Free Razing Beijing: A Thriller by Sidney Elston III Page B

air of composure. Until arriving this afternoon to his office, he
had seen the CEO on only three occasions since the accident, one of them Sandy
Cole’s funeral. On none of these occasions had Stuart seen Cole so much as
raise his eyes to look at him.
    Stuart managed to wrap up his current assessment of the
crash investigation, having avoided words that might foster the sort of graphic
images painful to a man who had recently lost his only child. Without having
asked a single question, eyelids drooping wearily and fingertips touching a
steeple to his lips, Cole didn’t appear to be listening.
    Stuart mentioned his hope that the Mojave video might help
solve the puzzle.
    Cole closed his eyes.
    Stuart searched rapidly for something to add. “The good
news is that we’ve eliminated a number of components from the list of probable
causes. We’ve released manufacturing to reopen those.”
    “That’ll certainly please Hackett.”
    Stuart knew Morton Hackett probably topped the list of
those with their knives drawn, seeing as he, the CEO’s former fair-haired boy,
had quite literally driven the program into the ground. After all, Cole had
hired him specifically to shake up the corporate bureaucracy, the equivalent
which Roget’s Thesaurus defined as Hackett . It was also probably the
case that either he or Hackett, not both, would still be around come the end of
the investigation. “I didn’t think that was possible.”
    Cole actually smiled. “What do you think of the help you’re
getting from the chief engineer’s office?”
    Stuart considered the qualitative nature of the question;
he presumed Cole had asked for a specific reason. “Hackett’s good in the role
of process watchdog.”
    Cole folded his hands.
    “Problem is, he stifles imagination and frustrates the
assertive individuals who tend to be the best problem solvers. He bogs meetings
down with his asinine little book, which I think he uses to track how well
disciplined a decision was reached rather than what it was that we learned, or
how it may advance a theory one way or the other. It’s frustrating to me that he
chooses to subordinate his considerable intellect to the role of bureaucratic
scold.”
    “All that helpful, is he?”
    “I’d say for a man in his role he reaches conclusions with
an astonishing absence of rigor. He spurns the use of the scientific method. His
latest position is to propose a bogus shopping list of probable causes—three or
four, I think, compiled by some sort of consensus opinion. By shotgunning a
redesign he seems to think we’ll improve the odds that the problem is solved. I
keep reminding him we can’t fix the problem unless we know what broke. For that
matter, we could wind up creating a new set of problems.
    “Other than that,” Stuart concluded with a laugh, “I think
the chief engineer’s office is doing a wonderful job.”
    Cole parted his lips in a smile, albeit a faint half
smile—he’s not completely lost his sense of humor, Stuart thought. Especially
as Cole was the one who had promoted Hackett to chief engineer.
    “There’s a place for a man like Hackett in an organization
like this. So, to summarize where we are…?”
    “Right. Bear in mind I’m trying to prevent people from
getting too comfortable with any one failure scenario. That said, this much we
know.” He counted off with his fingers. “We have Federov’s admission to a minor
assembly snafu that probably explains the carbon seal damage. Two, this damage precipitated
an oil leak that unbalanced, and then corn-cobbed, the forward rotor. Three,
the subsequent energy unbalance caused the aft rotor overspeed that burst the
engine, and took down the aircraft.
    “However, the fly in the ointment is the fact that we lost
all electronic data transmission before the engine oversped—a good two
seconds before.” Time measured in seconds were an eternity in such engine
failure events.
    “Some sort of an electrical aberration?” Cole