“Is that what you have there?” Juan asked, pointing to the desert imagery on the multipanel display.
Murph shook his shaggy head. “No, we already checked it out, and nada. We saw an abandoned truck and a lot of tire tracks left by what we assume are border patrols, but no plane.”
“That’s good news, then,” Juan said. “Her aircraft didn’t suffer a midair explosion.”
“Good and bad,” Eric replied. “Since we don’t know the nature of the event, it becomes much more difficult to figure out. Did the oxygen system fail and kill the crew, so the plane just kept flying until it ran out of fuel? If that’s the case, it could have struck five hundred miles or more to the east of Tripoli, possibly even in the Med. Or there could have been an engine failure. If that happened, the plane would have glided for miles before impact.”
“But that wouldn’t explain the radio silence,” the Chairman pointed out. “The crew would have radioed an emergency.”
“We know that,” Mark said a little defensively. “Still, we have to investigate every possible theory to winnow— good word, eh?—to winnow down our target area. It’s unlikely the radios would die the same moment as the engines, but stranger things have happened. Hey, that reminds me, have the feds talked to the ground people who serviced that plane last? You know, it could have been sabotaged.”
“Lang said the FBI is conducting interviews as we speak.”
“They should check out the flight crew, too. One of them could be Al-Qaeda or something.”
“The crew’s all Air Force personnel,” Juan replied. “I doubt they are a security threat.”
“The CIA said the same thing about Aldridge Ames, and I’m sure the FBI had vetted Robert Hanssen.” Despite his genius intellect, or maybe because of it, Murph delighted in pointing out the mistakes of others. “There’s no reason some Air Force guy couldn’t be bought. He could have flown the plane to some remote Libyan base, where they’re torturing the Secretary of State right at this moment.” He looked to Eric, his eyes a little glassy with inspiration. “What do you bet they’re waterboarding her? Good enough for the guys we have at Gitmo, right? Or they’ve attached electrodes to her—”
“Gentlemen, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Juan interrupted before they started coming up with more lurid torture techniques.
“Oh sure, sorry,” Eric muttered, even though he had remained silent during Mark’s excited outburst. “Um, well, if both engines failed, we factored speed, altitude, and estimated a fifteen-hundred-foot-per-minute descent rate. That gives us a target area of roughly eighty nautical miles.”
“So that’s what you have on the screen?” Cabrillo asked.
“Not exactly,” Eric said.
Mark overrode his friend’s next words, “Yes, we had to consider the engine failure-radio dying scenario, but we discounted it pretty quickly and came up with something better.”
Juan was losing patience with his brain trust, but he kept it to himself. He knew Murph and Eric delighted at showing off their intellect, and he wouldn’t rob them of their fun.
“So what’s the answer?”
“The plane’s tail came off.”
“Or at least part of it,” Eric amended.
“A structural failure in the tail could very likely damage the radio antennas, which would explain the blackout.” Mark said. “It could also knock out the plane’s transponder at the same time.”
“Depending on the extent of the damage,” Eric went on, “the aircraft could still fly for some distance. It would be highly unstable, and the pilot would have minimal control. He could only steer the plane by alternating thrust to each of its engines.”
“The danger comes from the fact the 737 doesn’t have fuel-dump capabilities. He would have had to fly in circles to burn off avgas or risk coming in too heavy.” Juan made to ask a question, but Mark anticipated him. “They refueled in London when they stopped for a quick meeting with England’s Foreign Secretary. By my calculations, they had enough to keep going for at least an hour after the plane went dark.”
Cabrillo nodded. “Even throttled back, she could have cruised for a couple hundred miles.”
“But they didn’t,” Eric said, “or they would have tried an emergency landing in Tripoli.”
“Good point. So where the hell are they?”
“We combined two of our scenarios. Engine failure and the tail coming apart,” Mark said proudly. “It’s plausible. Highly unlikely, but it could happen. That narrowed our area to about a hundred square miles. We found one potential spot, but it turned out to be a vaguely airplane-shaped geologic formation.” He pointed to the center screen. “And there, we found that.”
Juan stepped forward. The screen showed a mountainous area, nearly inaccessible to anything other than a chopper or a serious four-wheel drive. Mark hit a button on the panel’s control and the shot zoomed in. “There it is,” the Chairman whispered.
Near the top of one of the mountains was the plane. Or what was left of it. The wreckage stretched for a half mile or more up the slope. He could see marks on the ground where it first impacted, rose up again, and then belly flopped, tearing itself apart as it decelerated. Fire had scorched the ground about halfway between the second impact and the main debris site. The fuselage, at least the two-thirds of it that had stayed together, was a charred tube surrounded by the shredded remains of the wings. One engine lay a hundred feet from the aircraft. Juan couldn’t spot the second.
“Any signs there were survivors?” he asked, knowing the answer.
“Sorry, boss man,” Eric said. “If there were, they haven’t done anything to signal for help. Mr. Overholt said we should be getting another set of satellite images in about ten hours. We’ll compare the two and see if anything at the site has changed. But look for yourself. It doesn’t appear likely that anyone could have survived a crash like that, not with the fire and all.”
“You’re right. I know. I just don’t like it. Fiona Katamora was one of the good ones. It’s a damned shame for
