Final Approach (30 page)

Kell sighed, trying not to change expressions. “Well, I'd better get going.” He stood up and shook Joe's hand.

“Senator, I hope this works out for you. I'm sorry I can't do any more.”

“You've been very kind, Joe. More so than I would have expected.”

He turned toward the door, a high-pitched roar of decisional crisis in his ears, the truth of what the C-5 had been loading as the Airbus made its final turn Friday night filling his mind, the realization that much of it was classified national defense information bubbling up as a justification for saying nothing. Kell fumbled with the doorknob and made an uncoordinated departure, passing John Phelps, another NTSB investigator, who suddenly appeared in Joe's doorway.

“Joe. I need your copy of the Aging Aircraft Task Force Report issued a few years back by the Air Transport Association.” Joe focused on Phelps as his mind changed gears, recalling the report and the FAA involvement during a frantic period when fatigue-related accidents in the airline industry revealed a major flaw no one had considered: the inspection procedures relied on to keep older airliners safe were largely inadequate.

“Say, wasn't that Senator Martinson?”

“Yes it was. You need the file of airworthiness directives too, John?”

“All of it, please. What was he doing here?”

For a moment Joe thought of telling John about finding the driver of the mystery car, then rejected the idea. Not that Phelps wasn't reliable. He just didn't have an immediate need to know a bit of inflammatory information that could cost a senator his seat.

“Just getting some information on the Kansas City crash, John. It affected some friends of his.”

“That brings me to my next question, Joe. How was it in Kansas City? The crash involve anything in my expertise?”

When the NTSB had needed an aeronautical structures expert in 1985, Phelps had been the man, coming on board just as the average age of airliners began to climb to worrisome levels. Joe filled him in on the North America investigation as he fumbled around on the cluttered top shelf of one of the bookcases, drawing down a cardboard magazine file and looseleaf notebook. “What are you working on?”

John Phelps cocked his head and looked at Joe, then glanced at the door as he pulled up a chair.

“I was going to ask if you had a minute, but since you put it that way.”

“For you, John, always.”

“Remember last week when the Miami Air 737 had a rapid decompression south of the Keys, over water, and found he'd lost a one-by-two foot piece of skin just about over the wing?”

“Yeah. No one hurt as I recall.”

“That's right. The Miami field office asked us to send the Go Team, but Dean Farris decided not to because it was just cargo and the crew landed the airplane with no trouble.”

“I would have gone to that one instead of to Kansas City if we
had
deployed,” Joe added.

“Anyway, they sent me down to their headquarters in Miami, since the field investigator needed some metallurgical help. This was one of the first three hundred 737s.”

“Same pedigree as Aloha's convertible in 1988?”

“The same, and almost as experienced in flight hours. Naturally we'd find it flying out of Cockroach Corner in South Florida. Anyway, the piece of skin that gave way had been repaired by what had to be a drunk gorilla. I've never seen such sloppy riveting. He'd cracked the new piece so badly in putting it in, failure was a foregone conclusion, and God knows who with an FAA license ever signed off on it. Anyway, that's not what I'm researching. What's got me curious is some of the repair and rebuilding work this little charter airline did on this airplane after the FAA started issuing all the mandatory repair orders in 1989. With that skin repair done as badly as it was, I wanted to see their other repair records for the forward sections they've had to rebuild. Now I'm having to wait for the FAA down there to help me, 'cause the airline told me to buzz off. In the meantime, I need to study up so's I'll have some idea what I'm talking about.”

“You need help? We could go to the Board.”

“I'm sure it's not that serious, I just don't like being treated like an irritant and refused access.” John got to his feet, gathering up the box of materials Joe had handed him.

“Even when you
are
being an irritant, huh?” Joe laughed.

“I swear, Joe, put you guys in a position of authority and you develop an abusive sense of humor. Hey, thanks for the material. It'll be in my office for several days.”

“Take your time. Ah … John?”

“Yes?”

“I thought the accepted term for the aging aircraft and shady air operations capital of the Western Hemisphere was
Corrosion
Corner, not Cockroach Corner.”

“Naw, Corrosion Corner is too limited a term, Joe,” Phelps chuckled. “It leaves out the generous supply of cracks, crackpots, pot, and bug-infested cockpits.”

John Phelps departed, and when his footsteps had faded, Kell Martinson suddenly reappeared in the doorway, startling Joe.

“Senator?”

Martinson came in and closed the door behind him again, motioning Joe to sit down, this time in command and with calm authority. Joe complied, totally perplexed.

“Joe, it's not a moot point.”

“What isn't, Senator?”

“Were you a military man?”

“Yes. Navy pilot. Why?”

“You had a security clearance then?”

“Yes. Secret. It's long since expired, but why …?”

Kell held his hand out, palm up. “Wait. What I'm going to tell you touches on classified military information, and I may or may not have the right to do so. In any event, it has a direct bearing on your investigation of the Kansas City crash. Joe, you said it would take a very powerful transmitter within a half mile of the airport to cause trouble with that airplane's flight controls?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“And you said there wasn't one there.”

“Right.”

“Wrong. There was. Right alongside the runway, being loaded onto a C-5B on the cargo ramp at the very moment the planes hit. It's a highly classified self-contained tracking test unit associated with the SDI Brilliant Pebbles program, and it's one of the most powerful radars on the planet.”

Joe sat back, stunned. “Was it operating?”

“I don't know. And the hell of it is, being a highly classified program, neither of us may ever be able to find out.”

One floor above Joe Wallingford's office, FAA Associate Administrator Bill Caldwell had begun the day leaning back in his office chair with his ear to a telephone receiver and his office cleared of visitors and staff alike. The call was necessary in his estimation, but it was dangerous. The information he was about to leak could backfire, but the way things were going, he had to launch a preemptive strike for the agency through a seldom-used channel. On the other end of the line was a well-known reporter for the
Washington Post
, Fred Russell, whom Bill had come to know over the years as careful and trustworthy. Occasionally he fed Russell stories and insights, acting as a deep background source when it served his purposes. The reporter was no fool—he knew he was being used by Caldwell—but he was equally capable of reading between the lines and independently verifying what Caldwell said.

“Bill, let me make sure I understand this. You're saying the FAA is unwilling to wait for the NTSB to make a recommendation on the Airbus flight-control system, that the situation may be too threatening, and you're considering whether to issue an inspection order in the form of an airworthiness directive?”

“Essentially, yes. We could order immediate inspections of the flight-control computers in each operational A320 in use in the U.S., though we could also suspend the certificate if we found a serious problem—ground the airplane, in other words. But only the Airbus A320 is affected, because it has the fly-by-wire system. There aren't that many A320s in the U.S.”

“Good grief, Bill, what are you looking for? My NTSB contacts tell me that nothing's been found, no sufficiently powerful radio transmitters were anywhere close, there's no reason to suspect a flight-control malfunction, and no one knows at this point exactly
what
to inspect for even if you
did
enter an inspection order.”

“I'm not confirming we're going to do it, but I wanted to alert you that we're considering it.”

“And,” the reporter interjected, “you want to make sure someone gets this in print so you can watch your trial balloon and see who shotguns it.”

“Fred, if trial balloons weren't valuable, would you get any calls from official Washington?”

“Yeah, if not for this sort of thing, then for some other nefarious purpose. Okay Bill, now you're also telling me about all the FAA enforcement actions against North America in the past few years regarding the maintenance department? And you mentioned looking into their training program, which implies pilot error. Are you talking about human-performance stuff?”

“We're trying to be proactive, Fred, not reactive. We're not going to sit around and wait for the NTSB to make a recommendation to us if we can plainly see something needs to be changed in the meantime.”

“And North America has problems?”

“North America has been cited on twenty-eight occasions during the past three years for cockpit procedures violations, many of them involving checklists. That's because they continue to run a captain-oriented airline, and captains get tired of answering copilots and checklists.”

“Why haven't you guys made them change? Aren't you the FAA?”

“We can cite them for the violations, but that's only treating the symptoms. To treat the disease we have to force a change in philosophy, and that's where we're still struggling, trying to figure out how to write a rule to govern a new type of training course called CRM, cockpit resource management—teaching flight crews how to cooperate with each other and communicate effectively while running a disciplined, checklist-oriented cockpit.”

Fred Russell sighed and shook his head. “I know all about CRM. I just don't believe I'm hearing this from the guy who told me three years ago that human-performance people were nothing but professional apologists employed for the sole purpose of excusing negligent pilots. Suddenly you're a convert to human-performance disciplines? How come? You figure this crash was pilot error?”

“I didn't say that. We're simply looking at all the angles.”

“Come on, Bill. Do you have any evidence the crew did anything wrong or not?”

“Nope, absolutely not. And the NTSB is miles away from cause determination.”

“Yeah, I know. Anyone else you want to firebomb, Bill?”

“Such cynicism. Should I call someone else?”

“No, of course not, but I'm allowed to be cynical, and in that vein, Mr. Associate Administrator, what's going on here? Don't get me wrong, I'm glad as hell you called me before the competition in New York, but this is a twenty-one gun broadside at North America. Why? What'd they do, bump you off a flight?”

Bill Caldwell smiled to himself, but kept his voice steady, adding a slightly puzzled tone. “I'm just worried that people not get stampeded in the wrong direction, Fred. That's all.”

By the time she walked into the office Thursday morning, Cynthia Collins had heard about the press conference called by Wilkins's people. What they were going to talk about now was anyone's guess, but she dispatched Fred Sneadman to listen and take notes. Fred was on the phone as soon as the conference ended, excited and almost breathless, which was unusual.

“Cynthia, this was weird, and I'm not sure I've followed it all. Same as on Tuesday, they say that one of their people—a long-time Wilkins friend and campaign worker—had proof that the Kansas City crash was an assassination, and that it was carried out by agents of the U.S. government. Here's the crazy part: now they say the same people who ordered Wilkins's death had this campaign worker, a Walter Calley, killed down in Louisiana before he could reveal what he knew. They're trying to blame this on the FBI or CIA, or possibly even the military.”

“No one's taking that stupidity seriously, I hope?”

“Wait. There's more.” Fred related the details, the pictures of Calley they had shown, and their call for national protests against what was being called an official cover-up that reached all the way to the White House. “It's like they're trying to fabricate another Watergate,” Fred told her, “but then they got on the Star Wars project.”

Less than a mile away, Cynthia stiffened. “What,
exactly
, did they say, Fred?”

The scientist who had called Senator Whitney had called the Wilkins camp as well, he told her. They called Brilliant Pebbles a fraud and showed a sketch of the Air Force radar tracking unit.

“Oh Lord!” she said.

“There's still more, Cynthia. Their major allegation is that Wilkins found out the radar tracking unit was going to be shipped for testing, which was not supposed to be done, and he jumped on that airplane last Friday night to fly to Kansas City and personally expose the operation. Someone found out what was going to happen, they say, and as the airplane was approaching the field, whoever was pulling the strings ordered the Air Force to turn on the radar unit and aim it at the airliner, knowing it would crash. Isn't that ridiculous?”

“They said that?”

“I've got it on tape, Cynthia. I know where we stand on Brilliant Pebbles, and I knew you'd be interested.”

“Interested? Fred, I'm speechless.”

Cindy hung up with one hand rubbing her forehead, visions of Kell's name in unflattering headlines on newspapers and TelePrompTers all over the world: senator and U.S. military accused by right-wing group in assassination of congressman.