On arriving at the crash site, the word that came to Davis’ mind was progress. The first trucks had arrived to transport wreckage, and smaller sections of debris were already being loaded up for their final journey. He saw two men in police uniforms poking through the fuselage, clearly Echevarria’s contingent, and he wondered how they had gotten here so quickly. Certainly not by way of inter-agency cooperation.
Davis bypassed the main debris field and walked east into the wetlands, the area beneath the initial impact zone where the tail had been discovered. This was where Marquez had vowed to keep up the search for the two unrecovered bodies. When he arrived Davis saw no one on the task, and he was momentarily frozen by a terrible idea.
Had the search stopped because they’d succeeded?
Then, mercifully, he spotted two men leaning against a tree, smoking cigarettes, and his panic subsided. Davis approached the pair and launched into a broken conversation in which they confirmed that no additional bodies had been located. They also told him Marquez was going to end the search if nothing was found by the end of the day.
The cigarettes ended, butts went spinning into the wall of ferns, and both men got back to work. They pulled up hip waders, shouldered equipment, and in divergent paths began sweeping their probes left and right, like a pair of electronic lawn sprinklers. They set a loose pattern in the algae-topped water, stirring vegetation and parting thick stands of weeds. It was a primitive way to go about things, but Davis supposed it was effective to a point. A cadaver dog would have been better, yet he doubted there was one within a thousand miles. The marsh seemed exceptionally still, sound dampened by thick carpets of fungus and huge waxen fronds. Visually, it was a place more suited to dinosaurs than a wrecked airliner, a Jurassic topography that would grab things and swallow them, make them disappear for a million years. Davis had an urge to help the men, suggest better ways to go about their search.
But is that what I want? Success here?
His frustration level peaking, Davis decided he needed a little truth. A few fresh, hard facts he could trust and use to make some headway. Standing ankle deep in muck, and with a flying insect the size of a sparrow orbiting his head, he knew there was only one way to get them. Davis turned on a heel, his boot making a giant sucking sound, and began walking back to the main debris field. He would have to go over everything one more time.
FOURTEEN
After a full day in the field, Davis returned to Bogotá on what was becoming his regular flight, the last inbound chopper before nightfall. In his room he showered and changed into fresh clothes, preparing for an evening session at investigation headquarters. Before returning to El Centro, however, he allowed a few minutes of down time. He eased into the room’s only chair and fired up Jen’s iPod. Collective Soul was next on her playlist, a band he’d heard of, and a soothing track flowed through the wires to sweep clear his cluttered head.
It had been a frustrating afternoon, nine hours of stumbling through rain forest with no noteworthy finds. At least none that changed his outlook. Davis rose briefly to pull the curtains back from the room’s only window, and for the first time since arriving regarded the second-floor view. Amber-hued lights played the cityscape of Engativá, the northern Bogotá district that surrounded the airport. The neighborhood was a mix of low-rise businesses, apartments, and a shotgun assortment of restaurants and churches. At this hour the buildings were no more than shadows, and in the valleys between, a vibrant midevening rush played out, the streets alive with traffic and bright-burning neon. Collectively it was like a visual static, light and movement with no cohesion, no common theme or purpose. Not when taken as a whole. But each element made sense in its own right. You only had to look closely, patiently to see the details.
He returned to the chair, earbuds still in place, and tapped his fingers along with the percussion. Davis closed his eyes and imagined Jen doing the same. He had seen it before, his daughter sprawled on the couch with her eyes shut, drumming to a beat. Then the vision dimmed and his fingers went still.
Try as he might, the approach that had comforted him last night was hopeless. Tonight Davis was beyond rescue. The melodies seemed broken, the warm images of Jen interrupted. Instead he found himself logging his paternal shortcomings, which wasn’t hard to do. Not involved enough when she was young. Overbearing after Diane’s death. If they’d only talked more. Just talked.
What anchored in his mind at the end was not a list of his failings, or even the issue of Jen’s fate, which was a cyclone all to itself. Nor was it the burdens of a schizophrenic investigation. The menace that overshadowed everything lay farther afield. Farther to the north.
He felt as if he’d been standing at the edge of a cliff for two days, but was only now opening his eyes. He considered the executive jet he’d taken from Andrews. A State Department flight making a scheduled run to Bogotá. That’s what Larry Green had said, and probably what he’d been told. Davis knew otherwise. The pilots were on-call contractors, and there had been no one else on board. Nothing else on board. No passengers or cargo or secure diplomatic pouches for delivery to the embassy. Someone had chartered a G-III, a very expensive bird, for no other reason than to launch him toward Colombia like some kind of guided missile. Next had come the satellite data to pinpoint the crash site. How many times before had Davis asked for such information through NTSB channels? It usually took weeks of infighting and interdepartmental memos just to get a request approved. The result this time — he and Marquez were buried in hard data in less than an hour.
Finally there was his conversation this morning with Larry Green, when his boss mentioned he’d been getting heat for information on the crash. It had been a trigger, causing Davis to do something he’d never done before — hold back the truth from a friend.
He removed the earbuds and walked to the bedside. Setting down Jen’s iPod, he picked up the other device on the night-stand — the phone that had been waiting for him when he arrived in Colombia. His own mobile would never have worked here, but without so much as filling out a standard government request form, he’d been issued a replacement. A woman from the embassy stopped by and left it for you this afternoon.
Now there was some efficiency.
Jammer Davis had spent a career in the military, followed by an afterlife with the NTSB. By virtue of that background, he was a bona fide expert on labyrinthine bureaucracy and administrative ineptitude. He had taken part in dozens of investigations, and in every case made requests for information and equipment. Any fulfillment at all — set aside timeliness and accuracy — was cause for celebration.
And today?
Today he seemingly had the entire United States government at his disposal. A request for a pencil would get him a pallet-load within hours. Ask for a little flight support for aerial photos, and he’d probably get a carrier battle group. He was the beneficiary of a stacked deck, only the cards were being dealt by some unseen hand.
What the hell is going on?
He sat on the side of the bed, and for a long time stared at the room’s deepening shadows. Like any detective, his goal was to shine light on things, to peel away layers of confusion and obfuscation until the truth became clear. Yet every time he made headway here, the world got darker. He sensed a greater cataclysm, something bigger than one airplane hitting a jungle. He wondered if Marquez or Echevarria knew anything about it.