Airframe (10 page)

A young police officer said, "Ma'am, is your name Singleton?" "Yes," she said.

"You work for Norton Aircraft?" "Yes, I do..." "These gentlemen are Norton Security. They say they're guarding you."

Casey said, "What?"

"Would you like to see their credentials?"

"Yes," she said. "I would."

The policeman shone a flashlight while the two men each held out their wallets for her. She recognized credentials for Norton Security Services.

"We're sorry, ma'am," one of the guards said. "We thought you knew. We've been told to check the house every hour. Is that all right with you?"

"Yes," she said. "It's fine."

The policeman said to her, "Is there anything else?"

She felt embarrassed; she mumbled thanks, and went back inside.

"Make sure you lock that door, ma'am," the guards said politely.

"Yeah, I got 'em parked in front of my house, too," Kenny Burne said. "Scared the hell out of Mary. What's going on, anyway? Labor negotiations aren't for another two years." "I'll call Marder," she said.

"Everybody gets guards," Marder said, on the phone. "The union threatens one of our team, we detail guards. Don't worry about it."

"Did you talk to Brull?" she said.

"Yeah, I straightened him out. But it'll take a while for the word to filter down to the rank and file. Until it does, everybody gets guards."

"Okay," she said.

"This is a precaution," Marder said. "Nothing more."

"Okay," she said.

"Get some sleep," Marder said, and hung up.

53

TUESDAY

GLENDALE

5:45 A.M.

She awoke uneasily, before the alarm went off. She pulled on a bathrobe, walked to the kitchen to turn on the coffee, and looked out the front window. The blue sedan was still parked on the street, the men inside. She considered taking her five-mile run, she needed that exercise to start her day, but decided against it. She knew she shouldn't feel intimidated. But there was no point in taking chances.

She poured a cup of coffee, sat in the living room. Everything looked different to her today.

Yesterday, her little bungalow felt cozy; today, it felt small, defenseless, isolated. She was glad Allison was spending the week with Jim.

Casey had lived through periods of labor tension in the past; she knew that the threats usually came to nothing. But it was wise to be cautious. One of the first lessons Casey had learned at Norton was that the factory floor was a very tough world— tougher even than the assembly line at Ford. Norton was one of the few remaining places where an unskilled high school graduate could earn $80,000 a year, with overtime. Jobs like that were scarce, and getting scarcer. The competition to get those jobs, and to keep them, was fierce. If the union thought the China sale was going to cost jobs, they could very well act ruthlessly to stop it.

She sat with the coffee cup on her lap and realized she dreaded going to the factory. But of course she had to go. Casey pushed the cup away, and went into the bedroom to dress.

When she came outside and got into her Mustang, she saw a second sedan pull up behind the first. As she drove down the street, the first car pulled out, following her.

So Marder had ordered two sets of guards. One to watch her house, and one to follow her.

Things must be worse than she thought.

She drove into the plant with an uncharacteristic feeling of unease. First shift had already started; the parking lots were full, acres and acres of cars. The blue sedan stayed right behind her as Casey pulled up to the security guard at Gate 7. The guard waved her through and, by some unseen signal, allowed the blue sedan to follow directly, without putting the barrier down.

The sedan stayed behind her until she parked at her spot in Administration.

She got out of the car. One of the guards leaned out the window. "Have a nice day, ma'am,"

he said.

"Thanks. I will."

The guard waved. The sedan sped off.

Casey looked around at the huge gray buildings: Building 64 to the south. Building 57 to the east, where the twinjet was built. Building 121, the Paint Shed. The maintenance hangars in a row off to the west, lit by the sun rising over the San Fernando Mountains. It was a familiar 54

landscape; she'd spent five years here. But today she was uncomfortably aware of the vast dimensions, the emptiness of the place in early morning. She saw two secretaries walking into the Administration building. No one else. She felt alone.

She shrugged her shoulders, shaking off her fears. She was being silly, she told herself. It was time to go to work.

NORTON AIRCRAFT

6:34 A.M.

Rob Wong, the young programmer at Norton Digital Information Systems, turned away from the video monitors and said, "Sorry, Casey. We got the flight recorder data—but there's a problem."

She sighed. "Don't tell me."

"Yeah. There is."

She was not really surprised to hear it. Flight data recorders rarely performed correctly. In the press, these failures were explained as the consequence of crash impacts. After an airplane hit the ground at five hundred miles an hour, it seemed reasonable to think that a tape deck might not be working.

But within the aerospace industry, the perception was different. Everyone knew flight data recorders failed at a very high rate, even when the aircraft didn't crash. The reason was that the FAA did not require they be checked before every flight. In practice, they were usually function-checked about once a year. The consequence was predictable: the flight recorders rarely worked.

Everybody knew about the problem: the FAA, the NTSB, the airlines, and the manufacturers.

Norton had conducted a study a few years back, a random check of DFDRs in active service.

Casey had been on that study committee. They'd found that only one recorder in six worked properly.

Why the FAA would mandate the installation of FDRs, without also requiring that they be in working order before each flight, was a frequent subject of late-night discussion in aerospace bars from Seattle to Long Beach. The cynical view was that malfunctioning FDRs were in everybody's interest. In a nation besieged by rabid lawyers and a sensational press, the industry saw little advantage to providing an objective, reliable record of what had gone wrong.

"We're doing the best we can, Casey," Rob Wong said. "But the flight recorder data is anomalous."

"Meaning what?"

"It looks like the number-three bus blew about twenty hours before the incident, so the frame syncs are out on the subsequent data."

"The frame syncs?"

55

"Yeah. See, the FDR records all the parameters in rotation, in data blocks called frames.

You get a reading for, say, airspeed, and then you get another reading four blocks later.

Airspeed readings should be continuous across the frames. If they're not, the frames are out of sync, and we can't build the flight. I'll show you."

He turned to the screen, pressing keys. "Normally, we can take the DFDR and generate the airplane in' tri-axis. There's the plane, ready to go."

A wire-frame image of the Norton N-22 widebody appeared on the screen. As she watched, the wire frame filled in, until it took on the appearance of an actual aircraft in flight.

"Okay, now we feed it your flight recorder data..."

The airplane seemed to ripple. It vanished from the screen, then reappeared. It vanished again, and when it reappeared the left wing was separated from the fuselage. The wing twisted ninety degrees, while the rest of the airplane rolled to the right. Then the tail vanished. The entire plane vanished, reappeared again, vanished again.

"See, the mainframe's trying to draw the aircraft," Rob said, "but it keeps hitting discontinuities.

The wing data doesn't fit the fuse data which doesn't fit the tail data. So it breaks up."

"What do we do?" she said.

"Resync the frames, but that'll take time."

"How long? Marder's on my back."

"It could be a while, Casey. The data's pretty bad. What about the QAR?"

"There isn't one."

"Well, if you're really stuck, I'd take this data to Flight Sims. They have some sophisticated programs there. They may be able to fill in the blanks faster, and tell you what happened."

"But Rob—"

"No promises, Casey," he said. "Not with this data. Sorry."

BLDG 64

6:50 A.M.

Casey met Richman outside Building 64. They walked together in the early-morning light toward the building. Richman yawned.

"You were in Marketing, weren't you?"

"That's right," Richman said. "We sure didn't keep these hours."

"What did you do there?"

"Not much," he said. "Edgarton had the whole department doing a full court press on the China deal. Very hush-hush, no outsiders allowed. They threw me a little legal work on the Iberian negotiation."

"Any travel?"

Richman smirked. "Just personal."

56

"How's that?" she said.

"Well, since Marketing had nothing for me to do, I went skiing."

"Sounds like fun. Where'd you go?" Casey said.

"You ski?" Richman said. "Personally, I think the best skiing outside of Gstaad is Sun Valley.

That's my favorite. You know, if you have to ski in the States."

She realized he hadn't answered her question. By then they had walked through the side door, into Building 64. Casey noticed the workers were openly hostile, the atmosphere distinctly chilly.

"What's this?" Richman said. "We got rabies today?"

"Union thinks we're selling them out on China." 96

"Selling them out? How?"

"They think management's shipping the wing to Shanghai. I asked Marder. He says no."

A Klaxon sounded, echoing through the building. Directly ahead, the big yellow overhead crane cranked to life, and Casey saw the first of the huge crates containing the wing tooling rise five feet up into the air on thick cables. The crate was constructed of reinforced plywood. It was as broad as a house, and probably weighed five tons. A dozen workers walked alongside the crate like pallbearers, hands up, steadying the load as it moved toward one of the side doors and a waiting flatbed truck.

"If Marder says no," Richman said, "then what's the problem?"

"They don't believe him."

"Really? Why not?"

Casey glanced to her left, where other tools were being crated for shipment. The huge blue tools were first packed in foam, then braced internally, and then crated. All that padding and bracing was essential, she knew. Because even though the tools were twenty feet in length, they were calibrated to thousandths of an inch. Transporting them was an art in itself. She looked back at the crate, moving on the hoist.

All the men standing beneath it were gone.

The crate was still moving laterally, ten yards from where they stood.

"Uh-oh," she said.

"What?" Richman said.

She was already pushing him. "Go!" she said, shoving Richman to the right, toward the shelter of the scaffolding that stood beneath a partially assembled fuselage. Richman resisted; he didn't seem to understand that—

"Run!' she shouted. "It's going to break loose!"

He ran. Behind her, Casey heard the creak of rending plywood, and a metallic twang! as the first of the hoist cables snapped, and the giant crate began to slide from its harness.

They had just reached the fuselage scaffolding when she heard another twang! and the crate smashed down onto the concrete floor. Slivers of plywood exploded in all directions, whistling 57

through the air. They were followed by a thunderous whomp! as the crate toppled over on its side. The sound reverberated through the building.

"Jesus Christ," Richman said, turning to look back at her. "What was that!"

"That," she said, "is what we call a job action."

Men were running forward, hazy forms in the cloud of lingering dust There were shouts, and calls for help. The medic alarm sounded, ringing through the building. At the opposite side of the building, she saw Doug Doherty, shaking his head mournfully.

Richman looked over his shoulder, and pulled a four-inch splinter of plywood from the back of his jacket. "Jeez," he said. He took the jacket off, inspected the tear, putting his finger through the hole.

"That was a warning," Casey said. "And they've also wrecked the tool. Now it'll have to be uncrated and rebuilt. This means weeks of delay."

Floor supervisors in white shirts and ties ran forward into the group around the fallen crate.

"What happens now?" Richman said.

"They'll take names and kick ass," Casey said. "But it won't do any good. There'll be another incident tomorrow. There's no way to stop it"

"This was a warning?" Richman said. He put the jacket back on.

'To the IRT," she said. "A clear signal: Watch your backs, watch your heads. We'll see falling wrenches, all sorts of accidents, whenever we're on the floor. We'll have to be careful."

Two workmen broke away from the group around the crate, and started walking toward Casey. One man was burly, wearing jeans and a red-checked work shirt. The other was taller, and wore a baseball cap. The man in the work shirt held a steel drill-press stanchion in his hand, swinging it at his side like a metal club.

"Uh, Casey," Richman said.

"I see them," she said. She was not going to get rattled by a couple of floor goons.

The men walked steadily toward her. Suddenly a supervisor appeared in front of them, holding his clipboard, demanding the men show their badges. The men stopped to talk to the supervisor, glaring at Casey over his head.