“Reba McEntire,” I said. “She lost her whole band.”
He nodded. “She and her husband were supposed to be on the plane, too, but they decided to spend the night in San Diego and catch a flight the next day. Lucky for them. Too bad for everybody else.”
“What caused that one to crash?” asked Kimball.
“Bad luck and stupidity,” said Maddox, shaking his head. “The night was dark and hazy. The pilots didn’t know the area or the terrain. The FAA briefer they talked to on the radio gave ’em bad advice—practically steered ’em into the mountainside. Shouldn’t’ve happened. But it did. And I can tell you, it was a mess to clean up. Anyhow.” He switched on the projector, and a photo of a sleek little twin-engine jet filled the screen. “Here’s a Cessna Citation.” He clicked forward to another, bigger jet. “Here’s another Citation.” He fast-forwarded through a series of jets, each different from the others. “These are all Citations. Some have straight wings, some have swept wings. Some carry four passengers; some carry sixteen. But they’re all Citations—Cessna calls it the ‘Citation family.’ Confusing as all get-out, unless you’re an airplane geek like me.” He flashed a photo that I recognized from an Airlift Relief newsletter: a smiling Richard Janus standing beside a jet, freshly painted with the agency’s name and symbol. “This is the one we’re recovering here. Donated to Janus’s organization four years ago, in 2000. It’s a 501—an early Citation—built in 1979. Funny thing, most of us wouldn’t dream of driving a car that’s twenty-five years old, but we routinely zip around the sky—six miles up; five, six hundred miles an hour—in vehicles built before some of you guys were even born. This Citation wasn’t new by any stretch, but two years ago, it was upgraded—retrofitted with bigger engines and bigger fuel tanks—so it could fly faster and farther. In the end, of course, that meant it crashed harder and burned longer.”
“Excuse me,” McCready interrupted. “I’ve been wondering about that.”
“About which—the crash, or the burn?”
“The burn. How come the fuel didn’t all explode on impact—one giant fireball?”
“Because this wasn’t a scene in a Bruce Willis movie,” Maddox deadpanned, earning another round of laughs. “Actually, that’s a good question. Evidently the fuel tanks didn’t rupture completely. So instead of vaporizing and exploding, the fuel—some of it, at least—stayed contained within the wing structure, and it dribbled out or poured out, sustaining the fire. More on that in just a minute,” he said. “First, let’s back up to some basics. Structurally, an aircraft has a lot in common with a bug.” He looked around, noticed puzzled looks on many of the faces, and smiled, clearly pleased by the response. He turned to me. “Dr. Brockton, how would you describe the structural framework of humans?”
“Well,” I began, “we’re primates—upright, bipedal vertebrates—with an axial skeleton and an appendicular skeleton. The axial skeleton—”
He held up a finger to interrupt me. “Full marks,” he said. “To translate that into terms that even I can understand, you’re saying our skeleton is an endoskeleton—an interior structural framework—right?”
“Right.”
“Whereas bugs have . . . ?”
“An exoskeleton,” I supplied, feeling a bit like a student being nose-led by a professor—and not particularly liking the feeling. “An external shell, made of chitin—a bioprotein or biopolymer, if I’m remembering my zoology.”
“I’ll take your word for the chemical details,” he cracked. “A bug’s shell is light, strong, and rigid. So is an aircraft’s. Trouble is, when either one—a bug or a plane—gets squashed, the shell crumples, and the guts go everywhere.”
“The plane’s guts,” asked Kimball, “or the pilot’s?”
“At four hundred miles an hour? Both,” Maddox answered. “As we dig down through it, we’ll certainly recognize parts. I’m pretty good at identifying airplane pieces, and I’m told Dr. Brockton here is terrific at identifying people pieces. But basically? That plane and anybody in it? Squashed like a bug.”
“Oh, goody,” Kimball joked. “Can’t wait.”
It was gallows humor—a sanity-saving necessity in work this grim. But the truth was, I couldn’t wait. And unless I missed my guess, neither could eager-beaver Kimball.