UAAG CH29

Boston is located in the northeastern United States and is the capital of Massachusetts.

When the group arrived at Logan International Airport, investigators from the NTSB had been waiting at the airport for a long time. A tall, middle-aged man with brown hair stood in front of the welcoming party. Upon seeing Zhuo Huan, he smiled and extended his hand: “Long time no see, Patrick.” Then he walked towards Old Joseph, arms wide open: “Hi, my old friend, we meet again.”

The two laughed heartily and embraced each other.

Old Joseph: “Lawrence, are you in charge of this accident investigation?”

Lawrence looked helpless: “I didn’t want to be here either, but who made it so that when the wreckage of US Airways 4012 was found, I happened to be in Boston? It’s really ill-fated. As Patrick knows, half a year ago, during the Independence Day holiday, a US Airways Flight 2186 made an emergency landing at Logan Airport. Although there were no casualties, I spent a whole four months finding out what happened. Who would have thought that just after I submitted the investigation report at the end of last month, the next day, aircraft wreckage was salvaged from the Atlantic.”

Hearing this, Fu Cheng recognized this tall and strong investigator as the one he had met once when he came to the United States half a year ago.

Old Joseph: “You really are unfortunate; on a business trip for half a year, and now you can’t go back.”

Zhuo Huan: “What was the reason for that emergency landing half a year ago?”

Lawrence: “Oh, nothing major, metal fatigue. The cause was found out very quickly, but in the follow-up, identifying the responsible party took a long time because the airline and Boeing kept passing the buck to each other.”

While talking, several people walked out of the airport.

Outside the VIP channel, two luxurious Bentleys were parked quietly by the roadside. After getting in the cars, the UAAG members first went to the hotel to drop off their luggage. Soon they went downstairs again and took a car to the port.

US Airways 4012 crashed 189 nautical miles from the coastline. The NTSB directly rented a warehouse at the Boston port as a temporary investigation headquarters. After arriving at the port, Zhuo Huan and Lawrence took a boat to the salvage site, while Fu Cheng and the others went to the investigation headquarters.

In mid-December, Boston was shivering in the cold wind, with temperatures already reaching zero degrees. The desolate and biting sea breeze blew from Boston Harbor onto the land. The salty, damp, and cold wind could penetrate the thickest cotton clothes, a bone-chilling coldness almost from the soles of the feet straight to the heart and lungs.

The sky grew dark, but at the port, dozens of high-wattage floodlights shone towards the beach simultaneously, illuminating the bay as if it were daylight.

People stood shivering on the shore one by one. They always gathered in groups of two or three, holding each other’s hands tightly, looking hopefully towards the horizon. Their eyes were red and their bodies trembled, but not because of the winter cold.

“After the news of finding the plane wreckage was announced five days ago, many victims’ families rushed to Boston from various places. Yesterday, a burial site was found on the seabed, and bodies of victims have been gradually salvaged. These people are waiting to identify the bodies.” Pausing, the young investigator whispered, “Actually, it’s impossible to identify them; four months have passed.”

As soon as he finished speaking, a small salvage boat approached quickly from a distance with its lights on.

After docking, the sailors carried a body wrapped in white cloth off the boat and sent it to the centralized temporary morgue on the shore. The next moment, the victims’ families gathered on the shore swarmed forward. However, the investigators did not lift the white cloth on this body to let them see it.

After four months on the seabed, all victims were long beyond recognition, almost turned to skeletons.

To find their family members, they could only rely on DNA testing.

The four UAAG members stood on the shore, watching people rush forward one after another, even knowing it was meaningless.

“They are not here to identify the bodies; they are here to take him home.”

The black-haired young man’s voice was long and gentle in the cold sea breeze.

Lina and Old Joseph turned to look at Fu Cheng.

The sunset slowly sank below the horizon. On the coast, salvage boats continued to dock, followed by groups of weeping families rushing forward.

Soon, led by the investigator, they arrived at the temporary investigation headquarters.

At the same time, on the other side, Zhuo Huan and Lawrence took a speedboat and arrived at the salvage site 189 nautical miles away.

If the Boston port was brightly lit at this moment, crowded with victims’ families, investigators, and reporters, then the salvage site was even more magnificent and grand. Huge ocean cranes and salvage ships gathered on the sea surface. Small salvage boats were only used to recover victims’ bodies; the truly thorny trouble for the salvage company was that behemoth, 73 meters long and weighing 310 tons—

The Airbus A390 passenger plane.

Lawrence: “Patrick, normally if a plane crashes into the sea, it will be shattered into pieces by the huge surface tension. But coincidentally, this US Airways plane only broke into two halves underwater. One section is 58 meters long, the other 15 meters.”

The person in charge of the salvage company stood aside and nodded: “Yes, although 310 tons isn’t heavy, the length of 58 meters makes it very easy for secondary fractures to occur during salvage. We tried traditional pontoon salvage methods and floating crane methods before, but the effects were not very good. Mr. Lawrence said we should try not to damage the plane wreckage as much as possible.”

Lawrence looked at Zhuo Huan: “Patrick, we currently plan to use the chain salvage method to recover the plane. But this still cannot guarantee that the plane will not suffer secondary damage during the process. So I want to discuss and confirm with you first; if secondary damage is inevitable, which part of the plane being damaged would have the least impact?”

Zhuo Huan took the underwater scan map handed over by the salvage personnel.

His gaze swept over this sonar scan map centimeter by centimeter. Finally, Zhuo Huan reached out and drew a dividing line five meters behind the cockpit, which was the position of the plane’s first-class cabin.

“Here, prioritize this as the breaking point.”

Lawrence immediately passed the scan map down: “Follow this map, continue salvage!”

In the first ten days of salvage, many victims’ bodies were found.

However, from the twelfth day onwards, traces of victims became harder to find. This was the boundless Atlantic Ocean; many victims’ bodies had long drifted away with the ocean currents, to unknown destinations. In the end, out of a total of 198 victims, only 76 bodies were found.

The bodies of the two pilots were not found, and only one flight attendant’s body was recovered.

On December 23rd, after verifying structural strength and stiffness multiple times, the salvage company finally began salvaging the wreckage of the US Airways 4012 plane sunken on the seabed. The 15-meter-long tail section was salvaged first, followed by the 58-meter-long front half.

After spending a full 27 hours of sleepless salvage, this behemoth finally emerged on the sea surface.

The next day, it was sent to the investigation headquarters warehouse located by the port.

When the plane wreckage was delivered, Fu Cheng was looking at the plane’s maintenance records. He carefully checked every maintenance record of this plane in the past three years, from small things like light bulb replacements to major things like engine maintenance. This A390 had been in service with US Airways for four years, and its maintenance records had always been normal, with nothing particularly noteworthy.

“Your mocha, Fu.”

Fu Cheng looked up: “Thank you, Lina.”

Lina smiled: “Do you like cherry sauce?”

Fu Cheng was stunned: “Although I don’t dislike sweets, I don’t have a special preference either.”

Lina smiled knowingly.

Soon, this romantic French lady with a sense of ritual brought a small plate of Yule log cake and placed it gently on Fu Cheng’s desk. Fu Cheng was slightly surprised. Lina winked at him: “Christmas Eve, I baked the Yule log cake myself. Taste it; this is very common in France, always eaten on Christmas Eve.”

Then Lina delivered cakes to Su Fei and Old Joseph one by one.

None of everyone’s cakes had cherry sauce added, only Zhuo Huan’s cake was drenched with plenty of cherry sauce.

When the bell rang at twelve o’clock, inside the investigation headquarters, in the office exclusive to UAAG.

Lina and Old Joseph immediately stopped what they were doing: “Merry Christmas!”

The other three Chinese people, who didn’t feel much about Christmas, looked up and said very perfunctorily: “Merry Christmas.” Of course, the main person with a perfunctory attitude was Lord Zhuo.

Old Joseph and Lina had long expected this situation, and the two were helpless. Neither of them expected that this Christmas, they would be spending it working overtime.

Old Joseph said to Fu Cheng: “I always think, I’m only 52 now, but I’m afraid in less than a year, I’ll turn 82. Does this count as a work injury, Fu?”

Fu Cheng smiled slightly: “You can ask Teacher Zhuo for work injury compensation.”

Old Joseph shrank his neck: “Forget it, ask Reid for money? I might as well think about how to research immortality; that’s more likely!”

Zhuo Huan: “Heh.”

Everyone laughed together.

Early the next morning, investigation headquarters warehouse.

Lawrence walked over and looked at Zhuo Huan.

Zhuo Huan was looking down and talking to Fu Cheng. Last night, Fu Cheng discovered that in the past three years, this plane’s accumulator had been repaired four times.

Lawrence: “Patrick, the people from US Airways are here.”

Zhuo Huan’s voice stopped. He turned his head to look at Lawrence: “Mn, I’m coming over immediately.” Then he continued to say to Fu Cheng: “The specifications of the Airbus A390 accumulator are different from McFly’s. I haven’t had much contact with it, but judging from the latest maintenance record, it’s not a big problem. It should be absorbing pressure pulses…”

Fu Cheng listened and nodded: “So you mean, if there is a problem with the accumulator, we can look at the entire hydraulic system in reverse, from big to small, checking for omissions in reverse?”

Zhuo Huan smiled. He put his hands in his pockets, gave a soft “Mn,” and then said: “Let’s go, meet the people from US Airways together.”

Fu Cheng was stunned but didn’t object.

Halfway there, Zhuo Huan paused and said to Lawrence: “By the way, help call Old Joseph over too.”

Arriving at the conference room on the second floor, Fu Cheng followed behind Zhuo Huan and entered together.

As soon as they entered, the US Airways staff immediately stood up and greeted them. Soon, everyone sat down. Zhuo Huan was always too lazy to talk on such occasions. Fu Cheng inexplicably had an illusion: Did Lord Zhuo bring him here specifically to deal with these US Airways employees frantically looking for topics?

While talking, the conference room door opened again.

Lawrence walked in first. Those two US Airways employees stood up, about to speak, when they saw Old Joseph enter the conference room behind Lawrence.

Almost instantly, one of the employees stood up straight abruptly.

“Mr. Joseph!”

Old Joseph was startled and looked up. He smiled: “It’s actually you. I remember you are… Joey?”

This employee hurried over, extending his hand with a half bow: “Long time no see, how are you?”

Old Joseph patted his hand and laughed: “It hasn’t been that long, right? I followed a US Airways case two years ago and returned to the US Airways headquarters. Have you forgotten? Oh, maybe you weren’t there then!”

Old Joseph’s attitude was amiable, witty, and humorous. Gradually, the serious expression of the employee named Joey relaxed, and he smiled along.

Watching this scene, Fu Cheng frowned, sensing a trace of strange disharmony. With a thought in his mind, he turned to look at Zhuo Huan, but his gaze froze the next moment upon reaching the other person. He saw Lord Zhuo leaning on the sofa, chewing gum while lazily looking down at his phone.

Sensing Fu Cheng’s gaze, Lord Zhuo lifted his eyelids and met his eyes.

Thinking for a moment, he took out a piece of gum from his pocket and stuffed it into Fu Cheng’s hand.

Fu Cheng: “…”

Seeing Fu Cheng not looking away, Lord Zhuo raised his eyebrows, pulled out his coat pocket, and showed it to Fu Cheng.

Zhuo Huan: “Really gone.”

Fu Cheng: “…”

Who wanted gum!!!

Author’s Note:

Zhuo Rest-in-Peace: Can’t understand what young people are thinking nowadays, always wanting something for nothing. Giving one piece of gum isn’t enough, still want two? Shameless.
Fu Chengcheng: …You are single by your own ability!

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