Free Fly by Night by Ward Larsen

pointed to the electronic box. “Can you fix it?”
    Jibril acquired a fresh air of enthusiasm. “I think it will not be necessary. I began to lose confidence in the Chinese equipment some weeks ago, so I went to the trouble of ordering a wholly different device from a German manufacturer. It should arrive today on the flight from Hamburg.”
    Khoury was impressed. For a young man, the engineer displayed an uncommon balance of patience and initiative. He was working twenty hours a day in this place, moving heaven and earth to bring success. Yet the purchase from Germany was a concern. Much of Jibril’s hardware had already been acquired at considerable risk. Someclever, promotion-minded bureaucrat behind a customs desk might make uncomfortable connections.
    “Hamburg?” Khoury said hesitantly. “Is this not dangerous ground, Fadi? The West watches certain exports very closely. This device you have ordered, might it be on someone’s list of sensitive technology? Are you sure there will be no questions?”
    The engineer shrugged to say no. Or perhaps to say that he hadn’t really considered it.
    Khoury let it go and moved to more familiar ground. He asked the question he always asked. “Will the deadline still be met?”The edge in his voice was clear.
    “Yes, sheik. I will install the part as soon as it arrives. Yet …” Jibril hesitated, “I can only perform the most basic of bench tests. If there were more time—”
    Khoury chopped his hand upward to cut the engineer off. There was a time for coddling and a time for discipline. He gave Jibril his most solemn gaze.
    Jibril was duly inured. He bowed, and said, “It will be done, my sheik.”
    The bed was surrounded by paper as Davis studied the maintenance records for a second time. Every airplane has a logbook, a bound record of that airframe’s flight and maintenance history. Since they always stay on board, the original logbook for the mishap aircraft was now resting on the bottom of the Red Sea. Fortunately, logbooks also have duplicate pages that are removed and kept as a permanent record. This was what Davis had in his hands.
    The tear-out sheets were dry and brittle, like the paper had been baked in an oven. Arranged in chronological order, he was able to see where the airplane had been. Ten days prior to the crash, a hop from Dubai to Khartoum. The next day, an oil service and tire pressure check, then off to Lagos, Nigeria. On it went, bouncing around Africa and the Middle East. Two tires changed, a landing light replaced. A few gripes written up by pilots, subsequently addressed by maintenance.
    Every write-up he saw was entered after a landing in Khartoum, so there had never been any contract maintenance performed at a faraway airport. In an outfit like this, Davis knew, 95 percent of pilot complaints regarding inoperative systems came after landing at the home field—not a function of where things broke, but a function of the five hundred U.S. dollars FBN Aviation would have to pay for a contract mechanic in Cape Town or Mombasa. Or the five hours the crew would have to wait for them to show up, if they showed up at all.
    The logbook pages advanced chronologically until Davis reached the day before the crash. He saw a pilot-entered discrepancy: Ailerons out of trim—five units right of neutral required for level flight . Signed legibly at the bottom: Captain Gregor Anatoli . Then below, the corrective action: Ailerons rerigged and centered to zero units in accordance with maintenance manual procedure 56–7. Test flight required .
    So there it was in black-and-white. The ailerons were long tabs that ran along the trailing edges of the wings, the surfaces that made an airplane roll and turn. A critical flight control. The pilot had reported that they were out of adjustment. The attending mechanic had certified that he’d realigned them to perfection. Everything in order. Everything by the book. Davis looked at the signoff block and checked to see