Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

“That’s a decent thing to say.”

“Having said it, I have to ask you a question.”

“What?”

“Do you still think I had something to do with Mike’s murder?’

“Did you?”

“No.”

“Do you still believe I’m some sort of paranoid making up stories that somebody murdered Mike and Mark to abet a cover-up?”

“No, not anymore.”

“I guess we’re square then,” Pace suggested.

“Not quite,” Sachs said. “There are still scores to settle.”

“I’m in,” Pace said. “Whatever needs to be done.”

“I know you are,” Sachs replied. “You’re a relentless bastard. Anybody ever tell you?”

“Yeah. As a matter of fact, Mike McGill told me just before he died.”

4:00 P.M., the Federal Aviation Administration announced that the nation’s fleet of Sexton 811 aircraft had been grounded again as a precautionary measure until it could be determined what caused the ConPac crash at Dulles Airport.

Given the day’s myriad developments, it was after eight o’clock when Pace finished his Thursday story. Although he and his editors were supremely confident of the story’s accuracy, Pace hated the attribution. Once again the best information was attributed to “sources who asked not to be quoted by name” or to “sources who asked not to be identified.” Some readers inevitably believed unnamed sources were figments of the reporter’s imagination, that disclosures attributed to unnamed sources were highly suspect. He hoped fervently the NTSB could go public with its suspicions early the following week and confirm that he had been writing about real people making legitimate statements about real problems.

His phone rang.

“Pace.”

“Did I catch you at a busy time?” He recognized Kathy’s voice, and his heart leaped.

“There is no bad time for you to call,” he assured her.

“I think I owe you an apology.”

“Good. You can get in line. I’ve been hearing it from everybody today. No, actually, you can go to the head of the line. You’re the most important one. In fact, you don’t have to apologize for anything at all. Just come home.”

“You haven’t heard what I was going to say.”

“I don’t have to. Hearing from you is enough.”

She laughed softly. “No, I called to tell you something.” He said nothing, a silent consent for her to go on. “When I saw your story this morning, I realized I didn’t have any right to make some of the judgments I made,” she said, “especially, well, given the thing about Justin Smith. That’s awful. I get sick when I think it could have been you… still could be you. But I don’t know your business, except for what I’ve soaked up from you, and I didn’t have any right to suggest the course you should take. My misjudgments were made only out of concern for you. I hope you believe that.”

“I do,” he answered gratefully. “Now tell me you’re coming back.”

“Actually, what I called to tell you is that I’m going away—”

The gut-clutching pain returned. “What? Why?”

“Oh, not for long, only a week. I’m going back to Boston to see Dad and to think over some things. I know how I feel about you, and I’m pretty sure I know how you feel about me. But I’m not sure our strong wills won’t clash again. I expect they will. I want our relationship, if it continues, to be smooth and free from potholes like the one we fell into this time. I want to figure out if I can make that happen. I haven’t had any vacation in a long time, and Hugh suggested I take some now. I think it’s a good idea. Besides, I love Boston in the spring. All the good things I remember about growing up there happened in the spring. I need to go back and clear my head.”

“Sweetheart, there hasn’t been a couple in the history of mankind who didn’t get bounced around by life’s bumps and potholes. Don’t plan our future on some idealized notion that there will never be problems. If you do, we have no future.”

“My head knows that,” she said. “Now I have to convince my heart.”

“I love you,” he said.

“And I love you.”

The line went dead, and he felt empty again.

When the phone rang at his apartment early that afternoon, Steve Pace was certain he knew who it was.

“Can you meet me?” Ken Sachs asked.

“Sure. Where?”

“The hangar. In an hour.”

“I can’t get in.”

“Oh, yeah. Right. Sorry. I’m already thinking of you as a member of the staff. I guess those aren’t liberties I’m supposed to take.”

“No. Avery wouldn’t like it. And I’m kind of fond of my job. At the moment.”

“Okay, at the Marriott. Same place we met before, in the parking lot.”

“What’s up?”

“We’ve got the results from the first computer runs.”

“And?”

“The results are pretty conclusive. I don’t think they’re going to change.”

“You going to tell me or should I schedule a nervous breakdown on the Beltway?”

“I’m going to show you. And I’m going to give you a story that will shake this town like an earthquake.”

Pace appeared in the newsroom a little after four o’clock, a sheaf of large papers rolled under his arm. Wister could tell he was carrying a big story by the way he walked.

“So, yeah, what?” the national editor asked as the reporter approached him.

“Can we go in the Glory Room, where we can spread some papers out?”

“Sure. I’ll get Avery and meet you.”

“Avery’s working on Sunday?”

“You think he’d miss being in on this?”

Pace’s smile served as an answer.

When Wister and Schaeffer entered, Pace had several large sheets of computer graphics spread across the table. Three were in black and white. The fourth was in color.

The two editors flanked their reporter.

“What are these?” Schaeffer asked.

Pace explained them in the order he laid them out. “This first one represents the computer’s best estimate of where the remains of an average-sized red-tailed hawk would wind up if it flew headfirst into a Converse Fan operating at takeoff thrust.” He pointed to several blackened areas around the perimeter of the engine. “These ink smears represent pieces, uh, well, material that probably would have been channeled into the open space between the guts of the engine and the skin. That material would have continued through and out the back without doing any damage or touching any working parts except the fan blades. These jagged outlines represent pieces of fan blades broken by the impact. Most of them go around the engine, too, although the computer projected that a big enough piece could conceivably be ingested, and it’s represented by this outline here. But the black smudges are what’s important for now. That’s where the bird would have gone.”

He looked to see if his editors were following him, and both were nodding. He moved on to the second sheet.

“This is what might have happened if the bird was sucked in backwards. As you can see, there’s not too much difference. Ken explained to me that in the computer projections, the mass of the bird is the mass of the bird, no matter what direction it’s flying. The principal difference is that if the bird was flying in the same direction as the plane was moving, its own forward speed would detract marginally from the velocity of the impact. If it flew into the engine head-on, then its forward speed would increase the impact marginally. Again, what’s important is where the remains go, and as you can see, the smudges are in pretty much the same place either way.”