Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

It hardly seemed possible, but the scene inside was worse than the mess outside. Outside, at least the victims were dead.

Dulles was closed. Flights that couldn’t be diverted to Washington National Airport or Baltimore-Washington International were canceled. Passengers left in private cars or in special buses for their new takeoff points, or they went home, some feeling too hassled and others too frightened to make another attempt at flying on this day.

Immediate relatives of the victims of Flight 1117, once identified by ConPac officials, were driven in people-movers from the main terminal to the mid-field terminal where the doomed flight originated. In that now-isolated building the stunned and grieving were comforted by clergy and social workers trained to deal with sudden, unexpected tragedy.

Over in the main terminal, the halls were filled with airline and airport employees, friends and colleagues of the passengers, and the morbidly curious, those always willing to drive to a big fire or a fatal accident. Some let themselves consider what it must be like to die in an aviation disaster and were there out of a sense that it could have been them lying charred under black-plastic sheets on the runway. Everyone personalizes an airline accident, unconsciously quantifying it against his or her own experiences with aborted takeoffs, unscheduled landings, and in-flight near-collisions.

When 330 people die, they leave a lot of living victims behind.

Adding to the terminal crowd were hundreds of journalists. Television crews zoomed in as ConPac reps led the dazed and the weeping to privacy. Broadcast reporters shoved microphones into blank faces with glazed eyes. Print-photographers’ strobes popped like halftime special effects at the Orange Bowl. This suffering was a part of aviation-disaster stories Pace loathed. He felt immense gratitude that those assignments fell to junior reporters; he didn’t think he could handle all the agony.

“Pretty grim,” Smith observed.

“I hate it,” Pace agreed. “Why do we have to do this every time, feed on the emotionally crippled? Let them suffer in private.” He ran a hand through the curly dark hair that framed his face and crept over his collar. “Christ, how in hell do you approach them, and how do you live with the questions later? ‘So, Mrs. Jones, what’s it feel like being a widow?’ ‘So you’re little Tony. You know your daddy burned up in an airplane outside?’”

Somewhere in the crowd, Pace knew, Chronicle reporters and photographers, like the others, were gathering notebooks full of hesitant, probing questions and stunned, sobbing answers that would be given to a rewrite specialist for a sensitive mood piece.

“It’s all bullshit!”

“Can’t quarrel with that,” Smith agreed. “Can’t change it, either, so probably not much sense worryin’ over it.”

For a moment Pace considered Smith with both amusement and irritation. The Times man was in his early sixties but had the unlined face of someone much younger and a body that looked quite fit. Maybe those were the benefits of an easygoing attitude.

“You ever get hyper about anything, Justin?” Pace asked. “I don’t recall ever seeing you really angry—or really jazzed, for that matter. If I run the gamut of emotions from A to Z, you sort of stay stuck between L and M.”

Smith chuckled. “Naw,” he said. “Got all the way up to B once.”

“God, that must have been an incredible moment,” Pace suggested. “Amazing you didn’t have a heart attack.”

Smith agreed. “Was in the spring of 1984. Discovered the best barbecue place on earth, a little shack outside Brunswick, Georgia. Worth fightin’ through the pulp-mill stench to get to it, that’s how good it was. Still is.”

Pace shook his head and moved the conversation to the Sexton crash. “You got a great story on this?” he asked.

“Not yet,” Smith replied. “Will have, though. Enough to beat you, Hoss.”

“You wish,” Pace said, chuckling.

They parted, and Pace circulated, carefully skirting the Con Pacific offices, where more journalists stood the vigil of the passenger list, waiting for the airline to release the names of those on board Flight 1117, something that would come in small segments of five and ten names at a time as the airline confirmed that next-of-kin had been notified.

Notified! You think they don’t already know? They’re all here, milling around like fucking zombies while the bodies whose hands they shook or whose cheeks they kissed four hours ago are stuffed into body bags at the end of Nineteen-Right. What are they going to be notified about? “We’re sorry, Mrs. Johnson. We found all of Henry but his head.”

Pace stuffed his notebook deep into the side pocket of his expensive Britches sport coat, where he hoped it would go unnoticed. Unconsciously, he lifted the press credentials hanging from a chain around his neck and slipped them into the breast pocket of his shirt. His black mood, forced aside briefly by Justin Smith’s singular good humor, was back. Pace found himself wishing he could ditch the story and go somewhere—anywhere—else.

He leaned against an escalator handrail and scanned the throng, looking for nothing in particular. But one individual caught his eye.

She was standing with her back to him in a line of people—the families of the victims of Flight 1117—waiting to pass through the security checkpoints to ride out to the mid-field terminal. Pace thought he would have recognized the auburn hair anywhere.

Without planning it, he walked over and took the young woman’s arm. She turned in surprise, her green eyes rimmed and reddened with tears. The sight took Pace’s breath. All his memories of those eyes were of laughter and joy.

“Kathy?” He stared at her, open-mouthed. “What are you doing here?”

“Hello, Steve,” she said, her voice cracking. “I should have expected to see you.” She started to say something else but turned away suddenly and put a hand to her mouth. He saw her shoulders tremble.

He slipped into line beside her and took her arm again. The feel of her set off emotions he hadn’t felt in the year since they’d drifted apart. He wondered how he’d ever let that happen. He put his arm around her shoulders and felt her press into him.

“Who was on the plane?” he asked as gently as a question like that could be asked.

“Jonathan,” she replied. She closed her eyes, and he could see tears leaking.

“Your brother? Oh, God, Kath, I’m so damned sorry.” He thought he remembered that Jonathan McGovern was about five years older than Kathy. He was some big shot in the securities business in Chicago. Was he married? Yeah, and he had at least one child.

“Was his family with him?”

“No. Jonny was here for the day, for a meeting at the SEC, and he was going on to the West Coast for something, I don’t know what.” She was talking and sobbing softly at the same time. He squeezed her lightly. Their line had moved, and she was next to arrive at the security checkpoint. An agent looked at Kathy and waved both of them through.

Pace knew he shouldn’t be there. The bus ride and the mid-field terminal were off-limits to the press, but with his notebook in his jacket pocket and his credentials in his shirt, he passed for one more grieving family member. He wasn’t trying to be devious. He was there at that moment for Kathy McGovern, not for a story.

“Have you called anyone?” Pace asked her.

She nodded. “Daddy’s coming down on a flight tonight. I guess Betsy will be coming, too, from Chicago.”

He guessed Betsy was Jonathan’s widow.

“She’s pregnant again,” Kathy said, her fragile composure suddenly cracking. “Jonny won’t ever get to see the baby.”