Nelson DeMille - Night Fall

“Okay. So, if I said Arab terrorists, how would you feel about that?”

“If I couldn’t even see where the missile came from, how am I going to know the race or religion of the people who fired it?”

“Good point. How about if I said some group that wanted to harm the United States?”

“Then I’d say there was an El Al 747 right behind the TWA 747, and the El Al flight was running late and may have been the intended target.”

“Really? I don’t remember that.”

“It was in all the papers. Another theory.”

“Right. We got lots of theories.”

Captain Spruck asked me, “Do you want to hear about the explosion?”

“I do, but I’m not as interested in the explosion as I am in the streak of light. Let me ask you this-five years have passed since you saw what you saw. You’ve read and heard a lot of stuff in those five years. Right? Has anything caused you to reconsider your original statements? You know, like you think you may have made a mistake, or what you saw could be explained differently, and now you’re kind of married to your original statements, and you don’t want to recant or retract because it would make you look a little less than smart. You understand?”

“I understand. I am not being stubborn or egotistical, Mr. Corey, but I know what I saw. Within sixteen hours, Miss Mayfield was in my living room asking me what I saw. At that point, I had heard not one other eyewitness account of this incident-nothing that could have colored my perception of what I saw.”

“But there were news reports by that time about people seeing a streak of light.”

“Yes, but immediately after the incident, I called on my cell phone to this Coast Guard station and reported everything I’d seen, including the streak of light. At that point, for all I knew, I was the only person on the planet who saw what I saw.”

“Good point.”

“I made this point with the FBI people, who kept asking me about my perceptions being colored by subsequent news coverage. How the hell could my immediate report to the Coast Guard be colored by subsequent reports?” He added, “My call to the Coast Guard station is on file, though I was never allowed to see what the duty officer wrote.”

He probably wrote, “Nut job,” I thought, but then subsequent calls and events caused him to black that out of his log.

Captain Spruck continued, “Plus, I’m only one of two witnesses, to the best of my knowledge, who has actually seen a surface-to-air missile, live and in color, up close and personal.”

This guy was perfect. Too perfect? I asked Captain Spruck, “Who’s the other guy who’s seen a real, live, up-close missile?”

He replied, “A man who was an electronic warfare technician. He’s made public statements that coincide with my private statements.”

“You know this guy?”

“No. I only read his statements in the news. He was frustrated by the direction the investigation was heading and by the fact that his eyewitness account was dismissed, so he went public.”

“What’s this guy’s name?”

“Your wife can tell you. Or you can look it up.”

“Right.”

Captain Spruck informed me, “I didn’t need this. There was nothing in this for me to say anything about that streak of light. I could have just called the Coast Guard to report what I thought was an air crash and given them the location-which was the first thing I did. But then I described the streak of light, and the duty officer started getting a little strange on me. I gave him my name, address, and phone numbers. He thanked me and hung up. At noon, the next day, your wife showed up at my door.” He editorialized, “She’s very nice, by the way. You’re a lucky man.”

“Oh, I thank God every day.”

“You should.”

“Right. Okay, so you have some issues here about how your eyewitness account was not taken as gospel in the final report. You feel you were not believed, or that the FBI concluded that you were mistaken or confused about what you saw.”

He replied, “They were confused. What I saw, Mr. Corey, to get right down to it, was a surface-to-air missile that apparently destroyed its target-a commercial Boeing 747-and nothing that’s happened since then can shake my account of what I saw or cause me to regret coming forward.”

“You must have some regrets. You just said, ‘I didn’t need this.’”

“I… this has been very difficult… I did my duty and continue to do it, whenever asked.” He looked at me and asked, “If this case is closed, why are you here?”

“I’m just trying to make the wife happy on my day off.” Of course, by now, I realized that Mr. John Corey himself was not happy with the official version of events, thanks to Ms. Mayfield and Captain Spruck.

Captain Spruck informed me, “The other people I had been sailing with went back to the yacht club for the barbeque-about fifteen of them, joined by spouses and family. About twelve of these people, out on the back lawn of the club or sitting on the veranda, all saw this streak of light simultaneously. This was not a mass hallucination.”

“You know, Captain, I don’t think anyone doubts that the two hundred people who saw that streak of light actually saw it. The question is, What was it? And did it have anything to do with the explosion and crash of the 747?”

“I told you what it was.”

I said to him, “Okay, then, back to the streak of light. The last time we saw it, it had momentarily disappeared. Correct?”

“That’s correct. And that’s consistent with a missile in close proximity to a target if the target is between the observer and the missile. Follow?”

“Yeah. The plane was in front of the missile.”

“Correct. Or the propellant was expended and the missile was now ballistic. But to back up a few seconds, before I saw the missile change course, and before it disappeared, I again noticed the 747.” He continued, “My instincts… my training and my experience told me that this missile was on a course that would bring it into contact with the aircraft.” He took a deep breath and said, “To be honest with you, my blood ran cold, and my heart skipped a beat.”

“And you were back over North Vietnam.”

He nodded and said, “But just for a moment… then, I refocused on the aircraft and divided my attention between the aircraft and the streak of light. The light disappeared, as I said, then two seconds later, I saw a flash of light coming from the aircraft, around the midsection, somewhere near the wings, then a second later, I saw a very large explosion that separated the aircraft into at least two parts.”

“How would you explain that sequence of events?”

He replied, “Well, if the sequence of events began with a center fuel tank explosion, then the first explosion would have been the missile strike that detonated the fuel vapors in the center fuel tank, and that explosion then ignited one of the full wing tanks-the left one according to the accident investigators-which was the cause of the catastrophic explosion.”

I asked him, “Did you come to those conclusions immediately?”

“No. I was focused for a time on the aircraft itself, as it came apart…” He seemed momentarily at a loss for words to describe this, then said, “The… nose section separated and dropped almost straight down into the sea. Then, without the weight of the nose section, and with the engines still running on fuel in the fuel lines, the main section of the fuselage actually rose for a few seconds and continued along in an ascent… then, it rolled, wing over wing, and began a rapid descent…”

I let a few seconds pass, then said, “I guess you’ve seen planes shot down by surface-to-air missiles.”