Airframe

by Michael Crichton

Chapter 13

  NEWSLINE

  4:45 P. M.

  Jennifer Malone headed toward Dick Shenk's office. On the way, she passed his Wall of Fame, a tight arrangement of photographs, plaques, and awards. The photographs showed intimate moments with the rich and famous: Shenk riding horses with Reagan; Shenk on a yacht with Cronkite; Shenk in a Southampton softball game with Tisch; Shenk with Clinton; Shenk with Ben Bradlee. And in the far corner, a photograph of an absurdly young Shenk with shoulder-length hair, an Arriflex mounted on his shoulder, filming John Kennedy in the Oval Office.

  Dick Shenk had begun his career in the sixties as a scrappy documentary producer, back in the days when the news divisions were prestige loss leaders for the networks - autonomous, handsomely budgeted, and lavishly staffed. Those were the great days of the CBS White Papers and NBC Reports. Back then, when Shenk was a kid running around with an Arri, he was in the world, getting real stuff that mattered. With age and success, Shenk's horizons had narrowed. His world was now limited to his weekend house in Connecticut and his brownstone in New York. If he went anywhere else, it was in a limousine. But despite his privileged upbringing, his Yale education, his beautiful ex-wives, his comfortable existence, and his worldly success, Shenk at sixty was dissatisfied with his life. Riding around in his limousine, he felt unappreciated: not enough recognition, not enough respect for his accomplishments. The questing kid with the camera had aged into a querulous and bitter adult. Feeling he had been denied respect himself, Shenk in turn denied it to others - adopting a pervasive cynicism toward everything around him. And that was why, she felt certain, he would buy her frame on the Norton story.

  Jennifer entered the outer office, stopped by Marian's desk. "Going to see Dick?" Marian said. "Is he in?"

  She nodded. "You want company?" "Do I need it?" Jennifer said, raising an eyebrow. "Well," Marian said "He's been drinking. " "It's okay," Jennifer said. "I can handle him. "

  Dick Shenk listened to her, eyes closed, fingers pressed together to make a steeple. From time to time, he nodded slightly as she spoke.

  She ran through the proposed segment, hitting all the beats: the Miami incident, the JAA certification story, the Trans-Pacific flight, the jeopardized China sale. The former FAA expert who says the plane has a long history of uncorrected design problems. The aviation reporter who says the company is mismanaged, drugs and gang activity on the factory floor, a controversial new president, trying to boost flagging sales. Portrait of a once-proud company in trouble.

  The way to frame the piece, she said, was Rot Beneath the Surface. She laid it out: badly run company makes a shoddy product for years. Knowledgeable people complain, but the company never responds. FAA is in bed with the company and won't force the issue. Now, at last, the truth comes out. The Europeans balk at certification; the Chinese have cold feet; the plane continues to kill passengers, just as critics said it would. And there's tape, riveting tape, showing the agonies passengers went through as several died. At the close, it's obvious to all: the N-22 is a deathtrap.

  She finished. There was a long moment of silence. Then Shenk opened his eyes.

  "Not bad," he said.

  She smiled.

  "What's the company's response?" he asked, in a lazy voice.

  "Stonewall. The plane's safe; the critics are lying. "

  "Just what you'd expect," Shenk said, shaking his head. "American stuff is so shitty. " Dick drove a BMW; his tastes ran to Swiss watches, French wines, English shoes. "Everything this country makes is crap," he said. He slumped back in his chair, as if fatigued by the thought. Then his voice became lazy again, thoughtful: "But what can they offer as proof?"

  "Not much," Jennifer said. "The Miami and Transpacific incidents are still under investigation. "

  "Reports due when?"

  "Not for weeks. "

  "Ah. " He nodded slowly. "I like it. I like it very much. It's compelling journalism - and it beats the shit out of 60 Minutes. They did unsafe airplane parts last month. But we're talking about a whole unsafe aircraft! A deathtrap. Perfect! Scare the hell out of everybody. "

  "I think so, too," she said. She was smiling broadly now. He had bought it!

  "And I'd love to stick it to Hewitt," Dick said. Don Hewitt, the legendary producer of 60 Minutes, was Shenk's nemesis. Hewitt consistently got better press than Shenk, which rankled. 'Those jerkoffs," he said. "Remember when they did their hard-hitting segment on off-season golf pros?"

  She shook her head. "Actually, no . . . "

  "It was a while back," Dick said. He got fuzzy for a moment, staring into space, and it was clear to her that he had been drinking heavily at lunch. "Never mind. Okay, where are we? You got the FAA guy, you got the reporter, you got tape of Miami. The peg is the home video, we lead with that. "

  "Right," she said, nodding.

  "But CNN is going to run it day and night," he said. "By next week, it'll be ancient history. We have to go with this story Saturday. "

  "Right," she said.

  "You got twelve minutes," he said. He spun in his chair, looked at the colored strips on the wall, representing the segments in production, where the talent was going to be. "And you got uh, Marty. He's doing Bill Gates in Seattle on Thursday; we'll shuttle him to LA Friday. You'll have him six, seven hours. "

  "Okay. "

  He spun back. "Go do it. "

  "Okay," she said. "Thanks, Dick. "

  "You sure you can put it together in time?'

  She started collecting her notes. 'Trust me. "

  As she headed out through Marian's office, she heard him shout, "Just remember, Jennifer - don't come back with a parts story! I don't want a fucking parts story!"

  QA/NORTON

  2:21 P. M.

  Casey came into the QA office with Richman. Norma was back from lunch, lighting another cigarette. "Norma," she said, "have you seen a videotape around here? One of those little eight-millimeter things?"

  "Yeah," Norma said, "you left it on your desk the other night. I put it away. " She rummaged in her drawer, brought it out. She turned to Richman. "And you got two calls from Marder. He wants you to call him right away. "

  "Okay," Richman said. He walked down the hall to his office. When he was gone, Norma said, "You know, he talks to Marder a lot. I heard it from Eileen. "

  "Marder's getting in with the Norton relatives?"

  Norma was shaking her head. "He's already married Charley's only daughter, for Christ's sake. "

  "What're you saying?" Casey said. "Richman's reporting to Marder?"

  "About three times a day. "

  Casey frowned. "Why?"

  "Good question, honey. I think you're being set up. "

  "For what?"

  "I have no idea," Norma said.

  "Something about the China sale?"

  Norma shrugged. "I don't know. But Marder is the best corporate infighter in the history of the company. And he's good at covering his tracks. I'd be real careful around this kid. " She leaned across her desk, lowered her voice. "When I got back from lunch," she said, "nobody was around. The kid keeps his briefcase in his office. So I had a look. "

  "And?"

  "Richman's copying everything in sight. He's got a copy of every memo on your desk. And he's Xeroxed your phone logs. "

  "My phone logs? What's the point of that?"

  "I couldn't begin to imagine," Norma said. "But there's more. I also found his passport. He's been to Korea five times in the last two months. "

  "Korea?" Casey said.

  "That's right, honey. Seoul. Went almost every week. Short trips. One, two days only. Never more than that. "

  "But - "

  "There's more," Norma said. "The Koreans mark entry visas with a flight number. But the numbers on Richman's passport weren't commercial flight numbers. They were tail numbers. "

  "He went on a private jet?"

  "That's what it looks like. "

 
"A Norton jet?"

  Norma shook her head. "No. I talked to Alice in Flight Ops. None of the company jets has been to Korea in the last year. They've been shuttling back and forth from Beijing for months. But none to Korea. "

  Casey frowned.

  "There's more," Norma said. "I talked to the Fizer in Seoul. He's an old beau of mine. Remember when Marder had that dental emergency last month, and took three days off?"

  "Yeah. . . "

  "He and Richman were together in Seoul. Fizer heard about it after they'd gone, and was annoyed to be kept out of the loop. Wasn't invited to any of the meetings they attended. Took it as a personal insult. "

  "What meetings?" Casey said.

  "Nobody knows. " Norma looked at her. "But be careful around that kid. "

  She was in her office, going through the most recent pile of telexes, when Richman poked his head in. "What's next?" he said cheerfully.

  "Something's come up," Casey said. "I need you to go to the Flight Standards District Office. See Dan Greene over there, and get copies of the flight plan and the crew list for TPA 545. "

  "Don't we already have that?"

  "No, we just have the preliminaries. By now Dan will have the finals. I want them in time for the meeting tomorrow. The office is in El Segundo. "

  "El Segundo? That'll take me the rest of the day. "

  "I know, but it's important. "

  He hesitated. "I think I could be more help to you if I stayed here - "

  "Get going," she said. "And call me when you have them. "

  VIDEO IMAGING SYSTEMS

  4:30 P. M.

  The back room of Video Imaging Systems in Glendale was packed with row after row of humming computers, the squat purple-striped boxes of Silicon Graphics Indigo machines. Scott Harmon, his leg in a cast, hobbled over the cables that snaked across the floor.

  "Okay," he said, "we should have it up in a second. "

  He led Casey into one of the editing bays. It was a medium-size room with a comfortable couch along the back wall, beneath movie posters. The editing console wrapped around the other three walls of the room; three monitors, two oscilloscopes, and several keyboards. Scott began punching the keys. He waved her to a seat alongside him. I

  "What's the material?" he said.

  "Home video. "

  "Plain vanilla high eight?" He was looking at an oscilloscope as he spoke. "That's what it looks like. Dolby encoded. Standard stuff. "

  "I guess so. . . "

  "Okay. According to this, we got nine-forty on a sixty-minute cassette. "

  The screen flickered, and she saw mountain peaks shrouded in fog. The camera panned to a young American man in his early thirties, walking up a road, carrying a small baby on his shoulder. In the background was a village, beige roofs. Bamboo on both sides of the road.

  "Where's this?' Harmon said.

  Casey shrugged. "Looks like China. Can you fast-forward?"

  "Sure. "

  The images flicked quickly past, streaked with static. Casey glimpsed a small house, the front door open; a kitchen, black pots and pans; an open suitcase on a bed; a train station, a woman climbing on the train; busy traffic in what looked like Hong Kong; an airport lounge at night, the young man holding the baby on his knees, the baby crying, writhing. Then a gate, tickets being taken by a flight attendant -

  "Stop," she said.

  He punched buttons, ran at normal speed. "This what you want?"

  "Yes. "

  She watched as the woman, holding the baby, walked down the ramp to the aircraft. Then there was a cut, and the image showed the baby in the woman's lap. The camera panned up and showed the woman, giving a theatrical yawn. They were on the aircraft, during the flight; the cabin was lit by night lights; windows in the background were black. The steady whine of the jet engines.

  "No kidding," Casey said. She recognized the woman she had interviewed in the hospital. What was her name? She had it in her notes.

  Beside her at the console, Harmon shifted his leg, grunted. "That'll teach me," he said.

  "What's that?"

  "Not to ski black-diamond runs in chowder. "

  Casey nodded, kept her eyes on the video monitor. The camera panned back to the sleeping baby again, then blurred, before turning black. Harmon said, "Guy couldn't turn off the camera. "

  The next image showed glaring daylight. The baby was sitting up, smiling. A hand came into the frame, wiggling to get the baby's attention. The man's voice said, "Sarah . . . Sar-ah . . . Smile for Daddy. Smi-le. . . "

  The baby smiled and made a gurgling sound

  "Cute kid," Harmon said.

  On the monitor, the man's voice said, "How does it feel to be going to America, Sarah? Ready to see where your parents are from?"

  The baby gurgled and waved her hands in the air, reaching for the camera.

  The woman said something about everybody looking weird, and the lens panned up to her. The man said, "And what about you, Mom? Are you glad to be going home?"

  "Oh, Tim," she said, turning her head away. "Please. "

  "Come on, Em. What are you thinking?"

  The woman said, "Well, what I really want - what I have dreamed about for months - is a cheeseburger. "

  "With Xu-xiang hot bean sauce?"

  "God no. A cheeseburger," she said, "with onions and tomatoes and lettuce and pickles and mayonnaise. "

  Now the camera panned back down to the kid, who was tugging her foot into her mouth, slobbering over her toes.

  'Taste good?" the man said, laughing. "Is that breakfast for you, Sarah? Not waiting for the stewardess on this flight?"

  Abruptly, the wife jerked her head around, looking past the camera. "What was that?" she said in a worried tone.

  'Take it easy, Em," the man answered, still laughing.

  Casey said, "Stop the tape. "

  Harmon hit a key. The image froze on the wife's anxious expression.

  "Run it back five seconds," Casey said.

  The white frame counter appeared at the bottom of the screen. The tape ran backward, streaking jags again.

  "Okay," Casey said. "Now turn the sound up. "

  The baby sucked its toes, the slobbering so loud, it almost sounded like a waterfall. The hum inside the cabin became a steady roar. 'Taste good?" the man said, laughing very loudly, his voice distorted. "Is that breakfast for you, Sarah? Not waiting for the stewardess on this flight?"

  Casey tried to listen between the man's sentences. To hear the sounds of the cabin, the soft murmur of other voices, rustle of fabric moving, the intermittent clink of knives and forks from the forward galley. . .

  And now something else.

  Another sound?

  The wife's head jerked around. "What was that?"

  "Damn," Casey said.

  She couldn't be sure. The roar of ambient cabin sound drowned out anything else. She leaned forward, straining to hear.

  The man's voice broke in, his laugh booming: 'Take it easy, Em. "

  The baby giggled again, a sharp earsplitting noise.

  Casey was shaking her head in frustration. Was there a low-pitched rumble or not? Perhaps they should go back, and try to hear it again. She said, "Can you put this through an audio filter?'

  The husband said, "We're almost home, honey. "

  "Oh my God," Harmon said, staring at the tape.

  On the monitor, everything seemed to be crazy angles. The baby slid forward on the mother's lap; she grabbed at the kid, clutched it to her chest. The camera was shaking and twisting. Passengers in the background were yelling, grabbing the armrests, as the plane went into a steep descent.

  Then the camera twisted again, and everybody seemed to sink in the seats, the mother slumping down under the G-force, her cheeks sagging, shoulders falling, baby crying. Then the man shouted, "What the hell?" and the wife rose into the air, restrained only by th
e seat belt.

  Then the camera flew up in the air, and there was an abrupt, crunching sound, after which the image began to spiral rapidly. When the image became steady again, it showed something white, with lines. Before she could register what it was, the camera moved and she saw an armrest from below, fingers gripping the pad. The camera had fallen in the aisle and was shooting straight up. The screams continued.

  "My God," Harmon said again.

  The video image began to slide, gaining speed, moving past seat after seat. But it was going aft, she realized: the plane must be climbing again. Before she could get her bearings, the camera lifted into the air.

  Weightless, she thought. The plane must have reached the end of the climb, and now it was nosing over again, for a moment of weightlessness before -

  The image crashed down, twisting and tumbling rapidly. There was a thunkl and she glimpsed a blurred gaping mouth, teeth. Then it was moving again, and apparently landed on a seat. A large shoe swung toward the lens, kicked it.

  The image spun rapidly, settled again. It was back in the aisle, facing the rear of the plane. The briefly steady image was horrifying: arms and legs stuck out into the aisle from the rows of seats. People were screaming, clutching anything they could. The camera immediately began to slide again, this time forward.

  The plane was in a dive.

  The camera slid faster and faster, banging into a midships bulkhead, spinning so it was now facing forward. It raced : toward a body lying in the aisle. An elderly Chinese woman looked up in time for the camera to strike her in the forehead, and then the camera flew into the air, tumbling crazily, and came down again.

  There was a close view of something shiny, like a belt buckle, and then it was sliding forward once more, into the forward compartment, still going, banging into a woman's shoe in the aisle, twisting, racing forward.

  It went into the forward galley, where it lodged for a moment. A wine bottle rolled across the floor, banged into it, and the camera spun several times, then began to fall end over end, the image flipping as the camera went all the way past the forward galley to the cockpit.

  The cockpit door was open; she had a brief glimpse of sky through the flight deck windows, blue shoulders and a cap, and then with a crash the camera came to rest, giving a steady view of a uniform gray field. After a moment, she realized the camera had at this point lodged beneath the cockpit door, right where Casey had found it, and it was taping the carpet There was nothing more to see, just the gray blur of carpet, but she could hear the alarms in the cockpit, the electronic warnings, and the voice reminders coming one after another, "Airspeed . . . Airspeed," and "Stall . . . Stall. " More electronic warnings, excited voices shouting in Chinese.

  "Stop the tape," she said.

  Harmon stopped it.

  "Jesus Christ," he said.

  She ran through the tape once more, and then did it in slow motion. But even in slow motion, she realized, much of the movement was an indistinguishable blur. She kept saying, "I can't see, I can't see what's happening. "

  Harmon, who had by now become accustomed to the sequence, said, "I can do an enhanced frame analysis for you. "

  "What's that?'

  "I can use the computers to go in and interpolate frames where the movement is too fast. "

  "Interpolate?"

  "The computer looks at the first frame, and the frame following, and generates an intermediate frame between the two. It's a point-mapping decision, basically. But it will slow down - "

  "No," she said. "I don't want anything added by the computers. What else can you do?"

  "I can double or triple the frames. In fast segments, it would give you a little jerkiness, but at least you'd be able to see. Here, look. " He went to one segment, where the camera was tumbling through the air, then slowed it down. "Now here, all these frames are just a blur - it's camera movement, not subject movement - but here. See this one frame here? You get a readable image. "

  It showed a view looking back down the aircraft. Passengers falling over the seats, their arms and legs streaks from swift movement.

  "So that's a usable frame," Harmon said. She saw what he was driving at. Even in rapid movement the camera was steady enough to create a useful image, every dozen frames or so.

  "Okay," she said, "do it. "

  "We can do more," he said. "We can send it out, and - "

  She shook her head. "Under no circumstances does this tape leave this building," she said.

  "Okay. "

  "I need you to run me two copies of this videotape," she said. "And make sure you run it all the way to the end. "

  IAA/HANGAR 4

  5:25 P. M.

  The RAMS team was still swarming over the Transpacific aircraft in Hangar 5. Casey walked past to the next hangar in the line, and went inside. There, working in near silence in the cavernous space, Mary Ringer's team was doing Interior Artifact Analysis.

  Across the concrete floor, strips of orange tape nearly three hundred feet long marked the interior walls of the Transpacific N-22. Crosswise strips indicated the principal bulkheads; parallel strips were placed for each row of seats. Here and there, white flags stood in wooden blocks, indicating various critical points.

  Six feet overhead, still more strips had been pulled taut, demarcating the ceiling and upper luggage compartments of the aircraft. The total effect was a ghostly orange outline of the dimensions of the passenger cabin.

  Within this outline, five women, all psychologists and engineers, moved carefully and quietly. The women were placing articles of clothing, carry-on bags, cameras, children's toys, and other personal objects on the floor. In some cases, thin blue tape ran from the object to some other location, indicating how the object had moved during the accident.

  All around them on the hangar walls hung large, blowup photographs of the interior, taken on Monday. The IAA team worked in near silence, thoughtfully, referring to the photos and notes.

  Interior Artifact Analysis was rarely done. It was a desperation effort, seldom yielding useful information. In the case of TPA 545, Ringer's team had been brought in from the start, because the large number of injuries carried with it the threat of litigation. Passengers literally would not know what happened to them; assertions were often wild. IAA attempted to make sense of the movement of people and objects within the cabin. But it was a slow and difficult undertaking.

  She saw Mary Ringer, a heavyset, gray-haired woman of fifty, near the aft section of the plane. "Mary," she said. "Where are we on cameras?"

  "I figured you'd want to know. " Mary consulted her notes. "We found nineteen cameras. Thirteen still and six video. Of the thirteen still cameras, five were broken, the film exposed. Two others had no film. The remaining six were developed, and three had shots, all taken before the incident. But we're using the pictures to try and place passengers, because Transpacific still hasn't provided a seating chart. "

  "And videos?"

  "Uh, let's see . . . " She consulted her notes, sighing again. "Six video cameras, two with footage on board the aircraft, none during the incident. I heard about the video on television. I don't know where that came from. Passenger must have carried it off at LAX. "

  "Probably. "

  "What about the flight data recorder? We really need it to - "

  "You and everybody else," Casey said. "I'm working on it. " She glanced around the aft compartment, laid out by tape. She saw the pilot's cap lying on the concrete, in the corner. "Wasn't there a name in that cap?"

  "Yeah, on the inside," Mary said. "It's Zen Ching, or something like that. We got the label translated. "

  "Who translated it?"

  "Eileen Han, in Marder's office. She reads and writes Mandarin, helps us out. Why?"

  "I just had a question. Not important. " Casey headed for the door.

>   "Casey," Mary said. "We need that flight recorder. " "I know," Casey said. "I know. "

  She called Norma. "Who can translate Chinese for me?"

  "You mean, besides Eileen?"

  "Right. Besides her. " She felt she should keep this away from Marder's office.

  "Let me see," Norma said. "How about Ellen Fong, in Accounting? She used to work for the FAA, as a translator. "

  "Isn't her husband in Structure with Doherty?"

  "Yeah, but Ellen's discreet. "

  "You sure?"

  "I know," Norma said, in a certain tone.

  BLDG 1O2/ACCOUNTING

  5:50 P. M.

  She went to the accounting department, in the basement of Building 102, arriving just before six. She found Ellen Fong getting ready to go home.

  "Ellen," she said, "I need a favor. "

  "Sure. " Ellen was a perpetually cheerful woman of forty, a mother of three.

  "Didn't you used to work for the FAA as a translator?"

  "A long time ago," Ellen said.

  "I need something translated. "

  "Casey, you can get a much better translator - "

  "I'd rather you do it," she said. "This is confidential. "

  She handed Ellen the tape. "I need the voices in the last nine minutes. "