Marine One (34 page)

The judge responded, "Mr. Hackett, if you don't see the relevance, you're not tracking what's going on here. Mr. Nolan, you may recall Dr. Bradley and continue with your examination of him. We will evaluate whether there is need for a mistrial, or a deposition of Dr. Bradley after his testimony once it is concluded. As for now, we're going to keep right on going. We're going to take a five-minute break and then return with Dr. Bradley's testimony."

THE JOURNALISTS SPENT the fiveminute break, which of course turned into ten, screaming into their cell phones from every imaginable point on the property of the courthouse. Braden had left the courthouse as soon as his testimony was over, and most people expected him to head directly to Madagascar or Chad or Tibet. The reporters seemed not quite sure if they bought my entire story, but I had clearly gotten close enough to cause my own associate to take the Fifth Amendment. That was something you didn't see every day. Something about Braden Randall was fishy and possibly evil, which the journalists would now begin to look into. They were torn between whether to begin that inquiry or to sit in the courtroom and listen to Wayne Bradley, who promised to be even more explosive. If I took the risk of holding back on telling the other side about critical evidence in the case, let alone the Secret Service, the FBI, and the NTSB, in the hope of forcing Braden to blow up on the witness stand, it must be really good evidence. We were about to find out.

The jury looked around the courtroom somewhat disappointed they hadn't been there for the fireworks. They could tell something had happened, but they couldn't tell what. All they knew is that I was picking up right where I had left off.

Judge Betancourt called Dr. Bradley back to the stand.

He resumed his seat, adjusted the microphone, and placed the two leather bags in front of it. Hackett immediately noticed there were two bags and not one.

I began again. "Sir, when we left off, we were discussing your finding of the tip weight from Marine One. Do you remember that?"

"Yes, I do. It's right here."

"Is that, which we'll have marked as the court's next exhibit in order, a tip weight from Marine One?"

"Yes, it is."

The court clerk said, "658."

I looked at the judge. "I'd offer Exhibit 658 into evidence, Your Honor."

"Any objections?" the judge asked Hackett.

"I have more objections then I have time to list, Your Honor. This is completely outrageous. He's been sitting on this evidence-"

"Overruled. Exhibit 658 will be received as evidence."

"Now you said before our break that the tip weight had fractured. Is that right?"

"Yes. Right in half, like a doughnut had been cut in half across the hole with a large knife, leaving two semicircles."

"Now, Dr. Bradley. Since finding that tip weight have you formed an opinion as to why that tip weight fractured?"

"Yes. Initially I thought it had fractured from metal fatigue. I thought it had been improperly manufactured."

"And what did you do when you learned that information?"

"I came to your house and showed it to you. You said that we would simply have to tell the court whatever we find, regardless of how it impacts the case."

Hackett shook his head and threw his pen down. "This is self-serving hearsay. This is ridiculous."

"Overruled. Continue."

I said to the judge, "Thank you, Your Honor." Then to Bradley: "But since then your opinion has changed?"

"Yes, it has. I noticed a very small hole on the inside portion of the broken tip weight, on the fracture surface. Barely larger than a human hair. I was puzzled. So I x-rayed the tip weight, and while the X-ray didn't show very much, it showed me a shadow on the internal portion of the tip weight. I had no idea what that was about, so I machined off the top of the tip weight over the shadow, and I found this." He held it up so I could see it, then so the judge could see it, then so the jury could see it. But it was so small no one could tell what he was looking at.

"May I approach?" I asked the judge.

I went to the witness stand and took the tip weight from Bradley, returned to the podium, and placed the tip weight faceup on the ELMO. I zoomed the television camera down to it and turned on the screen so that everybody in the courtroom could see it. I went to maximum zoom so that the entire screen was filled with the area in the small tip weight that had been drilled out. People strained to see what they were looking at.

"Dr. Bradley, what is this?"

"It's a microchip."

"What is it for?"

"It should be for nothing. Tip weights are supposed to be simply metal. They're there for their weight. They're there to balance the rotor blade. It would be like taking one of the little balance weights off the wheel of your car tire and finding a microchip embedded inside of it. That would be just as mysterious as this."

"Did you pull out the drawings of these tip weights from the materials provided from WorldCopter?"

"I did."

"And the tip-weight drawings call for an internal microchip?"

"They did not."

"Sir, what did you do, if anything, to confirm that this tip weight came through WorldCopter?"

"I went out to WorldCopter headquarters and obtained access to the other Marine One helicopter that was there for maintenance. It hasn't been touched since the day of this accident when all the Marine One helicopters were grounded. I climbed up to the newest blade, removed the end cap, took off the tip weights, and examined them."

"What did you find?"

"I x-rayed the four tip weights from that blade and saw the same shadow. I ground down the face of one of the tip weights and exposed the chip, the path of this wire through the angled hole, and then the fiber that runs across the diameter."

"May I see that?" I approached and took the tip weight. I returned to the ELMO, laid the tip weight on the ELMO, zoomed in the television camera, and everybody in the room could see exactly what had happened. After I let everyone stare at it for a time, I said, "Your Honor, I move this into evidence as next in order."

"Any objections?"

"Yes-"

"Overruled."

"So all the tip weights have these chips?"

"I doubt that. I suspect only the most recent blades have the chip."

"So on the accident tip weight. Why is the microchip there?"

Bradley pushed his hair back with his hands. "That's what I was trying to figure out. It made no sense to me at all, but I realized the chip was connected to that hole that I found. I did a chemical test on the edge of the tip weight checking for one particular chemical."

"What chemical?"

"Well, it's PETN. Pentaerythritol tetranitrate."

"And was it positive? Did your test find the chemical you were testing for?"

"Yes. It was positive."

I paused and looked at the jury. They were hanging on every word but not yet understanding. "Dr. Bradley, tell the jury what is significant about your positive finding on that test."

He nodded. "It is the chemical that is almost universally present in detonation cord. Explosives."

The jury sat back startled. The journalists were talking audibly to each other. The judge said, "Quiet, please."

"Dr. Bradley. What is your opinion of what happened to this tip weight?"

"The microchip is actually a microscopic RFID, a Radio-Frequency Identification Device. You see those in shipping and tracking of goods all the time. They're very common. Some of them are passive, some active. This is a miniaturized device just like one of those, and it's passive. No power source required. The radio frequency that stimulates it provides enough power for it to emanate a single short signal, which in this case is set not to respond and identify, but rather to trigger the very, very thin detonation cord embedded in this tip weight. It's very ingenious. The entire thing weighs less than the weight of a human hair. It wouldn't change the weight of the tip weight in any measurable degree."

It was so quiet I could hear Dr. Bradley's knee rubbing up against the front of the witness box as he undoubtedly bounced his knee up and down as he testified. "What would happen if it worked?"

"The explosion it would create would be so small that if we duplicated it here in the courtroom, we would probably not even hear it, we wouldn't notice any change, and we wouldn't hear or see anything, but what it would do is cripple the tip weight's metal integrity. When under loads, like on a spinning rotor blade, it would ultimately fracture right along the line of the detonation fiber. This tip weight was fractured because of a microscopic explosive device."

The jury was stunned.

I asked Bradley, "Let me just be clear. What was the cause of Marine One falling out of the sky?"

"Fractured tip weight, which separated and threw the blade out of balance. That caused uncontrollable vibration and that blade separating from the aircraft. The helicopter broke up and crashed to the ground."

"And what is the cause of the tip weight failing?"

"A radio-triggered detonation cord built inside the tip weight."

"How would it be triggered?"

"All it would take is a common radio transmitter at that discrete frequency."

"Where would they have done it?"

"They could have been driving by the White House, or in a park in D.C. Marine One takes different routes every time, but usually goes out over the Potomac when heading northwest. Lots of places to park with a small transmitter. No one would notice at all. Could be anywhere. That helicopter is going to come down after the transmission, it's only a matter of when."

"What about the dummy Marine One? You know whenever Marine One is airborne, there's always a decoy Marine One, or two, or three, flying nearby. What if that helicopter had flown over the radio transmission?"

"We'd have to check and see if one of these RFID tip weights was on it. If it was, then it would have gone down. As it was, they got lucky and the real Marine One flew over whoever was transmitting the radio frequency to set off the RFID det cord."

"I have no further questions, Your Honor."

The judge seemed shocked by the developments. She looked at Hackett. "Seeing the lateness of the hour, Mr. Hackett, and the surprise of the testimony, I would assume that you would like to break now and begin your cross-examination in the morning."

Hackett stood eagerly. "I'm not sure I'm going to have any questions, for two reasons. First, the proper discovery and evidence disclosure did not occur, and I do not have enough information to cross-examine him. I have no idea if he's making this up. But since he has testified under oath, and Mr. Nolan has adopted his testimony, I think what he's proved is not only that WorldCopter caused the accident-they're the ones responsible for the integrity of the tip weights-but I think he's now proved that WorldCopter
murdered
the president. I will be asking this court for a directed verdict on liability and a request that we proceed in this trial only on damages, including punitive damages."

The judge nodded in complete understanding. "We will discuss that in the morning. Court is in recess."

That evening everybody was coming completely unhinged. WorldCopter, including Tripp, including Jean Claude himself, were furious at me for now having proved that WorldCopter murdered the president. They didn't want to hear that I wasn't done, that they needed to wait until the next day before they sent out the lynch mob.

Kathryn was completely baffled and asked me if that was what everyone had been waiting for, for me to prove that it was WorldCopter's fault? I told her to concentrate on the tip weight and not on WorldCopter and said we had found the cause of the accident. But she didn't want to hear that because the cause of the accident fell right on our heads. She didn't want to wait until the next day either. The press was absolutely apoplectic. They had so many things to write about and so many angles to pursue at once that they didn't know where to start. The entire case was flying apart, and little pieces of it were hitting all kinds of things like the hail on Marine One on the night of the accident. Senator Blankenship demanded new hearings on how the NTSB failed to find this tip weight-assuming it was legitimate-and how their investigation could be so flawed. The Department of Justice was considering an action for destruction of evidence by Wayne Bradley and me for finding a critical piece of a federal investigation and not notifying them before conducting "destructive testing." The NTSB demanded the tip weights, which of course we couldn't give them because they were now admitted into evidence at a federal trial. The commanding officer of HMX-1, who had only recently begun flying the Marine One helicopters again, grounded all of them until all of the tip weights could be inspected and x-rayed.

The public cried out through every available means that the president had been murdered, that now it clearly wasn't an accident. And if he'd been murdered, why would a helicopter company want to do that? The conspiracy theories began afresh.

I didn't want anything to do with any of that. So rather than have Rachel serve the subpoena on Grosvenor by herself, I went with her.

We drove to his house in Bethesda, Maryland. As far as I could tell, no one was following us, and no one had any idea where we were going or why, and he sure didn't know we were coming.

Rachel was overflowing. "What an absolutely amazing day. I've never seen anything like that."

"Neither have I. Probably because there's never been anything like that. But the explosions aren't done."

"So what do we have for tomorrow?"

"I think it's better that you not know."

"Why would that be?"

"I just have this feeling that we're not out of the woods, and if this guy that we're going to talk to tonight doesn't show up, I am absolutely dead and I'd rather have you not go down with me. I want to preserve at least a little of your own personal deniability. Of course I could end up in a meat grinder."

She turned to me in the seat suddenly. "Do you really think somebody had Tinny Byrd murdered?"

"Well, somebody sure did. But what you mean is, somebody related to this case."

"Yes. Hackett."

"Or the government."

"What? Why in the world would the government have him killed?"

"They wouldn't. There's no way. People talk about 'the government' like it's a monolith. But all it takes is one lunatic in the government and bad things can happen."

"You think they had something to do with it?"