Chapter 3 - Grounded on Paper
"I believe neither until I know how each was created," Laura answered.
Park considered that. "Good. Now give me the timeline you know firsthand."
Laura spoke slowly. She described the warning of a levee overtopping just after dawn, the calls from trapped residents, the order to move toward Walnut Cut, the family's collapsing roof, and her arrival after the volunteers' boat had disappeared. She told Park what she heard on the radio, including the phrases she could no longer remember exactly.
"Do you have a recording of your cockpit communications?" Park asked.
"The aircraft systems retain portions, but I haven't accessed them since the flight. Operations should secure the recording. My crew will have independent recollections."
"And your written mission log?"
"I wrote it at four yesterday morning. I was exhausted. I marked one call 'unclear.' I want to correct that if the recording shows more."
Park made a note. "Don't change the original. Submit a dated supplement."
Park had requested personnel records and documents from the Guard command, but the county river-alert system belonged to civilians. She was coordinating with Ohio emergency management and a separate county fact-finding team. She explained that the Guard's report could not by itself determine why three county volunteers drowned or whether a contractor had violated a civilian agreement.
"A tragedy doesn't become one person's fault because that makes an easier headline," Park said. "But tragedy doesn't excuse a commander from giving a defensible account of orders. Yours included."
She called Jonah Ruiz into the room after giving him an opportunity to review the scope of the request. He brought the original service ticket and the duplicate fuel-slip book, not a privately copied database extract.
"Twelve gallons wouldn't move that aircraft," he said. "But the receipt shows a full-service top-off. Then the postflight hour meter was entered in pencil, and someone transcribed it under a maintenance code. I can't say who until we have the handwriting and electronic entries."
"Was the aircraft airworthy?" Park asked.
"Yes. It was available for emergency missions when I signed the inspection."
"Who flew it?" Park asked.
"Captain Miles Everett was the duty pilot. He was reassigned to another facility this morning. He hasn't been interviewed yet."
"We'll speak with him."
Donovan's order removing Laura from planning arrived at 4:10 p.m. It cited possible deviation from mission priorities and directed her not to discuss ongoing operations with unauthorized personnel. Laura knew better than to read it as a blanket order forbidding her from speaking to an investigator or a family-assistance officer. She acknowledged receipt and forwarded a copy to Park.
In the barracks room where she'd been told to sleep, she opened the copy of the evacuation map she had been permitted to keep. It was wrinkled and stained with rain. The pencil route along Walnut Cut looked harmless: a narrow black line joining two higher roads. Nate Harris had warned dispatch the route was questionable after 8:19, Beth said. Yet the map used on the rescue operation marked it open at 9:05.
Laura called Major Alex Grant, the air-operations liaison who had read out the route status that morning. He answered reluctantly.
"I didn't mark Walnut Cut open," he said. "That came from the county desk. We were working from their situation board."
"Did anyone tell you the gauges had failed?"
A long pause. "We got an update that the upstream telemetry was unavailable. There was another message saying the station was being serviced, and dispatch could continue using the last verified chart. I believed that second message."
"Who signed it?"
"Keller. Dean Keller, the communications adviser."
"Alex, can you preserve your copy of that message?"
"Already sent it to Park. Listen, Laura. I was also on the radio when Donovan ordered you to leave the roof. I know what he said."
"Then tell her."
"I will. But there's something else. We passed a message to the county warning that the airstrip beside the school was not on the day's approved landing schedule. They replied the communications contractor had requested it for equipment recovery."
"Who approved a contractor's request for a Guard helicopter?"
"That's what Park's asking."
After the call, Laura sat with the map on her knees. The rescue aircraft she had flown had been number 804. The one in Lily's photograph was 812. Two different missions, hours apart. Until that afternoon, she hadn't known the first had taken place.
The next morning, Park forwarded a lawful request for additional information through command channels. The county's technical supervisor replied with a terse preliminary note: the silver case in Lily's picture appeared to be the portable communications gateway linking the upstream flood gauges to the emergency-operations center. It was not simply a weatherproof storage box.
May you like
The gateway had been removed at approximately eight that morning. For the following two hours, the county received no live upstream readings.
And Walnut Cut had been marked safe during those two hours.
