The President's Plane Is Missing

by Robert J Serling

  “How can you tell that, with all this mess?” Castle wanted to know.

  “The engines. The Condor has four aft-mounted power plants, as you know. They were fairly close together when they were dug up. This would indicate they were still on the fuselage at impact, and if this were true, I doubt if there would have been any in-flight breakup of the cabin. This is why I doubt the sabotage theory.”

  His audience was silent, each man mentally painting his own picture of what it must have been like in the last few seconds of the Condor’s death throes. The awful eternity of a ninety-second plunge to inevitable oblivion. It was Jones’s next question which brought them back to the less emotional realities of the living present.

  “Did Air Force One have one of those cockpit voice recorders? One of those gizmos which is supposed to record the last conversations of the crew?”

  Quincannon nodded, frowning. “It had a voice recorder, and it was found along with the flight recorder which depicts such data as speed, altitude, gust forces, direction and so forth. But unfortunately both devices were badly damaged by both impact and fire. We found them only an hour ago and they’re already on their way to Washington for analysis. I couldn’t tell you now what information we’ll get from them.”

  “I thought they’re supposed to be immune to crash damage,” Castle said.

  “They’re supposed to be,” Quincannon said with a note of bitterness in his calm, rather sleepy voice. “But it doesn’t always work out that way. In this case, maybe we were expecting too much. One of our structures men told me a little while ago he estimated that Air Force One must have impacted at about four hundred miles an hour. Don’t use that figure” (the reporters already were scribbling this down) “—it’s an off-the-west-wall guess of just one man.”

  “It’s a hell of an interesting guess,” Jones half protested. “I’d still rather you not use it at this stage. Later, we’ll be able to give you a fairly accurate estimate of impact speed. If you men have no further questions, I’d like to get back to work. General, I think Colonel Slattery would like to see you.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Dunbar said. “Lieutenant, escort these men around for a while. I’ll see all of you later.”

  “Brusque bastard, isn’t he?” Runnels observed—judiciously waiting until the general was out of hearing distance before offering this appraisal.

  “I think in about a half hour I’m gonna be pretty brusque myself,” Jones said. “Or awfully nauseous. Okay, Lieutenant. Lead on.”

  For a full hour Kermit took them around the crash site. The cruelly twisted metal that had once been a ten-million-dollar airplane was bad enough. The Condor had dug a huge pit, about thirty yards wide and five feet deep, when it struck the ground. Most of the wreckage was concentrated in this area, Kermit told them, but the impact and instantaneous explosion had hurled bits of metal hundreds of feet away.

  “The bodies too,” Kermit added laconically. “They found a couple of arms and a torso about seventy yards away.”

  It was the sight of the bodies that sickened the reporters. Only they were not bodies. Merely stumps of blackened flesh, looking for all the world like abnormally large, overcooked roasts. The rescue workers were dumping them in big rubber blankets and carrying them to the white tent serving as the identification center. The newsmen’s gauze sanitation masks filtered out the odor somewhat, but the sight of the charred remains was worse than the smell. Runnels and Jones both became ill, feeling no shame as they regurgitated from their heaving stomachs what they could never regurgitate from their minds.

  But they stuck with it because they were newspapermen covering a story. They stumbled around the mud, taking occasional notes and staring with glazed eyes at the chunks of wreckage that ranged from one huge wing to tiny shreds of metal. Some parts already bore yellow identification tags attached by technical experts from the Amalgamated factory that had built the Condor. “Station 215,” one said. “Hydraulic tubing, station 146,” another tag read. They meant little to the three reporters, who stood behind one group of the manufacturer’s representatives and watched curiously as they consulted a huge sheaf of blueprints, conferred briefly, and then affixed another tag. After they moved over to another piece of wreckage, Jones leaned down and read the tag they had just written.

  “Cabin wall lining, rear lounge, station 280.” For no particular reason, Jones shuddered.

  Incongruously, they were touched mostly by the few undamaged items they saw. A blue and gold matchbook with the engraved words “Air Force One.” A coffee cup. A man’s shoe, laces still tied, which Jones picked up to examine on the ridiculous, farfetched chance it might have some identification marks inside. A copy of Time, only the edges slightly marred by fire, the wind in the gorge gently riffling the pages like the unseen hand of a ghost. Finally, a mud-spattered girdle that must have belonged to Judi Nance. Jones, feeling that he had somehow intruded on the privacy of the dead, wondered if it had been torn from her body or out of a suitcase, and then scolded himself for yielding to ghoulishness.

  “I’ve had enough,” he announced suddenly to the others. “Let’s go find General Dunbar. We should be getting all this stuff back to Winslow.”

  Dunbar was emerging from the identification tent as they walked up. The general’s face was pale and his lips were tightened in a thin line, as if he had them sewn together to keep from vomiting. He merely nodded. A tall man in khaki trousers and shirt came out of the tent behind Dunbar, who introduced him. “This is Ed Davis of the FBI Disaster squad. These three gentlemen are the press pool, Ed. They might have some questions.”

  “Any identification yet, Mr. Davis?” Castle asked.

  “Like the President?” Runnels added hastily.

  “One,” the FBI man said. “Rear Admiral Philips. It’s pretty positive, from fingerprints and dental charts. We’re still working on some others, with the help of some people from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Might have something in a few minutes if you’d like to stick around.”

  “General, we should be getting back to Winslow or phoning something to the others if you can set us up some’ communications,” Jones said. “Then we can come back here and stand by for further identification news.”

  “It’s your decision,” Dunbar said. “Kermit, take them over to the communications center. But if you guys would rather fly back to Winslow, we can call a chopper.”

  The three newsmen conferred briefly. Then Jones spoke for the trio. “Castle and I will phone in the hard news— the Philips identification and what Quincannon gave us. Runnels will fly back and do a pool eyewitnesser on what we’ve seen. If that’s okay with you, General, we’re ready.”

  “One thing you might like to know,” Davis informed them. “It’s pretty hot inside that tent and we’ve been considering taking all the remains to the city morgue in Winslow. But General Dunbar says the Air Force can drop us a ground air-conditioning unit which’ll make it bearable.”

  “It should be here any minute,” Dunbar promised. “Bonanza Airlines over in Phoenix is loaning us one of theirs.”

  “That’s a pretty big piece of equipment,” Jones said. “We’ve got a chopper than can carry a small tank,” Dunbar said with a trace of pride. “Not inside, of course, but with steel cables and a suspended net.”

  By the time Jones and Castle had finished dictating to Winslow, alternating from their notes, they discovered much to their surprise that they were hungry. Kermit took them to the Army field kitchen set up on the fringe of the gorge where they greedily downed sandwiches and coffee.

  “I thought I’d never want to eat again,” Castle marveled. “Christ, I was starving. What now, Jonesy?”

  “Guess we’d better go back to that FBI tent and stay put until they find and identify Haines’s body. That’s what everyone’s waiting to hear—including, I fear, our beloved Vice President.”

  “Yeh,” said Castle, who wanted to give Jones the impression he was savvy on political personalities. The AP r
eporter was from the Los Angeles bureau and, like virtually every wire service man, he secretly (and sometimes publicly) yearned for a transfer to Washington.

  They were finishing the last sip of steaming coffee when Dunbar strode up.

  “Thought I’d get some java myself,” the general said. “How’s it going?”

  “Fine,” Jones replied. “We’re finished phoning. Anything new on identification?”

  Davis told me to tell you there should be something any time now. Wait till I get this coffee down and I’ll walk over with you.”

  He never got to finish the coffee. An air policeman came running up.

  “General Dunbar,” he panted, “you’re wanted back at the FBI tent on the double.”

  Dunbar put down the coffee cup. “What’s up?” he barked.

  “I don’t know for sure, sir, but I think they’ve found the President’s body.”

  Jones and Castle paced impatiently outside the identification tent for what seemed like hours. All they knew was what Dunbar had told them following a hasty briefing Davis gave the general, in private, after the trio had sprinted to the tent.

  “It isn’t definite until they get through with the prints and dental charts,” Dunbar warned them. “But they did find a body under a pile of mud and some wreckage. It could be that of the President.”

  “Why do you think so?” Jones asked. “Clothing? Facial characteristics? Build?”

  Dunbar shook his head. “This one’s burned like the others. All we know is that it’s male. But the people from Condor took a look at the wreckage on top of this body. They said it was part of the President’s private stateroom.”

  “Whew!” That was from Castle, who ejected the whistle with the automatic reflex of a man unable to stifle a cough.

  The two reporters were torn between unwillingness to leave the tent area and their natural instinct to phone in what they already had.

  “We should call Winslow, Jonesy,” Castle argued. “Jesus, man, it’s worth a bulletin—just the fact that they think they’ve found Haines”

  “Maybe,” the more cautious and experienced Jones reasoned. “But we might be jumping the gun, and if it turns out not to be Haines, we’ll have created a hell of a lot of excitement prematurely. You saw that wreckage and all the bodies, Castle. Scattered and sprayed all over this Godforsaken gorge. The way that plane hit, one of the pilots could have been tossed all the way back to the rear. Or the President’s body could have been flung forward as far as the cockpit. Let’s wait.”

  They waited. And waited. And waited some more. The occupational hazard of a newspaperman. A kind of death watch over history about to happen. Mounting tension, nerves stretching taut to the point of preferring the worst if it would only take place.

  They smoked enough cigarettes to give a whale lung cancer, throwing most of them away only half consumed. They watched the two tent entrance flaps that mercifully hid what was being done inside, as if their concentrated stares could propel Dunbar and Davis outside.

  The general and the FBI man did come out after a half hour, instantly erasing the newsmen’s eager anticipation with Dunbar’s “We just wanted a smoke.”

  “We’re still checking,” Davis said. “On this one body, I mean. We have established tentative identification on three others in addition to Admiral Philips. Miss Nance, Mr. Sabath, and one of the Secret Servicemen—Hudson.”

  “That should increase the chances of the other body being that of the President,” Jones suggested.

  “And how do you arrive at that conclusion?” Davis said. “I’ve ridden on Air Force One many times. Those people you’ve identified—the doctor, Miss Nance, Phil Sabath— they invariably ride in the rear of the plane. So does the President. If their bodies were in good enough shape to identify, it stands to reason so is the President’s. Because he would have been in the rear too. You’ve already said this body was found in the private stateroom.”

  “Well,” said Davis, “your assumption is logical. But logic doesn’t dictate in this case. The fingerprints and dental charts do. And we’d better get back to same. Perhaps I’ll have something pretty soon.”

  “Pretty soon” turned out to be nearly two hours later. In that time Castle went over to the communications center and gave Winslow the additional identifications plus the cautiously worded revelation (Jones had extracted a promise to be very tentative in phraseology) that another body was being examined “with some evidence that it might have been found in an area of the plane which the President was known to frequent on a flight.”

  Castle ran all the way back to the tent, an unnecessary burst of energy because Jones still was pacing restlessly outside. They smoked and talked languidly for another hour, and Jones had just started to tell the younger AP man what it was like covering the Kennedy assassination when the tent flaps parted. Out came Dunbar and Davis, their faces wearing twin masks of fatigue and sheer puzzlement.

  “Was it the President?” Jones almost shouted.

  Davis shook his head. His tanned forehead was furrowed. Dunbar looked at the reporters, his expression curiously sympathetic as if he were about to break bad news to the anxious relatives of a dying man. “Come over here a minute, you two—I don’t want that air policeman to hear this.”

  They followed him like dutiful children trailing a father to the woodshed. Ten yards from the tent, Dunbar turned and faced them.

  “This is off the record until I can contact Washington for clearance,” he began. “Understood?”

  They nodded.

  “Okay. The FBI got real good fingerprints off that body. They checked them with the file fingerprints of every person on the plane still unidentified, including those of the President. They checked the President’s dental charts with the teeth on the body in question. They checked those teeth with the charts of everyone else on Air Force One. Negative, down the line.”

  “What do you mean, negative?” Jones said.

  “I mean,” Dunbar answered slowly, spitting out each word with the emphasis of a jabbing forefinger, “that the body we thought was the President’s isn’t that of anyone who was supposed to be on that plane.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  General Coston brought the word in person to the White House late Wednesday afternoon, taking a helicopter from the Pentagon’s landing strip to the ’copter pad on the south lawn of the Executive Mansion. Madigan’s meeting with the Cabinet, congressional leaders and Chief Justice Van Dyke had just started when the Air Force chief of staff was ushered into the Cabinet Room in the Executive Wing.

  They knew something was up before he opened his mouth. His expression was that of a man carrying a terrible secret inside him, so unbelievable that he could not prevent its import from seeping to the surface and registering near panic on his face.

  “Mr. Vice President, Mr. Chief Justice, gentlemen. I didn’t phone first because I felt you all should hear this development simultaneously. I’ve just received word from General Dunbar at the crash site that a body was found which apparently didn’t belong on Air Force One. The body of some unknown person. Its fingerprints did not match those of the known passengers and crew members.”

  He paused to let his disclosure take root in their brains. “What makes it even more mysterious,” Coston continued, “is evidence that this particular body was in or near the President’s private stateroom when Air Force One crashed. And before going on, I’d like to ask on behalf of both the Air Force and the FBI, does anyone in this room have the slightest idea who was on that plane who was not listed on the passenger or crew manifests?”

  He looked at his audience. Every face was registering a blend of surprise and shock. Not a person spoke.

  “Then let me ask this. Does anyone know whether the aircraft made an unannounced or unscheduled stop, where another passenger might have been picked up? Did the

  President indicate or hint or actually tell any of you such a stop would be made?”

  Again he was greeted by total silence, unt
il Madigan finally mustered life into his vocal cords. “It seems to me, General, that the Air Force itself should know whether any stop was made.”

  “Agreed,” Coston snapped. “We’re almost one hundred per cent sure that plane never touched ground between Andrews and Arizona. It made the right position reports and on schedule, and it’s damned unlikely it could have landed after one of those reports, taken off again and still made the next position report on time. For that matter, it was being tracked by radar all the way across the country. I had to ask you about the possibility of such a stop, though, because it seems to be the only explanation even if it’s farfetched and damned near impossible.”

  “How about a stowaway?” asked Secretary of Transportation Brubaker.

  “Negative. We’ve already put the security guards assigned to Air Force One’s hangar through a meat grinder. Nobody but a ghost could have hidden on the plane before it left.” Secretary of State James Sharkey, a small man who looked about as much like the Hollywood version of a Secretary of State as Fiorello La Guardia resembled a ballet dancer, had another idea. “General, how does the count of bodies compare with the total number who boarded the plane?”

  “We’ve established identification on only four persons thus far, Mr. Secretary. Admiral Philips, Miss Nance, Mr. Sabath and one of the three Secret Service agents. That was the count as of twenty minutes ago. We may never get identification on everybody, which means we may never get a precise body count. There were seven passengers and nine crew members. The fingerprints and dental charts of all sixteen aboard were flown to the crash site. Eliminating the four bodies already identified, the fingerprints and teeth of our unknown passenger didn’t match any of the remaining twelve.”

  A White House secretary slipped into the room at this point and whispered something to Newt Spellman. “General, your office is calling you,” Spellman said. “Use that phone over there.”