Free Final Approach by John J. Nance Page B

them, interrupting his response.
    â€œAll we have, Doctor—”
    â€œSusan, please,” she said, smiling slightly. An assessment of what was and was not proper flashed through his fatigued cerebral cortex, balancing the risks of accepting her invitation to call her by her first name. What the hell, he concluded.
    â€œOkay, Susan. All we know is that the Airbus 320 was making a turning final approach, and for some reason he lost altitude prematurely and slammed into a 737 waiting for takeoff at the end of the runway. We have over a hundred fatalities, but some survivors, including, possibly, some of the crew members, and there are reports of some passengers still trapped in the wreckage. The captain of the Airbus, I’m told, was the chief pilot of this airline, and he apparently reported windshear on his first attempt to land, broke off the approach, and was coming back to try it again.”
    She nodded. “This is my first field investigation, as you probably know. I’m going to have a lot of questions.”
    They discussed what lay ahead, and what each of them would be doing on arrival. There were five NTSB members, and one of them almost always accompanied the Go Team to the crash site. It was true that the investigator-in-charge (who was always a professional staff member, not a Board member) was fully in charge of everything the NTSB team did in the field, and it was also true that even Board members were supposed to take orders from the IIC during such trips. But a Board member was still a presidentially appointed, 2,000-pound gorilla compared to a professional staffer. Although, Joe mused, that was a terrible simile in Susan’s case. With clear blue, wide-set eyes and a disarmingly direct gaze, a cultured and soothing voice, and a professional and businesslike manner, she was really quite attractive. Fewer than thirty-five of her forty-six years could be read in the slight crinkles around her eyes. At the office she wore her hair back, favoring understated glasses and conservative outfits, all of which failed to defuse what had struck Joe as an incongruous smoldering femininity just below the surface. Brenda, his ex-wife, had been like that. She could undo her hair, take off her glasses, and transform herself like a butterfly from the very image of a cool businesswoman into a very sexy lady. It always fascinated him how women could do that. Men, by contrast, were always the same old shoe, whether stuffed into overalls or a tuxedo.

4
    Saturday morning, October 13
    â€œYes sir, I’m quite sure. No one by the name of Cynthia Collins has been admitted. I have the entire list right here.” It had been a long shot, and it was the last hospital. Kell Martinson thanked her and broke the connection, looking up at last from the open phone booth in the darkened highway rest area where he had been standing for the better part of an hour—his cellular car phone out of range and useless so far from an urban area. A radio newscast had mentioned survivors from both airliners, and suddenly he had felt hope, but now it was gone. If Cindy wasn’t in a hospital, she wasn’t alive. He had been right all along.
    Senator Martinson reentered the interstate with a growing knot of guilt in his stomach. He had run like a coward, and it was tearing him apart.
    It was nearly two hours before he negotiated the cloverleaf ramp at the interchange of 1-70 and 1-135 near Salina, heading south and then west in pitch blackness over the familiar country roads which led to the farm. Finally his headlights illuminated the arched entryway his grandfather had built so many years ago, the half mile to the house littered with leaves and grass and puddles of wind-whipped water which told a tale of the thunderstorms that had passed within the previous hour.
    It was good to see the house again. For all his eight years in Washington the farm had remained his home, though he could spend less than two months a year