that was fused to the ring finger, a relatively unique gold band. There was some other tissue as well. With that we identified—”
“Fingerprints?”
“No, those were burned off. But his father’s still alive, so the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory was able to confirm it was Blane’s tissue through a DNA match with a blood sample that his dad supplied.”
“Reliable?”
“A hundred percent. Then the remains went to the toxicologists. There were minute amounts of ethanol in both Blane and Santorelli, but that was just the consequence of putrefaction. Blane’s partial hand was in those woods more than seventy-two hours before we found it. Santorelli’s remains — four days. Some ethanol related to tissue decay was to be expected. But otherwise, they both passed all the toxicologicals. They were clean and sober.”
Joe tried to reconcile the words on the transcript with the toxicological findings. He couldn’t.
He said, “What’re the other possibilities? A stroke?”
“No, it just didn’t sound that way on the tape I listened to,” Barbara said. “Blane speaks clearly, with no slurring of the voice whatsoever. And although what he’s saying is damn bizarre, it’s nevertheless coherent — no transposition of words, no substitution of inappropriate words.”
Frustrated, Joe said, “Then what the hell? A nervous breakdown, psychotic episode?”
Barbara’s frustration was no less than Joe’s: “But where the hell did it come from? Captain Delroy Michael Blane was the most rock-solid psychological specimen you’d ever want to meet. Totally stable guy.”
“Not totally.”
“Totally stable guy,” she insisted. “Passed all the company psychological exams. Loyal family man. Faithful husband. A Mormon, active in his church. No drinking, no drugs, no gambling. Joe, you can’t find
Lightning glimmered. Wheels of rolling thunder clattered along steel rails in the high east.
Pointing to the transcript, Barbara showed Joe where the 747 made the first sudden three-degree heading change, nose right, which precipitated a yaw. “At that point, Santorelli was groaning but not fully conscious yet. And just before the maneuver, Captain Blane said, ‘This is fun.’ There are these other sounds on the tape — here, the rattle and clink of small loose objects being flung around by the sudden lateral acceleration.”
Joe couldn’t take his eyes off those words.
Barbara turned the page for him. “Three seconds later, the aircraft made another violent heading change, of four degrees, nose left. In addition to the previous clatter, there were now sounds from the aircraft — a thump and a low shuddery noise. And Captain Blane is laughing.”
“Laughing,” Joe said with incomprehension. “He was going to go down with them, and he was laughing?”
“It wasn’t anything you’d think of as a
Eight seconds after the first yawing incident, there was another abrupt heading change of three degrees, nose left, followed just two seconds later by a severe shift of seven degrees, nose right. Blane laughed as he executed the first maneuver and, with the second, said,
“This is where the starboard wing lifted, forcing the port wing down,” Barbara said. “In twenty-two seconds the craft was banking at a hundred and forty-six degrees, with a downward nose pitch of eighty-four degrees.”
“They were finished.”
“It was deep trouble but not hopeless. There was still a chance they might have pulled out of it. Remember, they were above twenty thousand feet. Room for recovery.”
Because he had never read about the crash or watched television reports of it, Joe had always pictured fire in the aircraft and smoke filling the cabin. A short while ago, when he had realized that the passengers were spared that particular terror, he’d hoped that the long journey down had been less terrifying than the imaginary plunge that he experienced in some of his anxiety attacks. Now, however, he wondered which would have been worse: the gush of smoke and the instant recognition of impending doom that would have come with it — or clean air and the hideously attenuated false hope of a last-minute correction, salvation.
The transcript indicated the sounding of alarms in the cockpit. An altitude alert tone. A recorded voice repeatedly warning
Joe asked, “What’s this reference to the ‘stick-shaker alarm’?”
“It makes a loud rattling, a scary sound nobody’s going to overlook, warning the pilots that the plane has lost lift. They’re going into a stall.”
Gripped in the fist of fate punching toward the earth, First Officer Victor Santorelli abruptly stopped mumbling. He regained consciousness. Perhaps he saw clouds whipping past the windshield. Or perhaps the 747 was already below the high overcast, affording him a ghostly panorama of onrushing Colorado landscape, faintly luminous in shades of gray from dusty pearl to charcoal, with the golden glow of Pueblo scintillant to the south. Or maybe the cacophony of alarms and the radical data flashing on the six big display screens told him in an instant all that he needed to know. He had said,
“His voice was wet and nasal,” Barbara said, “which might have meant that Blane broke his nose.”
Even reading the transcript, Joe could hear Santorelli’s terror and his frantic determination to survive.
SANTORELLI: Oh, Jesus. No, Jesus, no.
BLANE: (laughter) Whoooaaa. Here we go, Dr. Ramlock. Dr. Blom, here we go.
SANTORELLI: Pull!
BLANE: (laughter) Whoooaaa. (laughter) Are we recording?
SANTORELLI: Pull up!
SANTORELLI: Shit, shit!
BLANE: Are we recording?
Baffled, Joe said, “Why does he keep asking about it being recorded?”
Barbara shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“He’s a pilot for how long?”
“Over twenty years.”
“He’d know the cockpit-voice recorder is always working. Right?”
“He should know. Yeah. But he’s not exactly in his right mind, is he?”
Joe read the final words of the two men.
SANTORELLI: Pull!
BLANE: Oh, wow.
SANTORELLI: Mother of God…
BLANE: Oh, yeah.
SANTORELLI: No.
BLANE: (child-like excitement) Oh, yeah.
SANTORELLI: Susan.
BLANE: Now. Look.
BLANE: Cool.
Wind swept the meadow grass. The sky was swollen with a waiting deluge. Nature was in a cleansing mood.
Joe folded the three sheets of paper. He tucked them into a jacket pocket.
