Night Fall jc-4 Read online

  The gentleman who had joined us was named Sidney R. Siben, and he was an investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board, and didn’t look like the sort of chap who would read you your rights and slap the cuffs on, even if he owned cuffs.

  In fact, up close in the light, he was not as young as I’d thought by his jaunty stride. He was intelligent-looking, well dressed, and seemed perhaps a bit arrogant, or at the least, self-assured. My kind of guy.

  Kate explained that she and Sid had become acquainted during the investigation.

  I asked him, “Were you just in the neighborhood and passing through the hangar?”

  He looked quizzically at Kate, who said to him, “You’re early, Sid, and I haven’t had the chance to tell John you were coming.”

  I added, “Or why.”

  Kate said to me, “I wanted you to hear the official version from one of the men who authored the final report.”

  Sidney asked me, “Do you want to hear what actually happened? Or do you want to believe in conspiracy theories?”

  I replied, “That’s a loaded question.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  I asked Kate, “What team is this guy on?”

  Kate replied in a strained, darling-what-are-you-talking-about tone, “There are noteams, John. Just honest differences of opinion. Sid made himself available to speak to you about your concerns and doubts.”

  Most of the concerns and doubts I had about this case had been very recently planted in my brain by Ms. Mayfield herself, who had obviously told Mr. Siben that I needed to have my brain cleansed of doubts and conspiracy theories. Unfortunately, she forgot to tell me. But to play along, I said to Sidney, “Well, you know, I’ve always thought there were problems with the official version. I mean, there are seven major theories about what caused this plane to explode-missile, methane gas bubble, plasma death ray… and… so forth. Now, Kate is a firm believer in the official version, and I-”

  “Let me tell you what happened here, Mr. Corey.”

  “Okay.”

  He pointed to something in the far corner. I looked and saw a huge lime green object on the floor.

  Mr. Siben informed me, “That is a 747’s center fuel tank. Not the one on this aircraft, which was taken to the lab. But another one that we brought here to make this reconstruction complete.”

  I looked at the fuel tank. I had imagined something the size of a truck’s fuel tank, but this thing was as big as a garage.

  Mr. Siben continued, “The pieces of the original fuel tank that were recovered were taken to a laboratory where they were studiedintensely.”He looked at meintensely and went on, “First, there was absolutely no chemical evidence found of explosive residue other than fuel-air. Follow?”

  I repeated dutifully, “There was absolutely no chemical evidence found of explosive residue other than fuel-air.”

  “Correct. Second, there was no evidence on the fuel tank’s metal of a high-velocity explosion-no pitting, no sign of what we call torturing or feathering on the metal. Follow?”

  “There was no evidence-”

  “Third, there was no evidence on the fuel tank of missile penetration-no entry or exit hole, which we call petaling-like a flower petal-which rules out a non-explosive warhead-a kinetic missile.” He looked at me and said, “I understand that you believe a kinetic missile was involved.”

  I hadn’t evenheard of a kinetic missile before I spoke to Captain Spruck, but Kate had written tonight’s script before I even knew I had a part in the play. I asked Mr. Siben, “Where’s the original fuel tank now?”

  “In storage at the laboratory in Virginia.”

  “What percentage of it was recovered?”

  He looked at me and replied, “About ninety percent.”

  “Is it possible, Mr. Siben, that there could be an entry and exit hole in the ten percent you haven’t recovered?”

  “What are the chances of that?”

  “Ten percent.”

  “Actually and statistically, the chances of two distinct holes, entry and exit, opposite one another, both not appearing in the ninety percent of the reconstructed fuel tank, are far less than ten percent.”

  “Okay, one percent. That still leaves it an open possibility.”

  “Not in my mind. All right, we also looked for matching entry and exit holes in the fuselage…” He nodded toward the reassembled aircraft. “… and we found no distinctive holes with inward or outward metal petaling.”

  I replied, “Obviously, the most critical parts of this aircraft are missing-the part where the explosion occurred.”

  “It’s not all missing. Inside this fuselage, which you can see later if you wish, is the reconstructed interior. The flooring, carpeting, seats, overhead bins, the ceiling, lavatories, galleys, and the rest of it. You can’t tell me that a kinetic missile passed through the center section of this aircraft and did not leave one trace of its entry or exit.”

  Mr. Siben was probably right, of course. So, here we had the classic case of the unimpeachable eyewitness-Captain Spruck-and the unimpeachable forensic evidence, represented by Mr. Siben. The evidence was totally contradictory, and to be honest, I was leaning toward Sidney Siben.

  I glanced at Kate, who seemed pensive, or perhaps conflicted herself. Obviously, she’d been through this a hundred times, and for some reason she leaned, privately, toward the kinetic missile theory.

  I tried to recall what I knew of the forensic evidence, and what Spruck had said, and I asked, “How about the air-conditioning units near the center fuel tank?”

  “What about them?”

  “Well, where are they?”

  He pointed to the right of the center fuel tank. “There. Reconstructed.”

  “And?”

  “No evidence of high-explosive residue, no sign of a kinetic missile penetration. Do you want to look at them?”

  “How much is missing?”

  “Again, about ten percent.”

  “Well, Mr. Siben, what’s missing might hold an important clue. And if I were a conspiracy theorist, I might say that something was actually found and spirited away.”

  He looked annoyed and replied, “Every piece of this aircraft that was recovered by Navy divers, FBI divers, local fishing boats, and dredge ships was carefully catalogued, photographed, and deposited here for further cataloguing. Hundreds of men and women were involved in this process, and no one, except conspiracy idiots, has suggested that anything was spirited away. The objects that went on to forensic laboratories are all accounted for.” He looked at me and added, “The only pieces not accounted for are still lying on the bottom of the ocean. This was an amazingly successful recovery operation, at depths of up to one hundred twenty feet, and what remains missing does not hold any surprises.”

  I replied, “Yet, if this was a murder investigation, a medical examiner would be reluctant to rule this an accident and to rule out a crime.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Yeah, it’s so.”

  “What would you need?”

  “I’d need to knowwhy you think it was an accident and not a crime. The lack of evidence for a crime doesn’t prove it was an accident. Do you have proof it was an accident?”

  “Noproof other than the fact that this explosion occurred where an accidental explosion is most likely to occur-in an empty center fuel tank, filled with volatile vapors. If you like analogies, imagine a house that burns down. Arson or accident? Arson is rare, accidents happen all the time. The fire marshal determines very quickly that the fire started in the basement. He goes right to the mechanical room where most fires start-furnace, air-conditioning unit, electrical panel, or stored flammables. He’s not looking for a Molotov cocktail thrown through a window. His investigation focuses on the most likely cause, based on appearances, on his years of experience, and on the overwhelming odds that accidents happen where and how accidents usually happen.”

  He looked at me as though I might need another analogy, which I didn’t
, but I had one of my own. “The safe neighborhood has changed, Mr. Siben. It’s now a dangerous neighborhood, and Molotov cocktails thrown through windows are not out of the question anymore.”

  “You,” he said, “as a criminal investigator, look for and expect to find a crime. I, as a safety engineer, look for and expect to find-and have always found-a safety issue or pilot error as a cause to an aircraft accident. I am not unaware of the possibility of foul play. But there were hundreds of criminal investigators on this case, and not one of them found any concrete forensic or even circumstantial evidence of any crime-not an enemy missile attack, not a friendly fire missile, and not a bomb on board. So, why do people still believe it was anything but an accident? And who could be covering up something sinister? And why? That’s what I don’t understand.”

  “Me, neither.” In fact, in criminal investigations you always have to ask why. If it was a terrorist attack, we knew why-they don’t like us. But why would the government want to cover up a terrorist attack?

  If, on the other hand, it was a friendly fire accident, I could see why the guys who accidentally launched a missile at an American airliner would want to cover it up. But, as Captain Spruck said, virtually no one in the chain of command or the government would or could go along with a cover-up of that magnitude.

  Kate, who had stayed silent for some time, said to Mr. Siben, “John seems to want to know how the center fuel tank could have accidentally exploded.”

  Mr. Siben nodded and looked at the aircraft, then at the lime-colored tank and said to me, “First, you start with the nearly empty center fuel tank, which has only about fifty gallons of fuel left sloshing around the bottom that the scavenge pump can’t get to. Then you have these volatile vapors in that tank-”

  “Excuse me. Why was the fuel tank empty?”

  “Because the flight didn’t need the extra fuel. Wing tanks are filled first and the center tank only if needed. This flight to Paris had a light passenger and cargo load, and the forecast was for good weather and tailwinds.” He added, “Ironically, if the passenger and cargo load had been heavier, and/or there had been bad weather or headwinds, that tank would have been full of jet A fuel, which is actually difficult to ignite. Fuelvapors are volatile. So that fact alone fit the scenario of an electrical short circuit igniting the vapors and causing the kind of explosion that the forensic evidence strongly suggests.”

  “What kind of short circuit? I mean, should I cancel my trip to Bermuda?”

  Mr. Siben didn’t smile at my stupid joke. He said, “There are four plausible and actually proven scenarios. One, a short circuit in the electric wires or motor in the scavenge pump; two, there’s always static electricity; three, there’s the fuel quantity gauges, which are electronic; and four, there are the tank’s electrical conduits. In other words, that big tank over there has electricity in and around it. If the tank was full, a spark could not ignite the jet fuel. But vapors are a different matter.”

  “So you keep saying.”

  “And I’ll keep saying it. It’s the laws of physics, Mr. Corey, which can’t be repealed by theories.”

  “Yeah, but we don’tknow — ”

  “No, we don’tknow. But what webelieve happened was that a wire was frayed and that a short circuit developed somewhere, inside or outside the fuel tank, and that a surge of electric current caused an arcing-a spark-and what started out as a remote possibility-the short circuit and the resulting spark in the one place where it could cause catastrophic consequences-became reality. It’s happened twice before on Boeing aircraft-one time on the ground, so we could see exactly what happened. In this case”-he looked at the 747-“the fumes ignited in midair, and caused an explosion that may or may not have been catastrophic by itself, but that apparently traveled sideways with enough force and heat to actually ignite the fuel in the left wing tank, causing it to explode, which in turn made controlled flight impossible.”

  I asked, “You deduced all this from”-I pointed to the 747-“from that?”

  “Absolutely. All the evidence was there as soon as we determined that the initial explosion occurred in the empty center fuel tank.” He added, “This is borne out somewhat by the eyewitnesses, some of whom reported a small explosion, followed by a huge fireball. These explosive forces caused a shock wave that separated the forward section from the main fuselage. This was also observed by people on the ground.”

  It was interesting, I thought, that the eyewitnesses who saw the separation of the aircraft in flight, which would have been difficult to comprehend, were cited as backup for Theory A, while many of these same witnesses who saw an unmistakable streak of light were discounted. But Mr. Siben was volunteering his time, so I didn’t want to point this out.

  I looked at Kate and asked her, “Are you buying all of this?”

  She hesitated, then replied, “Yes… up to a point. But as Sid can tell you, tests were done on an old 747 on the ground to try to reproduce this sequence of events in a fuel tank, and they couldn’t get an explosion.”

  I looked at Sid and said, “How about that?”

  Mr. Siben replied without a trace of hesitation, “You can’t reproduce conditions on the ground that took place at thirteen thousand feet in a moving aircraft. It was a stupid test.”

  “If you’d gotten an explosion, you wouldn’t think it was stupid.”

  “Yes, I would.”

  The guy was unshakable. I wished I’d had witnesses like this on the stand when I was a cop. I thought of Captain Spruck and asked, “If a kinetic missile had penetrated the aircraft from below, and traveled through the air-conditioning units, and damaged live electrical wires in and around the fuel tank, would that cause the vapors in the center fuel tank to explode?”

  He didn’t reply for a few seconds, then said, “It’s possible. But there’s no evidence of that happening.”

  “Is there any evidence of a short circuit?”

  “A short circuit would leave little evidence in the aftermath of a midair explosion over water. A missile strike would leave much more evidence that would be hard to miss.”

  “I understand that. So basically, the only evidence of the official cause of the crash is the lack of evidence of anything else.”

  “I suppose you could say that.”

  “I did.”

  “Look, Mr. Corey, to be very honest and blunt, I would like to have found evidence of a bomb or missile. And so would Boeing and TWA and the insurance companies. You know why? Because a mechanical failure suggests that people weren’t doing their job. That the Federal Aviation Administration wasn’t on top of this potential problem. That Boeing safety engineers should have anticipated this. That TWA should have performed more and better maintenance on this potential problem.” He stared into my eyes and said, “In the darkest parts of our hearts, we all really wanted it to be a missile, because no one could blame the airline industry for a missile.”

  We kept eye contact for a few seconds, and finally, I nodded. I’d thought about this five years ago and recalled concluding the same thing. I could add that people who fly a lot would rather play the odds of a one-in-a-zillion chance of getting hit by a missile than worrying about an inherent safety problem with the aircraft. I, too, if I let myself be honest, wanted it to be a missile.

  Mr. Siben said to me, “Aircraft don’t just fall out of the sky. There has to be a cause, and there are four possible causes for an aircraft accident-” He was into numbering his points and this time he counted on his fingers. “One, pilot error, which is not consistent with a midair explosion and for which there is no flight recorder or cockpit recorder data. Two, an act of God-lightning and weather, which was not a factor that night-or high-speed particle penetration, meaning a meteorite, which remains a long-shot possibility, as does space junk, meaning a piece of a satellite or a booster rocket. This is possible, but there was no physical evidence of anything hitting that aircraft. Three, an enemy attack-” He was up to his middle finger, and if I were sensitive, I’d th
ink he was saying, “Fuck you and your missile.”

  He continued, “Four, a mechanical failure.” He looked at me and said, “I have bet my professional reputation on mechanical failure, and that’s the winner. If you think it was a missile attack, I’d like to see the evidence.”

  “Have you ever spoken to an eyewitness?”

  “No.”

  “You should.”

  He ignored my suggestion and said to me, “I’ll tell you something else that is inconsistent with a missile attack. As long as we’re theorizing, why would a terrorist shoot down an aircraft so far from the airport? A simple-to-use and easy-to-obtain, shoulder-fired heat-seeking missile-what the military calls a fire-and-forget missile-could have brought down this aircraft anywhere within five miles of the airport. To shoot down this aircraft at thirteen thousand feet, eight miles off the coast, would take a very sophisticated, complicated-to-use, and almost impossible-to-obtain infrared or radar-guided surface-to-air or air-to-air missile. Correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “So there you have it.”

  “I got it.”

  Kate said to me, “I have a copy of the official Final Report on the case, which you can read.”

  Mr. Siben said to me, “And stay away from the conspiracy theory idiots and their books, their videotapes, and their Internet lunacy.”

  Time to cool down Mr. Siben. I said, “Well, I’ve never read or seen the conspiracy stuff, and I have no plans to. I’m also not likely to read your report, which I’m sure is well reasoned and convincing. In fact, I only expressed a mild-and as it turns out, uninformed-opinion to Ms. Mayfield, my wife and superior, which caused her some professional and personal concern, and thus my presence here tonight. And your presence as well. So, I thank you, Mr. Siben, for taking the time to brief me, which I’m sure must be tedious for you by now. It’s my opinion that you and everyone who worked on this case have done an outstanding job and reached the correct conclusion.”

  He eyed me for a moment, wondering, I’m sure, if I was pulling his chain. He glanced at Kate, who nodded reassuringly to him.