Night Fall by Nelson DeMille Page A

fuel tank to explode?”
    He didn’t reply for a few seconds, then said, “It’s possible. But there’s no evidence of that happening.”
    “Is there any evidence of a short circuit?”
    “A short circuit would leave little evidence in the aftermath of a midair explosion over water. A missile strike would leave much more evidence that would be hard to miss.”
    “I understand that. So basically, the only evidence of the official cause of the crash is the lack of evidence of anything else.”
    “I suppose you could say that.”
    “I did.”
    “Look, Mr. Corey, to be very honest and blunt, I would like to have found evidence of a bomb or missile. And so would Boeing and TWA and the insurance companies. You know why? Because a mechanical failure suggests that people weren’t doing their job. That the Federal Aviation Administration wasn’t on top of this potential problem. That Boeing safety engineers should have anticipated this. That TWA should have performed more and better maintenance on this potential problem.” He stared into my eyes and said, “In the darkest parts of our hearts, we all really wanted it to be a missile, because no one could blame the airline industry for a missile.”
    We kept eye contact for a few seconds, and finally, I nodded. I’d thought about this five years ago and recalled concluding the same thing. I could add that people who fly a lot would rather play the odds of a one-in-a-zillion chance of getting hit by a missile than worrying about an inherent safety problem with the aircraft. I, too, if I let myself be honest, wanted it to be a missile.
    Mr. Siben said to me, “Aircraft don’t just fall out of the sky. There has to be a cause, and there are four possible causes for an aircraft accident-” He was into numbering his points and this time he counted on his fingers. “One, pilot error, which is not consistent with a midair explosion and for which there is no flight recorder or cockpit recorder data. Two, an act of God-lightning and weather, which was not a factor that night-or high-speed particle penetration, meaning a meteorite, which remains a long-shot possibility, as does space junk, meaning a piece of a satellite or a booster rocket. This is possible, but there was no physical evidence of anything hitting that aircraft. Three, an enemy attack-” He was up to his middle finger, and if I were sensitive, I’d think he was saying, “Fuck you and your missile.”
    He continued, “Four, a mechanical failure.” He looked at me and said, “I have bet my professional reputation on mechanical failure, and that’s the winner. If you think it was a missile attack, I’d like to see the evidence.”
    “Have you ever spoken to an eyewitness?”
    “No.”
    “You should.”
    He ignored my suggestion and said to me, “I’ll tell you something else that is inconsistent with a missile attack. As long as we’re theorizing, why would a terrorist shoot down an aircraft so far from the airport? A simple-to-use and easy-to-obtain, shoulder-fired heat-seeking missile-what the military calls a fire-and-forget missile-could have brought down this aircraft anywhere within five miles of the airport. To shoot down this aircraft at thirteen thousand feet, eight miles off the coast, would take a very sophisticated, complicated-to-use, and almost impossible-to-obtain infrared or radar-guided surface-to-air or air-to-air missile. Correct?”
    “Correct.”
    “So there you have it.”
    “I got it.”
    Kate said to me, “I have a copy of the official Final Report on the case, which you can read.”
    Mr. Siben said to me, “And stay away from the conspiracy theory idiots and their books, their videotapes, and their Internet lunacy.”
    Time to cool down Mr. Siben. I said, “Well, I’ve never read or seen the conspiracy stuff, and I have no plans to. I’m also not likely to read your report, which I’m sure is well reasoned and convincing. In fact, I only expressed a mild-and as it turns