"I'm ready," she said.
"Keep your fingers crossed," Wong said. He pushed a single key on the keyboard.
The red light on the QAR box began to flicker rapidly.
Uneasily, Casey said, "Is that…"
"It's okay. It's downloading."
After a few seconds, the red light glowed steadily again.
"Now what?"
"It's done," Wong said. "Let's see the data." His screen began to show columns of numbers. Wong leaned forward, looking closely. "Uh… looks pretty good, Casey. This could be your lucky day." He typed rapidly at the keyboard for several seconds. Then he sat back.
"Now we see how good it is."
On the monitor, a wire-frame aircraft appeared and rapidly filled in, becoming solid, three-dimensional. A sky-blue background appeared. A silver aircraft, seen horizontally in profile. The landing gear down.
Wong punched keys, moving the aircraft around so they saw it from the tail. He added a green field running to the horizon, and a gray runway. The image was schematic but effective. The airplane began to move, going down the runway. It changed attitude, the nose raising up. The landing gear folded into the wings.
"You just took off," Wong said. He was grinning.
The aircraft was still rising. Wong hit a key, and a rectangle opened on the right side of the screen. A series of numbers appeared, changing quickly. "It's not a DFDR, but it's good enough," Wong said. "All the major stuff is here. Altitude, airspeed, heading, fuel, deltas on control surfaces-flaps, slats, ailerons, elevators, rudder. Everything you need. And the data's stable, Casey."
The aircraft was still climbing. Wong hit a button, and white clouds appeared. The plane continued upward, through the clouds.
"I figure you don't want to real time this," he said. "You know when the accident occurred?"
"Yes," she said. "It was about nine-forty into the flight."
"Nine-forty elapsed?"
"Right."
"Coming up."
On the monitor, the aircraft was level, the rectangle of numbers on the right stable. Then a red light began to flash among the numbers.
"What's that?"
"Fault recording. It's, uh, slats disagree."
She looked at the aircraft on the screen. Nothing changed.
"Slats extending?"
"No," Wong said. "Nothing. It's just a fault."
She watched a moment longer. The aircraft was still level. Five seconds passed. Then the slats emerged from the leading edge.
"Slats extending," Wong said, looking at the numbers. And then, "Slats fully extended."
Casey said, "So there was a fault first? And then the slats extended afterward?"
"Right."
"Uncommanded extension?"
"No. Commanded. Now, plane goes nose up, and- uh-oh-exceeding buffet boundary-now here's the stall warning, and-"
On the screen, the airplane nosed over into a steep dive. The white clouds streaked past, faster and faster. Alarms began to beep, flashing on the screen.
"What's that?" Casey said.
"The plane's exceeding the G-load envelope. Jeez, look at him."
The airplane pulled out of the dive, and began a steep climb. "He's going up at sixteen… eighteen… twenty-one degrees," Wong said, shaking his head. 'Twenty-one degrees!"
On commercial flights, a standard rate of climb was three to five degrees. Ten degrees was steep, used only in takeoffs. At twenty-one degrees, passengers would feel as if the plane were going straight up.
More alarms.
"Exceedences," Wong said again, in a flat voice. "He's stressing the hell out of the airframe. It's not built to take that. You guys do a structure inspect?"
As they watched, the plane went into a dive again.
"I can't believe this," Wong said. "The autopilot's supposed to prevent that-"
"He was on manual."
"Even so, these wild oscillations would kick in the autopilot." Wong pointed to the box of data to one side. "Yeah, there it is. The autopilot tries to take over. Pilot keeps punching it back to manual. That's crazy."
Another climb.
Another dive.
In all, they watched aghast as the aircraft went through six cycles of dive and climb, until suddenly, abruptly, it returned to stable flight.
"What happened?" she said.
"Autopilot took over. Finally." Rob Wong gave a long sigh. "Well, I'd say you know what happened to this airplane, Casey. But I'm damned if I know why."
WAR ROOM
9:00 a.m.
A cleaning crew was at work in the War Room. The big windows overlooking the factory floor were being washed, the chairs and the Formica table wiped down. In the far corner, a woman was vacuuming the carpet.
Doherty and Ron Smith were standing near the door, looking at a printout.
"What's going on?" she said.
"No IRT today," Doherty said. "Marder canceled it."
Casey said, "How come nobody told me that-"
Then she remembered. She'd turned her beeper off, the night before. She reached down, turned it back on.
"CET test last night was damn near perfect," Ron said. "Just as we said all along, that's an excellent airplane. We only got two repeated faults. We got a consistent fault on AUX COA, starting five cycles in, around ten-thirty; I don't know why that happened." He looked at her, waiting. He must have heard that she had been inside the hangar the night before, at about that time.
But she wasn't going to explain it to him. At least, not right now. She said, "And what about the proximity sensor?"
"That was the other fault," Smith said. "Out of twenty-two cycles we ran during the night, the wing proximity sensor faulted six times. It's definitely bad."
"And if that proximity sensor faulted during flight…"
"You'd get a slats disagree in the cockpit."
She turned to leave.
"Hey," Doherty said. "Where are you going?"
"I've got to look at some video."
"Casey: Do you know what the hell is going on?"
"You'll be the first to know," she said. And she walked away.
As swiftly as the investigation had stalled the day before, she felt it coming together. The QAR had been the key. At last she could reconstruct the sequence of events on Right 545. And with that, the pieces of the puzzle were falling rapidly into place.
As she walked to her car, she called Norma on her cell phone. "Norma, I need a route schedule for Transpacific."
"Got one right here," Norma said. "It came over with the FAA packet. What do you want to know?"
"Flight schedule to Honolulu."
"I'll check." There was a pause. "They don't go into Honolulu," Norma said. "They only go to-"
"Never mind," Casey said. "That's all I need to know." It was the answer she had expected.
"Listen," Norma said, "Marder has called three times for you already. He says you're not answering your pager."
'Tell him you can't reach me."
"And Richman has been trying to-"
"You can't reach me," Casey said.
She hung up, and hurried to her car.
Driving in the car, she called Ellen Fong in Accounting. The secretary said Ellen was working at home again today. Casey got the number, and called.
"Ellen, it's Casey Singleton."
"Oh yes, Casey." Her voice was cool. Careful.
"Did you do the translation?" Casey said.
"Yes." Flat. No expression.
"Did you finish it?'
"Yes. I finished it."
"Can you fax it to me?" Casey said. There was a pause. "I don't think I should do that," Ellen said. "All right…"
"Do you know why?" Ellen Fong asked. "I can guess."
"I will bring it to your office," Ellen said. 'Two o'clock?" "Fine," Casey said.