"John Varley - Millennium" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

Aside from picking a few items of clothes, it was all automatic. I didn't have to think again
until I was on Connecticut Avenue, driving south. The house was all battened down because
I kept it that way. Thank God I didn't have a dog. Anyway, Sam Horowitz next door would
keep an eye on the place for me when he read about the crash in tomorrow's Post.
All in all, I felt I had adjusted pretty well to bachelor living.


I live out in Kensington, Maryland. The house is way too big for me, since the divorce,
and it costs a lot to heat, but I can't seem to leave it. I could have moved into the city, but I
hate apartment living.
I took the Beltway in to National. That time of night Connecticut Avenue is almost
deserted, but the lights slow you down. You'd think the Investigator In Charge of a National
Transportation Safety Board Go-Team on his way to the biggest aviation disaster in history
would have a red light he could mount on top of his car and just zip through the
intersections.
Sad to say, the D.C. police would take a dim view of that.
Most of the team lived in Virginia and would get to the airport before me, whatever route
I took. But the plane wouldn't leave without me.


I hate National Airport. It's an affront to everything the NTSB stands for. A few years
back, when the news of the Air Florida hitting the 14th Street bridge first came in, a couple
of us hoped (but not out loud) we might finally be able to shut it down It didn't turn out that
way, but I still hoped.
As it was, National was just too damn convenient. To most Washingtonians, Dulles
International might as well be in Dakota. As for Baltimore ...
Even the Board bases its planes at National. We have a few, the biggest being a Lockheed
JetStar that can take us anywhere in the continental U.S. without refueling. Normally we
take commercial flights, but that doesn't always work. This time it was too early in the
morning to find enough seats going west. There was also the possibility, if this really was as
big as Gordy said, that a second team would follow us as soon as the sun came up. We
might have to treat this as two crashes.
Everybody but George Sheppard was already there by the time I boarded the JetStar.
Tom Stanley had been in contact with Gordy Petcher. While I stowed my gear Tom filled me
in on the things Petcher either had not known or could not bring himself to tell me when we
talked.
No survivors. We didn't have an exact count yet from either airline, but it was sure to be
over six hundred dead.
It had happened at five thousand feet. The DC-10 had gone almost straight down. The
747 flew a little, but the end result was the same. The Ten was not far from a major
highway; local police and fire units were at the scene. The Pan Am Boeing was up in the hills
somewhere. Rescue workers had reached it, but the only word back was that there were no
survivors.
Roger Keane, the head of the NTSB field office in Los Angeles, was still on his way to the
Bay Area and should be landing soon. Roger had been in contact with the Contra Costa and
Alameda County Sheriff's offices, advising them on crash site procedures.
"Who's running the show at LAX?" I asked.
"His name's Kevin Briley," said Tom. "I don't know him. Do you?"
"I think I shook his hand once. I'll feel better when Rog Keane gets to the site."
"Briley said he was told to grab the next flight to Oakland and meet us there. He'll be in