“Roger,” Captain Morrisey responded. His eyes were gritty and his back hurt like hell despite the fact he'd managed to get a few hours sleep on the last leg of the
flight from Shannon. Providing the company brass didn't want a quick turnaround he'd be okay by tomorrow for the return flight. Regular commercial pilots did not fly under the same restrictions as airline jockeys. But if they wanted to return to Moscow sooner, a new crew would have to be brought from Portland.
“I'd better get back and check my charges,” Lois Milliken, the second attendant said, smiling. She had come to Guerin almost directly out of Northwest's flight-attendant school and had had less than three months experience working with the general public. She liked this a lot better.
“Find out if we're heading back today,” Morrisey said. “I'd like at least twenty-four hours.”
“Roger that,” co-pilot Joe Tobias said. He looked just as tired as Morrisey.
“Will do, Captain,” Lois said. “I've got some shopping to do if we get the time.”
Morrisey and Tobias exchanged glances and grinned. “We'll be on the ground in three minutes,” the captain said.
“Yes, sir,” Lois said, and she left the flight deck.
“Shopping,” Tobias said, and he chuckled.
Â
The encoding solution had come up more than an hour ago, but the simulated heat-sensor circuit had not responded the way Zerkel thought it would. Something was missing. Something in the module had definitely switched to the on mode. There was a tone on the output line, but that signal was being shunted to ground by a capacitive circuit tuned to that frequency. Beyond that was a second circuit that Zerkel realized almost immediately would pass only a certain frequency or combination of frequencies. What threw him off at first was the extremely low theoretical values he was coming up with.
They were in the three thousand to eight thousand cycles-per-second range.
Within the audio range, the thought suddenly occurred to him. Within the range of a human voice.
Zerkel brought up a five-thousand-cycle tone and entered it into the simulator program. Immediately a sharp spike showed up on the output line. A couple of volts, at perhaps 150 milliamps or so.
The encoding sequence was merely the key used to cock the mechanism, while the low-frequency tone provided the actual firing pulse.
His brother Glen, who'd gone downstairs a few minutes ago for some breakfast, had left his walkie-talkie behind. Reid had insisted they all keep in constant touch. It was a good idea.
He pried the back cover off the walkie-talkie, and after a quick examination found the modulation section where the voice frequencies were added to the transmitter's broadcast frequency. He clipped a wire to the input section and led it to the input section of his breadboard transmitter.
A specially built walkie-talkie would be the way to go if you wanted to bring down one airplane at a time. First an encoding tone would be transmitted that would cock the heat-sensor unit, and secondly the operator or terrorist or whatever you wanted to call him would say something into the microphone.
“Boom.”
A spike showed up on the heat sensor's output line.
Â
“What the hell was that?” Captain Morrisey shouted. They were lined up for their final approach to landing, wheels down, flaps at twenty degrees.
“It's number one engine, Captain,” Tobias screamed. “It's going.”
The aircraft was listing sharply to port but there was nothing Morrisey could do about it. Alarms flashed and buzzed all across the panel and overhead.
It was the port engine. The entire engine was gone, flying away in piece! It had swallowed a blade. Something.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday,” Tobias shouted into the radio.
It was no use, they were well past a ninety-degree list
to port now, the end of the runway frighteningly close, and they were still turning over.
It was just like the American Airlines flight out of Chicago in '90, Captain Morrisey thought.
The instant before they hit he said, “Fuck it!” They were the last words on the cockpit voice recorder.
Â
Glen Zerkel came running up the stairs, Reid and Mueller pounding right after him. They'd been in the kitchen having breakfast when they saw the crash.
Louis Zerkel, his hair flying, his T-shirt untucked and dirty, his eyes wild, danced around the room, hooting and singing. In his left hand he held a walkie-talkie, its back off, wires trailing from its insides, and with his right he was pointing toward the ceiling.
“It worked!” he cried. “Did I tell you it would work? It did! It worked!”
“An airplane just crashed at the end of the runway,” Glen Zerkel said in awe. “It fell over and crashed in a ball of flame.”
Louis Zerkel stopped in his tracks, a large grin on his face. His brother and the others were looking at him. Waiting for him to say something. He shrugged.
“Well, what do you think about that?”
M
inister Matushin put down the car phone, his face grave. “I'm afraid I have some very bad news for you, Mr. Kennedy.”
The day had been gloomy. It was 5:00 and starting to snow as they returned to Moscow from touring the wing-panel factory site at Domodedovo Airport. Kennedy had been having premonitions of disaster all afternoon. “What is it?” he asked.
“You are to call Chris Bradenton as soon as you get to the hotel. Another five minutes. Do you know this name?”
“He's our director of flight operations.”
“He's on his way to Washington. The hotel will help get through to him. My staff is setting it up for you now.”
“Chris, on his way to Washington?” Kennedy said. “Why? What's happened?” He had an ugly feeling.
“Your company airplane crashed on landing at Dulles Airport a little more than an hour ago,” the minister said. He and Kennedy rode in the back seat of the minister's Zil limousine. The others followed in an Intourist bus. “Apparently there is little chance that anyone survived. There was fire.”
Kennedy slumped back in the seat, stunned. He felt as bad as he had in 1986 when he learned that the space shuttle
Challenger
had gone down with all her crew. His gut was hollow, and he found it difficult to concentrate. Such a thing was impossible to swallow in one lump. The P522 was the safest airplane that had ever flown. In her eleven-year history she'd only been involved in one fatal crash, the American Airlines accident in 1990. There'd been other minor incidents, but they were just thatânothing to be overly concerned about, although Guerin took even the smallest problems seriously.
“I'm sorry, Mr. Kennedy, I understand how you must feel,” Minister Matushin said. “But let me assure you that this accident in no way diminishes our faith in your company and our desire to proceed with the project.”
Kennedy looked at him. Soderstrom was gone. Despite the CFO's dour, pessimistic disposition and outlook, Guerin Airplane Company had come to depend on his counsel. Vasilanti had called him the “corporation's conscience.” And the others: Siegel, Dominick Grant, the aircrew. It was impossible to believe they were gone.
“An aircraft and crew will be made available immediately to fly you and your people anywhere you need to go. We understand and sympathize. Completely.”
Kennedy had made tough decisions all his life. As a
pilot and then as an astronaut when timing was often critical, his decisions had to be made instantly. But now the consequences of his judgment were more far reaching. Eighty thousand people worked for Guerin Airplane Company. Their futures rode on the future of the company, which rode on the managerial skills of its executives, from Vasilanti down. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, the old man was fond of saying. Either manage or get the hell out of the way. Pearls of the business. “This is not an industry of fainthearted namby-pambies,” Vasilanti said when he hired him. “So if you don't think you can handle it, son, let's get it on the table now and spare us all the grief later.”
“Simply tragic,” the Russian said. “No doubt these men were indispensable to your company. They will have to be replaced, of course, and new people brought into the talks. Which will take time, naturally. As will your government's investigation of the crash, and your own company study ⦠all of it, such a waste. But we will be patient here in Moscow, no matter how long the delay. We know about these things.”
Christ, Kennedy thought. He took a deep breath to clear the pressure in his chest and made his decision. He felt terrible, but there was nothing else he could do.
“Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Mr. Minister,” he said, pulling himself together. “I'll need to inform my staff, and we'll need a conference room in the hotel with eight or ten reliable telephone lines, two or three competent bilingual operators, and at least three fax machines. Can that be arranged with a minimum of delay?”
“Of course,” Minister Matushin said. “You're not returning to Washington?”
“I don't know yet. If there's something for us to do there, if we're needed, then we'll go. Otherwise we'll stay to continue our negotiations.”
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Kennedy, but your people were to meet with State Department officials about loan guarantees.”
“We'll send a new team.”
They raced across the river and passed Red Square, the hotel just ahead. Minister Matushin eyed Kennedy with respect. “Life goes on,” he said.
“Yes,” Kennedy replied absently, his mind already ranging to the enormous problems Guerin faced because of the accident and to the distasteful job facing him of telling the others, following in the bus, what had happened.
Â
Louis Zerkel locked himself in the front bedroom and sat cross-legged on the floor. Reid had been at him all morning, and now it was time to think about what was wanted of him. For a while he had watched all the activity over at the airport from an upstairs window. Ambulances and fire trucks and helicopters had streamed into the crash area just short of the main runway. Two hours after the P522 had gone down the stench of burned kerojet, baked metal, scorched rubber, and incinerated plastics and foams still lingered on the air. No one had survived that crash.
Zerkel knew that he was strange, probably even crazy. At this moment he wanted to talk to Dr. Shepard more than he'd ever wanted anything. All of his life he had been a law-abiding citizen. He never got traffic tickets, he always paid his taxes on timeâand never cheated, even if it would have been ridiculously easy for himânor had he ever stolen from anybody or lied. On the occasions he went with a prostitute he told himself that he really wasn't breaking any law. It was a matter of geography. If he were in Amsterdam, or Hamburg, or even Nevada the act would be perfectly legal. Simple.
But people had died in that crash, and he had made it happen. He was a murderer. He ran his fingers through his long, unruly hair. Something very odd had been done to him in the past forty-eight hours. Something had changed him from what he had been in California.
In California he had been content to study world conspiracies. Here he had become part of one. He had
no illusions now about Edward R. Reid and the othersâespecially the German. They had their agendas, which they thought they were hiding from him, but he'd seen through their bullshit almost from the beginning. Or, certainly he'd realized what they were up to this morning after the crash when they'd come rushing up to see what he'd done.
Fact is, he didn't think he minded awfully much being a killer. It didn't bother him as he thought it should. It even fit quite well. He felt a sense of power, of brute strength over all the sonsabitches who'd ever done a double take in his direction. Hey, geek, what' cha think you're doing?
Zerkel grinned.
Reid hated the Japanese because his kind needed to hate something, but his love of making money was even stronger. He wanted to bring Guerin airplanes crashing to the ground and blame the Japanese government for doing it. The company would slide toward bankruptcy, but Washington would block the Japanese from buying stock, so it would be up to Americans such as Edward R. Reid to help bail the company out. There would be hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.
Zerkel didn't mind. The question was how it could be done, and he had already begun thinking about it. One problem would be making sure that the blame ended up squarely in the laps of the Japs. InterTech was the key. The company was owned and directed by Tokyo. If InterTech could be blamed, the guilt would transmit directly to Japan.
Another problem was bringing down the airplanes. There was going to be a big investigation into this morning's accident. If another Guerin airplane went down soon, the entire fleet might be grounded. Two accidents might be suspicious, but they'd still be classified as accidents. If a lot of Guerin airplanes went down all at once, or all on the same day, no one would believe the crashes were coincidental. There would be tens of millions of dollars in property damage and hundreds if
not thousands of lives lost. The act of terrorism would be monstrous, beyond belief. If the blame could be placed on the Japanese, it would be the end for them. The consequences would be even worse than losing the war.
There were at least two other wrinkles Zerkel could see. The first was his absence from InterTech. Someone bright out there could very well be putting together this morning's crash with his disappearance. The next time he went back into the company's computers he was going to have to be extra careful of traps.
He had to smile thinking about it. A lot of sharp people worked for InterTech, but he was smarter than all of them. Thinking about the second wrinkle, however, wiped the smile off his face.
Bruno Mueller meant to kill him as soon as he'd outlived his usefulness. It was up to Zerkel to make sure that didn't happen.
Â
Kennedy and his staff used a conference room across the broad corridor from the Rossiya's three-thousand-seat concert hall. Phone lines and fax machines had been set up for them within the hour, but the news about the crash still hadn't sunk in. Soderstrom and the others were dead. The ones who'd been left behind felt isolated, cut off from the rest of the world. And they felt lucky and guilty because of it. Yet they had work to do, and they got to it.
Vasilanti and Bradenton were on a company jet en-route to Washington, D.C., when Kennedy finally made contact with them. “We got the news about an hour ago.”
“Something's goddamned fishy, David,” Vasilanti shouted. “It was the same engine as '90. Has George seen the specs?”
Kennedy glanced at Socrates standing at one of the fax machines. “I think they're coming in now,” he told the old man. “What happened, Al? We haven't been able to get through to the NTSB, so we're still in the dark.”
“The port engine disintegrated on the approach to landing. It's going to be just like the American Airlines
crash. We'll find that the engine swallowed a blade and fell apart. A severe overheat.”
“We'll take another look at the sensing system.”
“You're damned right we will, but that won't turn out to be the problem. It's in the engine. I can feel it in my gut.”
“Are you talking about the ceramics?” Kennedy asked. The Rolls-Royce engine used a carbon-ceramic composition for some of its turbine blades. They were lighter than steel and supposedly withstood much higher G forces and temperatures. After the crash in '90, Rolls reverted to titanium blades, but two years ago it switched to an improved ceramic composition. All of Guerin's P422s and P522s had been retrofitted.
“That's right. O'Toole is on the Concorde from London. I want you and George here. Will the Russians fly you, or should I send one of ours?”
“Al, were there any survivors?”
“No,” Vasilanti said, heavily. He sounded like an old man suddenly.
“Then for now I think you should leave the crash investigation to the NTSB and to our engineers. George is setting up a go-team. There's nothing we can do for Jeff and the others.”
“Except make goddamned sure it doesn't happen again,” the CEO retorted.
“Our technical guys will do that. Right now you need to get Maggie Drewd and Tony Glick out to Washington.” Margaret Drewd was Guerin's assistant chief financial officer, and Anthony Glick had been Howard Siegel's number two.
“They're on the plane with me. What have you got in mind, David?”
“I was sending Jeff and the others to Washington to talk to State about loan guarantees for our deal. Maggie and Tony can take over their respective departmental loads for now. But you're going to have to stand in for Dominick.”
“You're staying there?”
“Until we can get a reading from State. Once that's in place, the deal will be set and I can come home.”
Vasilanti took a moment to reply. When he did, his tone was guarded. “What are the Russians saying?”
“They sympathize, but Aviation Minister Viktor Matushin says our deal will not be affected. They want this just as badly as we do. They've even offered us a former tank factory and administration building at Domodedovo Airport. There's a rail spur already in place out to one of the taxiways where we can load and unload. It looks good.”
Again Vasilanti hesitated. “I'll have to talk to Jeff's wife, and the others.”
“Sorry, Al. I know it's something that I should be doing, but we're at a crucial point here. McGarvey has been very busy.”
“I understand,” the old man said. “This is a bad time for us.”
“It is. But if we can get past this one, I think we'll be okay.”
“Until the next time,” Vasilanti said, the heaviness back in his voice. It was as if he personally was responsible for Guerin airplanes staying airborne and safe. It gave Kennedy an odd feeling trying to comfort the CEO. It'd always been the other way around.