Crashers (24 page)

Another reporter elbowed her way to the front. “Have you ruled out a bomb?”

Are you deaf?
she thought, and smiled serenely. “Too early to tell. We have ruled out nothing whatsoever. Again, we know the Vermeer One
Eleven is on the ground. We don't know why. I can tell you that in the past decade, nearly a third of all U.S. aircraft accidents have resulted from a loss of control, suggesting mechanical failure. About twelve percent have been categorized as ‘controlled flight into terrain,' suggesting pilot error or an error with the avionics instruments. Naturally, we're keeping an eye on both possibilities, and an eye on all other possibilities. I don't know how many of you know this, but we tend to think of Arthur Conan Doyle as the patron saint of the NTSB. We're guided by his famous dictum: when the impossible has been ruled out, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. So for now, we're in the ruling-out-the-impossible phase.”

The next volley of questions, predictably, focused on terrorism: bombs and missiles being the villains du jour. “Why is the FBI interviewing survivors?” someone asked.

That would be John Roby at the Salem Hospital, Susan realized. “They're not. The passengers are being interviewed by our team. Next?”

The questions went on for another twenty minutes. As the press conference was breaking up, the devastatingly handsome anchorman for one of the local network affiliates walked up and flashed Susan his thermodynamic TV smile. “Hi. Quick question?”

Susan smiled politely.

“We're always looking for experts who can appear on our newscast, to lend a little authenticity to the reports.”

“Yes?”

He flipped open a notepad. “How do we contact this Arthur Doyle guy?”

“I don't remember much,” said the fourteen-year-old girl in the spinal brace. Her words were slurred by painkillers and the fact that three of her teeth were missing. “I was reading
People.
There was an article about Rob Pattinson. Then I woke up here.”

The interrogator asked her three more questions, but gave up as her eyelids fluttered. She was asleep before the man stood.

He turned.

Another man, smallish, maybe five-eight, stood in the doorway. He wore khakis and field boots, plus a navy-blue NTSB windbreaker.

“Cheers. John Roby. We met?”

The interrogator swore to himself and presented his own ID. “Tom Daystrom. FBI.”

The newcomer, an Englishman, frowned. “Yeah? To what do we owe the honor?”

Agent Daystrom held up both hands. “Hey, don't bust my chops, okay? I know I'm poaching here. But I've never worked a major disaster before. You know? I figured it'd be good training. Besides, I thought you guys could use the help.”

“Decent of you,” the Englishman replied. “You don't mind if I call this in to the powers that be, do you?”

Agent Daystrom winced. “You do, and my supervisor will yank me out of here. He's a real by-the-book type.”

John Roby paused, then smiled. “Sure, mate. The help's appreciated, init. I'll take the other side of the corridor and we'll compare notes in, say, two hours?”

“You got it,” Daystrom said and offered his hand.

 

As soon as Daystrom was gone, John slipped on his satellite phone headset and called Kiki Duvall, who'd been interviewing victims at hospitals in Portland.

“Oh God, John,” she said after he identified himself. “This is horrible. Most of these people don't remember diddly-squat. And those who do are trying to forget it. Until I get into their faces, that is. I hate this.”

John chose not to remind her that, like himself, she'd volunteered to interview survivors. “Same here. By the by, any sign of the FBI?”

From the short pause, he knew the answer before she spoke. “Yes. I just ran into an agent who said he was volunteering to help because—”

“Because he'd never worked a disaster before?”

“Exactly.”

“Same here,” John said. “Something's not right.”

“You think? FAA's doing more than they're legally required to do. Tommy had those firefighters and paramedics working through the night. Maybe the FBI really wants to help.”

John shrugged, as if she could see him. “Dunno, love. Could be. I never poached on another agency's investigation without clearing it, though. Stupid. Kind of thing that gets court cases all smudged up. Think I should call Tommy, just to be on the safe—”

“Hold it,” Kiki cut in. “I've got a call coming in. I'll be right back.”

A subtle hiss of white noise told John he'd been put on hold. The line clicked. “John? That was Isaiah. The swap-out plane is here. I'm heading out to the airport.”

“Right. Good luck. And sing out if you bump into any more FBI.”

Kiki said, “You bet,” and rang off.

Isaiah Grey waited for the pilot to open the door of the swap-out Vermeer 111. They'd parked the giant airliner near the Alaska Airlines maintenance hangar, within the airport's security perimeter and out of sight of the passengers and other civilians in the terminal. Isaiah had ridden a motorized ladder attached to the equivalent of a golf cart out to the site. The wind was brisk and he held on to the steel railing until the door opened.

“Isaiah?” The swap-out pilot beamed and offered a hand. Isaiah stepped into the jet and pumped the man's hand, pulling him in until their chests touched.

“Jesus, they let you in the left-hand seat? Hell in a handbasket.”

The pilot grinned. “Retiring next year. The steelheads are calling my name. So what are you doing hanging out with these ghoulish crash chasers?”

Before he could reply, Isaiah noticed a passenger standing up in the first-class section. The man was athletically built and wore a white dress shirt with a black tie. He was turned with his back to the door, and Isaiah saw something he had never before seen on any civilian airplane: the man had a small, matte black automatic pistol clipped to his belt.

The man approached. The swap-out pilot said, “Isaiah Grey, NTSB. Ray Calabrese, FBI. Ray, Isaiah.”

They shook hands. Isaiah put a smile on his face. “FBI?”

Ray said, “You the IIC?”

“No, but he's here in Portland.”

“I need to talk to him.”

They turned and found Kiki Duvall dashing up the stairs. She wore a navy-issue T-shirt under a blue denim shirt, unbuttoned and untucked, sleeves rolled up to her elbows. Her long, rusty hair was pulled back and tied with a leather thong, and she wore almond-shaped sunglasses. “What's this? Did you say FBI?”

Ray said, “Yes, ma'am. Ray Calabrese.”

Kiki said, “You guys get around. There was FBI at Good Sam Hospital and John said they were at the Salem Hospital, too.”

Isaiah tried for nonchalant, got pretty close. “Really?” He appraised Ray.

Ray shrugged into his sport coat. “We're just one big, happy federal family. If someone can direct me to your IIC . . . ?”

THE GARGANTUAN FLATBEDS AND cranes arrived before 2
P.M.
Walter Mulroney was a taskmaster that afternoon, running his troops at full speed, as the ominous, low clouds marched eastward, pregnant and bulbous with rain that hadn't begun to fall in earnest yet. When it did, everyone knew, the field would become significantly tougher to maneuver in.

The agricultural consortium that owned the field was represented that morning, along with their insurance provider. They stood on the right-hand, northbound lane, once again closed to traffic, and watched tires as tall as a man gouge rough trenches out of their cash crop.

The trucks and cranes made a slow, straight line for the biggest piece of the wreckage, the middle of the fuselage. Under Walter's watchful eyes, specially trained crews heaved metal-mesh belts around the jet. Another crew carefully carved away the remaining wing—it would be reattached later: moving the Vermeer with one wing sticking out would be impossible.

As the first drops of rain splattered onto the ground, crews dug trenches under the fuselage and slipped the heavy belts underneath at four places. The belts were attached to the cranes.

Walter wore rubber boots, oilcloth trousers and jacket, and a cowboy hat. It was his standard bad-weather getup. He carried an electric bullhorn in one hand and a walkie-talkie in the other. His NTSB-issued ear
jack was in his jacket pocket. When he gave the nod, the cranes began gingerly lifting the body of the jetliner. It groaned, protesting under the new pressure points formed by the metal belts. But it didn't break up any further. That was vital.

With infinite care, the cranes set the fuselage down onto one of the massive flatbeds. As soon as it was down, Walter lifted the megaphone to his lips, his voice echoing across the field. “Okay! Empennage and tail cone are next! This weather's only getting worse, people! Let's get to it!”

He put down the bullhorn, picked up the walkie-talkie, and thumbed the Send switch. “Truck. How's the catalog going? Over.”

A long panel truck the size of the largest U-Haul, with the NTSB logo on both side-sliding doors, sat on the edge of Interstate 5. In the back sat five computer operators with five computers. Displayed on each of the five monitors was a section of the grassy field, the edges of each section denoted by neon-green lines that didn't exist in reality but that marked the infrared tags on the global-positioning-system transceivers. The computer operators stared at small squares of the field, each being videotaped live by five automated cameras, mounted on the roof of the truck. Each operator wore a headset with a microphone.

A walkie-talkie stood upright on one of the monitors. When Walter Mulroney's voice sounded, the computer operator said, “Okay, time out,” into his microphone, then picked up the walkie-talkie and keyed it for transmission. “Truck here. We're a little ahead of schedule, boss, but that's good. Over.”

“Roger that.” Walter's voice came back flat, harried. “Keep them at it, but don't let them get careless. We pick up everything. Over.”

“Roger. Out.”

The operator set down the walkie-talkie and jiggled his voice mike into position. On his screen, he could see two men and a woman standing in his prescribed sector of the field. The operator had stuck masking tape on his Dell terminal, and had scribbled 5J onto the tape: that was his sector. All three of his team were holding something in their hands. He said, “Okay, Tammy, whatcha got?”

He squinted at his monitor. The woman in the field held up something he couldn't define from that distance. Her voice came back over his
headset: “It looks like a bundle of coax wiring, three wires colored blue, red, and green. They're connected to some kind of junction box, about the size of a paperback.”

The operator logged that information into the Dell and said, “Roger. That's marked Five-J-eighteen. Paulie, what've you got?”

One of the men in the field held up something white. “A roll of toilet paper,” he said. “Never been used. The end's still adhered.”

“Toilet paper. Five-J-nineteen. Right. Bill?”

“Um, got an arm bone here. A femur, maybe.”

“Femur's in the leg, Bill. We'll call it a long bone, human. Five-J-twenty. Check. What's next?”

Around him, the other four operators were going through the exact same drill, each with three of their own people standing in the rain. By the end of the day, they hoped to pick up and catalog every item of debris in the field.

A mile and a half away from the flatbeds and cranes, the searchers from Peter Kim's power-plant crew began finding bits and pieces of the missing Patterson-Pate engine number three, strewn among the plants ruined by the rain of jet fuel.

Donal O'Meara, Johnser Riley, and Daria Gibron stepped off a bus, drawing no particular attention, except for glances from a few women who recognized the expensive cut of their suits.

Reaching the sidewalk, Daria realized, to her amazement, that O'Meara hadn't tried to kill her. Yet.

She had fully expected to be attacked before leaving the porn czar's mansion that morning. If O'Meara was any sort of tactician, he would have taken advantage of her skills to get out of Los Angeles, then should have taken her to a quiet, isolated alley, broken her neck, and left her. Or at least he should have tried that. One of them would have ended up on the ground in that alley, and Daria was pretty sure it wouldn't have been she.

But he hadn't tried to kill her. Daria wasn't sure why she was alive, but she was having a hell of a good time.

She studied the little row of storefronts on San Bernardino Road. Three doors down was a hotel that featured a sports bar called Hot Shots. Johnser's eyes lit up when he saw it.

“What now?” the big man asked.

“Find a car we can steal,” O'Meara said, squinting into the afternoon sun. The temperature had spiked that morning, and it was already a dozen degrees warmer than Tuesday's high. “We have half a day to kill before we meet up with the others.”

“That's a long fucking wait,” Johnser groused.

“Find hotels,” Daria said. It was the first time she'd spoken since leaving the mansion. “Two of them. We need to split up again.”

The two men looked at her. They looked at each other. Then back at her. With a shrug, Daria stepped over to a kiosk vendor outside a drugstore and started rummaging through sunglasses on a spinner rack.

Johnser leaned in to O'Meara and said, “Why split up?”

O'Meara backhanded him on the arm. “Gobshite. It's so we change our bloody profile again, isn't it.” He drew a cigarette out of his pocket, eyes narrowed and never leaving Daria.

It had been Daria's idea to send the other two—Feargal Kelly and Keith O'Shea—on a different route to their final destination, because finding four big, tough, fair-skinned men and one small olive-skinned woman would be a “walk in the forest,” as she'd called it, for the police. “Walk in the park,” O'Meara had corrected her, but got her gist. She was right. Again.