Murder at the Pentagon Page 12

  The accident had occurred in California on a routine training mission. Margit’s father had been in charge of maintenance for a fleet of helicopters at a base in northern California. He was within one year of his retirement, but everyone, including Margit, knew he would never retire voluntarily. They would carry him out in uniform, kicking and screaming.

  Until the accident.

  The pilot had lost control of his chopper and died in the resulting crash. “Mechanical failure” was the official explanation. His controls had frozen, rendering the craft unmanageable. Why had the controls failed? Repair work on them had been done by a young airman in Falk’s unit. Falk knew what had caused the crash because he’d gone over every inch of the helicopter’s parts when they were trucked back to the base. Controls had inadvertently been crossed.

  “It could happen to anyone,” her father had told Margit. “The kid made a mistake, that’s all. Damn it! I wish he hadn’t, but he did.”

  Margit’s father had made a mistake, too. In the flood of paperwork, he’d signed off on the repair to the chopper’s controls because the airman who’d actually done the work was on leave and would not be available for weeks. Falk explained this to the investigating team, and the panel initially accepted it, issuing only a mild reprimand for having certified repairs he hadn’t personally performed.

  When the airman returned to duty and was called in to account for his mistake, he lied. Knowing he hadn’t signed the form, he claimed that Falk had actually done the repairs. “His signature is on the release, isn’t it?” he’d told the investigating panel.

  Falk was angry at the airman’s lie but assumed nothing would come of it. His record had been pristine, exemplary. He was certain that his version of what happened would be believed.

  But there was a factor that Falk hadn’t counted upon. The investigatory panel was headed by a bird colonel who’d been stationed with Falk at a previous base. The colonel was flight-rated, which brought him into frequent contact with his line chief, Sergeant Fred Falk. One day the colonel ordered Falk to shortcut a maintenance procedure, which, Falk believed, would create a potentially dangerous condition for the unit’s pilots. He refused, politely at first, more adamantly as the debate continued. The colonel brought him up on charges of insubordination. When the case was heard, Falk prevailed. His judgment concerning the maintenance was upheld, and the colonel’s charges were dropped.

  Falk knew the colonel would not forgive him for making him look foolish in front of his commissioned colleagues. He was right. They didn’t speak again for the duration of their tours at the base. Their next assignments took them in different directions until, four years later, they ended up together in California. They had little to do with each other until the accident, and the investigation. The colonel’s memory was long. The airman’s version of what had happened was accepted. Guided by the colonel with a grudge, the panel recommended that Falk be removed from duty as a line-maintenance supervisor. He fought the decision, but his avenues of recourse were narrow. Eventually, he was given the choice of continuing in the service at a desk job or taking early retirement. From his perspective he didn’t have a choice. Throat burning with bile, he left the air force.

  Those early days as a civilian were as painful for Margit as they were for her father. They were forced to leave base housing and to rent a small house in town where Margit watched him sit in a chair in the living room for days on end, barely speaking, seemingly growing older with each breath. Gone was the spark, the sense of urgency, that he always felt upon getting up every morning and tending to his flock of ungainly helicopters. She became fearful for him, thought he might take his life.

  Eventually, a family friend who’d started a small commuter airline convinced Falk to join the company as vice president of maintenance. Margit’s father appeared to be proud of his new title and responsibilities, but in retrospect she knew he was putting up a front. He never felt the pride and sense of accomplishment he’d had as a member of the military.

  Whatever discomfort he felt being out of uniform was short-lived. He was dead before he could celebrate his first year on his civilian job. A coronary. Premature. Mercifully quick.

  “Just came out of her hundred hour,” the young line chief said. Every hundred hours, the choppers were taken off the line for regularly scheduled maintenance.

  Margit handed him a clipboard she carried in one hand. Her flight case was in the other. He signed off and moved to another chopper.

  Margit put her flight case inside the cockpit and proceeded with her own external inspection of the Huey, using a printed list of sixty-three items as her guide. Some pilots were lazy and shortcutted the preflight, taking the line chiefs word that an aircraft was fit to fly. Margit’s father often told her that certain pilots, particularly young ones, seemed afraid that he might be offended if they double-checked his work, like a patient reluctant to seek a second opinion for fear of alienating the primary physician.

  She stood on the cockpit roof and carefully examined the rotor hub that held the blades to the craft. They didn’t call it the “Jesus Nut” for nothing. If it let loose, you were in a nonsurvivable accident, straight down, like a rock, no blades to slow the descent. As for parachutes, copter pilots didn’t wear them, even in combat. No time to use a chute. Instead, every chopper pilot going into battle carried two flak jackets, one to wear to protect the torso, one to sit on to deflect enemy bullets coming through the floor. Her final action was to get down on her knees beneath the craft and to push the fuel-drain valve, allowing a few ounces of fuel to fall into a test tube she’d carried in her flight bag. It looked clear; no water from condensation in it. She returned the tube to its special compartment in the bag.

  Climbing into the right-hand seat, a familiar exhilaration gripped her, as it always did when she was about to fly. It had been that way since the day when, as a teenager, she began training for her private pilot’s license.

  She’d pestered her father for a chance to learn to fly, and he’d finally agreed, not because he approved of the idea but because he was tired of being badgered. He drove her to a small civilian airport—a grass strip and corrugated-metal building—and signed her up with an old-time crop duster named Pop Mills. Margit never did learn his real first name. It didn’t matter. He was a crusty, demanding instructor who smiled not once during the first seven hours of their dual instruction in a Cessna 150.

  Then, on a Saturday morning after they’d spent the first half of the eighth hour shooting takeoffs and landings, he instructed her to taxi to the metal building. He got out and told her to continue takeoffs and landings on her own.

  “Really?” she’d said, nerves quivering.

  “Yup. Just remember, without my weight she’ll handle different.” His leathery face creased into what could pass for a smile. Then he winked. “Don’t mess up. I only got two a’ these.”

  She didn’t mess up, and the joyous feeling she experienced that day, alone at the controls and flying free in a vast, pristine sky, had never left her. That was the way most pilots felt, at least the ones she knew. It wasn’t the mission you were on; it was the sheer joy of being up there. Once bitten by that beautiful bug, the addiction was powerful, the habit unbreakable.

  She carefully adjusted the Huey’s seat so that her left hand naturally fell on the collective pitch lever. The cyclic stick rested comfortably between her legs. She tapped her toes on the antitorque pedals. Ready to go.

  She strapped the clipboard to the top of her left thigh, shifted papers on it, and ran down the printed pre-start and start checklist, twelve distinct things to do; fingers flicking switches and turning knobs, eyes taking in gauge readings, mind analyzing what she observed. That chore completed, she replaced the pre-start list with the PPC, the Performance Planning Card.

  She tuned into ATIS on her radio, the Automatic Transcribed Information Service that gives out a constant stream of recorded information on airport flight conditions. Updated every hour, each version is
designated by a letter of the phonetic alphabet. Margit listened to the “Bravo” report and jotted down notes.

  “Clear!” she shouted out the open window. She hit the starter ignition trigger switch on the collective. The PT6 kicked in with a whine, and the main rotor began a slow, laborious circle above her. Up to a hover, she matched gauge readings to the PPC. Everything was within parameters; there was enough reserve power to take off from the confined area.

  “Huey four-two-three—request permission to taxi to Charlie pad,” she said into a microphone that curved out from her helmet and poised in front of her mouth. Through earphones in her helmet she received the permission she sought from ground control.

  Margit gave a thumbs-up through the open window, indicating she was about to move.

  The line chief gave her a halfhearted salute and stepped back.

  Margit closed the window and eased up on the collective, which changed the pitch of the rotor blades. They bit into the air, and the Huey rose from the tarmac.

  Hovering three feet off the ground, she gave a final glance at her engine instruments and applied gentle pressure to the right antitorque pedal, which sent the Huey pivoting about the main rotor shaft in the direction of the departure pad a thousand feet away.

  She adjusted the cyclic, and the craft moved forward in what tower controllers call a “hover taxi.” Still only feet off the ground, she maneuvered the Huey to the pad, a circle outlined in white paint, and with a Maltese cross in its center.

  To the tower: “Air Force four-two-three ready for takeoff. I have information Bravo. Proceeding to practice area.”

  “Roger, four-two-three. Enjoy!”

  Margit smiled as she coordinated left and right hands. She adjusted the collective, and she climbed, the ground falling away below. She was higher now, but not too high. One reason to enjoy flying choppers was that there was more reason, to say nothing of regulatory permission, to fly low-very low.

  She looked to the practice area, a heavily wooded government preserve at the perimeter of the base. Areas had been cleared for chopper pilots to practice getting in and out of tight spots. Her face lit up as she guided the craft to where she would run through a series of exercises designed to keep her skills sharp.

  Every other aspect of her life disappeared—Cobol, Jeff Foxboro, the Pentagon, her BOQ at Bolling. It was at times like these that she questioned her decision to pursue a law degree. She’d had the option to remain a full-time chopper pilot, a role in which she’d been blissfully happy. Law, and becoming a lawyer, had also been appealing; a challenge, an opportunity to test intellect and to grow in knowledge.

  But flying was where pure contentment existed. Not only was controlling an aircraft exhilarating, a chopper left you time for only intense concentration on the task at hand. Fixed-wing aircraft virtually flew themselves, as long as you didn’t “mess up.” You reach cruise altitude, trim up the plane, lock on the autopilot, and sit back.

  But there was no time to glide through the air in a helicopter. Helicopters don’t glide. You fly every second, and if you don’t come back from a flight fatigued, something is wrong. Maybe you don’t come back.

  She flew “nap of the earth” once she reached the practice area, keeping the craft at “four-and-forty,” four meters above the ground and the speed at forty knots, a useful technique in combat. She practiced hovering techniques in the clearings, then went to an open strip on the edge of the area and ran speed runs for the fan of it, the ground racing by but her speed only about three times faster than what Lindbergh had managed more than fifty years before.

  She revisited the wooded area and visualized combat situations, responded to them—air evac of wounded, runs on imaginary enemy installations—things she was kept from doing in an actual conflict because of the regs prohibiting military women from flying combat missions. They may not have considered her runs in Panama to be “combat,” but the men on the ground shooting at her as she passed over them at treetop level didn’t know the regs. Tell it to her extra flak jacket, on which she’d sat and which took seven rounds through the copter’s belly skin.

  She ran through a running takeoff, the sort of maneuver all military chopper pilots—at least those still alive—found useful in hot jungle spaces where the air was less dense, the gross weight over specs, and the only chance of clearing trees was to pick up as much horizontal speed as possible before lifting off the ground and hope that the fat, wingless bird would make it over the trees—and not go into them.

  She chose a point not too far in the distance. Imaginary trees. She adjusted the cyclic and collective and was soon moving horizontally in the direction of her designated spot. When she reached that point, she sent the Huey into a fast vertical climb, the ground falling away, the crisp blue sky enveloping her.

  The hour went by fast. Her final practice maneuver was an autorotation exercise from one thousand feet in which the helicopter’s transmission design allows the main and tail rotors to rotate freely when the engine is stopped, or comes to an idle.

  She rotated the twist-grip throttle on the end of the collective to the idle position, and immediately lowered the collective to maintain rotor rpm. This produced an immediate descent. Margit maintained proper airspeed with the cyclic, and direction control with the pedals, the craft’s forward speed producing enough energy in the rotating blades to decrease the rate of descent.

  At a precise altitude above the ground, she initiated a flare by moving the cyclic to the rear. But rather than touch down, she decided to make a power recovery. She simultaneously moved the cyclic forward to place the chopper in a landing attitude, applied collective pitch to check the descent, increased throttle to return the engine and rotor to operating rpm, all the while continuing to maintain directional control with the pedals. Her sure and practiced movements brought the Huey to a hover at the exact place she’d intended. Satisfied, she entered a final fast vertical climb before heading back.

  If there was one aspect of chopper flying that Margit didn’t enjoy, it was the vibration. You learned to deal with it—you had to—but you never liked it. The vibration that suddenly shook Huey 423, however, was beyond normal limits. Margit had been taught to differentiate between types of vibrations, and this one was high frequency, emanating from the pedals, most likely caused by a problem with the tail rotor. She reduced power to compensate for what was happening at the rear. She wasn’t concerned about making it back to the tarmac; she’d successfully dealt with tail-rotor problems before. Once she’d landed, however, it meant filling out multiple forms. Paperwork. The military thrived on it.

  She approached her landing straight into the wind, and used minimal power changes to put as little pressure as possible on the tail rotor. As she felt the skids touch the ground, she breathed a sigh of relief.

  The young line chief was running a visual inspection on another Huey when Margit approached on foot. She told him of the problem she’d encountered.

  “Shouldn’t be,” he said. “She just came out of her hundred hour.”

  Margit had heard that before. It didn’t matter what maintenance it had undergone. The fact was that the tail rotor posed a potentially dangerous situation for the next pilot.

  “I’ll write it up inside,” Margit said, doing a good job of hiding her annoyance.

  “We’ll have to truck it,” he said, looking to where she’d left the craft.

  “Right,” she replied.

  He didn’t bother to salute this time. S.O.B, Margit thought as she went into Ops and found the appropriate forms. Nothing like her father. He would have shown instant concern, would have listened carefully to the pilot’s description of the problem.

  By the time she was in her car heading back to Bolling, she’d forgotten about the line chief, thought only of what she’d left on the ground an hour before—Flo and Robert Cobol, Jeff Foxboro, and whether she could convince Mac Smith to help her officially.

  She took a shower, wrapped herself in a heavy terry-cloth robe
, and returned a call Smith had left on her answering machine. No luck. She’d missed him again, machine talking to machine. He said he’d be home later that evening.

  There was a second call, this from Colonel William Monroney, who said he was having dinner in the Bolling Officers’ Club with some people and invited Margit to join them.

  “No thanks,” she muttered.

  She thought of Jeff and the disappointment of having their weekend plans dashed, and she reminded herself that she had no right to feel anger or bitterness about it. But the portion of her brain giving out that rational message wasn’t communicating with the softer side where emotions dwelt.

  Monroney had said he would be in the club at seven. She again dismissed the idea, looked at the corner of her desk where the growing file on the Cobol case rested, debated it, and decided she could use a good dinner and some upbeat conversation. Why not?

  Margit and Monroney sat in the Officers’ Club cocktail lounge. With him was an old friend, Lewis—she never did get the last name—who was stationed in Europe and was in Washington for a week of meetings, and an aide to Monroney, Major Anthony Mucci. Monroney’s friend Lewis and Tony Mucci were a study in contrasts. His friend was a jovial sort who kept Margit and Monroney laughing with stories about his recent exploits in avoiding a good-conduct medal. He’d had quite a bit to drink, and proposed marriage to Margit at the end of the evening. “It would be great having a chopper pilot and lawyer as a wife,” he’d said, “even better than marrying somebody whose father owns a liquor store.” Margit had pleasantly declined his offer, and an hour later he departed, leaving Monroney, Mucci, and Margit standing at the front door. “Nightcap?” Monroney asked.

  “Can’t, Colonel,” Mucci said, his face set in stone as it had been all evening. It wasn’t that Mucci was sullen. He wasn’t even unpleasant. The problem for Margit was that he seldom laughed, as though his life had precluded opportunities to practice. Sitting with someone who doesn’t laugh can make you feel guilty for laughing. Too frivolous, too shallow, for the stiff, correct, and handsome young major. But, she’d decided early, that was his problem, not hers, and she’d giggled even louder at Lewis’s funny, obviously tall tales. After all, that’s why she’d decided to join them.