Millennium

He held out an undamaged Seiko and I glanced at it. It had constant day/date display, and a second indicator silently flicking out the numbers in its inscrutable digital way. The time read 3:14, December the 11th.

"This one's really screwed up," I said. "It's not even close to the others."

"You're telling me," Freddie said. "It's 'cause it's counting in a way I'd call a little odd.

Take another look."

I did, and this time I really looked at the seconds.

Forty, thirty-nine, thirty-eight, thirty-seven ...

I plunked it down on the table.

"Goddam it, Freddie, every crash I ever saw plays crazy tricks, one way or another. All those watches reading forty-five minutes fast, now that's something I'll buy as having a bearing on the crash. Or at least it might. But one watch that's gone haywire and is ru

Freddie sighed.

"I'd agree with you, pal, but for a couple of things. One of them is that I've had some electronics training and I couldn't figure out what would make one of these go backwards. I mean, anything that would knock it that far out of kilter would destroy the whole chip, you know what I mean?"

I didn't, but these days nobody likes to admit they're ignorant about any part of computer science, else you start looking like an old biplane fogey. So I shrugged.

"You said a couple of things. What's the others?"

He just held out his hand and let me look. There were three other digital watches there.

All of them read 3:13, and all were counting backwards.

Donald Janz was in terrible shape. He looked like there was more Valium than blood in his veins. He was just a kid -- no more than twenty-five, younger than Tom Stanley -- dressed in a rumpled white shirt with the tie pulled askew. He kept tugging at his mustache and scratching at his nose, covering his face one way or another. He was sitting between Ian Carpenter of the Union sorry, 'Association' -- and somebody who l thought for a minute was Melvin Belli, but turned out to be just a hopeful imitator. He couldn't have looked more like a lawyer if he had the word stenciled on his forehead..

We were back in the small conference room at the Oakland airport and it was getting on toward two in the afternoon. All I'd had that day was a donut and a ham sandwich so my stomach wasn't in the greatest shape, but they finally had the DC-10 tape ready to play and I wanted to do it while Janz was there to listen.

It's not strictly going by the book to play the cockpit voice tape at the investigation site.

The actual tape was already on its way to Washington. There the Board maintains sophisticated machines that clean up, enhance, and analyze the usually awful recordings we get off CVR's. It takes a couple weeks putting the tapes through that mill. So I sometimes have a copy made before sending it off. That's what we'd be listening to.

The room had been cleared of reporters. I started out by watching Janz as it was played, but soon I was engrossed.

Somebody said: "United three-five, this is Oakland. I have you at twenty-three thousand, descending to fifteen. There is traffic below you, bearing ... " and so forth. I saw Janz jump at the sound of his own voice. At least, though I'd never heard him speak, I assumed it was him.

The quality of the voice was pretty good.

There were several exchanges, all routine, and some of the usual cockpit chatter, though by and large the two in the DC-10 didn't have a lot to say to each other. We heard a stewardess come in at one point, and heard the door shut behind her.

This sort of thing went on for ten or fifteen minutes. It was useful to get the names associated with the voices. We had the chief picots for Pan Am and United in the room to help us with that, and by the time things started to get interesting I had them sorted out.

In the DC-20 had been Captain Vern Rockwell, First Officer Harold Davis, and Flight Engineer Thomas Abayta. I wondered what nationality he was. Every once in a while we'd hear the voice of Ca plain Gilbert Crain, the pilot of the Pan Am 747, coming over the radio, responding to calls from Janz. There were also many other planes in the area, and we heard the parts of their communications that reached the DC-10 cockpit through their radio.

United 35 was descending, coming through cloud layers from the north and east, and Janz was guiding it through a series of turns that would have it heading almost due west when he handed it aver to the Oakland tower for landing. Davis said something about the clouds, and Rockwell griped about the weather in Oakland. It seemed he didn't care much for the city.

Abayta said something about a daft hr had that night, and it sounded like the other two laughed. Then things started to happen.

Janz said, "United three-five, I make you too far south. There is another aircraft in your path. Advise you increase speed and turn left."

Rockwell said, "Roger, Oakland, but -- " and that was it, because Janz was on the air again immediately.

"Pan Am eight-eight-oh, advise you initiate left turn and decrease speed at once. What is your altitude, eight-eight-oh?"

I glanced at Janz again. He wouldn't have had to ask that unless his computer was down.

It would be displaying altitude right next to 880's blip. Janz had no reaction. I wasn't even sure he was hearing anymore.

Somebody -- I'm pretty sure it was Davis, the co-pilot -- said, "What the hell?"

"I don't know," Rockwell said. "I better do it. Call him back."

"Oakland, this is United three-five, turning-"

But he was cut off again by Janz, who said, "United three-five, can you see anything out your right window?"

There was a pause. I could imagine Davis looking out the window. He'd have to get his face real close to it, because with the plane already in a left turn his side would be tilted sharply.

"Negative, Oakland," Davis said. "We are in a cloud layer at this time. Do you advise -- "

"Jesus! Right over -- "

That was Rockwell again, and that's all he had time to say. We could hear the screech of metal, far away and indistinct, and instantly alarms started to go off. That's all we heard for maybe five seconds. Then Rockwell came back on.

"Uh ... Oakland, this is ... uh-oh, get that, get it!"

The engineer, Abayta, was shouting something in the background. We might retrieve his words in the lab; we'd listen to it over and over and eventually work up a fairly complete script. For now, we all listened to Vern Rockwell's last words, delivered in a calm, almost bored voice.

"Oakland, this is United three-five ... uh, we have collided with something and the ... uh, the aircraft is not responding ... uh, to control. No rudder function. Ah ... no response from the elevators. We have lost most of our left wing and the aircraft is on fire, repeat, the aircraft is on fire."

"Out of the clouds now," Davis put in. "Come on, come on, pull it up, get up, get up, get up."

Rockwell again: "The aircraft is in a tight roll to the left."

Abayta: "Fifteen hundred feet."

Rockwell: "Applying ... right aileron ... the stick is shaking."

Davis: "Get the nose up ... we're going down, Vern."

Rockwell: "Looks like it."

Abayta: "Hydraulic pressure is gone, back-up hydraulics ..

Rockwell: "I'm trying to ... I'm going to try ... that didn't d. it, okay, uh, let's try ... shit."

I've never yet heard a pilot crying about it on the way down. Some of them are more excited than Rockwell was, but there's never anything that sounds like panic. These are men who have learned there is always something else you can do, something that, if you forget to do it, you're going to feel pretty silly. So they try and they try and they keep on trying until the ground is about an inch from the windshield, and then what I think they tend to feel is foolish. They finally realize they don't have time to do anything about anything. They've missed it. They've fucked up. They feel disgusted that they didn't solve the problem in time, and they say Aw, shit!