Here you are, Mr. Rebhun-- another scotch and soda.
The only way to fly.
Used to be just like you.
Used to hate flying.
I mean, the moment I got on a plane,
I'd be gripping those armrests
like my teeth were being drilled.
Truth is, statistically, you can fly every day
for the next 26,000 years
before you'd have an accident.
You believe that?
Of course, statistics don't matter.
They're just afraid of things they don't understand.
Like how a 700-ton piece of machinery could float
29,000 feet in the air.
Whoa, baby.
Settle down.
What the hell is this?
♪ Happy birthday to you ♪
♪ Happy birthday, dear Dana... ♪
♪ Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully ♪
♪ Happy birthday ♪
♪ To you. ♪
I didn't know it was your birthday, Scully.
Mulder... you have never remembered my birthday
in the four years I've known you.
That's the way I like to celebrate them
is every four years.
It's like dog years that way.
Dog years? Yeah.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
Oh, I got something for you.
Oh, you've got to be kidding me.
It's just something that reminded me of you.
What, an alien implant?
Two, actually. I made them into earrings.
Hmm.
Apollo 11.
Read the back.
"Commemorating Apollo 11 and the mission to the Moon--
July 1969."
I'm touched. It's, um...
Excuse me, are you Scully and Mulder?
Oh, promise me this isn't leading
to something really embarrassing.
My name is
Sharon Graffia.
I'm sorry to approach you like this, but I followed you.
I was asked to find you if something happened.
Excuse me?
You have no good reason to believe me,
but my brother-- who I believe you know--
he said you'd understand what to do.
About what?
If he didn't make it.
Excuse me, who are you talking about?
Max. Max Fenig.
He was on his way here
to deliver something that made him
fear for his life--
something he said the government would kill for.
But his plane-- it went down two hours ago.
What we know right now
is that the plane designated as Flight 549
lost radio contact tonight at 1900 hours EDT
and subsequently crashed into a wooded area
approximately 30 miles from Albany, New York.
Local law enforcement and EMTs
have been on the scene for just under two hours.
But initial reports are they've found no survivors yet
of the 134 passengers and crew listed on the manifest.
I wish I could tell you
that we had more information about the crash site, but...
darkness and the terrain are going to make it
pretty slow going until morning.
We have a tape of the last radio exchange before 549 went down,
which we're going to play,
but I want to stress the need to keep everything
you know or learn within the go team
so that all information to the press
comes from the I.I.C.
You cued up, John?
Ready.
Copy, tower. Please advise.
Do you see a need to adjust?
Negative, 549.
Steady air speed of two-niner-six nauts.
Maintain heading 1-0-0 and two-niner-thousand feet.
Go ahead 549.
What the hell is this?
549, do you read?
We got something...
It's on the intercept.
My God! My God!
Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!
And that's all she wrote.
The controllers tried to raise 549
on all available frequencies,
but the pilots did not respond.
Okay, we've got an F.A.A. charter leaving in one hour.
Accommodations... Excuse me, sir.
I'm Special Agent Mulder with the FBI.
Is there any indication
or suspicion that Flight 549
may have been forced down?
Forced down?
You can clearly hear
the pilot say "intercept" on the recording.
We have absolutely no data to support that--
no confirmation of other aircraft in the area.
Unless you have something.
No, no.
But there was a passenger on that plane
who is well-known to our government as an alien abductee.
An alien abductee?
A man named Max Fenig, a multiple-abduction victim--
what's known as a repeater.
Hold on a second.
Please, please, can I have some quiet?
He'd predicted the accident, and from the sound of the tape,
the plane may have been forced down.
Forced down by who or what?
I'm hesitant to speculate.
Mulder. Your name's Mulder?
Yes, sir. Let me tell you something.
I've been doing this for 18 years.
I thought I heard everything.
I'm looking through the manifest here,
and there was no one named Max Fe-nig
on Flight 549.
Fenig-- and there may be people
who want to cover up this evidence.
Agent Mulder, is this an official
FBI position?
No, sir.
Because what you're suggesting
trivializes this tragedy
and casts these fine people and the work they have to do
in a light that I think you would be well-advised to avoid.
I think we all share the same goal here, sir,
and that's to find out what caused that plane to crash.
And if any of the capable men and women in this room
find Dr. Spock's phaser or any green alien goo,
be sure to give you all the credit.
All right, then.
Sure know how to make a girl feel special
on her birthday.
Get a good shot of it.
You ever seen anything like this?
Where's the plane?
They think it hit the ground at over 300 miles an hour
on an almost vertical descent.
Meteorological data is being collected and analyzed,
and so far they are attributing the crash to weather phenomena,
to a rapid depressurization caused by a lightning strike,
or by something called a wind rotor
coming off the Adirondacks.
But not to Max Fenig.
Mulder, even if he was on this flight,
looking at this, he'd be in a hundred pieces.
I mean, they're going to be lucky
if they can I.D. half the bodies they find here.
He was on this flight, Scully.
I'm sure of that.
Well, say we do find him.
What's that going to prove?
I don't know.
But maybe that one man's life
was worth sacrificing 133 others.
Is that a hand?
Is that a watch? Yeah.
What does it read?
So does this one.
What are they listing as the time of the crash?
Uh, 7:52 p.m.
That's nine minutes difference.
It's got to be a mistake. Nine minutes, Scully.
Do you remember the last time you were missing nine minutes?
Mulder, no one even reported the plane on radar.
These guys are just going off of estimates
until they can recover the data recorder.
You know, something just occurred to me.
What?
I don't think we're going to find Max Fenig after all.
Just a few minutes ago, you were absolutely certain
he was on this flight.
Yeah, but I'm beginning to doubt
whether he finished this flight with the rest of the passengers.
Hey! Get me a medic over here!
This man's alive! This man's alive!
Get me a medic over here!
Somebody!
We need an airlift to a burn unit
as soon as possible!
This man needs oxygen and a saline I.V.
Sir... can you hear me?
Sir?
I got what you asked for.
All of those are from Max?
Every letter he ever wrote me.
You said to bring everything I had.
I'm still not sure why.
Sharon, we believe that there are things
that you haven't told us.
We need to know everything that you know.
About what?
About Max.
About where he's been, about where he's traveled,
about exactly what it was he was carrying on that flight.
Did you find Max?
No. But we found a passenger with severe burns,
severe cellular damage.
Burns that we wouldn't see
unless the victim was exposed to a high level of radiation.
Something Max was carrying?
We need to know what that was, Sharon.
If you're withholding any information,
there could be severe consequences.
Mulder.
Man's name was Larold Rebhun.
The manifest has him listed in seat 13D,
which is the aisle seat right here.
My guess is that Max Fenig was in 13F, window seat.
But the manifest has the passenger in that seat as a...
Paul Gidney. It's an alias that Max Fenig used
in his letters when he went underground.
He had many aliases, in fact, one of which he used
to get a job at the Rocky Flats
Environmental Energy Site in Colorado,
where they handle and store uranium 235
and weapons grade plutonium.
You think Max was carrying plutonium?
Mulder, the burns on that passenger's face
were deep-tissue radiation burns.
I don't know how else he might have gotten them.
What would Max be doing with that?
I don't know.
I mean, he wrote hundreds, maybe even a thousand letters
describing his abduction experiences,
but beginning in January,
he started making vague references to a theft.
Now, it seems to me, from reading it,
that he started to get the idea
that he'd come on to something that was very dangerous.
So, what caused this crash?
If he was carrying fissile plutonium, Mulder,
and it became exposed in the cabin,
it very conceivably could have caused the crash.
You want to know what I think, Scully?
I'm going to tell you.
I think Max was abducted-- sucked right out of this door
at 29,000 feet-- and the burns we're seeing
are the result of that abduction. Mulder...
And all the evidence will point to this conclusion,
but it will be dismissed because of
its improbability, it's unthinkability.
Mulder...
And the crash of Flight 549 will go unsolved
unless we find a way to prove it.
And when Max is returned, he's going to tell us
exactly the same story, unless someone gets to him first.
Mulder, Max is returned.
I found out a few minutes ago.
They found his body
a short way from the wreckage earlier today.
You're positive of this?
Traveling under the name Paul Gidney, seat 13F,
with the same burns as his seat mate.
Still no explanation for this crash.
Would you guys be willing to make a determination
as to whether there was an explosion pre-impact,
or as we can see from the fuel tank...
...whether the data only points to an explosion
after the aircraft had landed.
Did you make a positive I.D. on Max Fenig?
Well, they've located the cockpit voice recorder
and the flight data recorder.
And? And the I.I.C.
is making a statement to the press saying that
there was a complete systems malfunction on the plane.
In other words, there's still no explanation
for what brought this plane down.
No, not yet, but they are taking a careful look
at the emergency exit door.
And while they cannot explain the radiation readings,
they are not ready to attribute it as the direct cause.
They're not able to, or they're not willing to?
Mulder, why can't you just accept the facts?
Because there are no facts, Scully.
What they're telling you, what they're going to report,
they're the opposite of facts--
a claim to ignorance of the facts.
Claimed steadfastly,
ignorance becomes as acceptable as the truth.
What would you like them to report?
That there is not
one wristwatch on any of those bagged bodies.
All the wristwatches have been stolen.
Are you accusing these men of covering evidence?
These men, no.
These men are trained to identify moving parts--
hydraulics, electronics.
They're trained to reconstruct those parts in the past
and arrive at the present.
But they can't do that
because somebody has stolen the past from them--
nine minutes of it.
Nine minutes that became a lifetime
for those passengers, and now for their families.
Someone has got to figure out
what happened in those nine minutes.
Somehow, we've got to get that back.
Louis Frish?
Yes, sir. I just got the call from the C.O.
said you were coming out with some questions.
I'm Agent Mulder. This is Agent Scully.
If you're here about the crash the other night,
I already told the NTSB guys exactly what I know about that.
They were already out here?
Yes, ma'am. Night of the crash.
Were you in the tower
that night?
Yes, sir. Me and Sergeant Armando Gonzales.
Did Flight 549 show up on your radar?
Yes, sir, it did.
Did you establish
radio contact with them? No, sir.
We would have no reason to contact
a commercial or a civilian airliner
unless it crossed into military airspace.
Would there be a record of 549 on your log?
Yes, sir.
I know it by heart.
At 1952, Flight 549
dropped from an altitude of 29,000 feet.
About 45 seconds later,
we got an altitude reading of triple X.
I've never seen anything like it.
Hope to never again.
Then what did you do?
We called 549, and got no response.
Then we called ATC in Albany.
What was their response?
We just gave them the information-- last we'd heard.
There something else you're looking for?
About nine minutes.
We've been traveling a long way.
Wasn't the initial report
that there was no radar confirmation of the crash?
Yeah, that must have come after our briefing.
What did you tell them?
What I was supposed to say.
Somebody's going to figure out what's going on.
I don't ask. I don't know.
I don't want to know.
They find out the truth,
you think anybody's going to take the heat for us?
I'm not the only liar here.
They come back here to talk to me,
I'm telling the truth.
I'm not going to have no blood on me.
Then you make me the liar.
Roger.
Did they find her? No, ma'am.
We need some answers.
The place is a mess. We'll do our best, ma'am.
Hey, you're going to have to take care of this.
You're going to have to pay.
Excuse me?
The room you rented for the woman--
well, she trashed it and split.
Sharon Graffia?
It was under your name.
Yeah.
Look at this.
I don't know what kind of game
she was playing in here.
She blew the door right out of the jamb.
I doubt insurance
will cover it.
Does your policy cover the acts of extraterrestrials?
We'll take care of it.
Right.
Okay, Scully, hit me with your best shot.
What do you think happened here?
I haven't a clue.
Looks an awful lot to me like
this place fell from 29,000 feet.
You think Max's sister...
Was abducted, just like Max.
Maybe it runs in the family.
What happened here?
You're the experts.
Why don't you bring your team down here and work it out.
They've got their hands full.
Yeah, coming up with all that inconclusive evidence.
I've come to tell you we've found some evidence--
good evidence.
About what caused the crash?
Quite possibly, though I'm not ready to make an announcement.
Why not?
I'm afraid I'd sound as crazy as you.
There someplace I can show you these?
Someplace with a door?
These lines you see here running outward from center--
those are what we call fatigue cracks,
caused by cyclic stress on the fuselage structure.
From what?
Wear and tear.
Most commercial planes
have an average 20,000, 30,000 hours' flight time.
Except 549 was a new plane.
549 had no wear and tear.
Then what caused that?
I can't tell you that.
But I can tell you this--
the way all these cracks radiate from a central point
looks like the door's been shaken and blown
outward straight off its frame, right off the plane.
Hadn't been for you, we wouldn't have known what to look for.
Sounds like what you're describing
is physically impossible.
In normal operation, it could never happen,
not this way.
But it did.
Hey, man.
How you doing?
Sorry about before.
It's, uh... I was way out of line.
I just...
I've just been letting this thing get to me, I guess.
Hey, Gonzales.
You find him, the sergeant?
He's not up there.
35,000 feet.
It's negligible-- nothing to be concerned about.
Copy, tower.
Please advise.
Do you see a need to adjust?
Negative, 549.
Steady air speed at two-niner-six nauts.
Maintain heading 1-0-0 and two-niner-thousand feet.
Go ahead, 549.
What the hell is this?
549, do you read?
We got something...
It's on the intercept.
My God! My God!
Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!
Scully.
Hey, Scully, it's me. I just realized something.
The voice of the air traffic controller--
I've heard it before.
Mulder, we've been up for over 36 hours.
Can it wait till... No, I know, I know, I know.
I just need you to come over here
and listen to this right now, okay?
I'm on my way.
Just don't scream.
Just listen to me.
Listen to me.
I'm the man responsible.
I'm the one that caused that plane crash.
Give me a second.
You said you had someone who had some information.
This is Louis Frish--
Sergeant Frish.
He's the air-traffic controller
you heard on the recording that you played
for us the other night.
That was from the Albany Control Center.
It was the voice of a civilian air traffic controller.
No, sir.
There seems to be more than a little discrepancy.
What you've been told, what you've been led to believe
was built upon a lie
that Sergeant Frish was asked to perpetuate--
along with Sergeant Gonzales, who is now dead.
I was asked to lie.
I was ordered to lie about what happened to Flight 549.
By whom?
My C.O.
Flight 549 appeared on my radar at 1900 hours
when we were asked to give its coordinates
at 15-second intervals.
About two minutes past 30 degrees north,
we saw a second aircraft enter 549's airspace
in an intercept pattern.
It shadowed 549 for another ten minutes
before we were asked to give a new set of coordinates.
A few seconds later, there was an explosion,
and 549 disappeared from my radar screen.
I don't believe this man.
There's not one speck
of forensic detail to support it.
No sign of an explosion, no flashing, no residues,
no nitrates or oxidation, nothing.
I'm telling you what I saw--
that we shot down a civilian jet
knowingly and willingly.
I'm going to tell you two something.
I have a responsibility to the truth here.
And so do we.
This man can't testify to this story--
not without evidence.
The military is working to cover up that evidence.
The sergeant's story makes no sense.
Unless the aircraft that was fired on
never appeared on his radar screen.
A third unidentified aircraft that engaged
the civilian jet which the sergeant never saw.
A stealth aircraft?
Shot down by the intercept aircraft,
which, in turn, may have caused the crash of Flight 549,
which means that the cause of this crash
is not here in this hangar,
but it's out there somewhere at a second crash site.
Somebody would have spotted it.
No, they didn't know to look for that.
They didn't know about a second aircraft,
except the military.
Which means that this man's life is in danger
because he can put the pieces together.
Then somebody has to get him someplace safe.
If there's a second crash site...
...let's find it.
Mulder.
Hold on.
Mulder.
Louis, help me out.
Don't take your foot off the gas.
Is he going to see us?
No. We got to get under him.
We're not going to make it.
Somebody
help me!
Please!
Who's there?
Oh, don't...
don't let them take me again!
Louis!
Louis, I want to ask you something.
This is where Flight 549 went down.
As far as you know, there's been no substantiation
of a second crash site?
Right.
What if that's because there is no second crash site,
because that second aircraft never fell to the ground?
It came down somewhere around here.
In Great Sacandaga Lake?
Yeah.
Traveling north to south at 15 degrees...
it's a shallower descent.
Yeah, that's very possible.
Possible?
Are you okay taking Sergeant Frish back to D.C.?
By myself?
Yeah.
You just let me know what's going on, Mulder.
As soon as I know.
I saw the sign.
Are you Bearfeld?
Yeah.
I stopped by your place.
Nobody was home.
Who are you?
Fox Mulder. I'm with the FBI.
You got anything to do with what's going on out there?
What's going on out there?
Some kind of search- and-rescue operation,
or some damn thing, I don't know.
Where?
Out over Democrat Point.
Some kind of hovering lights, just there and then gone.
Can you show me?
No, no, I need you to take me there.
I'm just going to get some things.
Where then?
I'm going to ask for some kind of protective arrangement.
I need to talk to my agent in charge
to get a feel for how to go on this,
but, uh, I think it's pretty clear
you're going to want to talk to the right people.
You think I'll be prosecuted?
For what?
I gave the coordinates.
You didn't bring that plane down, Louis.
I lied.
I misled a federal investigator.
I misled you.
134 people, Sergeant Gonzales--
they're all dead.
It wasn't your fault.
But I'm going to have to live with it.
I watched that plane fall out of the sky.
It was just a dot on the screen, just a... set of numbers.
That wreckage... I can't get that out of my mind.
How those people died, how easy it is to lie,
just to say it was a dot on the screen...
until you see it.
Look, I can't tell you how to feel, Louis,
but I can tell you that I will do everything I can
to make sure you tell your story
to somebody who will do the right thing.
Yeah.
Thank you.
You think it's safe
to make a phone call?
I'd like to tell my girlfriend that I'm... whatever.
Yeah. Um...
Just tell her you're okay.
Over there.
How deep is it here?
50, 60, maybe.
Have you worked at this depth before?
Not exactly.
What exactly is your experience?
Once, I, uh, I got a quarter
off of the deep end at the "Y" pool.
Last call, folks!
Cocktail?
We'll be met here by a federal marshal.
You're probably going to end up
sleeping in somebody's office.
You want a drink?
You need a drink. Yes.
Hey!
Birthday girl!
Agent Pendrell, how you doing?
I have something for you.
Where have you been?
I've been, uh, gone.
Oh. Can I buy you a drink?
No. You know, it's okay.
Uh, I'm with somebody.
Oh.
Let me buy him a drink, too.
No. You know what? It's okay.
No, no, no. I insist, I insist.
Bartender, bartender. Yeah.
Set me up with a couple of, uh,
birthday girl drinks here.
Can I have a couple of your finest...
Get down!
You're going to keep breathing, Pendrell.
Do you hear me?