Final Approach

by John J. Nance

  The phone broke his train of thought.

  “Joe?” The voice was John Phelps’s, the line obviously long distance. Joe had to race mentally to recall that John had just deployed on the Go Team to the Miami Air crash in Florida.

  “John? That you?”

  “Yes. Joe, go to Dankers Bar and Grill, and tell Karen you’re there.” John Phelps fell silent.

  “What? Say that again, John?”

  “Joe, trust me, and do exactly what I’m asking. I’ll explain later. Dankers. And Karen, one of the waitresses. The one I took to that party last year …?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I remember Karen, but why?”

  “Just go.” And the line was dead.

  Joe sat back in his chair. Now what? His eyes roamed over the bookcase to his left, the space between two looseleaf folders catching his attention for some reason. There should be a book there, a book someone had borrowed. Oh yeah, he thought, that’s the aging fleet material. I lent that to … John Phelps.

  Joe was out of his chair in an instant, grabbing his topcoat and heading for the nearby watering hole through another light snowfall. He wondered what Susan was doing and found himself longing to tell her about John Phelps’s curious request. First, however, he’d comply with it.

  “Oh yes, Mr. Wallingford. There’s a message he had me write down.” Karen handed Joe a slip of paper and a glass of water and disappeared.

  “Please call J. P. immediately at 305-463-9667,” the note read. “Bill it to your home number only. Do not use an agency credit card.”

  Curiouser and curiouser, Joe thought. There was a pay phone near the rest rooms through the doors on the Sixth Street side, and Joe headed for it, punching in his personal telephone credit card number, listening for the first ring. The phone was answered immediately.

  “Joe?”

  “Yeah. John, is this you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why all the secret agent stuff? Where are you?” Joe could hear cars in the background.

  “At a pay phone by a highway near the crash site. Joe, I’ve got a big, big problem. In fact, we may all have a big problem.”

  “Explain that.”

  “I heard about what happened between you and Dean, but you’re still division chief, so it’s still proper to report to you, right?”

  “Of course, John. But I …”

  “And you’re now the last person who’s going to go running to the chairman, right? I need your word on that, Joe.”

  This was getting exasperating. “Get to the damn point, John. Of course you’ve got my word.”

  “Okay. Joe, you remember that I came down here when this airline had a cabin-pressure failure on another Boeing 737 a few months back?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “The same day North America crashed. I was worried because the blowout was caused by really poor maintenance, and I wanted to find out more, but the FAA local office in Miami began blocking me, and then Dean ordered me off of it, claiming the FAA had it under control.”

  “Had what under control?”

  “Quality control inspections of how well these people in Key West were repairing their old 737s. Okay, then I heard the repair work was being done offshore, in Bogota, Columbia, at a repair station recently certified by the FAA to do the rebuilds ordered after the aging fleet inspections. You know, where the FAA decided that certain parts of the airplane will be completely rebuilt and refurbished when it hits a certain age, rather than letting the airline just watch it for deterioration?”

  “Yeah, I’m familiar with all that, John.”

  “Okay, Joe. We’ve got a bunch of folks dead down here and a 737 that came apart in the air at 24,000 feet on climb out. No indication of a bomb, and, in fact, it’s beginning to look a lot like the Far Eastern Airlines accident in Taiwan in 1982, where the bottom blew out because they’d been sloshing salt water down there from fish tanks carried as cargo.”

  “Okay. So?”

  “So, the FAA-inspected maintenance logs on this airplane—which I retrieved when I got down here yesterday—show this airplane was rebuilt according to the FAA’s airworthiness directives issued in 1988 and 1989, and the work was done in Columbia and signed off. The FAA team in Miami has supposedly been inspecting the work on Miami Air’s planes once they got back here, but as we know, that mostly means looking at paperwork, which appears to be in order. Now, bear with me.”

  “I am,” Joe replied, intrigued but wishing he would get on with it.

  “The skin at one particular location in first class, station 390, should have a brand-new piece of metal behind it. That’s required to be installed during the major teardown and rebuild of that section. Now, I’ve got that very piece of metal in my hand this second, Joe, picked up at the crash site. This piece of metal should be two years old, no more. Joe, this piece is at least twenty-two years old, and so are all the other pieces I’ve found that should be brand-new!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. There’s no way this type of severe corrosion could occur in less than two years unless they’d been floating the damn plane in salt water and mooring it to a dock. No question. The paper airplane was rebuilt, the metal airplane apparently was not.”

  Joe thought for a second, ignoring the sound of bathroom doors opening and closing beside him. “John, that’s a major find, of course, but again, why the secrecy?”

  “I was told,” Phelps began, “when I kept pressing the Miami FAA office, to lay off. Finally I took a friend of mine who works there out to dinner. That was two months ago. I asked him off the record, where is the heat coming from? He told me the next highest level of the FAA, which is Bill Caldwell. This guy says that he and all his people have to be very careful in dealing with Miami Air because the chairman of that company and their operations vice-president are both former FAA officials from Washington, and good buds with Caldwell. Anytime the rank-and-file FAA inspectors out here get after Miami Air for violations of any significance, they get called on the carpet by their boss, and he tells them the heat originates from Washington.”

  “That would be hard as hell to prove, John.”

  “God help me, Joe, I’ve actually got a memo of theirs to prove it. And God probably did help me with this one. Joe, listen to this. I don’t believe it myself. I forced Miami Air to give me copies of their operations and maintenance manuals, and one of the executives personally delivers his copies when he realizes I’m gonna tear the place apart until they comply. Anyway, I’m sitting there last night in the hotel, and I open one of these large binders and this handwritten memo falls out that’s from Miami Air’s chairman to his operations VP, talking about this connection, Joe, and saying that Caldwell is putting the screws to, quote, ‘that professor at the Board’ to call off his dogs. Obviously this wasn’t meant to be seen, but I’ve got it! I didn’t even put my fingerprints on it, because when it fell out, I had this odd premonition. So I picked it up with latex gloves on, which means the latent fingerprints of whoever wrote it and handled it are still there, and those can be lifted off, probably, by the FBI lab. There is some technique involving ninhydrin that will do it. Joe, this thing was written one day before Farris did, in fact, call me off the case in October.”

  “Jesus, John. Those guys haven’t been away from the FAA long enough to escape the laws prohibiting that sort of pressure, have they?”

  “I don’t think so. But Joe, what the hell do I do now? None of the rest of the team knows anything, and I know Dean has his stoolies, so I don’t dare trust this memo, or the information, to anyone down here with me. The other head of the structures group is already on the trail of the fraudulently certified repair paper work, but I’m sitting on a bomb.”

  “Can you copy the heck out of that memo and Fed Ex several to me, then lock up the original?”

  “Already done regarding the copies and the original. I’ll Fed Ex two copies to you this afternoon, Saturday delivery to your home.”

  Joe made arrangements to phone John
Phelps at his hotel in Naples, Florida, during the evening, and rang off, his head spinning slightly. John’s last statement had seemed absurd, but Joe found himself looking around cautiously to check for anyone listening. “Watch yourself, Joe,” he’d said. “Watch your backside. There’s no telling where this leads.”

  Joe left Dankers hungry but not noticing as he headed back to his office. Farris was probably involved only as a dupe, which would not be unexpected. So, I’m no match for Caldwell, eh? Well, Professor, neither are you.

  The short walk back through the cold air that had blown into the city felt good, but he hardly noticed. There was too much to think about, and in spite of the deeply disturbing overtones, Joe realized there was a certain exhilaration in facing such hidden undercurrents.

  The only connection between Miami Air and the North American crash was Caldwell, but a problem obviously existed. The question was, how deep, and what could—or should—he do about it?

  Joe slipped behind his desk and immediately dialed Jeff Perkins’s number in Kansas City, getting the FBI field office’s noncommittal secretary, who took down Joe’s name and number.

  Agent Perkins himself, however, called him back within ten minutes from somewhere “in the field.”

  “Joe? Strange timing.”

  “Which means?”

  “I was going to call you. Are you alone?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “And no speakerphone, right?”

  “That’s right. Just my worn out, government-issue telephone handset and me. You’re not going to play secret agent too, are you?”

  There was a pause as Perkins considered the non sequitur, then ignored it and continued. “You asked me to look into stock ownership in aircraft manufacturers for one particular individual, and I have—though it took a while to get to it.”

  “Good … I think.”

  “Well, Joe, your FAA man Caldwell owns no Boeing, McDonnell Douglas, or any other applicable shares, nor did he report any on his federal disclosure forms.”

  “Okay. Well, I just …”

  “Hold on. There’s more. There is an individual rather close to you there who does show up on the computer run as owning quite a block.”

  “Who?”

  “First let me tell you what and how much. Not to stretch the suspense, but I want you to understand that I did not get this from the stock records of the companies themselves with any degree of currency, so the information could be out-of-date or faulty. This guy owns five thousand shares of Boeing, and twenty-five hundred shares of McDonnell Douglas, and two hundred shares of Lockheed, and he did not list them on his disclosure filing.”

  “Who, Jeff, who?”

  “Dean Farris. Your chairman, buddy.”

  That stunned him, and Jeff had to ask if he was still there.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I just … can’t believe that … if I’m interpreting it correctly.”

  “If you want me to, Joe, I’ll try to verify that with the current company lists, though I could get myself into deep trouble with the Bureau if I go too far with this.”

  “Please, Jeff. I think I need to know for certain.”

  “There’s another round of incoming fire, Joe. Your man Gardner, the guy with the copy of the FAA tower tape?”

  “Uh-oh. Now what.” Joe had his hand to his forehead.

  “The Bureau ran an analysis of the radio station’s copy of the tape and compared it to tapes produced on the cassette recorder the tower chief used to make the copy for Gardner. There were sounds there that matched, but did not come from the master tape.”

  “In other words …”

  “The leaked tape was your NTSB copy. I don’t know who did it, but it was definitely your copy.”

  So Gardner had been lying to him. The stupid bastard! “Does Bill Caldwell of the FAA know?”

  “I should think so. He asked for our help, I’m told.”

  Joe thanked his FBI friend profusely, hanging up then as he thought about Gardner. Farris would have to be involved. Since the FAA and the FBI were involved, Joe would have to take it to Farris. Goddamn Gardner! He lied to me. Joe tossed a pencil across the room at the bookcase, knowing Gardner would be finished when this hit the fan. It was no innocent act or white lie, that was certain. Joe knew Nick’s background with air traffic control, and he also knew how he’d always had the tendency to want to skewer the FAA for what he felt they had done to him. The other problem was personal. Joe had been in command and had lost control of Nick too. Another debacle that would be credited against Joe’s ledger with Farris. The thought canceled what had been the returning hint of an appetite.

  Joe was ready to storm from his office in search of Gardner when Mark Weiss appeared in the doorway, explaining there was something very important he needed to discuss, and then shutting Joe’s office door behind him as he handed over a sealed mailing envelope.

  “What’s this, Mark?”

  The psychologist studied the edge of Joe’s desk for a moment, working on phraseology. Joe noticed he wasn’t even removing his topcoat, and the office was warm. Mark looked up at last. “Remember I told you I felt Captain Timson was hiding something?”

  “Yes.”

  Mark raised his hand to forestall protest. “I know you didn’t—couldn’t—officially believe me without proof. I was hoping the hearing would unravel the mystery—”

  “Weren’t we all.”

  “Yes, but I mean as to whether Timson made some terrible pilot error and was trying to rewrite reality. Okay. I still don’t know what he could have done, but he says he made no error and the airplane is at fault.”

  Joe held his palm up. “Mark, I’m afraid, despite all the revelations at the hearing, I’m privately convinced the Air Force is lying. All my instincts point to electronic interference and an attempted cover-up, though I’ll deny it if you say anything outside this room.”

  “Maybe, Joe, but I’ve got proof that Timson has materially misled you on at least one occasion, and I think—”

  “What proof? This envelope?”

  “Yes. Let me finish. I think I can prove to you that Timson has not regained his memory and is making up what he says happened, or, he knows what happened and is trying to change it.”

  Joe was intrigued. Proof he could deal with—relate to, as they’d say in California. But what sort of proof could Weiss have that would do all that?

  Mark explained his frustration after his first visit to Joe’s office, omitting the burning temptation he’d had to steal the CVR tape. He told of setting up his recorder in the hotel room, how he had appropriated the name of one of the NTSB lab technicians, and how he knew from Joe’s own statements that Andy Wallace would be interviewing the captain within a few hours after his call.

  “I knew, Joe, that if the man was making up reality or trying to change it, he would grasp at the phrase I gave him, and it would show up in Andy Wallace’s interview.” Mark placed a page from the transcript of the interview on the desk, a heavy black circle around a particular Timson answer—one containing the phrase: “My stick’s not responding, take it Don, take it!”

  Mark opened the envelope then and retrieved the tape. He placed it in the small cassette recorder he had brought and punched the play button.

  The sounds of Mark asking the hotel operator for date and time came first, then the sounds of a new number being punched into the phone were followed by a deep, subdued male voice answering on the other end.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Captain Timson?” Mark had asked. There was a worrisome hesitation, then a slow response. Not suspicious, just hazy. The man had probably been under pain medication at the time.

  “Yes … yes it is … um … who’s calling?”

  “Captain, this is difficult. I’m Phil Baker from the NTSB laboratory in Washington.”

  Joe shot Mark a disapproving glance, receiving a determined shrug in response.

  “Yes?”

  “Well, Andy Wallace is on his way out there to
see you, isn’t he?”

  “Mr. Wallace … yes, he’s supposed to call when he gets to the airport. Why?”

  “Well, it’s kind of embarrassing, sir. See, we’re the people who transcribe the cockpit voice tapes, and I’ve been working over the last two days to do just that. I’m under a deadline to have that by this evening, but I’m stuck on one thing, one area where I can’t quite make out the words. Now, normally we’d just take more time, but I’ve already said I could do it by tonight, so I’d like to ask your assistance.”

  More silence as Timson thought through the words. “What do you need?”

  “Captain, the very last of the tape—and I know this is painful for you—but in the last fifteen seconds or so, I think I’m hearing you say, and I quote, ‘My stick’s not responding, take it Don, take it.’ That’s the best I can make out. Does that mesh with your memory? Is that what you recall saying?”

  Timson was slow responding, but when he did there was more energy behind his voice. “Give … give me that again, please.”

  “Okay. It was, ‘My stick’s not responding, take it Don, take it.’ At least, sir, that’s what it sounds like. You’ll save me half a day’s work if you can confirm that.”

  “Well … I think that’s right. I know I must have … ah, I know I remember saying that because my controls, you know, weren’t doing what they should have … should have been doing. Yes … I’m sure I remember saying that.”

  “Excellent. Now I have one more favor to ask.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’d very much appreciate it if you would not mention this call to Andy, or Joe, or anyone else. I won’t tell you I’d lose my job, because that’s not true, but it would be embarrassing.”

  He heard Timson clear his throat with some effort. “Don’t worry. I won’t mention it. That’s no problem.”

  “Thank you, Captain. And I hope you’re out of there soon and feeling better.”

  “Thanks.” There was the sound of plastic against plastic, the hollow sound a telephone makes when the receiver is being banged against the cradle as someone struggles to put it back on the hook.

  Mark snapped off the tape recorder and leaned back. “I figured at that point, Joe, now we’ll see what he does. It was the perfect time to plant the seed. I made up the words, of course, using a phrase that would seem to get the captain off the hook—the words of a pilot doing everything he could to save his malfunctioning airplane. They were supposed to sound to Timson like the sort of thing he should have said. Yet a pressured individual like Timson would not realize how unlikely it would be to have such a phrase of helplessness and surrender—a cry for help—emerge from his mouth. Totally uncharacteristic for someone in Timson’s position. I figured that if my analysis was correct, that exact phrase would show up word-for-word on the transcript of Andy Wallace’s impending interview, and it would prove that Timson was playing games with the truth, grasping at straws, claiming to recall something he couldn’t really recall. And you heard how fast he latched on to it.”