Razing Beijing

by Sidney Elston

  “Fifty miles out, flying a pattern near Nellis,” Murdoch said, harboring a wad of Copenhagen in his cheek.

  Terminating the flight test prematurely was bound to send a tremor throughout the company, its consortium of partners—and the airlines desperate to buy the fuel-efficient engine. The evidence indicated that the longer they flew, the more damage was being inflicted, which undoubtedly meant more money and time on the ground to repair it. Most disturbing was Stuart’s realization that the engineers had failed to predict the problem at all.

  “Have the pilots shut down the engine. Call them back to Mojave right away.”

  “Yes, sir.” Murdoch nodded approvingly, turned and rushed from the room.

  The disenfranchised and apparently devastated handful of engineers shuffled toward the door, muttering about the grotesque blemish on their achievement. Stuart watched Emily Chang silently gather her things and follow them out—her eyes caught his the instant she stepped through the doorway.

  Vickers remained behind and stared at the table while Stuart rolled up the blueprint.

  “What am I supposed to tell everyone?” Gloria Jackson, Thanatech’s squat, round-headed public relations spokesman stood in the doorway, her thumb jabbed over her shoulder. “The California state congressman just arrived. They’re all expecting to see a fly-by. They’ve got TV cameras and we just canceled it!”

  Stuart looked through the smoked glass windows of the conference room. Fifty or so people milled along a stretch of taxiway that paralleled the runway. In their midst was a gleaming white panel truck with a satellite dish angled up at the sky. The CEO of Thanatech was scheduled to join the congressman for the airport fly-by and talk up the benefit of the program to the local economy. But Stuart’s boss had phoned to say his flight was going to be late—that the job had been delegated to him. He’d forgotten all about it.

  2

  STUART SHIFTED HIS FOCUS between the attractive young woman holding the microphone and the sky above the hills beyond her camera crew. The tiny cable television operation, WMJV-TV, apparently viewed their feature of the flight test as today’s biggest headline. Every community’s ongoing interest in almost any ‘green’ initiative amid the slumbering economy had made such stories newsworthy. This was especially the case, should it also be shown as having the potential to strengthen America’s hand against OPEC’s embargo of crude oil delivery.

  Stuart wiped away beads of perspiration forming over his lip. Aside from quickly ending the interview, his goal was to casually interject that today’s test flight was proceeding ahead of schedule and would therefore be completed early, which in his mind he could justify as being factually correct. Gloria Jackson stressed the importance of doing this before the plane caught people off guard by appearing in the pattern to land.

  He caught glimpses of the company spokesman beyond the camera crew, a serenely confident smile plastered to her face, her hands fidgeting nervously. Murdoch had informed them both before the interview that the aircraft would be returning from the northwest. Jackson continually scanned the sky in every direction until even Stuart became nervous. Ten minutes into the interview, presumably at ease with Stuart’s performance, Jackson had thankfully disappeared.

  He made a show of examining his watch as the television journalist glanced up from her notes. “Mr. Stuart, we heard unofficially...”

  Stuart was aware of movement to the left and behind the television crew, a stout figure in the doorway to the administration building—Gloria Jackson frantically waving her arms.

  “...noticed only one single passenger boarding with the pilots today. With all the electronics aboard, one would naturally think the test of such a big airplane required more than a single passenger.”

  “I’m sorry. What is your question?”

  “Is there some concern about the safety of this new engine?”

  On its merit the question was innocent enough, but something in the woman’s intonation, or a subtle shift in her posture, alerted Stuart to an ulterior motive. Anyone who followed Thanatechnology was aware of the program’s earlier problems, widely publicized in aerospace journals. Several engines had violently exploded during ground test, such things being par for the development course. In the hands of competing marketing teams they made for exploitable fodder.

  “Well”—Stuart glanced at the identification tag pinned to the breast of the woman’s aqua silk blouse—“we’ve had the normal assortment of development hurdles. Truth is, it’s simply prudent to limit the number of personnel on early test flights. That way all systems can be checked throughout the flight envelope with minimal risk. We also use telemetry for that reason. It’s pretty much standard.”

  Candace Greene wrinkled her nose.

  As Stuart pondered why the reporter had apparently neither believed nor understood a word of what he had just said, Gloria Jackson crept behind the camera crew and was now drawing her open hand back and forth across her throat in exaggerated strokes, imploring Stuart to immediately cut off the interview.

  Stuart groped for a way to end it—the reporter opened her mouth to respond—he beat her to the punch. “By the time the FAA certifies this engine it will have been tested for the equivalent of several decades of airline service. It will be as safe and reliable as our customers—oh.” Stuart made an abrupt show of glancing over the young woman’s shoulder. “Seems like they need me inside.”

  “Are we—”

  “I’m awfully sorry, Candace. Could we finish this later?”

  “That’s fine,” the reporter relented with a nod and the red light over the camera went out. Stuart apologized again before leaving Greene to converse with her crew. He resisted the urge to break into a jog toward the administration building where Gloria Jackson stood waiting with a fractured smile.

  “I reversed your decision,” Cole announced unemotionally. “We are not going to shut that engine down.”

  James Cole, Jr., Chief Executive Officer of Thanatechnology International had led Stuart into the conference room and shut the door behind them. The two men stood facing each other alone.

  Stuart was struck by the casual audacity with which his boss had dismissed his opinion, and Cole’s apparent disregard for the risk associated with doing so. “You’re making a big mistake.”

  “I thought you’d say that.” Cole brushed back a shock of white hair. “Why do you think so?”

  “Because you don’t know what you’re doing, the very same reason you hired me to make these sorts of decisions.”

  Cole sat back on the edge of the table and folded his arms. The tall, lanky executive took Stuart’s comment in stride. “By the sound of things, we’ll be months getting back on test. What are we supposed to do in the mean time? We can’t put our marketing effort on hold. Our competition certainly won’t. I’m told we didn’t collect enough performance data to solidify our guaranty positions. Why, we could wind up tens of millions in the red for that simple reason alone.”

  Stuart realized Cole was probably right on that point. Fuel burn and various other guarantees were regularly demanded by the airlines as part of each sale. He was about to ask whether Cole had bothered to square the guarantee liabilities with the $37 million investment cost of the flight test engine but decided against steering the discussion that way.

  “To say nothing of the bad publicity,” Cole added.

  “It’s not clear yet how much data we did or didn’t manage to get,” Stuart said. “There will never be enough data.”

  “I’ll cede you that, but what about the publicity?”

  “We simply say that we called the flight back for an oil leak. Everybody knows what an oil leak is, don’t they? They find them under their cars on the driveway. You can announce it with an off-hand chuckle, ‘Nothing to do with production, you know, an isolated nuisance brought on by a piece of development hardware.’ ”

  “I see.” Cole pursed his lips. “An oil leak.”

  “What’s so diabolical?”

  �
��Once again, you’re missing the bigger picture.” The pink rims that bordered Cole’s eyes made the perennial golfer’s face look unusually pale. “The production program’s five months behind schedule. Everyone already knows why and that it has nothing to do with any sort of an oil leak. Nobody’s in the mood for yet a new type of problem to explain. This test flight is the one thing we have going our way at the moment. We taxi that airplane up here with its propeller blades motionless, the competition will rake our ass over the coals. For Christ’s sake, this is our maiden flight! We simply cannot afford to cancel that fly-by.”

  Inviting the congressman and press to the inaugural flight was Cole’s brainchild. Stuart was on record as calling the fly-by a stunt, pure public relations—and who out there really cared if an airplane looked or sounded a little unusual? Data already proved that the engine went far toward meeting the world’s carbon emission and noise restrictions. Whatever compelled his boss to rub the government’s back by inviting the congressman, Stuart hadn’t a clue. He viewed politics as sort of a study in lost motion and never understood Cole’s obsession with it.

  The problem here was that his personal distaste for publicity was butting against Cole’s disregard for technical detail. Cole always did prefer dealing with issues of ‘the bigger picture,’ often at the exclusion of everything and everyone else, as even his daughter Sandy had confided.

  “What is it?”

  “You do know Sandy’s on board.”

  Cole sat bolt upright as if an electric current had stiffened his spine. “Are you saying, do you mean...are you saying people’s lives are at risk? Is that what this is about?”

  Stuart knew there was no way Cole would override a declaration that the flight was unsafe. Cole knew it also, and he seemed to be bracing himself for the outcome.

  “I was only guessing you haven’t taken the time to get her opinion either.”

  “ ‘Either.’ What are you trying to imply?”

  “Look, I’ve got a daughter myself. I’m not trying to imply anything. I was only pointing out that Vickers has thoroughly briefed Sandy and the flight crew on our decision. My understanding is that she fully supports it, and Sandy’s every bit as good an engineer, even at her age—”

  “I already know how good an employee my own daughter is. I don’t need a lecture from you about Sandra.”

  “Okay. I’m telling you as clearly as I know how that the odds of something breaking are high. A controlled in-flight shutdown of that engine might well turn out to be a lot less dramatic to have to explain than the alternative.”

  Cole said nothing.

  “Postpone the rest of the flight. It’s not too late to simply shut the thing down.”

  “Actually, it is becoming academic.” The chief executive glanced at his watch. “It’s my understanding we don’t actually have to cancel much of anything.”

  Stuart instantly realized the score. Cole had arrived while he was being interviewed, still angry over Stuart’s cancellation decision and had probably made a scene. At that point it became too great an opportunity for someone not to pipe up with an alternative—like merely throttling the engine back, and proceeding with a modified flight test plan.

  “I’m going to support your decision,” Stuart said. “Just don’t be standing too close when the plane taxis up and the propellers stop turning.”

  “Well, of course not.” Cole frowned, his curiosity getting the better of him. “Why not?”

  “Because you’ll block the cameras rushing in to record the gallons of hot, steaming oil pouring out all over the tarmac.”

  Cole stood up from the table. “That’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

  3

  WHILE ONE IS FLYING at eight-tenths the speed of sound, the earth thirty-nine thousand feet below appears deceptively stationary, rendering one less distraction for pilots of the Dassault Falcon who were closely shadowing movement and snapping photographs of the larger jet. Conditions for the flight test had been nearly perfect in every respect due to a high-pressure system pushing down from British Columbia. Las Vegas was visible in the distance mired in ground-hugging haze, its stark angular shapes out of place in the vast landscape. On the edge of the horizon was the narrow turquoise of Lake Mead.

  The flight crew inside the test aircraft had little interest in the scenery. Vic Reilly, chief test pilot for Thanatech, could only shake his head as he now began the ritual scanning of airspace around and below for conflicting traffic.

  “Well, he is the boss,” co-pilot Chris Harris commented.

  Reilly eyed his younger colleague. “Since when have you bought into that concept?”

  Harris laughed. “We must have faith in the process.” The ‘process’ had yielded five last-minute changes, each affecting things of importance to pilots like fuel consumption and aircraft handling—these already uncharacteristic for this aircraft owing to its mismatched pair of engines. At least this latest change was familiar to any seasoned test pilot. And yet, for both men, something did not sit quite right with Murdoch’s instructions.

  Reilly grumbled an obscenity while carefully gripping the two throttle levers. Using both hands he smoothly worked them back, ever slightly, causing a perceptible decrease in pitch of the engines.

  Harris stowed the altitude re-start instructions, untried, for the prototype engine. He retrieved instead the old DC-9 operational checklist and placed it on his lap. “So they’re calling us back on an engine mechanical,” Harris observed, “but they haven’t canceled the media fly-by?”

  Reilly scratched his eyebrow. “No doubt marketing’s calling the shots.” He reached for the panel and selected the preset channel frequency. “Edwards approach, experimental niner-one-five-eight-lima requesting altitude change...”

  ROBERT STUART STEPPED inside the instrumentation data room and onto the raised tile floor that concealed miles of fiber-optic cable. At least here the refrigerated air and dim light wouldn’t aggravate this headache, he thought, chiding himself for lack of sleep and a diet extracted from vending machines. Stuart’s eyes began to adjust, and throughout the IDR’s racks of computer gear and data recorders, folks who’d broken off discussion as he entered the room quietly returned to their work.

  The thirty or so engineers were analyzing data that originated from telemetry aboard Thanatech’s test aircraft, where it was up-linked to a geostationary satellite also currently serving a handful of airlines. Situated in the northwest corner of the administrations building, both of IDR’s exterior walls consisted of smoke-colored glass. It was a popular place among the engineers, many having been drawn to Thanatech in the first place by their love of aviation. Their workstations offered a sweeping view of the Aviation Service hangar and a long stretch of the Mojave airport runway. For overworked and underpaid jet motor fanatics who spent most of their lives number-crunching deep in the bowels of a windowless factory, duty didn’t get any better than this.

  Stuart found Ian Vickers seated beside Emily Chang and speaking into a microphone between sips from a can of Coke. Chang cast him a lingering look before returning her eyes to her instruments.

  “Stu.” Vickers slid back his headphones. “Listen, I know you must be thinking I—”

  “Forget it.” Stuart pressed his hand on Vickers’s shoulder. “What’s the score?”

  Vickers let out a deep breath. “Not too bloody bad, although the vibration has been getting gradually worse. Good news is we’ve worked out a plan with the pilots and Sandy. They’ve pulled back the throttle in order to stay within limits.” Vickers flashed him a guilty look.

  “So that did reduce the vibration?”

  “Somewhat.”

  SANDY COLE FELT the plane being buffeted as they descended into the convection of heat from the desert surface. On the workspace in front of her the yellow no. 2 pencil threatened to break into a roll, indicating their bank turn onto final approach to the runway; across the aisle she saw the gray strip of asphalt several miles away travel up the height of th
e window and disappear. Sandy thought that Vickers’s plan seemed solid enough, despite her misgivings about conducting the unnecessary maneuver with a marginal engine.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your co-pilot speaking,” Harris announced over the intercom. “How’s our bearing vibration?”

  Sandy managed a smile while fixing her gaze on the analyzer and the one vibration asynchronous to all of the others. “Holding steady,” she replied.

  “We’ll take steady. Keep us posted.”

  “Don’t worry. Ok, you can set an upper fan speed of seventy-percent physical.” Which corresponded to the safe vibration limit worked out with Vickers and the IDR, she didn’t bother adding.

  Sandy expected a confirmation but heard only the familiar hum of the wing leading edge slats being deployed; the flight crew had their hands full at the moment. The digital display in front of her indicated the lumbering jet was descending slowly through an altitude of one hundred fifty-feet over the sweltering desert floor—for this approach, they would not be landing. The muted hum of the engines was the only sound penetrating her headphones as the plane completed the bank and leveled off on final.

  Harris confirmed her numbers. “Seventy per cent N1, roger that. Uhh, keep your baby-blues peeled back there, Sandy, out.”

  Seconds later the plane nosed up slightly as they began to level off. “One-twenty,” Reilly announced, which she recognized as approaching their go-around or ‘fly-by’ altitude. On the runway threshold below, she watched their shadow pass over the large white digits ‘12’—her pulse quickened. Pressing her face to the window, she saw a throng of tiny-looking people standing along the taxiway that paralleled the runway well ahead of the plane.

  “One hundred feet. Okay, throttling up now,” she heard Reilly announce. Her focus again became the vibration analyzer as she prepared to command a ‘back-off’ should the levels approach their limit. The whine of the engines increased pitch somewhat more sharply than she otherwise might have expected.