Final Approach (23 page)

“Gary? This is Dean Farris. I hadn't heard from you.”

“There's been no time, and nothing to report.”

“You keeping an independent eye on things?”

“Yes sir.”

“Well, now don't think I don't trust Joe. I just want to make certain I have a balanced view of all that's happening out there.”

“No problem.”

“I got you … you can't talk right now. Right?”

“Uh … right.”

“Call me later when you're in private if you've got anything interesting to tell me, and I guess, having said that, I should ask whether to expect a call from you?”

“You should, yes.”

“Okay. Later, then.” Farris recycled the phone once more, entering a sequence of numbers leading through the federal telephone system to an office one floor above his in the FAA's section of the FAA building. The voice of Associate Administrator Bill Caldwell came on the line. In the past few years Farris had come to regard Caldwell as an ally and confidant, even when they squared off agency to agency over issues of safety.

It was difficult for the NTSB. Whenever they determined a change was needed in the regulations, they could only ask the FAA to make the change; there was no way for the board to force anyone to do anything.

The two men exchanged pleasantries before Farris jumped to the warning he had been eager to pass on.

“Bill, my people tell me your control tower in Kansas City may have screwed up Friday night. I wanted to give you a heads-up warning.”

Bill Caldwell's mind raced ahead, reviewing the previous evening's telephone conference with the FAA members assigned to the NTSB team in Kansas City. He was acutely aware of the problems and the threat to the FAA. The shift supervisor, one Carl Sellers, had already been questioned extensively and copies of the tower tapes had been sent to Caldwell on Saturday. The apparent failure of the tower personnel to give out the proper windshear information might add up to a damage containment problem for the agency, and he damn sure wasn't going to discuss such sensitive information with an unprofessional politician like Dean Farris. Farris had cozied up to him over the past few years and Caldwell had encouraged the apparent friendship, not necessarily for purposes of expediency. Farris was indeed an interesting fellow, with wide-ranging interests and an analytical mind. But as a politician he was a rank amateur who didn't realize it. That, coupled with his big mouth, was a potentially disastrous combination within the Beltway. Farris, however, had also been a wonderful source of advance information into NTSB activities. Caldwell had been able to maneuver the FAA out of several potentially embarrassing problems because Farris leaked confidential details in the early stages of several crash investigations.

“Yeah, we're aware of the initial details, and I'm watching it. Any feelings on how the overall investigation is leaning, not that they lean, of course?”

“Of course.” Dean Farris laughed easily at the shared inside joke and filled him in.

Caldwell listened carefully as he checked his desk calendar. “Dean, join me for dinner tomorrow? Your wife mind?”

“I'll tell her its necessary.”

“Good. I want to get your ideas on several of the upcoming airworthiness directives we're considering for the DC-8 aging-fleet program.” Caldwell knew the ADs he was mentioning were set in concrete, but Farris loved to feel included. He'd throw Farris a dry bone, and Farris might reciprocate by innocently tossing him a live bomb with enough time left to defuse it. Such were the methods of protecting his boss, the FAA administrator, as well as his own tail.

Bill Caldwell shook his head as he hung up the phone, glancing at an aide who had been listening on an extension.

“Not a word of this to the administrator yet, but I think we're going to have problems in Kansas City. I feel it. Get hold of our people out there, figure out who is closest to the NTSB's IIC, and make a spy out of him. If we're going to get broadsided, I want early warning.”

The aide nodded and left as Bill Caldwell let his mind dart up and down the different corridors of possibility, peeking behind all the doors. He had always survived as a nonaeronautical bureaucrat in an aeronautical agency by playing it like a giant chess game. You either schemed and plotted several moves ahead of your opponent in order to put him in check, or he would blindside you and put
you
in check, or worse: checkmate. He looked at everyone that way. There were the kings, such as the administrator, who were to be carefully moved around and told what they needed to know, but no more. There were queens in the agency as well, he chuckled to himself, but that was another story. The department heads, one rank beneath, Caldwell regarded as knights and bishops. Strong but expendable. He could throw them judiciously into battle and sacrifice one every now and then to a congressional broadside, yet survive unscathed himself.

And then there were the pawns. Thank God for pawns. He enjoyed relegating people to the status of pawns, even those who were technically of higher rank. There were thousands of them, all available to do his bidding if properly moved around the chessboard of the FAA: air-carrier inspectors, air-traffic-control managers, engineers, and more. Even Dean Farris had let himself become a pawn in Caldwell's game, though he would never know it.

He loved the chess analogy. It had kept professional life in perspective during some dark days, when miscalculation born of not being from the world of aviation had nearly trapped him.

There were dangers, though. Even pawns like Farris could turn on you if you let them. The very move you fail to consider will always be the one that gets you. Chess was like that, and so was the job of associate administrator, and he was a master at both.

Bill Caldwell realized he had been drumming his fingers loudly on his rather plain desktop and willed himself to stop, getting up suddenly and aiming his athletic body toward the door as he double-checked his watch. He had a meeting in ten minutes four floors below, and as usual, he wanted to time it to the second. He liked the fact that people around 800 Independence could set their watches by his precise movements. If Bill Caldwell said he'd arrive at a given time, you could bank on it, and that slightly unnerved everyone, giving him the upper hand—keeping him one move ahead.

As Caldwell walked out of his office on the ninth floor, Beverly Bronson walked into Dean Farris's office one floor below, her teased auburn hair cascading over broad shoulders draped by a soft chiffon blouse which clung to and emphasized what the males in the NTSB were sure was the most magnificent female figure in U.S. government service. Miss Bronson had been appointed by parties unknown on the Hill to a job in NTSB public and governmental affairs, and had proven good at congressional liaison. It was her job to protect the image of the Board, especially in front of the congressional committees that controlled its budget. She was also amazingly adept at keeping track of NTSB gossip: what the troops were doing, who was sleeping with whom, and who might be secretly talking to the outside world about NTSB internal business. Her success in that area had earned her the suspicion of nearly everyone on the eighth floor—except Dean Farris.

10

Tuesday morning, October 16

The group of worried men in the boardroom of Rogers Drilling in downtown New Orleans had been filling the air with tobacco smoke and nervous profanity for the past hour. Now they were listening in silence as Forrest Rogers called the fishing camp one more time, the clock now showing 8
A.M.
The weary voice on the other end came through the speakerphone tinged with a Cajun accent and the distinctive rhythm of bayou country. The man assured them that Walter Calley had not shown up, and yes, as he had already promised them, he would call the moment the errant electronics engineer arrived—if he did.

Rogers launched a felt-tip pen at the far wall. “Goddammit! Where the hell
is
he?”

“Forrest, that tape'll be here in a few hours, I suspect. You said he sent it Sunday?”

“Said he did.”

“Okay. Let's all calm down. We don't know what Walter has or hasn't done.”

Rogers whirled on him. “What he's apparently done somehow, Edward, is murder the man it took us damn near two decades to get into the U.S. Congress, and by the by, he killed about a hundred other folks at the same time! I don't know how, but the son of a bitch killed Larry Wilkins, the white man's one true hope in this screwed up country! That good enough for you? I still say we call the FBI.”

“Hold on, damn it!” A meticulously groomed man in the far corner of the room held up his hand, and the others listened respectfully. “The last
gawdammed
thing we're going to do is call the very bunch of mindless hounds who've been trackin' and doggin' every move of every conservative organization since Bobby Kennedy declared war on the South … since before most of you boys were shavin' age. Now, maybe Mr. Calley's gone and lost his mind and become a mass murderer, and maybe he hasn't. Maybe he knows something. He told you—you said it, Forrest, I didn't—that he had good reason for what he did, and he wanted to explain, right?”

“Yeah,” Rogers said, “yeah, Bill, and he also admitted he persuaded Larry to fly to Kansas City.”

“But we don't know
why
, now do we? Until we hear his tape, or hear him explain, we don't know why. Could be someone else killed Larry and they're after Calley to shut him up.”

Forrest Rogers paused, then looked the man in the eye. “I figure at least that's what Walter thinks, the way he sounded. But what we
do
know, Bill, is this: Larry Wilkins was murdered, if not by Walter, then by somebody else. Walter told me that himself.”

“Okay.” Bill nodded and smiled. “Okay, so that's what we do in the meantime.” He turned to a sandy-haired young man sitting at the long table. “Jess? You arrange to have Larry's office issue a press release or hold a press conference
this afternoon
, an' announce that they've got proof positive it was an assassination. Get all the networks and news people in a frenzy. Have 'em say the details will be revealed in a couple of days, and then either we'll turn over the idiot himself if he did it, or relay what he knows to the world. Hell, we may just have us a martyr here, and I think Larry would have wanted it that way—if he had to go in the first place, of course. He's not the first one gave his life to get this country back in control.” Bill sat down heavily and looked at the group. “An' boys … he won't be the last, either.”

Forrest Rogers looked startled. “We can't turn him over to the FBI!”

“What do you mean, Forrest?”

“With what he knows about all of us, Larry's promises and agenda, and who supports us around this town. Walter, remember, was an important part of the campaign team. He was up there at that factory because Larry asked him to be there. You told me that. I didn't know he was spying. Anyway, if he got really scared and was facing murder charges, he'd probably start talking, and the public—they'd be so infuriated we'd never get anyone else elected.”

Bill stayed silent for a few seconds, looking straight at Forrest Rogers without changing expression. “What are you recommending?”

“Christ, I don't know. But we can't just throw him to the wolves, can we?”

Walter Calley punched the small light on his digital watch and read 8:05
A.M.
The air in the Camaro was stale, covered as it was with hay, but worming his way back inside had been the only method he had of staying warm. There were extra clothes in the trunk, but no blankets.

He had stayed flat on his belly in the open loft of the barn until sundown, silently watching through the open doors, noting the helicopter that flew back and forth over the area for several hours before noon and the police cars that roared up the road and then back again, none of them spotting the telltale tire tracks leading into the pasture.

In midafternoon a sheriff's deputy had turned into the field. Walter had quietly cocked his gun as the young man got out and walked to the barn to look in. He had prayed the deputy would see nothing, hear nothing,
feel
nothing, and his prayer was answered. The thought of having to actually shoot someone was horrifying, but he could not let himself be captured. The lawman had returned to his car and motored off to the west, oblivious of the firepower that had followed his every move near the barn. Walter saw him stop and approach another barnlike structure in another field, moving with equal disinterest and lack of caution. After sundown Walter had returned to the car for a fitful night.

If I'm not found before tomorrow, he had decided, I'll take off cross-country on foot. He had been trained well in the Army how to “E and E”—escape and evade. This was his neck of the woods after all, and the fishing camp couldn't be more than 40 miles.

Carefully and slowly he rolled down the driver's window and hauled himself through the hay to the surface, stopping and listening at intervals, expecting to hear the collective click of a dozen revolver hammers as his head came into filtered daylight in the ruined old barn.

Instead, the sedate sounds of distant birdcalls on a frosty morning meadow greeted him, shafts of sunlight slicing through the musty interior. After pulling what he needed from the trunk, he covered the car completely once more with hay and took up his position in the loft again to wait out the daylight, taking stock of his meager supplies. Fortunately he'd brought some water and snack foods—an old habit. He could last several days on those alone, and by wearing several layers of clothes for warmth and using the stars for navigation, he should be able to make ten miles or so a night. The police and FBI would be looking for a Camaro, not a midnight evader: one man traveling by foot in the darkness. He had a fighting chance.