Low Pressure

“He’d seen Van Durbin’s column yesterday. It’s created renewed hype. He thinks I should reenter the arena and ramp up the publicity. I said no. The book has already climbed two spots on the best-seller list without my having to do anything. Dexter says that with just a little media coverage, it could go higher, stay longer. The movie deal would get sweeter. Et cetera. I said no. Again. Emphatically.”

“Will they be dragging the East River for his body?”

She laughed. “When I left New York, he threatened to jump from the Empire State Building. He hasn’t yet.”

He exchanged several transmissions with air-traffic controllers when they were passed from one’s airspace to another. The cockpit controls were as alien to her as the surface of Neptune.

When he was free again to talk to her, she asked, “How did you ever learn what everything is for?”

“I learned it because I have a very healthy respect for gravity. The ground is always there, trying to pull you down. It’s the most important thing to keep in mind.”

“Why are crashes usually attributed to pilot error?”

“Because they make the last mistake, and it’s hard for them to defend themselves or explain their actions if they’re dead.”

“That’s terribly unfair, isn’t it?”

“Can be, yeah. Pilots aren’t infallible. They screw up. But typically a crash is caused by a series of mistakes or mishaps. They stack up, and that’s what the cockpit crew is left to deal with. Have you ever heard of the Swiss cheese model?”

“I think so, but refresh me.”

“In order for a catastrophic event, such as a plane crash, to occur, a sequence of events precedes it. Think of these separate factors as slices of Swiss cheese lined up one behind the other. If any one of the holes in them doesn’t align with the others, the series of events is changed or curtailed, and a catastrophe is prevented.”

“But if all the holes line up—”

“The door is open for disaster.”

“The pilot’s mistake is the hole in the last slice of cheese.”

He nodded. “Say an airplane mechanic has a fight with his nagging wife, goes out and gets drunk, and is hungover at work the following day. During a preflight check, the first officer—co-pilot—spills his coffee over an electronic panel, which could result in its shorting out.

“He reports it, this mechanic is called to come and replace it. He doesn’t feel good to start with, now he’s working under pressure, knowing that the clock is ticking, and that everyone on board is disgruntled over the holdup. To make matters worse, the weather is deteriorating, and they want to get this bird out of there before the worst of it moves in, stranding passengers and crew for hours longer.

“The panel is replaced. The mechanic signs off on it. The captain and co-pilot are aware of the storms, but, between them, they’ve threaded a needle like that many times. They taxi, the tower clears them for takeoff, they check the radar one last time, and off they go.

“At about a thousand feet, they encounter some heavy turbulence. In an effort to get them out of it, the ATC instructs them to turn left. The captain responds. But as the plane goes into the turn, it gets struck by lightning, which in reality doesn’t cause an accident, but it can make things hairy.

“So now, the plane is in a steep left bank, flying in turbulence, trying to climb out of heavy rain and hail, at night, because the flight was delayed on account of the panel replacement. When…” He paused for dramatic effect and glanced over at her.

“When the fire warning for the left engine sounds and lights up red. The captain reacts immediately and does exactly what he’s been trained and conditioned to do for years on a 727. He pulls the fire warning lever, instantly shutting down that engine.

“What he doesn’t know is that he’s responded to a false warning. It sounded because it had grounded out after the coffee was spilled on it, which went unnoticed by both pilots and the mechanic. The turbulence, or the lightning strike, something, caused it to go off at that critical moment. The captain’s quick action to correct an emergency, which didn’t exist, actually created one.

“Remember, the plane was already in a left turn. Well, you never turn into a dead engine because the opposite one accelerates the plane into an even steeper turn. Wings quickly go vertical. Nose goes down. The airplane is doomed. Everyone onboard dies.

“But who do you blame for the crash? The captain made the last mistake. But you could also blame the clumsy first officer who spilled his coffee, or the mechanic who failed to notice that the fire warning had been damaged along with the panel he’d replaced. You could blame his wife for being a nag and driving him to drink the night before, making him feel like dog shit and not nearly as sharp as he normally would have been. You could take the blame all the way up to God for the crappy weather and that particular bolt of lightning.

“The sequence of events proved disastrous, but if only one of the contributing factors had been taken out of the equation, it might never have happened.” He paused and gave a shrug. “That’s a simplistic, layman’s explanation, but you get the gist of it.”

Bellamy hesitated, then asked, “What happened on Flight 343?”

He turned his head and looked at her for several beats. “I just told you.”

The gravel road wound through the thick grove of cypress trees and dead-ended in front of Dale’s cabin. He heard their car approaching long before it appeared.

He couldn’t explain, even to himself, why he had listened to Haymaker’s earnest pitch that he agree to see them. He should have hung up on him, should never have answered his call in the first place. But he found himself listening, and there was some logic to what his friend had said.