Zero Separation (23 page)

“I'm not being blackmailed, and if I were, there are strict protocols in place at the DIA to deal with external threats.” Lauren felt the weight in her chest let up just enough for her to take a breath. Buck had done some digging into their shared financial history and found what he was supposed to find. All he was doing now was fishing.

“I do know that his behavior isn't making sense, and I'm paid to worry about the unknown, especially when it involves your safety.”

“It's none of those things,” Lauren lowered her head as if she were preparing some monumental admission. She had to give Buck something to chew on or he was going to keep chipping away at the façade until it crumbled. She took a deep breath. “My husband and I are having marital problems. It's why he's not here. Everything's
up in the air right now. We haven't really told anyone, so I ask you to please not say a word.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.” Buck nodded and tried to give her an understanding smile. “I promise it won't leave this room.”

“I appreciate that.” Lauren reached out and affectionately squeezed Buck's hand. “I really do.”

“Dr. McKenna, please try and get some sleep tonight. If you'd like, I can get you something to take, nothing too strong, but you'll rest.”

“I'll let you know,” Lauren whispered as he let himself out.

Lauren thought about what she'd just said to Buck. She'd purposely lied to him. As she rocked back and forth, she wondered about the other lies, the lies she'd told to Michael, Susan, even Calvin. They would all come to an abrupt halt if Montero leaked what she knew. The other reality was that the fabrications would never stop—they would pile up until something gave way, and the entire charade would implode.

She got up and gently placed Abigail in her crib. She grabbed the baby monitor and went down the steps into the study. The more she thought about what she'd told Buck the more she thought about Meredith. There was something in that DVD that had been bothering her, something her subconscious had been grinding on and now she thought she knew what it was. Relieved she didn't run into Buck or Andy, she closed the door, sat at the desk, and clicked on the computer.

Out of habit she logged on to check her e-mail and found one from Donovan, she opened it and began to read.

Dear Lauren—

With everything that's happened over the last twenty-four hours, the phone hasn't really been the best way for us to talk. I'm in the back of the da Vinci headed to Kingston in what I hope is one of the last legs of this journey. Under the banner of overseeing the salvage of the crashed Pan Avia flight, I've taken Montero off the front
lines and stranded her at sea. I've gotten a feel for the situation, and from experience I don't think she can sustain her rage much longer. When her bubble bursts, I think I'll be able to help her move on—hopefully without any repercussions for us
.

If this were any other situation, I would be there with you, I know I have much to explain. I hid some things from you because my past has come back to haunt me in ways I didn't think were possible, and for that I'm sorry. I wasn't sure how to explain certain things to you when I couldn't readily explain them to myself. As for our conversation last night, all I can say is I'm sorry
.

If I don't think I can fix this current problem, I'll come home and we'll face the future together and deal with whatever comes. Give Abigail a hug from me, and I'll talk to you soon
.

Love
,

Donovan

Lauren knew about the plane crash and knew what Donovan was trying to do, but it felt open ended—as did everything right now. She read the letter again and then deleted it. She retrieved the DVD from the book where her husband had hidden it and slipped the disk into the computer, positioning the screen so that if Buck or Andy came in they wouldn't see what she was watching.

The main menu materialized and Lauren clicked on the icon that would give her the individual chapter segments. She knew exactly what she wanted to see, it had been troubling her since she'd seen it the first time, and she quickly found the place. The movie played for a moment and then she gently touched the pause button. She inched it along frame by frame and then stopped on the precise image she was after. It was a close-up of Meredith and Robert.

Lauren's hand shot to cover her mouth, as if she needed to stifle a scream. Her eyes were drawn to Meredith, her face turned upward
toward Robert's. Lauren advanced the scene several more frames and then froze it. Robert's face filled the screen. Though twenty years had passed and surgeries had altered his facial structure, his eyes were unchanged. Lauren sat back and studied the image. She flashed back on moments in her marriage, not wanting to accept what she was seeing. She wallowed along in self-imposed denial until a definite sense of clarity finally overwhelmed her. She hadn't imagined it and she couldn't ignore it—the truth was right in front of her. Lauren couldn't stand it anymore and she mashed the button to eject the disk and in that split second before the screen went dark, Meredith and Robert moved together and kissed. Lauren closed her eyes. She felt hollow, gutted, and knew for sure that her world had just shifted on its axis.

Donovan had survived the evening. He'd met everyone, thanking each and every one of them for the difficult job they were doing. He'd finally left Montero in the mess hall and escaped into the aft storeroom, where the recovered debris was being stored. He'd been around wrecked airplanes before, but not so soon after the accident and never on this magnitude. A Boeing 767 was a large airplane, piloted by highly trained and skilled individuals, yet they were unable to stop the process that brought this airplane down. Donovan always felt a tragic bond with fallen aviators, especially with those he considered his peers. He, too, flew day in and day out in high-performance jet aircraft, and he couldn't help but wonder if he were put in the same situation would he have fared any better than the now silent crew of the 767.

Donovan slowly made his way amongst the recovered debris. Meticulously affixed to each object was a tag that offered latitude and longitude, plus a time stamp of when it was recovered. Smaller pieces were bagged so the NTSB would be able to identify the seemingly random parts and use the information to construct a detailed map of what ended up where. He examined several of the transparent bags and was saddened to find a cluster of personal effects. A purse, a shoe, a soaked boarding pass, all giving sad testament to the people who were aboard the airliner when it crashed.

The human remains were below in the infirmary. The Jamaican Coast Guard was scheduled to receive the bodies tomorrow and deliver them to a makeshift morgue in Kingston for autopsy.

Many sections of the twisted metal were coated with zinc chromate, a yellowish-green anticorrosive agent that easily identified
them as internal parts of the aircraft. Bare aluminum marked surface skin. The largest piece in the room was about the size of a mangled canoe, its aluminum edges jagged and scratched from the crash. He ran his hand over the once smooth surface and felt the aberrations and the gouges in the metal.

He spent time studying each of the larger pieces and tried to picture what part of a 767 he was looking at, but couldn't. The only reason any of it had floated was from rubber or foam sections that had created a modest amount of buoyancy, or a sealed section had trapped an air pocket. When he pictured an intact Boeing 767 and then compared it to the amount of wreckage before him, he was beset by the enormity of the recovery job that lay ahead.

“Mr. Nash, there you are. I've been looking for you.” Mary announced with an air of excitement in her voice. “ROMEO is approaching the debris field, and I thought someone with your aviation expertise should sit in on this.”

“Thanks, Mary.” Donovan said, as he fell in step behind her. They wound through the maze of gangways, and he held open a watertight hatch for Mary to pass through, then ducked and went through himself. They went down a passageway and through another hatch until Donovan found himself in a room that resembled a home theatre. At the front of the space was a wall full of screens. Situated below the monitors were computer keyboards as well as an assortment of controls and smaller screens. Off to the side was a stack of electrical components and computer hard drives, small green lights glowing in the semidarkness. Technicians were positioned at strategic stations around the largest work area, and Donovan knew they were the ones guiding ROMEO. Rising up at a gentle slope were six rows of large padded chairs—the observation section. In the second row sat Montero.

Donovan took a seat next to her.

“We're almost there,” a technician reported. “Sonar is showing what looks like a significant amount of metal on the bottom. It's fairly scattered, but the echoes concur with our earlier estimation of where the tail section may have come to a rest. The signal
strength from the locator beacon inside both the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder confirms our data.”

In the background, Donovan could pick out a faint pinging sound, ROMEO's relay of the directional beacon.

Montero leaned over and whispered, “I didn't know the black boxes had homing beacons.”

Donovan nodded. “Immersion in water automatically triggers the beacon. They are designed to operate for thirty days before their battery runs out.”

“We're fifty feet from the bottom,” the technician reported, careful to speak into a microphone as all operations were recorded. “Total depth is almost forty-seven hundred feet, and I'm bringing the lights up to step one.”

Donovan watched as the largest of the screens flickered to life. At first, all he could see was what looked like snowflakes, tiny organisms that threatened to block the view, but seconds later he began to make out the subtle contours of an unremarkable ocean floor. Smooth brown mud stretched out in every direction and vanished into the darkness.

“The first object should be visible shortly,” one of the technicians said.

“Very good.” Mary nodded. “Maneuver slowly.”

Donovan leaned forward as he started to see a vague shape materialize in the murky haze of the deep.

“I think we've got something here,” Mary said. “Roll video.”

Donovan knew there would be a video record made of everything they saw. There were also several still cameras that could be used for photographing specific objects of interest. As ROMEO silently approached the object, Donovan was the first in the room to understand what they were seeing.

“It looks to me like we're seeing a section of the fuselage. It's upside down, the top of the plane is partially submerged in the sediment.”

“You have a good eye, Mr. Nash.” Mary made a note on her clipboard.

“Can you maneuver us all the way around it?” Donovan asked. “I'd like to get a closer look at where this section separated.”

“Slowly, we don't want to raise a cloud of silt from the sea floor,” Mary said to her team.

As ROMEO was guided in a slow circle, Donovan could finally see where the smooth aluminum gave way to the harsh tearing of the metal. Insulation, fragments from seat cushions as well as wire bundles were strewn everywhere. They could now peer into the interior of the airliner itself. ROMEO's bright lights cast harsh shadows into what was once part of the cabin. Donovan braced himself for the sight of bodies. Most would have been sucked out when the fuselage ruptured or thrown clear when the wreckage hit the sea, but there was always the chance that some unfortunate souls would have ridden the wreckage all the way to the ocean floor. Initial inspection showed the small section devoid of passengers.

“The masks have dropped,” Montero said, pointing to the tangle of plastic tubing and yellow face masks floating inside.

“They could have dropped from the impact with the water. Even a hard landing can pop them out sometimes,” Donovan replied, his attention focused on where the metal had separated. The amount of force required to rip the metal apart had been enormous.

“Mr. Nash,” Mary asked, “can you positively identify the aircraft or airline from what we're looking at here?”

“No,” Donovan replied. The room was quiet as ROMEO made a slow three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle. The image told of a massive impact.

“If everyone is finished here, we'll move to the next location.” Mary looked around the room and everyone agreed.

“How long?” Donovan asked.

“Just a few minutes,” Mary said, glancing at a screen. “This next debris field is larger, or at least appeared that way on the sonar returns.”

The steady one-ping-per-second beacon sounded in everyone's
ears as ROMEO motored along the ocean floor toward the next contact.

“Object is dead ahead, fifteen meters,” the technician called out. “I'm switching on the video cameras.”

As before, the object came into view as though it were shrouded in a dense, snowy fog.

“What is it?” Montero said.

“Can you pan upward?” Donovan asked, as he too tried to make sense out of what he was seeing on the screen. He couldn't find a point of reference to determine what it was they'd found. Slowly, the perspective shifted, but it wasn't until Donovan spotted the distinct shape of an airfoil that he understood.

“According to the directional microphone we're getting close to the black boxes,” Mary said.

“It's what's left of the tail,” Donovan announced. “That smooth surface is the vertical stabilizer. Below that, partly sunk in the mud, is the section of the fuselage where the horizontal stabilizer is attached. You can just start to make out the gray-and-red stripes of Pan Avia Airlines and there's the registration number, PR-GFT.”

“Okay, good work, people. We have positive verification that this is indeed the Pan Avia Boeing 767. Now, let's do a three-hundred-sixty-degree survey and figure out the best way to get at the black boxes.”