Airframe (6 page)

29

"Ever see anybody get killed on one of those planes?"

"Well, no..."

"Seen people thrown from their seats?"

"No..."

"Seen injuries of any kind?"

"No," Richman said, "I haven't"

"That's right," Burne said.

"But surely it is possible that—"

"Possible?" Bume said. "You mean like in court, where anything is possible?'

"No, but—"

"You're a lawyer, right?"

"Yes, I am, but—"

"Well you better get one thing straight, right now. We're not doing law, here. Law is a bunch of bullshit. This is an aircraft. It's a machine. And either something happened to this machine, or it didn't. It's not a matter of opinion. So why don't you shut the fuck up and let us work?"

Richman winced, but didn't back down. "Fine," he said, "but if it wasn't turbulence, there'll be evidence—"

"That's right," Burne said, "the seat-belt sign. Pilot hits turbulence, the first thing he does is flash the seat-belt sign, and make an announcement. Everybody buckles up, and nobody gets hurt. This guy never made an announcement"

"Maybe the sign doesn't work."

"Look up." With a ping, the seat-belt sign came on above their heads.

"Maybe the announcement doesn't—"

Burne's amplified voice said, "Working, working, you better believe it's working." The PA clicked off.

Dan Greene, the chubby operations inspector from the IFSDO, came on board, puffing from the climb up the metal stairs. "Hey, guys, I got your certificate to ferry the plane to Burbank. I figured you want to take the bird to the plant."

"Yeah, we do," Casey said.

"Hey, Dan," Kenny Burne called. "Nice job keeping the flight crew here."

"Fuck you," Greene said. "I had my guy at the gate a minute after the plane arrived. The crew was already gone." He turned to Casey. "They get the stiff out?"

"Not yet, Dan. He's wedged in pretty tight."

"We got the other dead bodies off, and sent the seriously injured to Westside hospitals. Here's the list." He handed a sheet of paper to Casey. "Only a few are still at the 'port infirmary."

Casey said, "How many are still here?"

"Six or seven. Including a couple of stewardesses."

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Casey said, "Can I talk to them?"

"Don't see why not," Greene said.

Casey said, "Van? How much longer?"

"Figure an hour, minimum."

"Okay," she said. "I'm going to take the car."

"And take fucking Clarence Darrow with you," Bume said.

LAX

10:42 A.M.

Driving in the van, Richman gave a long exhale. "Jeez," he said. "Are they always so friendly?"

Casey shrugged. "They're engineers," she said. She was thinking, What did he expect? He must have dealt with engineers at GM. "Emotionally, they're all thirteen years old, stuck at the age just before boys stop playing with toys, because they've discovered girls. They're all still playing with toys. They have poor social skills, dress badly—but they're extremely intelligent and well trained, and they are very arrogant in their way. Outsiders are definitely not allowed to play."

"Especially lawyers ..."

"Anybody. They're like chess masters. They don't waste time with amateurs. And they're under a lot of pressure now."

"You're not an engineer?"

"Me? No. And I'm a woman. And I'm from QA. Three reasons why I don't count Now Marder's made me IRT liaison to the press, which is another strike. The engineers all hate the press."

"Will there be press on this?"

"Probably not," she said. "It's a foreign carrier, foreigners died, the incident didn't occur in the United States. And they don't have visuals. They won't pay any attention."

"But it seems so serious..."

"Serious isn't a criterion," she said. "Last year, there were twenty-five accidents involving substantial airframe damage. Twenty-three occurred overseas. Which ones do you remember?"

Richman frowned.

"The crash in Abu Dhabi that killed fifty-six people?" Casey said. "The crash in Indonesia that killed two hundred? Bogota, that killed a hundred and fifty-three? You remember any of those?"

"No," Richman said, "but wasn't there something in Atlanta?"

"That's right," she said. "A DC-9 in Atlanta. How many people were killed? None. How many were injured? None. Why do you remember it? Because there was film at eleven."

The van left the runway, went through the chain-link gate, and out onto the street. They turned onto Sepulveda, and headed toward the rounded blue contours of the Centinela Hospital.

"Anyway," Casey said. "We have other things to worry about now." She handed Richman a 31

tape recorder, clipped a microphone to his lapel, and told him what they were going to do.

CENTINELA HOSPITAL

12:06 P.M.

"You want to know what happened?" the bearded man said, in an irritable voice. His name was Bennett; he was forty years old, a distributor for Guess jeans; he had gone to Hong Kong to visit the factory; he went four times a year, and always flew Transpacific. Now he was sitting up in bed, in one of the curtained-off infirmary cubicles. His head and right arm were bandaged.

"The plane almost crashed, that's what happened."

"I see," Casey said. "I was wondering if—"

"Who the hell are you people, anyway?' he said.

She handed him her card, introduced herself again.

"Norton Aircraft? What do you have to do with it?"

"We build the airplane, Mr. Bennett."

"That piece of shit? Fuck you, lady." He threw the card back at her. "Get the fuck out of here, both of you."

"Mr. Bennett—"

"Go on, get out! Get out!"

Outside the curtained cubicle, Casey looked at Richman. "I have a way with people," she said ruefully.

Casey went to the next cubicle, and paused. Behind the curtain, she heard Chinese being spoken rapidly, first a woman's voice, and then a man's voice responding.

She decided to move on to the next bed. She opened the curtains and saw a sleeping Chinese woman in a plaster neck brace. A nurse in the room looked up, held her finger to her lips. Casey went on to the next cubicle.

It was one of the flight attendants, a twenty-eight-year-old woman named Kay Liang. She had a large abrasion on her face and neck, the skin raw and red. She sat in a chair by the empty bed, thumbing through a six-month-old issue of Vogue. She explained that she had remained in the hospital to stay with Sha-Yan Hao, another stewardess, who was in the next cubicle.

"She is my cousin," she said. "I'm afraid she was hurt badly. They will not let me be in the room with her." She spoke English well, with a British accent.

When Casey introduced herself, Kay Liang looked confused. "You're from the manufacturer?"

she said. "But a man was just here..."

"What man?"

"A Chinese man. He was here a few minutes ago."

"I don't know about that," Casey said, frowning. "But we'd like to ask you some questions."

"Of course." She put the magazine aside, folded her hands in her lap, composed.

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"How long have you been with Transpacific?" Casey asked.

Three years, Kay Liang answered. And before that, three years with Cathay Pacific. She always flew international routes, she explained, because she had languages, English and French, as well as Chinese.

"And where were you when this incident occurred?"

"In the midcabin galley. Just behind business class." The flight attendants were preparing breakfast, she explained. It was about five A.M., perhaps a few minutes later.

"And what happened?"

"The plane began to climb," she said. "I know that, because I was setting out drinks, and they started to slide off the trolley. Then almost immediately, there was a very steep descent"

"What did you do?"

She could do nothing, she explained, except hold on. The descent was steep. All the food and drinks fell. She thought the descent lasted about ten seconds, but she wasn't sure. Then there was another climb, extremely steep, and then another steep descent. On the second descent, she struck her head against the bulkhead.

"Did you lose consciousness?"

"No. But that was when I scraped my face." She gestured to her injury.

"And what happened next?"

She was not sure, she said. She was confused because the second stewardess in the galley, Miss Jiao, fell against her, and they were both knocked to the floor. "We could hear the cries of the passengers," she said. "And of course we saw them in the aisles."

Afterward, she said, the plane became level again. She was able to get up and help the passengers. The situation was very bad, she said, particularly aft. "Many injured and many bleeding, in pain. The flight attendants were overwhelmed. Also, Miss Hao, my cousin, was not conscious. She had been in the aft galley. This upset the other stewardesses. And three passengers were dead. The situation was very distressing."

"What did you do?"

"I got the emergency medical kits to care for the passengers. Then I went to the cockpit." She wanted to see if the flight crew was all right. "And I wanted to tell them the first officer had been injured in the aft galley."

"The first officer was in the aft galley when the incident occurred?" Casey said Kay Liang blinked. "Of the relief crew, yes."

"Not the flight crew?"

"No. The first officer of the relief crew."

"You had two crews on board?"

"Yes."

"When did the crews change?"

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"Perhaps three hours earlier. During the night."

"What was the name of the injured first officer?" Casey asked.

Again, she hesitated. "I ... I am not sure. I had not flown with the relief crew before."

"I see. And when you went to the cockpit?"

"Captain Chang had the plane in control. The crew was shaken, but not injured. Captain Chang told me that he had requested an emergency landing at Los Angeles."

"You've flown with Captain Chang before?"

"Yes. He is a very good captain. Excellent captain. I like him very much."

Protesting too much, Casey thought. The stewardess, previously calm, now appeared uneasy.

Liang glanced at Casey, then looked away.

"Did there appear to be any damage to the flight deck?" Casey asked.

The stewardess frowned, thinking. "No," she said. "The flight deck appeared normal in every respect."

"Did Captain Chang say anything else?"

"Yes. He said they had an uncommanded slats deployment," she said. "He said that had caused the upset, and the situation was now under control."

Uh-oh, Casey thought. This was not going to make the engineers happy. But Casey was troubled by the stewardess's technical phrasing. She thought it unlikely that a flight attendant would know about uncommanded slats deployment. But perhaps she was just repeating what the captain had said.

"Did Captain Chang say why the slats deployed?"

"He just said, uncommanded slats deployment."

"I see," Casey said. "And do you know where the slats control is located?"

Kay Liang nodded. "It is a lever in the center pillar, between the chairs."

That was correct, Casey thought.

"Did you notice the lever at that time? While you were in the cockpit?"

"Yes. It was in the up and locked position."

Again, Casey noted the terminology. A pilot would say, Up and locked. Would a flight attendant?

"Did he say anything else?"

"He was concerned about the autopilot. He said the autopilot kept trying to cut in, to take over the plane. He said 'I had to fight the autopilot for control.'"

"I see. And what was Captain Chang's manner at this time?"

"He was calm, as always. He is a very good captain."

The girl's eyes flickered nervously. She twisted her hands in her lap. Casey decided to wait for a moment. It was an old interrogator's trick: let the subject break the silence.

"Captain Chang comes from a distinguished family of pilots," Kay Liang said, swallowing. "His 34

father was a pilot during the war, and his son is a pilot as well."

"I see ..."

The flight attendant lapsed into silence again. There was a pause. She looked down at her hands, then back up. "So. Is there anything else I can tell you?"

Outside the cubicle, Richman said, "Isn't this the thing you said couldn't happen?

Uncommanded slats deployment?"

"I didn't say it couldn't happen. I said I didn't believe it was possible on this aircraft. And if it did, it raises more questions than it answers."

"And what about the autopilot—"

'Too early to tell," she said, and went into the next cubicle.

"It must have been around six o'clock," Emily Jansen said, shaking her head. She was a slender woman of thirty, with a purple bruise on her cheek. An infant slept on her lap. Her husband lay in the bed behind her; a metal brace ran from his shoulders to his chin. She said his jaw was broken.

"I had just fed the baby. I was talking to my husband. And then I heard a sound."

"What sort of a sound?"

"A rumbling or a grinding sound. I thought it came from the wing."

Not good, Casey thought.

"So I looked out the window. At the wing."

"Did you see anything unusual?"

"No. It all looked normal. I thought the sound might be coming from the engine, but the engine looked normal, too."

"Where was the sun that morning?"

"On my side. Shining in on my side."

"So was there sunlight on the wing?"

"Yes."

"Reflecting back at you?"

Emily Jansen shook her head. "I don't really remember."

"Was the seat-belt sign on?'

"No. Never."

"Did the captain make an announcement?"