Final Approach

by John J. Nance

  Standing at the window of Gate 14, the initial eruption of fire and flame had flared in the corner of Mark Weiss’s vision, then in his mind. Something had happened at the far end of Runway 19, the last place he had seen Kim’s flight waiting for the weather to clear—waiting for a safe time to takeoff. His head jerked automatically in that direction, his eyes taking in the sight of a tailless fuselage and wing assembly arcing to the taxiway surface in what seemed like a slow-motion special effects shot. He saw the nose impact and crumple, the wings begin to fold forward, and the rear fuselage begin to flip over, all of it disappearing behind a curtain of flame as what was rapidly becoming a fireball splayed out along the concrete surface, sliding and bouncing and flaring as it skidded to a halt, a grotesque inferno of ruined machinery and humanity to the north of the terminal.

  Mark had no recollection of following the North America agent through the door to the jetway, or of literally pushing the woman down as he ran at full speed to the end of the boarding ramp and yanked open the door, rushing down the steps and frantically looking around for something to drive. A baggage tug idled in front of him, and he leapt onto it, forcing it into gear, accelerating as fast as he could, oblivious to the four baggage carts banging and spilling boxes behind him, and unaware of the rising sounds of sirens and motors as fire trucks left their enclosures, police cars roared onto the field, and Klaxons blared in the distance. He only knew he had to get to Kim and the boys. Whatever had happened had been too close to them.

  Recklessly, he shot down the ramp on the unstable tug, selecting the far entrance to the parallel taxiways, dodging debris and taking to the marshy grass at one point, heading as fast as he could for the hammerhead. There was much flaming debris behind him and along the concrete taxiway, but there was something more chilling in front of him. Where the hammerhead had held the 737, there was now the scattered burning remains of an airplane.

  Brian Harlow regained his senses within seconds of the crash and put his squad car in forward gear, accelerating directly to where the 737 had been. His radio exploded in sound and fury, radio calls electronically lacing a delicate web of coordination between the fire and police and rescue personnel as men and women scrambled into vehicles and raced toward the scene.

  Harlow, however, was the first to respond, accelerator to the floor for a second until caution prevailed, causing him to slow up. He approached the darkest area in front of the wreckage with his foot on the brake, but not hard enough. A large chunk of metal bounced off the front grill as he slammed the brake pedal to the floor and threw the steering wheel to the left to avoid what appeared to be a person lying in front of him. Harlow backed up slightly and turned, illuminating the figure, then struggled to get the gearshift into park again. He tumbled out, running to the man caught in his headlights and realizing at once that he was far too late.

  Harlow stood in shock for a second, finally forcing himself into motion once again. More equipment was arriving now, people alighting from fire trucks and rescue trucks in all directions. He moved on toward the dark shapes between him and the fire that was consuming the main part of the wreckage. Holding his flashlight more like an instrument of protection than detection, he walked slowly ahead, picking his way past the crushed forms of several passengers still strapped into their three-place seat assembly, stepping carefully over other human remains that he was rapidly learning not to examine too closely, and headed for a lone figure sitting on the concrete.

  Harlow shone his light on the woman as she looked up at him. She was young and attractive, blond hair and face streaked by sooty smudges and splotches of blood, but otherwise physically intact. Harlow’s eyes took in the shape of her exposed breasts and her flat stomach, his eyes automatically roaming to her waist and her shapely hips, covered now only by a torn pair of panties, her legs bare and smudged as well, a thoroughly incongruous image amidst such a gruesome scene of death and destruction. It registered that her clothes had been torn off in the trauma of the crash, and that he was looking at a disaster victim who needed his help. But all his training as a policeman was pushed aside by the frantic need to deny the horror of the situation, to find something good and comfortable and acceptable in this nightmare, and her femininity was exactly that.

  She was trying to speak to him over the noise, but he couldn’t hear. Harlow leaned down, careful not to touch her, not trusting himself suddenly, straining to hear her tiny, confused voice.

  “My baby. My baby is here … but … I can’t find him.”

  Harlow saw the detached look in her eyes and watched her dreamy, confused gestures.

  “Where, ma’am?”

  She looked into his eyes and bit her lower lip, her right hand flailing the air absently.

  “I … uh … was holding him.” She looked down slowly at her left arm and stared at it for a second as Harlow recognized the symptoms of shock.

  “He’s only two months old, you know,” she said in a singsong voice, suddenly strong, then dropped her tone once again, looking up at him wide-eyed and chewing her lip once more. “I was holding him tight. They said I had to hold him on my lap. I had him … here. Where is he? Do you know where he is?”

  She held a small blanket, or what was left of a blanket, tightly in her left hand, gesturing as she spoke. Harlow followed her gesture, looking around, moving his flashlight back and forth, trying to find the child quickly and realizing at the same time that the distraught young mother was sitting many yards from where the 737 had been hit.

  Harlow looked at the inferno in the distance and knew instinctively her baby was gone. He had obviously not been in an infant seat, nor had he been restrained by a seatbelt. She had made the fatal mistake of trying to simply hold him in her arms, and for a baby, Harlow knew, that was a death sentence in any crash.

  “We’ll find him.” He spoke the lie gently, helping her to her feet, holding her tenderly. “Let’s go now.” Harlow smelled the plastic aroma of an airliner cabin mingled with the odor of acrid smoke in her hair as he gave her his jacket and walked her to the safety of the squad car.

  They had been in row 12.

  Mark kept that thought turning over and over in his frantic mind as he struggled to function, guiding the little tug to a halt near the central portion of the flaming wreckage, seeing the severed cockpit and noting with a flicker of hope that the section in flames began at the front of the wing box, substantially behind row 12.

  But where was row 12? Mark saw the dark mass of wreckage and seats to his left. There were people standing around, looking dazed, and others—obviously rescuers—dashing onto the scene. The wail of sirens was rising by the second in the distance, flashing red-and-blue lights joining the eerie orange glare of burning machinery. He could see some survivors silhouetted now by the flames. The section in front of him was not burning. Could Kim and the boys be there? They were here, somewhere, and they must be safe. He willed them to be safe.

  Mark dodged dark shapes on the concrete as he sprinted toward the spot he had seen, finding several people struggling to get out of passenger seats which had been scattered around like the toys of an angry child. He ran figure to figure, seat to seat, looking into faces, pulling up the edges of sharp metal panels to peer beneath, pulling at other debris and struggling to identify the bodies of those who hadn’t made it, making sure he did not recognize them. Someone was working on a victim to his right, kneeling and giving CPR to a small form on the concrete. With his heart in his throat, Mark pushed close enough to see, realizing the size was close to Aaron’s. But it was a little girl in a blue dress—and she was not responding.

  Twenty yards or so ahead of him, Mark saw part of the torn sidewall of the 737’s fuselage, a 15-foot-square section sitting like a gently curved, broken shell on top of a mass of debris, and still containing an unbroken row of windows. As he moved toward it, the top of a seat row could be seen under the end closest to him, the garish light of the fire behind him reflecting off various angles of metal and glass. He knelt besid
e the exposed armrest, finding the little tag, struggling to see the numbers. The light was flickering all around him, but it wasn’t quite enough. He had to let his eyes focus, fighting the growing panic, staring at what seemed to be an eight … no, a one and … what? A three? Mark cupped his hands, trying to reflect more light onto the tag, and in a quick flash recognized the tiny numbers as a one and a three. Row 13. The row behind his family.

  Mark Weiss began moving with increased urgency around the side of the panel, trying unsuccessfully to lift the heavy-gauge aluminum, slicing his hands in the process and not caring, kneeling, dashing to another location and peering under, yelling for help and pushing hard to move it.

  Finally the panel yielded a few inches as he shoved, exposing something beneath the edge as a fireman appeared from nowhere with a powerful flashlight. Mark grabbed the light from his hand and dropped to the panel’s surface again, peering beneath, seeing several human forms in a jumble of material. He reached underneath, finding a hand and arm, feeling in vain for a pulse and realizing he could pull whoever it was closer to the edge by pulling gently on the arm—her arm. It was a woman; her polished fingernails shone in the light for a moment as Mark positioned himself to haul her out. Gently but steadily he pulled, feeling the form begin to move, tugging as carefully as he could, and realizing the hand was limp. He dropped again, shining the light beneath the panel’s edge, trying to see her face and realizing that he had been avoiding a look at the ring he had felt on one of her lifeless fingers.

  With an emptiness as large as the galaxy, he shone the light on a diamond wedding ring, a small solitaire set on a platinum band, encircling the finger on which he had placed it so many happy years ago.

  Jean had tried to follow Pete and keep him safe. He was too distraught, but the big man had waded into the debris, trying to save his passengers, finding body after body amidst the few survivors and the rescuers who were increasing in number by the minute. Jean had let him go, moving into the wreckage on her own and taking charge of another area, hardly noticing the intense pain of her dislocated shoulder, working with one of the flight attendants to comfort people and move them away from the flames. From somewhere a bloodied Barbara Shubert appeared, her shredded uniform evidence of her brush with death in the forward jump seat. Jean hugged her for an instant before resuming her frantic efforts in what was becoming a massively confused situation on top of a Dantesque nightmare. The initial quiet had given way to a cacophony of sounds and sirens, screams and moans, yelled orders and blaring two-way radios, accompanied by the background rumble of flames and crackling metal.

  With the searing heat of the central wreckage of his airplane behind him, Pete kept moving, holding injured people until he could attract the attention of a fireman, giving orders, tenderly placing limp hands on quiet chests when it was too late, and moving slowly toward a small clump of debris at the edge of the taxiway. There were two people there, one kneeling and a fireman helping, a flashlight in the kneeling man’s hand. Pete came up to them and followed their gaze to the limp hand and arm protruding from the wreckage. He looked in the man’s tearful eyes—staring into an abyss of hollowness and pain—and recognized him as the fellow pilot whose family he had promised to protect. As the fireman grabbed for him, the bleeding captain sank to his knees, struggling to speak, the enormity of it washing over him.

  “I’m … I’m so … sorry. I’m so sorry! I tried … I …”

  Mark Weiss looked up at Pete with an expression beyond description—beyond anguish—the broken remains of something small and plastic in his hands, a scarred and twisted model of the F-15 fighter bearing a hand-printed name on the side which was still barely readable: “Millennium Falcon.”

  3

  Friday, October 12 Washington, D.C.

  A flowing river of colored leaves surged across the divided roadway in front of him on a wave of autumn wind, the late-evening landscape painted by the soft brush of greenish streetlamps and the glare of incandescent headlights as Joe Wallingford turned onto the Suitland Parkway, headed for home. It was 11:25 P.M. and he was mentally exhausted. Fridays at the National Transportation Safety Board tended to do that to him—the usual last-minute rush punctuated by a thousand unplanned interruptions. He supposed it was the same in any business.

  Joe accelerated and headed east, his mind chewing over the raging battle among the staff. He would have to convince the Board members to use some incendiary testimony from a New England commuter crash, and he hated the process—and hated politics. Nineteen years of such nonsense was making him cynical. He knew the symptoms.

  Joe reached over and switched on the radio, tuning it to an easy-listening station. The window should be down, he told himself. Can’t enjoy a night like this with the window up. He worked the crank, feeling the cool breeze flood the car, breathing the aroma of fall and forests along the tree-lined suburban motorway. It was a beautiful evening, and surprisingly so. The city looked magnificent. He had noted that as he pulled out of the garage at 800 Independence ten minutes ago and turned toward the stark white facade of the U.S. Capitol bathed in spotlights, the sound of wind-blown leaves scraping lightly over concrete filling his ears as he paused at the curb, waiting for traffic that wasn’t there—luxuriating in the empty streets.

  Joe took the exit ramp to Branch Avenue, mentally reminding himself of the comforting fact that his packed bag was in the trunk behind him. He had “the duty” for the next few days. If there was an aviation accident significant enough to require a Washington-based investigation, Joe would lead the “Go Team” as the IIC—the investigator-in-charge. And as always, if he needed the bag, it was ready to go in an instant, packed with duplicates of almost everything he had in his bathroom at home. He had adopted the habit of acquiring two of everything many years ago when he first joined the NTSB. It had been a family joke: don’t ever give Joe just one tie or one shaver. Give him two of everything—one for home, one for the infamous bag. Before their divorce, Brenda had done just that. In fact, he corrected himself, she still did, sending him two little electronic alarm clocks for his birthday back in June.

  The inviting thought of a crackling fire, the leaves blowing across his patio, and a Moselle wine he had been saving caused him to smile. That was an evening to look forward to—but the beeping noise that began coursing through his consciousness at that exact moment was not.

  Joe shook his head, sighing disgustedly before launching an emphatic “Damn!” at the road ahead. He reached to his side and found the offending electronic device, pushing the silence button harder than necessary. The rest of the world called them pagers or beepers, but NTSB Go Team members had been carrying them for decades, and still used the original name: Bellboy. Whatever you called it, Joe thought, they were a damned nuisance that could shatter a relaxed evening in an instant.

  Joe spotted a phone booth along the road ahead and stopped to call the FAA command post, hearing the first details of what had just happened in Kansas City. He reversed course immediately.

  Within twenty minutes he was back in the basement parking lot beneath the FAA building, the return trip a barely remembered sequence of blurred images, the terrible situation unfolding in Kansas City on his mind, a scene of broken airplanes and broken bodies, images in gruesome detail which were all too familiar from past experience. There was no question about scrambling the Go Team. This accident was obviously too big and too important to be left to any of the NTSB’s undermanned, underfunded field offices.

  Joe draped his topcoat over the first chair by the door as he entered the FAA command post on the ninth floor at flank speed, a nod of recognition greeting him from the sole occupant, an FAA technician he knew only as Wally.

  “What do we have so far?” Joe asked.

  Wally filled him in on the details, confirming that the NTSB’s field man, Rich Carloni, was driving to the scene from Kansas City, the death toll would be fearful, and the airline’s operations control center in Dallas was in gear and waiting for the NT
SB’s call. “They’re assembling their team to join you in Kansas City.” Wally paused to take a deep breath and check some notes on an ink-covered legal pad.

  “Lord.” Joe shook his head. “You know we almost scrambled the team to Florida this afternoon?”

  “Yeah, I heard about that. Boeing 737, older version, blew a hole in its cabin south of Key West?”

  “Correct. But it was a cargo flight—Miami Air was the carrier—and they got it down safely. The NTSB chairman decided not to send us. We’ll have our regional office do the report.”

  “Ah, one other thing.” Wally seemed hesitant, and the pause caught Joe’s curiosity.

  “Yeah?”

  “When I talked to the tower controller, at first he kept saying he—the 320, I suppose—flew into a microburst. Then he corrected himself and said they didn’t have a clue what happened. The Airbus was turning to a visual final approach and just lost it. I asked him about the windshear, and he says ‘I’m probably wrong … forget I mentioned it.’”

  “You know his name?”

  “A fellow named Sellers, Carl Sellers. He sounded terrified.”

  Joe nodded. “How about the weather?”

  “There were thunderstorms in the vicinity, and windshear had been reported. I don’t have details though.”

  “Thanks for that much, Wally. It just might be significant.”

  Joe realized he had been leaning on the edge of the man’s desk, energetically rubbing his forehead, his muscular, almost wiry body slumping slightly from fatigue. There would be no time to shower and change before heading for the airport, and that bothered him. Joe cared about his appearance, the result of never being quite handsome enough to just coast on good looks. With his green eyes and ruddy complexion, his dark hair cut short and carefully combed, his penchant for crisp shirts and pressed suits made him an imposing figure in a sea of slightly wrinkled clothes and striped ties.