Lynne Heitman - Hard Landing

"You guys always said the ceiling was the best place to hide things."

The TV powered up with its distinctive electronic snap, and a blast of full-volume static boomed from the set. The scratchy noise felt like sandpaper scraping across raw nerves.

"God Almighty." Dan scrambled for the volume control, punched the wrong button, and turned the static to blaring canned-sitcom laughter. Laughter, especially fake, felt obscene in the fragile silence and made our situation that much more surreal. He found the volume and turned it down as I fumbled with shaking hands to get the cassette out of the envelope.

"Where's the fucking remote?"

"Are you sure Delta's not going to mind us being in here?"

"I told you, we have a deal. I loan them a B767 towbar when they need it, and I get to use their VCR whenever I want."

I put the tape into the slot-tried to, anyway-cramming it in a few times before I realized one was already in there. Every step seemed to take forever as I found the button to eject, pulled the cassette out, and put ours in. Dan found the remote, killed the light, and moved in next to me in front of the screen. His shoulder was warm against mine as we leaned back against the conference table, and I was glad that whatever we were about to see, I wasn't going to see it alone.

I took a few deep breaths, trying to stop shaking. It didn't work.

He aimed the remote at the screen. "Ready?" Without waiting for an answer, he hit Play.

Within seconds, the picture changed from the high, bright colors of situation comedy to the grainy black-and-white cast of a surveillance video. The date and time were marked in the lower right-hand corner, and the rest of the screen was filled with the image of a small aircraft parked in the rain on a concrete slab. It was a commuter, so there was no jetbridge, just a prop plane parked at a gate. I looked at the markings on the tail. A wave of recognition began as a tightening of my scalp when I realized that I also recognized the gate. The date-check the date again. The tight, tingling feeling spread from the top of my skull straight down my back and grabbed hold, like a fist around my backbone. It was March 15, 1995, at 19:12:20. The Ides of March.

Without taking his eyes from the screen, Dan found the Pause button. We stared, as frozen as the image before us, and I could hear in his breathing, I could feel in his stiffening posture, that he was thinking what I was, that it couldn't be, please don't let it be-

"The Beechcraft," he whispered.

The Beechcraft, he'd said, not a Beechcraft. I looked at him, grasping for reassurance, hoping not to see my worst fears in his face. But the odd TV glow turned his skin into gray parchment and made deep hollows of his eyes. Under a day's growth of dark stubble, he looked stunned.

"Are you sure? Is that…" I tried to swallow the lump in my throat. "Check the tail number."

He didn't check. He didn't have to check. We both knew what we were looking at. It was one of Dickie Flynn's surveillance tapes of the ramp, the one from March 15, 1995. That was the night that Flight 1704 crashed outside Baltimore. This was the Beechcraft that had gone down, and this was our ramp it was parked on. It was less than three hours before the fatal landing, and I had no doubt that when he raised the remote and hit Play, we were going to see things we weren't supposed to see. We were going to find out the things that Ellen knew, and maybe understand why she was dead.

I turned back to the screen, eyes wide, neck rigid, and stared straight ahead. A feeling of dread filled the room-Dan's or mine or both, I couldn't tell. It was growing, filling the small space and, like that heat in my office, pressing back on me and making it hard to draw a breath. I wondered if Dan could feel it, too, but I couldn't look at him. I was glued to the screen, afraid to keep looking, but afraid to look away.

He held up the remote, but before he restarted the tape, I felt him pull himself up, square his shoulders, and center his weight, like a soldier girding for battle. He hit Play and the rain began to fall again.

The rain was falling hard on the evening of March 15, 1995, hard enough that I could see the drops bouncing off the wet concrete. During the first minute or two of the tape, that's all we saw, the Beechcraft sitting in a downpour. Occasionally, a ramper would walk through the shot, or a tug would cut through the narrow passage between the airplane and the terminal, which they weren't supposed to do.

A fuel truck pulled into the frame. Dan had been still, but when the truck stopped just behind the left wing, he started shifting his weight back and forth from one foot to the other.

"That's Billy Newman," he said as the driver climbed out and went to the back of his truck.

"Who's he?"

"A fueler."

"Does it mean something?"

"I don't know, boss. He's just another guy out there."

Not knowing exactly what we were looking for, everything meant something-or nothing. We had to watch every movement, every motion closely, and when Billy Newman disappeared behind his truck for an inordinately long period of time, we were both drawn a little closer to the screen. But when he reappeared, all he did was go about the business of fueling the aircraft. He hooked up on one side and stood in the rain with his hood pulled over his head. When the first tank was full, he went around and started on the other side.

"This is killing me." Dan pointed the remote and fired. "I'm going to fast-forward until something happens."

"Are you sure? We don't even know what we're looking for."

"If we miss something, we can start it over. Besides, I have a feeling we'll know it when we see it."

The tape whirred as the cockpit crew came out, stowed their gear, and boarded. Then the passengers appeared, most carrying umbrellas and forming a line to the boarding stairs. I tried to be dispassionate, to look with a coldly analytical eye for anything unusual in the high-speed procession. But in this moment captured on this tape, these people were about to die. I knew it and they didn't, and I thought maybe I should look away, lower my eyes and-who was I kidding? I was like any other wide-eyed, slack-jawed, rubbernecking ghoul. I felt ashamed and I felt dirty. At the faster speed, their movements were hyper and manic, almost comical, and I heard echoes of that canned sitcom laughter. We should slow this down, I thought. We're hurrying these people along when what they need at this moment is more time.

"Wait, stop it there."

"I see it." Dan was already pausing and reversing. "Goddammit." His gentle shifting from foot to foot accelerated to jittery rocking as he searched the tape, first going too far back. He hit the Rewind button, accidentally going still further back, then had to fast-forward again. I watched the seconds on the time stamp, each tick up and down winding the tension a little tighter.

Finally we were in normal speed. A tug towing a cart full of bags and cargo pulled into the frame. The vehicle, moving too fast for the conditions, skidded to a stop at the tail of the Beechcraft. I held my breath. The driver stepped out into the rain, stumbled, and nearly fell to the wet concrete. Dan saved him momentarily by stopping the tape.

"Oh, my God." I'd been staring at the screen so intently, my eyes were dried out and my vision was starting to blur. But there was no mistaking the identity of this man-his size, his build, the span of his wide shoulders. It was Little Pete, and Little Pete was drunk.

Dan was squeezing the remote with one hand. The other was on top of his head, as if to keep it from flying off. "That fucking moron," he said in a voice that was so quiet, it was scary.