Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

“Hum, yes,” Sachs said noncommittally when Pace finished. “I suppose you have an idea of what you’d like to do next.”

“I’d like to look at the engine. I’m not putting myself forward as somebody who could find evidence that trained aviation investigators couldn’t see, but they weren’t looking for the same thing I’m looking for.”

“What exactly is it you’re looking for?”

“Something inconsistent with the notion that a bird flew into the engine and began a chain reaction that tore the thing apart.”

“You know I’m not happy with this,” Sachs said. “NTSB investigations are inviolate. We don’t let outsiders in because we don’t want the purity of the investigative process tainted in any way. Yet I’m calling you because of Whitney Warner, the consummate outsider in a case like this, an outsider with a vested interest. And you! Christ, you’re so far outside you’re not on the same planet. Letting you anywhere near the engine goes against everything I know, everything I believe, against all my instincts.”

“But you’re going to do it anyway?” Pace asked hopefully.

“Yes, damn it, I’m going to do it anyway, because this is outside the realm of anything I know, everything I believe, and my instincts tell me I have no choice. Lund and Padgett will scream their bloody heads off, and I’ll have to find a way to deal with that.”

“I appreciate it,” Pace said sincerely. “When can I get access to the hangar?”

“I’m going with you, and I can do it this afternoon if you can.”

“I’ll be there. Where should I meet you?”

“In the lobby of the Dulles Marriott at two. We’ll leave your car in the lot and take mine so it won’t be a hassle getting past the gate. You know I hate this, don’t you, Pace? I hate it because of what it signifies and because it’s you.”

“I can understand on both counts.”

Pace was surprised at how easily he got a few hours’ leave. It was a slow day for general-assignment work, and Wister agreed to let him take some of his amassed overtime in comp time. But, true to form, the national editor got in a lick for procedures. “Next time,” he told Pace, “remember to ask for comp time in writing at least forty-eight hours before you want to take it.” Pace left the office before Wister could change his mind and was twenty minutes early getting to Dulles.

The nondescript white sedan with the U.S. Government license plates pulled into the parking lot fifteen minutes later. Pace recognized Sachs at the wheel, alone in the car. Pace got out of his own car and walked up to the sedan before Sachs had time to park and get out. He knocked on the passenger-side window. Sachs leaned over and opened the door.

“Get in,” the chairman said. “There are terms.”

“What?”

“I don’t think they’ll give you a problem. If there’s a story here, it’s yours. I’ll see to that. I’d owe you that much. You’ll have it alone. In return, however, I call all the shots. If we find anything, I decide what action to take, when it will be taken, and when it’s time to go public with it. I won’t put this car in gear unless you agree. You can get out and walk away, and I’ll proceed with this thing alone. Or you stay and, in essence, take orders from me.”

“All right. I’ll do it your way.”

“I thought you would,” Sachs said smugly. He keyed the ignition and pulled away toward the Dulles terminal. “Avery Schaeffer made the same decision.”

Pace whipped around to face Sachs. “What are you talking about?” he demanded.

“I called him after we talked this morning,” the NTSB chairman said in a tone that indicated it was no big deal.

“Avery knows where I am?”

“And what you’re doing.”

They entered the hangar a few minutes later, and Pace was struck by the sheer size of the place, more still by the enormity of the task facing the NTSB. As vast as the hangar was, the remnants of the huge jetliner consumed most of the floor space.

“They take up a lot more room when they’re still in one piece and standing on all three legs,” Sachs commented.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Pace responded lamely.

“Let’s get started,” Sachs said. “Although I have to tell you, I hope there’s nothing new here to find.”

Pace shoved his hands deep into his pockets. His eyes dropped.

“What’s wrong?” Sachs asked. He got no answer. “Steve?”

“The night Mike asked me to go with him to meet his anonymous caller, he said something like that, about how we might have hopes for different outcomes. I was looking for a big story. What he wanted was for it to turn out to be nothing, for the integrity of the system to stand up.”

“You and he were close, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” Pace said. “For a lot of years.”

“Mike and Mark were good men, and that’s a nice epitaph when you think about it.”

Picking through the debris, they started toward the back of the hangar, where the Number 3 engine was waiting.

“Are any of the investigators still around?” Pace asked.

Sachs shook his head. “The power-plants team left yesterday. Lund’s back downtown. Jim Padgett’s still around, but I don’t know if he’s actually on the field. I left a message that we were coming, so he’ll show up.”

They stood shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the maw that had been the intake end of the Converse Fan. There were shards of metal and dangling wires and hoses everywhere.

“How does anybody make anything of this?” Pace marveled. “I saw you guys do it in Sioux City, and I still don’t believe it.”

“We’re looking for inconsistencies,” said Sachs. “Anything that doesn’t look right.”

“None of it looks right.”

“You know what I mean.”

And so they looked. A half-hour turned into an hour and then into ninety minutes, and they found nothing that didn’t have a reasonable explanation. They talked about possibilities. The conversations were increasingly technical, and eventually beyond Pace’s knowledge of jet-engineering technology. If there was anything there, it was little wonder the experts didn’t spot it.

And it wasn’t pleasant work. Some of the remains of the bird had been removed for identification that ultimately showed the unfortunate creature to have been a hawk. But most of the bits and pieces of feather, flesh and bone—many of them burned—still adhered on flat surfaces and in crevasses beyond reach. Dried blood was sprayed widely.

Pace stepped back from the engine to stretch neck and shoulder muscles cramped by the odd angles at which he’d been twisted as he looked over as much of the inside of the engine carcass as he could reach. The intake looked like the mouth of an old man with most of his teeth missing. Many of the fan blades had been shattered by the impacts, first with the hawk, then with the ground. Of the surviving blades, seven were smeared or dotted with blood. The bird probably died on initial impact, a millisecond before its body was chopped to bits. It never knew what hit it.

Sachs stepped back to join him, also rubbing cramped muscles.

“You see anything at all?” Pace asked with some hope but no expectations.

“Not really,” Sachs said. “But I’ve got to tell you, something doesn’t feel right.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it. I expected to find inconsistencies. If I believed this bird strike was real, as our investigators did, nothing would look out of the ordinary. But looking at this mess with doubts in my mind… oh, hell, I don’t know. Something is reinforcing those doubts, but I don’t know what it is.”

“I’ll be damned if I see it, either,” Pace admitted. He turned his back on the engine. “I keep thinking, what should Dave Terrell have seen that night if this was a bird strike? I look at the blood on those blades up there, and I think, shouldn’t he have seen that? But maybe the dried, burned blood looked like dried mud. Who could tell? And now, after the investigators have been all through the engine and cleaned it up some, who knows how much bird gore there was to see? A hawk is a big bird, but its pieces could get lost pretty easily in an engine this size. Maybe Terrell didn’t see anything because the evidence wasn’t all that obvious.”