“Dr. Cole, I understand, but I’m not a magician. I quite frankly have no idea how to reach Mr. Jerrod at the moment, and all I can say is that we’ll keep trying. If you need some emergency protection, we can come get you in fifteen minutes.”
“That’s not necessary. It’s not a protection matter. At least, not about protecting me.”
It was going to be futile to pressure the man further, Ben realized. He terminated the call and sat rubbing his eyes for a minute, working to bat down the hopefully fictional scenarios that could explain Dan Jerrod’s sudden disappearance.
Schroedinger was making it very clear that a formal charge of feline abuse was in the offing if his breakfast was not served within the next few minutes. Ben gave him a conciliatory head scratching before following the aggravated cat to the kitchen. He made coffee and reached out the front door to retrieve the Anchorage Times, opening it on the center island in the kitchen as he settled onto a stool to catch up with the world. He was into the third section before a small article about a recent plane crash caught his attention.
FAA ACCUSED OF OVERREACTION IN
MONDAY’S SEAPLANE ACCIDENT
Midair Collision Possible
The Monday night loss of a private twin-engine seaplane some sixty miles south of Valdez has led to cancelation of a senior pilot’s license to fly and resulted in countercharges that local Federal Aviation Administration officials are persecuting the pilot.
The aircraft, a World War II — vintage Grumman Albatross, crashed south of Prince William Sound late Monday on a flight from Anchorage to Sitka. The owner-pilot — a senior airline captain for a major U.S. airline — reported a sudden fog bank at low altitude at the same moment his right engine mysteriously lost a propeller blade and broke loose, causing a loss of control. Captain Arlie Rosen of Sequim, Washington, and his wife, Rachel, were the only occupants of the aircraft, which was featured last year in the Living Section of the Anchorage Times for its motor home-like interior. The couple survived the crash without serious injury and were rescued late Tuesday morning by the Coast Guard. They were taken to Providence Hospital with mild hypothermia and released the following day.
The wreckage, which sank in some three hundred feet of water, has not yet been examined and may be very difficult to raise. The Coast Guard confirms that they have no current plans to raise the wreckage. Meanwhile, the FAA has already taken the highly unusual step of revoking Captain Rosen’s pilot license and charging him with flying while intoxicated, operating an aircraft recklessly, and violating several FAA regulations regarding flight into marginal weather conditions, charges Rosen vehemently denies through his attorney. Sources close to the case say the FAA does not believe the aircraft lost a propeller blade, but that instead, the pilot simply flew too low and drove the aircraft into the water.
The revocation, which came from FAA headquarters in Washington, D.C., effectively grounds Captain Rosen from his airline job as well as from private flying. Rosen’s attorney, Seattle lawyer Gracie O’Brien, told the Times, “There is no justification for the FAA’s actions. They’ve gone off half-cocked, without even the most cursory evidence, and have egregiously damaged the reputation of one of the finest senior pilots in the nation.”
Ms. O’Brien added that “thirty-thousand-hour airline captains do not just negligently fly airplanes into the water.” Ms. O’Brien accused the FAA of staging an unexplained vendetta from the very first interview, citing a hostile hospital room exchange on Tuesday between Rosen and an FAA investigator. “The FAA is refusing to investigate any of several other very possible scenarios, such as the possibility that the propeller clipped another aircraft that perhaps didn’t have the authority to be where it was.”
Local FAA officials have refused to comment on the case, referring all inquiries to officials in Washington, who are also refusing to comment.
That’s a shame, Ben thought, feeling an uncharacteristic bridge of camaraderie to anyone alleging government overreaction. He reread the next-to-the-last paragraph, his mind latching onto the mention of a possible midair collision, as the subtitle had bannered.
Monday night. Where was this?
He searched out the part that mentioned the location, some sixty miles south of Valdez, and moved to his laptop to call up a detailed Alaska map program. He pinpointed the area and sat back, his thoughts accelerating.
Where were we? And when did this occur?
The article hadn’t mentioned the exact time of the crash, he discovered, but a quick check of his own test notes pinpointed the time of the Gulfstream’s harrowing dive to fifty feet, and its deadeye aim at the oil tanker miles ahead.
The tanker was coming out of Valdez. That would put him about here, which means we were about here.
Ben shook his head to expunge the unwanted conclusions. He had been there, after all. If they’d hit anything, including some lumbering warbird’s propeller, he would have heard it and probably felt it. Besides, the fact they were in the same area on the same evening was hardly evidence they’d come close to each other. There were probably dozens of airplanes out that night, and who knew how many might have been nearby?
Just a tantalizing coincidence, he told himself.
But, just in case, he decided to clip and save the article.
Mac MacAdams was in a grumpy mood from waking up over and over during the night, and his wife, Linda, knew the warning signs. The fact that her sleep had been all but sabotaged by his insomnia was best suppressed for the moment, she figured. Mac was a compassionate and caring husband, but she knew the energy it took for him to be reasonable when the storm warnings went up from lack of sleep. Something was troubling the general, and the general’s wife was smart enough to know how to quietly fix his breakfast, serve it with the morning paper, and judiciously withdraw.
He would, she knew, be contrite later, and that was always useful.
Mac knew very well what was bugging him, and it made him even more irritated that such a small, potentially useless suspicion was leaching away so much of his attention. So what if they might have covered up a small ding on the right winglet of the Gulfstream? No way could that be evidence of some midair collision.
But the issue wouldn’t leave him alone, and the toll it was taking on his concentration reached a new level when he opened the Anchorage Times and came across the same article Ben had read about the FAA’s alleged overreaction.
Goddammit! Mac raced through the article, fixating on the subtitle and the ending reference to the possibility of a midair. He put his coffee mug on the counter with a thud and launched himself toward the secure Air Force official phone in the living room of the large, comfortable base house.
“Yes, sir?” a captain at the command post answered.
Mac checked a small notebook for the name. “The test flight manager for Uniwave, Richard Wilcox. Get him on the phone, tell him someone from the command post will pick him up in a staff car in ten minutes. Send someone to do exactly that, get him on a secure line there and call me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sometime yesterday. Understood?”
“Yes, General. Immediately, sir.”
He replaced the receiver and began pacing in a predictable pattern around the living room. His oldest son, who had already graduated from Air Force pilot training, loved to kid him about his pacing, which always aided his thinking.