5

I HAD ONLY actually met Chuck Collins once, or maybe twice, but I remembered his voice. It was one of the first things we heard from the cockpit voice recorder, and I recognized his resonant sound immediately. Collins had been one of the best helicopter pilots in the Marine Corps. He had flown off carriers, desert pads, and roads. He had mastered every helicopter the Marine Corps owned, from the biggest cargo carrier to the smallest, fastest gunship. He had flown off steep, snow-covered mountains and floating platforms while working with special operations. He had even graduated from Navy Test Pilot School in Patuxent River, Maryland. He had flown several tours in Iraq and begged to go back for more, but he had gotten too senior to go blow things up. During his last tour as a helicopter squadron commanding officer, much of which was spent on a carrier in the Pacific, he was told he would be the first pilot to fly the president in the new presidential helicopters, the WorldCopter 5, now known as the VH-80.

The CVR had captured the last thirty minutes of that evening's flight. It started with Marine One approaching the South Lawn of the White House through a torrential downpour. Collins was all business. Full of comments on the weather. His copilot was doing his job perfectly, monitoring the altitude, the air speed, and radios. They were talking to Washington control and the White House. It all sounded normal. Collins was a good pilot, and it showed through the recording.

I put myself in his seat and visualized what he was seeing, the instruments, the lightning, the rain hitting the rotor blades, and watching the White House grow bigger in the dark night as he approached. I'd never flown in Marine One, and I'd certainly never put a helicopter down on the South Lawn of the White House; but I had several hundred hours in this WorldCopter model and knew every switch that Collins was throwing and everything he was touching. I could do it in my sleep.

As they landed, everything continued normally until, just as they touched down, Collins said, "Whoa."

I focused intently. His copilot, Rudd said, "What was that?"

"I don't know. Might have been a wheel settling into the mud, but it felt like more of a thump. Maybe the strut bottomed out. We'll check it when we get out."

"Roger that."

We listened intently to the pilots' small talk while they waited for the president, listening for any indication of what we knew was about to happen, to see if just maybe they had a hint of what was coming. We listened for slurred speech, depression, anger, all the things anyone would listen for. But as the recording went on, it built its own story.

"This is an unbelievably shitty night to fly. Why we doing this?" Collins asked.

Lieutenant Colonel Rudd replied, "You've got the final say. Just say the word. Ground us." He waited for Collins to ground them, but he knew it wouldn't happen. They did what the president wanted, and the president wanted to go to Camp David.

"We're doing this because El Jefe says so," Collins said.

Rudd said, "Plus we're just dumb-ass Marines who always do what we're told."

"You're a dumb-ass, but I'm a smart-ass. So why am I doing this?"

Rudd replied, "Because you've been trained since your earliest waking moments to follow stupid orders in shitty conditions. We're trained to love it. The stupider the order and the worse the conditions, the more faithful the Marine is for obeying it. Semper fi. You know that."

Collins laughed into the ICS microphone. Probably only Rudd could hear him, but the crew chief might have been on the ICS line too. On a night like that, he would probably be outside checking the soggy ground in the pouring rain to make sure they wouldn't be pulling the earth toward the moon when they tried to take off, stuck in mud up to their axles. He was probably looking for the origin of the thump as well.

"At least we're in here and dry."

"Here comes the president," Rudd said.

I looked over at Rachel, who was listening with her mouth open.

"You've got the airplane. I'm going to talk to Secret Service." You could hear Collins moving out of his seat. I waited for the sound to cut off, but then remembered that they were using the new, encrypted wireless headsets. You could hear Collins belching as he made his way to the back of the helicopter. He was walking or moving, it was unclear, then he said, "Hey, Greg." Greg Marshall no doubt, the head of the Secret Service detail on the flight.

"Chuck," Marshall replied perfunctorily. We could barely hear the other voice, since it was coming through Collins's mike. If they hadn't had the speakers turned up so loud, we wouldn't have heard it at all.

"What the hell are we doing?" Collins asked. "Can't you drive the president to Camp David?" I could hear the noise of the helicopter engines in the background; they had kept the engines running and the rotors spinning as they waited for the president to board.

"No comment," Marshall said.

"You know what this is about, don't you?"

"Yes. One of many important meetings of the president of the United States."

"Meeting. Right. Just a meeting. And who's he going to meet? Do you know everything you need to know about them?"

"You know something I don't know?"

I found myself trying to see their faces in the speakers, wishing I could see their expressions and body language.

"I've forgotten more about Adams than you'll ever know."

"Right. Adams scholar. I forgot." Marshall waited a short time, then asked Collins in a tone that was half-annoyed and half-concerned, "So what you got? Anything I should know about?"

"If you don't know by now, I'm sure not going to tell you. Don't worry about it. I'll take care of it. It's nothing you can do anything about."

"You got something I need to hear, you know where to find me. Just don't kill us on the way."

"No guarantees tonight," Collins said. "Your life will be in my very capable hands, but there are other forces at work."

Collins's words were strange. Everyone in the room could feel it.

Marshall felt it too. "You saying it's unsafe? Say the magic words, Chuckie, say it isn't safe, and we're headed straight for the limo."

"Can't do it. I serve at the pleasure of the president. I do what I'm told."

"You can override any flight request."

"Never going to happen. How could it be unsafe when I'm the one flying? I could land this helicopter on the top of a flagpole." Collins chuckled. "But you wouldn't mind if I flew ten feet above the ground to avoid the weather, would you?"

"You know the minimum altitude." Marshall spoke to others we couldn't hear, then said, "President's coming aboard."

Collins sounded as if he had returned to the cockpit, and you could hear some background noise. Rudd exchanged comments on the weather and the instruments with Collins, then warned him that the president was coming into the cockpit. A chill came over the room as we heard President Adams's unmistakable voice: "Shit, Colonel-it's blacker than a witch's heart out there! Can you get us out of here?"

There was a long, long pause while no one spoke.

Rudd filled in the gap: "I believe so, sir. It isn't the best night for flying, though. Sure you wouldn't rather drive? You can borrow my car if you need one. Could be real bumpy, sir."

The president laughed with a nervous, strained sound, then the voices faded. The cockpit was quiet.

Rudd's voice was loud: "What the hell you doing, Chuck? You can't just ignore the president! He was talking directly to you!"

"I don't really give a shit what he was doing."

"Don't let your politics get into this. They'll fire your ass. Show respect for the office if not for him."

"I don't have any respect for the office while he's in it. You see his face? He looked like he's about to crack."