Razing Beijing: A Thriller (3 page)

Inviting the congressman and press to the inaugural flight
was Cole’s brainchild. Stuart was on record as calling the fly-by a stunt, pure
public relations—and who out there really cared if an airplane looked or
sounded a little unusual? Data already proved that the engine went far toward
meeting the world’s carbon emission and noise restrictions. Whatever compelled
his boss to rub the government’s back by inviting the congressman, Stuart
hadn’t a clue. He viewed politics as sort of a study in lost motion and never
understood Cole’s obsession with it.

The problem here was that his personal distaste for
publicity was butting against Cole’s disregard for technical detail. Cole
always did prefer dealing with issues of ‘the bigger picture,’ often at the
exclusion of everything and everyone else, as even his daughter Sandy had
confided.

“What is it?”

“You do know Sandy’s on board.”

Cole sat bolt upright as if an electric current had
stiffened his spine. “Are you saying, do you mean...are you saying people’s
lives are at risk? Is that what this is about?”

Stuart knew there was no way Cole would override a
declaration that the flight was unsafe. Cole knew it also, and he seemed to be
bracing himself for the outcome.

“I was only guessing you haven’t taken the time to get her
opinion either.”

“ ‘Either.’ What are you trying to imply?”

“Look, I’ve got a daughter myself. I’m not trying to imply
anything. I was only pointing out that Vickers has thoroughly briefed Sandy and
the flight crew on our decision. My understanding is that she fully supports
it, and Sandy’s every bit as good an engineer, even at her age—”

“I already know how good an employee my own daughter is. I
don’t need a lecture from you about Sandra.”

“Okay. I’m telling you as clearly as I know how that the
odds of something breaking are high. A controlled in-flight shutdown of that
engine might well turn out to be a lot less dramatic to have to explain than the
alternative.”

Cole said nothing.

“Postpone the rest of the flight. It’s not too late to simply
shut the thing down.”

“Actually, it is becoming academic.” The chief executive
glanced at his watch. “It’s my understanding we don’t actually have to cancel
much of anything.”

Stuart instantly realized the score. Cole had arrived while
he was being interviewed, still angry over Stuart’s cancellation decision and
had probably made a scene. At that point it became too great an opportunity for
someone not to pipe up with an alternative—like merely throttling the engine
back, and proceeding with a modified flight test plan.

“I’m going to support your decision,” Stuart said. “Just
don’t be standing too close when the plane taxis up and the propellers stop
turning.”

“Well, of course not.” Cole frowned, his curiosity getting
the better of him. “Why not?”

“Because you’ll block the cameras rushing in to record the
gallons of hot, steaming oil pouring out all over the tarmac.”

Cole stood up from the table. “That’s a chance I’m willing
to take.”

WHILE ONE IS FLYING
at eight-tenths the speed of sound, the earth thirty-nine thousand feet below
appears deceptively stationary, rendering one less distraction for pilots of
the Dassault Falcon who were closely shadowing movement and snapping
photographs of the larger jet. Conditions for the flight test had been nearly
perfect in every respect due to a high-pressure system pushing down from
British Columbia. Las Vegas was visible in the distance mired in ground-hugging
haze, its stark angular shapes out of place in the vast landscape. On the edge
of the horizon was the narrow turquoise of Lake Mead.

The flight crew inside the test aircraft had little
interest in the scenery. Vic Reilly, chief test pilot for Thanatech, could only
shake his head as he now began the ritual scanning of airspace around and below
for conflicting traffic.

“Well, he is the boss,” co-pilot Chris Harris commented.

Reilly eyed his younger colleague. “Since when have you
bought into that concept?”

Harris laughed. “We must have faith in the process.” The
‘process’ had yielded five last-minute changes, each affecting things of
importance to pilots like fuel consumption and aircraft handling—these already
uncharacteristic for this aircraft owing to its mismatched pair of engines. At
least this latest change was familiar to any seasoned test pilot. And yet, for
both men, something did not sit quite right with Murdoch’s instructions.

Reilly grumbled an obscenity while carefully gripping the
two throttle levers. Using both hands he smoothly worked them back, ever
slightly, causing a perceptible decrease in pitch of the engines.

Harris stowed the altitude re-start instructions, untried,
for the prototype engine. He retrieved instead the old DC-9 operational
checklist and placed it on his lap. “So they’re calling us back on an engine
mechanical,” Harris observed, “but they haven’t canceled the media fly-by?”

Reilly scratched his eyebrow. “No doubt marketing’s
calling the shots.” He reached for the panel and selected the preset channel
frequency. “Edwards approach, experimental niner-one-five-eight-lima requesting
altitude change...”

ROBERT STUART STEPPED
inside the instrumentation data room and onto the raised tile floor that
concealed miles of fiber-optic cable. At least here the refrigerated air and
dim light wouldn’t aggravate this headache, he thought, chiding himself for
lack of sleep and a diet extracted from vending machines. Stuart’s eyes began
to adjust, and throughout the IDR’s racks of computer gear and data recorders,
folks who’d broken off discussion as he entered the room quietly returned to
their work.

The thirty or so engineers were analyzing data that
originated from telemetry aboard Thanatech’s test aircraft, where it was
up-linked to a geostationary satellite also currently serving a handful of
airlines. Situated in the northwest corner of the administrations building,
both of IDR’s exterior walls consisted of smoke-colored glass. It was a popular
place among the engineers, many having been drawn to Thanatech in the first place
by their love of aviation. Their workstations offered a sweeping view of the
Aviation Service hangar and a long stretch of the Mojave airport runway. For
overworked and underpaid jet motor fanatics who spent most of their lives
number-crunching deep in the bowels of a windowless factory, duty didn’t get
any better than this.

Stuart found Ian Vickers seated beside Emily Chang and
speaking into a microphone between sips from a can of Coke. Chang cast him a
lingering look before returning her eyes to her instruments.

“Stu.” Vickers slid back his headphones. “Listen, I know
you must be thinking I—”

“Forget it.” Stuart pressed his hand on Vickers’s shoulder.
“What’s the score?”

Vickers let out a deep breath. “Not
too
bloody bad,
although the vibration has been getting gradually worse. Good news is we’ve
worked out a plan with the pilots and Sandy. They’ve pulled back the throttle
in order to stay within limits.” Vickers flashed him a guilty look.

“So that did reduce the vibration?”

“Somewhat.”

SANDY COLE FELT
the
plane being buffeted as they descended into the convection of heat from the
desert surface. On the workspace in front of her the yellow no. 2 pencil
threatened to break into a roll, indicating their bank turn onto final approach
to the runway; across the aisle she saw the gray strip of asphalt several miles
away travel up the height of the window and disappear. Sandy thought that
Vickers’s plan seemed solid enough, despite her misgivings about conducting the
unnecessary maneuver with a marginal engine.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your co-pilot speaking,” Harris
announced over the intercom. “How’s our bearing vibration?”

Sandy managed a smile while fixing her gaze on the analyzer
and the one vibration asynchronous to all of the others. “Holding steady,” she
replied.

“We’ll take steady. Keep us posted.”

“Don’t worry. Ok, you can set an upper fan speed of
seventy-percent physical.” Which corresponded to the safe vibration limit
worked out with Vickers and the IDR, she didn’t bother adding.

Sandy expected a confirmation but heard only the familiar
hum of the wing leading edge slats being deployed; the flight crew had their
hands full at the moment. The digital display in front of her indicated the
lumbering jet was descending slowly through an altitude of one hundred
fifty-feet over the sweltering desert floor—for this approach, they would not
be landing. The muted hum of the engines was the only sound penetrating her
headphones as the plane completed the bank and leveled off on final.

Harris confirmed her numbers. “Seventy per cent N1, roger
that. Uhh, keep your baby-blues peeled back there, Sandy, out.”

Seconds later the plane nosed up slightly as they began to
level off. “One-twenty,” Reilly announced, which she recognized as approaching their
go-around or ‘fly-by’ altitude. On the runway threshold below, she watched
their shadow pass over the large white digits ‘12’—her pulse quickened. Pressing
her face to the window, she saw a throng of tiny-looking people standing along
the taxiway that paralleled the runway well ahead of the plane.

“One hundred feet. Okay, throttling up now,” she heard
Reilly announce. Her focus again became the vibration analyzer as she prepared
to command a ‘back-off’ should the levels approach their limit. The whine of
the engines increased pitch somewhat more sharply than she otherwise might have
expected.

Suddenly the analyzer and its digital displays—every
electronic device in sight, flickered twice and went completely blank.

Fearing a loss of electrical power Sandy lunged for the
breaker switch. The restraining straps tugged against her shoulders as she
realized the breaker hadn’t tripped. She shouted into the open microphone,
“I
just lost everything!”

THEY COULD NOT
have
been directed to a better location, Gloria Jackson realized as she assembled
her sixty or so invitees for the fly-by a mere fifty feet from the edge of the
runway. She saw to it that everyone, particularly the cable television crew,
had an unobstructed view of the airliner. The mustard Mojave foothills provided
exceptional contrast as the glistening jet leveled off and approached from the
distant end of the runway. Most folks were accustomed to the sight of a large
passenger plane flying low to the ground, but usually with landing gear
extended in preparation to land, and certainly not at so high a speed. Glints
of light reflected off the wings as the airliner dipped down, down, close to
the runway.

Tom Hickok of WMJV-TV focused through the video camera’s
eyepiece on the rapidly approaching aircraft. For Hickok, the view conjured
memories of air shows with his father back in Dayton, Ohio. “Awesome,” he
breathed.

The increasing pitch of the approaching engines, as the
pilot advanced the throttles, prompted the cameraman to disengage himself from
the eyepiece and double-check the audio gain. Then Hickok heard something else
that made him look up.

When a rumble announced the approaching jet, none inside
the IDR could resist the temptation to look up from their monitors and gaze
expectantly toward the runway. Any moment the plane would materialize from
behind the huge hangar and roar on past.

“I just lost—”
Sandy Cole’s screech was loud enough
to clip the loudspeaker circuit. Everyone in the IDR lurched. Confused, they
began searching their instruments.

“We lost the signal!” “All channels OUT!” Technicians and
engineers lunged at consoles, all arms and hands pressing buttons and spinning
dials in a desperate effort to reestablish contact.

Stuart’s stomach turned when he saw Vickers clutching his
headset and shouting into his microphone: “
Sandy...Sandy...Sandy...
Fuck.”
Vickers turned toward his boss. “She ain’t answering.”

“Try the cockpit—”

“Nobody’s responding!”

Stuart looked around. “Where the hell’s Murdoch?” From
outside came the sound of a dull pop not unlike that of a car backfiring, but in
reality a jet engine’s violent reversal of airflow known as a compressor stall.
Stuart started for the window and stumbled over a chair. A technician with
thick eyeglasses and waist-long hair spun from his console and yelled, “Does
anyone
know if we lost the friggin’ satellite?”

A reverberating
BOOM
rocked the glass plates
encasing the IDR. Headsets went tumbling in the dash for the windows that
followed.

Stuart pressed his palms to the glass as a hundred yards
away the plane roared into view from beyond the hangar, trailing a stream of
flame and smoke. Near the rear of the fuselage was a pulsating ball of fire,
dark shapes within gyrating as if struggling to escape—Stuart’s eye was drawn
to the gaping slash in the cabin. A bright flash and splash of dirt delivered a
BOOM
as something struck the ground—

—the windowpane shattered and somebody screamed. Stuart
dropped to the floor beneath a hot shower of glass and desert air.

“Holy shit,
look!”

Dazed and disbelieving, Stuart blinked open his eyes. Embedded
in the wall on the opposite side of the room was a smoldering slab of metal.

IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE
EXPLOSION,
it dawned on the crowd by the runway that they were standing
in the path of an advancing wall of shrapnel. Blind panic erupted. Instinct
sent many running for the nearest building—a hundred yards away, it might as
well have been a mile. Dozens scrambled for cover behind the television van.