'And who are you?'
'I'm Mike Nolan.'
'Who are you with?'
'I'm with her,' I said, indicating. 'Excuse us.'
'Are you an attorney?' she asked to my back.
I didn't respond as I walked to the receptionist and gave her my driver's license. She looked at the list and checked my name off and handed me a visitor's badge. I passed through the turnstiles and took the elevator to the fourth floor, where I knew the large hearing room was. It was eight thirty and only ten other people were there, several from the NTSB, and several men who looked to me to be with the Secret Service. The room was government-stark. The paintings on the wall looked like photocopies of bad art in cheap metal frames. Two long metal tables were up front with fifty or so metal chairs placed like audience seats throughout the rest of the room with a narrow aisle in the middle. The only thing in the room that looked modern or new was a sophisticated PA system that had large speakers on stands at the ends of the two metal tables and a large amplifier in the middle of the table hooked up to the speakers. The charred CVR sat next to the amplifier. A technician was connecting its wires to the amp in preparation for playing the tape.
It wasn't actually a tape at all, of course, but a hard drive. The sound was recorded digitally. Tapes are too vulnerable to heat and pressure. The orange box that contained the cockpit voice recorder was designed to withstand one thousand G's-one thousand times the force of gravity-for at least five milliseconds, and eleven hundred degrees for thirty minutes. It had probably come close to reaching both of those in this crash. It was dented in one corner in particular and was more charred-black than orange.
Well before the clock actually reached nine, the room was full of parties to the investigation, from the engine manufacturer, to Marcel and his group, to numerous other component-part manufacturers who had been invited to participate. Rose came into the room with quite a flourish. Her braid was taut and long. Her face was humorless and full of determination. She waited until the crowd gave her their full attention, and the room finally grew silent.
She spoke to the group. 'Good morning. For those of you I haven't met, my name is Rose Lisenko. I am the investigator in charge. Couple of ground rules. First, this investigation is ongoing. The press has not been invited because we don't know what's on the recording. We have checked to make sure that it is intact and will play. We have not listened to it. You will hear it at the same time we do. Because of that, we don't want the press taking this raw information and giving it to the general public, especially in a case as sensitive as this one. If we believe the recording should be released to the public, we will do so when that is appropriate. We therefore ask that everyone confirm to us that there are no recording devices in the room. Does anyone have a digital recorder or video recorder of any kind on their person?' She looked around the room and waited.
'Good. Second, after this recording is played, it will be transcribed later today, and each chairman of each working group will be given a copy of the transcript. If you are in a working group, you will also receive a copy of the recording. If you are not in a working group but believe you need a copy of the transcript or the recording, please let me know and I will determine whether you are entitled to a copy. We will also of course be playing the tape again later, and you can hear it at those later times. You will be given notice before the playing occurs. If you want to have the tape played after today, please let me know and we will determine whether we need to conduct a special playing of the tape.'
She looked at one of the NTSB employees in the back and said in a fairly loud and commanding voice, 'Secure the doors.' He stood in front of the door as another NTSB employee exited the room. They took up posts on either side of the closed doors.
Rose continued, 'I would ask everyone to refrain from making any noise whatsoever during the playing of this tape. Every little sound can be significant. We've cranked up the volume quite a lot, so that it may sound too loud to you in this room, but we, like you, are listening for background noises as well as the obvious information from the voices.' She paused, looked around, and then said, 'Play it.'
5
I HAD ONLY actually met Chuck Collins once, or maybe twice, but I remembered his voice. It was one of the first things we heard from the cockpit voice recorder, and I recognized his resonant sound immediately. Collins had been one of the best helicopter pilots in the Marine Corps. He had flown off carriers, desert pads, and roads. He had mastered every helicopter the Marine Corps owned, from the biggest cargo carrier to the smallest, fastest gunship. He had flown off steep, snow-covered mountains and floating platforms while working with special operations. He had even graduated from Navy Test Pilot School in Patuxent River, Maryland. He had flown several tours in Iraq and begged to go back for more, but he had gotten too senior to go blow things up. During his last tour as a helicopter squadron commanding officer, much of which was spent on a carrier in the Pacific, he was told he would be the first pilot to fly the president in the new presidential helicopters, the WorldCopter 5, now known as the VH-80.
The CVR had captured the last thirty minutes of that evening's flight. It started with Marine One approaching the South Lawn of the White House through a torrential downpour. Collins was all business. Full of comments on the weather. His copilot was doing his job perfectly, monitoring the altitude, the air speed, and radios. They were talking to Washington control and the White House. It all sounded normal. Collins was a good pilot, and it showed through the recording.
I put myself in his seat and visualized what he was seeing, the instruments, the lightning, the rain hitting the rotor blades, and watching the White House grow bigger in the dark night as he approached. I'd never flown in Marine One, and I'd certainly never put a helicopter down on the South Lawn of the White House; but I had several hundred hours in this WorldCopter model and knew every switch that Collins was throwing and everything he was touching. I could do it in my sleep.
As they landed, everything continued normally until, just as they touched down, Collins said,
I focused intently. His copilot, Rudd said, 'What was that?'
'I don't know. Might have been a wheel settling into the mud, but it felt like more of a thump. Maybe the strut bottomed out. We'll check it when we get out.'
'Roger that.'
We listened intently to the pilots' small talk while they waited for the president, listening for any indication of what we knew was about to happen, to see if just maybe they had a hint of what was coming. We listened for slurred speech, depression, anger, all the things anyone would listen for. But as the recording went on, it built its own story.
'This is an unbelievably shitty night to fly. Why we doing this?' Collins asked.
Lieutenant Colonel Rudd replied, 'You've got the final say. Just say the word. Ground us.' He waited for Collins to ground them, but he knew it wouldn't happen. They did what the president wanted, and the president wanted to go to Camp David.
'We're doing this because El Jefe says so,' Collins said.
Rudd said, 'Plus we're just dumb-ass Marines who always do what we're told.'
'You're a dumb-ass, but I'm a smart-ass. So why am I doing this?'
Rudd replied, 'Because you've been trained since your earliest waking moments to follow stupid orders in shitty conditions. We're trained to love it. The stupider the order and the worse the conditions, the more faithful the Marine is for obeying it. Semper fi.
Collins laughed into the ICS microphone. Probably only Rudd could hear him, but the crew chief might have been on the ICS line too. On a night like that, he would probably be outside checking the soggy ground in the pouring rain to make sure they wouldn't be pulling the earth toward the moon when they tried to take off, stuck in mud up to their axles. He was probably looking for the origin of the thump as well.
'At least we're in here and dry.'
'Here comes the president,' Rudd said.
I looked over at Rachel, who was listening with her mouth open.
'You've got the airplane. I'm going to talk to Secret Service.' You could hear Collins moving out of his seat. I waited for the sound to cut off, but then remembered that they were using the new, encrypted wireless headsets. You could hear Collins belching as he made his way to the back of the helicopter. He was walking or moving, it was unclear, then he said,
'Chuck,' Marshall replied perfunctorily. We could barely hear the other voice, since it was coming through Collins's mike. If they hadn't had the speakers turned up so loud, we wouldn't have heard it at all.
'What the hell are we doing?' Collins asked. 'Can't you drive the president to Camp David?' I could hear the noise of the helicopter engines in the background; they had kept the engines running and the rotors spinning as they waited for the president to board.
'No comment,' Marshall said.
'You know what this is about, don't you?'
'Yes. One of many important meetings of the president of the United States.'
'Meeting. Right. Just a meeting. And who's he going to meet? Do you know everything you need to know about them?'
'You know something I don't know?'
I found myself trying to see their faces in the speakers, wishing I could see their expressions and body language.
'I've forgotten more about Adams than you'll ever know.'
'Right. Adams scholar. I forgot.' Marshall waited a short time, then asked Collins in a tone that was half-annoyed and half-concerned, 'So what you got? Anything I should know about?'
'If you don't know by now, I'm sure not going to tell you. Don't worry about it. I'll take care of it. It's nothing you can do anything about.'
'You got something I need to hear, you know where to find me. Just don't kill us on the way.'
'No guarantees tonight,' Collins said. 'Your life will be in my very capable hands, but there are other forces at work.'
Collins's words were strange. Everyone in the room could feel it.
Marshall felt it too. 'You saying it's unsafe? Say the magic words, Chuckie, say it isn't safe, and we're headed straight for the limo.'
'Can't do it. I serve at the pleasure of the president. I do what I'm told.'
'You can override any flight request.'
'Never going to happen. How could it be unsafe when I'm the one flying? I could land this helicopter on the top of a flagpole.' Collins chuckled. 'But you wouldn't mind if I flew ten feet above the ground to avoid the weather, would you?'
