Zero Separation by Philip Donlay

Author:Philip Donlay [Donlay, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Thrillers, General
ISBN: 9781608091119
Google: LJepMQEACAAJ
Amazon: 1608091112
Barnesnoble: 1608091112
Goodreads: 16202142
Publisher: Oceanview Publishing
Published: 2013-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY

Donovan had survived the evening. He’d met everyone, thanking each and every one of them for the difficult job they were doing. He’d finally left Montero in the mess hall and escaped into the aft storeroom, where the recovered debris was being stored. He’d been around wrecked airplanes before, but not so soon after the accident and never on this magnitude. A Boeing 767 was a large airplane, piloted by highly trained and skilled individuals, yet they were unable to stop the process that brought this airplane down. Donovan always felt a tragic bond with fallen aviators, especially with those he considered his peers. He, too, flew day in and day out in high-performance jet aircraft, and he couldn’t help but wonder if he were put in the same situation would he have fared any better than the now silent crew of the 767.

Donovan slowly made his way amongst the recovered debris. Meticulously affixed to each object was a tag that offered latitude and longitude, plus a time stamp of when it was recovered. Smaller pieces were bagged so the NTSB would be able to identify the seemingly random parts and use the information to construct a detailed map of what ended up where. He examined several of the transparent bags and was saddened to find a cluster of personal effects. A purse, a shoe, a soaked boarding pass, all giving sad testament to the people who were aboard the airliner when it crashed.

The human remains were below in the infirmary. The Jamaican Coast Guard was scheduled to receive the bodies tomorrow and deliver them to a makeshift morgue in Kingston for autopsy.

Many sections of the twisted metal were coated with zinc chromate, a yellowish-green anticorrosive agent that easily identified them as internal parts of the aircraft. Bare aluminum marked surface skin. The largest piece in the room was about the size of a mangled canoe, its aluminum edges jagged and scratched from the crash. He ran his hand over the once smooth surface and felt the aberrations and the gouges in the metal.

He spent time studying each of the larger pieces and tried to picture what part of a 767 he was looking at, but couldn’t. The only reason any of it had floated was from rubber or foam sections that had created a modest amount of buoyancy, or a sealed section had trapped an air pocket. When he pictured an intact Boeing 767 and then compared it to the amount of wreckage before him, he was beset by the enormity of the recovery job that lay ahead.

“Mr. Nash, there you are. I’ve been looking for you.” Mary announced with an air of excitement in her voice. “ROMEO is approaching the debris field, and I thought someone with your aviation expertise should sit in on this.”

“Thanks, Mary.” Donovan said, as he fell in step behind her. They wound through the maze of gangways, and he held open a watertight hatch for Mary to pass through, then ducked and went through himself.

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