Breaking Point (19 page)

Lakshmi Jain still frowned. “Is that likely?”

Reuben shrugged. “More common than you'd think. Last twenty years, something like—what, Beth? Fifteen percent of domestic crashes are controlled flight into terrain?”

“About that: fifteen, sixteen percent.”

Teresa Santiago jumped in. “In this case, likely a binary glitch. Altimeter was wrong, and they lost radio contact with the tower. I mean, we have a long way to go, to be sure. But I'm betting the flight data recorder backs up that diagnosis. I wish Gene were here.”

He was the only pilot among the Go-Team leaders.

Reuben shrugged. “Sounds like a slam dunk. Sure didn't sound like pilot error. The big mystery is going to be the altimeter and the radio. Separate glitches? Or symptoms of another gremlin we haven't discovered yet?”

Peter Kim looked pleased with himself. “Jack, Reuben? Getting as much of the avionics out as you did today is going to be invaluable. Thank you both. Nice job.”

Teresa stood and moved to the door. Others rose, too. “My FDR will fill in the gaps. Five dollars says we'll be sleeping back in our own beds inside of a week.”

Reuben said, “Your lips to God's ear.”

They were all near the door now, realizing that most of the mystery of Flight 78 had been solved in less than twenty-four hours.

Peter thought—but didn't say—that this would get everyone at the NTSB to stop gabbing about the damn Oregon crash.
Thank God.

18

P
ETER KIM CALLED HOME
but it went right to voice mail. He left a message saying his team was performing very well and he hoped to be home sooner than anyone anticipated.

He decided a quick drink was in order because the day had gone so well. He checked his diver's watch: closing in on 10:00
P.M.

He had spotted a quaint-looking bar down the street from the hotel. A one-story brick-facade affair that looked like something out of the 1950s, right down to the flickering neon sign.

The saloon itself was dark and neat, with a red leather bar and black-and-white photos of San Francisco cityscapes on the walls. Sinatra played softly. Only a few of the round tables were taken. Two of eight stools at the bar were in use. Peter selected a third.

“What do you have in the way of single-malt Irish whiskeys?”

The bartender pointed to a bottle of Bushmills.

“That'll do.”

“Peter?”

He glanced to his left. Jack Goodspeed sat at the bar, a beer in front of him. Peter thinking,
Oh, great.

Predictably, Jack stood and scooted over to an adjacent stool. He'd changed into jeans and sneakers and a Utah Jazz sweatshirt, sleeves pushed up his muscled forearms. Peter's glass arrived and Jack held his stein up in toast. Peter decided to gulp his whiskey and escape quickly.

“To a good first day,” Jack said. “Quick, clean, by the book.”

That, actually, was a toast Peter could get behind. They touched glasses and sipped.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Peter said, “Shoot.”

“So what's up with everyone's reverence for last year's Oregon crash?”

Peter was surprised. “What do you mean?”

“No offense, here. You guys, that Go-Team. Remarkable work. You saved thousands of lives. I'm just saying: from an outsider's perspective, it appears that absolutely nothing went according to protocol.”

Peter decided not to gulp the Bushmills after all. “Honestly? It's worse than you know. We soft-sold some of that absolute clusterfuck to give Del Wildman the political cover to not fire Tomzak and Isaiah Grey.”

“No kidding? Hell.”

Peter was thinking maybe he'd underestimated the affable Jack Goodspeed.

“Laws were broken, protocol was broken. It was pure dumb luck that solved the crash. But trying telling that to Wildman.”

“Why'd they put a pathologist in charge of the team? That'd be like—and again, no offense—Dr. Jain running our investigation. Thanks. I'll pass on that.”

“That was Susan Tanaka's stupid idea. Do you know her?'

Jack said, “A little. We haven't caught a crash together.”

“She was with Tomzak at the Kentucky crash, three years ago.”

“The unsolved crash. I remember.”

“Right. She was using Oregon as … I don't know. Therapy for Tomzak's bruised ego over not solving Kentucky.”

“Well.” Jack raised his beer. “Here's to the book. And going by it.”

“To the book.”

Peter ordered another.

*   *   *

Gene Whitney sent a text message to Beth Mancini that read, “
all looks normal in d.c. see you
A.M.
tomorrow.
”

He sent it from two miles away at a bar—a different bar from the one with the fistfight because, on the ground, what? a day, day and a half, and he'd already been kicked out of one local watering hole. City wasn't that big. And he might be around for a while. Best to slow that shit down.

Gene caught the eye of the cute-as-pie waitress with the spiky hair and full-sleeve tattoos and said, “Hit me.”

ANNAPOLIS

At 8:00
A.M.
eastern, Saturday, Renee, Antal, and Terri met in the little conference room of the company headquarters. Two full walls were covered in wipe board, with trays of dry-erase markers everywhere. Engineers were encouraged to toss up notions, quotes, mathematical formulas, whatever. The quote nearest the light switch today read: “Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. And inside a dog, it's too dark to read—Groucho Marx.”

Renee sat on the conference table, her feet in a chair, elbows on her knees, spine curved, hunched in. She hadn't slept and it was obvious. Her voice was thick, as though she had a cold. “There's a plane, going to Helena. Helena, Montana, where … Anyway. I can go.”

Antal took a sip of fizzy water. “Do you want us to go with you?”

“No. I'll represent us.”

Terri reached out and they grasped hands for a moment.

Renee wiped her cheeks. She held a wadded Kleenex in her fist like it was a life raft. She smiled a brittle smile at Terri, thinking,
Were you fucking Andrew? He said you weren't. I think you were.
She said, “The company…”

Terri said, “The company's fine. There's nothing we need to do today, tomorrow, that can't wait. We'll come with—”

“We're maintaining our contract with Halcyon.”

Terri and Antal exchanged looks. The natty Hungarian engineer cleared his throat. “Ah. Okay. That's a talk for later. We should come with you. To heck with the airline's plane. We'll charter a jet. I'll foot the bill. Let's go to Montana, go get our people.”

Renee let a little laugh escape. She smiled at the intense man with wispy blond hair, whom she'd known for fifteen years. Eight in the morning on a Saturday and Antal Borsa's idea of
dressing down
was to put a cashmere turtleneck under his double-breasted suit coat.

Renee had thrown on a burgundy sweater, jeans, JP Todd moccasins. She had pulled her hair back into a ponytail. She'd aged twenty years since yesterday. “I am serious about Halcyon/Detweiler,” she said. “Andrew was wrong. I've already informed them. You stay here. You have work to do.”

She climbed off the table, wiped her nose with the wadded cloth, walked to the door.

Terri said, “Renee? Andrew didn't want—”

“Yes. I know.”

She walked out.

HELENA

Friday morning, Ray Calabrese drove his rental to Big Sky Community Hospital to find Tommy and Kiki.

He located them in Tommy's room. Tommy was in bed wearing hospital PJs and propped up by pillows. Kiki wore powder-blue operating-room scrubs and slippers someone on the staff had dug up for her. These were obviously from the neonatal or pediatrics unit and were adorned with cute patches of teddy bears and giraffes. A metal cane rested against the bed stand.

Kiki's face lit up. “Ray?” She hopped up, weight on her good leg, to take the proffered hug. A half second into it she said, “Broken rib! Broken rib!”

“Damn! Sorry!”

She laughed, and winced when even that hurt.

Tommy looked pale and gaunt, unshaved, with purple bags under his eyes and a large, square bandage adhered to his skull over his right ear. Ray put out a hand to shake.

Tommy said, “How you doing, New York?”

They shook hands. “Docs tell me that thick skull of yours finally paid off.” He gripped Kiki's hand in his left and said, “Hey. Isaiah. I am just so damn sorry.”

Kiki hugged him again, then perched on the side of Tommy's bed. “Thank you. I haven't processed it yet. I keep wanting to ask him what to do.”

Tommy sipped water through a straw. “Is there a proper Go-Team on site?” His voice was as rough as sandpaper.

“Yeah. I met the team. Ah, Peter Kim is IIC.”

The two crashers exchanged glances. Tommy drawled, “Well, shit,” but then shook his head. “No. Petey's smart. Smart and determined. He's a dick, but that's okay. He'll do good.”

Ray produced his ubiquitous notebook and went through the names of the Go-Team members. Some Tommy had worked with. Some Kiki had. For some, neither. There wasn't a bad review for any of them.

Kiki said, “Sounds like Peter has a good team. I can't vouch for Beth Mancini. She's pretty new. But Susan says she has potential.”

The hospital-room telephone rang. Kiki leaned over to grab it. “Hello?…
Susan!
” To the boys she said, “It's Susan Tanaka!” Then into the phone: “My God!… Thank you … I know, us, too. Hang on: here's Tommy.”

She handed him the receiver. She saw her boyfriend paste a smile onto his face, knowing that Susan would be able to tell otherwise. “Hey.”

Ray made an I-should-go gesture. Kiki stood, retrieved her metal cane. “Walk you out.”

Tommy lay down as they exited, the phone to his ear.

In the corridor, Kiki said, “Can you pull some strings here? I want to hear the CVR.”

Ray said, “Sure. But you're in a lot of pain.”

She winced. “Yeah. I'm laying off the painkillers. I want to be sharp. I want to help.”

“Their cockpit-voice-recorder guy, Hector Villareal? He seems pretty competent.”

She placed her long-fingered, pianist's hand, palm forward, on Ray's chest. “I know. I want to help.”

They hugged again, only very softly this time. “I'm on it.”

“Thanks.” As they separated, Kiki said, “Hey—how's Daria?”

Ray's eyes traveled around the hospital corridor, his brain mulling his options. “She's … busy.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.” She straightened Ray's tie.

He gave her a rueful, crooked grin that was robbed of any humor. “Half a year ago, ATF was working with her in L.A., breaking about a dozen law-enforcement-entrapment rules. I blew the whistle. Federal judge threw out a few convictions. Top ATF people took early retirement. I'm not on ATF's Christmas card list and I … Daria is in Mexico. Doing God knows what.”

Kiki let the moment linger. “Well, I'm sorry.”

He winked. “Hey, let me do what I can on the cockpit recording. Stay off that leg.”

*   *   *

In her hotel room, Beth Mancini began filling out a preliminary report on the first day of the investigation. She sat cross-legged on her bed with a can of Diet Coke on the bedside table, her MP3 player locked on Ani DiFranco.

She entered her ten-digit alphanumerical NTSB identification and the date of the crash. Under “Most Critical Injury” she typed: “Fatal.”

She added the nearest city/place, Twin Pines, along with the state, zip code, and local time of the accident.

Under “Aircraft Information” she typed the registration number, followed by “Claremont VLE,” plus the model serial numbers.

Under “Injury Summary,” she typed “18 dead; 8 survivors.”

Under “Narrative,” she typed: “On August 4, about 2315 mountain standard time, a Polestar Airlines Claremont VLE, d.b.a. Polestar Flight 78, crashed during its descent to runway 5-23 of Helena Regional Airport (HLN). The crash site was approximately 7 nautical miles west of the airport. Four flight crew and 24 passengers were fatally injured and the aircraft was destroyed by impact forces. There were 8 surviving passengers and no ground fatalities. Night visual meteorological conditions prevailed at the time of the accident. The flight was a Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 121 scheduled passenger flight from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) to HLN. Updated on Saturday, August 6.

*   *   *

Beth saved her work, made a pdf of it, and immediately e-mailed a copy to the NTSB mainframe, to Delevan Wildman in Washington, to Peter Kim in Helena, and to her own MobileMe Web-cloud account.

ANNAPOLIS

Renee Malatesta called the airport shuttle service and asked for a ride to Reagan National. She dragged out her matching russet-red suitcase and carry-on satchel. She packed underthings. Three unopened packages of tights, her riding boots, khaki boot-cut trousers, three tops, and a warm jacket. She hadn't checked the weather in Montana, so she walked to the entryway closet and grabbed a small, retractable umbrella. She returned to the bedroom and gave a little shriek.

The nickel-plated Colt .25 sat atop the pile of clothes in her suitcase.

Renee turned to the closet. The step stool sat there; not in the kitchen, where it lived.

Renee's knees buckled and she eased herself onto the bed. She let her fingertips touch the iron, making sure it was real. It wasn't as cold this time—her own hand must have warmed it up, retrieving it. She had no memory of having done so.

Renee sat and stared at the gun, as her eyes brimmed with tears, spilling out, running down her cheeks, the underside of her chin, pooling in her clavicle.