Millennium

5 "Famous Last Words"

Testimony of Bill Smith

I never did find out who got the temporary morgue set up. Briley hadn't had the stomach for it, but apparently Rog Keane had somebody on his staff who had dealt with the problem before. When we got there it was already a going concern.

Personally, I think it would be much neater and sweeter, more compassionate all around, just to dig a big hole where the plane went down and shovel them all in and put up a big stone with everybody's name carved on it. But nobody's ever going to buy that idea. The next of kin all want a particular body in a specific grave.

In some crashes, we can accommodate them. In the worst ones, there's just no way, but they have to find that out for themselves. All that's left of uncle Charlie would fit into a plastic sandwich bag.

What are you going to do? Show them a severed hand and ask if that wedding ring looks familiar? Most of them don't even have faces.

This morgue was in a high school gym. The parking lot was full of cars belonging to relatives, and one news truck from a local television station.

"Easy, Bill," Tom said, and guided me gently away from the camera crew. "You don't want to wind up on the six o'clock news. Not that way."

"I hope there's a hell, Tom. And when those guys get there, I hope the devil's waiting to shove a camera in their faces and ask them what they feel like."

"Sure, Bill, sure."

It was a relief to get inside the gym with the corpses.

There were maybe seventy or eighty of them. What I mean is, that's how many long, narrow body bags were arranged in neat ranks. Against the far wall were many, many more bags with no shape at all. An FBI team had arrived from Washington. They'd already taken prints from the reasonably intact bodies, and now were at-"work on whatever fingers they could find. Later, jaws would be examined for dental work, though you'd be surprised how few people get identified that way.

We were introduced to the Oakland Special-Agent-in-Charge, or SAC, as they like to be called. We already knew the boys from the Washington fingerprint team. The FBI inherited this messy job simply because they have more fingerprints on file than everybody else put together. If you read their literature you might think they get about a ninety-nine percent match of names with carcasses. The plain fact is that, after a couple weeks, a lot of next of kin would be told there was just no way to find even a piece of their dead relative, and there would be a lot of memorial services in a lot of chapels. A lot of burned meat would go wherever such things end up for quiet disposal. I'd never asked where that was. Doctors and morticians should have some secrets.

We met the Contra Costa and Alameda County coroners, the heads of paramedic and fire department teams, and quite a few doctors. It was a busy place.

I've been to crashes where they were just letting relatives wander through the morgue lifting up the comers of blankets. There's no way you can make it pretty or easy to stomach, but there are limits. Here, they were mostly going by personal effects. In a separate room they had lines of tables covered with burnt clothing and jewelry, all tagged as to which corpse it had been taken from. A lot of people were looking through this stuff Tom and I were looking for Freddie Powers, the agent who had called us to the morgue in the first place. We spotted him on the far side of the property room. He's more or less your standard Texas blond-headed collegiate G-man, tall and conservatively dressed.

"Hello, Bill. Tom. Got something over here you might like to see." Not too long ago he'd have said "Howdy." They say you can't take the Texas out of the boy, but Freddie was working on it. His drawl was practically gone.

"Bill Smith, Tom Stanley, this is Jeff Brindle." Brindle was a short, curly-haired intern in his late twenties, dressed in a bloody smock. He had a quick smile and slightly buck teeth.

"Jeff put all this together and brought it to my attention," Freddie went on. I thought he was looking a little uncomfortable. Strictly speaking, he was here to put names on stiffs; maybe he was afraid he was encroaching into my territory. Or maybe it was something else.

"Actually, I don't know if it means a damn thing, but it sure as hell is funny," Brindle contributed. He glanced at Freddie. "You want me to show them?"

"I wish somebody would," I said.

Freddie nodded, and picked up a man's wristwatch. It was a Timex on an expansion band.

The band was stained with dried blood and the crystal was cracked, but you could see the second hand still moving.

"Takes a licking and keeps on ticking," Freddie drawled. I looked up at him. With Freddie, when the drawl gets thick, the kicker is on the way. I looked down at the watch. It read 10:45 and some seconds. I glanced at my own watch and saw that it was actually a couple seconds shy of 10 A.M.

"I've got ten and about eighteen seconds," Tom said.

Freddie beckoned me a few feet down the table, where he'd arranged about twenty watches. I leaned over and examined them.

Several things could be seen at once. They were all working, though some had completely lost the glass. They all showed the same time -- 10:45. There was something else about the group, but it eluded me for a moment.

"They're all mechanical," Tom put in. Of course, that was it.

Freddie didn't say anything. He just led me to a second group o f watches.

There were a lot more of these, though I could see down the table that the bulk of the weird exhibit was still to come. I sighed, and looked down.

Again, all mechanical. None of them were working. Some were so badly melted they might have been scraped off a Salvador Dali painting. But of the ones that were still readable, none had a time later than ten o'clock. The great bulk of them read 9:56, exactly.

"The planes hit the ground at 9:11," Freddie said.

"And eleven and forty-five is fifty-six. They're forty-five minutes fast, like the others.

What else have you got?"

He seemed to realize I was getting impatient, because he hurried through the next part.

"These four here, also mechanical, are reading 1:45. Still running. And over here we've got a dozen stopped mechanicals that all read 12:56."

"These people hadn't set their watches back to Pacific time yet," Tom suggested.

"That's the way I read it."

I thought it over. I couldn't think of anything real intelligent to say, but I had to try something.

"Are these from one plane, or both?"

"Both. Most from the 747 -- I doubt we'll ever find all of them from the DC-10. But those we did get from the DC-10 agree with the rest."

It was Tom who finally put into words what we'd all been wondering.

"Who sets their watch forty-five minutes ahead?"

I sure couldn't think up a good reason, much less explain why two planeloads of people would all get the same brilliant idea "Thanks, Freddie," I said, starting away from him. "I don't know what it means yet, but we'll sure look into it."

Freddie was looking a little guilty.

"That's not quite all, Bill," he said. I should have realized. He led me further down the table, to where a large number of digital watches were arranged. They all had blank or broken or melted faces.

"Maybe the old-fashioned stuff's the best," Freddie said. "At least the gear-and-

mainspring equipment came through better than these things did. But we did get a couple of survivors. Like this one."

He held out an undamaged Seiko and I glanced at it. It had constant day/date display, and a second indicator silently flicking out the numbers in its inscrutable digital way. The time read 3:14, December the 11th.

"This one's really screwed up," I said. "It's not even close to the others."

"You're telling me," Freddie said. "It's 'cause it's counting in a way I'd call a little odd.

Take another look."

I did, and this time I really looked at the seconds.

Forty, thirty-nine, thirty-eight, thirty-seven ...

I plunked it down on the table.

"Goddam it, Freddie, every crash I ever saw plays crazy tricks, one way or another. All those watches reading forty-five minutes fast, now that's something I'll buy as having a bearing on the crash. Or at least it might. But one watch that's gone haywire and is running backwards ... shit."

Freddie sighed.

"I'd agree with you, pal, but for a couple of things. One of them is that I've had some electronics training and I couldn't figure out what would make one of these go backwards. I mean, anything that would knock it that far out of kilter would destroy the whole chip, you know what I mean?"

I didn't, but these days nobody likes to admit they're ignorant about any part of computer science, else you start looking like an old biplane fogey. So I shrugged.

"You said a couple of things. What's the others?"

He just held out his hand and let me look. There were three other digital watches there.

All of them read 3:13, and all were counting backwards.

Donald Janz was in terrible shape. He looked like there was more Valium than blood in his veins. He was just a kid -- no more than twenty-five, younger than Tom Stanley -- dressed in a rumpled white shirt with the tie pulled askew. He kept tugging at his mustache and scratching at his nose, covering his face one way or another. He was sitting between Ian Carpenter of the Union sorry, 'Association' -- and somebody who l thought for a minute was Melvin Belli, but turned out to be just a hopeful imitator. He couldn't have looked more like a lawyer if he had the word stenciled on his forehead..

We were back in the small conference room at the Oakland airport and it was getting on toward two in the afternoon. All I'd had that day was a donut and a ham sandwich so my stomach wasn't in the greatest shape, but they finally had the DC-10 tape ready to play and I wanted to do it while Janz was there to listen.

It's not strictly going by the book to play the cockpit voice tape at the investigation site.

The actual tape was already on its way to Washington. There the Board maintains sophisticated machines that clean up, enhance, and analyze the usually awful recordings we get off CVR's. It takes a couple weeks putting the tapes through that mill. So I sometimes have a copy made before sending it off. That's what we'd be listening to.

The room had been cleared of reporters. I started out by watching Janz as it was played, but soon I was engrossed.

Somebody said: "United three-five, this is Oakland. I have you at twenty-three thousand, descending to fifteen. There is traffic below you, bearing ... " and so forth. I saw Janz jump at the sound of his own voice. At least, though I'd never heard him speak, I assumed it was him.

The quality of the voice was pretty good.

There were several exchanges, all routine, and some of the usual cockpit chatter, though by and large the two in the DC-10 didn't have a lot to say to each other. We heard a stewardess come in at one point, and heard the door shut behind her.

This sort of thing went on for ten or fifteen minutes. It was useful to get the names associated with the voices. We had the chief picots for Pan Am and United in the room to help us with that, and by the time things started to get interesting I had them sorted out.

In the DC-20 had been Captain Vern Rockwell, First Officer Harold Davis, and Flight Engineer Thomas Abayta. I wondered what nationality he was. Every once in a while we'd hear the voice of Ca plain Gilbert Crain, the pilot of the Pan Am 747, coming over the radio, responding to calls from Janz. There were also many other planes in the area, and we heard the parts of their communications that reached the DC-10 cockpit through their radio.

United 35 was descending, coming through cloud layers from the north and east, and Janz was guiding it through a series of turns that would have it heading almost due west when he handed it aver to the Oakland tower for landing. Davis said something about the clouds, and Rockwell griped about the weather in Oakland. It seemed he didn't care much for the city.

Abayta said something about a daft hr had that night, and it sounded like the other two laughed. Then things started to happen.

Janz said, "United three-five, I make you too far south. There is another aircraft in your path. Advise you increase speed and turn left."

Rockwell said, "Roger, Oakland, but -- " and that was it, because Janz was on the air again immediately.

"Pan Am eight-eight-oh, advise you initiate left turn and decrease speed at once. What is your altitude, eight-eight-oh?"

I glanced at Janz again. He wouldn't have had to ask that unless his computer was down.

It would be displaying altitude right next to 880's blip. Janz had no reaction. I wasn't even sure he was hearing anymore.

Somebody -- I'm pretty sure it was Davis, the co-pilot -- said, "What the hell?"

"I don't know," Rockwell said. "I better do it. Call him back."

"Oakland, this is United three-five, turning-"

But he was cut off again by Janz, who said, "United three-five, can you see anything out your right window?"

There was a pause. I could imagine Davis looking out the window. He'd have to get his face real close to it, because with the plane already in a left turn his side would be tilted sharply.

"Negative, Oakland," Davis said. "We are in a cloud layer at this time. Do you advise -- "

"Jesus! Right over -- "

That was Rockwell again, and that's all he had time to say. We could hear the screech of metal, far away and indistinct, and instantly alarms started to go off. That's all we heard for maybe five seconds. Then Rockwell came back on.

"Uh ... Oakland, this is ... uh-oh, get that, get it!"

The engineer, Abayta, was shouting something in the background. We might retrieve his words in the lab; we'd listen to it over and over and eventually work up a fairly complete script. For now, we all listened to Vern Rockwell's last words, delivered in a calm, almost bored voice.

"Oakland, this is United three-five ... uh, we have collided with something and the ... uh, the aircraft is not responding ... uh, to control. No rudder function. Ah ... no response from the elevators. We have lost most of our left wing and the aircraft is on fire, repeat, the aircraft is on fire."

"Out of the clouds now," Davis put in. "Come on, come on, pull it up, get up, get up, get up."

Rockwell again: "The aircraft is in a tight roll to the left."

Abayta: "Fifteen hundred feet."

Rockwell: "Applying ... right aileron ... the stick is shaking."

Davis: "Get the nose up ... we're going down, Vern."

Rockwell: "Looks like it."

Abayta: "Hydraulic pressure is gone, back-up hydraulics ..

Rockwell: "I'm trying to ... I'm going to try ... that didn't d. it, okay, uh, let's try ... shit."

I've never yet heard a pilot crying about it on the way down. Some of them are more excited than Rockwell was, but there's never anything that sounds like panic. These are men who have learned there is always something else you can do, something that, if you forget to do it, you're going to feel pretty silly. So they try and they try and they keep on trying until the ground is about an inch from the windshield, and then what I think they tend to feel is foolish. They finally realize they don't have time to do anything about anything. They've missed it. They've fucked up. They feel disgusted that they didn't solve the problem in time, and they say Aw, shit!

Sure, he's afraid. At least the ones I've talked to who made it through say they felt something that was an awful lot like fear. But his job is to keep the thing in the air, and he's still doing his job when he hits.

You can define heroism any way you want, but that's it for me. It's sticking in there no matter what. Whether it's a pilot fighting his plane down through that last mile, or switchboard operators and doctors and nurses staying at their posts while the bombs blitz London, or even the dance band on the Titanic playing while the ship goes down ...

It's fulfilling your responsibilities.

The room was silent for a while. Nobody could think of anything to say. Rockwell hadn't said anything deathless, anything quotable as being a heroic thing to say, but no one wanted to spoil the moment.

That's my job.

"Let's hear the other tape," I said, and everyone began murmuring at once. I glanced to my left, where a stenographer from United was sitting with a notepad in her lap. She was pale and her eyes were shiny. I gave her a smile that I meant m tell her it's okay, I understand, but from the way she looked at me she probably thought l was leering at her. My face is like that, sad to report. I'm told I usually look a little mean, or a little excited.

"They're still working on the other," Eli said. He looked meaningfully over at Janz, flanked by his protectors. I sighed, and went to him.

I dragged a chair around and straddled it, facing him I was introduced to his attorney, but I'm afraid the name has gone clear out of my head.

You can't run an investigation without lawyers. They'd soon be as thick as maggots in a week-old carcass.

"I had both 35 and 880 where I wanted them," Janz said, dully. He kept looking at his hands, clasped in his lap. You couldn't help thinking, looking at him, that the guy would fall over any minute. His eyelids kept drooping, then they'd jerk open and he'd study his hands some more. He had two ways of talking: too fast, and too slow. We'd get a burst of something, then he'd sit there looking vague and mumbling things we couldn't understand.

"And where was that, Don?" I said, encouragingly.

"Huh?"

"In what order? They were both going toward an approach at Oakland, right? Which one were you going to hand over first?"

"Uh ... " His eyes got spacey.

I should have known better. The lawyer cleared his throat again. We'd already listened to a lecture about how this whole interview was against his advice, and at several points he'd broken in, accusing me of manhandling his client. Manhandling! He was a lousy jerk in a three-piece suit, and dammit, I knew better than to push this kid. My big fear was that he'd start to cry.

"Okay, counselor," I said, holding up my hands. "No more questions, okay? I'll just sit back and listen." It was probably the best course, anyway. Questions just seemed to befuddle Janz.

"You were saying, Don?"

It took him a few minutes to recall where we'd been.

"Oh, right. Which one was ahead. I ... I ... can't remember."

"It's not important. Go ahead."

"Huh? Oh, okay."

He showed no inclination to do so, then started to talk rapidly again.

"I think there were fifteen commercial flights on my board. I don't know how many private planes. Some military ... it was a fast night, but we were doing okay, I was on top of it. I brought them in, and I could see they were going to get close, but I'd have plenty of time to straighten them out.

"Not a collision course. No way. Even if they'd never heard from me again, they should have missed each other by ... oh, four, five miles.

"So I gave 35 a ... it was a right turn. Just a hair. I was feeling .pretty good about it, since I'd just made a bigger hole behind 35 for somebody else ... ah, it was PSA something-or-

other from ... ah, Bakersfield. Eleven-oh-one, that was it."

He smiled faintly, remembering how neatly he'd done it. Then his face fell apart.

"That's when the computer dropped out.

"I got real busy. I think I sort of put 35 and 880 in the back of my mind; I'd just dealt with them, and I knew they were okay. I had another situa -- There were a couple other aircraft ... uh, a couple others that needed looking after just then." Janz looked at Carpenter. "How long did the computer stay down?"

"Nine minutes," Carpenter said, quietly.

"Nine minutes." Janz shrugged. "Time sort of gets mixed up. I had 'em all labeled ... " He looked up at me, puzzled. "You know what it's like when the computer goes down? You know how we -- "

"I know," I said. "You go back to manual marking."

"Right. Manual." He laughed, with no humor. "They didn't tell me it was gonna be that hard, I mean, I just about had it back under control ... and the next thing I know the computer was back on. There were even a couple of flights labeled, but not much altitude information available yet. It's like that, sometimes, when we're getting back on line. Some things get lost, and others -- "

"I know," I said. I was visualizing him trying to switch from one system to another, with inadequate data.

"Well, the computer was still slow. It wasn't real-time yet."

"It hardly ever is," Carpenter said, with a scowl directed at me.

The lawyer looked confused, and I thought he was about to make an objection. He was obviously out of his depth, and didn't know if he ought to let his client talk on about things he couldn't advise him about. Carpenter noticed it, and shook his head "Don't worry," he said. "Don's just saying the computer was running behind. We make it about fifteen seconds, which is about average on a busy night." The lawyer still looked confused, which exasperated Carpenter. "It means the picture Don was seeing on his screen was fifteen seconds old. And it's all he had to go by. Sometimes the computer falls behind as much as a minute and a half. There's no way anybody can blame Don because the computer is an antique."

I could tell from Carpenter's look that he had a pretty good idea who to blame, but he wouldn't say anything just now. The lawyer seemed satisfied.

Janz didn't seem to have noticed the exchange. He was still back there in the ARTCC, coping with a new situation.

"Right off, I could see three-five and eight-eighty were problem. They weren't close enough yet to set off the alarm, but they were getting that way. Or at least, considering the computer lagtime, I didn't think they were in trouble yet. But they weren't were they ought to be.

"They were on the wrong side of each other. Damn it, I couldn't figure out how the fuckers had passed each other like that. It didn't seem like they'd had enough time, no matter how bad my course figures were. But 35 should have been north of 880, and it was the other way around. And they were drifting back toward each other."

He put his head in his hands again, and shook it slowly.

"There wasn't a hell of a lot of time to make the decision. I figured they had about three minutes. But the fucking crash alarm wasn't going off, and I couldn't figure that, either. I turned them away from each other damn quick, and figured I'd sort it out later, in the incident report.

"That's when they switched places."

I looked up, and over at Carpenter. He nodded grimly at me.

"You're saying, Don, that the computer had mislabeled the two planes?"

He was nodding.

"Just for a couple of sweeps. I don't know ... transponder trouble, simultaneous signals ..

. what the hell. Whatever happened, for a minute there the computer was telling me the Pan Am was the United and the United was the Pan Am." He looked up at me for the first time, and in his eyes was a terrible emptiness.

"And ... see, what I had to do ... from what the computer was saying ... " He choked, but struggled on. "See, I tried to turn them away from each other. But since they were exactly reversed on my screen, what I ended up telling them to do was to steer straight toward each other."

There was a short silence in the room. A couple of my people looked skeptical -- hell, maybe I was, myself, in a way. But it was hard to believe, looking at him, that he was lying.

He went on; still calm.

"And then, see, when the computer got them straightened out, there was just time for the alarm to go off, and I looked down and you couldn't tell the blips apart anymore. They were just one blip.

"And the blip dropped right off my board."