5
The giant Airbus A330’s 216 passengers remained strapped tightly into their seats. The storms indigenous to this area had tossed the plane about as though it were a child’s ball. Last night’s native Brazilian dinner, perhaps too rich, had caused Captain Marc Duboise to temporarily turn the ship over to the first and second officers while he made a brief visit to the first-class head. On long international flights, it was not uncommon to share the duties even though the captain had far more hours of experience than the two younger men combined.
Within minutes, the plane would reach TASIL, a point existing only on aeronautical charts and defined by the aircraft’s global-positioning system as 780 statute miles west of Dakar, Senegal. Its only real significance was that it marked the end of the “dead zone,” the point at which there was no VHF radio communication. Though no one voiced the thought, the sound of another human voice would make the turbulence more bearable.
“Merde!” the first officer swore as a particularly violent down draft buffeted the plane, pushing the nose down. He was thrown painfully against his seat harness. The aircraft was bucking like one of those wild horses he had seen in films of American rodeos. Broncos, yes, that was what they were called, broncos. He kept his line of vision on the instrument panel below the windscreen, taking no chance of being temporarily blinded by the lightning outside, flashing with the frequency of a celestial disco. He could only hope the repeated strikes had not damaged the electronics.
The second officer pointed to the altimeter and shouted to be heard above the crash of thunder. “You’re off your assigned altitude of thirty-five thousand feet.” He put a finger on the weather radar, indicating a narrow streak of green between red and yellow blobs. “Try flying zero-seven-zero. That might get us around the worst of it.”
For an instant, the first officer contemplated switching off the autopilot. Its immediate reactions to extreme turbulence could, possibly, damage the air frame. He discarded the idea. Even with hydraulically assisted controls, he would be unable to make all the corrections required by this line of storms. Instead, he thumbed the electric trim tab on the control yoke, elevating the aircraft’s nose.
“That should help,” he shouted above the clatter of hail against the plane’s hull, the sound of a coven of demons demanding admittance.
Neither man noticed the air speed indicator remained steady, an inconsistent reading since airspeed should have decreased in direct proportion to the elevated angle of the aircraft’s nose — one reason planes land in a nose-up configuration.
“The altimeter!” the second officer exclaimed. “It is not moving. Neither is the vertical speed indicator!”
That was the least of the immediate problems. The yoke in the first officer’s hands was not only twisting with the aircraft’s gyrations, but now it was pulsating, a phenomenon neither first nor second officer had ever experienced.
“What the…”
There was a tearing sound, the cry of distressed metal, followed by a crash from the left side of the plane. The second officer looked up as a bolt of lightning illuminated the left wing. The number-one engine was gone, a gaping hole in its place.
“Mon Dieu!”
The stricken aircraft rolled violently to its left, shuddering in its death throws just as the strange expansions and contractions increased in violence. Over the terrified shrieks of passengers and the bedlam of the storm, there was the sound of ripping metal. From its location, the first officer guessed the vertical stabilizer had torn free.
6
It was, perhaps, fitting that the French BEA, the agency charged with examining and investigating crashes of French-operated aircraft, should be located on the site of the first successful solo transatlantic flight, a feat easily eclipsing an earlier duo flight by a pair of World War I pilots. It was there on May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis touched down 3,500 miles and 33½ hours from Roosevelt Field, Long Island. It was an exploit of individual courage not to be equaled until man walked on the moon.
Almost 100 years later, the field’s 8,000-foot runway, multiple terminals, and status as Europe’s busiest general aviation airport in no way resembled the open pasture that greeted the young American. Among the buildings clustered around the aviation center was a three-quarter acre, two-story structure that housed France’s equivalent of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.
Inside, two men stared at a computer monitor in a combination of disbelief and incomprehension. The orange boxes recovered from the ocean floor more than 3,000 meters below the surface must have been affected by the great pressure of such depths. But the flight and voice recorders had been specifically designed to exist in such a hostile environment indefinitely, long after the batteries no longer sent out signals as to their location.
“Impossible!” Patrick Guyot, PhD in physics, exclaimed with the buzz of lips peculiar to the French pronunciation of the word. He was scrolling down the computer screen for the third time.
Charles Patin, aeronautical engineer, stepped over to a counter where a beaker sat on a single-ring burner, noted it was empty of the coffee usually brewed in it, and said, “Unusual, I agree. But impossible? We have checked and rechecked the readings, and they are consistent: The pressure driven instruments failed, the pressure altimeter, the static pressure vertical speed indicator. And the airspeed indicator, which would indicate the pitot tube, the…”
“And what is the likelihood of redundant instruments failing simultaneously? Even so, instrument failure was not the cause of this crash.” Guyot looked around and lowered his voice before continuing though he and Patin were the only two in the room. “The aircraft literally disintegrated in the air. I mean, parts of the tail assembly were found nearly twenty kilometers from the fuselage’s pieces. The wings weren’t even found in the search area at all. What are the odds of a storm causing that?”
Patin was looking for the small bag of ground coffee kept in a drawer. “Worse than you would get in the casino at Monte Carlo, I agree. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. There is no known limit to the severity of weather in those latitudes.”
Guyot held up a multipage document. “And this series of tests: There is no explanation as to how parts of the aircraft’s aluminum seem to have simply melted. There is also evidence of high heat on surfaces.”
“Odd, I agree. I wonder if somehow lightning…”
Guyot shook his head. “To burn like that, lightning would need to be grounded. There is no ground between an airplane at thirty thousand plus feet and the earth.”
Patin eased into a wooden chair that was every bit as uncomfortable as it looked. “If not lightning, what?”
Guyot pulled over the mate to his companion’s chair and plopped down into it so close that the two men’s knees were nearly touching. He fished a blue box of cigarettes from a shirt pocket, Gitanes, with a picture of a wisp of smoke forming a dancer. “Surely, you don’t think what I’m thinking.”
He offered the box.
Patin shook his head. He was almost a year past his last cigarette. He gave a wan smile. “Unless I can read your mind…” He studied the other man’s face. “No! You cannot be serious!” He ground a finger into his temple, the French gesture to show one was mentally unbalanced. “This is crazy! Without absolute proof, I would not sign any report that even hints at…”