Crashers (28 page)

Isaiah Grey sat down in the pilot's seat of the Vermeer swap-out and handed Kiki a pen.

“Bic,” he said. “I hope blue ink is okay.”

She rolled her eyes at his sly smile.

Holding the pen with the capped end in her hand, she tapped the nearest monitor. She frowned. Isaiah waited quietly, fascinated.

Kiki tapped the next one, waited. Then the next one. She hit each monitor within her reach.

She reversed the pen, cap facing away from her, and went through the ritual again. It took ten minutes.

She took off the cap, tapped the monitors with the metal nib.

After the last monitor, Isaiah said, “Anything?”

“Not a pen,” Kiki said. “What the hell did he see? And what was that tapping sound?”

The Oregon Department of Transportation and state troopers worked in the rain to close off the ramp from Interstate 5 to the rural community of Valence. The rain was coming strong now, bouncing off the asphalt and turning the borrow pits along the sides of the highway to mud. An independent contractor had been hired to move the remains of the Vermeer 111 to the leased hangar in Valence, and the crews were experienced enough to know that if the six-foot-high wheels of the huge trucks hit that mud, they'd have to transfer the cargo off and get hauled out. It would cost them a day.

Walter Mulroney rode ahead of the convoy in a rented Sentra. The first thing he noted about Valence was that the downtown had been designed for highway traffic, not for the residents. The main strip featured a dozen fast-food joints, each with its logo-bearing sign perched precariously atop metal poles at least a hundred feet up; hard to see from the sidewalks but readily visible from the highway.

Troopers were just beginning to close off the main drag—the massive trucks were far too wide for two-way traffic through town—as Walter took the well-marked turnoff for the airfield. A short, stocky man in jeans, cowboy boots, and a poncho ran out to open one of the two big gates for him. Walter rolled down his window and flashed his ID.

“Ricky Sanchez,” the man said as he leaned down, elbows on the window frame of the driver's door. He was maybe twenty-five, Walter thought, and his accent was strong enough to suggest that he was an immigrant or first-generation in the States. “Where's the Vermeer?”

“Five minutes behind me.”

The armrest inside the door was getting wet. Ricky Sanchez pointed to a row of hangars and said, “Park it over there. I'll meet you in hangar five.” He dashed away to open the other gate.

The airfield was a bit of a surprise. It included one well-kept runway, easily long enough for multiengine takeoffs. There were five hangars, and, to Walter's experienced eye, they clearly delineated the history of the field. The first two hangars were rusty Quonset huts, barely big enough to
park a Hercules transport plane. The third one, also a tin Quonset, was twice the size and half as old as the first two. The fourth hangar couldn't have been more than five years old. It was frame constructed and wide enough to provide cover for two UPS jets, side by side, along with wiggle room for ground crews to perform maintenance. As Walter drove past, that was exactly what he saw going on.

The fifth hangar was brand-new and freshly painted sky blue and white. The UPS logo adorned the doors. This building had more space than the first three hangars combined. It was a top-of-the-line facility that would have looked right at home at O'Hare.

Walter parked just inside that hangar. The barn doors had been thrown open. There was room inside for three Vermeer 111s, but currently his Sentra was the only vehicle within. Walter got out and shut his door, and the sound echoed crazily around him.

Ricky Sanchez hustled in and shoved back the hood of his poncho. His face was square and his smile was like a neon light. He was maybe five-six, and the hand that gripped Walter's could have belonged to a boxer.

“Walter Mulroney, NTSB. You have a fine facility here.”

Ricky beamed as if he'd built it himself. “I'm the day foreman. It doesn't pay much but they're giving me free flying lessons.”

“Want to be a pilot?” Walter asked.

Ricky said, “I am a pilot.”

Walter smiled. Most pilots considered themselves born that way. “We're going to need outlets for a dozen computers, not to mention all the power tools. Will that be a problem?”

Ricky said, “We got enough power strips for that, and UPS had us put in three data drops. You can surf the Net right from the workstation.”

Walter's fears of a podunk airfield with 1950s technology evaporated. “Outstanding. We're also going to set up a microwave relay from your tower, if that's okay.”

He glanced outside. The control tower was a simple wooden box on stilts. It could have doubled as a fire-watch facility in a national forest or a spotlight guardhouse at a prison.

“Power's no problem,” Ricky said. “UPS says you got the hangar for as long as you need. We don't got a lot of luxuries or nothing but there's a Coke machine and a candy machine in the office. And a couple restaurants around here deliver. My sister owns one. Best enchiladas in town, guaranteed. We also—”

He paused, eyes going wide, feeling the ground vibrate beneath his muddy boots.

Walter felt it, too, and smiled. “That's no earthquake, son. That's CascadeAir Flight Eight One Eight.”

The first of the mammoth trucks turned into the airfield.

ISAIAH GREY SAID, “AH, roger that, ATC. We've got a yellow light. Holding at the line for your word. Over.”

A crackle of static, then a woman's voice: “Confirmed November Tango Sierra Bravo One. Hang tight. We'll get you guys airborne in a minute. ATC out.”

Hayden, the pilot who'd flown the swap-out—and Ray Calabrese—from LAX to PDX sat in the copilot's chair. Kiki Duvall sat in the fold-away seat behind Isaiah. Her teeth were working her lower lip and she was pulling absently on the frayed cuff of her jeans. Normally, Kiki loved to fly. But cruising in an exact duplicate of the jet whose shattered corpse she had so recently helped to examine was an unnerving experience.

“I didn't realize you could fly these big commercial jobs,” she said, speaking up to be heard by Isaiah, who wore a headset.

“If it's got wings, I can fly it,” he replied over his shoulder. “You ready to rock?”

The plane inched toward the painted stripe, its waiting position. Isaiah tapped the brake, bringing the plane to a full stop, and a loud
thump-thump
sounded from within. The men jumped, eyes alert.

“Relax, boys,” Kiki said. “Something just fell over, amidships.”

The copilot, Hayden, began to unbuckle his seat belt. “More than something. I heard two thumps, ma'am.”

“Hmm.” Kiki was staring out the window absently. “One thing fell. You just heard it twice.”

He stopped before exiting the flight deck and smiled down at the seated woman. “Come again?”

Kiki sighed. “One thing fell. It'll be about halfway back to the tail. It's not metal. Rubber or plastic, maybe. We heard it land twice.”

Hayden stepped out of the flight deck. Isaiah adjusted his voice wand and said, “Portland ATC, this is November Tango One. Be advised that copilot has exited the flight deck to check on a noise. Expect him back up here in thirty seconds. . . . Roger, tower. Thanks. November Tango One out.”

The copilot returned with an odd, artificial smile painted on his face. Isaiah restrained his own grin. “Well?”

“Ah, a flashlight was stowed badly in an overhead bin. It bounced free.” He retook his seat and turned to Kiki. “It's waterproof, rubber coated, not metal. It was just what you said and right where you said. You mind me asking how you knew that, ma'am?”

“I'll tell you if you stop calling me ma'am. It's Kiki.”

“Hayden,” he responded.

“Glad to meet you. Sound travels through the air. But it also travels through metal. Aluminum is a particularly good medium for sound. Even better than air. That means sound travels first through the skin of an aircraft, then through the air in the fuselage and the wood of the cockpit door. When the flashlight hit the deck, we heard the thump through the skin of the plane first. I knew it wasn't metal because the thump lacked that resonant quality. And I did a little calculation in my head, figuring out how far apart the thumps were, to gauge how far back the thing landed.”

Hayden gaped. “How the hell did you learn something like that?”

Kiki blushed, enjoying the act of showing off. “I was a sonar officer on a nuclear sub. Want to know how to tell a Russian boomer from two whales making love?”

“Not really, no. Since when do they allow women on board subs?” Hayden asked.

“Since me. Well, me and four others. We were the freshman class. And we were only allowed to serve on the big, nuclear boomers. Attack subs don't have enough room for mixed housing.”

Hayden exchanged impressed grins with Isaiah. “I've practically lived half my life inside jets and I never knew that thing about sound traveling through walls.”

Isaiah inclined his head, hearing something over his headset, then toggled his Send switch. “Ah, roger that, tower. We're cleared and rolling. Thanks for the hospitality. November Tango One out.”

He turned to Hayden and jerked his thumb back to Kiki. “And you wondered why I took this job.”

Dennis Silverman was putting the finishing touches on the false data for the flight data recorder when his phone rang. “Dennis? Walter Mulroney here.”

Dennis smiled and kicked back, his feet up on his cluttered desk. “Mr. Mulroney. Hey, how's it going?”

“Good. We've moved the fuselage to a hangar at the Valence Airfield and most of the detritus will be here by sunset. I just heard from Susan Tanaka. We'll debrief here, tonight. Any chance the data from the FDR will be ready?”

“You bet.” Dennis sucked apple juice through a straw punched through the top of a waxy box. “We've got better data than I hoped. The Gamelan should explain a lot of things tonight.”

“Really?”

“Trust me. I can make this box tell me anything I want,” Dennis said. He meant it literally.

One of the searchers from the fuel-soaked field arrived around 6
P.M.
and presented the three thin, twisted pieces of metal, each in its own sealed evidence bag.

“Excellent,” said Peter Kim. “Partial thrust-reverser deployment, as predicted. Good old-fashioned pilot error.”

“We've swept three adjacent fields,” the searcher said. “We haven't found even half of the engine.”

Peter nodded. “I suspect some of it hit the fuselage. Have you found the hydraulic isolation valve yet?”

The man frowned. “I don't think I know what that is.”

“Here.” Peter walked him over to the massive workbench. A team of engineers from Boeing, Patterson-Pate, and Peter's own crew had engine number four almost completely stripped down. Peter picked up a piece of metal approximately the size and shape of a desk stapler. “Hydraulic isolation valve. This has to open before the reversers can deploy the blocker doors. The blocker doors check the airflow and reroute it, slowing down the plane. Here, see this?”

He held up the valve and pointed to a thin wire at the top. “This triggers a signal to a monitor on the flight deck. One of the pilots should have seen that. With a partial deployment, they could have cut power to that engine and flown fine on the other three until they could stow the reversers again. You find me this valve and we'll have the smoking gun. After that, we'll write our reports and head on back home. Case closed.”

The searcher said, “Yes, sir,” and left.

The tropical depression that had beaten the crap out of Georgia finally skipped off the eastern seaboard and began lumbering toward New England and Canada. Power was quickly restored to much of Atlanta.

At the apartment with the Red Fist of Ulster's answering machine, phone service was finally back in operation.

“Can you take a look at something?”

Tommy Tomzak was taking a break in the outer office of the ME's building, watching traffic glide past the front window. His hands were cramping up and his lower back vibrated with a dull, red ache from leaning over gurneys. He'd have killed for a sauna or a couple of laps in a pool, and he realized that he hadn't looked to see if their hotel offered either amenity. He was leaning against the back of a couch in the waiting room, sipping his sixth
cup of coffee, his mind flitting from the cadavers awaiting his attention to the FBI consultant, to Kiki Duvall. He wondered what she was up to today, wondered if either of them would be free for dinner.

He wondered how she'd react if he asked. He wondered if he'd really ask her. Was there any point in pursuing a relationship that had already gone south once before?

He checked the wall clock. A little after 6
P.M.
At 8, this crash would be forty-eight hours old.

He thought about the autopsies in Kentucky. About finding enough of a dismembered thigh to do a DNA test on the pilot. The muscle was far too ruined by jet fuel for a drug test. But was there something he'd missed? Hadn't someone written a paper about—

“Ahem.” The voice of Laura, the ME's black-clad daughter, snapped him out of his reverie. “I said, can you take a look at something?”

Tommy smiled ruefully. “Sorry. My brain's slowly leaking out my ears. 'Sup?”

She waved off the apology with a good-natured pop of her bubble gum and led him to her dad's office. She plopped herself down in the rolling chair, facing the MacBook Air. Tommy parked his butt on the edge of the desk and watched her hands flash across the keyboard.