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Forty-five years old, resident of Hong Kong, six thousand hours' experience. He's Trans-Pacific's senior pilot for the N-22. Very skilled."
    "Oh yeah?" Burne said, leaning forward across the table. "And when was he last recertified?"
    "Three months ago."
    "Where?"
    "Right here," Mike Lee said. "On Norton flight simulators, by Norton instructors."
    Burne sat back, snorting unhappily.
    "Do we know how he was rated?" Casey asked.
    "Outstanding," Lee said. "You can check your records."

    20
    Casey wrote: Not Human Error (?)
    Marder said to Lee, "Do you think we can get an interview with him, Mike? Will he talk to our service rep at Kaitak?"
    "I'm sure the crew will cooperate," Lee said. "Especially if you submit written questions ... I'm sure I can get them answered within ten days."
    "Hmm," Marder said, distressed. "That long..."
    "Unless we get a pilot interview," Van Trung said, "we may have a problem. The incident occurred one hour prior to landing. The cockpit voice recorder only stores the last twenty-five minutes of conversation. So in this case the CVR is useless."
    'True. But you still have the FDR."
    Casey wrote: Flight Data Recorder.
    "Yes, we have the FDR," Trung said. But this clearly didn't assuage his concerns, and Casey knew why. Flight recorders were notoriously unreliable. In the media, they were the mysterious black boxes that revealed all the secrets of a flight. But in reality, they often didn't work.
    "I'll do what I can," Mike Lee promised.
    Casey said, "What do we know about the aircraft?"
    "Aircraft's brand-new," Marder said. "Three years' service. It's got four thousand hours and nine hundred cycles."
    Casey wrote: Cycles = Takeoffs and Landings.
    "What about inspections?" Doherty asked gloomily. "I suppose we'll have to wait weeks for the records..."
    "It had a C check in March."
    "Where?'
    "LAX."
    "So maintenance was probably good," Casey said.
    "Correct," Marder said. "As a first cut, we can't attribute this to weather, human factors, or maintenance. So we're in the trenches. Let's run the fault tree. Did anything about this aircraft cause behavior that looks like turbulence? Structural?"
    "Oh sure," Doherty said miserably. "A slats deploy would do it. We'll function hydraulics on all the control surfaces."
    "Avionics?"
    Trung was scribbling notes. "Right now I'm wondering why the autopilot didn't override the pilot. Soon as I get the FDR download, I'll know more."
    "Electrical?'
    "It's possible we got a slats deploy from a sneak circuit," Ron Smith said, shaking his head. "I mean, it's possible..."
    "Powerplant?'

    21
    "Yeah, powerplant could be involved," Burne said, running his hand through his red hair.
    "The thrust reversers could have deployed in flight. That'd make the plane nose over and roll.
    But if the reversers deployed, there'll be residual damage. We'll check the sleeves."
    Casey looked down at her pad. She had written:
    Structural — Slats Deploy
    Hydraulics — Slats Deploy
    Avionics—Autopilot
    Electrical — Sneak Circuit
    Powerplant — Thrust Reversers
    That was basically every system on the aircraft.
    "You've got a lot of ground to cover," Marder said, standing and gathering his papers together.
    "Don't let me keep you."
    "Oh hell," Burne said. "We'll nail this in a month, John. I'm not worried."
    "I am," Marder said. "Because we don't have a month. We have a week."
    Cries around the table. "A week!"
    "Jeez, John!"
    "Come on, John, you know an IRT always takes a month."
    "Not this time," Marder said. "Last Thursday our president, Hal Edgarton, received an LOI from the Beijing government to purchase fifty N-22s, with an option for another thirty. First delivery in eighteen months."
    There was stunned silence.
    The men all looked at each other. A big China sale had been rumored for months. The deal had been reported as "imminent" in various news accounts. But nobody at Norton really believed it.
    "It's true," Marder said. "And I don't need to tell you what it means. It's an