Crashers (9 page)

“Sure,” she said.

They climbed into the ambulance together, its heavy-duty shocks hardly budging under their combined weight. John and Kiki sat side by side on a stretcher facing Bernard Weintraub.

“Sir?” Kiki said softly.

He stirred, looked up, surprised. He hadn't seen them enter, although their knees practically touched in the narrow space between gurneys.

“Yes?”

“I'm Kathryn Duvall,” she said, offering her hand. His palm was ice cold, and she noticed no steam rising from the cup. “Do you want a fresh cup?”

“No. Thanks. I'm trying to cut down.” His voice was soft and a little raspy, like a lifelong smoker's. Or maybe he was just a shy person who had never learned to project his voice. Kiki had heard only eight words, but she pinned him as a Midwesterner.

“Are you injured, sir?” she asked.

“No. I'm fine.” He expressed no shock, no fear, no outrage, no relief. If she had asked about the Boston Celtics or the Dow Jones leading industrials, he might have answered the same. Three more words, and Kiki guessed Kansas.

“Do you remember what happened?”

“You mean, on the plane?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes.”

Not Kansas,
Kiki corrected herself.
Higher. Nebraska or South Dakota.
It was a gift she had, like her perfect pitch and her ability to play almost any song on the guitar after hearing it just once.

John said, “When did you realize something had gone wrong?”

Weintraub looked at him and blinked. “I fell asleep. I always sleep on planes. I was using my raincoat for a blanket. Something hit me on the head. I think it was that breathing thing.”

Kiki said, “The air masks came down before the plane shook? You're sure?”

“Not really. I'm a heavy sleeper. The plane might have been shaking.” His shoulders rose and fell. “Sorry.”

Nebraska,
Kiki decided.
And not rural. Maybe Lincoln.

People in trauma can be like the hypnotized, she knew. They can be susceptible to suggestions, so Kiki and John worded their questions with exquisite care. But traumatized people also can have remarkably clear memories. She tried something that had just dawned on her. “Before that, were you dreaming?”

John's eyebrows rose, surprised by the question. A smile flickered across Weintraub's lips, his first hint of emotion. “Yeah.”

“What about?”

“Ah, it was stupid.”

“No, I want to know.” She kept her tone light, conversational.

“I had a Mustang in high school,” he admitted a little sheepishly. “A real muscle car, No muffler, just glass packs. You know?”

Kiki did; John didn't, but kept quiet, letting Kiki play her hand.

Kiki said, “Cherry bomb, sure. I haven't heard that noise in years.”

“Yeah.” Weintraub's smile broadened just a bit, then slipped away like a breeze on a hot summer night. “That Mustang roared.”

John got it: the noise of the breakup had intruded into Weintraub's dream before he woke up. A lour roar, as in an explosion, and before the air masks deployed. Mr. Weintraub had incorporated the sound into his dream. John had been a very good detective in his day, and he knew how to run an interview. He'd also asked Kiki into the ambulance because the Sonar Witch heard things that other people didn't.

Kiki said, “What happened after you woke up?”

His eyes didn't wander, the way most people's do when they try to recall specific incidents. Instead, he seemed to stare at the questioner, but looking toward their throats or chests, not making eye contact.

“People were screaming.” He spoke softly and without emotion. “Things were in the air. A book, one of them flimsy little pillows they give you. Lady next to me started chanting that thing.”

John said, “Thing?”

Weintraub's eyes turned to John's chest. “That Catholic thing. What's that called?”

“The rosary.”

“Yeah, that.”

Kiki asked, “How long before you hit the ground?” even though she knew the answer would be meaningless. Time elapses in bizarre ways for people in the middle of a life-threatening crisis.

“A long time,” Weintraub said.

“Did anything on the jet break? Anything big?”

“The overhead doors popped open. Stuff fell out. And there was . . .” His voice trailed off .

“Mr. Weintraub?”

“There was holes, over on the right side. Holes just appeared in the wall. Kind of like they weren't there, then they were. It sort of looked like a roll of film that freezes in a projector, you know? And the film starts bubbling and melting?”

Kiki nodded. “I know what that looks like, sure. And you saw that on the right side of the plane?
Your
right?”

He nodded.

“Then what?”

He cleared his throat. “Oh, there was lots of blood, I guess.”

The plastic cup was shaking a little now, the surface of the coffee undulating in concentric rings. Weintraub wet his upper lip with the tip of his tongue. Kiki saw a single trickle of sweat escape from his scalp, course down his temple. She gently touched John's leg, nodded toward Weintraub. Without a word, John stood and hopped out of the ambulance.

“There was blood and people were screaming and there was this blood,” Weintraub said. His voice cracked. Little peaks—the coffee equivalent of whitecaps—popped up in the cup. Kiki gently reached over, took the cup from his hands, set it down at her feet. He didn't protest.

“There was just so much screaming and crying and people were shouting and these holes, these holes, they just appeared, like film melting, holes in the plane and that's not right.”

John came into view with a paramedic right behind him. Susan Tanaka was with them.

“It's just not right, holes in the plane like that, it isn't supposed to happen. I gotta be in San Diego for a sales meeting and it's starting real soon and I didn't bring an extra sports coat and there's just so fucking much blood! It's just fucking blood! It's bleeding! THE FUCKING AIRPLANE IS BLEEDING! IT'S GOT HOLES AND IT'S
FUCKING BLEEDING , MA'AM! IT WAS BLEEDING!”

That single, mannerly “ma'am” spooked Kiki as much as anything. The paramedic was in the ambulance now, seated next to Weintraub, sliding up the sleeve of his houndstooth sports coat, jabbing a needle into
his arm. Weintraub turned to the younger man, eyes blazing, the full iris visible in both. His arm jerked, pushing the paramedic back. Kiki switched seats, sat on the other side of Weintraub, threw her arms around him, and pinned his arms at his side. Even in his livid, terror-stricken state, Kiki was too strong for him.

Kiki didn't know what was in the syringe but she felt the man's energy drain away from him. He leaned against her, losing form like an inflatable figure with a fast leak. She stood—as well as she could in the cramped ambulance—and Weintraub toppled over onto the gurney, his eyes rolling up into his head.

The paramedic nodded. “Thanks.”

Kiki scampered past him out of the ambulance, eyes glittering with tears. Susan Tanaka stood with John.

“Oh God oh God I am so sorry,” Kiki gushed. “I didn't mean . . . I don't . . .”

“Kiki!” Susan almost barked at her. “Calm down. He was going to spin out at any minute. That's why Tommy parked him in an ambulance. It's all right. You did okay.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Kiki hugged her, almost hyperventilating. She'd seen sailors with attacks of claustrophobia go nuts on nuclear subs, parked beneath the Arctic ice pack. But that had been different. She'd been an observer. This time, she felt like she'd caused Weintraub to lose it. “Susan. Thank God you got here.”

“He was sleeping before the crisis,” John told Susan. “He dreamt of a very loud sports car.”

“Muscle car,” Kiki corrected. She was regaining her equilibrium. “A car with glass packs instead of a muffler, to reduce back pressure. They make a heavy, bass sound. I think there was an explosion before the air masks deployed. He also said the starboard side of the fuselage seemed to melt.”

Susan wrote everything down in her ubiquitous notepad. “Good. All right, it's something. Hey.” She took Kiki by the forearm, stared up into her eyes. “You're okay?”

Kiki inhaled deeply, let it out. “Yeah. Freaked me out. I'm cool.”

Susan bussed her on the cheek—not easy with their height disparity. “It's so good to see you. Both of you.” Susan handed the investigators two sheets from her pad, with the name of their motel. “Here. It's in the town of Keizer, south of here, next to Salem. The debriefing for all the stake-holders is at nine, and we'll do our first press conference at eleven. But for
now, you two should get out of here. Relax. There's nothing to do until the CVR comes back and we get bomb dogs from the Portland police.”

“You're right.” John nodded. “But there was no bomb.”

Susan shrugged. “You're usually right, but Mr. Weintraub described an explosion. We've got to go by the book.”

SUSAN TANAKA WAS ON her ear jack satellite phone, confirming more arrivals. The NTSB is one of the smallest bureaucracies in Washington, with fewer than six hundred employees in all. The only way to handle a major crash investigation was to bring in experts from the very manufacturers they were investigating. It was an uncomfortable partnership, the ultimate example of strange bedfellows, but it had worked like that since the 1960s.

Peter Kim was a gifted engineer and his crew was highly trained. But when it came to studying the Vermeer 111, they'd need the experts from Vermeer Aircraft itself to help them take apart the wings. And they'd need a crew from Patterson-Pate Electric to tear apart the four cowls on each of the four engines, which covered the intake, fan, core, and exhaust systems. Likewise, the hydraulic actuators, cascade segments, and sleeves of the engine were highly complicated pieces of technology, and only teams from the manufacturer could hope to truly understand it all. Some parts could fail if they malfunctioned by as little as two millimeters.

It was the perfect example of foxes guarding the henhouse. And it was Susan's job to make sure they helped but didn't hinder the investigation. Those experts—often called “hired guns” by the NTSB regulars—were beginning to arrive now. Susan had arranged for the offers of help to be
routed through her. By booking every room at the Chemeketa Inn for her own people, she hoped to severely limit the casual interaction between the hired guns and her Go-Team.

Susan broke a telephone connection with a flick of the switch on her belt-mounted control unit and slipped her earpiece into a jacket pocket. She checked her ever-present notebook. Her to-do list was growing frighteningly long.

Tommy's volunteers were named Gary and Sarah. The three of them stood outside the ruined remains of the airliner's nose for a couple of minutes, studying it from different angles. They wore firefighter turnout suits but not the helmets or breathing tanks. The first two sections of the fuselage had been easy to get into, having landed relatively flat, but the flight deck section had torn off and tumbled. The best way to get in looked like it was pointing straight up.

“We're going to need one of those ladder trucks,” Tommy said. “Do you mind?”

Gary used his walkie-talkie to whistle up a truck. Tommy stepped closer to the crushed section and knelt in the crisp, ashy grass. The cockpit windows faced the ground. He bent low, his elbow in the muddy soil, and shone his flashlight into the window.

The ruined body of a white male, in his fifties, was pressed up against the window, his face distorted by the pressure. Blood was everywhere. His body ended after the third rib and Tommy didn't know where the rest of it was.

He stood and said, “Well, shit.”

The fire truck edged its way slowly into the field, tearing up the nicely tended grass even further. It took a circuitous route, avoiding all debris. The driver parked twenty feet from the nose of the plane and extended a ladder, not up but straight out, over the flight deck.

Two firefighters climbed out on the ladder on their hands and knees, followed by Tommy and his two volunteers.

Flashlights shone straight down into the flight deck of the Vermeer. They were facing the galley, with its refrigerator and heating units and sinks. The rolling trays of food had miraculously remained in place, and Tommy could smell Salisbury steak.

The male volunteer sniffed. “Since when did they go back to serving real food on flights?”

“First class only,” Tommy said. “It's a CascadeAir thing.”

The woman volunteer, Sarah, swung her legs over the edge. “Let me go first.”

No one disagreed.

She stood on the door of the galley refrigerator, holding on to the ladder. The two firefighters flanked her, holding on to the shoulders of her baggy, nearly indestructible turnout. She shifted her weight. Nothing gave. She said, “Okay, try it.”

Tommy went next and stood on the fridge beside her. It all seemed sturdy. Gary, who was built like a fullback, stayed where he was, by unspoken mutual consent.

Tommy knelt. Beside the galley was a bathroom and the main hatchway, the one people walked through to get on and off the plane. The hatch door was missing; it lay about seventy feet away and had sliced into the ground like a giant arrowhead. Next to the fridge was the door to the flight deck. Tommy knelt, reached down, and turned the handle. The door didn't open. He shoved. Nothing.

“Let me try,” Sarah said, and took the hands of both firefighters on the ladder. “You guys hold on to me. Ready?”

Tommy nodded. She lifted her right leg and slammed the sole of her boot down on the door. It creaked open about three inches. She raised her leg and stomped on the door again. It opened halfway. Another mighty slam and it swung in all the way, banging against the wall of the flight deck.