The NTSB Listening Room was as unique as each of the prior rooms for processing the contents of a Cockpit Voice Recorder. McGrady had never been involved in a crash investigation before, but this was like some strange monkish cloister.
In twenty-four years of service, he’d lost a few friends to training accidents, but never been in the flight. He’d lost more friends to the wars he hadn’t been assigned to, but Marines were needed everywhere in the world.
And this was definitely a first for HMX-1.
The room was as plain-white-and-fluorescent-lights as any military conference room, with black two-foot squares of—he rubbed his fingers over one—cloth panels on the walls that must be for sound absorption. The parquet floor probably came from Home Depot.
But that’s where the similarities ended
