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… tails.
‘Pull everyone away from the wreckage,’ Grimsley says, putting the Coin away. ‘Divert them to the black box search. Nobody enters that valley without my approval.’
‘Sir, we’ve been going through the remains for the past four hours,’ George says. ‘We haven’t found any evidence of anomalous activity.’
Grimsley locks eyes with Lance. He has a single eyebrow raised.
‘Then we should have everything we need already.’
The ensuing hour is far from fruitful.
Deprived of a full night’s sleep and withering beneath the unyielding sun, the attending members of Grimsley’s investigation team are lethargic, dull, and miserable. The looming deadline weighs down both hope and interest, the agents recognising the impossible task and silently resigning themselves to inevitable failure.
Grimsley does his best to lead by example, relentlessly scouring the amassed photographs and documents to awaken some internal resolve, or at least inspire it in others. His efforts aren’t entirely fruitless, encouraging an odd few to renew their focus; but every time one of them is sent off for treatment – heatstroke, scorpion stings, snake bites – or a section of the plane is removed, that drive is stifled again.
As for new discoveries, few are made – the additional hour atop the preceding four of analysis changes little. There is at least the observation that the pilots had tried to put out the engine fire, but more concerning is the damage to the fuselage; a section of three entire metres is missing, reduced to shrapnel, with the jagged metal ends scorched black.
‘Two explosions,’ Grimsley says, rubbing his face in frustration. ‘One at the port-side engine, the other near the tail, also port-side. Connected? The engine came first – they wouldn’t have bothered with the suppressant once the tail came off. Could it have caused the second explosion? Burning fragments ignited something?’
George shakes his head. ‘It was too far back, there shouldn’t have been anything explosive there. Unless the fuel tank was ruptured and leaking?’
Grimsley bobbles his head. ‘Probably not. They should have noticed the fuel level dropping, and even if they hadn’t, it wouldn’t pack enough of a punch. But it definitely happened below the floor, from the way that metal is bent.’
The two of them return to silence, staring at the document stuck to the whiteboard before them; schematics for a Boeing 737-400, the model of passenger plane FM-2439 belongs to. The Foundation had purchased it from a liquidating airline company, hollowing it out for cargo use – trucks, trains, and boats are preferred, having larger capacities and lower maintenance costs, but whenever time is of the essence, air transport is the go-to.
‘It could be some new wiring or parts – a bad cable could have kicked off some sort of chemical reaction between… the plastic and metal, I guess.’
‘Better than nothing, follow it. Lydia, get hold of the service records, pull up everything that was changed in these two spots since… forever.’
Lydia nods, turning to look for a spare laptop.
‘Honestly though sir, the last time I saw something like this, it ended up being —’
‘I know, I know,’ Grimsley sighs. ‘A bomb, which would mean it’s intentional. I’m just hoping it isn’t – fifty minutes is a scrape to find out who did it, assuming we even can still.’
A pause; the distant sound of a running engine – a portable crane, lifting parts of the wreckage out of the valley for removal, and destruction. Lance is over with the removalists, directing them; he lost interest in Grimsley the moment he abandoned the wreck.
Keeping an eye out for something, Grimsley thinks. Waiting for it to be uncovered.
‘Director Lance will extend the deadline, surely,’ George says.
Grimsley shrugs. ‘Probably not, but we can at least see what excuse he comes up with. Go fetch him, don’t say why, just that it’s important.’
‘You don’t seem to trust him much.’
‘I don’t, at all. He gives me orders, I give him reports, and everything else is just doublespeak and redactions to keep up appearances. Now enough of that, we’re burning time.’
George nods, turns, then sets off for the other side of the valley. Grimsley returns his focus to the photographs and documents.
I’ll bet Lance knows what happened, and wants to bury it – getting rid of the wreckage deals with the evidence. The bomb had to be under the floor, inside the fuselage, and the only way it could get there is maintenance – has Lydia —
‘Got something,’ Lydia says.
‘Perfect timing. What?’
She turns the laptop towards Grimsley. ‘A crew of seven were doing maintenance behind the fuel tank just a few hours before the flight.’
Grimsley grins. ‘What maintenance?’
‘It just says a routine inspection.’
‘Find the list of everyone on that crew and detain them all for questioning.’
Lydia raises an eyebrow. ‘Detain?’
‘Something changed there, and one of them did it, or saw who did. I don’t care where they are or what they’re doing, send our guys to grab them and grill them until they tell us what they were really doing.’
Could have been an accident still – accidentally knocked something loose, or what-have-you. But that engine fire… that’s still unanswered. Was it a trigger? How? If we had the damn flight data —
‘Found the flight recorders!’ a nearby agent shouts, holding a phone to one ear.
‘Perfect timing!’ Grimsley says – pausing for a moment. ‘Déjà vu. Bring them here ASAP, and be ready to dump their contents immediately.’
Now it’s just a matter of convincing—
‘You wanted to speak to me.’
Grimsley turns to Lance. ‘Perfect timing!’
His brow furrows; he takes a moment to glance between Lydia, the agent on the phone, and Lance.
‘Something the matter, sir?’ George says, arriving behind Lance.
‘… nothing,’ Grimsley says. ‘Just… convenient timing. Yes, I wanted to speak to you about extending the blackout.’
‘No.’
‘…you haven’t even given me a chance to say what we’ve found.’
‘Explain,’ Lance says, taking a puff from his pipe.
‘We know that there were two explosions —’
‘I am aware of this.’
A pause. Grimsley scowls. ‘Then why aren’t you giving us more time? Things don’t explode for no reason.’
Lance takes a long drag. ‘SCP-6056.’
‘… what?’
‘A series of explosions that occurred throughout Site-43 without cause. There is precedent.’
Grimsley looks to George. ‘Pull that one up. See if there’s similarities.’
George nods, going straight for an available laptop.
‘You don’t seriously expect me to just wave this away as bad luck, do you?’ Grimsley says to Lance. ‘That blast is too big to be an accident. It was brought down, either by someone, or something we’ve put in all our 400’s. It will happen again.’
Lance stares at Grimsley for a few moments. ‘You believe this is an intentional attack?’
‘I can’t be sure, but yes, there’s a good chance it was. Which is why we need more time, so we can figure out if, who, and how.’
Lance turns away, taking several long, extended puffs from his pipe. Grimsley checks the time on a nearby laptop.
‘No.’
‘… No?’
‘The blackout —’
‘Are you kidding?’ Grimsley hisses, clenching his fists. ‘Do you think this is a joke? You wake us up at four in the damn morning, you force us to work to an impossible deadline, admitting you don’t actually care what we find, and now when I’m saying we’ve actually found something, you’re just ignoring us?’
A few moments’ pause.
‘It’s your turn to explain, Lance.’
‘We are at a sensitive juncture,’ Lance says, taking a puff from his pipe. ‘There are operations in motion that must succeed, and factions that will benefit if they fail. The time constraint is necessary because of this; if this area is not sanitised once the blackout is lifted, then any discoveries you make, regardless of their benefit, will be rendered totally redundant. Of your division, you are the most likely to determine the cause of these events within these constraints. That is why you are here.’
‘And what happens when I don’t figure it out in time?’
‘Then we hope that this was a random, isolated event, and if it recurs, you must do better in the next investigation.’
A vehicle pulls up near the base camp, the occupants jumping out, carrying a pair of bright orange objects. Struggling to come up with an adequate insult, Grimsley simply turns away to join the agents – with Lance following behind.
‘Get these open now,’ he says. ‘We need everything on them.’
‘Will do,’ one of the agents says, ‘but, uhh…’
Grimsley exhales loudly, pinching the bridge of his nose. ‘What.’
‘Some of the gear has just… stopped working. We can only dump these one at a time.’
‘Start with the flight data then.’
The agent nods, getting to work. Grimsley turns away, shaking his head.
Just stopped working, right. And I’ll bet the other one mysteriously dies before we get into it. What the hell is Lance playing at? He’s acting like some fairytale villain, just being an arse for the sake of it – even he isn’t usually this… obvious. With a bit of luck the flight data will give me the answer, but if it doesn’t…
He turns back, looking between the orange devices. He begins to doubt his decision – what if the pilots knew something?
He pauses.
Lance is looking for something on this plane. Surely the pilots would have known about it – maybe they said something that can give me a lead.
Grimsley tosses up between the options, unable to decide which to pursue; go for the recorder most likely to say how the plane went down – or risk it on the one that might tell him why?
After a few moments, he pulls out the Coin.
Heads, cockpit recording. Tails, flight data.
He flips…
