“Slim,” said Strand, “but I’ve considered it from every angle. It’s just dumb luck.”
“Luck,” Evers said, almost to himself. “But which kind?”
TWENTY-FOUR
It was nearly ten o’clock when Davis got back to his room. He arrived to find a note from Delacorte taped to his door:
I have information that would interest you. Room 302.
Davis climbed one flight of stairs, rounded the building and found 302 on the back side. The door was open and he found Delacorte sitting on a chair near the window. The room was much like his own, except the painting on the wall was of a mission-style church instead of a conquistador.
“I thought they put flankers up at the Ritz,” said Davis.
“I would prefer anywhere but this room. My air conditioner has stopped working.”
Davis saw a window-mounted air conditioner. The control panel had been removed, and wires dangled free like so much overcooked spaghetti. “Looks like you’ve already tried to fix it.”
“The fan motor has seized — there is no hope.” Delacorte fanned himself with a tourist brochure. “It does not get so hot in Paris.”
“If you want to drag your mattress around the corner you can bunk with me.”
“No, but thank you for offering.”
“I got your note. What’s the interesting information?”
“What you said earlier about landing on an unimproved field,” he raised a finger to imply a revelation, “it caused me to think of other possibilities.”
“Such as?”
“You have suggested that Flight 223 made an interim landing, after taking off from Bogotá but before the crash. We also have a dead copilot to consider, and another man dressed in a TAC-Air captain’s uniform, but who has not been identified.”
Davis nodded. “Not to mention the pastry chef who ended up as pilot-in-command.”
“It will be a challenge, I think, to construct a scenario that brings all these things together.”
“To say the least.”
“I’m afraid I have — what is the term in America? — one more wrench to throw in your machine.”
“By all means, toss away.”
Delacorte pulled out a tablet computer and kept talking as he typed. “In studying the hull I have discovered that certain parts remain missing. Of course, this is not at all unusual in such a devastating crash. There was, however, one absence I thought strange.” He turned the screen to show Davis a photograph of the forward side fuselage. “The main entry door is nowhere to be found.”
Davis studied the picture. He had seen the opening before, even stepped through it once, yet he’d attached no particular significance to the missing door. “Nobody mentioned that it hadn’t been found. I assumed it had broken off and was probably retrieved from the undergrowth.”
“A reasonable assumption. You and I often encounter missing doors. It is usually the result of an evacuation, or sometimes they are removed and discarded in haste by firefighting crews.”
Delacorte was right — doors were often absent. Such a normal occurrence, in fact, that he hadn’t seen it as relevant.
Delacorte continued, “The cabin of an ARJ-35 has four access doors. At the front you have a port-side entry door, the one we are missing, and an opposing starboard service door that was undisturbed in the crash sequence. Aft of these are two small emergency exit hatches, one above each wing. In our mishap the evacuation hatches remained in place — they were never opened. The two forward doors, of course, double as emergency evacuation points, although there are no emergency escape slides as you would find on a larger airliner.”
“So the missing entry door — are you going to tell me somebody survived the crash and opened the door as an emergency exit?”
“Actually, quite the opposite. That door will likely never be found.”
Davis looked at him quizzically.
Delacorte tapped the screen. “As you see, the door is a clamshell design, upper and lower halves hinged to the entryway frame. The bottom half contains an integral set of stairs, used at remote airports where no jetways or airstairs are available.” Delacorte switched to another image. “I took photographs of the hinges — these are from the bottom half of the door.”
Davis looked closely. Two heavy steel fittings had clearly failed, both twisted severely to the breaking point.
“I inspected them very closely,” said the engineer, “and I can tell you that they failed very clearly in torsion.”
“Torsion.”
“A terrific force twisted the door and ripped it off the airframe quite cleanly. The top hinge is nearly identical. I also discovered two dents on the leading edge of the inboard port wing, and another on the number one engine cowling. All of this supports my theory.”
Davis finally understood. “You’re saying this door opened in flight… that it was ripped off its hinges.”
A satisfied Delacorte said, “Almost certainly.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Delacorte’s finding changed the picture completely. It also created new complications.
“Okay,” said Davis, “so we have a door that came open in flight. Could that have caused the crash?”
“This was my first thought as well, but I do not think it fits. True, the wing was damaged, but not in a way that would affect aerodynamic performance. This aircraft has no leading edge flaps on the wing, which would be prone to causing instability if damaged. The tail is a more critical surface, however, I see no damage there that correlates to door separation.”
“The engine?”
“Yes, I considered this also. The outer cowling was dented, impact damage from the door, I would say. This led me to examine the engine, both the fan and turbine. I found no acute rotational damage — only the graduated distortions one would expect from an impact with the forest.”
Delacorte allowed a moment for Davis to digest it all.
“Of course,” he continued, “this is all no more than one engineer’s opinion. With time, everything can be verified by way of laboratory inspections.”
Davis shook his head. “That would be fine if we had time, but in my opinion you’ve already passed the most critical test — it makes perfect sense.”
“What do you take from it? You realize what must happen for this door to be opened in flight.”
Davis did know. Over the years there had been regular occurrences, often sensationalized in the media, of mentally unbalanced individuals trying to open aircraft exit doors in flight. What on the surface appears dramatic and threatening, however, is in fact a non-event. Passenger aircraft are pressurized to counter the thin air at high altitude, and among manufacturers the design specifications are more or less universal, the differential pressure being roughly eight pounds per square inch at service altitude. Simply put, a cabin door six feet high and three feet wide is held in place during cruise flight by an effective force of over twenty thousand pounds. Davis and his entire rugby team would never budge a fully pressurized door.
That said, there was a way to open a door in flight, a scenario that was problematic for one very good reason — it involved cooperation from the flight deck.
“The pilots could have depressurized the cabin,” said Davis.
“It is the only way,” agreed Delacorte. “But why would a crew do that?”
As Davis thought about it, disjointed details began to mesh. “Remember — we still have the issue of the disappearing Captain Reyna. Let’s say Flight 223 landed on an grass strip somewhere, then took off again and flew to where it crashed. That requires at least one pilot on board to get the jet airborne and pointed in the right direction. We found three people in that cockpit. Two, as far as we know, weren’t even pilots. The other was the first officer, and he was dead before the airplane went down. I’m guessing maybe a long time before, which would mean our copilot, Moreno, had no part in this scheme.”