Fly by Night

CHAPTER SIX

Whoever first called the earth’s outer layer its crust had probably lived right here. The brown desert was baked into layers that had cracked for lack of moisture, and a high midday sun was vulcanizing everything in sight.

Davis set his bag on the tarmac in front of FBN Aviation. Standing on the groomed concrete, a searing wind snapping at the cuffs of his pants, he filled his lungs with the dry, musky air. This was his target box, and so, just like flying a combat mission, the first order of business was to get his bearings. The FBN Aviation building looked relatively new, a given really, since the whole airport complex had been nothing but scrubland seven years ago. The main building was big, two stories of concrete and burnt brick. It reminded him of any number of military facilities he’d seen. Brown, gray, tan — shades so dull Michelangelo couldn’t have done anything positive with them. On the flat roof, two box-like swamp coolers were working hard. There was little in the way of architectural detail. Just square corners and a few token windows, institutional and cheap, a budgetary stepchild to the over-the-top passenger terminal a mile away. Behind the main office was a second building, three stories that reminded Davis of a college dormitory. And that was probably what it was. Finding homegrown pilots and mechanics in the Middle East was a challenge, so companies like FBN Aviation were usually operated by expatriates. And when foreign contractors were brought in, part of the bargain had to be housing. You gave the hired help a place to live, kept them fed, particularly important when the cultural differences between the host nation and employees were so stark. A little distance to keep everyone out of trouble.

Davis walked toward the entrance and passed a row of parking spaces. Back home, the spot closest to the door would have been reserved for the handicapped. Here a sign said: CHIEF PILOT. It was occupied by a relatively late-model Mercedes. The building’s front door was glass, and opened automatically with a rubbery sticking noise as it rotated inward, like a refrigerator door opening — weather stripping still new enough to be doing its job. When Davis walked inside the temperature dropped forty degrees.

His first impression was that the place looked strangely familiar. There was an L-shaped counter, two young men seated behind it. They were clearly locals, clearly bored. Behind them, taking up an entire wall, was a dry erase board with lines corresponding to the days of the week. Flight numbers and routes and crews were all listed in colored marker, a half dozen of these strewn in a gutter at the base. The different colors were codes, maybe blue for a regularly scheduled flight, black for a special charter, red for a maintenance test flight. Also in the gutter was a collection of crumpled rags for making changes. There were always changes. Weather delays, broken airplanes, shipment foul-ups, sick pilots. The whole setup reminded Davis of the operations desk in a dozen squadrons he’d been assigned to.

The two men behind the counter straightened when they saw Davis. One stood and said something in Arabic. At least he thought it was Arabic.

Davis didn’t respond, and soon the second guy got up. He was tall enough to look Davis in the eye, probably weighed a hundred pounds less.

“Can I help you with something?”The question came in English, but the tone said he didn’t really want to help. It said, Are you lost, or what?

“I’m here to see Bob Schmitt.”

“For what reason?”

Davis almost said, I’m from the government and I’m here to help, but he decided that in a place like Sudan the government might not be a laughing matter. He said, “It’s official business.”

The men eyed one another before the taller one picked up a phone.

“Name?” he asked.

Davis thought about that. He wondered if Schmitt knew he was coming. Larry Green had sent word that an investigator was en route, but Davis knew he hadn’t given a name. Still, FBN Aviation had to have some connections to the government, and the government ran customs, which could check things like passenger manifests and passports. So Schmitt might know he was coming.

“The name’s Davis,” he said. It was common enough.

The tall man had a quick conversation on the phone in hushed English, then jabbed a thumb toward the hallway. “Second door on your right.”

Davis said, “Thanks,” and headed for the second door on the right.

There was a placard at the entrance: CHIEF PILOT. Just like the parking spot outside.

The door was open, and Davis turned the corner to find Bob Schmitt working at his desk. He had not seen the man in ten years, and he’d definitely changed. Schmitt had always been built like a bulldozer, squat and thick, but now he was overweight and his complexion had gone ruddy. He looked like he must have arteries as hard as copper pipes, a cholesterol count of a million. But some things were the same. His dark hair was still thick and coarse, like a black Brillo pad — if they made black Brillo pads. When Schmitt looked up and saw him, he shot to his feet like his chair had caught fire.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

From across the room Davis watched with inner satisfaction. The veins at Schmitt’s temples bulged, and his face went from red to purple, like some kind of arterial kaleidoscope. Right there, Davis’ first question was answered. Schmitt hadn’t known he was coming.

A number of smart-ass replies came to mind, but Davis just said,

“I’m here to investigate your crash.” He liked the sound of that. Your crash. One of the hits you had to take when you ran a flying unit. “The aviation authorities here in Sudan don’t have a lot of experience with investigations like this, so they had to call in help. It fell to the NTSB.”

Schmitt settled into the same angry look Davis had last seen, on the day when he’d been drummed out of the service. It was a look that said a lot — the man still hated him. For Davis, that alone made the trip to Sudan worthwhile. All thirty-nine hours.

Schmitt seemed to recover. If there was anything positive about the man, it was that he kept control. He was confident and couldn’t be intimidated. Davis knew because he’d tried. Schmitt strode around the desk and puffed out his thick chest.

He said, “And you’re with the NTSB now.”

“Small world, huh?”

“No, not that small. Whose ass did you kiss to get this assignment?”

One minute, maybe less, and the interchange was already going down like a MiG in flames.

“Just another investigation to me,” Davis said.

“Sure. And you want my complete cooperation.”

Davis shrugged. “If you were to make things difficult for me, I’d have to put that in my report.” Davis tried to say this in earnest, as if he was going to write a report.

Schmitt didn’t respond.

“For starters,” Davis said, “why don’t you tell me about this outfit. Who controls FBN Aviation?”

Schmitt made him wait a moment before answering. “His name’s Rafiq Khoury.”

“What’s he like?”

“He signs my paycheck.”

“Is he a hands-on kind of owner?”

“In what way?”

“You know, does he tell you what to put on the airplanes, where to take them? That kind of thing.”

“You know what kind of operation this is, Davis. Want to see load manifests and flight plans? I’ve got lots of them.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet you do. And I’m sure Khoury is a real stand-up guy. Not the kind of boss who’d throw a chief pilot under ICAO’s bus if he needed a scapegoat.”

Schmitt scowled, his squat forehead plowed with furrows. “I’ve been under the bus before. Fact is, I’ve still got your tire tracks on my ass.”

Again, Davis smiled inwardly. Outside nothing changed. He said, “Look, let’s cut the crap. You lost an airplane, and I’m here to find out why. Agree to put our background aside, and I’ll call this crash like I see it.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Get in my way, and I’ll make this crash an anchor. I’ll tie it to your civilian license, and drop everything into the deep end of the ocean.”

“Just like last time.”

“Last time? I didn’t bust you out of the Air Force, Schmitthead,” Davis said, reverting to the old squadron nickname he hated, “you were always going to crash and burn. This time it might be different. Maybe you’re clean.”

Schmitt stood there thinking, calculating. Dealing with him was going to be tricky. When organizations got investigated, the people in charge were always cautious. But Davis and Schmitt had a past, and from it, a residue of mistrust that wasn’t going to wash away under a beer or two.

“Okay,” Schmitt said. “What do you want?”

“For starters, a few answers — since you are the chief pilot.”

“Chief pilot?” Schmitt gestured toward the door. “Of that bunch? I’m more like a parole officer.”

Davis thought, He still has his people skills. Yet there was a grain of truth in the comment. The pilots here would be journeymen, a global collection of the adventurous, furloughed, and malcontent.

Schmitt picked up, “I’ve got fourteen pilots to run seven airplanes. It’s my job to keep them in line.”

Davis couldn’t resist. “It’s your job to keep them operationally safe. Last month you had sixteen pilots and eight airplanes.”

“Go to hell.”

“Right. And now that we’ve settled that, tell me what you know about the crash.”

“It was a maintenance check flight. They’d just rerigged the flight controls, done some work on the aileron mechanism. The airplane took off at nine o’clock that night. By ten thirty, we realized it was overdue. We tried to raise the flight on our company radio frequency, but there was no reply, so we reported it to the Sudanese aviation authorities. They couldn’t find the airplane either. It was officially declared missing at around midnight. There were no reports of a landside crash, so we figured it went down off the coastline. According to the flight plan that’s where they’d been headed for the checkout work.”

“How far off the coastline?”

“I don’t know. An air traffic controller said he remembered seeing the airplane over the water for a while, but then it just disappeared. He figured the crew had dropped down to screw around at low level.”

“Your guys do that a lot?”

“Never to my knowledge.”

Schmitt and Davis locked eyes again.

Davis asked, “Do the Sudanese authorities keep records of their radar data?”

Schmitt laughed. “In this country? They can’t keep track of who’s born and who dies. Sudan’s Civil Aviation Authority isn’t exactly the FAA. Sometimes you can’t even raise the air traffic controllers on the radio. They just disappear, walk away to get a cup of tea or pray or whatever. We don’t worry about stuff like that. We fly, with or without them.”

“Should I put that in my report?”

“I don’t care what you put in your damned report. That threat rings hollow with me, Davis. If the Sudanese government steps in and shuts down FBN Aviation, it’ll be up and flying again inside a week. Same airplanes, same pilots, new name. You know what FBN stands for?”

“It’s a Bahamian law firm. Franklin, Banks, and Noble.”

Schmitt shook his head. “That’s what’s on the letterhead, but the pilots know the real name — Fly by Night Aviation.” He chuckled. “A limited liability corporation.”

Davis actually saw the humor in that. “Right. So tell me, when this airplane was discovered to be missing, was there a search?”

“According to the government there was. I saw a couple of the helicopters down the street launch. As far as I know they didn’t find anything. That airplane just disappeared into a big, deep ocean. Things like that happen.”

“Is that what you told the pilots’ next of kin? ‘Things like that happen.’”

Schmitt’s eyes glazed over to his trademark glare.

“Was there any record of a mayday call?” Davis asked.

Schmitt shrugged. “Not that I ever heard about. If I was you, I’d call back to D.C. If there was any call for help on 121.5, the good old U.S. Navy probably has a record of it.”

Schmitt actually had a point. The U.S. Navy was plowing continuously over the Red Sea and Persian Gulf, every day and night. If there had been any transmission on 121.5 MHz, the international distress frequency, they’d have it on record.

Davis asked, “What kind of voice and data recorders do your airplanes have?”

“You kidding me? These airplanes are Third World military surplus. We get them because places like Burkina Faso and Antigua figure they’re past their useful lives. If they have any recording devices, we don’t keep them up.”

Davis was no expert when it came to equipment requirements for civil aircraft, but he was sure this was some kind of regulatory violation. He let it go for now.

Schmitt suggested, “If you really want to figure out why that airplane went down, you should start looking for the wreckage. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to dredge it up.”

Easy to say, Davis thought. Not so easy to do. “Tell me about the pilots. Who were they?”

“A couple of Ukrainian guys.”

“Ukrainian?”

“I hire captains from all over the world. The only requirement is lots of DC-3 pilot-in-command time. No choice, really.”

“Why is that?”

“Because the Sudanese government, as an informal condition of our operating certificate, has dictated that we hire local copilots.”

“Sudanese pilots?”

“Unfortunately. It’s basically an ab initio program. The government supplies candidates, usually some big shot’s brat kid. They fly a few hours in light airplanes, then get sent to us to build time as first officers.”

“Which means your captains are essentially flying solo.”

“Like I said, I have to get experienced guys. I just had another of these damned Sudanese kids show up last week, which brings me to three.”

“But the accident involved two expatriate pilots,” Davis said, “Ukrainians. Neither of them was paired with one of these local copilots?”

“That crew was an exception. Neither spoke very good English, so I kept them together. I figured they could at least talk to each other.”

Davis realized that Schmitt would likely regard this as a sound management decision. He asked, “You have any records on these guys?”

Schmitt got up and went to his filing cabinet.

As he began to dig, Davis said, “And while you’re at it, check for the rest. The usual stuff — flight plan, logbook records, weather.”

“This will probably surprise you,” Schmitt said sarcastically, “but I’ve already collected all that. Damnedest thing — I actually like one of those stupid Cossacks.”