Skyhook

by John J. Nance

  Jim had the camera hauled in and secured, and Scott fired the engines before the cutter crew had finished hauling out their boat. The takeoff was made in relative silence, the long rays of the setting sun just disappearing as they flew up the channel. Forty minutes later, Scott opted for a landing on the hard surface of the Valdez airport rather than risk the water in the dark.

  They were waiting for a taxi back into town when Scott sat down on a log by the edge of the tarmac and handed something small and plastic to April.

  “What’s this?”

  “The VCR tape.”

  “What? I thought you gave it to—”

  “I gave him the one that was in the machine. This was the one I ejected from the machine before he came aboard.” She could see an almost ear-to-ear grin in the subdued light of a nearby sodium-vapor lamp.

  “I don’t believe this! Thank you!”

  “So … that make up for the cigar?”

  “Yes,” she said without hesitation.

  “And.… maybe I could take you to dinner?”

  “Let’s not get carried away.”

  “The mind boggles at the possible replies to that statement, April.”

  “Seriously, thank you!”

  “Think that’s enough?”

  “Sorry?”

  “To help your dad? Is the tape enough?”

  Jim was seating himself on the same log, having listened to the exchange.

  “I don’t know,” April replied, “but something besides negligence knocked that engine off its mounts, and I think this tape will show that. I can’t tell you how relieved I am.”

  “We can take a better look at the tape when we get back to my place,” Jim said. “Also, there’s a small hotel in town, April. I mean, I’d be honored to have you stay at my house, in my so-called guest room, and I’d even kick Junior here out on the streets to accommodate you, but it’s really not fit for a lady.”

  “Hell, Jim,” Scott laughed, “it’s not fit for a pig, though I’m not complaining. But I’ll be happy to share my space.” Scott winked at her and waited for a response.

  “Now that you mention it, the hotel sounds nice,” April said with an even expression. “Wouldn’t want to crowd you, or see you sleeping in the street.” April opened her cell phone and started to dial Gracie’s number, but a beeping noise greeted her when she pressed the “send” button.

  “Damn. No signal.”

  A pair of headlights cut through the twilight and turned toward the airport road in the distance.

  “Here comes our taxi,” Jim said. “Probably the only fare he’s had all day.”

  “I may still need to raise the wreckage,” April said suddenly.

  Both men looked around at her, but Jim spoke first, shaking his head. “You know, the honor of a boarding party from the Coast Guard usually leads to courtrooms and big, ruinous fines. I’d say we were pretty lucky today, but we stumbled onto something. With all due respect and apologies, April, I don’t think raising that bird’s going to be possible until they get through with their war games and clear the area and give the okay. I’m sorry.”

  The silence grew as the cab moved closer, and April heard Scott McDermott sigh deeply.

  “What?” she asked.

  “It’s not war games,” Scott said.

  “No? What, then?”

  “They’re trying to keep us, and everyone else, away from what we just found.”

  She sat in silence for a few seconds looking at him. “My dad’s plane?”

  Scott nodded.

  “No, that can’t be it. It took political pressure just to get my folks rescued, and the Coast Guard already told me they weren’t interested in raising the wreckage or having anything to do with it.”

  “They knew you were out there with us,” he said flatly.

  “Why … why on earth do you say that?” April asked.

  The car was turning the last corner before reaching them as Scott sighed again.

  “When that lieutenant left, he told Mr. Dobler and Mr. McDermott, and one Ms. Rosen that we could all go.”

  “I remember. So?”

  “So, I introduced Jim and me by our first and last names. I never mentioned your last name.”

  The sound of tires crushing gravel and bright headlights prompted Jim and Scott to get to their feet. April remained sitting, thoroughly stunned, as Scott reached out to help her up. There was the sound of a car door opening.

  “That you, Jerry?” Jim called to the driver as he squinted into the headlights. “What took you so long? And get those damned lights out of our eyes!”

  The passenger door opened, and someone stepped around the front of the car.

  “This isn’t Jerry, Jim. This is Trooper Joe Harris of the state police. Coast Guard says you folks may have a tape that belongs to them.”

  TWENTY FOUR

  THURSDAY, DAY 4 UNIWAVE FIELD OFFICES ELMENDORF AFB, ALASKA

  Notification that the final acceptance test flight had been postponed one more time came in the form of a note Lindsey White left on Ben’s office computer.

  At first Ben didn’t see it when he returned from Dan Jerrod’s office. It was a folded piece of paper literally taped to the upper right side of his computer monitor, and it was a measure of his current state of distraction that he could miss it for more than an hour. That hour had consisted of stressing out over ways to deny the would-be saboteurs a means of recontaminating the master program on the test flight.

  The delay note, when he found it, was tantamount to a stay of execution. All of which meant that Schroedinger would get fed in person for at least one more evening.

  The team was growing exasperated with him, Ben could tell, though no one had been bold enough to say anything. His extreme distraction, moodiness, fatigue, and otherwise un-Ben-like behavior was prompting equally uncharacteristic group behavior in response. The room fell silent now when he walked in, and he could feel their eyes following him. Where normally he was a full member of his own team, suddenly he was an oddity, and more of an annoyance than a team leader. That recognition, however, was doing little to cure the underlying malady of frustration and fear.

  Ben reread Lindsey’s message, wondering what had prompted this new postponement.

  Am I somehow out of the loop and don’t know it? he wondered. It depended on who had made the decision, and that almost certainly would have come from above Joe Davis.

  The basic fact remained, of course, that he did not know who fit the description of enemy. Lindsey and Joe had lied about fitting the emergency disconnect to the Gulfstream. “Hey, Ben,” they could have said, “there’s some major problem in getting that installed in time. Would you agree to fly without it?”

  Ben snorted, startling himself, as he wondered what his answer would have been. He was too compliant, too cooperative to have said no. But they should have asked, because now they, too, looked like the unseen enemy.

  He wandered out to talk to his team members and listen to their exasperated admission that after three days of feverish work they’d failed to find a single glitch in the main program. He refrained, of course, from revealing what the Cray had helped him find. Dan Jerrod’s admonition wasn’t the only reason. It came down to the lonely reality that no one was beyond suspicion.

  When all the research team members had left, Ben sat in silence trying to order his thoughts. Perhaps Jerrod could protect them tomorrow when the test flight finally occurred. Sharing his suspicions with Jerrod had lifted his spirits, but there were too many unanswered questions to feel comfortable.

  A wave of fatigue rolled over him, and he sat at his desk and put his head down to rest for a few minutes, drifting off into a troubled jumble of dreams.

  RESEARCH TRIANGLE RALEIGH-DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA

  Will Martin had been alternately pacing his office and staring out the window for the better part of the morning as he fielded phone calls and tried to stay focused. The delays in Anchorage had passed critical, but pressing J
oe Davis any more was certain to be counterproductive. There was little he could do now but wait and hope and watch the clock before the day began with a security briefing from Todd Jenkins, his corporate security chief. The possibility, however remote, of a major security breach at the most critical moment in Uniwave’s history had easily captured his undivided attention, but with the daughter of a grounded airline pilot asking too many questions and the pilot himself hiring lawyers, the threat of a breach was real.

  “The name is Rosen?”

  Todd Jenkins, the head of Uniwave’s corporate security department, nodded.

  “Yes, and it’s getting more complicated by the hour, with the man’s daughter pushing at the Coast Guard and the FAA for answers.”

  “What does she know?”

  Jenkins had shrugged. “Dan Jerrod’s people are watching,” Todd had replied, referring to the Anchorage-based security chief for Skyhook.

  Will had leaned forward and leveled a piercing stare at Jenkins.

  “I need you in the field. I want you shadowing the situation, too, in person. I don’t trust Jerrod to react in time. This is too serious a situation to take lightly, Todd. Congress is looking for victims among black projects, and if this grounded pilot manages to blow our cover, even a successful flight test won’t save us. I mean, this is survival.”

  Jenkins had nodded and said nothing before taking his leave. His greatest challenge had been to keep a large smile off his face. With twenty-eight years in the CIA covert operations, being confined to a desk job had been killing him.

  TWENTY FIVE

  FRIDAY MORNING, DAY 5 THE PENTAGON WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Major General Mac MacAdams walked from the JCS meeting room with General Lou Cassidy after finishing the top secret briefing on the Boomerang system.

  “Surprised, Mac?” Cassidy asked when they were back behind his office door.

  “‘Flabbergasted’ would be a good word, Lou. I expected we’d have at least a month for the first installation, but fifty units installed within the next ten days?”

  “Right from the Oval Office, Mac. Can we do it?”

  Mac nodded. “Well, yes … physically. I mean, part of the planning quite a while ago was to have black boxes made up and ready to receive final circuit boards and hard drives for immediate installation.”

  “Great thinking, too. I’m still impressed that you got it down to the level of such industrial simplicity, with over a year to test all the subcomponents.”

  “Thanks. The parallel effort out of Wright-Patterson has been handled very efficiently. My latest count shows the entire C-l7 fleet, one hundred eighty C-141s, and all the operational C-5s have completed the hardware retrofit.”

  Cassidy nodded. “Just slide the little sucker in the bracket, turn the cyberlock, and she’s operational.”

  “With codes as secure as the President’s launch code.”

  Cassidy nodded. “I think it was a much better idea to have the same established office that handles the nuclear codes choose the codes for Boomerang. One-stop shopping with proven security.”

  “Are we ready for the bomber fleet? Do we really want to do that?”

  Cassidy shook his head. “No. We have another system planned for which you have no immediate need to know.”

  “Yes, sir,” Mac replied, glad that he hadn’t been handed one more weighty responsibility on the spur of the moment.

  Cassidy leaned forward. “Mac, really good job in there, by the way.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re headed back to Anchorage?”

  Mac nodded. “Immediately. A few loose ends have to be sewn up, including tonight’s final acceptance test, but otherwise, we’ll make it work.”

  Cassidy showed him to the door, and Mac collected his aide from Cassidy’s outer office and headed down one of the maze of corridors past a portion of the Pentagon’s rebuilt western side, which had been hit in the 9/11 attacks.

  Lieutenant Colonel Anderson caught his sleeve at one point. “Sir? The car will be waiting on the north side.”

  “I’m going in a different car, Jon.”

  “Sir?”

  “You take the car you arranged. I’ll take the other one.”

  “Okay. We go separately.”

  “Yep,” Mac said, rather enjoying the confusion on Anderson’s face as he tried to keep up.

  “If it makes a difference, sir, I did bathe and use deodorant this morning.”

  “At long last!” Mac joked. “But you still can’t go with me.”

  “Very well, sir. But I assume plausible deniability,” Anderson said.

  Mac stopped him and turned to put a hand on his shoulder. “No. Complete deniability. Take your car, Jon. I’ll see you on board.” He started to turn away, then looked back at the colonel. “Jon, I’m pulling your chain. I’m actually going over to Arlington National to pay my respects to an old friend I lost long ago.”

  “Understood, sir. I’m sorry I pressed.”

  Mac watched his aide disappear in the right direction before walking to an interior courtyard driveway, where his driver was waiting. The unmarked car moved immediately into the throng of traffic around the Pentagon and smoothly accelerated to the north, pulling up to a back gate into Arlington National Cemetery a few minutes later. The guard verified the credentials the driver held up and waved them through.

  Mac had visited Arlington many times during his career. Robert E. Lee’s home, the Custis-Lee Mansion, was his favorite spot, but the revered anonymity and peace that permeated Arlington was something he’d always sought.

  “We’re here, sir,” the driver announced.

  “Thank you. You know where to wait for pickup.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mac removed his hat and put on a light, non-uniform raincoat to hide all vestiges of a uniform.

  The day was cloudy and cool, but invigorating nonetheless, and he made his way down a familiar path, stopping for a second near the Coast Guard Memorial, then proceeding to a grove of trees near the end of Dewey Drive, where a tall, blond woman in a long black coat was standing, reading the inscription of a large headstone.

  Mac came up beside her quietly, reading the same headstone.

  “He died the day before the Normandy landing,” Mac said quietly.

  “So I see,” she replied, not looking at him.

  “How are you, Lucy?”

  “On a four-year-long, exhilarating, exhausting high. How about you?”

  “The atmosphere isn’t as rarified as where you’ve been living, but … it’s been an interesting couple of years.”

  “Is the program ready?”

  Mac sighed, a thousand worries tied into one moment of decision.

  “Yeah. We’re ready if we have to be. The list still the same?”

  She nodded. “It is. Discovery would destroy us, Mac. We need to get it right the first time. You realize how important this is to the President personally, don’t you?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Maybe, but I’m not sure you fully understand the depth of his resolve.”

  “The timetable?” he asked.

  “It’s concurrent with the Pentagon’s schedule. I assume the plan is the same for the containers?”

  “Yes. Two per crate, manifested as one, and handled the way we agreed.”

  “And no problems as yet?”

  “I’ve … had a few anxious moments, including this morning in Cassidy’s office, but they’ve all been containable questions, no pun intended.”

  She chuckled. “Right. Good luck, Mac,” she said, turning away and strolling casually toward the adjacent roadway. Mac forced himself to stay focused on the gravesite before him, even kneeling down and putting on his reading glasses before standing and stealing a look around.

  She was nowhere to be seen.

  Mac checked his watch and turned to the south. He could see the car waiting at the appointed spot through the trees. With luck, they could lift off from Andrews by 11:30 A.M. lo
cal for the nearly seven-hour flight, putting them into Elmendorf at 2:30 P.M. He caught himself sighing and longing for sleep. There was a comfortable couch on the Air Force Gulfstream, and he’d have to take advantage of it, since the evening would involve some very long hours aboard an AWACS.

  TWENTY SIX

  FRIDAY MORNING, DAY ASPEN HOTEL VALDEZ, ALASKA

  A telephone rang somewhere in the darkened hotel room, jangling April back to consciousness. She rolled to the left to reach for it before remembering that she wasn’t in her apartment. She sat up in the pitch darkness, feeling for the edge of the bed, unable to dredge up a memory of the previous evening, or where she was now.

  Okay, wait … I was in Sequim, then …

  As if flipping a switch, her memory flooded back, bringing with it a depressing recollection of the previous night.

  Valdez! I’m in a hotel in Valdez.

  The phone was still ringing somewhere to the left and she flailed around in search of it, knocking something off the nightstand as her hand found the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “April? Gracie. I’m sorry to wake you.”

  “S’ okay,” she said, rubbing her eyes, then trying to find the lamp. “I had to get up anyway to answer the phone.”

  She could hear Gracie sigh in response. “You awake enough to talk to me about last night?”

  “You got my message, then,” April said.

  “Yes, but … I can’t figure out why you couldn’t get hold of me last night.”

  “Maybe …’cause someone else had hold of you last night?”

  April smiled to herself as Gracie squirmed on the other end and cleared her throat. “I was on my boat, alone.”

  “’Kay. I’m awake now, and we’ve got a big problem. We found Dad’s plane, I got pictures of it on an underwater video, and the Coast Guard took it.”

  “Wait!” Gracie interrupted. “Slow down. Tell me everything that happened, in order. You say you found the Albatross and had a tape of it, and the Coast Guard took it?”