Crashers (11 page)

“You're just supposed to get on with your life.”

“My life ended when I betrayed my government,” she said and stood. She reached for his cappuccino and drained it, leaving a foamy mustache on her upper lip. She leaned over the table and kissed Ray on the lips, then wiped her lips clean. “My life ended and I have the bullet wounds to prove it, Agent Calabrese,” she said, her eyes still very close to his. “Get on with my life? What life?”

She headed back out toward the rain-slick sidewalk. Ray called after her, “Do you want to share a cab back to . . . ?”

But Daria waved a hand over her shoulder without turning around. She broke into an easy jog, already thoroughly soaked, catching the eye of every man on the street.

Ray Calabrese sat there for a while, feeling guilty and frustrated and not knowing why. His meetings with Daria always left him feeling off-kilter.

The Go-Team leadership had ordered wake-up calls for 8
A.M.
That meant that Tommy Tomzak got about an hour of sleep before the phone in his room shrieked like a Harrier jet.

Why do they make hotel-room phones so freaking loud?
he wondered.

“Good morning, Dr. Tomzak?” The voice on the phone was way too chipper. “This is your wake-up call. Mrs. Tanaka asked me to tell you there will be a van waiting in front of the hotel at eight thirty
A.M.
, and that breakfast will be served when you get there.”

Tommy said. “There? Where there?”

The chipper voice didn't say, and Tommy hung up. He got up, stood under the hot-hot shower until his brain kicked into first gear. He didn't bother to shave, just threw on jeans and his boots and an
Austin City Limits
sweatshirt. Somehow, during the night, Susan Tanaka had had his things moved from his hotel in Portland to this one in Keizer. Tommy wasn't sure why; maybe she wanted him to be debriefed by the Investigator In Charge, first thing this morning. He couldn't find his sports coat or his raincoat, so he threw on the NTSB windbreaker.
What the hell,
he thought.
For old times' sake.

.   .   .

The van was waiting for him in front of the Chemeketa Inn. In it sat Isaiah Grey, John Roby, and Kiki Duvall. Tommy and Isaiah exchanged handshakes; they had not met before.

“I hear good things about the crash site,” Isaiah said. “I can't believe you were on the scene so fast.”

Tommy said, “It's good to be good but better to be lucky. We got fucking lucky. Hey, where we headed?”

John Roby, who sat in the back, drawled, “Del Wildman's famous Allthing.”

“Yeah?” Tommy said, facing forward and thinking,
What do they need me there for?

Kiki frowned. “All the craziness, I forgot to ask, do we have a head count?”

Tommy shrugged. “I was in the field all night.”

John grimaced a little. “I asked Susan, first thing this morning. Thirty-five survivors, a hundred and eleven dead.”

Kiki shivered. “A hundred and eleven dead on a Vermeer One Eleven. That's eerie.”

SUSAN TANAKA CHECKED HER watch. Ten minutes until 9
A.M.
The Vermeer 111 had been on the ground about twelve hours.

The setting was McNary High School in Salem. Susan stood in the middle of the set for
South Pacific,
watching people arrive. Most wore suits. Some were more casual. The place was filling up.

She glanced to the side stage and saw Walter Mulroney and Peter Kim. Walter was on his cell phone. Peter watched Susan.

The high school had a traditional proscenium stage facing six hundred seats curved like a fan, the seats elevated the farther back you went. About 250 of the seats were occupied. It was an Allthing, as Del Wildman, director of the NTSB, called them: the first meeting of all relevant parties to the crash. The first meeting could be long and annoying, but it also set some important ground rules. Most of the crashers hated them, but most also realized the wisdom of getting this meeting over with as quickly as possible.

It was 8:50
A.M.
Pacific Time, 11:50
A.M.
Eastern, when the secretary in Director Wildman's office got the call from a Go-Team in the field. Everybody in the building had heard about the Oregon crash on the morning TV talk shows or drive-time radio news broadcasts. The secretary knew rule number one: time is more precious than gold after a plane goes down, and any call from an active Go-Team gets top priority.

She buzzed Delevan Abraham Wildman in his office and relayed the call.

Wildman, sixty-three, was the number-one man at the NTSB. He'd been a TWA pilot in the seventies—when being an African American pilot had been rare indeed—and an American Airlines executive in the eighties before joining the agency. He'd been on a record seven major crashes in his eighteen years before getting kicked up to the top echelons of administration.

When the call came, he snatched up the phone. “Wildman.”

“It's Walter Mulroney.”

“Walt?” he drawled. “You're in Oregon?”

“Yes, sir. Peter Kim, power plant, is with me. We're about ten minutes from one of your Allthing meetings.”

“Give me good news, son.” Wildman had been born and raised in Tennessee and he'd never made any effort to lose the accent.

“We'll know more in about an hour, after the meeting. But we've got a potential crisis. Someone made Leonard Tomzak Investigator in Charge.”

Wildman said, “Tommy?” It was Del Wildman himself to whom Tomzak had given his resignation, only a few months earlier. Wildman wondered for a split second, but then the obvious answer hit him: silver-tongued Susan Tanaka had talked him into this. He wondered why Tomzak had agreed.

Walter was still talking. “Sir, he's a pathologist: he's never taken an engineering course, never flown an airplane. This guy's going to fold when the real media gets here. Imagine what he's going to be like when officials from Vermeer Aircraft and CascadeAir show up, not to mention the engine manufacturer and the danged lawyers. Sir, I don't know who dropped the ball here, but I'm offering to take control as IIC before this situation gets out of control.”

“Walt? Where's Susan?”

“She's out onstage, getting people to take their seats.”

“Stage?”

“We're in a high-school auditorium.”

Wildman said, “Well, put her on.”

“It's just, I think we need a more professional IIC than we saw in Kentucky. I think we need to—”

“Walter.” Wildman let his voice dip an octave. “Put 'er on. Now.”

 

At McNary High School, Walter Mulroney walked half the width of the stage and handed Susan a cell phone.

“It's Del.”

Susan stepped well away from the microphone, covered her left ear with her other palm. “Hello?”

“Susan. Del. Did you get Tomzak to rescind his resignation and make him IIC?”

Susan glowered daggers at Walter Mulroney's retreating back.

“He was on the scene before anyone,” she said. “I watched his work in Kentucky. He's brilliant and tenacious, and he gets amazing work from his crashers.”

“Kentucky was—”

“A fluke,” she cut in. “Nobody could have gotten to the bottom of that one. No one. I want Tommy.”

“How 'bout going with a more traditional IIC. An engineer. You've got Mulroney. He's an experienced leader. Put him in—”

“Screw Walter!”

Delevan Abraham Wildman was one of the most feared and respected administrators in the aviation industry. The FAA and DOT had headhunted him for years, but he remained loyal to the board. He was known alternately as The Bear and The Old Man, but to his face he was Mr. Wildman to most people, Del to a few, and sir to the world at large.

Nobody yelled at him. Not ever.

Susan Tanaka actually stomped her foot as if Del Wildman could see it. “God damn it!” she boomed into the cell phone. She paced the stage in short, choppy strides that threatened to buckle the wood under her Gucci calfskin boots.

“Susan, I—”

“Tomzak was my choice for IIC and he's done a sensational job, Del.
I'm the best intergovernmental liaison you've got, and if Tommy goes, so do I. Get your ass out from behind that desk and get out here to relieve me yourself, or else put Tommy back in charge and let me do my job!”

“Walter—”

“Blow him!” she boomed—as much as a petite woman can boom. “The jet pancaked in at eight forty-one local time. We had an IIC on site and controlling the rescue parties forty minutes later! That's a record, Del! The scene is in mint condition. The rescue teams were kept on a tight leash. This is the finest day one I've ever seen, and that wasn't because of me or because of Walter Mulroney. It was Tommy Tomzak. He's done a fantastic job and you can't just undermine his authority, not to mention my authority, by pulling crap like this! You can't!”

When he didn't respond, she plowed on through the silence.

“So Tommy was IIC for the Alitalia crash in Kentucky. So that was never solved. Are you thinking that Tommy was at fault? Are you questioning the actions of that Go-Team?”

“No,” Wildman shot back. “Not at all. That was an awful crash. Nobody could have coaxed any secrets out of that pile of rubble.”

“Right. Tommy drew the short straw, and his name will forevermore rest on a document that says: ‘we don't know.' But he still ran a good investigation there, and he's got this crash site in excellent shape. I made the call and I back it up. Now, is Tommy in charge or do I head back to the airport and debrief my replacement?”

She stopped pacing, crossed her arms under her breasts, and held her breath.

The last thing in the world she expected to hear was the low, throaty chuckle of Del Wildman.

She said, “Hello?”

He kept laughing. When he could, he drawled, “Don't hold back on my account. Tell me how you really feel.”

Susan said, “I always do.”

“It's your scene. I won't pull Tomzak. Y'all do what you have to do. Find out why the bird's down.”

She said, “Done. Can you stay on the line a minute?”

Tommy, Kiki, John, and Isaiah entered the theater through a side door, escorted by a Salem police patrol officer, just in time to see Susan march up to Walter and hand him a cell phone.

“It's for you.” She smiled politely, turned on her heels, pointed to Tommy, and said, “You. Over here. Now.”

Tommy glanced at John, who shrugged. “Jesus H. Christ on a bicycle,” Tommy whispered, but did as he was told.

 

Tommy noticed that more than two hundred people were getting into their seats. A table had been set up over the closed orchestra pit with coffee, water, and pastries. He nodded to the crowd as he joined Susan.

“Good showing for so early.”

“A midevening crash meant everyone was home from work, done with their commutes,” she explained. “It saved us a day, contacting people.”

Tommy rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “What's going on?”

She spoke for his ears only. “I picked an IIC and Walter Mulroney got bent out of shape because it's not him. He went behind my back, called Del Wildman.”

“No shit?” Tommy frowned. “Gotta say, you shoulda gone with Mulroney. He's good.”

“He has no imagination.”

Tommy nodded, conceding the point.

“I'm the best there is at this.” Susan said this as a matter of common knowledge.

“Hell yes.”

“Don't you think my pick for Investigator in Charge should be respected?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, Del agreed. He's backing my play. I just wanted you to know.”

“Okay, well . . . thanks.” He hugged her. And because he was so addled from lack of sleep, it didn't even dawn on Tommy to ask who her pick for IIC was.

 

At 9
A.M.
sharp, Susan stepped to the microphone and said, “Let's start by introducing ourselves. Larry? Want to kick this off?”

A man in the third row stood and, around him, twenty-three more people stood. “We're CascadeAir,” he announced. He pointed to his people, who included some high-ranking brass, a few engineers, public relations specialists, the marketing department, and attorneys; lots of attorneys.

Tommy and the three he'd rode in with had stepped off the stage and were helping themselves to coffee and pastries.

Twenty-nine people stood and identified themselves as representing Vermeer Aircraft. The pilots' union was next, followed by the flight attendants' union and the engineers' union. People from Patterson-Pate Electric, who made the engines, were there. The insurance carrier for CascadeAir was present, as were the insurance carriers for the unions and for Patterson-Pate. The Federal Aviation Administration sent its representatives, as did the federal Department of Transportation and the Transportation Safety Administration. The Department of Homeland Security sent two people, just to observe. The Portland office of the FBI sent one woman. All air crashes are initially investigated by the NTSB until someone can prove that a crime was involved, at which time the case gets handed over to the FBI. The governor of Oregon had sent a handful of people to report back. And, of course, Marion County had sent Sheriff Alfredo “Al” Escobar and District Attorney Adele Bergman-James. The aircraft had crashed in Marion County, and if a crime could be proved, it actually fell under the purview of local law enforcement and prosecutors—as the constabulary in Lockerbie, Scotland, knew only too well.

The janitorial staff and the principal of McNary High School sat in, too.

It took twenty minutes for representatives of all the stakeholders to stand up and introduce themselves. In the past, NTSB investigations had begun by kicking all these people out, but it had been learned that pissing off the participants too early actually slowed down the investigation. So Del Wildman's now-infamous Allthings had been invented: first-day gatherings of all the “clans” to speak out, be heard, and feel appreciated.