Six Passengers, Five Parachutes

by Ian Bull

  “Hey, how did you do that? You’re in our system!” Paul says.

  “I hack pretty quick,” Glenn says, without even glancing up. “Check it out.”

  Glenn electronically tosses photos onto the monitor from his computer: an olive-skinned woman with pink hair has two metal devil horns emerging from her forehead. A bald, muscular black man with a shaved head has a row of reptile bumps running down the middle of his skull. And a woman has a peace sign around her neck, but embedded under her skin.

  “Enough!” David shouts.

  The monitor goes dark and Glenn goes back to typing.

  “And they stage and shoot car accidents?” I ask the room.

  Le Clerq answers. “They rig small cameras outside and inside two cars, then the drivers and passengers climb in, and the cars speed at each other and collide. The airbags inflate, and the drivers and passengers walk away uninjured. Then they edit all the camera footage together and sell it as underground performance art.”

  “I just found a video online,” Glenn says.

  Before we can object, a video comes on the monitor. It’s nighttime, and a crowd of people are gathered in an outdoor parking lot with shiny, wet black asphalt that stretches into the darkness. Some are dressed like bikers in black leather, some like pirates, some are clowns, and some are goth punks. All of them have tattoos, wild-colored hair, and from the horns and ears and scales I see on their faces, most are “modified.” The crowd parts to reveal two muscle cars, one bright red, one electric blue, and each is covered with a dozen small cameras like little square warts, mounted on the hood, the windshield, the dashboard, the ceiling, and the rearview mirrors. Two couples walk into frame. The men are dressed like ’70s Elvis Presley in jumpsuits, black wigs, and sunglasses; the women are dressed like Ann-Margret in miniskirts and white go-go boots. The only way to tell them apart is that their outfits match the colors of their cars—bright red and electric blue. The crowd howls as they get in and the cars peel away.

  “My god, those are Gran Torinos,” Le Clerq says. “What a waste.”

  The cars end up about 200 yards apart and face off. The editing becomes rapid. The video cuts to the hood of the car, speeding down the asphalt—the other car approaching—the pavement zooming past—the speedometer pushing sixty—red Elvis and Ann-Margret screaming, then blue Elvis and Ann-Margret screaming in the other car—a street wide shot as they collide—the front of the blue car crunches into the red one—the bodies in each car lurch forward—the video goes into slow motion—the white airbags explode, knocking the red and blue Elvis and Ann-Margret duos back against their headrests.

  We gasp in the conference room. “Awesome,” Le Clerq whispers.

  Men dressed as rodeo clowns smash the windows and pry open the crushed doors with crowbars. Blue Elvis and Ann-Margret step out, unscathed except for ruined hair and crushed glasses. They raise their fists in a victory salute as the crowd cheers. A naked man tattooed like a black and red checkerboard hugs them both.

  The crowd falls silent as the rodeo clowns pry open the red car. The handheld camera runs around the car as the passenger door comes off. Red Elvis and Ann-Margret are making out, their faces smashed together in a deep, passionate kiss. The crowd howls and the video ends.

  “Is that legal?” David asks.

  “No,” Glenn says, reading his monitor. “But they make a lot of money on the DarkNet.”

  “Yet you seem to have no problem finding it,” David asks, his voice sarcastic. “And you’re accessing my computers and servers to do it.”

  “I access secrets. That’s my job,” Glenn says. He shuts his laptop, looking right at David. David gets the message. He’s a Hollywood badass, but Glenn’s a different kind of badass. He’s a nerd warrior.

  Le Clerq leans back, crosses his arms across his immense belly and chuckles to himself. The jerk is that much closer to another paycheck from me, and he knows it.

  “Could these crazies actually shoot Snow’s production?” Steven asks.

  Le Clerq nods. “The shooting part, yes. They know their cameras,” He raises his finger. “But they may not know broadcast. Snow’s production has to transmit all that audio and video. Sending all those images and sounds through cables or microwaves or high-speed Internet? That’s more complicated.”

  Steven’s face lights up. “Call your buddy at Sportcam and tell him you know a Wi-Fi and broadcast expert who can help them with their project, if they’re interested.”

  “But you’re not an expert,” Le Clerq asks.

  “I don’t have to be. We just have to convince them that I am.”

  Le Clerq shakes his head. ‘That’s going to be tough.”

  “Then you don’t get Julia’s second check. All I want is a meeting. We’ll create an identity for me as a fringe outsider. Then, you call and convince your guy at Sportcam to tell them about me. We’ll even toss him some money. Next, you and I will drive out to Arizona for a face-to-face meeting with Peter Heyman, the body mod king.”

  Steven leans against the table with his hands in his pockets, like he’s waiting for a bus. He’s in his zone, which isn’t a good sign.

  “So you’re really serious about doing this?” I ask him.

  “I get five days, just like we agreed. Tell Carl hi when you see him.”

  Le Clerq holds up his cellphone. “Let’s start with a name. Who do you want to be?”

  “I know Seattle from when I was stationed at Ft. Lewis. I’ll be Vic Lowry, an IT expert who worked for Microsoft, stole money, and got in trouble with the law. You work the phones, and I’ll work on my new identity.”

  Chapter 35

  * * *

  Robert Snow

  Day 12: Wednesday Morning

  Tucson, Arizona

  Lionel Bachman, my bitter former JPL engineer, reattaches the metal lid to the microwave transmitter. I can’t believe how small it is; it looks more like an oversized toaster oven than one of the most powerful transmitters in the world. Next to it sits the transmitting antennae, which looks like a gumdrop the size of a small trashcan. He’s also got a GoPro HD video camera that goes into a mother device the size of a printer, and his laptop computer. It all fits on one table in a corner of this vast warehouse.

  “How are we looking, Lionel?” I ask.

  Lionel jumps back in surprise. His black eyes are like laser dots, as if he’s tweaking on speed—at eight a.m., no less. “You scared the shit out of me,” he says.

  “I’ve been standing here for the last five minutes.”

  “Sorry, I get intense when I’m working.” He says, running his hands through his thick black hair and beard. He’s a barrel-chested bear of a man who looks like he should be carrying a rifle in the woods, not wearing a white lab coat and holding a screwdriver.

  “No worries,” I say. “Talk me through it.”

  “We can handle twenty cameras and forty microphones. The video and audio flow into this box first,” he says, pointing at the printer-sized device. “This encrypts the signals. The encrypted signals then flow into this digital microwave transmitter.” He pats the toaster oven in the middle.

  “It’s not very big.”

  “This is NASA-grade. It can transmit 500 miles, and I’ve modified it to carry all twenty signals uncompressed, in the Ku band, right at twelve gigahertz, coming out of this antennae here,” he says, patting at the giant gumdrop with a plastic pipe coming out of it. “This goes on the exterior underbelly of the plane. There’s a GPS homing device built in. Once the studio crew in La Paz picks up the signal on their receiving antenna, they can lock in and continually track the transmission as the plane flies toward them.”

  “And what will they have in La Paz?” I ask.

  “They will decrypt the signals, and twenty different camera angles plus audio will appear on their monitors.” Lionel grins, but looks scared. Sweat pours off him, making his hair and beard glisten and darkening his blue t-shirt.

  “Yet you seem to have concerns,” I say.
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br />   “These machines can’t get knocked around. I need to bolt them into a steel frame inside the cockpit and lock them behind a steel panel.”

  Jim Hardwick is on the other side of the warehouse, in a makeshift machine shop I set up for him, with sheet metal, a lathe, metal racks, rollers to bend and curve metal, and an acetylene torch. “Jim!” I shout. “Can you make a metal rack for these machines, with a secure cover?”

  Jim turns off the metal lathe and shouts back. “You bet. I need an hour.”

  I shrug at Lionel with my palms up. “What else?”

  Lionel’s chest inflates and his nostrils flare. “Give me any video signal and I’ll transmit it perfectly across the Sonoran Desert and the Sea of Cortez to an antenna in La Paz,” he says, pointing westward. “But if you give me crap, I’ll transmit perfect video crap. You get me?”

  “You mean the cameras in the fuselage of the plane.”

  “And their microphones. They must be wired perfectly. Your camera guys have to know their shit!” My engineer is an unemployed genius with an anger problem.

  I hand him a wrench from the next table. “Throw it. You’ll feel better.”

  Lionel screams and heaves the heavy wrench across the warehouse. It smashes against an I-beam and rings like a doorbell. On the mezzanine floor above, all noises stop.

  It’s weird, but the more upset Lionel is, the calmer I become. I put my hand on his shoulder. “You’ll meet Peter Heyman today. His job is to make all the cameras work and give you perfect signals. Your only job is to encrypt and transmit those signals. Your deadline is tomorrow afternoon, when the test flight happens. Focus on that.”

  My phone vibrates with a text: Just landed DC-9 at Ryan. Come see your baby. Pauline.

  “Who wants to see the airplane?” I shout out.

  Tina appears midway down the staircase from the mezzanine. “Who’s invited?”

  “Everybody. Sydney and Kat, you’re coming, too!” I shout up at the mezzanine railing. “Bring your phones and iPads. We’re a moveable office, remember? And Tim, bring your measuring tape and calculator. You’ve got steel boxes to build.”

  “Ooh Rah!” Jim shouts. He’s got a temper as well, but he’s my Marine cheerleader.

  Sweaty Lionel shakes his head, as if amazed he’s sunk so low.

  “Come on, Lionel, you’re with us now,” I say. “It ain’t the Mars project, but this is fun.”

  Hachiro and his punk rock band hurry down the stairs with thick cardboard tubes under their arms. I shout up at them too. “Bring a whiteboard and an easel—whatever you need to make your presentation to me!”

  Ten of us pile into two black Ford Explorers parked behind the loading dock, with Jim driving one and me the other. Tina smiles at me as I tear out of the parking lot, honking. Jim honks and speeds to keep up.

  “Misfits on parade?” Tina asks, squeezing my arm.

  “Misfits on parade!” I yell. That’s our phrase for when we’re in production.

  I love this band of instant brothers and sisters, we lucky few. A group of weird strangers and odd experts who don’t fit in anywhere else, yet I brought us together to make magic happen. Tina knows it too, which is why she trusts me. And one of my secrets is to keep my parade of misfits moving. Never give them time to worry about what they’re doing.

  We zoom through industrial South Tucson, lit up golden by the morning sun bouncing off the yellow landscape, past metal fabricators and paint shops and wrecking yards—the anonymous guts of the desert city where I can score anything.

  “Hachiro! Look around! Anything you need for your build-out is within five miles of us!” I shout into the back seat. In the rearview mirror I can see him glancing around, excited.

  “Compressors…plastic…foam,” he says, reading the signs flying by. “This is good.”

  Soon we’re tearing down Highway 86, which cuts through the open desert, and I flash back to the dozens of other reality shows where I sped through foreign landscapes in production vehicles packed with crazies, racing against the clock to get it all done.

  “This reminds me of Spain,” Tina offers. “That was a tough one.”

  “But I made it happen. And I’ll make this happen, too.”

  “And we’ll finally get rich doing it.” Tina pinches my arm.

  Ryan Airfield appears on our right. Built in the ’40s, it’s a general aviation airport with runways big enough for all sizes of aircraft. But there aren’t many tenants, the hangars are far apart, and there’s plenty of jet fuel for sale. We turn off the highway, and there on the Northwest runway I see my green and blue baby, glinting in the sun—my DC-9 built in 1981, first used by the Canadian government, then leased to touring rock bands in the ’90s, and then used by NGOs to fly doctors and medical gear to poverty zones in Central America.

  And I’m going to crash her into the ocean.

  We head for the frontage road that runs parallel to the outside runways. The gate is wide open and, and a man standing next to a Ryan Airfield service truck waves at us. I slow down and lower my window.

  “Your name is Professor Wayne Kirkpatrick,” Tina reminds me as I come to a stop.

  I give the man a wave. He wears jeans, a short-sleeved shirt, and a sweat-stained cowboy hat. He’s young, but his skin is already chapped like leather from years in the dry desert air.

  “Hi there. I’m Professor Kirkpatrick from the University,” I say.

  “I’m Mike Ahearn. I work with Airjet. We’re the FBO that services the airport.”

  “You got the check I sent you?”

  “We’re all good, Professor. You sure you want to keep your jet way out there?”

  “We’ll set up some pop-up tents and diesel generators out there with some lights—turn it into a campout, so we can work at night, too.”

  “Tight schedule, huh?”

  “We want to get the terrain photos done before too much green grows back. We’re racing against Mother Nature.”

  “I hear you. This road will be yours then. If you need diesel or jet fuel, let us know. And come by the restaurant. We’re open seven to eleven. We have great burgers and sandwiches.”

  “Thanks, Mike, I appreciate it.” I offer him my hand. We shake. If we’re lucky, I’ll never need to talk to him again.

  “Hey, I like your pilot, by the way. She’d fit in well around here.”

  “She’s damn good,” I say. I power my window up as we trade one last wave. I love Arizona; it’s the ultimate “live and let live” state. Mind your own business, and you’ll be fine.

  My heart beats faster as we get close to my plane. “This shit is real now.”

  We park the Explorers under the right wing. The DC-9 is nowhere near as big as an Airbus 340, but she’s still eighty feet long and twenty high. The rear hatch is open and the staircase is down. The sound of the slamming car doors alerts Pauline, who comes bounding down the stairs and onto the tarmac. She’s got short, bleached blonde hair and wears blue overalls over a sleeveless pink t-shirt. For the first time I can see her left arm is completely covered with a sleeve of tattoos. When I interviewed her in Alaska, she was in winter gear.

  “Yowza!” She launches into two cartwheels and comes up right in front of us and does a shimmy dance while singing to herself. “Pauline is happy, Pauline is happy, yeah!”

  “Everyone, this is Pauline, our pilot,” I say.

  Pauline shimmies and dances to music that only she can hear.

  “I like this girl,” Jim says.

  “We like her even more,” Sydney says as her sister Kat nods. Hachiro and his Japanese punk band all whisper, and Lionel just stares, open-mouthed.

  “How does she fly?” I ask, nodding at the plane.

  “Like a thirty-five-year-old jet with no onboard computer. She’s big and slow. But she takes off and lands just fine, and flies in a straight line, which is all she’s got to do.”

  “Any trouble in Texas?”

  “None. They filled her up and handed me the keys, no questio
ns asked. When I got close, I told TAA I was landing here at Ryan, and I set her down with runway to spare.” Pauline bounces from one tennis shoe to another. Looking at her, you’d never guess she’s a former Navy jet pilot turned bush pilot. She’s thirty-five, but looks twenty-five, and at five-foot-five in high tops, acts like she’s fifteen.

  “Let’s look at the inside!” I shout, and wave for everyone to follow.

  Pauline whispers in my ear as we head up the stairs. “This staircase is a drag.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s a drag, literally. I lowered it halfway down mid-flight, and she drank fuel faster than a sorority girl doing shots on spring break. This baby’s got to fly low and slow for 500 miles, so I’ll be burning fuel fast. On that final flight, we should leave the staircase on the runway. Let your boys jump out into a 500-mile-per-hour jet stream.”

  I don’t like the idea of anything being left behind. But I also want to make sure this plane gets to the ocean and crashes past the continental shelf. “Let me work on that,” I tell her.

  The back of the plane is right out of 1970s Playboy. Two rows of deep, swiveling leather chairs face each other, and midway down the aisle, there’s a bar built out of dark wood veneer, with a sink and mirrored shelves for the booze. Deep purple shag carpet covers the floor.

  “Does my plane make you horny, baby?” I ask in my best Austin Powers voice.

  “May I join the Mile High Club, too, Mr. Hefner?” Jim asks.

  Everyone laughs.

  We pass through a small door into the next section. It’s just bare metal floor with electrical wires hanging from the ceiling, with a few suspended lights. Metal cabinets are bolted into the walls. “This is where those amazing doctors fixed all those kids with hare lips,” I announce.

  We pass through one more door into the front section, which is just an empty fuselage with cargo netting still tied to the walls.

  “This is the cargo hold,” Pauline says as we walk the last few yards through the metal toothpaste tube. We reach the cockpit, which is a mass of switches and gauges from before the digital age. “And this is where I make the magic happen.”