The President's Plane Is Missing

by Robert J Serling

  Being senior IPS White House reporter had given Malcolm Jones a deep sense of personal contentment. He was one of those relatively rare men who actually enjoy going to work every morning. Most Washington newsmen have something of an indefinable feeling of gratitude about their work, a kind of privileged satisfaction at their closeness to history and those who make history. Nowhere does the term “Fourth Estate” carry more esteem and prestige than in the nation’s capital, for the Washington press corps literally comes close to being a fourth branch of government—an informal, unofficial, unwritten part of the traditional check-and-balance relationship among the legislative, executive and judicial wings. For occasionally the press corps makes its own news and its own history with its indefatigable tools for digging into the camouflaged soil of corruption and deceit.

  But Malcolm Jones’s attitude toward his job transcended the natural pride of a Washington correspondent. He had enough normal conceit to relish his daily contacts with the famous, the frequent invitations to fire his interrogative darts on programs like Meet the Press, the enormously satisfying egocentricity of having the President of the United States address him by his nickname of Jonesy.

  His proximity to presidential personalities, however, went far beyond the mere nourishment of ego. More than the majority of his colleagues, he had grasped the awesome loneliness of their exalted positions, their goldfish-bowl environment—a constant exposure to criticism, an unending vulnerability to massive mistakes as well as cruel gossip. He had come to recognize what most Americans cannot conceive in their almost blind worship or hatred of a President, namely that Presidents are only men with the emotions, sentiments, weaknesses and strengths of any human being.

  Where the average citizen tends to paint a President with either the shining colors of Godlike virtue or the black hues of Satanic evil, Malcolm Jones dipped his own paintbrush in a colorless, transparent oil of total objectivity. He merely looked at a President through a window he kept clean, instead of trying to paint the window with his own prejudices.

  He was first assigned to the White House in 1948 when Harry Truman won a second term on his own. He liked and, more important, respected every President he had covered but this did not make him a subservient reporter living off the personal prestige of a glamorous assignment. Rather, it made him a better reporter because his respect was a kind of tolerance that tempered an inclination toward affection with sharp awareness of presidential faults.

  Thus, he could admire Truman’s immense courage and simultaneously cringe at his propensity for putting political cronies into jobs they could not handle. He had chafed under Eisenhower’s vacillating but he had real admiration for Ike’s integrity and his somewhat vague but enlightened concept of liberal Republicanism. He had come close to worshiping Kennedy for his wit, intelligence and youthful enthusiasm, yet he refused to tag JFK with an automatic mantle of greatness simply on the basis of an uncompleted first term. He found in Lyndon Johnson the ruthlessness, the political killer instinct that Kennedy-lacked and might well have been able to utilize. He had considered LBJ vindictive and bad-tempered at times, but he also warmed to his personal loyalty, his very real sentimentality and his astuteness at political infighting—the latter a quality, again, that Jones wished JFK had possessed in more ample supply.

  Jeremy Haines, in Jones’s view, was a rare combination of his four immediate predecessors. Truman’s raw guts, Eisenhower’s idealism and intelligent conservatism, Kennedy’s intellect and courage, and Johnson’s political shrewdness, all were imbedded in the mind and conscience that made up the being of Jeremy Haines. And only the Lord could tell what was imbedded in the mind and conscience of the man who would have to replace him.

  Those thoughts were unnerving for a man about to gaze on the graveyard of Air Force One. But Malcolm Jones found he still was unprepared for the sight below, as the security guards posted around the rim parted to let him peer over the edge.

  The wreckage resembled the carcass of some huge animal, almost totally devoured, the chunks of eviscerated metal strewn haphazardly around like slabs of rotting entrails. A brontosaurus torn apart by a tyrannosaurus, thought Jones, and the scene indeed was one of primeval savagery. The bottom of the gorge might have been straight out of a Jurassic landscape and the remains of the Condor seemed to be something a paleontologist could decipher more easily than an aeronautical engineer.

  It was obvious that Air Force One’s final resting place was a one-in-ten-million shot. If it had hit a few yards to either side of the gorge’s rim it would have been discovered almost immediately. As it was, the Condor must have plunged almost vertically into the relatively narrow pit, squeezing its bulk into the opening like an arrow shot skillfully into a funnel.

  Helicopters had managed to airlift a few small tractors into the gorge and, by attaching makeshift plows to this equipment, the rescue party had achieved what amounted to miniature bulldozers. But most of the searchers were working with shovels, digging into muck that already was beginning to crust in the Arizona heat.

  “Jesus,” said the UPI man simply.

  Dunbar watched the reporters’ faces, half in sympathy and half with the patronizing disdain of a military man inured to anything in the line of carnage and death.

  “There’s a semblance of a trail down to the gorge,” he said as if to take their minds off what they were seeing. “You’ll need gauze masks. Sergeant!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Bring us four masks from that medical truck.”

  “Why the masks?” Jones asked.

  “Sanitation, mainly. Sensitivity next. The stench is pretty bad. Ever smelled burned flesh?”

  “Yeah,” said the AP man. “In Korea—I used a flame thrower on some Gooks and I could smell the results for weeks. I even dreamed about it.”

  “You’ll probably dream about this for weeks,” Dunbar assured him. “Here are the masks. You don’t have to wear them right away, but put ’em on as soon as we hit the bottom. Ready? Okay, let’s go.”

  His weekly eighteen holes of golf had not conditioned Jones for what the general had charitably referred to as a trail. It started at the north rim and wound laboriously down to the bottom, a pitted scar gouged into the side of the gorge. Dunbar may have been pure Air Force but the reporters suspected he also was half mountain goat. They were puffing after the first twenty-five yards, while ahead of them Dunbar edged his way gingerly but steadily, occasionally glancing back to make sure none of his charges had fallen off. He stopped halfway down to give them a rest.

  “Christ, I didn’t know I was this much outa shape,” the UPI man panted.

  “A more apt observation,” Jones said, “is how the hell we’re gonna get back up. Going down is bad enough.”

  “Why couldn’t we have taken a ’copter down?” AP grumbled.

  “A chopper will take you back up,” the general promised. “We’re flying them down only when they carry essential personnel or equipment. They kick up too much of a ruckus over a small area. We did take that TV pool man down because his cameras were too bulky. If you guys are rested, we’d better get going.”

  The odor of charred flesh invaded their nostrils the moment they reached the bottom and the UPI man murmured through his mask, “I think I’m gonna get sick.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Dunbar grunted. “Just so you won’t step on anything important and know what the hell you’re looking at, I’ve assigned a bright young shavetail to stick with you.”

  Jones was nettled. “We can find our own way around, General. We don’t need any goddamned sightseeing guide. Sounds like a little bit of censorship and—”

  “Don’t get your bowels in an uproar, Jones. I told all of you back in Winslow there’s security stuff involved. Lieutenant Kermit’s job is to make sure you don’t stumble on anything that’s supposed to be classified. But he’ll also help you with any questions you might have—and he’s been told to answer anything. Satisfied?”

  “Yes, sir.” The �
��sir,” Jones suddenly realized, was purely inadvertent and almost automatic. There was something about Dunbar that bred respect and discipline even in a newspaperman.

  They found Kermit, a tall blond youngster with somber eyes but an easy smile that was more of an unerasable grin. It gave him the appearance of a photographic composite in which the upper facial features of one man have been grafted to the lower features of another. The lieutenant was talking to a burly, gray-haired civilian when Dunbar and the reporters approached. Kermit saluted.

  “Lieutenant,” Dunbar acknowledged with a cursory return salute. “May I present Mr. Jones of IPS, Mr. Runnels of UPI, and Mr. Castle of the AP. These are the gentlemen representing the press pool. Has the network cameraman gotten down yet?”

  “Yes, sir, he’s already shooting. Captain Powell’s with him. General, have you met Mr. Quincannon of the DOT’S Bureau of Safety? This is General Dunbar, in charge of the search and rescue operation.”

  “Glad to know you, Quincannon. I heard Washington was sending you out to help us. Bring any of your boys?”

  “A full team, General. We landed at Winslow yesterday and came right to the scene from the airport. Our top men on structures, power plants, systems and operations. We’re all at your disposal. I’ve already conferred with Colonel Slattery—he’s heading the Air Force investigative group— and we’re ready to cooperate to the fullest.”

  Jones decided that Quincannon, being a civilian, might prove to be a more lucrative source than the Air Force.

  “Mr. Quincannon, can you brief us on what you’ve seen thus far? Body identification? Any clues? Any indication of what might have happened?”

  Quincannon glanced suspiciously at the general, his eyebrows raised in a mute question as to how far he could go and how much he could say to the press. Dunbar nodded.

  “Give them anything you’ve got,” he said. “Matter of fact, I could stand some expert briefing myself. I’m a search and rescue man, not a crash investigator.”

  Quincannon sat down on a nearby rock, like a scoutmaster about to instruct a group of youngsters on wild-life flora and fauna. He wiggled the toe of one mud-crusted boot into the ground, like a pitcher digging aimlessly at the mound before delivery.

  “Well, I suppose you’re most interested in the people aboard. First, we haven’t found the body of the President But for that matter we haven’t found anybody as far as positive identification is concerned. All the occupants were badly burned. Some bodies aren’t even whole—just a collection of torsos, arms and legs. A few are in better shape, but not for identification purposes. The FBI disaster squad is working from fingerprint files and dental charts—that’s about the only way to do it. And frankly, I’ve handled crashes where there was no identification possible—like one of the Electra crashes in 1960. There wasn’t anything remotely resembling a human corpse among the sixty or seventy persons aboard. This isn’t quite that bad, but it’s not going to be easy.”

  “How many, uh, bodies would you say have been found?” Runnels asked in a voice that was more of a series of gulps.

  “So far, we’ve found five in relatively intact condition. But by that I mean there’s a semblance of the right number of arms and legs. Individual facial characteristics have been completely obliterated by fire. We think one of these is a woman, the President’s secretary, I believe, but even this isn’t sure.”

  “Any idea when we might get some word on identification?” Jones said.

  “You’ll have to ask the FBI boys that. The fingerprint and dental charts were flown here only about an hour ago. Naturally, they’re working on the President’s first of all. In that white tent over there, by the way. I wouldn’t advise your peeking inside. It’s pretty rough.”

  “I’ll be happy to waive my press privileges,” the AP’s Castle said fervently.

  Jones figured they had milked Quincannon dry on the distasteful but all-important subject of identification. “How about the plane itself? Any theories on what happened?”

  “Well,” Quincannon replied, “the aircraft impacted in an almost vertical position—a straight dive in. It’s too soon to tell whether there was any fire before she hit the ground. All the wreckage appears to be concentrated in a relatively small area inside the gorge, Which means the plane was reasonably intact at the time of the crash. With one important exception, as you already know. Part of the tail section was found in a wooded area a few hundred yards from where the airliner crew spotted the first wreckage.”

  “Which means,” Jones put in, “structural failure.”

  “It appears so. Our structures people and similar experts from the Air Force already have examined the tail section. The damage does not resemble anything suggesting metal fatigue. Rather, the breaks indicate stress overloads beyond design capability.”

  “In other words,” the AP man said, “it broke up in that thunderstorm.”

  “That,” said Quincannon firmly, “is merely a possibility. A strong possibility but still a theory requiring further investigation and proof.”

  “Aw, come on, Mr. Quincannon,” Reynolds said with uncealed exasperation. “That plane was in a bad thunderstorm and you’ve just told us the tail fell off. What more evidence do you need?”

  “Something more solid than circumstantial evidence. I’ve been in this business too long, young man, to accept anything at face value. I’ll admit—off the record—that it looks as if Air Force One was torn apart by storm turbulence. But offsetting this is a contradictory fact. Namely, the Condor is an exceptionally strong aircraft. Structural failure because of turbulence is apparent, but at the same time it’s also illogical.”

  “What else would be logical?” Jones asked.

  “God knows. Loss of control in turbulence could lead to excessive attitudes which, in turn, could cause structural failure. It’s happened before on jet transports. Northwest lost one over the Everglades for just such a reason, in 1963, I believe. A jetliner crash near Tokyo a few years ago also was attributed to loss of control. But here again, we have a possible cause which is negated by a diametrically opposing fact. The behavior of large, swept-wing airliners in severe turbulence caused enough concern in the past to prompt improved crew training and better techniques for recovery in turbulence. We haven’t had a really serious turbulence incident for several years. And it goes without saying that the pilots on Air Force One were the equal of or even superior to airline crews.”

  “You used the phrase . . . I’ve got it in my notes somewhere . . . yeh, ‘the breaks indicated stress overloads,’ ” Castle said. “Have you examined the tail section for any signs of sabotage—like an explosion? Or are you completely satisfied that the tail came off because of stress?”

  “Not completely. The examination of this section has been preliminary. We didn’t find any obvious traces of something like dynamite, for example. And as I said, the breaks were of the type associated with stress overloads. They were not what you’d normally find, say, in metal that had been deformed by an internal explosion with all the forces directed outward. But nobody can discount the possibility of sabotage. There are probably fifty or a hundred different ways to blow up an airplane. And some of them, for all we know, conceivably could leave no traces that an explosive substance was used. However, and this is again off the record, I personally doubt that sabotage was involved in this case.”

  “Why?” blurted Lieutenant Kermit, apparently forgetting in his absorption with Quincannon’s discourse the foreboding presence of a general.

  The safety expert hesitated with the inbred, inherent reluctance of any good crash investigator to commit himself publicly. He and his breed were men to whom the obvious was a blood-red flag of warning against hasty assumptions. He finally decided to pass the buck to Dunbar.

  “As I said before, the Air Force is running the show. I’ll leave it up to the general here if he thinks it’s okay to discuss this, ah, aspect.”

  “Go ahead,” Dunbar snapped.

  “Well, one of th
e elevators was found a good two miles from this gorge—”

  “The elevators move a plane up or down?” Jones broke in.

  “Correct. They are part of the horizontal stabilizer structure—the part which forms the upper portion of the so-called T-tail. Now, the horizontal stabilizer section sighted by the airline pilots retained the other elevator but in a badly damaged condition. This may have been from impact force, but a preliminary examination indicates that this elevator also failed. It did not separate from the main stabilizer, but it probably was inoperative.”

  “So what happens if one or both elevators fail?” Runnels asked.

  “The probable sequence is that the aircraft would pitch violently forward, almost like a man at the end of a suddenly released rope. A fatal dive would result. There would be no means of controlling attitude.”

  “No way to pull it out of the dive?” Castle interpreted. “No way on God’s earth. The last resort of a pilot would be to try to bring up the nose by applying full power. We’ve found all four engines and, while they haven’t been examined yet, I’ll wager they were developing full thrust at impact. Futilely, as you can see.”

  “Getting back to sabotage,” Runnels said. “Couldn’t an explosion of some sort have ripped off those elevators? Maybe they came off when the whole tail section went.” Quincannon shook his head.

  “The phrase ‘tail falling off’ is misleading,” he explained with impersonal calmness. “Actually, what separated from the main fuselage were the horizontal stabilizers and part of the rudder structure, not the entire tail section. The fuselage itself must have been fairly intact when it hit.”