1996, a stormy night at the airport in Dubrovnik on the coast of Yugoslavia. A group of American diplomats are en route in a Boeing 737 especially designed to carry high-echelon passengers, what the military call DVs or distinguished visitors. The plane is crewed by the Air Force. The interior sighs with comfort. It carries all the materials needed to conduct official business aloft. The ranking passenger is Ron Brown, Secretary of Commerce. The area has been ripped apart by one of those period tribal wars and the Secretary of Commerce has the job of getting the economy back on its feet.
Dubrovnik is a small airport that had been close for years after being thoroughly trashed by the Serbs, who had gone out of their way to destroy the instrument landing system. Further, the rain isn't letting up and visibility is low.
The 737 receives advice to use the airport at Split if their first attempt at Dubrovnik fails. Split occupies a warm place in my heart. My cousin Ron and I, along with Flory, Dixie Browngardt, and Moose Maeder, were driving a Volkswagon through the hinterlands of what was then Yugoslavia, we were short on maps and the country was short on street signs. The paved road turned to gravel, then to dirt, then into a twisting cow path edged by steep bluffs. Finally we groaned over a heap of rocks and found a paved road with a street sign. Split was one way. Eps was the other way. Neither carried any particularly heavy semantic weight -- or any at all for that matter. Thanks for your kind attention.
Soon after the 737 is cleared for landing, radio contact is lost. The airplane has crashed into a mountain and everyone of the trade delegation and crew are killed. The Air Force investigation finds a multitude of causes. Heads roll, technology is updated, rules modernized.
It would have been bad enough if the aircraft had been carrying merely ordinary passengers -- but more than 35 diplomats, businessmen, and a cabinet secretary? The series is very neatly done. All the parts -- the expert witnesses, the reenactors, the newsreel footage of the crash site, and the CGI work, are done almost flawlessly. And a fine episode if you want to hear what the Croation language sounds like.