Executive orders - Tom Clancy [217]
Please! the maintenance contractor objected.
I'm speaking theoretically, Gulfstream pointed out. Or even pilot error of some sort or other. Without hard data, our hands are pretty well tied.
The pilot had four thousand hours in type. The copilot had over two thousand, the owner's representative said for the fifth time this afternoon.
They were all thinking the same thing. The aircraft manufacturer had a superb safety record to defend. There were relatively few airliner manufacturers for the big carriers to choose from, and as important as safety was for them, it was even more so for the builders of business jets, for whom competition was stiffer. The buyers of such corporate toys had long memories, and without hard information to hang their hats on about the few crashes which took place, all they remembered was a missing aircraft with missing passengers.
The maintenance contractor had no wish to be firmly associated with a fatal accident, either. Switzerland had a lot of airfields, and a lot of business aircraft. A bad maintainer could lose business as well, not to mention the trouble from the Swiss government for violating its stringent civil-aviation rules.
The corporate owner had the least to lose in terms of reputation, but amour propre would not allow him to assume responsibility without real cause.
And there was no real cause for any of them to take the blame, not without the flight-data recorder. The men looked at one another around the table, thinking the same thought: good people did make mistakes, but rarely did they wish to admit them, and never when they didn't have to. The government representative had gone over the written records and been satisfied that the paperwork was all correct. Beyond that there was nothing any of them could do except talk to the engine manufacturer and try to get a sample of the fuel. The former was easy. The latter was not. In the end, they'd know little more than they knew now. Gulfstream might lose a plane or two in sales. The maintenance contractor would undergo increased government scrutiny. The corporation would have to buy a new jet. To show loyalty, it would be another G-class business jet and with the same maintenance contractor. That would please everybody, even the Swiss government.
BEING A ROVING Inspector paid more than being a street agent, and it was more fun than sitting behind a desk all the time, but Pat O'Day still chafed at spending most of his day reading over written reports generated by agents or their secretaries. More junior people cross-checked the data for inconsistencies, though he did the same, keeping careful penciled notes on his own yellow pad, which his secretary would collate for his summary reports to Director Murray. Real agents, O'Day believed implicitly, didn't type. Well, that's what his instructors at Quantico would have said, probably. He finished his meetings early down at Buzzard's Point and decided that his office in the Hoover Building didn't need him. The investigation was indeed at the point of diminishing returns. The new information was all interviews, every single one of which confirmed information already developed and already verified by voluminous cross-referenced documents.
I've always hated this part, ADIC Tony Caruso said. It was the point when the United States Attorney had everything he needed to get a conviction,