"We have the sleeve in stores," he said. "Correct part number." "Good," Caleb said and stood up. "I need to make a call to the Chicago office," Derek said. "Push the meeting. That's a good idea.
Derek looked at him. The expression wasn't hostile. Exactly. It was the expression of a person recalibrating, adjusting the internal model they'd built of someone they'd underestimated and finding the adjustment uncomfortable. You were right, Derek said about stopping the engines.
Caleb didn't need anything from that acknowledgement. They'll he didn't particularly want it. He picked up his toolbox and said, "I'll need the part brought to the aircraft, and I'll need someone to pull the full maintenance record for this aircraft going back 6 months." The summary, the actual records. The maintenance records are internal. They are.
And if what I'm looking at is what I think it is, you're going to want to know what's in them before anyone else does." Derek stood very still. "I'll get them," he said. Caleb had the old sleeve out and the new one fitted within the first 40 minutes. The replacement work itself wasn't complicated. The access was reasonable.
The part was correct. The tooling was straightforward. What took time was doing it right, which meant cleaning the coupling surfaces before installing the new sleeve, verifying the sleeve orientation against the install diagram, and torquing the securing band to specification rather than to feel. He was doing the final torque verification when he became aware that he was not alone at the access panel. He looked to his left.
Vanessa Sterling was crouched about 2 ft away, looking at what he was doing with an expression of genuine attention that had nothing performed about it. You don't have to watch, he said. I know it's not particularly interesting. You're deciding whether a vehicle I'm about to get inside is safe. She said, I think that's interesting.
He went back to the torque verification. Most people who fly on private aircraft have never seen the inside of one of these access bays. I've been flying on private aircraft for 8 years and I've never looked in one. Passengers haven't. That bothers you?
Caleb considered that for a moment. Doesn't bother me. It's just how it is. Most people who fly don't think about the mechanics. Same way most people who eat at restaurants don't think about the kitchen.
But if the kitchen is sending out some that could kill you, then someone in the kitchen has to care about that. Whether or not the person eating knows about it, he finished the torque check and pulled his hands back. That's the job. Vanessa was quiet for a moment. Why did you come back when the engines were running and you were already at your truck?
You'd been paid, however, inadequately. You had no further obligation to this aircraft or to anyone on it. Caleb picked up his flashlight and checked the sleeve seating one final time before closing up. My daughter, he said, expects me home for dinner. She's 8 and she makes a face when I'm late that I don't particularly like making happen.
He secured the access panel and started tightening the fasteners. Every person on your aircraft has someone who expects them home. Doesn't stop being true because I already got paid. Vanessa looked at him, not at the work, at him. That's a very simple way to think about it, she said.
True things are. She stood up and brushed off her slacks. He stood up beside her and began gathering his tools. I need to understand the maintenance record issue, Vanessa said. Derek is pulling the files.
I'd like you to look at them with me. That's outside what you've hired me to do. I know. I'm asking anyway. Caleb looked at her.
She wasn't offering more money. She wasn't making it transactional. She was asking because she'd arrived somewhere in the past 2 hours at the understanding that he knew something she needed to know and she had decided the most direct way to get it was to simply ask. He respected that more than he expected to. I'll look at the records, he said.
But I'm going to tell you what I see honestly, not what you want to hear. I'm not asking for what I want to hear. People usually say that, Caleb said right up until they hear something they don't want to hear. No. The corner of her mouth moved.
Not quite a smile. Something drier than that. "Fair enough," she said. They sat at the table in the terminal level conference room that overlooked the hangar floor, and Derek spread the maintenance records across the table in front of them printed copies because Vanessa had specifically asked for printed copies rather than screens. She she'd said she thought better with paper she could mark up and Caleb had noticed that she'd uncapped a pen before sitting down.
He went through the records methodically. He was aware that Derek was watching him from the other side of the table with an expression that moved between weariness and something closer to dread, and he understood why. Derek had been operations director long enough that whatever was in these records, some part of his signature was probably adjacent to it. What Caleb found was not a single catastrophic failure. It was something more insidious than that.
It was a pattern of small acceptances. Checkboxes initialed on inspection forms for items that when cross- referenced against the component replacement logs should have prompted more detailed follow-up. dates that suggested inspection intervals had been stretched not by an amount that would set off an automatic compliance flag, but by margins that accumulated parts documented as replaced that had part number codes inconsistent with the replacements they were supposed to represent. Cedence. It was the paperwork of an operation that had been running on the assumption that close enough was good enough and that the pilots and the aircraft and the schedules would compensate for whatever gap existed between the documentation and the actual condition of the machines. He laid this out quietly and without drama.