by Dana Haynes
“No,” Peter said. “One crash together. Oregon.” He didn’t need to elaborate. That crash was legendary within the NTSB.
“I’ve set up the All-Thing for eleven on Saturday. There’s no way we could get the stakeholders to Montana today.”
“Acknowledged.” He checked his watch; a bit past seven. For all Peter cared, they could have the damn thing on New Year’s Eve. He considered the meeting of every conceivable stakeholder a monumental waste of time.
He rang off as Jack Goodspeed, the airframe-team leader, jogged over. A strapping, affable guy with jet-black hair worn short and a perpetual smile, Peter thought he looked like he’d played football in college and likely dated the homecoming queen. Upon arriving, he’d jogged east with a bright LED flashlight snugged into his palm, checking the debris trail. Now he was back, shaking his head.
“It’s pretty much a straight line of wreckage, boss. Goes back a little better than a mile. You can see where both wings sheared off.”
“The engines?”
“The one closest to us looks pretty chopped up. The other one’s where the fire started. I couldn’t get close enough to see it.”
Peter nodded. “The fire?”
“Somebody dug a firebreak, quarter mile back there. The fire’s not a threat right now but that could change quick. One option is for us to stay out here, get as much info out of that bird as we can before our luck turns. Besides, it’ll be light soon.” The day had dawned but the state forest remained in shade behind a mountain range to the east.
Peter said, “We’ve got the black boxes. There isn’t much else to do until our teams are assembled. Get the others. We’re heading in. I want everyone up and briefed by ten hundred.”
But Dr. Jain walked up at that moment. “Peter? I don’t know about the airframe, but I want to get all of the bodies out of here, in case the fire turns.”
“All?”
“Absolutely. It wasn’t a full flight. And I definitely want to autopsy every one. I can’t do that if the forest fire expands.”
Peter blinked. “It’s seven A.M., in the middle of nowhere. Where would we even secure eighteen cadavers?”
“Excuse me?” A stocky man with a doughy, Irish face, in a bomber jacket and police hat, stepped up. “Paul McKinney. I’m chief of police, next town over. Twin Pines. Not five minutes away from the ambulance staging area. You need to store bodies?”
Lakshmi Jain said, “Yes, please.”
“The mayor just called me, said he’s set up a market, went bankrupt a month ago. Plenty of storage, and it’s ice cold in there.” Secretly, McKinney was wondering what had magically happened overnight to the lead in Mayor Art Tibbits’s ass. He’d never seen the mayor mobilize anything bigger than a backyard barbecue.
Lakshmi turned to Peter. “Perfect. I’ve spoken with the paramedics. The fire could change direction today.”
Jack said, “I’m with her, boss. We got bad clock here.”
Peter nodded, turned to McKinney. “Chief, we’re going to need help getting these bodies out of this field and transporting them to your town.”
In response, McKinney reached up for the police radio clipped to his epaulet. “McKinney to base. Over.” To Peter, Lakshmi, and Jack, he said. “I’ll whistle up something.”
Jack said, “If Lakshmi’s staying, I want to help Reuben get as much of the avionics off the flight deck as we can. Same as the bodies: if the fire whips around, we’ll lose a lot of evidence.”
Peter agreed. It seemed that his people, or at least some of them, wouldn’t be getting any rest. But he had to admit, he liked their professionalism.
HELENA REGIONAL
The supervisor for Helena Regional’s air traffic control tower paged Adrienne Starbird, suspecting she had pulled an all-nighter due to the crash. “Adrienne? We’ve got seventeen chartered flights booked for Helena tomorrow and more being filed every few minutes. And not small ones, either. Last two were a Gulfstream 550 and a Challenger S.E. What in the world is going on here?”
* * *
Adrienne Starbird took the question to Beth Mancini, who was using her office. “It’s the All-Thing,” Beth said, rubbing at a kink in her neck. “Everyone who had a hand in putting that plane together is going to want to help us figure out how it came apart. And I mean everyone. The airframe manufacturer, the wing manufacturer, the engines, the avionics, on and on. Then we get into Polestar Airlines and the pilot’s union and the flight attendant’s union.”
Adrienne said, “And they’re coming here?”
“Yes. My boss invented this event and dubbed it the All-Thing. Basically, we take two or three hours in the first few days to figure out who the players are. Establish a roster. Then, and I know this is counterintuitive, we actually take them up on the offer to help. If you’ve got a mental image of foxes guarding a henhouse, you’re right on the mark. But when it comes to doing a full postmortem on, say the flight deck avionics package, we’re going to need the experts of Acme Avionics or whoever it turns out to be. Which means your tower will receive a lot more flight plans in the next few hours.”
HALCYON/DETWEILER, DUPONT CIRCLE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Liz Proctor’s new aide, Donny, handed her three manila envelopes and a cup of coffee. “Our friends in Islamabad have asked for twelve MKK-17s,” he said, following her into her office.
Liz frowned. “Going fishing?” The MKK-17s were Halcyon’s helicopter gunships, rigged for antisubmarine warfare. They were outfitted with both extremely low-frequency sonar and sonobuoys. “India’s not going to like that.”
“True.”
She set the first folder on her oak desk and opened the second.
Donny gave her the highlights. “A Turkish Cypriot suicide bomber took out five people in a terminal at Larnaca International last night using—”
Liz said, “Suicide bomber in Cyprus? Jesus, Donny.”
“I know. That’s an escalation. No one saw it coming. I talked to my guy at the CIA. He says MI-6 has people on site now and they’re sharing … for once. The Nicosia station chief is moving assets into position.”
She sipped the coffee. Donny was twenty-seven and a total hottie. Blond hair, tall and slim, and favored Hugo Boss trim-fit shirts. Liz Proctor could have licked him. It didn’t hurt that he had a master’s in public administration and a doctorate in foreign policy and an IQ slightly higher than that of the Vulcan High Council.
“Okay, I need face time with Deitrich, before noon,” she said, doffing her jacket. “Who’s good on Cyprus. Jennings?”
“Jennings’s water broke last night,” Donny said, smiling. “Sorry. I’ll get Craig Sutter up here.”
“Okay.” Liz looked at the third manila folder, opening it.
“Manifest from that crash in Montana.”
Wow, he was good. She had forgotten all about it by the time she’d made the commute in. “Anyone interesting?”
“Unfortunately, yeah. A guy on the payroll. Subcontractor vetted by Mr. Tichnor’s office. An Andrew Malatesta. Near as we can tell, he and … Liz? Are you okay?”
Her cheeks were burning. She made a hand gesture toward the door and Donny didn’t hesitate. The moment the door closed, she sat and dialed Barry Tichnor’s extension. The line rang twice. Liz heard the click of a receiver being lifted and didn’t wait for Tichnor to identify himself.
“What the fuck, Barry? Seriously! What the fuck!”
CRASH SITE
The sun was close to rising from behind the mountain range but the forest remained dark.
Reuben Chaykin had flown from Chicago to take command of the powerplant team. He stood at the empennage end of the downed plane and stared forlornly to the east, at the fire that had started with the portside wing and engine and had chewed its way due west—straight as a Texas highway—to the starboard wing and engine.
The Claremont featured those two engines, two starter generators for direct-current power, three transformer units in the cargo deck, and three nickel-cadmium
batteries. They, along with an engine-driven AC generator to supply variable-frequency power, made up the allied powerplant of the Claremont aircraft. It was Reuben’s job to see if something within the powerplant had brought down the plane.
Much of his “evidence” was a fiery, mile-long mess. This was going to take a long, long time. Many months.
Reuben Chaykin was a squat, muscled little bantam of a man with a half-moon of hair the color and texture of steel wool. He wore half-glasses at the end of his nose, attached to a lanyard around his neck. He stood there, hands jammed into the back pockets of his dungarees, and sighed deeply.
Teresa Santiago, the flight data recorder expert, threw an arm over his shoulder and gave him a little hip check.
“You’re powerplant?” She stood five inches taller than Reuben and they were both in their early forties.
“Yeah,” he admitted.
“Bummer.”
He removed his glasses and let them hang against his chest from their lanyard. “You’re tellin’ me.”
The tall, curvy Latina bombshell and the morose Jewish fireplug made a sharp contrast. “How’s your black box look?”
“Pristine. U.S. marshal’s already been here and gone.”
“This could be an easy catch for you,” Reuben said, and shrugged, turning again to the fire trail.
“Yeah. But I think you’re well and truly screwed.”
He signed yet again. “I am so fakaktah.”
Jack Goodspeed jogged in their direction. He’d been around to the belly side of the plane to see if the pilots had deployed the retractable tricycle-style landing gear. They had not.
“Reuben? Peter gave us the okay to try to get the avionics suite out of the cockpit. As much as we can, anyway.”
Reuben said, “You’re worried the wind will change direction, that fire biting us in the ass?”
“Yeah. You?”
Reuben gave his signature sigh. “Sure. God hates me. Why not?”
* * *
Chief Paul McKinney got the superintendent of the Twin Pines/Martins Ferry Unified School District out of bed. “Chip, I want to borrow your buses. All of them.”
“Um … sure.” The superintendent sounded half asleep. “When?”
“Now.”
Chip Ogilvy climbed out of bed so as not to wake his wife. “Paul? What’s going on?”
“A midsize aircraft crashed into the state forest, couple miles outside of Twin Pines. The damn thing started a forest fire. The feds are here, and they want to transport these people into town as quickly as they can.”
Chip agreed, hung up, called his director of transportation, and got the buses rolling. It was early August and the buses weren’t in use anyway.
Paul knew Chip well enough to know that he would have said no if the request had been to transport eighteen dead bodies. That’s why Paul had worded it these people.
CLANCY, MONTANA
Calendar ditched the stolen Durango into a creek outside Clancy and walked a quarter mile to the motel he’d rented under a false name, paying cash. He let himself into the room, tossed the titanium case on the bed. He stripped off his clothes, took a two-minute shower, very hot. He scrubbed himself thoroughly. He disliked killing civilians.
He toweled dry. Naked, he brought the locked attaché case to the bathroom, studied it under the lights. The lock was a ten-key pad. Unpickable. He grabbed the case, turned it over, wedged it between the toilet and the bathroom wall with the hinges facing upward. It was a tight fit.
He padded into the main room, knelt, reached under the cratered bed with the threadbare cover, pulled out another locked case, dialed the combo, and withdrew an HK45, matte black and solid, with an Advanced Armament silencer. He screwed them together, returned to the bathroom, and put two bullets through the hinges, phut phut, barely audible if you’d had your ear against the motel-room door. A fine dust of steel filings, bullet fragments, and titanium littered the none-too-clean linoleum floor.
Calendar lifted the case away from the toilet, set it up on the cabinet, and opened it.
It was empty.
AIRBORNE
En route back to Helena via helicopter, Peter Kim called his intergovernmental liaison via their comm link. “Beth? We’re leaving some of the Go-Team in place. Pathology and avionics/powerplant. The rest of us are heading back now. Where are we staying?”
“Um, I’m having a little trouble booking rooms. I hope to have it sorted out by the time you get back.” She paused. “Are you sure it’s wise to leave some of our people that close to a forest fire?”
“Time’s arrow only points one direction,” he responded, and checked his diver’s watch. It was a little after 8:30 A.M.
“Del Wildman’s Rule Number One is pretty clear,” Beth said. “First, take no risks.”
“Noted,” Peter said. “Out.”
In fact, Beth Mancini had booked only four rooms so far. She would need upward of eighty within a day or two. She hadn’t anticipated the popularity of Helena during hunting season.
CRASH SITE
Lakshmi edged her way into the downed Claremont, a Maglite held up by her shoulder. She moved toward the flight deck. She didn’t enter: it was crowded with Jack Goodspeed, Reuben Chaykin, one intact dead pilot, the remains of another dead pilot, and, completely unexpectedly, a deer.
She said, “My.”
Jack turned and saw her eyeing the deer carcass. “Yeah, I know. Weird. I think the plane hit once, shredded this wall,” he stamped his boot on the rough sod beneath him, “bounced, caught this poor guy,” he nodded to the deer, “and scooped him up.”
It was growing lighter outside but very little sunlight crept into the flight deck. Jack and Reuben crouched together up front. Reuben’s right arm stretched almost completely behind the avionics panel, reaching back for something. Lakshmi said, “Can you get the equipment out of here?”
“Think … so…” Reuben stretched his arm farther, wincing in discomfort.
Lakshmi stepped over the threshold. She went down on one knee, moved a portion of the severely crumpled right-hand seat. She saw part of the torso of one pilot.
She shifted to the other pilot, played her flash along the gold nameplate over his left-hand pocket. Pilot-in-Charge Miguel Cervantes. He lay on the forest floor, his upper torso leaning on a portion of the flight deck that—in a normally oriented Claremont—would have been the ceiling. From the way his head lolled, she guessed a broken spine. She played the light on his neck, manipulated his skull. Yes. A C4 break.
She studied the rest of the body. Very bad bleeder in his right arm, with a trail of blood that ran forward to where Jack and Reuben were laboring. Lakshmi frowned. She also pulled back his shirt collar to discover a broken clavicle. Common enough injury in airline crashes: the safety harness.
But not with a C4 break.
She looked at the men kneeling up front. Lakshmi did not enjoy physically touching people until she knew them well, a process that could take years.
Steeling herself, she said, “May I?” and wedged herself in closer to the men. Her jeans-clad calf rubbed against Reuben’s left arm. There wouldn’t have been enough room for a third man up in front but Lakshmi was willow thin and flexible enough to fit, if uncomfortably. She stood, studying the pilot’s chair. Yes, there was the telltale blood of the arm bleeder, the smear of blood on the safety harness from the clavicle break. And she studied the buckle of the safety harness. One perfectly fine, bloody thumbprint.
She turned back, shone the light on the pilot. Turned and shone it on the seat.
Reuben said, “Can you give us a little light here?”
She turned the Maglite on the avionics monitors.
“What are you trying to salvage?”
Jack nodded to the monitor nearest his head. “EFIS.”
“Which is…?”
“Sorry. Electronic Flight Instrumentation System. Five high-res liquid crystal displays. Some of these Claremonts are retrofitted with heads-up h
olographic guidance systems, too, but I’m not seeing one here.”
“Me, neither.” Reuben grunted, still trying to reach some hidden connector in back.
Jack said, “We get this, maybe the TCAS unit. That’s got global positioning, traffic alert, and collision avoidance systems, rolled into one. That could tell us if we had a near miss or a missile.”
Lakshmi said, “Missile,” as if Jack had said eight tiny reindeer.
Kneeling, Jack shrugged. “Assume nothing.”
And a minute later, three of the avionics monitors fell free.
HELENA
The ambulances carrying Tommy, Kiki, and the six other survivors of Polestar Flight 78 arrived at Big Sky Community Hospital at 8:45 A.M. The Claremont had been on the ground nine hours.
16
MOST OF THE MEMBERS of the Go-Team were ferried back to Helena Regional and found that Beth Mancini and her assistants had rummaged up only a few hotel rooms in different hotels. Beth apologized profusely. Peter Kim recommended that people use their own credit cards to find rooms. They’d get reimbursed later.
It was a bad way to start their first full day on the ground, everyone thought, as they headed their own way to find hotel rooms.
* * *
Gene Whitney loved airports. You could almost always get booze. And nobody knew that you hadn’t just flown in from Hong Kong, wherever, and it was really happy hour to you. He returned to Helena Regional and found a chain restaurant serving a full menu of drinks. Plenty of time to find a hotel room later.
He hoisted his 250-pound form up onto a stool at the nicked bar. It was wood but no discernible type of wood. Just wood. He ordered a Coors and got a bowl of pretzels without asking.
He didn’t get into a fight with the locals for a good hour. It was almost a personal best.
LIMA, MONTANA
Almost due south of the crash on Highway 15, Calendar’s man, Cates, stood outside in a motel’s parking lot, sipping coffee from a Thermos lid as the sun rose. He leaned against a Ford Escape SUV. Five minutes later, an identical Escape pulled in, facing the other direction, and parked next to it.