Millennium

12 The Productions of Time

Testimony of Bill Smith

It came out like this: " ... dead! They're all dead, every one of them! They're burnt, Gil, they're dead and burned up and torn to pieces, all dead -- "

Then the plane hit the mountain and Wayne DeLisle had nothing more to say.

It was getting on in the evening when we finally had the tape cleaned up and processed enough to hear those words clearly. When the operator shut off his machine we all just sat there for a while.

I couldn't begin to describe the sheer horror in the man's voice. It came through, though, even with the poor technical quality.

To say we were shocked would be an understatement. None of us had ever heard anything quite like that from a CVR. Fear, tension ... sure. They're not robots, the people who fly these planes. They try to conceal their emotions in a moment like that -- I guess it's a reflex -- but it comes through.

No. It just didn't make sense. I've come to expect heroic behavior, or at least stoicism, when monitoring a CVR tape, but panic would not throw me too much. Pilots are just like the rest of us. They suffer mental problems, drinking problems, marital problems. They go crazy, but hardly ever as the result of an emergency in the air.

They don't have time. Not even passengers go crazy that quickly. Contrary to what you've seen in the Airport movies, in the first few moments after an impact a few people will scream a little and maybe jump up in reaction, but that generally calms down pretty quickly. After that, the dominant reaction is to just sit there in their seats, stunned, for a fairly long time.

They don't know what to do. The common response to that, in a plane, is to do nothing. They become pliant, eager to do what the flight attendants tell them. It's only if the emergency stretches out and they get time to form their own hare-brained ideas that you have to watch out for them.

Wayne DeLisle just shouldn't have gone that nutty that quickly.

In thirty-three seconds he'd gone from a competent pilot, a take-charge guy who was willing to get out of his secure seat and go- moving around in a plane that was bucking and turning like a rock rolling down a hill just so he could try to help the passengers, to a gibbering ... well, coward, crying about how they were all dead. Dead and burned.

We spent some time discussing it.

Jerry: "Maybe they were all dead. There's indications that the fuselage might have been breached. We found some bodies and debris a good ways from the main site." The verdict on that was in pretty soon; even Jerry didn't stick to it long. If there was cabin depressurization it would have blown out the cockpit door and maybe DeLisle with it. Some people would have been sucked out, but the rest would have been all right. They were only at five thousand feet, so decompression was no problem, nor lack of oxygen.

Craig: "He said they were burned, too. Maybe there was a fire in the cabin before it went in."

Eli: "In the first-class lounge? I don't buy it. Everything I saw looks like the fire was restricted to the engines ... maybe the wings, but no further. At least until it hit, when everything went up. I don't see a wing fire spreading that far forward that quickly."

Craig: "Maybe it was downstairs. Maybe he got back to tourist."

Tom: "In a 747? Listen, we're assuming the plane wasn't holed, or we'd have heard it on the tape. It makes a hell of a noise."

Jerry: "We might not hear it if the hole was toward the back."

Tom: "Yeah, but how's he going to get there? Into the first-class lounge, down the stairs, back to tourist, and then all the way back to the cockpit in thirty-three seconds? Not in that plane. It would be a miracle if he got down the stairs without breaking his fucking neck."

I agreed. It would have been easier to walk on a roller coaster.

"So," I said, "we can postulate he didn't get much farther than the stairway. It doesn't seem reasonable that he'd see anything there but a bunch of scared people."

Carole interrupted us after we'd gone on like that for quite a while.

"You guys are going to have to learn to accept the obvious," she said.

"What's that?" Jerry wanted to know.

"That he simply went crazy."

"I thought you psychologists didn't like that word."

She shrugged. "I'm not prejudiced against it when it's the simplest one that fits. But I used it to rub your faces in it. I know you don't want to believe that a pilot could flip out like that, and I'll admit it's rare. But you've all pretty well proved that when he went back into the lounge all he could have seen were frightened people, not burnt corpses."

Tom protested. "But he said he saw -- "

"He didn't say he saw anything. Don't treat it as a reliable eyewitness account of anything.

Treat it as the last realization of a man pushed beyond his limits. He said they were all dead and burned. He was a man trained to fly a plane but he couldn't do it because it wasn't his plane. He knew more than the passengers; he had more reason to panic, because he knew they were all doomed. He could look at the reality Gil Crain and the others could keep denying because they had things they could do. He just gave in and said what he knew would happen -- that they were all going to die. And he was right."

None of us liked it, but it ended the discussion, at least for then. Carole was the human-

factors expert. Thinking it over, I had to agree that the main reason I was reluctant to accept her explanation was the one she'd mentioned: I didn't want to believe a pilot could come unglued that fast. But he must have.

We held our nightly meeting -- the first of many -- not long after the first run-through of the 747 tape.

It was all we could do to squeeze everyone into the smaller of the two airport rooms.

There must have been over a hundred people there who had a right to be present. I'm afraid I dozed through a lot of it, but I can doze with my eyes open, so nobody noticed. I hope.

The nightly meetings are a fixture of any investigation. Everybody that's been working on the crash gets together and compares notes. Decisions are made about what avenues to pursue.

We agreed that the computer at Fremont -- which is where the Oakland Air Region Traffic Control Center is actually located -- would have to be gone over by an expert team.

Tom already had some people in mind. Otherwise, it was mostly a matter of confirming things already done and telling everybody to keep doing them. Many of the physical aspects of an investigation take quite a while.

After that the meeting could have gone on for ten more hours. Any meeting will, if you let it. But in the early stages I've found it's just a lot of wind. Later on some longer meetings would be in order, but when I saw by my watch that this one had been going on for two hours I chopped it off short and told everybody not actually working in the hangar to go home and get some sleep.

Some of them didn't like that, but they couldn't do anything about it. It was my investigation. Maybe on paper it was C. Gordon Petcher's, but in fact it was mine. And speaking of good old Gordy ...

Briley came up to me as everybody was shuffling out, looking like he had bad news. I let him off easy.

"I already know," I told him. "Gordy didn't make the evening flight. He'll show up in the morning. I heard he held a press conference in Washington."

"That's what I was told."

"It must have been a cute one. I haven't talked with him, so I wonder what he told them?"

"That the situation was well in hand, I gather. Just like you're going to have to do in about twenty minutes."

I groaned, but I was already resigned to it. The press had been promised a conference. All it would really be, to my way of thinking, was what they call a "photo opportunity." They'd have footage of me to put on the late news. There was certainly damn little I could tell them.

I hate inefficiency. You'd have to look a long, long ways before you found a better example of it than the press conference.

The duplication of effort is enough to make you break down and cry. Is it really necessary for the evening Eyewash News in Kankakee, Illinois, to send a cameraman to cover an airline disaster in California? And it's not just television, though every major station in the seven surrounding states had a camera there. All the newspapers were there, too. Reporters from India and Japan and England and, for all I know, Bali, the Maldive Islands, and Kampuchea. There were the magazine reporters and the columnists. There must have been a hundred just from the aviation journals. There were scientists from every university in the state. There were the nonfiction authors who specialise in quickie news books, and concept people whose job it is to swarm around Patty Hearst or Gary Gilmore or anybody and anything that captures the country's attention for a few days and assign pimp writers and pimp producers to write cash-

in books and make cash-in television movies. They are the packagers of disaster. In a couple of months we'd be seeing the results of their efforts: "The Last Seconds of Flight 35" and "Collision!" and "Mount Diablo" and "Crash of the Jumbos."

I wondered who they'd get to play Bill Smith.

I'd have been tickled pink if all they wanted to do was stand in front of wreckage in the middle of the night in mud up to their knees, hold mikes up to their faces, and look solemn.

But they wanted to talk to me, and all I'd ever wanted to know was why? There was no story from me. They knew that as well as I did, but they had to have a circus, anyway.

So I stood up there in front of a forest of microphones and squinted into the lights and cursed C. Gordon Petcher, who should have had this job. If he wasn't good for this, what was he good for? I started out with the standard statement that there'd be no comment about facts still under investigation. Then I gave them the things we knew, which they all knew already. It was just a dry recital of where the planes came from, where they were bound, the time of impact, the location of the sites. I told them how many passengers and crew had been on each plane (we'd finally gotten those figures: 637 total), that there were ten missing and probably dead on the ground, and seven injuries on the ground, all hit by the DC-10. Names of the dead were being withheld pending notification ... Well, you fill it in. You've heard it on the evening news.

Causes of the crash were still under investigation.

Questions, anyone? Well, my God, don't everyone shout at once.

"Mr Smith, was everyone on the basketball team killed?"

That was the first I'd, heard of a basketball team. It turned out some collegiate team was on the 747. I told the reporter that if they were on the plane, they were certainly dead, as there had been no, repeat no, survivors. How many times would I have to say that? "What about Senator Gray?"

"Was he on one of the planes?"

"That's our information."

"I can't confirm or deny that. If he was on it, he's dead."

"I'm talking about State Senator Eleanor Gray."

"Okay. It's not my department. The list will be released when identities are confirmed.

Next question."

They asked me about ground control and about pilot error. No comment. They wanted to know about radar transponders. No comment. Are you talking to a man by the name of Donald Janz? No comment. Was there a computer failure? We don't know. No comment. I couldn't say. That's under investigation. We're looking into it. Not to my knowledge. The investigation is continuing.

What they did was turn me into one of those squirming public officials you see on the news or on "60 Minutes" who don't commit themselves on whether or not this is the month of December. I get as burned about them as you do, and I don't appreciate being made to look like that. But, you know, sometimes when Mike Wallace asks somebody a question and he says, "That's still in litigation" or words to that effect, he's not covering up anything. He can't talk. It wouldn't be proper. Any public pronouncements I made at that conference could damage innocent parties.

We waltzed around like that for almost an hour.

There was only one thing about the conference that was worth remembering. It came toward the end, when most of a serious organizations had given up and only the crackpots remained. The TV cameras, of course, had started leaving after they had five minutes of film.

This one fellow stood up and I could tell right off he thought he was Ralph Nader.

"Mister Smith, I represent the Air-Line Passengers Organization."

I couldn't resist it.

"A.L.P.O.? You're the man from ALPO?"

It got a good laugh. In fact, I think I was responsible for that group changing its name.

He asked his question, red-faced, and I brushed it off. Surely there had to be a few more people here I could insult without fearing reprisals. I looked around, hoping to pick out the man from the National Enquirer.

What I got instead was a dignified, white-haired gentleman, a little portly, a bit old-

fashioned in his dress. His hair was unruly, but it was the only thing about him that wasn't neat. He stood out in that audience.

"Mister Smith, I am Arnold Mayer. My question has nothing to do with overloaded computers or negligent air-traffic controllers."

"That would be a relief."

"I doubt it. I'd like to know what unusual facts you have developed so far in your investigation."

"I'm afraid I can't comment on ... " I stopped, thinking about all those watches. Not that I was about to tell him about them.

"That's about as broad a question as I've ever heard, Mr Mayer."

The old fellow gave me a wry smile, ducking his head quickly. I'd already decided this was going to be the last question of the night, and I wondered if I could finish with something that didn't make me out as such a bastard.

"If you could be a little more specific," I prompted.

Again he shrugged.

"If l knew how to describe the facts they wouldn't be unusual. Have you found any unusual item associated with the crash? Were there any unexplained observations? Is there any indication that this crash was caused by something less obvious than a computer overload?"

"Without in any way endorsing that computer overload hypothesis, I can say that, no, there has been nothing unexplained thus far." That's right. Lie, you wonderful public servant, you. "Of course, every crash is unique, and -- "

" -- yet they share common factors. There are things you expect to find, and things you don't. I've heard, for instance, that the cockpit voice recording -- or CVR as you people refer to it contains something a little out of the ordinary."

So something had leaked. I can't say I was surprised. Things always do. I was a little taken aback that the leak had come to this old guy and not the people from CBS or Time magazine.

"I can't comment on that until the CVR has been processed and analyzed. Since you seem to know so much about our workings, you know that will take about two weeks. Then the relevant portions will be released and you can listen yourself."

He jumped in again, quick, before I had time to call an end.

"All right, but is there anything else odd? Something that may not in itself appear significant. Any discrepancies in the sequence of the crash. Any inexplicable item found in the wreckage. Most particularly, anything having to do with time."

Once again I thought of the watches, but I was distracted by someone in the back of the big room having a coughing fit. It was a woman, and she had her back to me. Somebody was holding her arm and leaning toward her as she doubled over, dearly concerned that she was going to choke to death. She was waving him away.

"I still don't know what you're driving at," I told Mayer.

"I can't be more plain without sounding like a fool," he said, wryly. "I'm simply looking for the inexplicable. I usually find it."

"You won't here," I said. "In a few days or weeks I'll be able to tell you exactly what happened last night. No doubt about it. There's ... "

The woman in back had straightened up at last, and it was her. The one who wouldn't give me any coffee in the hangar and then gave me entirely too much of it a few hours ago. She was on her way out of the room.

"There's nothing inexplicable in my line of work, Mister Mayer. And that's the end of the press conference, ladies and gentlemen."

I stepped off the platform and hurried toward the back of the room.

She wasn't in the hallway outside. I went down it a little ways, to where it made a right angle, and looked around that. There were some reporters straggling away, but she wasn't among them. At the end of that corridor was the door to the public part of the terminal. No point in looking for her out there.

"What are you in such a hurry for?"

I glanced back at Tom. He looked about as tired as I felt. We stood there at the side of the hallway while the last of the reporters went by us, including Mayer, who gave me what might have been a wink.

"I saw her again. I thought she came this way."

"Who? Oh, your mystery woman. You think a cup of coffee in the lap is a sufficient introduction?"

"Hell, I don't know. I just wanted to talk to her."

"Sure." He shook his head in disbelief. "I don't know how you hold up. I'm half dead, and you're looking for a party."

"It's not like that. It's just ... " I realized I didn't know just why l wanted to talk to her. But I did want to. l thought about calling up United and seeing if I could trace her down, decided to put it off until tomorrow.

"Is that all for today, boss-man?" Tom asked.

I glanced at my watch. "Damn right. The night crew's got their orders?"

"They do. Want to go get something to eat?"

"No, thanks. I'll just head back to that motel room I heard a rumor about seven or eight days ago. See if I can make it to the bed."

Two to one you don't sleep alone."