Murder at the Pentagon (34 page)

“ ‘Afternoon, Major,” the Ops officer on duty said as Margit approached the desk.

“Hi. Did you order this day?”

He grinned and looked out the window. “Couldn’t be
nicer,” he said. “Perfect VFR weather. You filling squares today? You’ve got Huey four-three-niner.”

She shook her head. “No, just logging a pleasant hour. I thought I’d play tourist, maybe fly over to Turkey Island.” She pointed on the chart to a group of six small islands in the Potomac, northwest of Andrews.

“Pretty out there,” he said.

“Any chance of getting clearance into prohibited area Fifty-six Alpha?” The center of Washington—specifically the White House and close-by buildings and monuments—was designated as prohibited airspace. The charts called it P-56 A.

“Shouldn’t be a problem, Major. I’ll clear with my c.o.”

The necessary forms completed, she went to where Huey 439 stood at the end of a row of choppers. It was a busy day at Andrews; every other copter in line was spoken for, and pilots were going through their preflight, or postflight, checks.

A line chief, one of two, whose name tag read
CHILTON
chatted with a pair of pilots as they drank coffee from Styrofoam cups. Margit was pleased to see a different chief from the young man who’d been so uncaring the last time she was there. She introduced herself to them.

Some of the other pilots had scheduled an hour of formation flying, something Margit had considered doing, too. She hadn’t flown close formation since Panama. Too late for that now. You had to plan and schedule far in advance. Besides, it had been a late night. She was in the mood only for joyriding this day.

She asked Chilton, “Everything shipshape?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “They’re all ready to go.”

“Have fun,” one of the other pilots said.

“You bet,” Margit tossed at him.

She carefully conducted her preflight using the checklists. Everything looked to be in order, but as she was about to climb into the right seat, she hesitated, then returned to the roof of the chopper and eyeballed the blade-root laminations. Her father would be proud of her. Every chopper pilot
checked the Jesus Nut, but too many ignored the possibility of hairline cracks in the blades themselves. “The J-Nut might be okay,” her father had told her, “but it doesn’t do a pilot any good if the blades split away.”

These blades looked fine. “Thanks,” she said under her breath to the man who’d been such a positive influence in her life and who she wished were alive to dispense his wisdom—and his love. Lord knows, she could use both.

She’d plugged her mike cord into the chopper’s radio system, and put her helmet on the seat. She removed the helmet, replaced it with her body, adjusted the helmet on her head, pulled shoulder straps down and secured them, and followed the internal checklist.

Margit listened to the ATIS Charlie report, then tuned to the tower frequency at Andrews. “Air force four-three-niner ready to go,” she said crisply into her microphone. “Request chopper route two.” Route two was one of many prescribed helicopter routes across the city.

“Roger, four-three-niner,” the controller in the tower replied. “Request to fly through prohibited area Fifty-six Alpha has been granted. Helicopter route two approved. Contact Washington TCA at Marlow Heights. Squawk five-two-seven-five.”

“Roger.”

“Air force four-three-niner cleared for takeoff.”

“Roger.”

She followed a northwest compass heading, overflying the town of Morningside and paralleling the Suitland Parkway until changing heading to a northerly direction over Washington National Cemetery.

When she reached Fort Dupont Park, she slowed airspeed, then increased power so that she was in a virtual hover over the park. She slowly regained airspeed and followed her original compass heading. Directly ahead, across the Anacostia River, was the nation’s capital, the splendid sun painting the imposing government buildings and monuments even whiter than they were. Below, in the park, families dotted the green countryside. A perfect day for a picnic—and for
flying. A sudden recalled vision of being in Jeff’s apartment last night hit her, and she realized she hadn’t thought about it since walking into Ops. “Forget it,” she told herself aloud, adjusting power to provide more forward momentum in the direction of the city.

She crossed the Anacostia and flew a route that took her between DC General Hospital on her left and RFK Memorial Stadium on her right. After passing those familiar landmarks, she turned due west and flew north of the Capitol Building, then slowed the aircraft to look down at the Mall. Evidently, half of Washington had decided it was a good day for a picnic, or for jogging and bicycle riding, for browsing the myriad museums of the Smithsonian, or for just lying on a blanket and soaking in the rays of a waning summer.

What a wonderous thing a helicopter was, she thought, able to hang in midair as though tethered to an infinite cord anchored somewhere high above. She was again in a hover at fifteen hundred feet above a multitude of people on the ground. She knew that some of them were probably looking up at her and wondering what this military helicopter was up to. Had to be official business, they would think. Surveillance in anticipation of the arrival of a dignitary? Part of a training exercise? She smiled. None of those. Just doing the same thing you are, she thought, enjoying myself on this beautiful Sunday.

She inched the Huey forward, which moved her in the direction of the imposing white obelisk that was the Washington Monument, D.C.’s Eiffel Tower, the tallest man-made creation on earth when its capstone was laid in 1884, now merely the District’s tallest structure and the world’s loftiest piece of solid masonry.

Immediately beyond was the oblong, glass-surfaced Reflecting Pool, which ended at the stately and inspiring Lincoln Memorial.

She made a decision to fly north of the Lincoln Memorial, then follow the river over Theodore Roosevelt Island and continue northwest until reaching the small group of islands that were her destination.

A voice crackled in her earphones. “Chopper four-three-niner, DC Control. Have you cleared P-Fifty-six Alpha yet?”

“Negative, but about to,” she replied.

“Roger. Please advise.”

“Will do.”

She gave the Huey more forward speed and circumvented the Washington Monument. She adjusted her heading to bring herself back over the Reflecting Pool, and was pointed directly at the Lincoln Memorial.

The craft suddenly jerked to its left. Margit tried to adjust using the antitorque pedals, but her efforts had no influence over the chopper’s erratic behavior. It continued to pull wildly to its left, as though trying to turn itself into an airborne corkscrew. Nothing she did corrected the out-of-control situation. The tail rotor ran wild, spinning at top speed on its own and sending the copter into a precarious attitude. It began to tip over on its side as the tail wagged the dog. “Damn!” Margit exploded, her hands and feet fighting the vibrating pedals, cyclic, and collective.

“Mayday, Mayday!” she barked into the mike.

She looked out her door. Below, surrounding the Reflecting Pool, were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people. She didn’t have much time—seconds—to do something to keep the chopper from hurtling down into their midst.

She smelled fire. Electrical. The hydraulic lines. A wisp of acrid smoke reached her nostrils.

The altimeter read one thousand feet. She changed pitch on the freewheeling main rotor above, guiding the Huey down in an autorotation. She descended fast, faster than she wanted to, but she knew she would land safely. More important, those on the ground would not be hurt, because her path of descent took her directly into the middle of the Reflecting Pool.

She killed the power. With the sudden cessation of it to the tail, the violent yawing lessened, and the craft began to right itself in her skilled hands.

Hopefully, no one was breaking the rules against swimming in the Reflecting Pool.

Huey 439 hit the water and threw up a wave. She was thumped hard but didn’t have to worry about drowning; the pool was only a few feet deep. When the chopper had settled, she threw open the door on her side and sat there. Hundreds of people lined the pool and applauded. She felt no sense of accomplishment. Embarrassment was the feeling of the moment. And anger. What kind of maintenance mayhem had been the result of carelessness that had killed all control to the tail rotor?

“Air Force four-three-niner,” the familiar voice of the TCA controller said.

Margit activated her mike with the floor switch. “Roger,” she said.

“We have a report of a chopper down on the Mall. That you?”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Condition of chopper?”

“Rusting.”

“We’ve dispatched a rescue team. Suggest you remain with aircraft, unless there is danger in doing so.”

“No danger. Not at the moment. But there will be once I get out of the rig and find out who screwed up with this bird. Out!”

By the time rescue crews from National Airport, Bolling AFB, and Andrews AFB showed up, the crowd surrounding Margit’s downed chopper rivaled July Fourth on the Mall. The press had arrived in droves; still photographers shot the scene from every conceivable angle, and television remote trucks, their antennae extended high into the air, transmitted the tragicomic scene to their studios for later, and repeated, airings.

A military jeep transported Margit back to Andrews, where she underwent a two-hour debriefing. She recounted in detail every aspect of the emergency she’d faced, and the steps she’d taken to save herself, the people on the ground, and the aircraft.

She came out of the small debriefing room behind the Ops desk and stopped to talk with other pilots, who were naturally curious about her experience. They asked what she thought had caused the mishap. She told them she didn’t know, but offered that the runaway tail rotor had to have been the result of incredibly sloppy maintenance.

Or … tampering?

She couldn’t help but wonder about that.

She’d successfully exorcized that troubling thought until, while saying good-bye to her fellow pilots, she heard the Ops officer ask someone whether Major Reich had been informed of the chopper’s loss. The other officer replied, “No need. Reich canceled the mission a couple of hours ago.”

She approached the desk. “Excuse me,” she said. “I heard you mention a Major Reich. Did he cancel because of the accident?”

The officer who seemed to know answered, “No. A change in orders. At least that’s what he said when he called.”

Margit laughed. “I’m glad to hear that. Wayne would be furious with me for losing a chopper he intended to use.”

“Happens all the time,” said the Ops officer. “You know the Company. Always canceling something.”

“Just as well,” Margit said. “I got it down. Maybe they wouldn’t have.”

“Something out a’ sight must have really fouled up in your chopper,” the Ops officer said to Margit. “Our line chief signed off on it, and so did Reich’s.”

“Oh. I’ll have to ask Wayne about that. Who was his line chief?”

The officers looked at each other. “What was his name? Wilton? Chilton? Something like that.”

Margit remembered the chunky line chief who was there before she took off. His name tag had read
CHILTON
.

“Well, sorry to screw up the fleet,” Margit said. “I’ll be anxious to find out what the problem was.”

Her mind was so clotted with what she’d learned about Reich and his “mechanic” that she had trouble concentrating on the road and drove to Bolling in a fugue state.

As she walked into her BOQ, the phone rang. She looked at the digital numbers on her answering machine that indicated the number of calls recorded. There were nine, including three from that morning. She waited until the obligatory four rings had sounded. The machine went into action, giving
out her message. Then, through the speaker, came a male voice.

“I’m trying to reach Major Margit Falk. This is Sergeant Davis. It’s important that I …”

She yanked the receiver out of its cradle. “This is Major Falk. You’re the one who called my base locator and told me Captain Cobol wanted to see me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“But there is no Sergeant Davis at McNair Detention Center.”

“Yes, ma’am, I know that. Davis is not my real name.”

“Then what the hell is your real name?” she snapped.

“Ma’am, I’m not looking for any trouble. That’s why I’m using a false name. I was a friend of Bob’s. We were—we were close once.”

“Look,” Margit said, unable to put the reins on her cumulative frustration and anger. “Let’s skip the euphemisms. You say you were close. Do you mean you had a homosexual relationship with him?”

“Yes.”

“You delivered that note to my BOQ?”

“Right.”

Margit sat in a chair and wished she had a cigarette to light. She hadn’t smoked since high school, but she now understood the appeal. She said, “Okay, I’ve had enough of all the games. Why are you calling? What do you want to tell me?”

“That Bob—Captain Cobol—was set up to take the blame for the murder of Joycelen.”

“How do you know that?”

“He told me.”

“Who set him up?” she asked.

“The CIA. Elements within the CIA, as he put it.”

“Could he prove it?”

“No. He said they’d given him last-minute duty at the Pentagon that Saturday morning to put him in place at the scene of the murder.”

“Who put him there? Name!”

“He said Major Mucci made the change on the roster.”

“Was he alleging that Mucci killed Joycelen?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, Sergeant Davis, or whoever you are, I’m a little tired of hearing ‘He said,’ and, ‘He told me’ without attribution. You’re assigned to the detention center?”

There was a pause.

“Did you hear me?” she asked.

“I was. I’m leaving the service.”

“Why?”

“Reg Thirteen-Thirty-Two. They don’t like us to dishonor the uniform.” There was, at once, sadness and anger in his voice.

“Can we meet? After you’re discharged? When will that be?”