Fly by Wire: A Novel (19 page)

^{"It's all because of too much environmental regulation," Chief of Staff Spector chided.}

^{"Actually," Coyle argued, "the cumbersome oversight process is only a minor nuisance. Like the rest of our economy, the market for petrochemicals has globalized. Simply put, it is cheaper for us to buy foreign refined products, incrementally, than to produce them ourselves." Coyle turned to Townsend. "With these factors in mind, Mr. President, there are four steps we must take immediately."}

^{Coyle waited for a cue from his commander-in-chief.}

^{Townsend nodded.}

^{"First, we must protect our remaining facilities against further attack"}

^{General Banks piped in, "I've already been in touch with the National Guard Bureau. I think they're in the best position to handle it, but if we need to augment with active duty forces, I'll see to it."}

^{The president had only one addition. "All right. But I want every refinery locked down tight
by tonight."}

^{Coyle nodded approvingly. He said, "Second, we must fast-track all repair work. Corporations must not be hogtied with toxic cleanup plans from the EPA or safety audits from OSHA."}

^{There was no dissent around the conference table. There wasn't a politician in Washington who, at least at some point in his or her career, hadn't relished the chance to tell EPA and OSHA to go jump in a toxic lake without a safety line.}

^{"Third, we must procure every barrel of foreign excess capacity we can get our hands on. This must take place at both the governmental and corporate levels."}

^{Again Coyle's directive went unchallenged. The room remained silent for his final decree.}

^{"My last suggestion," he said, "requires an understanding of the term 'forward cover.' Simply put, it is the amount of time that the refined petroleum in our system will stretch given standard rates of usage. Yesterday, we had a forward cover of twenty-one days."}

^{The president wanted to be sure he understood. "You're saying the gasoline already in the pipeline will last us twenty-one days?"}

^{"Essentially, yes. Since we still have significant production in place, and with the purchase of additional stores on the global market, the effect on supply should be manageable. However--" Coyle parked at the podium again and his voice rose for emphasis,
"this all makes one assumption
. Mr. President, you must appeal for calm. Americans will be inundated for weeks with images of these attacks, images of lines at gas pumps. As I said, there will be spot shortages due to kinks in our distribution network. Any panic, any mass hoarding of gasoline or other refined products will exacerbate the problem. It could quickly wipe out our safety margin and induce a catastrophic shortage."}

^{President Townsend said, "So you want me to make an appeal for calm."}

^{"It is vital, sir." Coyle then made eye contact with the rest of the table and his thin lips puckered as if he had encountered something distasteful. "Any missteps, ladies and gentlemen, will result in a most dire crisis."}

^{Townsend had the distinct feeling that Herman Coyle was telling them not to screw this up. It was probably good advice.}

^{Chapter SEVENTEEN}

^{Lyon, France}

^{The meeting at Building Sixty-two was one Davis did not want to miss. The initial play of the cockpit voice recorder, or CVR, was scheduled to take place. Together with the flight data recorder, it was among the investigators' most critical evidence. These were the infamous black boxes -- a sensational misnomer since they were actually life vest orange -- the digital record keepers that stored detailed logs of what occurred in an aircraft's final minutes.}

^{Typically, it was the data recorder that garnered the greatest interest from investigators. It tracked hundreds of parameters -- control inputs, instrument readings, switch activations. It was a series of technical snapshots -- three per second -- that when strung together could identify virtually any anomaly. Unfortunately, in the case of World Express 801, the data recorder information had already been declared useless, although the technicians were not ready to give up. Given this lack of flight and performance information, the voice recorder took on even greater importance.}

^{Davis arrived early, and with time to kill, he went to the hangar where pieces of wreckage were slowly accumulating. He spotted Thierry Bastien meandering amid the debris, sipping from a china cup -- tea, Davis guessed. Probably some kind of pointless decaf chamomile. As he watched Bastien go about his work, his opinion of the investigator-in-charge dropped yet another notch. When Davis walked through a pile of rubble, he could never resist the urge to dig, poke, and smell. Bastien was simply strolling. He might have been window shopping on Rodeo Drive. Surely any vital clues would jump out at him.}

^{Bastien looked up and saw him coming. "Ah, Monsieur Davis. You have been in the field, no?"}

^{Davis looked down at his boots. He had knocked off the worst on a stone wall outside, but they were still caked in mud. He gave Bastien a dry look that said,
Brilliant deduction, Sherlock.}

^{Bastien pursed his lips. "Please, my friend. You and I have gotten off--how do they say -- on the wrong leg."}

^"Foot."

^{"Yes." Bastien sipped from his cup. "I think you did not agree with my initial assessment yesterday."}

^{"You mean when you publicly accused the captain of committing suicide?"}

^{In the midst of his sip, the Frenchman pulled away looking like he'd just sucked a lemon. "I only said that we consider these possibilities. There are many similarities to the SilkAir tragedy, you must agree. I have seen the circuit breaker panel behind the captain's seat, and indeed the data recorder breaker has been deactivated. To suggest such a thing could happen by random chance in the very moments before this disaster -- an overvoltage at that precise point in time? The odds against it are insurmountable. You try, sir, to put the square peg in the round hole."}

^{Davis thought,
I'd like to put my square fist in your round mouth.
He said nothing, but was looking forward to his own inspection of the circuit breaker panel.}

^{Bastien said, "I told you earlier that we spoke to the bartender at the hotel where Captain Moore stayed. Has your Human Factors Group followed up on this?"}

^{"No. But let me guess -- you have?"}

^{"In fact, yes. There are many witnesses. Captain Moore was indeed drinking the evening before the incident."}

^{"How long before the flight?"}

^{Bastien s eyes went skyward in thought. "Roughly twelve hours."}

^{"Eight makes him legal. How much did he drink?"}

^{"His bill was for four beers."}

^{"Was he alone?"}

^{Bastien hesitated. "He was with a woman."}

^{"His first officer."}

^{"This has not yet been verified. But possibly, yes."}

^{Davis felt his ire rising. He wanted to talk about bent elevons and fire damage, but Investigator-in-Charge Bastien couldn't get past bar tabs. "So he and his first officer each had two beers -- twelve hours before the flight. And he picked up the tab like a good captain. From experience, Terry," he said, again Anglicizing the name, "I can't think of any more normal behavior for a couple of pilots."}

^{Bastien bristled. "I can only say, Mr. Davis, that we will continue to examine this evidence as a contributing causal factor."}

^{Davis thought about that. Last week Earl Moore had been a veteran, a dad who took his kid to ballgames. Now he was a "causal factor." When Davis had been in the Air Force there was an unwritten rule about dead pilots. Around the squadron, you never said somebody had been a drunk, a philanderer, or a buffoon in the cockpit. You never said it -- even if it was true. But accident investigations were different. No one here had known the crewmembers. They were just names, numbers on pilot certificates, and so expediency and a reckless search for the facts overcame any quaint semblance of honor. Davis knew it would always be that way. But he didn't have to like it.}

^{A young woman rushed up and passed a message to Bastien. The
investigator
-in-charge frowned sourly. "Mon
Dieu!}

^{"What now?" Davis asked.}

^{"So much important work to be done," he waved the paper, "and I am pulled down by the weight of dead horses."}

^{"Dead horses?"}

^{"A horse was victim to the crash and the owner is now demanding compensation."}

^{Davis prodded, "A champion Thoroughbred, no doubt."}

^{"The man is outside complaining to the press." Bastien straightened his tie and began to walk away. His gait was stylish, confident. In parting, he glanced over his shoulder, a look that said,
We will resume our discussion later.}

^{Davis nodded in return, his eyes sharp.
Yes, we will.}

^{Davis continued his walk through the hangar. The investigators were gathering amid rising mounds of debris. He counted four regionalized conversations where the working groups had divided into packs. The buildings tall, rectangular frame was an acoustic nightmare, and so the competing words mixed in a chattering waterfall, the aggregate indistinguishable to Davis' ears. In three of the pods, the participants were bantering -- loud, animated discussions, the usual give-and-take over early findings and theories. The fourth group, however, was different.}

^{Dr. Ibrahim Jaber presided, giving muted directions to two colleagues. He talked, they listened. He moved his hands in slow chopping motions and his colorless face was compressed as he emphasized a point. On their first encounter, Davis remembered Jaber as being subdued, almost listless. Now he looked like a mime on Valium. From a distance, even his eyes appeared changed, lacking the intensity Davis had seen earlier. Now they were dim, like a light that was neither on nor off, but something in between.}

^{Sorensen hadn't come up with anything yet on Jaber's background, but Davis had asked around among the other investigators. He'd found out that the guy was Egyptian, just as he'd guessed, and had a Ph. D. from Cairo University in systems engineering. After a short stint writing computer code for an Italian avionics supplier, he had hooked up with Aerostar, a nascent Russian airframe manufacturer. Neither job was management, but rather technical in nature. Apparently the guy was some sort of expert in software integration, made his living by renting out his skills to whoever was buying. A hired gun. Not bad work, but hardly the resume of a chief project engineer for a new civil aircraft program.}

^{Davis edged over.}

^{When Jaber saw him coming he ended his one-sided conversation The two men he'd been lecturing faded away.}

^{"Hello, Mr. Davis."}

^{Davis nodded. "Dr. Jaber."}

^{"Are you looking forward to hearing the cockpit voice tapes?"}

^{"Looking forward to it? Not really. But we might learn a few things."}

^{"Yes, indeed."}

^{Davis said, "I understand that you're something of an expert in the design of flight control software."}

^{Jaber waved the compliment away, that false air of coyness so imbued in people who thought highly of themselves. "I would more precisely describe my work as systems integration -- it is my duty to bring conformity to the various aircraft computers and data inputs."}

^{"Then I should ask your opinion. Whose concept do you prefer -- Boeing or Airbus?"}

^{Jaber cocked his head to one side, the way people did when they were perplexed, as if a new angle of perspective might bring enlightenment. "I am an engineer, so Airbus, of course."}

^{In the decades since Airbus had come into existence, two essential theories had evolved concerning the design of flight control systems. Airbus had pioneered fly-by-wire technology for commercial aircraft, a method where the pilot controlled what was basically a joystick, and a series of computers then provided inputs to hydraulically actuated flight controls. Boeing, on the other hand, had long kept a more traditional method, retaining mechanical links between the pilot and the flight control surfaces. Over the years, the two manufacturers had gravitated to something of a middle ground, but these divergent design philosophies gave rise to yet another division -- pilots favored more direct input, while engineers liked to give their computers ultimate say. Davis knew, from a neutral investigator's standpoint, that each camp could point to spectacular failures of the other.}