Crashers Read Online Free Page B

Go-Team.”

5
    SAN FRANCISCO: KATHRYN DUVALL sat on a couch with a bowl of dry Special K cereal and a tortoise-shell cat on her lap. She was watching
Chocolat,
which she’d Netflixed for the fourth time. The special pager she kept with her twenty-four hours per day chirped.
    Lawrence, Kansas: another pager woke up Walter Mulroney. An early riser, Walter had been in bed by nine and fallen asleep with a copy of
East of Eden
on his chest.
    Pensacola, Florida: Peter Kim had been making love to his wife when the pager went off at their split-level home overlooking the Gulf. It would not be making too fine a point of it to say that the call ruined the moment.
    New Haven, Connecticut: Isaiah Grey was sound asleep, his legs tangled with those of his wife, a fat tabby cat, and the eighty-pound Irish setter that insisted on sleeping perpendicular to them. It took Isaiah a minute to heave the dog off him so he could reach his pager.
    Thirty thousand feet over Illinois: John Roby was en route to Toronto. By FAA regulations, his satellite pager couldn’t be kept active while he flew, so Susan Tanaka’s call was patched through to the copilot of the Boeing 757, who called the senior flight attendant, who went out to first class and informed John that he was being rerouted to Oregon, once they touched down.
    â€œYeah?” He’d been asleep when the attendant came back. It took him a moment to get his bearings. “Where’s Oregon, then?”
    The woman smiled. John’s scruffy English accent identified him as a resident of Manchester. “Pacific Northwest, between California and Washington. You’re with the NTSB?” She kept her voice low, not wanting the others to hear.
    â€œYeah. Something must be up.”
    â€œI’ll go up front and ask. The pilots usually hear from the towers. What are you, an investigator?”
    â€œAye.”
    â€œAre you a pilot or engineer?”
    He said, “Mad bomber.”
MARION COUNTY
    The Life Flight helicopter from Oregon Health & Science University touched down a little after 9 P.M. Tommy was sweating despite the cold, and the sour, acidic feeling in his stomach hadn’t gotten any better. He wasn’t dressed for the field, but at least his cowboy boots were better designed for fieldwork than the loafers he’d considered wearing. One of the other docs had loaned him a fully lined coat. The temperature had just dropped under forty degrees.
    Fire trucks were just now arriving from both directions, Portland and Salem. Ambulances were on the scene, too, at least six, with more dome lights visible in the distance, inching through insane traffic to reach the scene. Traffic on Interstate 5 had slowed to a crawl in both directions, and the emergency vehicles were moving exclusively along the shoulders. State troopers were there, but they didn’t have much work to do.
    For all that frenzy, Tommy couldn’t take his eyes off the blackened, still-smoldering gouge that had been clawed diagonally through a field of grass. The tail section and about a third of the fuselage lay nearby, the grass before the open end of the fuselage littered with overturned seats and human bodies and survivors. The rest of the fuselage was a quarter mile away. One wing was missing.
    Once the helo was on the ground, Tommy unbuckled, gave the pilot a thumbs-up, and leaped out. He dashed across the grass, flagged down two of the state-police officers, and flashed them the badge he had never bothered to throw away when he resigned. “Dr. Leonard Tomzak, NTSB,” helied. “We got federal authority over any airplane- or train-crash site. You fellas okay with that?”
    One of the troopers eyed him critically. “You’re a doctor?”
    Tommy nodded. “Pathologist. Are we cool?”
    The trooper shrugged.
    â€œGood. I’ve got to organize the rescue teams but I’m dressed like a fucking civilian. You guys have the badges and the guns and