Fly by Night

CHAPTER EIGHT

Davis started with meteorology, but found nothing remarkable. No thunderstorms or turbulence or weather fronts on the night in question. No dust storms, which could be a concern in this part of the world. All in all, the conditions on the night of the accident had been quiet, almost serene. Certainly nothing to make an airplane fall out of the sky. He studied the flight plan and aircraft history, and again came up empty.

This wasn’t going to be easy. Davis was accustomed to going into an investigation with teams of experts from the NTSB, military, and industry. He was used to having people who specialized in tiny corners of knowledge: engines, structures, aircraft performance. He was used to having photographers to document wreckage. He was used to having wreckage. Davis felt like a homicide detective trying to solve a murder without a partner or a medical examiner or even a body.

He pulled out the crew profiles, and right away two pages jumped out at him — the personnel records on the two pilots. There were no photos, just two vibrant lives, each condensed to a single page of words and numbers. The captain’s name was Gregor Anatolii, former Ukrainian Defense Forces. Born in Kiev. Nine thousand hours of flight time, including eighteen hundred in the DC-3. First officer Stanislav Shevchenko, former Air Belarus. Native of Sevastopol. Eighty-four hundred hours, nine hundred in the DC-3. There were dates of hire and contract terms regarding pay and housing. Copies of airman and medical certificates issued by the EASA, Europe’s regulatory sister to the FAA. Then Davis’ eyes went to the bottom of each page. Address of record, next of kin. Two wives and seven kids between them.

Christ.

Davis hunched forward on his chair, elbows on knees and chin cupped in his hands. He stared at the names. The information did nothing to help solve the crash. But it did a lot to complicate things. It always did. Davis had been brought here to find a missing drone, a mangled pile of high-tech hardware. Yet things were never so simple. Larry Green should have known better. He should have known better. An airplane had gone down and two pilots were dead. Nobody knew why. Not their boss, not their fellow pilots, not the mechanics who’d worked on the airplane. Worst of all, not their families.

It was a terrible thing to be in the dark about something like that. Davis had felt it when Diane had been killed. He’d wondered why. Her car had been T-boned by a delivery truck. On first glance, a straightforward tragedy, yet it had been all he could do to stand back and let the state police run their investigation. When he eventually got a look at the final report, Davis had to be restrained from taking the investigating officer’s head off. The delivery truck had recently been in for brake maintenance, but nobody at the scene had bothered to check if the brakes were working. Nobody had checked phone records to see if the driver had been talking on his cell phone or texting at the time of the crash. Loose ends everywhere. The supervisor had tried to convince Davis that it had just been an accident, one driver missing a stop sign. The who and the when and the how were all right there, clear as day. But the why was left unanswered. Davis and Jen had been forced to live with that, and they had. But right now two families in Ukraine were asking that same agonizing question. Why? In a place like this, a dysfunctional corner of North Africa, Davis knew that if he didn’t find the answers, nobody ever would.

And then there was the other part, the thing he’d mentioned tauntingly to Schmitt. Aviation really was a small world. A brotherhood, even. If Davis didn’t get to the bottom of this crash, he would be haunted by questions. Could the same disaster happen to another crew? Possibly someone he knew? Would another pilot lose his or her life to the same faulty part or shoddy procedural screwup?

Not if Jammer Davis could help it.

He would find the CIA’s drone — find it if it still existed. But at the same time, he was going to get to the bottom of this crash.

When he entered the familiar hangar, Khoury took off his sunglasses and paused to let his eyes adjust. The light inside was good, but no match for the brilliant desert sun. The place was cavernous inside, and while an attempt was made to cool — big fans overhead stirring and blowing — the system never quite kept up. Until eight months ago, Khoury had never been in an aircraft hangar in his life. Now he had come to appreciate their utility. It was a Spartan place, naked light and ventilation fixtures mounted openly to the walls and rafters, no effort made toward a tidy appearance. Benches and toolboxes and work stands encircled the perimeter, all of it bathed in the brazen fragrances of machine oil and rubber.

As he walked around the old airplane with the crazy antennae, he encountered Muhammed. The mechanic was tending to something underneath an engine, and when he saw Khoury he clambered to his feet and bowed respectfully. Khoury gave him the wave, but said nothing. The Jordanian recruit was at one end of Khoury’s spectrum, the last man he would ever have to worry about. Raised in a strict madrassa, he was as devout an extremist as Khoury had ever seen. If Muhammed were not here, he would certainly be in Kandahar or Lahore being fitted for explosive underwear.

The hangar’s second working area was well defined, separated by a high partition of plywood and cloth. Inside he found Fadi Jibril. By training, the man was an engineer, years spent in university learning things Khoury could never hope to understand. His freshly earned doctorate in aerospace engineering was taken from a top school in America, and while Khoury did not know Jibril’s exact age, the man was young, certainly no more than thirty. Presently he was standing at a workbench, smoothing a long bundle of wire with his thin fingers. Everything about Jibril was delicate, almost feminine. There was no question about his sexuality — he was married to a thick, matronly woman who was, rather predictably, five months pregnant with their first child. Still, Fadi Jibril was not a man’s man. His limbs seemed to swim in the loose-fitting shirts and trousers he preferred. His shoes looked too big, like those of a clown. Yet there was no doubting his intensity, the focus that encompassed everything he did. This was forever etched in his eyes, a thing Khoury appreciated, yet never quite understood. Religion was part of it — that was why he was here, indeed why any of them were here — yet for Jibril there was something more. Khoury sensed it at this very moment as he watched the engineer caress the insulated wire, watched his sharp black eyes critique his work. Khoury could not dismiss the idea that he was watching a man who was, at heart, more an artist than a scientist.

He cleared his throat and Jibril straightened.

“Sheik,” he said, “I am honored.”

This was what Jibril always said, each day when Khoury came to check his progress. He supposed Jibril was not being polite. He truly was honored. Khoury smiled inwardly.

“And how does our work progress?” the imam asked, the pronoun covering not only the two of them, but God as well.

Jibril sighed. “Certain parts have been difficult to work with. Our lathe is not the best. If we had a better machine—”

“Fadi, Fadi,” Khoury interrupted, acquiring his most patient tone. “You know our troubles. We must make do with what we have. You have made great strides, no one can deny it.” He swept an arm across a work area that was surrounded by tools, machinery, and electronics. “Six months you have been at that bench, hammering and turning screwdrivers. Time, however, is not our ally.”

The young man relented. “Yes, sheik, I know. But things are always more difficult when one turns the screws clockwise.”

Hand tools had never been a friend to Khoury, but the metaphor was clear enough. It is easier to take apart than to build. He committed this thought to memory, recognizing its potential for a future sermon.

“The schedule cannot be altered,” Khoury insisted. “You must distinguish between what you would like, and what you must have.”

Jibril’s put his hands to his temples. He looked defeated, near exhaustion.

Khoury put a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “Fadi, look at me.”

The engineer did, and Khoury asserted his most persuasive gaze.

“Always remember — you will be to Sudan what A.Q. Khan was to Pakistan. The father of a nation’s technical might.” Khoury watched the young man swell, his ego stoked by the bellows of his words. Khoury thought perhaps he might have struck upon it. What was different about Jibril? Scientist and artist — what combination could breed a more outsized ego?

“Now,” Khoury suggested, “tell me where your troubles lie.”

Jibril picked up his gaze and led Khoury to a bench where circuit boards and test equipment were strewn haphazardly. Khoury recognized a pungent electrical odor, burnt insulation or arcing wires. The engineer picked up a metal box the size of a bread pan. Three wires dangled freely, their loose ends stripped of insulation and scorched with solder.

“This is the telemetry interface module,” Jibril said. “I told you yesterday it was giving me trouble. This unit is defective. I now suspect they are all defective.”

Khoury sighed. “Yes, the Chinese do not have a reputation for reliability.”

“Which is the very reason they paid us such a favorable price for the unit we removed.”

“Indeed,” Khoury said. He pointed to the electronic box. “Can you fix it?”

Jibril acquired a fresh air of enthusiasm. “I think it will not be necessary. I began to lose confidence in the Chinese equipment some weeks ago, so I went to the trouble of ordering a wholly different device from a German manufacturer. It should arrive today on the flight from Hamburg.”

Khoury was impressed. For a young man, the engineer displayed an uncommon balance of patience and initiative. He was working twenty hours a day in this place, moving heaven and earth to bring success. Yet the purchase from Germany was a concern. Much of Jibril’s hardware had already been acquired at considerable risk. Some clever, promotion-minded bureaucrat behind a customs desk might make uncomfortable connections.

“Hamburg?” Khoury said hesitantly. “Is this not dangerous ground, Fadi? The West watches certain exports very closely. This device you have ordered, might it be on someone’s list of sensitive technology? Are you sure there will be no questions?”

The engineer shrugged to say no. Or perhaps to say that he hadn’t really considered it.

Khoury let it go and moved to more familiar ground. He asked the question he always asked. “Will the deadline still be met?”The edge in his voice was clear.

“Yes, sheik. I will install the part as soon as it arrives. Yet …” Jibril hesitated, “I can only perform the most basic of bench tests. If there were more time—”

Khoury chopped his hand upward to cut the engineer off. There was a time for coddling and a time for discipline. He gave Jibril his most solemn gaze.

Jibril was duly inured. He bowed, and said, “It will be done, my sheik.”

The bed was surrounded by paper as Davis studied the maintenance records for a second time. Every airplane has a logbook, a bound record of that airframe’s flight and maintenance history. Since they always stay on board, the original logbook for the mishap aircraft was now resting on the bottom of the Red Sea. Fortunately, logbooks also have duplicate pages that are removed and kept as a permanent record. This was what Davis had in his hands.

The tear-out sheets were dry and brittle, like the paper had been baked in an oven. Arranged in chronological order, he was able to see where the airplane had been. Ten days prior to the crash, a hop from Dubai to Khartoum. The next day, an oil service and tire pressure check, then off to Lagos, Nigeria. On it went, bouncing around Africa and the Middle East. Two tires changed, a landing light replaced. A few gripes written up by pilots, subsequently addressed by maintenance.

Every write-up he saw was entered after a landing in Khartoum, so there had never been any contract maintenance performed at a faraway airport. In an outfit like this, Davis knew, 95 percent of pilot complaints regarding inoperative systems came after landing at the home field — not a function of where things broke, but a function of the five hundred U.S. dollars FBN Aviation would have to pay for a contract mechanic in Cape Town or Mombasa. Or the five hours the crew would have to wait for them to show up, if they showed up at all.

The logbook pages advanced chronologically until Davis reached the day before the crash. He saw a pilot-entered discrepancy: Ailerons out of trim — five units right of neutral required for level flight. Signed legibly at the bottom: Captain Gregor Anatoli. Then below, the corrective action: Ailerons rerigged and centered to zero units in accordance with maintenance manual procedure 56–7. Test flight required.

So there it was in black-and-white. The ailerons were long tabs that ran along the trailing edges of the wings, the surfaces that made an airplane roll and turn. A critical flight control. The pilot had reported that they were out of adjustment. The attending mechanic had certified that he’d realigned them to perfection. Everything in order. Everything by the book. Davis looked at the signoff block and checked to see if the time and date made sense. They did. Then he checked the signature, saw the mechanic’s name, along with his Airframe and Powerplant certificate number. Muhammed al-Fahad. The Jordanian, no doubt.

Then something hit him.

Davis shuffled back to the crew profile sheet and compared it to the logbook write-up. Gregor Anatoli. The captain’s signature was right there on the logbook page, clear and legible. Maybe a little too legible. Anatoli, with one “i.”The captain had spelled his name wrong.

Davis looked closer. He was no expert in handwriting analysis — it wasn’t the kind of thing that usually came up in aircraft accident investigations — but this one didn’t look right. A pilot like Anatolii would have a signature that was smooth and quick, like he’d done it before fifty thousand times. Which he certainly had. A captain was always signing for something — a flight plan, cargo paperwork, crew accommodations, fuel slips. But the signature on this logbook page had perfect lettering, slow and deliberate. Not like any pilot Davis had ever known. He went back over some old pages in the logbook, and a week before the crash found another write-up by Captain Gregor Anatolii. Correct spelling, two i’s, different signature. Completely different. Barely legible from the speed. Probably whipped out in a second, two at the most.

Davis leaned back in the tiny chair and rubbed his temples. The more he found, the less sense everything made. The write-up for the ailerons — the purported reason for the accident — was almost certainly bogus. Which meant that the corrective action by the Jordanian mechanic had to be equally bogus. But why? An excuse for the crash, inserted into the records after the fact?

The elevator rumbled past, and his little pile of papers vibrated. Frustrated, Davis stuffed them back in the folder, put the folder on the nightstand. He got up and stretched, thought about sleeping but knew he couldn’t. He was restless. It was the same feeling he got when he took a spell on the bench in a rugby match. There was a lot you could learn from sitting back and watching a game flow. You could study and theorize. See who was fast and who was slow. Who held formation and who didn’t. But after a time, sitting and watching was a pursuit of diminishing returns. There came a time to lace up, trot back out on the pitch, and start throwing yourself around.

So Davis switched to his work boots and laced them up. Grabbed his room key and headed for the flight line.