Free Fall - Rick Mofina

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soft cry of a baby two rows ahead saddened him, not only because Hooper and Gwen would never have children, but because it pulled him back to the horrors of his job.

      No matter how many investigations he’d done, it never got easier. He’d lost count of how many times he’d found charred remains, dead passengers holding each other at the moment of impact, victims entwined in metal debris, impaled in trees, buried in the ground.

      He still had nightmares.

      The baby in the seat ahead continued crying and pulled him back to last year, when a commuter jet had lost both engines on its approach to Memphis during a storm at night and plowed into a hillside. Forty-seven people had died. Walking alone in a wooded area among scattered pieces of twisted wreckage, Hooper had come upon a baby.

      The only visible injury had been a tiny bloodied scrape on its head.

      The child had been beautiful, a perfect angel, wearing pajamas with teddy bears and rabbits. Its eyes had been closed and it had appeared to be sleeping as a soft breeze lifted strands of its hair.

      The baby had been dead.

      Suddenly the wall Hooper had built to protect himself from the emotional toll of his work had crumbled and he’d been overcome. He’d dropped to his knees beside the baby and said a silent prayer, had removed his jacket and gently covered the child, then reached for his radio to call the medical examiner’s staff.

      Now, as his plane jetted to New York, he looked at the sky, relieved this incident had had no fatalities.

      Seven

      Queens, New York

      The next morning a vacuum cleaner hummed down the hall from a meeting room in LaGuardia’s central terminal.

      Outside the room’s closed doors, Captain Raymond Matson waited alone to be interviewed by NTSB investigators. Nervous tension had dried his throat and he’d grown thirsty.

      He hadn’t slept well.

      He thought of his passengers and crew—they’d suffered fractures and concussions. Rosalita Ortiz, one of the flight attendants, had broken her back.

      Matson clenched his eyes tight.

      He’d already given a verbal report to an FAA inspector who’d met him and the first officer yesterday at the gate, and he’d provided a blood sample for analysis.

      After several seconds, Matson opened his eyes. He resumed reviewing his notes when his phone vibrated with a text from his lawyer.

      Papers are ready to sign whenever you can drop by. That’ll be it.

      Matson stared at the message. With his signature, his sixteen-year marriage would be over. For a brief instant, he remembered a time when they’d been happy. He stared at a mural on the wall of Manhattan’s skyline and his wife’s accusations played through his thoughts:

      You’re never home. You’ve become a ghost to us and I’m so tired of being a single parent to three children.

      She’d already taken the kids and moved back to Portland. She’d let him take care of the house in Westfield; a for-sale sign was on the front lawn. She’d get 60 percent when it sold, according to the settlement. It was true. He’d missed birthdays, Little League games, recitals and graduations. He was married to his job and now it was hanging by a thread. The doors opened.

      “Captain Matson, we’re ready to see you.”

      A woman invited him inside to an empty chair at one end of a large boardroom table. The woman, dressed in a burgundy jacket, white top and matching pants, took her seat at the opposite end.

      “Thank you for coming in so early this morning, Captain. I’m Irene Zimm with NTSB. I’ll be leading this session. To my right is Bill Cashill and Jake Hooper with the NTSB, then we have...”

      She introduced the half dozen other officials who were seated at the table with notepads and pens poised. Small microphones rose from the table before each of them, as well as Matson himself. All eyes and a video camera were on him as Zimm proceeded.

      “As we begin, you understand that this interview is being recorded, and anything you say will inform our investigation?”

      “Yes, I understand.”

      “And you understand the rules and policies of the board, your airline and union, about talking to the media or public?”

      “Yes, I understand.”

      “Very well, we’ll go over some preliminary matters. We have a summary of your verbal report. You’ve been in contact with Gus Vitalley from the pilots’ union, seated to your left.”

      “Yes, we spoke yesterday.”

      “And we have your blood sample.”

      “Yes.”

      Zimm tapped her pen on an open file folder she had before her and consulted a laptop next to it. “We’ll confirm your personal background with you. You’ve been with EastCloud for approximately thirteen years, and have been a captain for six of those years, correct?”

      “That is correct.”

      “You have over twelve thousand total flight hours, of which you were pilot-in-command for seven thousand flight hours.”

      “Yes.”

      “I see that you have no incidents and no failed check rides.”

      “Correct.”

      “As for the new Richlon-TitanRT-86, you have approximately eight hundred flight hours as the pilot-in-command.”

      “Yes.”

      “Prior to this trip, you and the first officer, Roger Anderson, had flown together twice before?”

      “Yes. Chicago to San Diego and Phoenix to Atlanta, both in RTs.”

      “Thank you. The aircraft has been taken out of service and moved to a maintenance hangar. The flight data recorder and the voice cockpit recorder have been removed and sent to our lab in Washington for analysis. We’ll also be examining air traffic control radar and weather. Now, leading up to the incident, you reported the trip as routine with no weather issues.”

      “That’s correct.”

      “Approximately twenty-five minutes into the flight, your course was one hundred fifteen degrees southeast, speed was four hundred ninety-one knots and your altitude was twenty-seven thousand feet, when you experienced a sudden, unintended series of roll oscillations, ninety degrees to the right then ninety degrees to the left, then a banked, unintended descent of seven thousand feet before you, Captain, regained control of the plane and alerted New York Center, then LaGuardia.”

      “That’s correct.”

      Zimm looked to the experts around the table as a cue to begin questioning Matson.

      “The autopilot was engaged prior to the incident?” Bill Cashill asked.

      “It was.”

      “Did you at any time encounter turbulence?”

      “No. And there was nothing of note on radar, and no reports of turbulence from earlier flights.”

      “Clear-air turbulence doesn’t appear on radar, and the autopilot could make any needed adjustments for it,” Cashill said.

      “I’m aware of the characteristics of clear-air turbulence. We didn’t encounter it.”

      “Captain Matson,” Cashill said, “the Richlon-TitanRT-86 is a fly-by-wire model with an array of auto-detect safety systems to address any anomalies or problems that arise. The new design also has a provision that allows the pilot to disable those safety features so that in an emergency he or she can make control inputs that would not otherwise be permitted.”

      “I am absolutely aware of the features of

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