by Michael J. Webb
With impetuous recoil
and jarring sound
Th’ infernal doors, and
on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder, that the
lowest bottom shook
Of Erebus. She opened, but to shut
Excelled her power; the
gates wide open stood
Paradise Lost, John Milton
Chapter 1
The stricken A320
Airbus--originally bound for St. Thomas and now
limping back to Charlotte , North Carolina
Lisa, Ethan’s
wife, sobbed beside him. Across the
aisle his eighteen year-old son, Josh, yelled, “Dad--are we going to crash?”
“No, son,” he
lied. “We-are-not-going-to-crash.”
Megan, his sixteen
year-old daughter, seated next to her brother, screamed, “The engine is on
FIRE!”
Lisa clung to the
seat arms so hard her fingers turned white and whimpered, “We’re all going to
die--just like Greg,” then moaned, “I don’t want to die—”
Ethan reached for
his wife’s hand as a thunderous explosion shook the plane and slammed him
against the window, knocking breath out of him.
He cried out in agony as the palm of his right hand was sliced open by a
jagged metal clasp sticking up on the arm rest between him and Lisa. Blood gushed out of the ugly-looking wound
and splattered the back of the seat in front of him.
The plane banked
hard to the right and the nose suddenly pointed toward the ground, six miles
below, as if the commercial airliner was being plucked from the cloudless,
crystal blue heavens by a giant unseen hand.
Ethan glanced toward the rear of the aircraft. A gaping hole replaced the emergency
exit. Loose debris disappeared violently
out of the plane—and there were at least
two rows of seats missing!
Swinging his gaze
back to the First Class Cabin, Ethan noticed that ice crystals now clung to the
windows. His ears popped as oxygen masks
dropped from overhead. Shivering, he
reached for the oxygen mask dangling in front of him like a puppet on a string
and struggled to place it over his mouth and nose. He took several deep breaths, ignoring his
bleeding hand, then yelled out to his family, “Put your masks on!”
In the next
instant, he was pressed so hard into his seat it seemed as if he weighed four
to five times his normal weight. Black
spots danced before his eyes and he fought for breath.
All he could think
about was that he had failed his family—that he had not been able to save
them. He cried out in desperation, “GOD
HELP US—”
Moments later, a
flash of blinding white light enveloped him as a blast of fiery heat washed
over him.
Then everything
went black.
Sam Weaver, lying
on a towel in the hot sand, thirty feet from the edge of the blue-green ocean,
daydreamed about what it might be like to lead a normal life, when her pager
went off.
She opened her
eyes and fought rising resentment.
It was her first
vacation in over eighteen months. Her
boss, E. “Mac” Macready--the Chief of the Major Investigations Division of the
National Transportation Safety Board, or the AS-10 in Board nomenclature had
promised he’d page her only if it was absolutely necessary.
She stared at her
bright pink beach bag, one that matched her swimsuit, for several
seconds, tempted to ignore the
pager. Then she remembered that when
she’d signed up to be an investigator for the NTSB she’d literally signed the
rights to her life away. She sat up,
brushed several errant strands of thick black hair from off her face, and
reached inside the bag.
Her heart beat
rapidly as she read the text: Call
Mac immediately. Major accident
involving Quest Airways A320 your neck of the woods. Go Team notified.
No matter how
frustrated she got with the government bureaucracy, her pulse always quickened
whenever she received a message like this.
Some of her friends back in DC found her reaction a bit gruesome, but
her dad understood. “The thrill of
figuring out complex problems
others find too challenging, or too
painful, to deal with is in your blood, Sam,” he’d told her on more than one
occasion. “You can’t help yourself. You love Gordian knots.”
She found her cell
phone. When she reached Mac he said,
“Sorry to interrupt your down-time. I
know I promised not to call, but this one is big--and bad.”
“Tell me—”
He did, and then
finished by saying, “I’ve already spoken with Ted, Marissa, Tony--and
Frank. All of them but Frank are on
their way to Hanger Six at Reagan International.”
Ted Anson was the
human performance specialist, while Marissa Chen was highly regarded as one of
the world’s foremost experts on cockpit and flight data recorders. Tony North was a top notch metallurgist. Frank Bacon had two Ph.D.’s and was the
NTSB’s expert on the A320.
Frank was obsessed
with planes manufactured by the French consortium. He blamed Airbus for the downsizing that cost
him his high-paying job at Boeing. It
was widely known he’d compiled a detailed and extensive computerized list of
all suspicious incidents resulting in the crash of planes manufactured by
Boeing’s chief competitor. When it came
to fatal crashes involving Airbus, Frank was like a detective tracking down a
serial killer he’d pursued for years in his spare time.
“Frank is in Dallas Command Center
“Me?” Was it finally time?
“Yeah--you.”
“But--but,” she
stammered.
“Well, well,
well. I’ve always wondered what it would
take for the unflappable Sam Weaver to be at a loss for words.”
“I want it
official--on the record.”
“Okay. You’re the Investigator-in-Charge. After five years of working with you, I know
you don’t care about the title, or need the pay raise. You just want to be in control of your own
investigations. I know the
feeling.”
Sam took two deep
breaths and pulled a notepad out of her bag.
“Who’s the Regional on the ground in Georgia
“Ed Landers. He’s the senior IIC out of Atlanta
“Which translates,
he’s smart, soft-spoken, and doesn’t play politics.”
“Not everyone in
government service subscribes to the ‘dog-eat-dog’ mentality, Sam.”
“You could have
fooled me.”
Mac snorted and
continued. “Ed is already on his
way. He’ll set up a perimeter, establish
security, and get the investigation started.
He’ll also coordinate with local authorities, including police and
firefighters, and inform the media the investigation is under our
jurisdiction.”
Sam scribbled on
her notepad as Mac talked. “Am I flying
on one of the Board’s planes?
Or going commercial?”
“The Citation
is in Fort Lauderdale
“I’ll be ready.”
“One more thing,
Sam. Watch your back. Frank has been looking for an excuse to make
life miserable for you--”
“I can handle
Frank,” she retorted. Her male
counterparts at the safety board tended to behave with the macho air of men in
a locker room. Frank was one of the
biggest proponents of the pervasive attitude.
“I know you can,
Sam. Frank has more time with the Board,
but you have the kind of moxie, and the people skills, it takes to handle all
the egos involved. You’ve worked hard
for this slot--you deserve it.”
Mac was in rare form. He’d given her both a promotion and a
compliment within a couple of minutes.
“What about the ‘flyaway’?” She
referred to one of two large standby suitcases used by the Board for
investigations. Each contained a video
camera and tape, a laptop computer, a printer, a variety of charging devices,
film, administrative supplies, as well as several copies of the ubiquitous
investigator’s manual. Both of the
flyaways also had programmable combination locks.
“You’ll have everything you need
by nine a.m. tomorrow.” He gave her the
combination he’d programmed in.
“Thanks, Mac. For everything--” she said as she stood up,
grabbed her towel and her bag, then headed at a run for her car.
Michael J. Webb graduated summa cum laude from the University of Florida and obtained his J.
D. at the same university. Over the past
forty years he has travelled the world in search of adventure.
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