“By that time I was out on the back deck. Not much to see until the two lower fires, sparked by the wings, started working. Early in the season for fire. Normally, the undergrowth is still damp from the snowmelt, though it was a dry winter. Whatever the conditions, the fire grabbed hold and burned up the slope hard and fast. Swept right over the crash site. Nothing much left to burn anyway after that explosion.”
Miranda decided that she was willing to accept Brett’s observations, pending further observation, despite the early stage of the investigation.
“ARTCC Denver said,” Mike had been on the phone even as he’d boarded the helo, “that the flight reported a depressurization event at Flight Level Three-niner-zero and basically augered in at over four hundred knots. Thirteen crew.”
Brett nodded, “Mountain Rescue has twelve of them off the mountain. Bits and pieces of them anyway. Can’t find the last one anywhere.”
Over four hundred knots, almost five hundred miles an hour, he didn’t need to mention that there hadn’t been any survivors.
“Wow! Look at those wings. They’re totally trashed!” Brett’s son Jeffrey’s high voice sounded over the intercom.
“You’ll have to pardon my boy, he’s quite the aviation enthusiast—”
“I’m gonna be a pilot, just like my dad!” Jeffrey declared loudly.
Brett’s tone shifted deeper, “—who rarely knows when to keep quiet about it.”
“Yet his assessment is wholly accurate.” Miranda inspected the wings herself, though that too was the wrong sphere of a proper investigation. Everything was all out of order but that seemed to be out of her control. The wings were relatively intact, which indicated that they’d separated from the diving aircraft to fall at a much slower pace. “Those wings are totally trashed.”
“See, Dad. I told ya.”
Miranda remembered her early days of flying, begging rides and free lessons from anyone who flew out to visit their family.
Jeffrey’s enthusiasm reminded her a lot of herself. “What else do you see, Jeffrey?”
Brett slowed to a hover at the same altitude as the wings’ final resting place.
“Jeff,” the boy announced. “Just Jeff.”
He was silent long enough that she was wondering if he was awaiting a response from her. But then he continued.
“I see four engines. One still has a couple of its propellers. By the angle, I’m guessing four blades?”
She glanced down and saw that he was correct. Which meant that it might by a Hercules, but it wasn’t an AC-130J Ghostrider. She turned around far enough to look at Jon, who just shrugged in confusion.
“Good guess,” Miranda shifted her attention back to Jeffrey. “Does that tell you what plane it is?”
There was another long silence before he answered tentatively, “C-1300 Hercules? Like the Disney movie?”
“C-130 Hercules. Just like the Disney movie.” It had come out the year after her parents died and she had watched it innumerable times. Not for the conquering of evil, but for Zeus challenging young Hercules to become a “true hero.” Her own father had always pushed her to excel, no matter what her learning and behavioral challenges. But it was Father Zeus who had given her the words for the goal she’d striven to satisfy ever since. Father Zeus’ words combined with Father Sam Chase’s demise in a plane crash had driven her to be the best NTSB crash investigator she could be. A true hero.
“What happened to it?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out. Do you want to help?”
“Really?” His squeal hurt her ears over the intercom; there was no questioning his excitement.
Brett looked over at her sharply. He mouthed, Are you sure?
Miranda replied aloud, “Of course I’m sure. Or I wouldn’t have offered.”
“Please, Daddy? Please? Please? Please?”
Brett sighed for reasons that eluded her.
“Jeff. You are not to bother Ms. Chase with too many questions.”
“Questions are helpful. That is our job: to ask questions until we find answers.”
Suddenly Brett truly smiled for the first time. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Warn me of what?”
But a chuckle was his only answer.
She recognized Jeff’s passion for aircraft and wanted to nurture that. It was all that had sustained her after her own parents had died in a crash. His father was a pilot in a very dangerous environment.
Miranda wanted Jeff to have that passion as well—in case it was ever the only thing left for him to hold on to.
5
At her suggestion, they dropped Jeremy and Jon near the wings to inspect them.
Brett landed the rest of the team—including Jeff, with more admonishments to behave—at the top of the mountain before gathering up a load of firefighters to deliver back to the bottom of the mountain now that the fire was beaten.
The char was thick on the air. Every step puffed up a small cloud of ash from the burned vegetation. For a moment, the morning breeze would swirl it aside in a brush of fresh mountain air—and then it would drive a cloud of ash up the hill.
Jeremy handed around paper masks.
Brett had been accurate when he’d told Miranda that there wasn’t much to see. Actually, the problem was that there was so much to see and most of it was very small—and scattered widely. Any attempt to map the debris perimeter would involve tracking far and wide. Very little of the area was truly vertical but, beyond the broad crown of the peak and the few ski trails, much of it was quite steep.
The tail section had landed below a particularly steep headwall. Climbing gear would certainly be advisable for safety.
“Looks like my game,” Holly swung loose her pack and propped it on a steel pipe sticking out of the ground.
As Holly began pulling out climbing gear, Miranda circled the pipe twice but was unable to identify it. Five inches across, eight feet showing above the soil. The upper end appeared to be shattered, as if the metal hadn’t even had time to deform due to the suddenness of the blow. She looked down to inspect what Holly was doing.
“Do you always bring climbing equipment?”
“Jon said the crash was on a mountaintop in Colorado. So I tossed in a bit of gear just in case. I brought a second set. Want to join in?”
“I never learned to climb.”
“I’ll go with you,” Mike stepped up.
“You?” Holly sneered. “Don’t tell me. Stephanie Garr was also into rock climbing?”
“Mandy Becot. She’s a romance author. She uses actual written words, so you probably wouldn’t know about her.”
Even Miranda knew about Mandy Becot. “She’s amazing.”
“In more ways than one,” Mike turned away from Holly before winking at Miranda.
She hoped that Holly’s eye roll was the intended response, even if he wasn’t in position to witness it, as that’s what she delivered him.
Once Holly and Mike had on climbing belts and hard hats, Holly threw her body weight at the embedded pipe. It didn’t budge. Within moments, she’d lashed her rope around it, and the two of them disappeared off the edge of a steep embankment strewn with parts of what appeared to be the rear ramp and tail section. Hopefully, somewhere in the scattered debris below would be the black boxes.