Free Marine One by James W. Huston Page A

somebody else did it. That means somebody else killed him. As in
on purpose."
    "Is that what this is all about?"
    "I'm just trying to think this stuff through, Mike. Is my thinking wrong?"
    "It's pretty far-fetched. I'm not convinced of that at all."
    "If somebody killed him, and you're out there trying to prove it wasn't WorldCopter, then your only way out will be to find out who it was. Am I right?"
    "Sort of."
    "You ever think about that maybe they won't
want
you to find them? And that they probably already know who you are?"
    "What, you think somebody's going to come after us?"
    "I've read enough history to know that when the emperor dies, you don't want to be anywhere near it."
    "There will be a rational explanation of this accident, Rick."
    He wasn't satisfied. "What I'm saying is, I want you to-how do you always put it? Keep your head on a swivel." He jerked on the handle of my office door and walked out.
    He was right about one thing. If someone killed the president, the last thing they would want was for me to find out what really happened. Fair enough to tell me to keep that in mind. We didn't know what was behind the curtain.
    ____________________
    I headed to the WorldCopter offices in Maryland outside D.C. the next morning before the sun was up. I told Rachel to stay at the office and do some quick research on federal security clearances for foreign corporations, and background research on the WorldCopter helicopter involved in this accident. I needed to know every other incident it had been involved in, the cause of every accident, and the helicopter's reputation. Now that I had stuck my neck out at Justice on how there had never been a fatal accident in this helicopter, something I was pretty sure about, I needed to know about every incident Justice might cite back to me.
    Tripp was waiting for me in the lobby of the sprawling WorldCopter building. It looked like a factory but was really more of an assembly plant. WorldCopter made everything in France and shipped it to the United States for assembly. This allowed them to claim that it was an American helicopter. It was all about appearances. Everyone knew it was a French helicopter, or rather a helicopter made in France by a European consortium known as WorldCopter.
    Tripp gave me a badge and hustled me through security. "They've got it set up in the computer room."
    "You watch it?"
    "Not yet. Here we are," he said, opening a heavy steel door.
    I was surprised at the number of people in the room. This was to be the first playing of the combined animation of the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder that anyone other than a technician would actually see. Even Marcel hadn't seen the entire thing; he'd just sampled it to make sure it looked right. Several technicians and engineers were standing around the computer console where the FDR had been loaded up. Others, including Tripp, stood against the wall trying to stay out of the way.
    Marcel nodded his head to one of the technicians standing at the door, who dimmed the lights. Another one turned up the speakers connected to the computer. Everyone focused on the large, flatscreen monitor that had been connected to the computer and hung on the wall. I was anxious to see what movements of the helicopter coincided with the various noises I'd heard on the cockpit voice recorder. The background was dark blue for the sky and green for the land. There was no attempt by the computer to put any terrain into the images. The flight data recorder had no terrain information.
    The colors were simply background to help discern the horizon. The voices could be heard exactly where in the flight they were talking. Marcel had had the CVR transcribed too, so the subtitles went across the bottom of the screen as quickly as they were spoken.
    Collins's voice was now familiar as the helicopter approached its landing at the White House. We stood silently and listened again to Collins's conversations with his copilot and the head