Millennium

I looked where Tom had been looking when he had finally turned green. There was a woman's arm, cut off pretty neatly. The trick the crash had played with this arm was to arrange it on the ground, palm up, fingers curling as if beckoning. There was a wedding ring on one finger. It would have been a sexy gesture in another context, and I guess that's what got Tom.

It was going to get me in a minute if I didn't look away, so I did.

Roger Keane's the perfect man to head the Los Angeles office of the NTSB. He looks a little like Cary Grant in his younger days, with just a touch of silver in his hair, and he buys his suits in Beverley Hills. He's not a guy to get his hands dirty, so I wasn't surprised to find him back by the spotlight, supervising the crew who had clambered up the precarious tail section with cutting torches to get at the flight recorders. He had his hands thrust deep in the pockets of his trench coat, the collar turned up, and an unlit cigar clenched in his teeth. I got the impression that the biggest a

He greeted me and Tom, and a few moments were passed in polite pleasantries. You'd be surprised how much they can help. I suspect I could carry off a reasonable imitation of polite conversation in the middle of a battlefield.

When that was done he took us off for a guided tour. There was a proprietary air about him. This had been his site, for better or worse, and until we were filled in on what he'd found out it still was, in a sense. This was not to say he was delighted with what he'd found. He was grimfaced, like the rest of us, probably taking it harder because he didn't see it as often.

So we trudged through the devastation like solemn tourists, stopping every once in a while to puzzle out what some of the larger chunks were all about.

The only really important things for me here were the CVR and the FDR. The famous black boxes. Eventually we got back to the tail section. We were just in time to see the Cockpit Voice Recorder lifted free and handed carefully down to someone on the ground.

Roger looked happy.

I was, too, but the other one is more important.

The Flight Data Recorder, in the newer aircraft, is one hell of a piece of equipment. The old ones recorded just six variables, things like airspeed, compass heading, and altitude. The readings were inscribed by needles on rolls of metal foil. This 747 had one of the newer FDR's that recorded forty different things on magnetic tape. It would tell us everything from flap settings to engine rpm's and temperatures. The new FDR's were a big improvement except for one thing. They were not quite as tough as the old metal-foil machines.

Tom and I stuck around until the workers came up with the second flight recorder, and we lugged them out ourselves. Roger didn't offer to help, but I didn't expect him to. The chopper came back and returned us to the other crash site.

The sun was coming up by the time we got back to the airport.

This time we went in the back door and airport security managed to keep the press away from us. We were shown to the rooms the Oakland Airport had made available to us. There was a small one for the top brass -- me and my people -- a medium-sized one for the nightly meetings when all the people we'd gathered to investigate the crash got together to exchange findings and compare notes, and a big one, for press conferences. I didn't give a damn about the latter. Presumably C. Gordon Petcher would be here before long and that was his job. It was his photogenic mug everybody would see on their television sets at six o'clock, not my bleary and unshaven one.

I checked out the facilities, got introduced to liaison people from United, Pan Am, and the airport management, and once again met Kevin Briley. He seemed a lot happier than the last time I ran into him. He dropped a couple of keys into my hand.

"This is your car, and this is to your hotel room," he said. "The car is at the Hertz lot, and the room is at the Holiday I

"Hell, I can find a Holiday I

He looked at his watch.

"It's 7:15. I told the reporters you'd be talking to them at noon."

"Me? Hell that's not my job. Where's Gordy?"

He obviously didn't know who I was talking about.

"C. Gordon Petcher." Still a blank. "Member of the Board. You know, the National Transportation Safety -- "

"Oh, of course. Of course." He rubbed his forehead and I thought he swayed slightly. I realized the guy was at least as tired as I was. Probably more tired; I'd had a few hours sleep at home, and a few on the plane. The crash had happened at 9:11 P.M., his time, so he'd certainly been awake all night.

"He called," Briley said. "He won't be in until later this evening. He said you should handle the noon press briefing."

"He said ... the hell I will. I've got a fucking job to do, Briley. I don't have time to smile pretty for the fucking cameras." I realized I was yelling at the poor stooge again, when I ought to be yelling at Petcher. "Sorry. Listen, you get him on the phone and tell him he'd better get out here. When we start the hearing phase, he's the big cheese. Technically, he's in charge of the whole damn thing, but he doesn't know shit about airplanes and he's aware of his ignorance and he knows damn well that without me and my boys to feed him the stuff we find out he's going to look like a fool ... so for all practical purposes I'm in charge here for the next couple of weeks. And that means he will do his job, which is to suffer the gentlemen of the goddam press gracefully. It's all he's good for anyway."

Briley watched me for awhile, wondering, I guess, if I'd get violent.

"Are you sure you wouldn't rather tell him yourself?"

I gri

"United has a hangar at the north side of the field They're bringing everything out there."

"And the Pan Am?"

"They're renting space from United. Both planes will be brought there."

"Good. That'll be handy. What about the bodies?"

"Pardon me?"

"The corpses. Where are they putting the corpses?"

I think I'd upset him again. He looked nervous, anyway.

"Uh, I presume they're taking them somewhere ... but I -- "

"It's okay. You can't do everything. I'll find out where they are." I patted him on the back and advised him to get some sleep, then looked around for Tom. He was talking to somebody I thought I recognized. I went over there.

Tom was about to introduce us, when I remembered the guy's name.

"Ian Carpenter, right? Air Traffic Controllers' Union?"

He looked pained at the word "union" -- they're a new group, and still pretty sensitive and quite aware that they rated just below Senators and Congress-critters in public esteem.

That was a damn shame, in my book, where Air Traffic Controllers rate a bit higher than pilots -- who are almost as cla

"Association, please," he said, trying to make a joke out of it. "And you're Bill Smith. I've heard of you."

"Yeah? Who was handling those two planes when they hit?"

He grimaced. "You want to know what I heard about you? I heard you get right to the point. Okay. His name is Donald Janz. And before you ask, he isn't a trainee, but he's not what I'd call a veteran, either."