Crashers (20 page)

KAZMANSKI:
Uh, PDX flight control, this is CascadeAir Eight One Eight. Mayday! We are declaring an emergency!

PDX ATC:
Roger, Eight One Eight. Do you wish to return to Portland?

DANVERS:
Affirmative.

PDX ATC:
What is the nature of your emergency?

DANVERS:
Unknown, Portland! Engine trouble. We're shaking apart!

PDX ATC:
Understood, Eight One Eight. Runway one zero romeo is available. We're clearing airspace for you. Contact one zero five point four for your lineup.

KAZMANSKI:
One zero five point four, roger.

PDX ATC:
Ah, good, Eight One Eight. Come about one eight zero, altitude at your discretion. Would you like fire crews on scene?

DANVERS:
One eight zero confirmed. Affirmative on the fire crews. We don't know what's wrong!

PDX ATC:
Eight One Eight, you are, ah, seven miles from the first localizer.

KAZMANSKI:
Meg, we got— Christ!

Sounds of extreme turbulence. A crash, several thuds. The siren continues to sound. The stick-shaker begins.

(Isaiah closed his eyes and whispered, “Christ almighty.” The stall had begun.)

Sound of emergency fuel venting.

A dull snap within the aircraft. A yelp, from one of the pilots.

DANVERS:
Dammit!

KAZMANSKI:
Jesus, God.

Sounds of damage to airframe.

DANVERS:
No!

Sound of pilot howling.

End of tape.

 

In the hotel room, everyone stayed silent for a while. Meghan Danvers and Russ Kazmanski had spoken to them, had relayed to them what few details they knew about the last moments of their lives.

It was up to the Go-Team to take this message from the grave and to figure out what went wrong.

 

Dennis Silverman sat with the others, his head bowed. He was biting his lip. In his head, he was chanting,
Don't laugh don't laugh don't laugh. . . .

He stood and said, “I've got to go.”

The others saw his pained expression. Walter patted him on the shoulder as he left.

“You did well today. Thanks.”

Dennis nodded and left the room. In the hall, he held his hand over his mouth and leaned against the wall and waited for the hysterical laughter to subside before heading for the elevator.

He realized that he had a massive erection.

 

Everyone remained quiet for a time. Tommy lay on the couch, Peter leaned against a wall, studying his fingernails. The others sat around the table, looking at their photocopied transcripts or staring out the window at the blackness beyond.

“There's something you should know,” Peter said to the room at large. His tie was firmly knotted at his throat and his cuffs were buttoned. “There's a very strong likelihood we're looking at pilot error.”

Isaiah's frown grew deeper. Tommy said, “Why?” without moving his arm.

“Engine number three,” Peter said. “It's preliminary, of course. We haven't even found it yet. But the primary pylon is torqued inwardly. I've seen metal strain like that before. It's evidence of a partial thrust-reverser deployment.”

Walter Mulroney's eyebrows rose and he let loose a low, slow whistle.

Kiki said, “What's that?”

“You're in a jet and it's landing,” Isaiah explained. “You know how, right after you touch the ground, you start to hear a loud scream from the engines? It's the loudest sound they've made the whole trip.”

“With any luck,” Peter muttered.

“Anyway, that's the thrust reverser,” Isaiah said. “Metal slats block the flow of air through the engine, actually making the air move the wrong direction, slowing down the plane.”

Walter scratched his neck. “But that makes no sense. If thrusters reverse in midair, the aircraft would break up instantly. We would have found debris over a thirty-mile area, not in a single field.”

Peter shrugged. “Not if it was a partial deployment, rather than a full one. Just enough to make it nose over. But even if it was only partial, it would have shown up on the flight-deck's monitors. The pilots should have realized what was going on and manually corrected for it. They didn't: pilot error.”

“I don't know.” Tommy lowered his arm for the first time and squinted in the light. He hadn't shaved in more than a day and his hair stood up, spiky. “Did Captain Danvers sound panicky to any of you? She didn't to me.”

Walter turned a baleful eye on him. “Yes, well, you've never flown an airplane.”

Tommy sat up. “What's that supposed to mean?”

Susan whispered, “Oh, God,” and rolled her eyes.

“It means what I said: you've never flown an aircraft and you've never been an engineer. Maybe if you had, you'd know how people react in midair disasters.”

“So you're saying the captain sounded panicky.”

“No, I didn't say that. I'm—”

“That was my point, Walter. She sounded pretty fucking levelheaded, considering the situation. Peter said she should have seen a monitor telling her what was going wrong. But she didn't. That implies panic, and I'm not buying it. Kiki?”

“Not panic, no.” Kiki had heard the recording an even dozen times and made notes on her copy of the transcript. She had covered three pages with doodles and scratches that meant nothing to any other living human. “I don't get fright from her, either. The dominant emotion in that voice is anger.”

“Yes.” Susan nodded. “I heard that, too. Her aircraft is supposed to obey her every command. And it's not. So she's angry at it.”

Peter shook his head, a sneer making his thin features hard and unpleasant. “Whatever. The point is, she has a monitor to her right, to the copilot's left. If she had a partial reverser deployment on engine three, it would have shown up. She should have seen it. She didn't.
Quod erat demonstrandum
—pilot error.”

“If it's a reverser deployment,” Isaiah Grey cut in, his chair tipped far back.

Peter checked his air force wristwatch. “At first light, I've got a team covering the ground from the Wheeler farm back along the flight trajectory. We'll find most of the engine along the way. As for the three other engines, there's a Boeing operation east of Portland, in the suburbs somewhere. They've offered us the use of their shop for the strip-down.”

The term
strip-down
wasn't an exaggeration. Before the full diagnosis would be offered, every tiny part within the engines would be separated and scanned, some with X-rays, some with a mass spectrometer, and some with a microscope.

Kiki stood, placed her fists on the small of her back, and bent to the left. Her spine let loose an audible series of cracks. “This monitor—does it have an audio signal?”

Peter looked to Walter and Isaiah. They both shrugged. “Some do,” Isaiah said. “We'll have to see what brand they installed.”

Kiki bent to the left and her spine popped. A runner, she hadn't exercised in two days and was beginning to feel it. “Susan, can we get a swap-out?”

It was an expensive request. Kiki wanted an exact duplicate of the Vermeer 111, made the same year and with more or less the same number of air miles as the one that had crashed. They'd have to lease such a jet, probably from CascadeAir, to make sure the same equipment had been loaded in each aircraft. CascadeAir would agree, of course, but the company would charge the NTSB dearly for it.

To Kiki's surprise, Susan smiled. “Already done. Del okayed it this morning. We'll have a swap-out here in the afternoon.”

Kiki headed for the door. “Thanks. I'm going to bed.”

Tommy's eyes were bloodshot and he looked like the walking dead. He stood, too, yawning. “I'm gonna catch some sleep.”

Walter stood. “We'll start playing pick-up sticks at dawn.” The structures crew had a task ahead of them that was very similar, in a macabre sort of way, to the children's game. They would begin moving the Vermeer 111, bit by bit, to the hangar that Susan had secured for them in Valence, Oregon. It was tedious, arduous work, and his was the largest single section of the Go-Team, with more than sixty people in all.

Susan started to tidy up the room. “Everyone remember to eat and get some rest. We have a long, long way to go.”

Glumly, the fatigued group trudged out and headed to their rooms.

 

Nobody had planned it this way. It was a complete coincidence that Tommy and Kiki ended up on the same floor of the hotel, their rooms right across the hall from each other's. It was just after 10
P.M.
when they fumbled for their keys and stepped off the elevator together. The corridor was abandoned, the other guests asleep. Tommy's hair stood on end and the bags under his eyes were turning the color of eggplant.

“This is me,” Kiki whispered, halfway down the hall. She matched the number on the envelope of her magnetic swipe-key card with the number on the room door.

“Huh. I'm right across the hall.”

Kiki said, “Guess so. Well . . .”

Tommy shrugged. “Yeah.”

They stood for a moment. Tommy played with his key.

Finally, Kiki let out a soft, quiet laugh at their predicament.

Tommy grinned. “Yeah. See you in a couple.”

They turned away from each other and opened their doors.

In his room, Tommy fell onto his bed, fully clothed, the key in his hand, and fell asleep instantly.

THE BEVERLY HILLS HOME of Abdul-Hakam Bakshar Farouk Abdel-al was massive, and a huge amount of the space had been turned over to the luxury of the staff .

O'Meara's people found walk-in closets that ran the length of the building, featuring literally hundreds of suits, from polo uniforms to evening clothes to a wide array of business attire. Everyone on staff was expected to dress impeccably, and even the massive Johnser Riley found a Calvin Klein suit that fit his frame. When they emerged from the dressing rooms, Daria Gibron directed them to the immaculate kitchen and told them to help themselves.

“This is the fucking life,” Feargal Kelly said around a mouthful of turkey and havarti on rye.

 

Down in the south wing, in one of the spare bedrooms, Daria discovered that the consul general liked the beautiful young things (accent on
young,
as in legally underage) who were draped on his arm at social events to be dressed to the nines. There were enough clothes to be found in the room-long wardrobe to handle a decent-size fashion show.

Daria slipped on a snug pair of black leather jeans. She had stripped
down to her bra and held up two tops, a gray-and-black sweater and a maroon jacket that buttoned to the neck. She held each up in front of her, studied herself in a tri-fold mirror. Either would complement her small, athletic frame, she thought. Spikes should have been a must for the leather trousers, but Daria planned on doing some running in the next few days, so she toed around in the floor of the closet for something a bit more sensible, found a pair of black leather boots with a Spanish heel.

My God,
she thought.
I'm enjoying myself way too much.

“You look the fucking ride.” O'Meara startled her, speaking from the doorway of the dressing room. He wore gabardine trousers in a natty camel brown, with wingtip shoes to match. He wore an undershirt. He'd thrown a plain white shirt and brown tie over his arm.

Daria said, “Is that a compliment?”

O'Meara gave her that same crooked smile she'd seen when they first met. Then he raised his other hand and pointed the silver Colt Python at her midsection.

“You've helped us this far and I'm grateful. But I don't trust coincidences. And you showing up like that, kicking the shite out of your FBI lad, that was just too coincidental for my taste.”

Daria nodded knowingly. “Besides, they're looking for four men and one woman. Changing our look helps, of course, but killing me also alters the group profile. That's smart.”

O'Meara hesitated, a little crease forming on his forehead. He hadn't thought about “changing the group profile” but he understood what she meant. And her passionless, logical recitation of why killing her made sense was unnerving.

“You have been helpful,” he admitted, stalling as much as anything else.

Daria sighed and tossed both tops onto the bed. “Keeping me around would be a tactical error. I understand thoroughly.”

She reached behind her back and unsnapped her bra with a casual flick of her thumbnail. The cloth fluttered to the floor. “If only I could think of a good reason to keep me around.”

O'Meara grinned. “You figure, flash a man a bit of that and he'll think with his dick?”

She pretended to think about it a bit. “Yes,” she said with a decisive nod.

The grin widened. “You may be right. Let's even the odds a bit.” And he produced Lucas Bell's handcuffs again.

.   .   .

Downstairs, Keith O'Shea finished off a sandwich and twisted the cap off an expensive microbrew. “Where's O'Meara, then?”

“Probably shagging your lass there,” Johnser replied, snorting a laugh.

“Jay-sus, you!” Feargal Kelly threw the remains of his turkey and havarti sandwich at the big man. “O'Meara's a professional, isn't he? Don't you worry, lads. His mind's on the game.”

ON WEDNESDAY, THE 6
A.M.
briefing started on time, in the same executive-level briefing room of the FBI headquarters as before. Once again, Donal O'Meara's photo was being projected onto the wall. This time, it was a surveillance shot courtesy of British intelligence.

Lucas Bell stood at one end of the table, holding the remote control for the projector and a laser pointer. He was the least senior of the agents and executives in the room, which was packed. He wore a double-breasted black suit with a perfectly pressed white shirt. The overall look was smooth enough to cover the swollen lip and discolored mark on his jaw. The hunt for the Irishmen had just become top priority for the entire Los Angeles field office, and Lucas Bell had been the top man on the Ireland Watch unit back in the 1990s, charged with looking for illegal, partisan activities in the United States.