ll go see if I can get it.”

  “Don’t you have it, Nick?”

  “After … after that release, I wasn’t terribly worried about its security. But I think I can lay my hands on it.”

  Joe fixed him with a questioning gaze for perhaps ten seconds, but Nick did not look away. “Joe?”

  “Nick, I’m sorry to say this, but if you’re not being straight with me—if you haven’t been up to now—this is the last chance to do so.”

  “Are you accusing me of lying, Joe?”

  “I’m telling you that in the hopefully unlikely event you are, beyond this point you’ll get no help and no sympathy. They’re going to find out where that leak came from, Nick, and right now all their evidence seems to point to you. I’ve taken your word without question. I’m not asking for reassurance, I’m asking for your reassessment. If there’s anything you need to tell me, this is the last chance.”

  “Only thing I need to tell you, Joe, is thanks for the faith. It’s not misplaced.”

  “Okay Nick,” Joe said slowly. “Just find the damn thing and get it up there, and … better make a copy of it before you do.”

  Nick Gardner nodded and left, trying to do so casually. The effort did not go unnoticed by Joe Wallingford.

  All but Kell and Susan had filed out the door, and Kell Martinson waited for Joe to turn back to the mostly empty room before speaking to him. “Where do you go with this now, Joe?” he asked, hands thrust deep in his pants pockets, leaning slightly against the table as Susan came around the other side beside Joe, who was scratching his head. “Senator, I think we’re in a lot of trouble with this. Especially with the hubbub out there about the radar, and the blanket military denials.” He told Kell and Susan about the call from Andy Wallace, and the corresponding power glitch in the tower tapes.

  “Joe,” Kell began, “I’ve had a three-star general assure me the thing was not operating. The White House, the Secretary of Defense, a dozen senators—everyone is saying for the record the thing was not operating.”

  “Is that enough for you, Senator, given what you’ve heard?”

  Joe watched Martinson’s face as he thought over the question in stony silence for a few seconds. Susan was watching him as well.

  “No. I see your point.”

  “I’ve got the FAA upstairs ready to close the lid on even internal flight-control failure. Let me ask you, could the Air Force not have known the thing was on? Could somebody—a technician, for instance—have accidentally activated it?”

  Kell’s answer was very quiet, his eyes focused somewhere down the hall. “I don’t know, Joe. But I agree we need to find out.”

  “Well, you asked where we go from here,” Joe said. “We’ve got to do a massive amount of deep detective work from now until the hearing, and that sort of investigation costs a lot of money and strains our budget.”

  Kell smiled at the not-so-subtle funding appeal. “Hearing?”

  “Early December, in Kansas City. At least that’s what I’ve tentatively recommended.” He turned to Susan, who was nodding.

  “That probably is going to be approved by the other members, Joe.”

  “I’d like to be there,” Kell said. “Unofficially, of course. I wouldn’t expect to do anything but observe.”

  Susan beat Joe to the punch. “We’d be honored, Senator.”

  Kell left them alone in the briefing room, finally, the door closing behind him, and Susan told Joe about the appointment she had made with Mark Weiss in an hour.

  “He’s been sniffing around North America in Dallas.”

  “I know,” she replied. “I’m curious to hear more about his analysis, especially now.”

  “Oh?”

  “Joe, let’s assume the Air Force is right, and in addition, let’s assume there was nothing internally wrong with the captain’s flight-control stick. This captain was flying alone, effectively. He’d beat that copilot into silence and inaction. In my opinion, whether you ever find out what happened with the control stick, the question is how many captains out there would treat a copilot like that? How many airlines tolerate it and set that precedent? That’s a valid area to probe, regardless of what happened to push the nose over.”

  Joe sat down again across from Susan, enjoying her company and the brief respite. “Remember, Susan, this was the chief pilot.”

  She smiled and nodded. “That’s exactly my point. He sets
the pace.”

  “Well, it’s an interesting ancillary issue, but it’s not primary.”

  “No?”

  The edge in her voice halted a quick reply. Joe studied Susan’s face, noting the sly smile. She had opened a small trap and was waiting for him to step in. “You believe it’s primary?”

  “Maybe. Consider this.” She moved forward, gesturing urgently. “Regardless of what caused the nose to push over, if the copilot had taken over a little sooner, they would not have crashed, correct?”

  “Probably, but these were grown men, experienced pilots. If the copilot should have taken over sooner and didn’t, he was trained improperly or was insufficiently assertive, which are his own problems, not the captain’s.”

  “But you just proved my point,” she said.

  “How?”

  “Whether it’s training, defective personality traits for the job, or intimidation, the failure to take over in a timely fashion is a system failure, and that is always significant.”

  It went against the grain, but it made sense to Joe. And in any event, he didn’t want to counter her, which was an unprofessional response born of the realization that he really liked this lady. He could do nothing about it, of course, but he could enjoy being around her, and, perhaps, fantasize a little.

  Susan’s eyes were on Joe’s right hand as he played, unconsciously, with a paperweight, carefully and precisely raising it a few millimeters above the surface of the table, and landing it again, over and over, tilting it back each time as if flaring an aircraft, a part of his brain still working on the aerodynamics of Flight 255.

  “You know, there is something more here, Susan. There is something about this accident that disturbs me very deeply. With all the tragedy I’ve seen, and all the crazy accidents I’ve worked, it frustrates me. There’s something wrong here involving Timson. It’s just a vague suspicion, but while on one hand I’m all but convinced this is mechanical, electronic failure—you know, since radar interference is more than probable now—I’ve also got a gut feeling that something human happened. But with Caldwell upstairs outflanking this investigation and no doubt influencing the chairman, who in turn is hovering over every decision with a portfolio of hidden agendas, I don’t know if we’ve got a prayer of unraveling this. Someone may get away with murder.”

  “You mean that?” she said at last, looking him deeply in the eye.

  He nodded slowly. “I do.”

  16

  Monday, December 3 Kansas City International Airport

  Strange how lonely it looked. Joe Wallingford stood just inside the doorway of the huge main ballroom of the same Kansas City Airport hotel they had used for the field investigation, feeling slightly intimidated by the emptiness. In two more hours it would become a battleground of sorts, but at 7 A.M. it was nothing but an empty stage, the ranks of tables and chairs arrayed like silent ghosts in the gray light from a single lamp visible near the back.

  The great ceiling of hanging chandeliers loomed dark above him, their mirrored panels with no light to reflect, their light bulbs unpowered. Joe realized he had nearly tiptoed into the maw of the room, moving with the respectful stealth of an Indian crossing through enemy territory. Yet this was anything but foreign territory. It was uniquely his forum.

  Two months had passed since the crash and the five days the ballroom had held the frantic comings and goings of Joe’s NTSB team in full cry. The table and chair arrangements were far different now, the long head table on a raised platform along the western wall providing places for the hearing officer—which was Joe’s role—plus five additional chairs for other NTSB staff members. Dr. Susan Kelly, as a Board member, would act as chairman of the hearing, and Joe would run the questioning. Whether or not the hearing would produce any answers was another question. What seemed to be the central issue overshadowing all other possibilities—whether the Star Wars radar was off or on—would hardly be mentioned. If it had been on and caused the Airbus to pitch down, then almost everything Joe had scheduled for the hearing would be superfluous. If the radar had been off, however, the mystery was still deep and compelling, and the hearing would be vital. Joe had wanted the hearing to probe the question of the radar, but Dean Farris had forbidden it, on political grounds as far as Joe could tell. The government’s position was clear, and Farris saw no reason to contradict it. But even if Farris had approved, there was no one to question. The Air Force refused to provide witnesses, as had the contractor—and from the Defense Department there had been nothing but stonewalling. Without names of people to question, even subpoenas were ineffective.

  Four floor-level tables sat at right angles to the raised head table, looking in the darkness like miniature fortresses—shields of cloth and plywood behind which the worried and warring parties would consult and scribble, listen and react, each of them trying to preserve the interests closest to their professional hearts. Airbus, the FAA, North America Airlines, and the Air Line Pilots Association were the four officially admitted parties to the investigation, and each had a table.

  Joe sat on the edge of one of the tables and thought back over the conflicting events of the past few weeks.

  Without evidence, the sabotage accusations of the Wilkins group had faded from the media, leaving in their place a dangerous undercurrent of public belief that the Defense Department was lying to the Congress and the American people—though the FAA had flatly announced that electronic interference was not a possibility, and Caldwell had washed his hands of the issue. Increasingly, all eyes were on the NTSB—and Joe Wallingford—to solve the problem once and for all of what, or who, brought down North America 255. Yet Joe had been blocked in so many ways, turning out of near-desperation to Kell Martinson, who could probe the defense establishment in ways Joe couldn’t. Dean Farris had been angry and threatening when Joe kept pushing at the radar issue, but there was no responsible way to let it go. It woke him up at night and kept scratching at the back door of his mind.

  At the same time, Joe knew that Kell Martinson and other Brilliant Pebbles supporters were under siege from congressional colleagues for what looked to many like a foiled, sneaky attempt to test the tracking radar, and high-level thunderbolts continued to pass over Joe’s head daily in a battle of behind-the-scenes maneuvering between the Pentagon and Capitol Hill on matters too Olympian to concern a mere accident investigator.

  “What if it was off, Joe?” Andy had kept reminding him. “We can’t assume it was on. We have to keep looking at all possible causes.”

  “Already at work, I see.” Joe turned, startled at the sound of FBI agent Jeff Perkins’s voice as he pushed through the double doors and walked toward him, his hand outstretched.

  “Jeff. What are you doing here? Some new development?” Joe got off the edge of the table and shook his hand warmly. He had known Jeff for—what was it?—at least twenty years. Yet the two of them were always passing in the night, so to speak. They had met at Quantico Marine Air Station in Virginia in the late sixties, both assigned by their respective agencies to a special antihijacking course. Despite Jeff’s postings outside Washington throughout the intervening years, they had kept in touch.

  “Naw. I live in Kansas City, remember? Just can’t pass up a good show, and a good excuse to officially get away from the office.”

  “Well, we’ll try to accommodate.” Joe checked his watch, squinting to read the 7:05 A.M. displayed on its face. “With a good show, I mean. By 9 A.M. we should be ready to start the fireworks.”

  “Actually, Joe, I do have one small item for you.”

  “Oh?”

  “The senator you accompanied to our offices in D.C.? The owner of the mystery car seen here on the night of the crash?” A look of astonishment crossed Joe’s features. “Hey, don’t look so startled.”

  “How’d you get involved in that, Jeff?”

  “I was assigned to the crash, remember?”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Well, the word is they may turn the package over t
o local authorities here to prosecute for criminal trespass.”

  “Oh, no. Martinson’s a helluva nice guy, and very sincere. I’d hate to see that. He came forward voluntarily. In fact, he’s been following this investigation. I expect him here this morning.”

  “The law is the law, Joe.”

  “Is it certain?”

  “Not yet. But you know, Christ, a senator? You can’t push that under the rug. Anyway, it’s not rape or murder, and the locals may decline to pursue it.”

  “If it hits the media, it could damage him.”

  Jeff simply shrugged as Joe began moving toward the head table, both of them looking at the empty audience chairs set in multiple rows and the press platform at the far end where at least eight television cameras would blossom within the next hour. Wherever the NTSB held a public hearing of this magnitude, the room setup was almost identical.

  “I’ve done so many of these now, Jeff, I sometimes look up and forget which city I’m in. Ever have that happen with what you do?”

  “Only in shopping malls when I’m on the road. They’re all the same. I get vertigo.”

  Joe plunked himself down in one of the chairs, looking back at Jeff Perkins, waiting for him to catch up and pull out a chair of his own. “There are so many things I’m going to have to fight over to get the right information on the record in this hearing, yet it’s not supposed to be adversarial. You’ve heard the opening statements we use on these things, haven’t you?”

  “What, you read them their Miranda rights?”

  “Hah. Sometimes I think we should, but that’s for you guys to use to help protect the guilty. We don’t have guilty parties, you see. Crashes just happen, at least according to FAA, the airlines, the manufacturers, and the pilots.”

  Joe paused and looked at Perkins, gauging how much to tell him. “Jeff, this is not to be repeated, but aside from the radar interference question, there have been some strange things going on at North America. It would be too easy to attribute some sinister intent to their actions, but something isn’t quite right. Back in early November, a member of my human-performance staff noticed an odd gap in Dick Timson’s FAA medical record.”