Phoenix Rising

by Nance, John J. ;

  He looked up with a snap of his head suddenly, a gesture that Conrad knew meant trouble.

  “That’s a gap as big as China,” he added.

  “Jake, I’ve never seen a JT-9D do what this one did, not without help.”

  “Where’s the evidence? Is there plastique residue on the shop floor? A blasting cap? Wire? Something, anything?” Lovesy’s eyes were boring in now, and Bill didn’t flinch as he shook his head.

  “We’ve got nothing except a collection of broken parts about eighty miles off the coast, in several hundred feet of salt water. That would tell the tale.”

  Lovesy nodded.

  Good, Bill thought. At least we agree on something.

  “Look,” Jake Lovesy said suddenly, shifting in his chair, “I agree this one flew apart with an unusual vengeance. I also promise we’ll get the FBI in on this and comb the wing and what’s left of the pylon for any evidence of explosives. We find any, I’ll buy the idea. We don’t find some hard evidence, all we can do is crank that into our thinking.”

  “Jake, I—”

  “Bill, I’ve been around this business long enough to know that the publicity is already hurting you.” Bill started to protest, but Lovesy’s hand was already up. “I know. I know, man. You would never concoct something for that purpose. It’s just that I can’t go public with speculation on a bomb or sabotage without something more than what you’ve given me. Hell, I’m not supposed to go public with anything. Our board member does the platitudes and the leaking of facts, but only facts we’re sure of.”

  “The publicity is hurting a little, but it’ll get worse,” Bill began. “At least don’t defuse this possibility if the media should ask you—”

  Lovesy was shaking his head at the mere mention of the media.

  “Don’t do it! Don’t you guys run to the media with this story prematurely. You’ll end up embarrassed. Go tell the camera about the highly unusual aspect of a 747 engine scattering like this if you want, talk about how damn good your maintenance is, talk about gremlins in flying saucers, but don’t—repeat, don’t—put the media in my face with questions about sabotage before we have hard evidence, or I’ll leave you hanging.”

  As they parted in the parking lot after dinner, Lovesy walked back over to Bill’s car before he could climb in.

  “If it’s on the structure of your airplane—the evidence of explosives, I mean—we’ll find it. Meanwhile, go get that engine out of the water if there’s any way you can do it. Go get someone to dive and photograph it, at least. Air traffic control will have the radar track, and I’ll bet it’s just like United 811’s door, south of Honolulu. I’ll bet we can locate the impact point from the tapes.”

  “Already have,” Bill said, noticing with some satisfaction the look of surprise on Lovesy’s face. “Friend of mine at Seattle Center spent hours today with the tapes, and he found a large radar return headed for the water just after the explosion. He’s got the exact coordinates.”

  “Good. Go get the sucker.”

  Friday, March 10, midnight

  Downtown Seattle

  Kelly had succumbed to fatigue and sleep in the new condo when Brian phoned. Elizabeth read ten past twelve on her watch as she picked up the telephone.

  “I’m sorry, Elizabeth, I’m going to be here all night, I think.”

  “You haven’t found them?”

  “Nothing. And I damn well know we’re not negligent! Those files were there. I’m wondering something really bizarre. I’m wondering if the FAA is setting us up.”

  He sounded furious and bitter and exhausted.

  “Brian, you’ve been awake since Tokyo. You can’t think straight when you’re that tired. Remember our fruitless attempts to pull all-nighters before exams back in Cambridge? You were worthless without sleep.”

  “So were you. Anyway, I gotta keep on looking.”

  “Go to bed. At least get some sleep on your couch in the office.”

  There was silence from the other end.

  “Brian?”

  A long sigh filled the phone, a resigned sound of someone about to admit partial defeat. “Okay. A few hours, then. Can we … take a rain check tonight and spend tomorrow evening together?”

  “Tonight’s gone and tomorrow’s not possible. I’ve got my mother coming to town, and you know what kind of portable thunderstorms she brings.”

  “She’s a sweet lady, Elizabeth.”

  “She’s Attila the Mother when we get on the subject of Kelly.”

  “Well then, don’t—”

  “Can’t help it, Brian. She’s coming to pick up Kelly for the weekend.”

  More silence, then a chuckle. “The weekend, huh? Even if I’m unemployed by Saturday, I can’t pass this up. How about Saturday evening at your place, m’lady?”

  “I thought the gentleman would never ask. Bring wine. Bring yourself.”

  9

  Friday, March 10, morning

  The tip had come into the newsroom of United Press International at around four on Thursday afternoon, and it took one of the editors an hour to track down their aviation specialist to deal with it.

  By 1:00 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, the story was in motion and being picked up in early-morning news operations worldwide, including CNN.

  By 9:00 A.M. in New York, the story had begun to depress the price of Pan Am stock, and at 9:15 Eastern—6:15 Seattle time—two stock analysts had issued an emergency sell recommendation on Pan Am as Elizabeth Sterling turned on her TV and saw the Pan Am logo hovering over the shoulder of the CNN anchor in Atlanta.

  “The new Pan American Airlines, whose Seattle-Tokyo flight suffered a catastrophic multiple engine failure on Wednesday and had to make an emergency landing after a harrowing flight at wavetop level, is reported this morning to be the subject of a special investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration. Sources close to the FAA have told CNN that major fines in the millions of dollars are pending against the newly formed airline for alleged violation of training and other operational regulations, including serious maintenance violations. The National Transportation Safety Board has not commented on a cause of the accident Wednesday, but the investigation is said to be centering on past maintenance problems with the destroyed engine. There has been no comment from the troubled airline.”

  By the time Elizabeth arrived on the fifty-sixth floor of the Columbia Center, two TV crews were waiting. She brushed by at first, only to recognize the cameraman she had flown with to Whidbey Island. He shrugged as if to apologize, and came forward to shake her hand.

  “We’re hoping to snare your president. You wouldn’t want to, uh …” He gestured to his camera.

  “No!” She looked wide-eyed and laughed. “Ees not my yob, mon! I just got here. I know nothing.”

  She had entered the inner sanctum when Ron Lamb materialized from his office, a thoroughly panicked look on his face.

  “Elizabeth—”

  “I know, Ron, I saw them. I heard the story on TV a while ago.”

  He looked puzzled, she thought, and that was odd.

  “Oh. Oh, those guys.” Ron gestured to the reception area. “That’s Ralph Basanji’s problem. That’s nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  Lamb stood stock-still for a second and searched her eyes before gesturing for her to follow him the few steps to his office. She entered and moved to one of the chairs opposite his desk as he carefully, almost conspiratorially, closed the door.

  What on earth? she caught herself wondering.

  There were papers spread across the usually neat desk, and Ron moved to them now and scooped up a couple before turning to Elizabeth.

  He was breathing hard, she noticed.

  “You all right, Ron?”

  “No.” He shook the papers, sat on the edge of his desk next to her, and studied his shoes. “I’m going to have to call an emergency board meeting on this, I think.”

  “What?”

  “An hour ago I got a call from the lead ban
k of the revolving-credit-line consortium—the one you’re going to try to replace.”

  “And?”

  “They’re panicked. They heard the news this morning, they saw the stories, and they’ve panicked.”

  “Okay, Ron, so they’ve panicked. What did they say?”

  “They froze the revolving line at its current balance.”

  “Can they do that? Under that Byzantine agreement you signed, can they legally do it?”

  “I don’t think so. I really don’t know, I’ve called in Jack Rawly, our general counsel. I think you’ve met him. But even if we get it changed, we’ve got a bond payment due on the twentieth of this month. We have to make that payment, and without the credit line, I don’t know how we’re going to find the money!”

  Elizabeth let her mind race back over the complex details of the original financial package. They had sold several short-term debenture issues. It had to be one of those. The plan had been to redeem them through current accounts, revolving credit, or a combination of the two.

  “I haven’t had time to study the corporate payables. How much?”

  “We owe, and must raise, eighty-five million dollars.”

  “What? I didn’t leave you any eighty-five-million balloon redemption!”

  “No, we negotiated a delay of two other bond payments that came due last year, and let them all mature at the same time. We agreed to a slightly higher interest rate in return.”

  Elizabeth sat back in the soft leather chair.

  “Ron, I haven’t had a physical for a while. I’m not sure my heart can take many more of these shocks.”

  “I’m sorry, Elizabeth. This wasn’t supposed to be a problem, but now it’s a life-or-death rhubarb. We can’t be declared in default.”

  “How much do we have … hell, that’s my department.”

  “This is your second day. I don’t expect you to be up to speed yet. I checked with your assistant, and he tells me we’ve got about forty million in the accounts right now, but that’s operational money. We spend that, we can’t pay our bills.”

  “And if we don’t pay the debentures and someone in that crowd declares us in default, poof.”

  “Yeah. Poof.”

  Friday, March 10, 9:20 A.M.

  Brian Murphy replaced the telephone handset and looked at his watch. He had made the appointment with Larry DePalma for 10:00 A.M. It was less than fifteen minutes’ drive from Pan Am’s Seatac base to the FAA’s Northwestern Mountain Region headquarters nearby, but he preferred being early than late.

  For what seemed like the fifteenth time, against all logic, he pulled his desk drawers out to see if by any chance the missing files could be hiding there. He was sure, now, that their disappearance wasn’t an accident, but his instincts kept telling him that if he’d turn over just one more rock, or look behind one more stack of boxes, he’d find them all.

  Nothing.

  He got up, but hesitated by his desk, feeling the full weight of many sleepless hours. He looked sadly at the framed picture of Elizabeth and Kelly. Kelly would be miffed that he wouldn’t get to spend time with her until next week, but the warm feeling that rushed over him when he thought of being alone with Elizabeth the next evening washed away any pangs of guilt.

  Larry DePalma’s second-floor office was not hard to find in the new FAA headquarters of the Northwestern Mountain Region. Larry was waiting for him, but not alone. In the corner was Larry’s boss, Ken Schaffer.

  Afraid of meeting me alone, are you, Larry? Brian thought as he shook hands with DePalma and Schaffer and cautioned himself to stay gracious. They kept the small talk to a minimum, and within two minutes Brian had Larry DePalma’s full attention across his desk.

  “Larry, I’ll say it plain and simple. Someone stole our files. Both my pilot files and the training files for the same people. You say you’ve got nine captains involved, and coincidentally they happen to be our most experienced and most important captains, all but one of them on the 747. But their training was completed correctly, and there is no way those files could have been misplaced accidentally. I mean, we’ve got the same information on the computer, and it shows everything’s been done right.”

  DePalma looked down and sighed deeply before looking up again and meeting Brian’s eyes.

  “We had a tip, Brian. I told you that on the phone. The tip was that you folks had been short-changing the training. We were told that where your operations specifications require a full four hours of simulator time for the 747 captain recurrent training session, your check captains have been cutting it down to three hours.”

  “That’s bullshit!” Brian shot back. “We did nothing of the sort! We fly exactly what’s scheduled, and not a minute less.”

  DePalma leaned forward, elbows on his desk, and Brian could see the strain on the man’s face. DePalma had never been their enemy, and he wasn’t now.

  But someone around here doesn’t like us! The thought echoed through Brian’s head.

  “Okay,” Larry continued, “so we organized an unannounced inspection, as you know, expecting that, at worst, we’d find we had a disagreement with you over interpretation of practice simulators, or something of the sort. Instead, when we did a routine check of the records for the only captains who’ve gone through the complained-about recurrent training in the last five months, we discovered the folders had been removed! We can’t even check to see if the simulator rides were signed off properly because—guess what—the records aren’t there!”

  Brian could feel his jaw grinding around as he fought to contain his anger at the implication.

  “We didn’t pull those files, Larry, if that’s what you’re implying. That would be an act of idiocy. Besides, we didn’t know you were coming, and the folders don’t contain anything that would tell you the exact number of minutes spent in the simulator session. Your tip is ridiculous, and none of us have any knowledge what this tipster is talking about.” Brian pronounced the word with visible distaste.

  “I didn’t say you did. I merely—”

  “But your implication is clear. So let me ask you—let me ask both of you gentlemen—” Brian turned to Schaffer with a sweeping gesture of inclusion. “Since this looks suspicious to you—why the very records that would prove a violation aren’t there to inspect—consider an alternate conclusion. Assume that someone wants to set Pan Am up for an embarrassing situation and destroy any trust between the FAA and Pan Am. Assume there is no discrepancy in training or the training records, or whatever the bastard who called alleged. Now, what better way for that someone to accomplish his goals than to phone in a tip to you, then go steal the very records the tip concerned? We can’t prove we’re innocent, because the records are gone, and on top of it, we end up looking like we’re trying to hide something by apparently concealing the records!”

  Larry DePalma shook his head and sat back, his right hand held up, his index finger extended as if about to give a downbeat to a band. “Exactly the point I’ve made, Brian. Ken?” DePalma turned to Ken Schaffer, his boss, who had been less than excited about attending the meeting to begin with.

  That guy’s look could kill, Brian thought. Schaffer was not happy to be suddenly in DePalma’s spotlight.

  “What?” Schaffer said quietly.

  DePalma had turned to his right in the compact office to look at Schaffer. “I raised this issue with you two days ago, but …” DePalma turned back to Brian. “… but, Brian, we need hard evidence. And you guys are going to have to provide it. Otherwise we’ve got missing files, and airmen whose training now can’t even be verified, and that’s suspicious as all hell when viewed from back in D.C.”

  Brian thought he could hear something catch in Schaffer’s throat in the corner, or it could have been his imagination. DePalma could catch hell for revealing that Washington’s scrutiny was involved, but it was just as Brian had suspected. It was someone back East who had it in for Pan Am.

  “What are you saying?” Brian asked slowly, carefully,
but with a metered amount of acid dripping from his words.

  “I think you know what I’m saying, Brian. Either we find those records or some acceptable proof that those nine captains of yours have been trained in accordance with your training manual, or you’ve got to ground them and retrain them.”

  “That is ridiculous! I brought a complete computer printout showing that everything’s been done properly, and if you want it, I’ll have affidavits faxed in by all my captains by sundown. I’ll—”

  “Won’t be acceptable, Captain Murphy.” Schaffer’s voice stabbed at him from the corner. “You haven’t applied to us, nor have we approved, the use of your computer records in lieu of your hard-copy folders. That computer file could easily have been altered. Now, we’ll let you reconstruct and recertify those hard-copy records if you can show us the independent proof upon which you’re basing the reconstruction—simulator instructor logs, classroom logs, that sort of thing. But just asking your guys to call in and say, in effect, ‘Hey, I’m legal’? Forget it.”

  Brian whirled on Schaffer. “You know damn well that’ll take days, and in the meantime I’ll have to ground all these guys worldwide.”

  Schaffer shrugged. “You’re already in violation for not having the records in place for us to inspect. I would hope you wouldn’t make it worse by using unqualified pilots.”

  Larry DePalma looked panicked. He could see the meeting was deteriorating to a contest of wills between Schaffer and Murphy, and that had been the last thing he intended.

  “Mr. Schaffer!” Brian hissed, his eyes flaring as he fought to bring himself under control. “If someone out of our control has stolen those records, we are not in violation!”

  “Well, Captain, I guess that’s our determination, not yours. We could take it under consideration in terms of amount of fines and penalties or whatever, but that decision is ours alone. Besides, you said someone out of your control might have stolen those records, but someone within your control might have been involved, too. Someone could have misplaced them, or shredded them. Perhaps someone in your shop wanted to hide the records from you, someone who’d been cutting corners on simulator time without your knowledge, for instance.”