Night Fall by Nelson DeMille Page A

closely as it continued its climb into the sky-”
    “Excuse me. What was your
first
impression?”
    “My first, second, and lasting impression was that it was a surface-to-air missile.”
    I had been trying to avoid the “M” word, but there it was. I asked, “Why? Why not a shooting star? Lightning? A skyrocket?”
    “It was a surface-to-air missile.”
    “Most people said their first impression was a leftover Fourth of July-”
    “Not only was it a missile, it was a
guided
missile. It zigzagged slightly as it climbed, as though correcting its course, then it seemed to slow for a half second, and it made a distinct turn to the east-toward my position-then it seemed to disappear, perhaps behind a cloud, or perhaps it had expended its fuel and had become ballistic, or perhaps my view of it was now blocked by its target.”
    Target
. A TWA Boeing 747, designated as Flight 800 to Paris, with 230 people on board had become the
target
.
    We both stayed silent, during which time I evaluated Captain Thomas Spruck’s statements. And as we’re taught to do, I considered his general demeanor, his appearance of truthfulness, and his intelligence. Captain Spruck got high marks in all categories of witness believability. Good witnesses, however, sometimes fall apart at the end-such as the time a very intelligent man who began as a good material witness in a disappearance case ended his statement with his theory that the missing person had been abducted by space aliens. I had dutifully noted that in my report with an asterisk explaining that I wasn’t fully convinced.
    Witnesses also start to unravel under questioning, so I asked Captain Spruck, “Tell me again how far this object was from you.”
    He answered patiently, “As I said, I believe, but I can’t be sure, that it originated over the horizon, which would be about six miles line of sight on the water with calm seas. But it could have been farther, of course.”
    “So, you didn’t see an initial point of… let’s say, launch?”
    “No.”
    “What would that have looked like? I mean, how much light would that make?”
    “A lot. I’d be able to see the glow lighting up the dark horizon, even if it was launched ten or twenty miles from my position.”
    “But you didn’t?”
    “To be honest, I don’t know what first caught my eye-the flash of a launch, or the red-orange streak of light rising off the horizon.”
    “Did you hear anything?”
    “No. A missile launch is not
that
loud, especially from a distance, with the wind blowing toward the launch.”
    “I see. And how far up was this object when you first recognized it as an ascending streak of light?”
    “I can’t say unless I know the distance. Height is a product of distance and angle off the horizon. Simple trigonometry.”
    “Right.” I was a little out of my element here, but interrogation techniques remained the same. I said, “Give me a good guess.”
    He thought a moment and said, “Maybe fifteen hundred to two thousand feet above the water when I first saw it. This initial impression was reinforced as I watched it climb, and I was then able to get a feel for its speed and flight path. It was rising in a straight line as opposed to an arc, with small zigzag corrections, then a distinct turn as it locked on.”
    “Locked on to what?”
    “Its target.”
    “Okay…” I asked him, “Did you ever see that CIA animation of what they thought happened?”
    “I did. I own a copy of it.”
    “Yeah, I need to get one. Okay, so in this animation, what they’re saying is that the center fuel tank vapors accidentally exploded because of an electrical short circuit. Right? And what all the eyewitnesses saw was a stream of burning fuel from a ruptured wing tank coming
down
from the aircraft-not a streak of light coming
up
— toward the aircraft. In other words, people had it backwards in their minds. They
heard
the explosion before they saw it, then looked up, and mistook the burning stream of