AUTOPSY

“Amazing. The amount of holes in the fuselage is astounding and it still flew here. God knows whose backyard the engine fell into. Hard to believe,” said the taller man to a shorter and heavier man who stood beside him. Both were staring up at the shredded side of the airliner. They both wore knit shirts and khaki pants they had bought in Paris several weeks ago. A monogram shop had added an airplane logo with three initials underneath. The taller man wished he was still in Paris wearing his designer pants and a silk shirt but he knew there would be several more stops like this before they would be going back. He looked like a cable television installer in this uniform but agreed with the intent of the costume. They were supposedly insurance adjusters, not Syrian playboys.

The short, heavy man grunted an agreement. They stood on the airport’s asphalt parking ramp which heated the soles of their suede lace-up shoes. The heat made them feels as if the soles of their shoes were melting. Both men had cell phones in small holsters fastened to their leather belts. Behind them, four uniformed soldiers smoked cigarettes and stood in individual stances of disinterest. The soldiers carried late-model assault rifles, something that surprised the two men. They had expected shop-worn rifles common to African countries. But not here—these soldiers had new weapons. Even their uniforms looked new. The soldiers were not surprised when they had requested entrance to the remote airbase. The Boeing had become a celebrity.

“There is no reason why this airplane should be here,” the taller man said, this time in English.

The short man replied, “They should have been all dead. But only the co-pilot and three passengers were killed.” They walked slowly around the Boeing to survey the damage. They had wanted to photograph the damage but the soldiers had taken their cameras at the entrance to the air base. They made no attempt to keep the cameras although they could see no airplanes at the windblown airfield other than the disabled Boeing. Even the large hangars were empty.

“The missile went right up the right hand engine and blew up. A perfect shot,” the shorter man said. He swept his chubby hand to indicate where the engine and its connecting metal pylon had been. Stubs of wires and blackened hoses hung from the once silver wing which had been blackened by the explosion. Every square foot contained a puncture wound to the wing’s underside and the fuselage. It looked like a madman had taken an axe to the metal.

The Boeing had been towed off the runway and moved to what the two men guessed was a staging area for multiple cargo planes. From half a mile away, it could have been an airliner at any airport, waiting for its next destination. It had sat here for a month until the two men had been granted access to the airbase.

“What a miracle! The tires are still good!” the short man said. The tall man continued to make notes in a pocket notebook. Their access to the remote airbase had been achieved though the Egyptian consulate in Khartoum on the pretense of an aviation insurance. The inspection was an obvious ruse since the genuine insurance company declared the airplane scrap after one phone call. The airplane would never fly again. No mechanics would be allowed on the air base to repair it and no parts would be allowed to enter. The men wondered if the soldiers cared if they looked at it. They must guess we had something to do with this, the men thought, but they don’t seem to care.

“We picked the worst pilot in Africa and he survived.” The tall man looked around, wondering if the soldiers could hear him, but he doubted it. The wind was gusting in hair-dryer hot blasts making a noisy rush in their ears.

“He should have crashed within minutes of the missile strike in a huge ball of flame. That’s what we paid for. Instead, we get a hero and a martyred Boeing. We’ll start to see Boeing tee-shirts on Sudanese pretty soon. Truly a miracle,” the shorter man said, this time in French.

The papers in Khartoum had been full of clandestinely taken cell-phone camera pictures of the old Boeing. “The airplane of life,” one newspaper said. “The airplane fought like a lion.” The Lion of Marrak Valley. Parts of the Boeing would be sold as good luck charms, as Catholics used ossi, the old bones of saints. Saint Boeing, the taller man thought to himself, patron saint to lucky pilots.

The afternoon sun made the dry grass fields glow bright and emphasized the brown hills surrounding the smooth valley. A wobbly portable stairway with a faded sign showing “East African Airways—Spanning the Continent” had been pulled up against the undamaged side of the plane for access to the cabin. Small drawings at the end of the sign showed front views of four-engine propeller airliners. This boarding ramp came from another era, the short man thought. The sun was setting and he wondered how long it would take them to drive back to An Fasher and have dinner. He was getting hungry. There was nothing here to learn and he felt somewhat irritated. It had cost more to buy and get the missile into Sudan than the airplane had been worth before it became a local shrine. He reminded himself to fix the missile cost problem as soon as they returned to France.

The boarding stairs allowed the two men to climb into the Boeing’s steamy interior. They saw the dried blood, pools and spatters, in the cockpit area and the blood-soaked area where three of the five passengers had died in their seats of missile fragments. Pieces of clothing and abandoned luggage littered the cabin area. Most of the instruments and radios had been removed from the instrument panel. Both men knew this airplane would slowly vanish as the local scavengers began disassembling the machine. The airport soldiers would be bribed for access to the airplane and the ramp would again be empty. The scavengers would be melting the aluminum down soon.

Ari said in English, “The ants will have this lizard eaten soon.” The ancient boarding steps swayed uncomfortably as the two men and a soldier climbed down. One of the soldiers commented in Arabic, “The good jet engine will disappear tonight, I will forecast.” The short man laughed.

Both men had searched newspapers and news programs in Europe for mention of the Boeing missile strike in Sudan—there was nothing. Only the local paper in Khartoum mentioned the downing and that article lionized the pilot and the one flight attendant as local heroes. There were many pictures of the pilot, looking tired and distracted in his wrinkled white shirt and black pants. His uniform tie was missing along with his coat. One of the shirt’s epaulettes was missing and his shirt was stained with blood.

Both men knew the soldiers would undoubtedly tell the genuine insurance company of their bogus visit. They weren’t concerned since they would be quickly disappearing into the African commerce and the local police had no interest in pursuing the attackers. Their taxi was waiting with the driver asleep on a rug in the shadow of the car.

The Hotel Tiega bar was a trashy add-on, built on an old veranda with a rough brick floor. It overlooked the alley and the hot air of the afternoon was mixed with the pervasive smell of animal fat cooking oil. Constructed during the zenith of foreign aid to Sudan, the bar probably had been a haven to dozens of idealists eager to hand out checks to improve the miserable living conditions of the Africans. Now, the idealists had moved to Khartoum to escape the heat and dust around the new three-star hotels financed by Chinese investment in Sudan’s oilfields. Living ‘in-country’ had changed to living ‘in-hotel.’

The drive back to An Fasher lasted two hours. The overheating Peugeot taxi and all three men were covered in dust. Both looked forward to a shower and clean clothes. Food was the next priority.

At dinner, the two men recognized the Boeing’s pilot and a male companion. Both wore wrinkled white dress shirts with “East Africa Airways” logos. Both looked like they had been drinking since before breakfast. The two spies walked up and introduced themselves. Ari spoke better English and had an American accent and they had decided in advance to let Ari do the talking. The older man would pretend to be shy.

“Hello, I’m Ari from Aviation Underwriters. This is Sanjay. We heard you might be here.” Both men held out their hands to shake, remembering to use firm grasps, not the French finger grips. They decided to use Hebrew and Indian names. Neither could speak Hebrew nor Hindi but the chance of the men testing them in those languages was slim, they decided. If the pilots found out they were Arabic-speaking things may get violent quickly. America pilots often carried pistols in their flight bags.

The heavier and older pilot spoke first. “The owners took care of the insurance on the phone. The plane is scrapped. Why are you guys here? Looking at the carcass? Looking at us?” He looked over to the younger man and smiled as if there were a secret story between them. They had become local celebrities.

“No, we wondered how you survived. Some piece of flying on the Boeing! We saw the plane at the Russian airfield near Karfo. What a mess,” Ari said. The pilots motioned them to sit down. A waiter in a stained white server jacket approached them. Ari ordered a beer, the older man ordered coffee. Ari knew he would be scolded by the older man, but he missed the freedom of his university days and would argue that his drinking beer would diminish the suspicion of their being Muslims.

“Flying stories can be heard for drinks and dinner,” the older pilot said, giving the younger pilot another smile and a wink. He fumbled in his pocket for a pack of Marlboro no-filters and lit it with a brassy old-style lighter. He spoke to them letting the smoke roll out his mouth giving his cigarette voice a somewhat aquatic sound.

“How do we know you aren’t the guys that shot our plane down? You look like a couple of terrorists except you have clean clothes.” The older man motioned them to sit down.

“We didn’t shoot your plane down. We want to know how you survived. There will be other attacks. We want to know how you survived.” Ari internally winced at the lie he had quickly and hopefully convincingly told. He felt lying was a great sin. They hoped there would be more attacks but they wanted to know why the inept pilot survived.

Ari ordered beer for the pilots and himself. “Will, here, was lucky. He let the plane go where it wanted to.”

“What do you mean?” Ari asked, not sure if the partially drunk pilot was speaking in jargon or he literally meant the Boeing pilot let the plane go where it wanted to. Neither of the Syrians had any flight training. Both were trained as accountants but now served as scouts for a European-based terrorist group. Ari was educated in California; the older man had studied in Egypt.

“Our ace-of-the-base Will, here, froze up. He was a passenger for almost the whole twenty minutes,” the older pilot laughed, nudging the other pilot on the arm. They had apparently discussed this to where each of them was bored with it. It had become a good story, and less of a terrifying morning.

The pilot named Will looked at them and spoke slowly, “I froze. I kept the wings level. That’s all. I’m surprised we didn’t hit a mountain.” He drank more beer and motioned for the hovering waiter to bring another round.

“Why didn’t you return to An Fasher airport?” Ari asked.

“Didn’t occur to me. I thought it would be better to crash away from the city. Pretty flat and empty north of town. I thought the wing was going to fall off anyway. I kept thinking about Marcia and the kids.” He looked at the men with teary, reddened eyes.

This guy’s a loser, Ari thought. If this guy could save a crippled Boeing, anybody could. His opinion of pilots as razor-sharp, fast-acting intellectuals had vanished. These guys were alcoholic pigs.

“How did you find the Karfo airbase?” Ari asked while lighting a cigarette. The shorter man looked at him and waved the smoke away.

“The flight attendant showed it to me,” the pilot answered in almost a whisper. “It wasn’t on our maps. I had never seen it before.”

Ari leaned forward on his elbows. “The flight attendant just looked out the window and found you the best airport in the entire Sudan? Just like that? That’s hard to believe.”

“I think she’s from around here. I would have landed it next to the north road but, like you said, she looked out the window as were heading down the valley and said, ‘Land there.’”

“Did she help you fly the plane?” Ari was suspicious that the airline had conveniently placed a back-up pilot to cover for the two stooges in the front.

“No, but she did confirm I had the engine settings to full power.”

Ari noticed the two men had become a little less drunk and more guarded in their answers.

“What difference would that make?” Ari asked. He was now suspicious that the surviving stooge might have been super competent and covering something up with tales of his ineptitude. The purpose of this deception was unclear to him.

The older pilot interrupted. “Old buddy Will, here, was lucky. The plane had about two hours of gas, no cargo and five passengers. A 737 will fly on one engine pretty well when it’s this lightly loaded.” He pronounced it seven three seven, not seven thirty-seven, so as to convey the correct factory approved pronunciation.

“Even with an engine completely blown off?” Ari could not conceal his amazement.

“If I had woken up sooner, I think I could have flown it all the way to Khartoum,” Will said.

“Who got you moving? The flight attendant?” Ari had a suspicion the pilot would have drifted around until he ran out of gas unless something knocked him out of his fear-induced stupor.

“Yeah, she poked me pretty hard when I wasn’t moving fast enough getting the landing setup. Guess she wanted to get on the ground pretty bad—can’t blame her.”

“So you avoided hitting the mountains, flew down the valley until the flight attendant pointed out a handy airport?”

“Yep. Then I cut the engine, got the wheels on the runway, and hit the emergency brakes. We ended up in the grass. The soldiers towed it up on the ramp with a truck and some ropes. They didn’t have a tow bar that fit, not that it matters.”

“So you then hopped a taxi to An Fasher?” Ari was impressed with the calm demeanor of the surviving pilot. His co-pilot and three passengers are dead, but he finds a taxi and travels two hours to the nearest city with a hotel with clean sheets and a phone. A normal airline would have sent another plane to pick up the survivors but that would have been unwise. The Russians would have impounded it immediately.

“I needed to get a drink and call my wife,” the pilot explained.

“Where’s the flight attendant?” Ari wanted to know more about the woman who could switch from pouring rotten coffee to pointing out the nearest Russian airfield.

“We haven’t seen her. She probably went home. We’re still waiting for the soldiers to deliver Hal’s body,” Will answered, dispassionately.

“Hal?” Ari asked, “Who is Hal?” He was losing track of the characters involved in the missile attack. He was still thinking about the woman.

“My co-pilot,” Will answered quietly.

Ari caught himself worrying about their plan to the point of forgetting about the people he had injured and killed. He needed to show some compassion for the victims or he might be facing a drunken pilot’s pistol. He quietly said, “I should have asked the Russians where his body was stored. I didn’t think of it,” Ari apologized. Both pilots nodded their affirmation.

“Where do you think the flight attendant is hanging out now?” Ari asked.

©Gerry Cullen 2007

To be continued.