“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.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
While Schmitt was busy at his filing cabinet, Davis studied the room. From a practical standpoint, it was standard issue for a chief pilot. A big desk for sorting papers. A cheap carpet for tap dancing. Two chairs facing the boss’s desk that looked uncomfortable, no arms to grip when you were getting your butt chewed. But if the furniture was conventional, the décor was something else.
Davis was no expert when it came to interior design, but it didn’t take a professional to see that Schmitt’s office was a testosterone-fueled calamity. There was a deer’s head mounted on the wall over his desk — or, to be exact, something called a springbok. On the file cabinet was some kind of medium-sized creature, like a Tasmanian devil or something. It was presented standing on its hind legs, baring pointed teeth, and had stitch marks up the gut as if Dr. Frankenstein had done the taxidermy. A bandolier of 7.62-mm rounds was hanging from a hat rack. Altogether, it was like some kind of half-assed rod and gun club. What the room lacked was anything personal. There was the obligatory government-issue portrait of Sudan’s glorious leader, but no awards or plaques of commendation, no family pictures. Davis remembered that Schmitt had been single with no kids, and he doubted that had changed. The closest thing to a personal touch was a hand-carved wooden nameplate, the same trinket every Air Force pilot who’d ever been stationed in Korea had planted on his desk.
Schmitt sent a manila folder spinning across the desk and sat down.