Chapter 5 - The Glass Room
The room they took me to wasn't in the hangar; it was three stories below it, in the concrete bunker that had been built back when people thought bombers were going to come over the Pole with nuclear heads.
It had no windows, two doors made of eight-inch steel with hand-wheels in the center, and a carpet that smelled of old ozone and damp carpet cleaner.
In the middle of the floor was a long table made of fake walnut with twelve chairs on one side and a single steel chair on the other.
Above the table, mounted on three black steel brackets, were three seventy-inch monitors displaying grey, split-screen video feeds from four different locations: the Pentagon, the naval station at Norfolk, a desk in Omaha, and a small, wood-paneled room in Maryland where two men in civilian clothes sat with their hands folded over black notebooks.
"Major," the man in the center monitor—a admiral with four stars on his collar and a face that looked like an old map of the Atlantic—said. "We're recording this for the Joint Chiefs' permanent record. You are under military oath."
"I understand, Admiral," I said.
I was sitting on the steel chair. My leg was starting to throb now—a long, steady pulse that started at the small of my back and went down to the ankle. Every time my heart beat, I could feel the cloth of my flight trousers tugging against the scab on my hip.
"State your name and designation," the admiral said.
"Evelyn Mary Carter. Major, United States Marine Corps, Special Operations Support Squadron Three."
"State your duty on the night of September 10th."
"Command Pilot, Aircraft 404, Search and Rescue Duty, Atlantic Shelf."
The room was cold. The air conditioning was blowing straight down from a metal vent above my head, carrying the sharp, chemical smell of the hangar floor.
For forty-five minutes, they didn't ask about the storm. They didn't ask about the rain or the sixteen-year-old boy from Ohio with the blue Timex watch.
They asked about seconds.
"At 0214, the telemetry shows a three-degree drop in hydraulic pressure on line B. Why didn't you dump the auxiliary fuel then?"
"Because line B feeds the tail ramp mechanism, Admiral," I said. "If I dumped the fuel, the trim would have gone six degrees nose-down. We were at three hundred feet with fifty-knot crosswinds. If we went six degrees nose-down, we would have hit the water in four seconds."
"The manual says dump at three degrees," a voice from the Omaha monitor said—a colonel with a clean, pink face who looked like he had never been wet in his life.
"The manual was written for an aircraft that has both wings attached, Colonel," I said. "We were missing four feet of the starboard tip."
The colonel looked down at his papers. He didn't ask another question.
"At 0222," the Admiral continued, his voice neutral as stone, "you ordered Crew Chief Miller to manually release the secondary latch. He was injured in that operation."
"He broke his wrist, sir."
"Was it necessary to put a crew member into the unpressurized bay while in a forty-degree bank?"
I looked at the center monitor. I looked at the four stars on the admiral's shoulder. I remembered the way Miller had looked when I grabbed the collar of his vest—his face white under the red emergency lights, his teeth covered in thin, pink foam from the smoke.
"If he hadn't released the latch manually, sir, the ramp would have stayed locked," I said. "And if the ramp stayed locked, the three men in the tail section would have burned to death when the starboard tank ruptured forty seconds later."
"You knew the tank was going to rupture?"
"I could smell it, Admiral."
"You could smell it?"
"Yes, sir. Aviation fuel has a specific smell when it hits an overheated turbine housing. It smells like hot tin and burnt sugar. When you smell that in the cockpit, you have about thirty seconds before the flash comes through the vents."
The room went quiet again.
The Admiral reached forward on his desk in Washington and picked up a black fountain pen. He didn't write anything; he just rolled it between two long, yellow fingers.
"Major Carter," he said after a long pause. "Your father is Charles Carter?"
"Yes, sir."
"He was the CEO of Carter Marine Systems until two thousand twelve?"
"Yes, sir."
"Carter Marine built the hydraulic manifolds for the 404 series," the Admiral said flatly.
I didn't move. I didn't blink.
"I am aware of that, sir."
"Did you know that three months ago, your father’s former firm filed a formal protest with the Armed Services Committee regarding the replacement of those manifolds with the new German units?"
"No, sir," I said. "I don't discuss defense procurement with my father."
"He didn't mention it to you?"
"My father doesn't discuss his business with me, Admiral," I said, my voice dropping an octave into that flat, icy tone I had used in the foyer at St. Michaels. "He considers my career to be a minor administrative error on the part of the government."
A small sound came from the back of the room—General Vance, who was standing against the wall with his arms folded across his chest, clearing his throat once.
The Admiral looked at Vance through the camera feed.
"General," the Admiral said. "Is the Major's medical clearance signed?"
"Signed by Miller at 0300, sir," Vance said. "Though she's currently bleeding through her uniform onto your chair."
The Admiral looked at me again. His eyes softened—just a fraction, like ice getting hit by a warm rain.
"Major Carter," he said. "The President will be speaking to the nation at ten00 hours tomorrow. He intends to read six names into the Congressional Record."
May you like
He paused, letting the words settle into the cold air of the glass room.
"Your name is first."
