Free Fall

Six

Washington, DC

Jake Hooper kept pace with the rhythmic jingling of the leash as he and his German shepherd, Pax, trotted alongside the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool at the National Mall.

Pax panted happily. He loved running here. But Hooper was running with a heavy heart. His dog was getting on and his arthritic pain and bone spurs had taken a toll. The vet didn’t give Pax much time before the pain would be unbearable and he’d have to be put down.

Hooper and his wife, Gwen, couldn’t have children. For them, Pax was a cherished family member who gave them nothing but unconditional love. Hooper was thinking about what life would be like without him when his phone rang and he stopped cold.

It was from the National Transportation Safety Board duty officer.

“Jake, it’s Crawley at the comms center. We got one at LaGuardia, an EastCloud Richlon-TitanRT-86. More than two dozen injured. No fatalities. Landed without incident.”

“Thank God for that. Do we have a suspected cause?”

“Crew reports a flight control computer malfunction.”

“A computer malfunction?” Hooper considered it.

“The RT-86 is a new model. That’s why we’re traveling on this one. I’m sending you a ticket now.”

“Okay. I’ll get home, grab my bag and get to National.”

Hooper cupped Pax’s head in his hands, reading the question in his big eyes.

“That’s right. I gotta go, pal.”

They caught a cab home to their porch-front row house in Glover Park. Hooper took a quick shower, called a cab and set out bowls of fresh water and food for Pax, who whined a goodbye as Hooper shouldered his prepacked bag and locked the house.

In the cab to the airport, he texted Gwen, who was at her sister’s in Georgetown. Then he digested the information coming in about the aircraft and the occurrence.

EastCloud Flight 4990 had originated in Buffalo, bound for LaGuardia, with eighty passengers and five crew aboard. The plane had been twenty-seven thousand feet over the Catskills when it suddenly rolled ninety degrees right, then ninety degrees left, then dropped seven thousand feet before the crew regained control. Result: twenty-eight passengers and two attendants injured, some of them seriously. There was damage to the cabin.

The crew reported a flight-management systems problem. But there are safety features to guard against that.

Hooper’s years as an NTSB investigator had taught him that initial information on the circumstances of an incident was often incomplete. He always regarded preliminary data with caution. They had a long way to go yet and a lot to do, like analyze the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder, and talk to the crew.

He considered the plane.

The RT-86 had come on stream about two years ago with few problems. The new model had a good safety record with no incidents with significant implications. Bottom line, Hooper thought the RT-86 was a very solid, state-of-the-art commercial jetliner.

So what could’ve caused the problem?

Don’t overthink this. Wait until all the facts are known, he thought. But it was impossible not to consider theories. He was a detective. Probing crashes and incidents was all he’d done since he’d got his degree in aeronautical science from Arizona State University.

Hooper had been among the top graduates of his class. Right out of school he’d been hired as a civilian at Naval Air Systems Command in Virginia, where he’d examined United States Navy and Marine Corps aircraft accidents.

Along the way, he’d become a licensed pilot, then a flight instructor, and he’d obtained an engineering degree. He’d left Virginia when he’d been hired by the MacCalleb Aircraft Company in Wichita, Kansas, as a flight test engineer. He’d taken part in dozens of accident investigations, providing technical help to Federal Aviation Administration safety inspectors and the NTSB. He’d frequently and successfully challenged their findings.

Hooper’s exceptional work led to a position as an NTSB regional investigator then, eventually, a job with Major Investigations Division at their headquarters in Washington. His insights impressed seasoned experts and he was not afraid to challenge supervisors. Hooper didn’t care because he adhered to the belief, as did all investigators, that safety was paramount; that with each tragedy, each incident, his job was to find information that would prevent other accidents and enhance the safety of air travel.

He was obsessed, almost pathologically so, with ensuring that nothing in an investigation was ruled out without being triple-checked and triple-checked again.

Today, he was anxious because this was his last time on a Go Team as a senior air safety investigator. After this investigation, he’d be promoted to investigator-in-charge, the IIC, and would lead his own team.

Hooper’s cab stopped at Departures and he headed for the American Airlines desk. The NTSB comms center had sent him an electronic ticket for the next flight to LaGuardia. Tapping his mobile boarding pass and showing his ID, Hooper made his way through security to the preboarding area of his gate, where he recognized members of the Go Team.

“Hey, Jake, you old tin-kicker.” Swanson, the expert on power plants, shook his hand.

They were joined by Willet from maintenance. From human performance, sitting off alone working on a laptop, was Irene Zimm. She was known as Good Night Irene, because if she found that a pilot had violated any aspect of safety procedures, it meant a world of pain.

The one man who didn’t greet Hooper was on the phone: Bill Cashill, a case-hardened veteran. He had no love for Hooper, who’d once corrected Cashill at an investigation, something Cashill had never forgotten and never forgiven. Cashill was set to retire after thirty years as a leading investigator on some of the board’s biggest crashes. He was the investigator-in-charge. He glanced at Hooper then resumed concentrating on his call before he finally stood and surveyed his team.

“What do you think about this EastCloud incident, Bill?” Willet asked.

“I think this is overkill, even with a partial team.”

“But it’s a new-generation aircraft,” Swanson said.

“I’m aware of that, but my gut’s telling me that this thing has all the indications of an overreaction by the crew to clear-air turbulence.”

“But the crew said-” Hooper started.

“I know what the crew said, Jacob.”

Hooper preferred to be called Jake, and Cashill knew it.

An uneasy moment passed before Irene Zimm broke it.

“Bill, would you come over for a second and look at this?”

Cashill went over to Zimm, who turned her computer so he could see the screen. They chatted quietly. A short time later, they boarded their jet for the one-hour flight to New York. As it leveled off, Hooper took stock, reflecting on Gwen. They’d been high school sweethearts and they had an anniversary coming up. He was going to surprise her with a pearl necklace and matching earrings.

The soft cry of a baby two rows ahead saddened him, not only because Hooper and Gwen would never have children, but because it pulled him back to the horrors of his job.

No matter how many investigations he’d done, it never got easier. He’d lost count of how many times he’d found charred remains, dead passengers holding each other at the moment of impact, victims entwined in metal debris, impaled in trees, buried in the ground.

He still had nightmares.

The baby in the seat ahead continued crying and pulled him back to last year, when a commuter jet had lost both engines on its approach to Memphis during a storm at night and plowed into a hillside. Forty-seven people had died. Walking alone in a wooded area among scattered pieces of twisted wreckage, Hooper had come upon a baby.

The only visible injury had been a tiny bloodied scrape on its head.

The child had been beautiful, a perfect angel, wearing pajamas with teddy bears and rabbits. Its eyes had been closed and it had appeared to be sleeping as a soft breeze lifted strands of its hair.

The baby had been dead.

Suddenly the wall Hooper had built to protect himself from the emotional toll of his work had crumbled and he’d been overcome. He’d dropped to his knees beside the baby and said a silent prayer, had removed his jacket and gently covered the child, then reached for his radio to call the medical examiner’s staff.

Now, as his plane jetted to New York, he looked at the sky, relieved this incident had had no fatalities.