by C. F. WALLER
We fly an hour to a ship that’s waiting to re-fuel us, but it’s not the same commercial operation that fueled us previously. This one is a military ship flying an Indonesian flag. At least there’s a flag. We are ordered to stay in our seats, which is a change from the hospitality shown only a few days earlier. Previously, we rode over to the refueling ship and used the restroom, then ate lunch. These men appear tense and on full alert.
A uniformed man with a drawn pistol watches us. This is surreal. I fear that when John’s plane got here there may have been violence, but it’s possible this isn’t where the other seaplane refueled. When I ask the security guy guarding us, he shrugs, signaling with his hands that he doesn’t speak English. A little bit later his walkie-talkie goes off and he is asked a question in English. When he replies in a language that’s unfamiliar, it’s clear he lied to me earlier.
I try John’s cell number three times, but only get the answering service. I can’t tell if this is him just missing the call or something more. Why didn’t he listen to me?
“What’s this look like to you?” Dexter whispers, bumping his shoulder to mine.
“Like you were right,” I concede, nodding at the man holding the pistol.
“I get that a lot. Since you’re the Government spy, I should probably ask you what’s going on?”
“Not a spy,” I shake my head. “Last week I was working at the mall.”
“Funny,” he crosses his arms over his chest and sighs.
“You said this wasn’t what it looks like?” I remind him, receiving a nod in return. “Neither am I.”
At the dock in Perth, John is nowhere to be seen, which is not breaking news to me. The dive guys are gone before I realize it, having hopped a private plane for Sydney. It’s not one of Hal’s planes either. It would appear that they chartered it all by themselves. They took the opportunity to get off this rollercoaster ride as fast as possible. Dexter did say this wasn’t their first Rodeo.
I receive a ride from a hired service to a decent hotel with strict instructions not to leave the property. A note from Hal, presented by the driver in a white envelope, promises a car will come for me the next day. I enjoy a burger and fries in the hotel bar, then sit on a stool watching CNN on a flat screen hanging behind a rack of fancy bottles. I expect some news about the underwater airport, but there’s no mention of it. They probably haven’t had time to break the story. As a matter of fact, other than a brief pause to inform the viewers about recent soccer scores, all the news revolves around the same thing.
Hostilities between China and the United States have escalated into a naval standoff in the South China Sea. Adding to the already tense situation, North Korea is accusing Japan of crossing into it’s airspace. Opinions are bandied about the bar on whose fault it is, but after an hour I head back to my room for some shut eye. As I lay in bed for over an hour, weary eyes staring at the ceiling, I am surprised by how much John’s situation bothers me. It’s been a long time since I cared about anything.
Chapter Twelve
The next day I find myself on a C-130 headed for home. There are plenty of crates tied down in the cavernous belly of the plane, but I sit alone on a jump seat. Due to the Naval build up in the Pacific, we fly to Panama City, which is a southern detour of thousands of miles. We are avoiding the pacific rim, staying well south of the hostilities. As armed men unload the plane, I wander off to one side smoking. At least these guys have American flags on their uniforms.
A silver Mercedes weaves its way across the tarmac, pulling up near me. The tinted window rolls down revealing a familiar face in the driver’s seat.
“Why Agent Katz, what brings the CIA to Panama?” I needle her, dropping my cigarette, then stepping on it with the toe of my shoe.
“Get in.”
“We aren’t going back to the States?”
“Just get in.”
I wait for further clarification, but grow weary of her glare. I nod at my rolling suitcase and the trunk pops up. Some things don’t change.
We ride in silence, passing through a run down market area, until we reach huge black gates watched over by armed military. The words United States Embassy are loud and proud on a bronze plaque next to the gate. Anna flashes her ID, then I am forced to produce my own. I panic momentarily, thinking my own passport is a forgery, but hand it over at Katz’s urging. I smile nervously when the guard leans down to peer in the car. He takes turns looking at each of us, then back at the passports. It feels like TSA on steroids.
Apparently, mine is a very good forgery, or possibly an actual passport given this is my new name. They pause for two full minutes before they sign off on Katz’s entry, taking turns scrutinizing her ID. She doesn’t look concerned, but the wait feels ominous. Is there something about the CIA that requires more secure vetting, or are they on high alert?
We pass, unmolested, then park in back. Anna plows inside, leading me down a long corridor where we have to show our I D again and walk through a metal detector at an armed security point. I receive an uncomfortable pat down from a male guard, who is not remotely as polite as the TSA at an airport. They test my hands for explosive residue by wiping them with tiny round tissues, then place them in a machine. Katz acts like all of this is normal, seeming almost bored. Once cleared, we walk down two more halls before getting into an elevator.
“Long walk back to fresh air for a cigarette,” I suggest, drawing rare eye contact from my babysitter.
“You got bigger things to worry about.”
The ride goes down, rather than up. We travel an unknown distance, but safe to say five floors minimum, before we bounce to a stop. Katz stays on the lift, pointing me down a poured concrete hallway. When I don’t heed her immediately, she silently points a second time, reminding me of the ghost of Christmas Yet To Come in A Christmas Carol. I go as instructed, but stop after a few yards and look back. The doors have already closed, the lights overhead indicating it’s moving up.
“Don’t stay on my account,” I grumble, wondering where the mysterious Agent Katz is off to now.
I pass a half dozen doors, all closed. At the end of a hallway, which ends abruptly after a left turn, is an open door. Inside are three men in dark suits, but one I already know.
“Will you two excuse us,” Hal motions for the others, who leave.
There’s a good size round table with some sort of intercom device in the center. Large flat screens cover two walls, with dry erase boards on the others. Green lines and circles fill the closest board, almost certainly the diagram of a sports play. They must have an embassy soccer team. Green paper files litter the area in front of Hal, who puts out his hand to shake.
“Great work out there.”
“Thanks.”
He sits and motions for me to do the same. A guy in a white army uniform enters and sets a clear glass pitcher of water down, then leaves two glasses. Hal pours one, then looks to me. I nod and he fills the second glass, pushing it down the table. It bothers me that there are no coasters, condensation is already forming on the smooth wooden surface. Why is that my biggest concern?
“The pictures from the dive guys are horrific,” he sighs, flipping open a file with color 8x10’s taken from the video I preciously saw in the nerd’s cabin.
“I didn’t see any coverage on the news?”
“And you won’t,” he shakes his head.
“How’s that possible?”
“Bigger fish to fry at present.”
“You mean the impending war between China and the U. S.?”
“China, the U. S., Japan, North Korea—,” he rattles on, but I stop him.
“Still, it’s a pretty big story to sit on.”
“That’s true, but it’s all chunks of a bigger puzzle.”
“How so?”
“Stop and think. How big of a conspiracy would it take to hide the disappearance of three dozen commercial airliners?” he thumps a finger on the tabletop.
“I thought it was eighteen?�
�� I argue, then think some of those were smaller. “Wait, only nine big ones.”
“There’s more.”
“How many?”
“That’s not important,” he waves a hand dismissively. “Stick with me on the cover up.”
I nod, wondering how the total population of the airplane grave yard could be unimportant, but save the query for later. Plenty of time to circle back around.
“So, that many people go missing, not to mention the employees, ground personnel and families. How wide a net would that sort of cover up have to throw?”
This had not occurred to me previously. People waiting to pick up their loved ones in an airport, but the plane never comes? The Malaysian deal was huge news, but there were a bunch of planes down there. Hal does pose an interesting question. I shrug and motion for him to continue.
“The next obvious problem is how did they all get there?”
“Had to have been deliberate. Some sort of pilot conspiracy?”
“So, you imagine all those flight crews just switched off their beacons and flew out the same place and ditched?”
“Drank the Kool Aide,” I shrug. “Decided to create their own Jim Jones memorial at the bottom of the ocean.”
“You’re smarter than that.”
“You got a better explanation?”
“They were all auto piloted to that location. A wireless signal took over control of the airplane, then depressurized the cabin to control the passengers and crew.”
“Depressurized manually or gained enough altitude to bleed off the cabin pressure?” I ask, hoping to surprise him with second hand knowledge acquired from the dive guys.
“Either,” he mumbles, eyeing me for a full minute before moving on. “Depressurized, then navigated via waypoints.”
“Waypoints?”
“Waypoints use latitude and longitude coordinates that define invisible routing paths for navigation. They are common GPS points that all airlines use to navigate,” he explains. “On a map, it looks like highways in the sky. The pilot enters a series of waypoint numbers, then the airliner flies to each in the order they were entered.”
“Isn’t it dangerous having all the planes flying on the same roads. Sounds like a recipe for fender benders.”
“It’s a wide road, plus they use altitude like levels on a parking structure,” he explains. “Put a thousand feet or more between them and it’s not a problem.”
“A three-dimensional highway,” I mutter, then try and steer the conversation back to the graveyard. “But it’s basically autopilot?”
“More like pre-selection.”
“And you think it was the pilots?”
He shakes his head.
“So, who, or what, entered the waypoint numbers?”
“Back up a little. Remember, I said they were hijacked electronically.”
I nod.
“The cabins were depressurized to control the crew and passengers, then flown to the ditch location. The airliners circled until their fuel was exhausted, then the auto land feature was used to put them down easy.”
“Auto land?”
“Yeah, it’s a thing now. Some of them had it.”
“A computer managed to get all those planes down via a water landing in one piece? That seems pretty unlikely.”
“Some of them were landed manually by the rogue signal.”
“What, like remote control?”
“Yeah, the entity involved didn’t want too much debris leading search parties to the location. Even so, several pieces of the Malaysian jet did wash up on the east coast of Africa last year.”
“Your dive guys seemed to think it was impossible to keep them intact on the way down. They couldn’t figure how the air inside didn’t implode the fuselage?”
“Right, you’ve been hanging out with the science club,” he smirks. “There were plenty of holes in most of them from the water landings, but some of them were on their backs on the bottom with their landing gear down,” he uses his hands to demonstrate. “Or up as the case may be, when they are on their backs.”
“Wouldn’t the gear be ripped off when they hit the water?”
“They were set down with the gear up, then once they began to float the gear was deployed.”
“Opening up the inside to flood.”
“A few of them had the ability to blow the emergency doors remotely, but for the most part they just floundered and went down in one piece, more or less.”
It’s seems implausible that anyone could hijack and sink a fleet of airliners without being discovered. Not to mention the military fighters. Even though I saw them with my own eyes, it’s very difficult to imagine. Wait, did he use the word entity to describe the perpetrators? Why would he use that word?
“So who did this? Who’s the mysterious entity responsible?””
“We did.”
“The United States government hijacked and sank all those planes. To what end?”
“Not the government per se,” he shakes his head, a hand up to defer direct blame. “A prototype surveillance device was lost, and we believe that’s what set this series of events in motion.”
“By that, you mean the airplane graveyard?”
“Yes,” he nods and pauses. “That and the China thing.”
“How are those two things related?”
“Do you recall how the China thing started?”
“They shot down two of our jets flying over international waters?”
“That’s what the news is reporting, but we rescued a pilot who managed to eject before he got hit. He claims the Chinese fighter passed by him before his wingman shot down the first F-18. He reported the canopy had been ejected and there were no pilots flying the attacker.”
“He’s probably confused. He couldn’t have gotten a clear look at those speeds.”
“Claims it flew right alongside like it was in a formation. He got hit from behind by the second fighter and ejected soon after.”
“How do you get hit by a sidewinder missile and eject after?”
“The Chinese didn’t use missiles. They only used the guns.”
“Why?”
“Air to air missiles would be visible to the satellites. This way there weren’t any pictures.”
“Creating a veritable he said, she said?”
He nods.
“Are you suggesting the Chinese fighters were hacked remotely?”
“Yes, then the radios disabled and the crews ejected,” he sighs. “There’s a J-16 sunk three miles from the bones of Malaysia 370. We already know they can be hacked.”
“What did the Chinese pilots say? Assuming they got picked up and rescued.”
“No sign of them. We think they were ejected at an un-survivable speed, their transponders turned off so China couldn’t retrieve the bodies. After the attack, the J-16’s flew back in the direction of home, but China claims they never got there.”
“But it makes China look as if it’s lying?”
He nods.
“And this was done by some prototype that was stolen from us?”
“Not stolen so much as escaped,” he remarks, pulling a file folder out and pushing an 8x10 black and white photo across the table. “That’s the Tesla 2 prototype surveillance drone. It was developed by the Airforce, in a partnership with Talus, a computer company in Bowie Maryland.”
I turn the photo around and study it. It looks like a kite made out of solar panels. There’s a wide wing surface with two props. The props are concealed in open ended rings. The entire thing is translucent, like glass, allowing a view of the insides. It’s about the size of an SUV, maybe smaller. The longer I stare, the more I am reminded of the Wright Brothers. The drone has only one wing, as opposed to the dual wings of the Wright Flyer, but they both have two propellers. If the design works, don’t fix it.
He slides me a second photo that reveals a series of cameras along the bottom. A big one that moves and several smaller ones that remind me of closed circuit camer
as with fish eye lenses.
“Why Tesla?”
“The drone is one hundred percent solar powered. It’s self-sufficient and never has to land. It has an altitude ceiling of 50,000 feet with a top speed of around 170 knots.”
“And you think it’s hacking jets and either crashing them or using them as weapons? Why would it do that?”
“We don’t know. Nothing in the design remotely explains this.”
“When did you lose it?”
“2004.”
“The military must be years ahead from a technology stand point. How did you manage to build this way back then? Even if you had the solar panels and batteries, which seems unlikely, what sort of brain did you give it? I didn’t even have a cable modem in 2004.”
“The brain, as you put it, is the problem in this case,” he rubs his forehead. “Have you ever heard of a Quantum Computer?”
“The term yes, in practice no?”
“Talus was working on a Super Cooled Quantum Computer. It’s pretty technical, but basically, it’s a new kind of processer chip in a vat of liquid nitrogen. Technically, it’s a stack of chips,” he explains, sliding me another photo.
This picture shows giant tanks that remind me of the cryo-tanks wealthy people have their bodies frozen in. I think Walt Disney’s head is floating around in one. He slides over a second photo, but this one shows a cube on a white table. It glows blue and frosty gas escapes from a hole in the side. Turning the picture, I see an exit door in the background. By the scale I’d say this little box is no more than two feet wide.
“And you put this cube in your prototype electric drone?”
“Yes, to manage the solar array and make the calculations to keep it airborne, the project required something fast. Not to mention it was shooting HD long range spy footage.”
“How’d you lose it? Am I looking at the real life incarnation of Sky Net?”
“Not funny.”
“Sorry,” I shake my head, thinking my observation was witty. “Was it artificial intelligence or something?”
