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younger, better educated, better manners.
    "Ken Burne, powerplant ..." Kenny was red haired and freckled; his chin thrust forward, ready to fight. Notoriously profane and abusive, he was known in the plant as Easy Burne because of his quick temper.
    "Ron Smith, electrical..." Bald and timid, nervously fingering pens in his pocket. Ron was extremely competent; it often seemed he carried the schematics for the aircraft around in his head. But he was painfully shy. He lived with his invalid mother in Pasadena.
    "Mike Lee, who represents the carrier ..." A well dressed man of fifty, gray hair cropped short, in a blue blazer with a striped tie. Mike was a former Air Force pilot, a retired one-star general.
    He was TransPacific's rep at the plant.
    "And Barbara Ross, with the notepad." The IRT secretary was in her forties, and overweight.
    She glared at Casey with open hostility. Casey ignored her.
    Marder waved the kid to a seat, and Casey sat down beside him. "First item," Marder said
    "Casey is now liaising QA to the IRT. Considering the way she handled the RTO at DFW, she'll be our press spokesman from now on. Any questions?"
    Richman looked bewildered, shaking his head. Marder turned to him, and explained:
    "Singleton did a good job with the press on a rejected takeoff at Dallas-Fort Worth last month.
    So she'll handle any press inquiries we get. Okay? We all on the same page? Let's get started.
    Barbara?" The secretary handed around stapled packets of paper.
    'Transpacific Flight 545," Marder said. "An N-22, fuse number 271. Flight originated at Kaitak Hong Kong at 2200 hours yesterday. Uneventful takeoff, uneventful flight until approximately 0500 hours this morning, when the aircraft encountered what the pilot described as severe turbulence—"
    There were groans throughout the room. "Turbulence!" The engineers shook their heads.
    "—severe turbulence, producing extreme pitch excursions in flight."
    "Ah, Christ," Burne said.
    "The aircraft," Marder continued, "made an emergency landing at LAX, and medical units were on hand. Our preliminary report indicates fifty-six injured, and three dead."

    19
    "Oh that's very bad," Doug Doherty said in a sad monotone, blinking behind his thick glasses. "I suppose this means we've got the NTSB on our backs," he said.
    Casey leaned over to Richman and whispered, "National Transportation Safety Board usually gets involved when there are fatalities."
    "Not in this case," Marder said. "This is a foreign carrier, and the incident occurred in international airspace. NTSB has its hands full with the Colombia crash. We think they're going to pass on this one."
    'Turbulence," Kenny Burne said, snorting. "Is there any confirmation?"
    "No," Marder said. "The plane was at thirty-seven thousand feet when the incident took place.
    No other aircraft at that altitude and position reported weather problems."
    "Satellite weather maps?" Casey said.
    "Coming."
    "What about the passengers?" she said. "Did the captain make an announcement? Was the seat-belt sign on?"
    "Nobody's interviewed the passengers yet. But our preliminary information suggests no announcement was made."
    Richman was looking bewildered again. Casey scribbled a note on her yellow pad, tilted it so he could read: No Turbulence.
    Trung said, "Have we debriefed the pilot?"
    "No," Marder said. "The flight crew caught a connecting flight out, and left the country."
    "Oh great," Kenny Burne said, throwing his pencil on the table. "Just great. We got a damn hit-and-run."
    "Hold on, now," Mike Lee said, in a cool tone. "On behalf of the carrier, I think we have to recognize the flight crew acted responsibly. They have no liability here; but they face possible litigation from the civil aviation authorities in Hong Kong, and they went home to deal with it"
    Casey wrote: Flight Crew Unavailable.
    "Do, uh, we know who the captain was?' Ron Smith asked timidly.
    "We do," Mike Lee said. He consulted a leather notebook. "His name is John Chang.