Free Fall
Page 22
When Hooper went to the kitchen for a fresh coffee, investigators Jayden Kennett and Vernon Nall were having a heated discussion.
“What’s up, fellas?” Hooper asked.
“Did you see Cal Marshall and Stuart Shore on CTNB last week?” Kennett asked.
“Yeah, I caught it online after it aired.”
“We think Shore came close to identifying the technology with Project Overlord,” Kennett said.
“Could be,” Hooper said. “I don’t know a lot about Overlord. I was never part of it. It was a long time ago and classified. You guys ever touch it?”
“No, I didn’t have the clearance. It was beyond us,” Kennett said.
“But you’re thinking it’s something we need to look into?” Hooper asked.
“I think so,” Nall said. “Last night I went to the game with Cal Marshall.”
“You know Marshall?”
“Our wives are cousins,” Nall said. “Anyway, he told me he’s hearing rumors on the grapevine about Overlord. Something’s buzzing about it.”
The lunchroom door closed behind Bill Cashill, who’d been standing in the doorway.
“Overlord was abandoned. It never happened,” Cashill said. “So let’s just kill any cockamamie ideas about it having any bearing on EastCloud and Shikra.”
“Were you on the project, Bill?” Nall asked.
“No. It was a very select group back then, people from the military, industry, systems, FAA. There were two NTSB people on it—Elwood King, who died a few years ago of cancer, and John Carmody, who fell off a cliff last summer while hiking in New Zealand.”
“Hang on, hang on.” Hooper snapped his fingers at a memory. “I think a guy I worked with a few times from the industry had mentioned once that he’d worked on Overlord.”
“Who was that?” Cashill asked.
“Robert Cole.”
“Robert Cole? The guy who became a drunk and lost his marbles? The guy who calls us on every investigation with his wild-ass theories?”
“You know he worked with Richlon-Titan on their fly-by-wire system.”
“So?” Cashill’s face tightened. “Where’re you headed here, Jacob?”
“I just don’t think, given the current context, the FBI, the emails, that we can categorically rule out a cyber breach of the system in both planes.”
“A cyber hack?” Cashill began shaking his head bitterly. “We’ve been down this road a dozen times. We know the systems. It can’t happen. What you’re suggesting is a distraction.”
“It’s our duty to be open-minded and investigate all scenarios.”
“We have no real evidence!” Cashill raised his voice.
“But the emails,” Nall said.
“The emails came out after the fact! They’re post-incident claims!” Cashill said. “They’re nothing but typing from a disturbed mind! The FBI’s searching for the sender to charge them for making threatening claims, not interfering with flights, because that’s impossible.”
“Is it, Bill?” Hooper asked. “Do you know this conclusively?”
“Are you challenging me, Jacob?”
Hooper said nothing.
“Listen to me.” Cashill held a finger near Hooper’s face. “With EastCloud, everything points to pilot error, and with Shikra, everything points to errors in maintenance. I’m ordering you to stop this bullshit search for ghosts in the machine and to focus on reality. Is that clear?”
Cashill looked at his three investigators one by one.
“Now get back to work,” he said before leaving.
At his desk, Hooper dragged his hands over his face.
He could not and would not let go of the real fear that someone had discovered a back door into the system or a wireless jump point—that they’d somehow found a way to override the plane’s security software and gain access to the flight-critical system.
The faces of the Heathrow tragedy stared at him.
Then he noticed his discarded phone messages from Robert Cole.
Fifty
Clear River, North Dakota
It’s the coding.
Robert Cole stared hard at the screen of his laptop, then at the pages of notes and calculations spread across the dining room table.
It’s the decision logic in the Omega Protection system.
In the days since he’d recovered his lost files from the second-hand dealer in Bismarck, he’d worked nonstop on repairing RT’s fly-by-wire system. With his redesign he’d firewalled the vulnerability of the kill switch network, absolutely securing it against any attack. Then he’d checked and double-checked and triple-checked his work. Then he’d reviewed it again and again, until he’d been satisfied.
This is it. This will fix the problem in the control system.
Cole sat back in his chair, scratched the stubble on his chin, pushed back his hair that had curtained in front of his face, and downed the last of the tepid coffee in his cup. His next problem was getting his solution to the NTSB and convincing them that he was not the drunken shell of a man that they thought he was.
At least not anymore.
He’d go to Jake Hooper because he was the only person in Washington, the only investigator, with whom he had a slim chance of being heard. The truth was Hooper had never responded to his recent calls, but in the time after Cole had lost Elizabeth and fallen into the abyss, Hooper was the only one who’d acknowledged him, taking the time to speak with him, asking how he was doing.
Even when I called him drunk and out of my mind he was there.
He’d go to Hooper and beg for ten minutes, just ten minutes, and he would show him the problem and the solution. Cole had to do it. He had to make them understand before it was too late.
Before more people died.
Cole hadn’t checked the news for the latest developments on the investigations into the London and New York incidents. He went online, scrolling through news sites from the United States and the UK. Finding a recent article from Newslead, he began reading.
A potential puzzle piece has emerged in the mystery surrounding the horrific crash of a jetliner at London’s Heathrow airport and the near-tragic incident experienced by a New York–bound commuter plane.
Coming to the paragraphs concerning the FBI “examining cryptic communications made by someone claiming to have knowledge of what is behind both events,” Cole read faster. His breathing quickened as he saw that the FBI was attempting to locate “a person or persons of interest.”
Looks like a break in the case. They must have a lead, he thought, racing to finish the story, slowing when he read about the emails sent by “Zarathustra” to Newslead and the Kuwaiti Embassy in London. Cole read the excerpt in which the sender had written:
“...tell the ordinary masses that we are extraordinary people destined to soon achieve a monumental victory of a colossal scale, the likes of which the world has never seen. We will take civilization to unprecedented heights, lighting the way forward for all of human existence. We are Zarathustra, Lord of the Heavens.”
Cole froze.
In a buried corner of his heart an alarm sounded, faint at first, telling him what he refused to believe—that the warning’s words, the syntax and the meaning of the passage were familiar.
I know this. Where’s it from?
But he’d no sooner posed the question when the answer hit him like a sledgehammer to his stomach.
“No, no, no!”
He searched helplessly among his papers, manuals and files spread on the table. He rushed to the other stacks of records he’d recovered from the second-hand dealer. He spotted the thick brown envelope from MIT, slid it from the stack and pulled out its contents, starting first with an old letter addressed to him:
Dear Mr. Cole:
I am your daughter Veyda’s doctoral thesis advisor. As you may know, her thesis topic was to advance research in aircraft systems engineering. However, upon her return after the horrible tragedy your family has suffered—for which I offer my deepest and belated condolences—Veyda informed me of her intention to switch the subject of her thesis.
She subsequently produced a hastily pulled together work in another discipline. It was a rambling, nearly incoherent manuscript that bordered on a manifesto, calling for the Third Reich to be praised for its accomplishments. She also argued that Nietzsche’s philosophy of supremacy without consequences should not only be worshipped, but applied in contemporary society in order to advance civilization.
Her thesis committee, supported by the graduate program chair, rejected her submission and suggested Veyda’s tragic loss of her mother may have had a bearing on her emotional and intellectual state. The committee, with whom I concurred, suggested Veyda seek counseling.
At this writing we are unaware of her whereabouts or her welfare.
Mr. Cole, I hope you will understand that I felt a need to bring this matter to your attention privately out of concern for your daughter’s well-being.
Sincerely,
Rachel Rinchley, PhD, Aerospace Engineering
Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
PS—I’ve enclosed a copy of Veyda’s thesis for your reference.
Cole recalled receiving the package when he’d been grieving Veyda’s estrangement from him. He’d been in an inebriated haze when he’d first read it. Now, as he set her doctoral thesis before him, he exhaled slowly and began a meticulous line-by-line examination. With every sentence and every paragraph, the crushing realization soon overwhelmed him.
Veyda had written the emails quoted in the article.
The notes he’d made on her paper confirmed his fear. Chills shot through him as he read every reference to Hegel, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky; and the “extraordinary human whose achievements must be unfettered at any cost, take civilization to unprecedented heights, lighting the way forward for all of human existence.” Then, “Without pain, without blood, there is no birth, no advancement for humanity.”
He burned through the pages and the awful truth screamed at him.
Oh God.
Cole drew his shaking hands over his face to stop the room from spinning as he struggled to absorb the implications.
If Veyda had written the emails, was she also responsible for the Heathrow crash and the EastCloud incident?
News images of the bodies amid the fiery Shikra wreckage, the video of horrified passengers on the EastCloud flight, swirled before him.
Did Veyda cause this? Is my little girl a murderer?
He glanced at his photos: Veyda the diapered baby sleeping on his chest. Veyda on her bicycle. Veyda receiving academic awards.
God, please. No.
Maybe she’d written the emails but hadn’t hacked into the RT system? The one he’d designed. But she was brilliant. She’d studied the engineering of systems much of her academic life. This could be Veyda’s revenge for Elizabeth’s death.
In killing my mother, you killed part of me. I no longer want you in my life. I never want to see you again. You are not my father and I am not your daughter.
Veyda’s words hammered against his brain and his heart.
Cole had to do something.
I’ll call the FBI. I’ll tell them.
Suddenly he envisioned a SWAT team descending on Veyda, wherever she was. They could hurt her. Or she could hurt herself.
They could kill her.
No, he couldn’t, he wouldn’t, go to the FBI.
No, this is my fault. I created this monstrous situation! I have to find her. Veyda’s mind is broken. She needs help. I have to find her, get a lawyer, surrender her properly and bring this all to an end.
But how?
He held his head in his hands, listening to the table making soft vibrations from his trembling as he searched for an answer. He needed a drink. There were bottles at the hangar. He could go get them, take a drink, just one to help him think.
No. No. That’s not what he needed.
He got up, washed his face, put on a clean shirt and combed his hair. He sat before his laptop, activated his camera and microphone and made a short video. After three takes he’d settled on one and replayed it, watching himself, tears in his eyes as he pleaded to his daughter.
Cole knew full well the risks he’d face at every turn if he released this video. But he had no choice. Lives were at stake and time was running out.
Fifty-One
Hyattsville, Maryland
Veyda’s monitor came alive with a blizzard of tiny animated planes representing the nearly six thousand commercial flights moving over the continental United States at this moment.
Look at them. Throngs of ordinary people speeding to their destinations.
She studied the living, breathing activity with the fascination of a self-appointed god looking over a thriving anthill. She was proud of the work she and Seth had done.
Now it’s time we enlighten the world.
Veyda clicked and her monitor changed to show activity by specific airline. Another click and the screen showed flights in and out of specific airports and hubs. She sampled them, clicking on Atlanta, then Albuquerque, then Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Fargo, Houston, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Omaha, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Raleigh, San Diego and so on.
She clicked again and she saw flights by aircraft make and model. Another click showed all traffic over each state. Another showed specific routes. Another click showed control towers across the United States. Then she clicked on radar approach facilities, then traffic control centers.
“It’s a technological wonder—a beautiful, powerful tool, Seth!”
“We’re set,” he said, placing luggage at the front door. “Just have to lock on to the selection, employ our software, enter our codes and we’re good.” He surveyed the equipment on his worktable, deciding on which laptops he needed to take with them.
At her desk, Veyda leaned forward, staring deep into her monitor and thinking.
What about Kate Page?
Veyda hadn’t landed on the punishment she wanted to administer to that insolent, insufferable Gamma girl.
We haven’t seen any new stories. What’s up with her?
Veyda’s keyboard clicked and she browsed Kate Page’s private information through the path Seth had created. Nothing new jumped out at Veyda until...
Wait...what’s this? I don’t believe it!
“Seth, come here and look at this!” Veyda tapped her monitor. “Look!”
Seth drew his face to the screen.
“Damn, she’s just boarded a flight to Los Angeles. Wow!” he said.
“Can we adjust things to capitalize on it?”
“Let me see.”
Seth moved to his desk and began working, clicking on graphs, charts and maps, making calculations while Veyda studied the new information. Kate Page had a round-trip flight from Kennedy to LAX.
Why’s she going to California? What’s that girl up to? Is she on to something? Working something with the FBI? It doesn’t matter. We’re too far advanced to be stopped. If anything, this is a gift, a golden opportunity.
“Okay, done,” Seth said.
“So we can do it?”
“Yes, it was easy. We just need to fine-tune the coding, but it also means we’re changing our plans.”
“Great.”
“We’ve got a little over two hours. Are you done packing?
”
“Almost.”
A chime notification sounded on one of Seth’s laptops.
“What’s that?” Veyda asked.
“I set up a notification alert for anything that comes up online with your name or my name.”
Seth clicked on a new video posted online.
“Oh, no,” he said.
“What is it?”
Seth moved so Veyda could meet the face of her father, Robert Cole. Seth looked at her. She blinked as her face tightened with anger.
“Play it,” she said.
Her father’s head and shoulders appeared and tears filled his eyes as he pleaded.
“Veyda, sweetheart, this is your father. Whatever you’re doing or thinking of doing, please stop. We have to talk. I’m begging you. I want to help you, and me, too. You know how to reach me. You will always be my daughter and I will always be your father. I love you. Please call me. Please, Veyda.”
For the last fifteen seconds the video showed a montage of photos: Veyda, the toddler, asleep on her father’s chest at his desk; Veyda and her dad with her first two-wheeler; Veyda with her parents at the beach.
Then the video froze.
Nothing in the video identified the family name—but it wouldn’t take long before someone somewhere zeroed in on it.
Veyda stared at the image, not moving. Her nostrils flared, her breathing deepening as emotion raged through her.
“Veyda?” Seth asked. “Are you going to be okay?”
Beyond Seth’s worktable the large TV screen continued playing footage of the Heathrow crash and the EastCloud cabin video. The churning of passengers triggered Veyda’s memory of the car accident that had killed her mother...
Oh my God, Mom, the winters in Cambridge are absolutely cruel...
Then their car was airborne... They were rolling... The screams... Glass shattering, metal crunching... Rolling...rolling... Her mother was pinned under the car...
Her father was shouting... Elizabeth!
Her mother screaming her name... Veyda!
Mom! She was crawling to them...blood webbing her face... Mom! Sirens...shouting...a helicopter...everything turning black...