As Luck Would Have It (37 page)

I needed to ask the questions and try to learn the truth.  I could not save Henry or any of the other
s, but I felt that I should at least do this for them; find out what might have gone wrong on our flight.  They deserved that from me; Henry’s parents ought to have more than this, believing in some
obscene
version of a phantom terrorist; no, I was determined to find out something that might help them get beyond all of this and
maybe begin living some sort of normal life again.

I read everything that I could get my hands on regarding the demise of flight 1123 and I talked to every person I could identify who was in any way connected to it and was willing to talk
.
  Most would have probably refused to discuss it at all, but once I identified myself as Clifford Andrews, the
lone
survivor, their
curiosity was certainly aroused.
  I was such an anomaly, my story so miraculous, my luck so undeniable; they were as interest
ed
in talking to me as I was to them.  So
over the next several weeks, I was to learn a great deal about what I had actually survived from, what makes airplanes fly and more importantly, what causes them unexpectedly not to.  But the majority of what I learned ha
d
little to do with either airplanes or flying and more to do with fear.  Fear of our neighbors, fear of ourselves
,
and fear of the truth.

From the start, there was little evidence of an onboard explosion.  The explanation for the theory was that residues were found inside the cabin itself of an explosive material, but these were only traces and could not be specifically identified.  Because the plane was submerged in water, chemical analysis of what was actually in the plane at the time of the incident was tenuous at best.  At least one expert believed that the explosive material was most likely jet fuel, as opposed to some substance brought onto the plane by a passenger.

The NTSB had also concluded that the burn patter
n
s
in
the area surrounding the starboard engine were consistent with a sudden burst of heat, presumably f
rom an
explosion, as opposed to the engine catching on fire and getting hotter
a
s it consumed more fuel.  However, the patter
n
s of the decomposition and scorching on the fuselage would indicate that
there
was a much greater concentration of heat
on
its outer surfaces, with minimal evidence of burning on any interior portions of the plane; none of the seats were burned for example.  None of the bodies anywhere on the plane were burned, nor did any of the passengers seated in or close to rows 19 and 20
show any physical evidence of an explosion, no limbs torn off, no unusual disfigurement, no more or less broken up than those sitting furthest away.  Despite what was officially reported, others concluded that the physical evidence pointed more to a fire rather than an abrupt explosion, and that its origin was outside of the airplane, rather than inside.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that there was an explosion inside the plane, even if we have no reason to believe there was.  Who would have done such a thing and why?  Each of the passengers were carefully evaluated following the crash, and none had any connection to any terrorist group, none with even the most remote history, and none with anything other than rather minor clashes with the law, the one notable exception among the dead being a woman who had allegedly once stabbed her husband with a steak knife after he had knocked out two of her teeth and broken her jaw.  By 2020, the scanners used at the screening areas contained complete digital records of every bag and every person scanned.  I’d learned that the recording
s
were reviewed by various experts, all of whom were in agreement that there was no breach of security evident; no liquids got through unaccounted for, no unusual wires, timers, chemicals, no unidentifiable substances of any sort could be found after the fact, meaning that in all probability, nobody had brought a bomb on
to
the plane, nor any materials that might be used to construct one.

All of the employees that were anywhere near the plane we checked as well, and all were eliminated as suspects, except for one.  Yes, there was a suspect, though not a credible one.  A Somali national named Ahmad Kalani, who had been living in the United States since his parents escaped the chaos there in 2004, had been detained for questioning.  Mr. Kalani was a 35
-
year
-
old airplane mechanic who had been trained while serving in the U.S. Air Force for six years.

And what was his connection to any terrorist organization?  A distant cousin had been held for questioning in New Jersey following the 9/11 attacks, but was subsequently released and not charged.  According to both Mr. Kalani and his wife, neither had ever
met
the cousin.  But Mr. Kalani had been working at O’Hare on December 8
th
and had access to several aircraft, the only problem being that no one could recall seeing him anywhere near the A300 since its landing in Chicago the prior evening.

T
h
ough he was still being detained under a bizarre and arcane law that had been enacted in 2017, ostensibly to protect Americans from people like Mr. Kalani who were suspected of specific acts of terror against the United States, he was not a real suspect at all, but rather a
scapegoat
. 
He no more wanted to see the plane go down than you or I did.  I attempted to visit with Mr. Kalani to form my own opinion of him as a potential mass murderer, but the same law that allowed for prisoners to be detained absent an indictment also prohibited them from receiving visitors. 
That
meant
any
visitors; Mr. Kalani had not see
n
his wife, nor his two young children in over four months.

The war in Afghanistan had dragged on for nearly two decades and had cost the country untold billions of dollars and thousands of young lives.  Apathy had begun to give way to anger in some places and protests had sprung up in major cities against the military insurgencies, as well as our continued entanglement there.  Now that Iraq had been more or less neutralized as a regional power, though the violence there continued unabated, the United States had its hands full with the tyrannical and fanatic regime
s
in Iran
and other places
. 
The Arab Spring protests from ten years earlier had also c
ontributed to the destabilization of the region and for now at least, the prospect of total chaos was a genuine fear, even if most of
our other ones were not.

Americans were
reeling at home as well, with gas prices soaring to over $7.00 per gallon in places like Los Angeles.  Heating the house was more of a concern for many people than buying Christmas presents or going
out to eat.
  We’ve already discussed the increasing violence in our cities and the mistrust of one another, the indifference towards
and
the hostile treatment of minorities
,
and the mood of isolation that hung over
our heads like an ugly cloud.  The common dominator to many of these problems and the most expedient means of dealing with the converging force they represented was to blame someone; a common enemy, someone who wanted to destroy us, the terrorists of course.  From one point of view the failure of any concrete terrorist threat to actually materialize in nearly 20 years was a big problem.  It basically might come down to just this; how can you continue to try to explain away the war on terror if
there are no terrorists attacks on our own soil?

Various theories surfaced concerning what brought down flight 1123, none of them too vigorously pursued.  Two witnesses on the rescue sh
i
p had reported seeing a bright object in the sky near the plane moments before they say it began its descent.  Both of these men were discredited; one was a Canadian citizen working on the cargo ship illegally, the other gentleman was a 69
-
year
-
old boiler room worker with admittedly poor eyesight, though he swore he always wore his eyeglasses while working and was in fact wearing them and could see quite clearly when he came on deck for a cigarette break no more than five minutes before witnessing the crash.

The most plausible theory was either ignored or covered up.  Prior to the plane leaving Atlanta for Chicago on December 7
th
, a mechanic named Ian Sanderson claimed to have noted problems with the starboard engine; one of the fuel lines showed signs of cracking and wear, and also that a fuel control regulator appeared to have malfunctioned, resulting in some scorching to the exhaust pipe from an associated engine flare-up.  While not
necessarily
indicative of a serious problem
, either one of them alone should have grounded the aircraft at least until a more thorough
inspection
could be
completed.  Mysteriously, when the mechanic’s manifests were produced, the notations that Mr. Sanderson claimed to have made were absent and the log had been initialed by a different mechanic, Johnnie Cutler.  I did manage to speak to poor Ian; he had been fired for alleged incompetence, despite having what he
claimed
was an excellent performance record for the past nine years.
  I never had the opportunity to interview Mr. Cutler.  After numerous unsuccessful attempts to locate him, I concluded that either he had been effectively silenced somehow, or more likely did not actually exist.

I’m not claiming in any way to be an aviation expert, nor am I advocating any
specific
conspiracy theor
y
.  I don’t hate the government, nor am I accusing them of
any specific
cover up.  I am not asserting that any particular hypothesis should be accepted or ignored.  I don’t know what happened, but I would like to know and believe that I am entitled to know.  But one thing we all do know is that I never will.  Henry’s parents and the others never will either.

My frustrations over this continued for quite some time.  For whatever reasons, the truth about the crash I had
essentially
walked away
from
, or more accurately swam away from was not being pursued, and the American people along with the rest of the world were being lied to ab
out it.  Despite my displeasure
with these realities, based on our prior discussion concerning lies, it would not only be appropriate, but I think now mandatory that we
should consider both the type and degree of this lie.  Obviously, this was a real lie, not a white lie; the elements of deception and harm clearly present.  The entire world was deceived, and besides Mr. Kalani and Mr. Sanderson, who were the most clearly harmed, potentially many, many more were indirectly harmed, including possibly any member of the Islamic faith, not to mention the surviving loved one
s
and others who knew those that were lost in the tragedy and whose suffering may have been exacerbated because they were lied to.  Then there is me; I don’t fit into any of the above mentioned categories.  How have you been harmed Clifford, you may be asking yourself after hearing all of this, and the truth is, I don’t know exactly.

But I do know this.  I
f the ends do in fact justify the means, then perhaps this lie falls more to the left on the scale of lies than you might have initially thought; that is to say that this may seem like a gigantic lie at first, far to the right, but perhaps for the good of Americans who might stop protesting, who might back their government rather than revolt, who might be less inclined to cheat on their taxes, be less prone to violence, willing to work harder,
or
feel satisfaction in their lives instead of detachment; then perhaps the lie would have served its purpose, even if the price
paid was a steep one,
even if we still have to live
with
fear
. 
For
even
if he exists solely
our imagination
s;
the terrorist that we are afraid of may be good for us in the end.

After we returned from Las Vegas, things between Michelle and me continued to get better.  By the following summer we had been seeing each other for
three
years, and despite the fact that she initially was quite clear in her aversion to the concept of marriage, I believed that given how our relationship had progressed, she might change her mind at some point. 
We were very close now and I’m sure that neither of us doubted that our love for each other could maintain itself for as long as at least one of us managed to live. 
It's not that I had to be married exactly; it seemed I'd managed reasonably well by myself for 61 years.  But the idea of commitment with someone like Michelle seemed to become more and more appealing as time passed.  I
remember her commenting once
that marriage
is
best suited
for
needy people, which neither of us
were
, but still I hoped I might convince her to see the value of the lifetime promise of love and support.