Free Fall. Rick Mofina

plane, it’s your people, your pilots, your maintenance people,’ to avoid a negative impact on their aircraft and costly litigation. Both players have millions at stake, so the best thing they can do is to ultimately put it on the pilot. ‘Hey, it was this guy, he screwed up. He’s gone so let’s move on.’ This is the context that I feel is at play here. You got that?”

      “Yes.”

      “Okay, I want the truth out there, so I’ll tell you what I told the NTSB and everyone else. This is what you can use.”

      “Wait.” Kate switched on her recorder. “Okay, go ahead.”

      “There was no clear-air turbulence and I did not disable the safety system. The aircraft suddenly rolled. For a critical time, the plane refused to respond to our commands. I don’t know what happened but I know something went wrong. This was a clear flight control computer malfunction.”

      “But if it’s a malfunction, a safety issue, is the public at risk?”

      “Until they find out the source of this system failure, I’d say yes.”

      For the next half hour Matson helped Kate with the timeline of the Buffalo–New York flight and the technical background. Matson said he was in agony for the passengers and his crew members who’d been injured.

      “If we didn’t fight for control of the plane the way we did, we would have lost it. And that’s God’s honest truth.”

      After Kate got everything down she confirmed with Matson that he hadn’t spoken with any other reporters and that she would use his name and picture with her story.

      “Agreed,” he said.

      “I’ll be talking to other people for their response.”

      “That’s expected, but remember, no matter who you talk to, I was on that flight deck. They weren’t.”

      Kate thanked Matson, gave him her card and left.

      Heading back to her car, she had to keep from running. She decided to go to a small park, where she sat at a picnic table in the shade of an oak tree and called Chuck Laneer.

      “You got the captain?”

      “Exclusively.”

      “What’d he say?”

      “That it was a malfunction and the public is at risk.”

      “That’s a helluva story. Get it to us as soon as you can. I’ll alert subscribers telling them what’s coming. Good work.”

      Kate stayed at the picnic table, made calls and sent messages requesting comment from EastCloud, the FAA, the NTSB and industry experts. Those who responded underscored that the NTSB had not yet issued a preliminary report and had so far found nothing that warranted grounding of the Richlon-TitanRT-86, or the issuance of safety alerts.

      An industry expert in Seattle challenged Matson’s account of the incident.

      “The scenario as described by the pilot cannot happen with the type of fly-by-wire system installed in the TitanRT-86. It’s that simple. For the plane to oscillate the way it did, according to the reports of passengers, the safety features would have to be manually switched off. This still sounds like a classic case of a bad response to clear-air turbulence.”

      Within two hours of her interview with Captain Raymond Matson, Kate’s exclusive was released to Newslead’s subscribers across the country and around the world.

      Twelve

      Clear River, North Dakota

      A few miles beyond town, a lone wooden hangar rose defiantly from the badlands.

      A faint clink of metal against metal signaled life as Robert Cole halted his work on the radial engine of an aging crop duster and climbed down the stepladder.

      He dragged his sweaty, greasy forearm across his brow, tossed his wrench on his cluttered workbench next to where he’d left the Minot Daily News. His face was creased with concern over the back-page article he’d read that morning.

      Worry pushed down on him as he moved outside the hangar’s open doors to contemplate the earthen airstrip and search the eternal plain. But gazing at the horizon failed to ease his troubled mind about the news story and the direction of his life.

      There was a time when he’d had everything. Now it was gone and he was alone with his sins, awash with guilt. A gust peppered him with dry dirt. In his mind, he heard his wife’s laughter, felt her touch and saw her face.

      Elizabeth.

      Help me. Please. Tell me what I should do.

      He thought of her every moment of every day and now, standing alone in the crying, aching wind, he rubbed his dry lips. The bottle in his lunch bucket called to him. It would numb his pain.

      That’s not the answer I need now.

      He got into his pickup truck and drove through town, passed the strip malls, the municipal buildings, and the old storefronts that evoked the frontier days. Elizabeth had grown up here; her father was a doctor. This was her town and living here gave him some comfort.

      He drove south over the rolling rangeland that stretched as far as he could see. Two miles later he turned onto a narrow, paved road that wound into a grove of trees overlooking a creek. A small sign identified the spot as the Riverbend Meadow Cemetery. He parked and made his way through the burial grounds, stopping at the headstone that read “Elizabeth Marie Cole, Beloved Wife and Mother. Died...”

      He didn’t need to read further.

      The truth hit him as hard as the granite that marked his wife’s grave.

      I’m responsible for her death. I destroyed everything I had in this world.

      He ran his fingers gently over her gravestone and a breeze rolled up from the river, carrying him through the moments of their lives.

      They’d met at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where they’d bumped into each other at a bookstore, which had led to coffee and subsequent dates. She’d thought he was a looker, and he’d loved her smile. Her name was Elizabeth Hyde, and she’d had a scholarship to study medicine. He’d been in engineering. They’d both been reticent, nerdy bookworms.

      After they’d graduated, Elizabeth had convinced him to take time off with a nonprofit international aid group. They’d spent a year helping people in poor parts of South America and Africa. When they’d returned, he’d taken her to a beach north of LA, and as the sun set, he’d given her an engagement ring. After they were married, they embarked on their careers. She became a doctor, and he became an engineer.

      They got a house in Burbank and in the years that followed, they’d each put in long hours, dedicating themselves to their professions. They’d had trouble starting a family but after nearly a year of treatment, therapies and effort, Elizabeth had become pregnant with their only child, a daughter they’d named Veyda.

      She was their miracle, their joy.

      As busy professionals, the pressures of their jobs had been constant, but Elizabeth’s priority had been Veyda. He remembered when Elizabeth had stayed up all night when Veyda had had a fever; or when Elizabeth had rushed Veyda to the hospital when she’d fallen from her bicycle; or that time they’d driven through Glendale, at three in the morning, Elizabeth frantic and desperately trying to reach her daughter, who’d passed out drunk after lying about going to a party and missing her ride home.

      Yes, Elizabeth and Veyda had had their battles. But Elizabeth had been devoted to Veyda and Veyda had adored Elizabeth. Her mother had been her hero and theirs had been an unbreakable bond.

      Yes, and Veyda had loved him, too, coming to him for advice or help solving a problem. But he had tended to be away often, working on projects that demanded his attention 24/7. Even at an early age, Veyda had understood and respected his job. He’d smiled when he’d overheard