“I know of no other case with such a basket of anomalies. If the NTSB doesn’t take them head-on, you know conspiracy mongers will claim we’re hiding something.”
“What if we wait until all the analyses are finished before taking this step?” asked Charlotte. “Explanations might still turn up.”
Curtis grimaced. “Not going to work. The airline wants the pieces back so they can do their own study, and the FBI is already hinting these issues might point to terrorism. It’ll take time to get the debris back to Ashburn to a secure facility large enough for the reassembly. We could drag our feet a bit on the reassembly until more results are finalized. However, to do our job properly, we need to get the pieces moving east before we lose control of the investigation. Then, if it turns out most of the anomalies are explained, we can cancel the reassembly.”
It was another week before Janofsky returned home to begin the long process of completing the investigation. During the following months, he had other duties, but he kept coming back to Flight 4382.
The reassembly took more than a year, once all the debris arrived from Colorado. The long months saw completion of the working groups’ findings and a beginning draft of the NTSB’s final report. Charles Delacour, the NTSB chair, had been puzzled when Curtis had come to his office and insisted they visit the aircraft reassembly site. He hadn’t been happy when Curtis had made the reassembly recommendation based on anomalies, but he hadn’t felt justified in overruling the IIC assigned to the incident.
It was the first time Delacour had viewed the reassembly of United 4382. At least it’s only fifteen minutes from headquarters , he thought, while driving to the warehouse. He parked and walked inside.
The plane itself looked surreal. An estimated 98 percent of the plane had been recovered, and all but a few smaller pieces had been fitted together like a huge three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Delacour stood looking at the right side of the plane, failing to predict what the reassembly team would tell him and why he had to come here personally. He saw nothing obvious. Despite his years of NTSB experience, he was mainly a bureaucrat and depended on technical staff. His job was deciding what to do with the information and conclusions the investigators provided.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” said a man’s voice. Delacour turned. Curtis Janofsky and Charlotte Gonzalez walked up to him. “I saw all the steps in the assembly, and it’s even more impressive that way. Will Canares will join us shortly. Ah . . . here he comes.”
A tall, wiry man loped toward them from the rear of the warehouse. “Sorry I’m a little late. I decided to print this out.” He handed each of them several sheets with photographs of the reassembled airliner, showing numbered arrows pointing to plane sections.
Delacour looked at the sheets. “All right. I’m here. So, give me the bad news. I assume it’s something I don’t want to hear. Otherwise, we’d be doing this in my office. I haven’t studied updates carefully, but I don’t recall anything that flagged why I had to come here. It’s been fifteen months since the incident with United 4382, and I’m getting more calls from congressional delegations. Colorado wants this wrapped up, Boeing has the ear of both Washington senators, and now I’ve gotten a snippy call from a staffer of the House Transportation Safety Subcommittee.”
“I’ll let Curtis give you the summary of bad news,” said Charlotte. “He’s stayed on top of all the investigation groups from the beginning until they completed their final reports.”
“What I’ll say includes the findings from Will’s group,” Curtis said. “He’ll correct me if I misstate anything. I’ll take it from the beginning.
“At 1:07 p.m., on September fourteenth of last year, United Flight 4382 was eighty-two miles south of Denver when a catastrophic event occurred. At that moment, a traffic controller at the regional en route control center saw the icons for United 4382 flicker and then disappear. Radar records are consistent with a momentary increase in the radar cross-section of the plane, followed by its disappearance. The only plausible cause of the change in the radar cross-section—consistent with anything we understand—is the plane breaking up and the scattering pieces simulating an increase in size.
“Shortly thereafter, at least eighty eyewitnesses, most in and around the town of Elizabeth, Colorado, reported seeing a fireball high in the sky at the approximate position of 4382. Three witnesses reported looking at the plane at the moment of the incident. Two of those three insist the plane broke into several large pieces before a fireball developed. If true, that argues against an explosion as the primary cause.”
Curtis stopped and grimaced. “Here’s where it gets a little freaky. Both of these witnesses also claim they saw the plane change into a larger, darker object for a split second before three or more big pieces of the plane fell away from one another, followed by a fireball around one of the pieces.”
Delacour shook his head. “We all know how unreliable eyewitnesses can be. Even if they did see something unexpected, it could have been smoke, an optical illusion, or who knows what else? The same for that smartphone video that apparently has the plane in the background when some citizen was filming his grandkids playing.”
“All true,” said Curtis, “and all within reasonable grounds to dismiss, but let me continue.
“The plane’s contents and parts fell onto gently rolling, grassy terrain with few structures or paved roads and no water features—an ideal setting to recover both plane parts and the remains of people on board the flight, meaning we had high expectations of finding all two hundred and forty-five bodies. The problem is, we’re missing twenty-seven bodies: two crewmembers and twenty-five passengers. The D-Mort team alerted me there was a discrepancy, and now that all reports are finished, it’s confirmed.
“Let me emphasize this point. I’ve quietly posed theoretical questions to everyone associated with this investigation and several others, and they have all agreed it’s impossible for this to have happened if those twenty-seven were on the flight. The manifest shows the passengers, and we recovered baggage for most of the missing. In addition, there’s no way the crew was short two people for the flight.
“If that wasn’t confusing enough, there’s the dispersal pattern of remains. Instead of roughly coinciding with the area of debris, we found a cluster of intact or mainly intact bodies well outside the aircraft’s debris pattern. Once again, this couldn’t happen. Unfortunately for logic and all our experience, it did happen, and we have no explanation we’d want to share.”
The more Curtis talked the grimmer became Delacour’s expression.
“And now we come to the pièce de résistance,” said the incident IIC. “The plane itself. Nothing was found in any of the systems that could plausibly have contributed to the accident, including electrical, hydraulics, or pneumatic. Nothing. The engines show no damage not attributable to whatever broke up the aircraft or from ground impact. Everything came up blank until we finished the reconstruction. Let’s walk around to the left side.”
Canares led the way, with Delacour following and Curtis and Charlotte in the rear, side by side. She looked at Curtis and raised a questioning eyebrow. He shrugged, not knowing how the NTSB chair was taking in what he heard.
When they stopped, Delacour stood stunned. The left side of the fuselage was crumpled inward from behind the cockpit to the wing.
Canares leaned toward Delacour and pointed to a diagram. “The conditions of the plane’s pieces are consistent with breaking up in midair and falling thirty-five thousand feet to the ground. Everything except this,” said Canares, pointing to the left side of the fuselage anterior to the wing. “No matter how we tried to fit the pieces together, we kept coming back to an indentation running from approximately row three in business class, past the mid-galley, and extending to row six just anterior to the left wing—a section covering about a quarter of the fuselage.”
Canares stepped back and looked firmly at Delacour. “There’s no question. The reconstruction suggests a collision with something o
f enough mass and momentum to cave in a good part of the aircraft’s left side.”
Delacour took a breath and opened his mouth to speak but was stopped by Curtis. “And no, before you ask . . . the initial event was not an explosion. You’ve already seen the chemical analyses. No high-energy explosive residues were found on any part of the plane. Neither was a fuel explosion to blame. All signs of fire were from row seven aft to row twenty-seven in the fuselage and on both wings. This suggests the front of the plane, to row six, broke away before fuel ignited.”
The NTSB chair rubbed his eyes, then looked at the ceiling. “You’re telling me what? An unknown large object collided with United 4382? An object that wasn’t on radar or visible to witnesses before or after the collision—only visible during the collision? What’s next? The dragon from Game of Thrones ate the missing people and regurgitated whole bodies to land apart from the debris field?”
“Trust us, Charles,” said Curtis, “we’re well aware how all this sounds. However, there’s no getting around the scenario for the aircraft. As for what happened to the people, we’d have to get into speculations I don’t want to voice, even if it’s just here among the four of us. How the final report will handle this is in your ballpark. I sympathize with you.”
Delacour looked up, as his mind raced through possibilities. His first thought was that everyone involved in the investigation was colluding or delusional, but he quickly dismissed it. Not this many people with this much experience.
Could it be some elaborate hoax? Was it possible? Yes, but perpetrated by whom? The effort and the technical details would have to be so complex, it would eliminate any party except sovereign nations or someone with fantastically deep pockets. And why do it?
Delacour heaved a big, audible sigh, as he lowered his head to face three people waiting for his response.
“You know we have to be careful with the final report and not raise wild speculations on how the aircraft was destroyed.”
“You aren’t suggesting we hide our findings?” Canares protested.
Charlotte nodded in grim understanding, and Curtis laid a hand on Canares’s shoulder.
“Think about it, Will. To be honest, all we can say is that a cause unknown damaged the fuselage, leading to the aircraft breaking up. Subsequently, fuel ignited and further fragmented the plane.
“As for the bodies’ odd distribution pattern, it’s not lying to say we can’t rule out freak wind patterns at those altitudes essentially sorting the bodies, thereby pushing many of the complete, or near intact, bodies away from the debris field. Highly improbable, and we may not believe it ourselves, but still within the realm of possibility.”
“We might be able to wordcraft much of this,” said Charlotte, “but there will be a problem with the missing bodies.”
Delacour’s mind was already on the same track as Curtis’s: they would have to gloss over most of the anomalies.
“Okay. I’ll read everything, and I expect we’ll need to meet often. However, I only see one way forward. As I said before, we can’t go into speculations that could lead to a media circus. We might have to suggest improbable possibilities, even if we don’t believe they’re valid.”
He raised both hands, as if to ward off Canares’s red face and Curtis’s pursed lips. “Think about it. Do you want to spend the rest of your life pestered by conspiracy nut jobs, tabloids, and alien abduction freaks? Isn’t it the truth that we don’t know exactly what happened? We won’t lie, but in the absence of plausible explanations, we don’t want to fuel controversy any more than necessary.
“As for the missing bodies, we’ll honestly say we simply don’t know what happened. Enough wackos will come out of the woodwork. We don’t need to encourage them.”
“You know we’ll have to meet with the families of the missing passengers and crew,” said Charlotte. “It’s been months since the last remains were released, and the families of the missing are lawyering up.”
“I wish to God I could forget it,” snapped Delacour. “I don’t intend one-on-ones with them, so we’ll schedule a meeting with them all as soon as possible.” He pointed to Charlotte and Curtis. “The two of you will be there to share the glares and accusations, but we’ll all stick to the truth. We don’t know what happened to their missing loved ones.”
Two months later, the two NTSB members and Curtis sat at a raised table facing 137 hostile faces—family members overwhelmed by anger, sorrow, frustration, and fear. In a very few cases, they still dared to hope. Yet they were about to hear that the investigation into Flight 4382 was officially closed, without a resolution regarding the remains of their loved ones.
Charlotte sat to Delacour’s right. He would do most of the talking. She didn’t envy him the next two hours, the time scheduled for the meeting room. She glanced over the faces. Some she recognized from previous encounters or from watching TV interviews and news spots. Her eyes rested momentarily on an obvious family group on the left end of the first row. She recognized them. The family of passenger Joseph Colsco. Middle-aged parents. A couple of siblings. Two other middle-aged women Gonzalez assumed might be aunts. And in the middle of the grouping, a young woman holding a one-year-old infant.
If you skipped “Where Are the Bodies?” stop and go back. Then return here. The next three stories answer two of the questions Yozef Kolsko posed to himself at the end of Forged in Fire —questions he doubted he would ever learn the answers to.
UNEARTHLY STARS
Martha Whitworth awoke to pounding on her front door.
“Uh . . .,” she groaned and rolled over. Being a medical caregiver in a small village usually meant getting a full night’s sleep, except for cases that couldn’t wait—childbirth, worsening illnesses, and late-night accidents that the village healer couldn’t handle. Martha (Marta, as the locals pronounced her name) didn’t think of him as a real doctor—more like a first-aider. Neither the village nor the rest of the valley had the population to support someone more trained. Not that she wanted to be treated by anyone practicing what passed for medicine in this society.
The pounding continued, despite her wish that it go away. She accepted that she wouldn’t get any more sleep before morning light.
She pushed aside the covers, walked barefoot across the plank flooring, and lifted the wooden locking bar from the door. She opened it to reveal the village chief, Nando Sadaro, dressed in a nightshirt and a hastily donned cloak. Puffing hard, he had a harried expression.
“Pan Marta, there has been an accident in Seminang. Chief Ramat begs you to come quickly.”
Seminang was one of five villages clustered in the Amamor Valley. People regularly called on Marta for the most difficult medical cases. She usually hoped that whatever the problem, it would be in her own village, Tagel.
Sighing, she motioned to the village chief.
“Chief Sadaro, come inside while I get ready and tell me what happened.”
Sadaro followed her inside and stood by the door of the one-room house. He turned his back, as appropriate, while she shed her nightgown and pulled on a full-length dress typical of the Jukanda people of southwest Purasia. She slipped into sandals and checked on the three-and-a-half-year-old child sleeping in her bed.
Sadaro hadn’t answered her question, so she prompted him.
“Well, what happened? I need to know what I should bring.”
He turned, taking her prompt to mean she was dressed. His eyes roamed quickly over her gray clothing. “No, no, Pan Marta, gray will not do. You should wear blue or at least green.”
“Before I do anything, what is doing on?”
“Chief Ramat’s messenger says that as a party of riders galloped through Seminang, a child ran in front of them. The mount of the men’s leader threw the man, and he broke his leg—badly, said the messenger. I don’t know who he is, but Ramat says he wears blue, and one of his men addressed him as ‘Lord.’ The whole village is afraid. Parents have already sent their children to hide in the forest, in ca
se the village is punished.”
“Nando,” she said, switching to his first name, “we’ve talked about this. The villages need to forget what happened in past times. From everything I’ve been told, severe punishment for minor transgressions hasn’t happened in over a generation, when Emperor Juhatro was on the Golden Throne. Emperor Jokamdo long ago forbade such injustices.”
“People’s memories are long, Pan Marta. There are still many alive who remember when Duke Emundo ruled the province, and memories still haunt their dreams. Please hurry. Chief Ramat’s cart and driver are waiting. And change your clothing so the Lord’s men will let you attend him.”
Marta habitually wore gray when treating patients. The neutral color had many implications, but most important was that it didn’t identify the wearer as belonging to one of the castes. She still hadn’t mastered the intricacies of the caste system. However, from experience, some patients and circumstances were best handled if she was thought to be from one of the recognized societal strata. In those cases, she might wear blue, green, tan, rust brown, or dull brown. The people of the valley had come to accept her idiosyncratic view of clothing shades.
She’d never seen purple, the royal color allowed only to high members of the emperor’s court. Blue identified the upper caste of members of important families who filled leadership positions in the military and the empire’s bureaucracy, along with people acknowledged as experts in trades or professions. Even within the blue, unacknowledged sub-castes existed, with those who rose from lower origins the least respected.
Tales of Anyar Page 2