Night Fall

by Nelson DeMille

  “Yes. But you can’t conclude that there was no missile.”

  “Okay . . .” I thought a minute and said, “Maybe the missile totally disintegrated in the explosion.”

  He shook his head and informed me, “Hell, fabric survived the explosion. Ninety percent of the 747 was recovered and so were all but a few of the 230 bodies. Missiles don’t disintegrate. They blow up into hundreds of pieces, big and small, any one of which can be identified by an expert as part of a missile. Also, high explosives, as you just said, leave distinctive traces.”

  “Right. Hey, maybe it was a laser beam. You know, like a death ray.”

  “That’s not as impossible as you may think. But that’s not what it was. A laser beam or a plasma ray is almost instantaneous and leaves no smoke plume.”

  He kept looking at me, and I realized I was still up at bat. I thought a minute, then said, “Well . . . maybe the missile didn’t explode. Maybe it went right through the aircraft and kept going, outside the debris fields that they were searching. The impact caused the fuel to explode. What do you think?”

  “I think you’re on to something, Mr. Corey. What you’re describing is a kinetic missile. Like a bullet or an arrow passing through anything in its path with such force that it just keeps going. No explosive warhead. Just kinetic energy and the subsequent deceleration forces ripping through anything in front of it. That would take down an aircraft if it hit something critical to maintaining flight.”

  “Isn’t everything in a plane critical to maintaining flight?”

  “No. It helps when there are no holes in the plane, but sometimes it doesn’t hurt when there are.”

  “No kidding? So, if a fuel tank was punctured by a kinetic missile—”

  “The fuel would get loose, obviously, and wind up in places where it doesn’t belong. That, in and of itself, might not cause an explosion because jet fuel doesn’t ignite that easily. But the vapors in a tank can ignite, and everyone agrees that the empty center fuel tank blew first. So what may have happened to that 747 is that a kinetic missile passed through the air-conditioning units, which are directly behind the center fuel tank. The missile ruptured the air conditioners, then the center fuel tank, and there was a meeting of damaged electrical wires with the vapors, which set off what we call a fuel-air explosion. That in turn blew one of the full wing tanks. The missile continued on through the aircraft, eventually falling into the ocean miles from the debris field.”

  “You think?”

  “It explains why no one has found explosive residue or missile parts.”

  I didn’t reply, which Captain Spruck interpreted as skepticism.

  He said, with a touch of impatience, “Look, it’s very simple. More than two hundred people see a streak of light, and eventually a lot of people are saying missile. Then there is not one trace of a missile found, so the FBI rules out a missile. What they should have said is that there is no evidence of an explosive missile. This is not rocket science . . .” He chuckled. “. . . Well, I guess it is.” He informed me, “Kinetic projectiles are not exactly new technology. An arrow is a kinetic projectile. So is a musket ball or a bullet. It kills by passing through you.”

  In fact, I had three bullets pass through me on a single occasion, though none of them hit my center fuel tank. I asked, “Why this kind of missile?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s all they had available. The military can pick its ordnance to match its target. Other groups can’t always do that.”

  I wondered who he thought “they” were, but he didn’t know and I didn’t know and maybe there was no “they.” I asked, “Why does such a missile even exist? What’s wrong with a surefire explosive warhead?”

  “Guidance systems today are so accurate you don’t need an explosive warhead to knock down an aircraft, or even another missile, and non-explosive warheads are cheaper and safer to handle, and they leave more room for propellants.” He added, “A kinetic missile would be your choice of weapon if you wanted to take out an aircraft without leaving any evidence. Special Ops kind of stuff.”

  I thought about all this, and I wondered if Captain Spruck had, rightly or wrongly, come up with the only possible scenario that fit his and the other eyewitness accounts. I asked him, “Why didn’t the FBI at least raise this as a possibility?”

  “I don’t know. Ask them.”

  Yeah, right. I said to Captain Spruck, “So, you think there’s a missile out there somewhere?”

  He replied, “I shot an arrow in the air, and where it fell, I know not where.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  “I think there are the remains of a moderately intact kinetic missile lying on the ocean floor. It was probably about twelve feet long, thin, and probably black in color. It is miles and miles from the debris fields where the Navy and FBI divers worked, and from where the naval dredges operated. And no one is looking for this missile because they don’t believe it exists, and also because even if they did, you’d be talking about trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack.”

  “How big is the haystack?”

  “If you guessed at the missile’s trajectory after it passed through the aircraft and fell into the ocean, you could be talking about a hundred square miles of ocean floor.” He added, “For all we know, it could have reached Fire Island and buried itself deep in the sand. The entry hole wouldn’t be noticed, and the sand has long since filled the hole.”

  “Well . . . if that’s true, no one is going to mount a multimillion-dollar search to find this thing.”

  Captain Spruck had obviously thought about this and replied, “I think they would, if the government was convinced that this missile existed.”

  “Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? I mean, it’s five years later, the case is closed, there’s a new guy in the White House, and money is tight. But I’ll talk to my congressman, when I find out who he is.”

  Captain Spruck ignored my flippancy and asked me, “Do you believe this scenario?”

  “Uh . . . yeah, but that’s not important. The case is closed, and even a great theory is not going to reopen it. Someone would need hard evidence to get those divers and dredges out there again.”

  “I have no evidence except my own eyes.”

  “Right.” Captain Spruck, retired, may have too much time on his hands, I thought. “You married?”

  “I am.”

  “What’s your wife think?”

  “She thinks I’ve done all I can.” He asked me, “Do you know how frustrating this is?”

  “No, tell me.”

  “If you’d seen what I’d seen, you’d understand.”

  “Probably. You know, I think most of the people who saw what you saw have gotten on with their lives.”

  “I’d like nothing better. But I’m very bothered by this.”

  “Captain, I think you’re taking this personally, and you’re pissed off because you’re pretty cocksure of yourself, and for one of the first times in your life, no one is taking you seriously.”

  Captain Spruck did not reply.

  I glanced at my watch and said, “Well, thank you for taking the time to speak to me, Captain. Can I call you if I have any further thoughts or questions?”

  “Yes.”

  “By the way, do you know this group called FIRO?”

  “Of course.”

  “You belong?”

  “I do not.”

  “Why not?”

  “They haven’t asked.”

  “Why not?”

  “I told you—I’ve never gone public. If I had, they’d be all over me.”

  “Who?”

  “FIRO and the FBI.”

  “You bet.”

  “I’m not looking for publicity, Mr. Corey. I’m looking for the truth. For justice. I assume you are as well.”

  “Yeah . . . well, truth and justice are good. But harder to find than a missile at the bottom of the ocean.”

  He didn’t reply, and I asked him, pro forma, “Wo
uld you be willing to testify at some sort of official hearing?”

  “I’ve been waiting five years.”

  We shook hands, and I turned and walked toward the door of the watchtower. Halfway through the door, I turned back to Captain Spruck and reminded him, “This conversation never took place.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I found Kate in the Jeep talking on her cell phone. I heard her say, “Gotta go. Talk to you tomorrow.”

  I got in the Jeep and asked, “Who was that?”

  “Jennifer Lupo. From work.”

  I started the Jeep and headed back toward the gate.

  She asked me, “How did it go?”

  “Interesting.”

  We rode in silence awhile down the dark, narrow road leading away from the Coast Guard station. I asked, “Where to?”

  “Calverton.”

  I looked at my dashboard clock. It was close to 11 P.M., and I inquired, “Is this the last, last stop?”

  “It is.”

  We headed toward Calverton, which is a small town toward the north shore of Long Island, which was the site of a former Grumman Aircraft and naval installation plant, where the pieces of the TWA Boeing 747 had been trucked for reconstruction in 1996. I wasn’t sure why I needed to see this, but I guess I needed to see this.

  I turned on the radio to an oldies station and listened to Johnny Mathis singing “The Twelfth of Never.” Great song, great voice.

  There are times when I want to lead a normal life; to not carry a gun, a shield, and the responsibility. After leaving the NYPD, under strained circumstances, I could have and should have left law enforcement. But my stupid former partner, Dom Fanelli, hooked me up with the Anti-Terrorist Task Force.

  At first, I looked at it as a halfway house to civilian life. I mean, the only thing I missed from the NYPD were my buds, the camaraderie, and all that. And there was little of that with ATTF. The Feds are weird. Present company excluded.

  And on that subject, my relationship with Special Agent Mayfield had been born and bred in the cauldron of the undeniably important work we were doing. So, therefore, I wondered if the marriage would survive if I took a job on a fishing boat while she was still hunting terrorists.

  That was enough introspection for the month. I switched mental gears to more immediate concerns.

  Both of us knew we had crossed over the line that separates lawful and assigned investigation from unlawful and freelance snooping. We could stop now, and probably get away with what we’d done since the memorial service. But if we went to Calverton, and if we kept following this trail, we’d be unemployed, and indicted.

  Kate asked me, “Did that gentleman mention that Liam Griffith and Ted Nash did a follow-up interview?”

  I nodded.

  “Did you find his eyewitness account compelling?”

  “He’s had five years to work on it.”

  “He had barely sixteen hours to work on it before I interviewed him, and he was still a bit shaken up. He had me convinced.” She added, “I did eleven other interviews with eyewitnesses. They all basically corroborated one another’s testimony, and none of them even knew the others.”

  “Yeah. I understand that.”

  We continued on for about twenty minutes, the oldies station cranking out songs that connected me to high school dances and hot summer nights on the streets and sidewalks of New York, a time before airport metal detectors, a time before planes were blown out of the sky by people called terrorists. A time when the only threat to America was from far away, not as close as it seemed to be getting.

  Kate said, “Can I turn that off?” She shut off the radio and said, “A few miles from here is Brookhaven National Laboratory. Cyclotrons, linear accelerators, laser guns, and subatomic particles.”

  “You lost me after laboratory.”

  “There’s a theory—a suspicion—that this laboratory was experimenting with a plasma-generating device that night—a death ray—and that was the streak of light that took down TWA 800.”

  “Well, then, let’s stop there and ask them about it. What time do they close?”

  She ignored me, as usual, and continued, “There are seven major theories. You want to hear about the underwater methane gas bubble theory?”

  I had this disturbing image of whales in an underwater locker room lighting farts. I said, “Maybe later.”

  Kate directed me along a road that led to a big gate and a guardhouse. A private security guard stopped us and, as at the Coast Guard station, ignored me and glanced at Kate’s Fed creds, then waved us on.

  We entered a large, almost treeless expanse of flat fields with a few large industrial-type buildings here and there, lots of floodlights, and at least two long concrete runways.

  In my rearview mirror, I saw the security guard talking on a cell phone or walkie-talkie. I said, “You remember that X-Files episode where Mulder and Scully go into this secret installation and—”

  “I do not want to hear about the X-Files. Life is not an X-Files episode.”

  “Mine is.”

  “Promise me you won’t make any analogies to an X-Files episode for one year.”

  “Hey, I didn’t bring up the plasma death ray or the methane gas bubble.”

  “Turn right over there. Stop at that hangar.”

  I pulled the Jeep up to a small door beside the huge sliding doors of a very big aircraft hangar. I asked Kate, “How are we breezing through these guard gates?”

  “We have the proper credentials.”

  “Try again.”

  She stayed silent a moment, then replied, “Obviously, this was pre-arranged.”

  “By who?”

  “There are people . . . government people who aren’t satisfied with the official version of events.”

  “Sort of like an underground movement? A secret organization?”

  “People.”

  “Is there a secret handshake?”

  She opened the door and started to get out.

  “Hold on.”

  She turned back to me.

  I asked, “Do you belong to this FIRO group?”

  “No. I don’t belong to any group except the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  “That’s not what you just said.”

  She replied, “It’s not an organization. It has no name. But if it did, it would be called ‘People Who Believe Two Hundred Eyewitnesses.’” She looked at me and asked, “Are you coming?”

  I shut off the engine and headlights and followed.

  Above the small door was a light that illuminated a sign that said AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

  She turned the door handle, as though she knew it would be unlocked, and we entered the huge hangar, which had a polished wooden floor that made it look more like a gymnasium than an aircraft hangar. The front half, where we stood, was in darkness. But at the rear of the hangar were rows of fluorescent lights. Beneath the lights was the reconstructed Trans World Airlines Boeing 747. Kate said, “This is where Grumman used to build the F-14 fighter, so it was a good place to rebuild the 747.”

  We stood in the darkness and stared at it. For one of the few times in my life, I was speechless.

  The white-painted fuselage gleamed in the lights, and on the ripped aluminum of the left side, facing us, were the red letters ANS WOR.

  The forward section and the cockpit were separated from the main fuselage, the reconstructed wings lay on the polished wooden floor of the hangar, and the tail section sat to the right, also separated from the main fuselage. This is how the aircraft had come apart.

  Strewn across the wooden floor were huge tarps, on which lay bundles and tangles of wires and other debris, which I couldn’t identify.

  Kate said, “This place is so big, people used bicycles to get around quickly and save time.”

  We walked slowly across the hangar, toward the carcass of this giant machine.

  As we approached, I saw that all the glass had been blown out of the portholes, and I could see now th
e separate pieces of the aluminum skin that had been meticulously pieced together, some huge, the size of a barn door, some smaller than a dinner plate.

  The midsection, where the center fuel tank had exploded, was the most damaged, with large gaps in the fuselage.

  About ten yards from the aircraft, we stopped, and I looked up at it. Sitting on the floor, even without its landing gear, it was as high as a three-story building from belly to spine.

  I asked Kate, “How long did this take?”

  She replied, “About three months, from beginning to end.”

  “Why is it still here after five years?”

  “I’m not sure . . . but I hear unofficially that a decision has been made to send it to a junkyard for recycling. That will upset a lot of people who still aren’t satisfied with the final report—including relatives of the deceased, who come here every year before the memorial service. They were here this morning.”

  I nodded.

  Kate stared at the reconstructed aircraft. She said, “I was here when they began the reconstruction . . . they built scaffolds, wooden frames, and wire netting to attach the pieces . . . The people working on it started calling it Jetasaurus rex. They did an incredible job.”

  It was hard to take this all in—in one respect, it was a giant jetliner, the sort of object you didn’t have to study to know what it was. But this thing was somehow greater than the sum of its parts. I now noticed huge, scorched tires, twisted landing struts, the four mammoth jet engines sitting in a row away from the aircraft, the wings sitting on the floor, the color-coded wires everywhere, and the fiberglass insulation laid out in some sort of pattern. Everything was labeled with tags or colored chalk.

  Kate said, “Every object here was examined in minute detail—seventy thousand pounds of metal and plastic, a hundred and fifty miles of wire and hydraulic lines. Inside that fuselage is the reconstructed interior of the aircraft—the seats, the galleys, the lavatories, the carpeting. Everything that was brought up from the ocean, over one million pieces, was put back together.”

  “Why? At some point they must have concluded that it was a mechanical failure.”

  “They wanted to put to rest any other theories.”