by Tom Hansen
“Miami Tower, what’s the status of that small plane?”
“Trans South 256, hold your course. We haven’t been able to reach the plane, but at this point, your flight path will take you well over the top. Doubtful if that plane will go above 6,000 feet. Advise you to ascend to 12,000 and wait for instructions.”
“Roger, Miami. We’re pulling up hard as we speak.”
Trans South 256 had finally reached the billowy black clouds and raindrops were scattering over the cockpit windshield and passenger portholes. Creaking noises could be heard throughout the cabin as wing and fuselage metal stretched and retracted into place in unison with the violent wind. From the back of the plane a faint “Oh Lord Jesus” could be heard. Many of the travelers tried to focus on a page in their paperback to keep their minds off Harry’s thrill ride.
“Trans South 256, our little buddy has changed course again. Please set a new course heading to -” The voice in Harry’s headset went dead. He quickly looked over to Johnny Berger who could only shrug his shoulders.
“Did you get that heading, Johnny?”
“Negative, Harry. It cut off.”
“Trans South 256, this is Miami Tower. We cut you off because our radar is dead. We’re trying to switch you over to Sarasota Tower but they’re not responding. Can you see the plane on your screen?”
“Negative, Miami. The turbulent weather is sending up white blotches all over our screen. Can’t tell if any are small planes or just big birds.”
“Hold tight on your heading, 256, we’re also requesting assistance from Fort Lauderdale. Can’t seem to get ahold of anyone!”
“Damn it, Mustaf, we can’t see a thing and I got a bad feeling about our present course!”
“Relax, Harry, we’re working on it as quickly as possible.” So much for FAA regulations and proper radio communication protocol. Harry and Mustaf were friends and things were becoming serious. They both needed the comfort of calling each other by first names.
Although the wind didn’t want to cooperate, Harry was masterful at keeping the metal bird on course. However, with every screech, cabin prayers were bountiful, trusting that God would make sure the wings didn’t fall off.
“Mayday, Miami Tower. This is PanMexico 441 requesting immediate landing clearance. We have a rupture in our fuel line and we’ll be running on fumes soon!” The PanMexico jet from Cancun had been in a holding pattern over the Everglades with twelve other jets waiting for the weather to clear when the pilot noticed a rapid drop on his fuel gage. A warning light alerted the rupture.
“Roger Mex 441, however, you probably heard we have no radar capacity at the moment to bring you in. Are you able to reach Sarasota or Fort Lauderdale Tower?”
“Roger, Miami, but they are having the same problem you are. Seems the radars are jammed!”
“Do you have any visual, 441?”
“Negative, Miami. No visual for your runways. There is a slight break in the clouds just ahead so I’m requesting a manual approach that will bring us in under the clouds.”
“Hold on 441. You have a Trans South on departure with no radar assistance.”
“No can do, Miami! My warning light is flashing red. I can’t keep us up here any longer!” With that, the PanMexico pilot began his rapid, blind decent into Miami.
“Trans South 256, we have an emergency on approach. Can’t advise, Harry, because I can’t see either of you!”
“Oh shit, Mustaf! I’m coming back in! No choice if I don’t know what’s up here keeping me company!”
“Your call, 256. Good luck, Harry.”
“Let’s go, Johnny. Let our ZynzoTech folks know what’s happening and prepare to break out the diapers!” With that, Harry made a sharp bank southward while the wind monster grabbed and yanked on both wings. Harry could barely see a small cloud break just above as he tried to level off amidst severe turbulence that shook his bird silly. But he didn’t see the PanMexico jet soaring through the break at 350 miles-per-hour.
The blast could be heard up the coast to Stuart and the ground shook with earthquake type tremors. Metal and luggage and shoes and body parts showered on to the sugar cane fields below.
“Trans South 256, can you read?! Harry, are you there?! Damn it, Harry, come in! PanMexico 441, can YOU read?!” Mustaf repeated the request several times, each shout out more intense and desperate then the previous one. Finally, discerning the obvious, Mustaf took off his headset and dropped his head into his hands. The entire Miami tower became eerily silent. Mustaf fought back the anguish from the loss of his friend and those onboard both aircraft, and forced himself to call nine-one-one.
As red lights and sirens converged from all directions to the outskirts of Miami, a small unidentified float plane crossed northward over Lake Okeechobee, turned off its signal lights, and began an approach to land on the swamp adjacent to Roy Jackson’s ranch. Just before the pilot landed, he reached over to hit the switch that would turn back on the jammed radar controls in Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Sarasota.
The lights flickered on the screens in the Miami tower and Mustaf quickly locked in the positions of the commercial aircraft that were holding over the Everglades. He radioed Fort Lauderdale to request that the planes be diverted there and then called the head of Miami operations to advise a shut down until emergency crews could secure the crash area.
Mustaf rolled his leather chair back from the screens and folded his hands in deep thought. Cal Swenson, the second in charge in the Miami tower, walked over to Mustaf and pulled up a chair next to him. “Sorry about Harry, Mustaf. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I could have ordered him not to fly! Damn well was my fault, Cal, and you know it!”
Cal reached out his arm and put his hand affectionately on Mustaf’s shoulder. He then scooted his chair in front of Mustaf’s and looked him in the eyes. “I know this isn’t the best time to talk about it, but something’s seriously wrong with our radar unit. This is now the seventh outage we’ve had in the past two months.”
“Yes, I know, but every time the SignalNav boys check it out they find nothing. And they find nothing in Fort Lauderdale, West Palm and Sarasota either, yet we all lose radar at the same time. Fortunately, up until now, nothing’s happened. But the FAA needs to shut us all down until they figure out what’s wrong.”
Cal shook his head. “Too much tourist revenue lost if they do that. The president would never allow it. Florida is a key state for his re-election bid.”
“If the country ever found out that the FAA knew we had a problem and just ignored it, thus costing hundreds of lives, the re-election bid would be over much quicker!” Mustaf pushed himself to his feet and walked aimlessly to a window and gazed out on the rain-soaked runways below. He then stared up into the still dark clouds and pondered, “What radar connection do the four airports have in common anyway? We’re all on our own frequency, right?”
“Yes, but the echo effect is the same for everyone. We all use the same satellite beacon,” Cal replied, but was beginning to understand where Mustaf was going with his question.
“So, if there’s a break in the radio beacon, it would have nothing to do with our receivers.” Mustaf raced back to his own master control station, just about knocking Cal over. He punched in a few keys on the computer keyboard, then pressed “print”.
Cal followed Mustaf over to his desk and peered over his shoulder. “What are you thinking, Mustaf?”
“I want to print out the history of the ten minutes prior to the radar outage and compare notes with the other six outages. Do we have the dates and times stored somewhere?”
“Have to. The NTSB required the logs be stored in a safe place. They’re in the Sentry cabinet in the back room. I’ll get them for you.”
“How far back can we pull up historical data and screen blimps, Cal?”
“Should be able to go back a year.”
“Thanks. Get those dates for me, please.”
“You got it boss.�
� Cal headed for the storage room.
* * * * *
An hour later, Cal laid out the log sheets for the previous six outages on Mustaf’s desk. Both he and Mustaf could not understand why the FAA had not examined them for commonalities. No, instead the FAA would just log the dates of the outages and require SignalNav Enterprises to send service reps to check their high tech pricey instruments for malfunctions. For each outage, SignalNav claimed the problem stemmed from the ZynzoTech mainframe transmitter sporadically shutting down, not with their radar or satellite equipment. ZynzoTech would then send service folks to investigate, and then claim it was SignalNav’s fault. The FAA told both mega-companies to get together and fix the problem, and that was the end of the FAA official report. No follow up was ever assigned. No one compared notes until now, and simple logic would tell you that it shouldn’t have been Mustaf and Cal making those comparisons.
The screen dot coordinates of flights in the air over southern Florida were posted on the black printout that looked like an amateur photographer’s picture of the night sky with no moon but plenty of stars. There were four pictures of the radar screen on a page, automatically registered every fifteen seconds, and Mustaf had asked for the last ten minutes prior to each outage. Every dot had a tiny box next to it that listed its coordinates as well as the flight name and number if it were known.
In the early evening, outbound Miami air traffic, for the most part, was headed east over the Atlantic to Europe, or south across the Caribbean to South America. However, inbound flights were arriving from all directions as vacationers packed the clean, white sandy beaches year-round, especially in the winter.
By looking at the printout, Mustaf and Cal couldn’t find any glaring evidence of commonalities, then again, they weren’t sure exactly what it was they were looking for. Mustaf headed back to his computer and once again punched in a few keys that brought to the monitor a spreadsheet of latitude and longitude coordinates, flight names and numbers, and dates and times. He decided to do a search of common coordinates thinking that maybe an interference associated with an aircraft flying through the satellite beacon was causing the outages by breaking a tracing line. That would be similar to when an object breaks the beacon generated by a police radar that is fixed on an automobile’s radar detector and the reading in the squad car goes blank.
No luck. Mustaf stared at the spreadsheet, then back to the radar screen printouts. Once again, he glanced at the spreadsheet then back to the printout. His eyes noticed something but his brain wasn’t registering it. Then it came to him and he punched away at his keyboard.
“What’s up?” Cal wanted to know.
“Not sure. I’m going to do a search of the aircraft names and numbers,” Mustaf replied.
“Doubtful any of the same aircraft were approaching Miami because the times were different,” Cal said with a puzzled look on his face. “And even so, what would that prove?”
“I don’t know, but I have a strange feeling that I can’t pinpoint at the moment, Cal.”
The search provided only one match, yet that match was the same for the dates that each outage occurred: UNKNOWN AIRCRAFT.
“Bingo, there’s our match!” Mustaf shouted.
“Mustaf, have you lost a few particles up here,” Cal said skeptically while pointing at the temples on his own head. “There’s always many unknown aircraft flying the skies, primarily the small Cessna’s that our air traffic controllers don’t bother to log because of time constraints.”
“That’s not news to me, Cal, but there might be more to this. Call Al and have him come in and cover for me. I’m heading out to the crash site.” Mustaf pulled his NTSB pass card from his desk and headed to the door. He paused, then changed directions and walked warily over to the tower’s window and saw the burning mass in the distance. The pounding rain had done little to eliminate the flames. The shock and grief finally overcame Mustaf and he pounded his fists on the glass while tears dripped down his nose. “Damn it,” he whispered to himself, “You were the best, Harry.”
CHAPTER 25
Friday, February 19, 1982
8:30 p.m.
“D addy’s an asshole.”
“Girl, don’t look this way for an argument,” Tyrone sputtered back at Jenny as he watched the red and white bobber dip under the surface and pop back up. It was early evening and an incessant chop on Lake Okeechobee made it difficult to know if the wind was the cause of the bobber’s movement, or if a baby crappie was nibbling at the night crawler dangling from the small copper hook. Tyrone really didn’t like messing with someone else’s cane pole, but he couldn’t pass on a fishing trip, especially with Jenny. It turned out that leaving after the Berry’s memorial service for an afternoon of fishing was just what the doctor ordered. Tyrone’s broken heart was beginning to mend.
Why Roy Jackson would own a worn out old cane pole was a bit confusing to Tyrone. Plus, Jackson’s family pontoon boat was nothing special either, which made it hard to believe that Roy Jackson possessed it. With all his dough, it should be lined with sparkling diamond studs imbedded in gold railings. Instead, it was constructed of faded pink two-by-fours tied together by rope that rested on top of two, long aluminum pontoon floats. The captain’s wooden steering wheel was connected to what looked like a college professor’s lectern on the twelve by eighteen-foot platform boat. A bar stool was placed in front of the wheel and a cushioned bench seat ran along the aft rail. A hand-made canvas canopy covered just a small portion of the boat and was used for a shade break from the intense Florida sun. The boat was powered, if you could call it that, by a single, fifty horsepower Mercury outboard motor and a propeller that was drastically distorted from its run-ins with shallow water, gravel and sand. But dang, you can’t catch a largemouth bass anywhere except along the weedy shoreline, so a banged-up prop was nothing but collateral damage.
Dark clouds and lightning flashes appeared in the distance to the southwest and gusty winds blanketed the lake. Tyrone had steered the pontoon from its dock in the Angler’s Delight marina to the weed patch at the mouth of the Kissimmee River. He slowly maneuvered the boat southward and hid behind a mass of swamp grass stalks eight feet high, not so much because that’s where the fish were biting the best, but because Jenny had a bad habit of topless sunbathing, day or night, whenever she boarded a boat!
“Tyrone, I’ve got to tell you something,” Jenny murmured hesitantly.
“What’s up, babe?”
“I think Daddy may be up to something. Jimmy and me have never been allowed to go in or even near the migrants’ cottages that are way out back behind the barn on our ranch. He said the workers need privacy and we should never, ever bother them. When we were little and Daddy wasn’t looking, we’d sneak out to the cottages, but the doors were always locked. Anyway, the night you beat Martin Park, you know, the night Coach Berry and his wife were killed, I was putting on my cheerleader dress for the game and I happened to notice out my window that four or five migrants were dragging something to a pickup truck that was parked next to the cottages. I thought it was an alligator they killed and they were going to haul it to the DNR or the dump. Well, I noticed the same truck was in the school parking lot when we left after the game. Nobody was around it and the cheerleaders were the last to leave. It crossed my mind that I recognized the truck, but at the time, I couldn’t place where I had seen it. Not surprising, after all we were all wrapped up in celebrating your big win.”
“So what’s the big deal? You got a bunch load of gators out your way and maybe the migrants went to the game after they were done hauling one of them away.” Tyrone was puzzled as he glanced over at Jenny.
“Yeah, but like I just said, we, the cheerleaders, were the last ones out of the parking lot because we were the last to leave the school. Remember, we waited ‘til you boys were all showered so we could give y’all hugs without being drenched in sweat! Anyway, I didn’t think about it until Daddy asked me and Jimmy to give him a ride to school on the way to
the memorial service this morning. He wanted us to drop him off at the school office cuz he said he had business to attend to. We told him no one was going to be in the office cuz they would all be going to the service. He said it was none of our concern what he was doing. We asked him if we should pick him up when the service was over and he said no cuz he had a ride. I couldn’t figure out why he wanted to go to the school office seeing everyone was at the service in the gym anyway. And I was a bit ticked off that he didn’t want to go with us out of respect for the Berry’s. After we dropped him off, I noticed the pickup truck was still in the parking lot, and then I realized that the truck was the same one that was parked outside of our migrants’ cottages the night of the game.”
“So your dad was just picking up the migrants’ truck. Who cares?”
“Why didn’t he tell us he was picking up the truck when he asked for the ride? And by the way, our migrants don’t own a truck. They have a rusted out Ford Pinto that hasn’t been driven since the muffler fell off a couple of weeks ago.”
“Would your rich old daddy have bought them a truck?” Tyrone was searching for a common sense angle.
“Maybe, but I would have known cuz I would have seen it there before. The only time I ever saw it was that night. Just one time, Tyrone.”
“So you got some sort of theory or something, Jenny?”
“Heck no, Tyrone, but it sure seems strange, don’t you think?”
The bobber submerged and the cane pole bent like a whip. Tyrone grabbed the pole and snapped it upward, then pulled the one-pound speckled perch up by the nylon filament line. “The key is to break its neck. This poor crappie never had a chance!”
“I probably should get back, Ty, or Daddy will break your neck.”
CHAPTER 26
Friday, March 5, 1982
9:00 a.m.