Airframe (13 page)

Ron Smith and the electrical team were standing on a raised platform beneath the midships belly. Higher up, she saw Van Trung through the cockpit windows, his crew testing the avionics.

And Doherty was out on the wing, leading the structure team. His group had used a crane to remove an eight-foot aluminum section, one of the inboard slats.

"Big bones," Casey said to Richman. "They inspect the biggest components first."

"It looks like they're tearing it apart," Richman said.

A voice behind them. "It's called destroying the evidence!"

Casey turned. Ted Rawley, one of the flight test pilots, sauntered up. He was wearing cowboy boots, a western shirt, dark sunglasses. Like most of the test pilots, Teddy cultivated an air of dangerous glamour.

"This is our chief test pilot," Casey said. 'Teddy Rawley. They call him Rack 'em Rawley."

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"Hey," Teddy protested. "I haven't drilled a hole yet. Anyway, it's better than Casey and the Seven Dwarfs."

"Is that what they call her?" Richman said, suddenly interested.

"Yeah. Casey and her dwarfs." Rawley gestured vaguely to the engineers. "The little fellas.

Heigh-ho, heigh-ho." He turned away from the plane, punched Casey on the shoulder. "So: How you doing, kid? I called you the other day."

"I know," she said. "I've been busy."

"I'll bet you have," Teddy said. "I bet Marder's got the screws on everybody. So: What've the engineers found? Wait a minute, let me guess—they found absolutely nothing, right? Their beautiful plane is perfect. So: Must be pilot error, am I right?"

Casey said nothing. Richman looked uncomfortable.

"Hey," Teddy said. "Don't be shy. I've heard it all before. Let's face it, the engineers are all card-carrying members of the Screw the Pilots Club. That's why they design planes to be practically automatic. They just hate the idea that somebody might actually fly them. It's so untidy, to have a warm body in the seat. Makes 'em crazy. And of course, if anything bad happens, it must be the pilot. Gotta be the pilot. Am I right?"

"Come on, Teddy," she said. "You know the statistics. The overwhelming majority of accidents are caused by—"

It was at that point that Doug Doherty, crouched on the wing above them, leaned over and said dolefully, "Casey, bad news. You'll want to see this."

"What is it?"

"I'm pretty sure I know what went wrong on Flight 545."

She climbed the scaffolding and walked out on the wing. Doherty was crouched over the leading edge. The slats were now removed, exposing the innards of the wing structure.

She got down on her hands and knees next to him, and looked.

The space for the slats was marked by a series of drive tracks—little rails, spaced three feet apart, that the slats slid out on, driven by hydraulic pistons. At the forward end of the rail was a rocker pin, which allowed the slats to tilt downward. At the back of the compartment she saw the folding pistons which drove the slats along the tracks. With the slats removed, the pistons were just metal arms poking out into space. As always, whenever she saw the innards of an aircraft, she had a sense of enormous complexity.

"What is it?" she said.

"Here," Doug said.

He bent over one of the protruding arms, pointing to a tiny metal flange at the back, curved into a hook. The part was not much larger than her thumb.

"Yes?"

Doherty reached down, pushed the flange back with his hand. It flicked forward again. "That's 70

the locking pin for the slats," he said. "It's spring-loaded, actuated by a solenoid back inside.

When the slats retract, the pin snaps over, holds them in place."

"Yes?"

"Look at it," he said, shaking his head. "It's bent"

She frowned. If it was bent, she couldn't see it. It looked straight to her eye. "Doug..."

"No. Look." He set a metal ruler against the pin, showing her that the metal was bent a few millimeters to the left. "And that's not all," he said. "Look at the action surface of the hinge. It's been worn. See it?"

He handed her a magnifying glass. Thirty feet above the ground, she leaned over the leading edge and peered at the part. There was wear, all right. She saw a ragged surface on the locking hook. But you would expect a certain amount of wear, where the metal of the latch engaged the slats. "Doug, do you really think this is significant?"

"Oh yes," he said, in a funereal tone. "You got maybe two, three millimeters of wear here."

"How many pins hold the slat?"

"Just one," he said.

"And if this one is bad?"

"The slats could pop loose in flight. They wouldn't necessarily fully extend. They wouldn't have to. Remember, these are low-speed control surfaces. At cruise speed the effect magnifies: a slight extension would change the aerodynamics."

Casey frowned, squinting at the little part through the magnifying glass. "But why would the lock suddenly open, two-thirds of the way through the flight?"

He was shaking his head. "Look at the other pins," Doherty said, pointing down the wing.

"There's no wear on the action surface."

"Maybe the others were changed out, and this one wasn't?"

"No," he said. "I think the others are original. This one was changed. Look at the next pin down. See the parts stamp at the base?'

She saw a tiny embossed figure, an H in a triangle, with a sequence of numbers. All parts manufacturers stamped their parts with these symbols. "Yeah ..."

"Now look at this pin. See the difference? On this part, the triangle is upside down. This is a counterfeit part, Casey."

For aircraft manufacturers, counterfeiting was the single biggest problem they faced as they approached the twenty-first century. Media attention focused mostly on counterfeit consumer items, like watches, CDs, and computer software. But there was a booming business in all sorts of manufactured items, including auto parts and airplane parts. Here the problem of counterfeiting took a new and ominous turn. Unlike a phony Cartier watch, a phony airplane part could kill you.

"Okay," she said. "I'll check the maintenance records, find out where it came from."

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The FAA required commercial carriers to keep extraordinarily detailed maintenance records.

Every time a part was changed out, it was noted in a maintenance log. In addition, the manufacturers, though not required to, maintained an exhaustive ship's record of every part originally on the plane, and who had manufactured it. All this paperwork meant that every one of the aircraft's one million parts could be traced back to its origin. If a part was swapped out from one plane to another, that was known. If a part was taken off and repaired, that was known.

Each part on a plane had a history of its own. Given enough time, they could find out exactly where this part had come from, who had installed it, and when.

She pointed to the locking pin in the wing. "Have you photographed it?"

"Oh sure. We're fully documented."

"Then pull it," she said. "I'll take it to Metals. By the way, could this situation give you a slats disagree warning?"

Doherty gave a rare smile. "Yes, it could. And my guess is, it did. You got a nonstandard part, Casey, and it failed the aircraft."

Coming off the wing, Richman was chattering excitedly. "So, is that it? It's a bad part? Is that what happened? It's solved?" He was getting on her nerves. "One thing at a time," she said.

"We have to check."

"Check? What do we have to check? Check how?"

"First of all, we have to find out where that part came from," she said. "Go back to the office.

Tell Norma to make sure the maintenance records are coming from LAX. And have her telex the Fizer in Hong Kong to ask for the carrier's records. Tell him the FAA requested them and we want to look at them first."

"Okay," Richman said.

He headed off toward the open doors of Hangar 5, out into the sunlight. He walked with a sort of swagger, as if he were a person of importance, in possession of valuable information.

But Casey wasn't sure that they knew anything at all.

At least, not yet.

OUTSIDE HANGAR 5

10:00 A.M.

She came out of the hangar, blinking in the morning sun. She saw Don Brull getting out of his car, over by Building 121. She headed toward him.

"Hello, Casey," he said, as he slammed the door. "I was wondering when you'd get back to me."

"I talked to Marder," she said. "He swears the wing isn't being offset to China."

Brull nodded. "He called me last night. Said the same thing." He didn't sound happy.

"Marder insists it's just a rumor."

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"He's lying," Brull said. "He's doing it."

"No way," Casey said. "It doesn't make sense."

"Look," Brull said. "It doesn't matter to me, personally. They close this plant in ten years, I'll be retired. But that'll be about the time your kid starts college. You'll be looking at those big tuition payments, and you won't have a job. You thought about that?"

"Don," she said "You said it yourself, it doesn't make sense to offset the wing. It'd be pretty reckless to—"

"Marder's reckless." He squinted at her in the sunlight "You know that. You know what he's capable of."

"Don—"

"Look," Brull said. "I know what I'm talking about. Those tools aren't being shipped to Atlanta, Casey. They're going to San Pedro—to the port. And down in San Pedro, they're building special marine containers for shipment."

So that was how the union was putting it together, she thought. "Those are oversize tools, Don," she said. "We can't ship them by road or rail. Big tools always go by boat. They're building containers so they can send them through the Panama Canal. That's the only way to get them to Atlanta."

Brull was shaking his head. "I've seen the bills of lading. They don't say Atlanta. They say Seoul, Korea."

"Korea?" she said, frowning.

"That's right."

"Don, that really doesn't make sense—"

"Yes, it does. Because it's a cover," Brull said. "They'll send them to Korea, then transship from Korea to Shanghai."

"You have copies of the bills?" she said.

"Not with me."

"I'd like to see them," she said.

Brull sighed. "I can do that, Casey. I can get them for you. But you're putting me in a very difficult situation here. The guys aren't going to let this sale happen. Marder tells me to calm 'em down—but what can I do? I run the local, not the plant."

"What do you mean?"

"It's out of my hands," he said.

"Don—"

"I always liked you, Casey," he said. "But you hang around here, I can't help you."

And he walked away.

OUTSIDE HANGAR 5

73

10:04 A.M.

The morning sun was shining; the plant around her was cheerfully busy, mechanics riding their bicycles from one building to another. There was no sense of threat, or danger. But Casey knew what Brull had meant: she was now in no-man's land. Anxious, she pulled out her cell phone to call Marder when she saw the heavyset figure of Jack Rogers coming toward her.

Jack covered aerospace for the Telegraph-Star, an Orange County paper. In his late fifties, he was a good, solid reporter, a reminder of an earlier generation of print journalists who knew as much about their beat as the people they interviewed. He gave her a casual wave.

"Hi, Jack," she said. "What's up?'

"I came over," he said, "about that wing tool accident this morning in 64. The one the crane dropped."

'Tough break," she said.

'They had another accident with the AJs this morning. Tool was loaded onto the flatbed truck, but the driver took a turn too fast over by Building 94. Tool slid off onto the ground. Big mess."

"Uh-huh," Casey said.

"This is obviously a job action," Rogers said. "My sources tell me the union's opposed to the China sale."

"I've heard that," she said, nodding.

"Because the wing's going to be offset to Shanghai as part of the sales agreement?"

"Come on, Jack," she said. "That's ridiculous."

"You know that for a fact?"

She took a step back from him. "Jack," she said. "You know I can't discuss the sale. No one can, until the ink's dry."

"Okay," Rogers said. He took out his notepad. "It does seem like a pretty crazy rumor. No company's ever offset the wing. It'd be suicide."

"Exactly," she said. In the end, she kept coming back to that same question. Why would Edgarton offset the wing? Why would any company offset the wing? It just made no sense.

Rogers glanced up from his pad. "I wonder why the union thinks the wing's being sent offshore?"

She shrugged. "You'll have to ask them." He had sources in the union. Certainly Brail.

Probably others as well.

"I hear they've got documents that prove it."

Casey said, "They show them to you?"

Rogers shook his head. "No."

"I can't imagine why not, if they have them."

Rogers smiled. He made another note. "Shame about the rotor burst in Miami."

"All I know is what I saw on television."

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"You think it will affect the public perception of the N-22?" He had his pen out, ready to take down what she said.

"I don't see why. The problem was powerplant, not air-frame. My guess is, they're going to find it was a bad compressor disk that burst."

"I wouldn't doubt it," he said. "I was talking to Don Peterson over at the FAA. He told me that incident at SFO was a sixth-stage compressor disk that blew. The disk had brittle nitrogen pockets."