Read Online Fly by Wire: A Novel by Ward Larsen - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Ward Larsen
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saw it everywhere -- fire. World Express 801 had probably been carrying a hundred tons of Jet A fuel. A lot of potential energy.
He began walking again. The ground was crisscrossed with deep ruts. These were not a direct result of the crash, Davis knew. Emergency vehicles always dominated the first few hours, and they did a lot of damage, running over debris, indiscriminately spraying water and fire retardant on the whole mess. Nobody could blame them. It was a tough job, and sometimes lives were at stake. But it only added to the forensic nightmare, made the investigators job that much harder.
Davis stepped over a large metal tube that had one end ripped apart in three sections -- it formed a perfect fleur-de-lis. He found a cockpit instrument panel, a twelve-inch square liquid-crystal display.
The glass screen was intact in its frame, black and empty, and a cable covered in melted insulation snaked out from the back. In years past, flight instruments were round dials with needles, "steam gauges" in the parlance. In those days, you could tell how fast an airplane was going when it hit by finding the indentation the airspeed pointer made on its glass cover plate. Now things were different. The actual instruments were void, black masks that hid whatever had existed at the moment of impact. The only way to tell was to mine chip sets, dig into memory cards, read bits of data. Clinical and secretive.
Davis drew to a stop and put his hands on his hips. He took one last look at the scene, taking a mental picture as he had done many times before. Not for the official record. It was just for his own sake.
By chance, airplanes could crash anywhere. By design, crash investigations were almost always based at airfields. The reasons were many. Airports were publicly owned, had communications gear, buildings to support meetings, trucks and tugs to haul things around. And they had hangars to hold wreckage. Sometimes there were only a few massive pieces involved. Sometimes there were millions. But a vacant hangar was always the way to go.
Davis hitched a ride with a photographer, an amiable Parisian who'd contracted himself out for air crash work to support his more artistic side -- landscape black-and-whites. Like a good starving artist, he gave Davis his portfolio to study on the twenty-minute drive. The guy was actually good. As far as Jammer Davis could tell.
Davis got a good look at the Lyon airport as they drove. It was a fairly busy regional hub, maybe a dozen midsized jets nested at the passenger terminals. The terminal buildings had a modernist tilt, two grandiose main structures that reached for the sky. It was getting to be an architectural cliche, he thought. Give an airport designer a blank check, and you'd get no end of columns, arches, wings, and height.
The photographer drove around the airfield on a perimeter road, skirting the two north-south runways. He pulled into a quiet corner of the airport, a place that in the States might have been referred to as a "business park." There were groups of offices, workshops, and hangars. The photographer pointed to the correct building. Davis thanked the fellow and wished him luck. He really meant it, too.
It was labeled soixante-deux. Building Sixty-two. A boxy two-story support complex was attached to a larger hanger. Both seemed relatively new. Davis could just make out the faint impression of a name on the hangar s corrugated sidewall where the large letters of a sign had been removed. All that remained was a shadow where the paint had weathered unevenly -- primaire. The name stood there like some pale, ghostly apparition, serving as the headstone of yet another European budget airline gone into receivership. Now the place had found a new life. Any remains of the carcass of primaire had been exhumed. Padlocks were snapped off, electricity restored, and the floors swept up. Building Sixty-two had been fully requisitioned and prepared for the cause of World Express 801.
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He began walking again. The ground was crisscrossed with deep ruts. These were not a direct result of the crash, Davis knew. Emergency vehicles always dominated the first few hours, and they did a lot of damage, running over debris, indiscriminately spraying water and fire retardant on the whole mess. Nobody could blame them. It was a tough job, and sometimes lives were at stake. But it only added to the forensic nightmare, made the investigators job that much harder.
Davis stepped over a large metal tube that had one end ripped apart in three sections -- it formed a perfect fleur-de-lis. He found a cockpit instrument panel, a twelve-inch square liquid-crystal display.
The glass screen was intact in its frame, black and empty, and a cable covered in melted insulation snaked out from the back. In years past, flight instruments were round dials with needles, "steam gauges" in the parlance. In those days, you could tell how fast an airplane was going when it hit by finding the indentation the airspeed pointer made on its glass cover plate. Now things were different. The actual instruments were void, black masks that hid whatever had existed at the moment of impact. The only way to tell was to mine chip sets, dig into memory cards, read bits of data. Clinical and secretive.
Davis drew to a stop and put his hands on his hips. He took one last look at the scene, taking a mental picture as he had done many times before. Not for the official record. It was just for his own sake.
By chance, airplanes could crash anywhere. By design, crash investigations were almost always based at airfields. The reasons were many. Airports were publicly owned, had communications gear, buildings to support meetings, trucks and tugs to haul things around. And they had hangars to hold wreckage. Sometimes there were only a few massive pieces involved. Sometimes there were millions. But a vacant hangar was always the way to go.
Davis hitched a ride with a photographer, an amiable Parisian who'd contracted himself out for air crash work to support his more artistic side -- landscape black-and-whites. Like a good starving artist, he gave Davis his portfolio to study on the twenty-minute drive. The guy was actually good. As far as Jammer Davis could tell.
Davis got a good look at the Lyon airport as they drove. It was a fairly busy regional hub, maybe a dozen midsized jets nested at the passenger terminals. The terminal buildings had a modernist tilt, two grandiose main structures that reached for the sky. It was getting to be an architectural cliche, he thought. Give an airport designer a blank check, and you'd get no end of columns, arches, wings, and height.
The photographer drove around the airfield on a perimeter road, skirting the two north-south runways. He pulled into a quiet corner of the airport, a place that in the States might have been referred to as a "business park." There were groups of offices, workshops, and hangars. The photographer pointed to the correct building. Davis thanked the fellow and wished him luck. He really meant it, too.
It was labeled soixante-deux. Building Sixty-two. A boxy two-story support complex was attached to a larger hanger. Both seemed relatively new. Davis could just make out the faint impression of a name on the hangar s corrugated sidewall where the large letters of a sign had been removed. All that remained was a shadow where the paint had weathered unevenly -- primaire. The name stood there like some pale, ghostly apparition, serving as the headstone of yet another European budget airline gone into receivership. Now the place had found a new life. Any remains of the carcass of primaire had been exhumed. Padlocks were snapped off, electricity restored, and the floors swept up. Building Sixty-two had been fully requisitioned and prepared for the cause of World Express 801.
At
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