Free Crashers by Dana Haynes Page A

standing. Kiki joined them and handed Tommy a bottled water. “I’ll follow you, soon as we get the pilots’ bodies out of the flight deck.”
    â€œD’you have to do that now?” John asked.
    â€œYeah.”
    Kiki looked at Tommy’s face and didn’t like what she saw. “You’re running on fumes,” she said. “You’ve done a great thing here. This is the cleanest crash scene I’ve ever seen. The rescue teams were on tight rein, and we’re going to appreciate that for weeks to come. Come on. Get some rest.”
    â€œThanks. But I’m gonna get the pilots’ bodies. It’s . . .” He thought about it for a second, then turned and peered into the field. “I want to see them.”
    Kiki touched his arm. “If I know you, you’re going to want to stay on and handle their autopsies, too.”
    He laughed. Kiki always could peg him. “This ain’t your average autopsy situation. The local MEs are going to want to help, and thank God for that. But if they start hacking away before they understand NTSB protocols, they could contaminate the bodies, screw up the chain of evidence.”
    She nodded.
    â€œ ’Sides, I want to do the pilots before the wolves start howling.”
    Kiki and John understood. In any major crash, people started asking about pilot error almost from the first moment. It just made sense: the various manufacturers assumed that their technology couldn’t fail so dramatically, thus the pilot must have screwed up.
    Go-Teams had learned to rush toxicology tests on the pilots; that is, whenever a sufficient amount of the pilots’ bodies can be identified. Until alcohol and drugs could be ruled out, the media would steadfastly report that they hadn’t been ruled out yet. Through no malice of their own, reporters would begin the process of maligning the cabin crew. A quick tox test could put a stop to that.
    It hadn’t happened like that in the Alitalia crash in Kentucky because theplane had nosed in. It had taken weeks to find enough body parts to DNA test for identification, and then to test for drugs or alcohol. By that time, decay made any such tests inconclusive.
    Kiki patted his arm. “Go get ’em, tiger. I’ll wait here. We’ll head to the hotel together.”
    â€œOkay,” he said, truly appreciating it. He took a swig of water and headed back into the field of grass.
    Â 
    Tommy Tomzak gathered his paramedical team. They looked as tired and brittle as he felt. Everyone stood on the asphalt of the blocked-off, northbound slow lane, in the space between two fire trucks. It was close to 5  A.M. ; the sun would be up soon.
    â€œWe’re done with the first job,” Tommy told them. “The survivors are away. I gotta tell you, we broke some kind of NTSB record for evac’ing the wounded. Y’all done good.”
    There was a smattering of applause and backslapping. Most of the med techs who’d arrived the night before had departed with the victims. About one in four had stayed behind to cart wounded away from the site. Now, as the sky began to lighten behind Mount Hood, the fatigued group guzzled bottled water and coffee and Gatorade. Some sat on the ground, others rested on the running boards of the fire trucks. Tommy sat on the bumper of a cherry-picker truck.
    â€œNext is phase two,” he said. “We gotta get the dead out of here in the same orderly manner as the living. The number-one thing we can do for these people—both the living and the dead—is to figure out why this bird crashed, and to see that it doesn’t happen again. So far, we’ve left the crash site immaculate, and that’s going to help a hell of a lot.”
    Beyond Tommy’s field of vision, yet another helo landed in the area that the state police had roped off and designated “the LZ,” the landing zone. Susan Tanaka stepped out of the