“I’ve got to try,” Scott said.
“Okay,” April replied, fatigue vying with disappointment. “Let’s go.”
“No. April, I think you ought to go back with Jim.”
“Why? I’m paying you.”
He smiled and nodded, glancing off to sea for a few moments.
“Yeah, well, there are times I like to fly alone, and this one’s on me, okay?”
She cocked her head. “Straight up, Scott, why don’t you want me along?”
“First, I think you’ll be more productive and relaxed with Jim.”
“That’s a smokescreen. What else?”
“Because I may press a few limits and I don’t necessarily want passengers or witnesses, okay?”
April nodded. “That I understand. You have the satellite phone. Can you call if you spot someone churning away with a wrecked Albatross on deck?”
“Immediately.”
“Because, otherwise, I think we’re screwed. Without that tape, or the wreckage, I’ve got zip to convince the FAA they’re wrong about my dad.”
Scott put his hands on April’s shoulders and drew her closer. She looked up at him and started to speak.
“It’s going to be okay, April. I know it.”
“Well … I can hope,” she said. He could see she was rapidly losing the battle to stay composed, the adrenaline and exertion and disbelief of finding the wreckage gone washing past her emotional limits and down her face. She closed her eyes and let him enfold her, her head on his chest. Scott tightened his arms around her and rocked her gently, patting her as she sobbed. There were disturbing feelings there competing for his attention. Knight-to-the-rescue feelings, and more. But they were far too confusing, and he forced himself to shove the deeper emotions aside and concentrate on the mission as he waited for her tears to subside.
ANCHORAGE, ALASKA
The tenor saxophone had been staring him down for weeks, sitting on its stand in the corner of his living room, but Ben had put off trying to play it until the crunch at work was over. That, as he reminded himself, had followed the year-long period of grief and agony over losing Lisa, a year in which all the music in his soul had gone silent.
He sat now on the black leather couch, staring back at the instrument he’d played so well for so long, recalling the times Lisa had pushed him to take it downtown to a restaurant that featured blues and jazz every Sunday where he’d join the paid musicians he knew for a few sets. He’d loved those sessions, all the more because of Lisa’s smiling face looking up at him from the nearest table, her lips mouthing suggestive things only they understood until neither of them could stand it. A hurried trip back home and a trail of clothes from the garage to the bedroom made those wonderful nights so memorable. The saxophone had been the midwife to those evenings. “The joy of sax!” Lisa had dubbed it.
Sometimes, Ben recalled, they hadn’t made it home before their passion for each other overwhelmed them. The memory of several risky sessions in the backseat of their car made him smile.
He knew what she would say now about the sax, if she could peek into his life for a moment: “Play it for me!” she would tell him. “Life goes on.”
And now his last excuse for putting it off was apparently gone.
Ben sighed and got up, intending to pick up the sax and begin the long process of getting back his proficiency as a musician, but a glimpse of his computer screen flashing at his desk in the corner stole his attention.
Later, he mouthed to the sax, turning instead to his desk, where the screen was urgently reporting that new e-mail had arrived.
Ben triggered the appropriate keys, recognizing the communiqué as unwanted spam. He deleted it and began to turn away when an idea flitted across his mind. He triggered a web search engine and punched up his list of favorite websites, scrolling down until he found the one that provided a direct link to the FAA’s command center in Herndon, Virginia, a program that let anyone track any airborne aircraft.
He found the right page and queried the database, pleased to see that he could effectively replay a particular point from the previous Monday evening, and entered the time they had begun plunging toward the Gulf of Alaska.
Seconds rolled by before the screen lit up with the response from the FAA’s computers, and he worked to zoom in on the appropriate area.
He could find nothing with the Gulfstream’s call sign, Sage 10, but there was one for the AWACS listed as Crown 12. He pushed the program forward in time, watching the blip designating the AWACS move steadily toward the east at the very time the Gulfstream, with him in it, would have been diving toward the water.
The article he’d seen in the Anchorage Times hadn’t given a call sign for the lost amphibian, but it didn’t seem to matter. Without a datablock, he couldn’t tell where the Gulfstream was anyway.
I should have known. This is a time waster.
Ben exited the program and got up, then sat down again, wondering if there was a way to get raw air traffic control data from recent days.
There was a possibility, he decided, that an old friend and reformed hacker named Hank Boston might know a path. Hank, whose infamous screen name was Mastermouse, had quit breaking into computers about two steps ahead of the FBI in the late eighties, and had shifted instead to a lucrative business in protecting computers from people like himself. Ben chuckled at the thought that he’d learned more about computing from the University of Mastermouse than from Caltech. The best part was how much Hank loved airplanes. If there was a way to see what the FAA’s radars had recorded, Hank would know how. Any contact, however, might be monitored, which meant he had to be very careful not to reveal too much.
It might as well be in writing, Ben concluded, pulling an e-mail form onto his computer screen and typing in a message. The effort was probably wasted, he told himself. Hank could be on vacation, in jail, or in some public arcade hunched over a computer game, oblivious to the rest of the world while he saved the earth from the fifty-thousandth alien attack he’d repulsed—for a half-dollar per game.
He sent the e-mail and sat in thought for a moment, wondering what was motivating him so urgently to find out whether the lost amphibian had been close to Sage 10 Monday night. The answer was ridiculously simple and naive and altruistic: revulsion at a senior pilot losing his livelihood to the unknown force of a passing aircraft whose interference might be cloaked in the secrecy of a black project. It was too much to bear, and too great a price to pay. It wasn’t his problem, of course, but in some ways it seemed like it. It was as if the ultimate cause of the Gulfstream’s dive had been his failure to spot the flaws in the program.
Hey! Don’t forget the fatal flaw was the autopilot system. You had nothing to do with that.
But the expected relief from feelings of guilt wouldn’t come.
A “new message waiting” notice was flashing on the screen. Ben clicked through the appropriate sequence to bring up the email, which was from Hank.
That was fast! he thought.
The message was vintage Hank:
Good to hear from you, Benji! Yes, I have a backdoor for what you need, though I wouldn’t trust just anyone. They keep those tapes on computer in several places. I know the one they seldom guard. Give me 30 minutes and I’ll send you a temporary web address that will interface for precisely 12 minutes. After that, it goes poof and can’t be used again. Be ready with the right questions, among which are not How did you do this? Naturally, if you or any of those minions around you are caught or chastised, I will expect you to self-destruct. Goes for that damned cat of yours, too!
Mastermouse
As promised, within a half hour the follow-up e-mail arrived with a lengthy address and additional instructions, which Ben carefully entered. A long listing of database storage disks covering various dates and radar sites suddenly appeared under the FAA’s logo, and he tried to ignore the reality that somehow he was almost instantly inside an FAA computer.
The names of the various air tr
affic radar sites were unfamiliar, but he called up an Alaska map and quickly scanned back and forth between the place names for the area south of Valdez and what was on the radar list. One name in particular stood out, and he selected it. The screen indicated a download of the requested clip, and Ben waited in apprehension, wondering if there was any way the altered identification codes his computer was sending could be discovered and the connection traced back to him.
The download complete, Ben broke the connection, collapsing the communications program and changing his computer’s individual ID code back to normal. He called up the radar information for Monday night then and worked to convert the format to something he could display, finally succeeding. A few more keystrokes and the picture enlarged to full size before him, each recorded sweep of the radar beam bringing a vastly clearer picture than what he’d seen from Herndon.
This was, after all, the raw data. He worked to refine it before identifying the Gulfstream, a task that proved simple once he’d located the AWACS on the screen.
Ben worked through the data, isolating the various blips as they appeared and disappeared, creating projections of their positions and moving them back and forth until the conclusion became obvious.
My God, if that’s the amphibian coming from the southeast to the northwest, we crossed right over or under him at fifty feet! And immediately after that encounter with us, he disappeared for good.
The newspaper article he’d cut out earlier about the crash was sitting next to the keyboard. He reread it now, memorizing the name of the grounded pilot and querying an on-line phone book for his phone number.
Rosen, Arlie. Sequim, Washington. The phone number followed.
Ben copied down the number and punched it into the desk phone before thinking about the possibility that Uniwave—or someone else—might be bugging it. He hung up quickly. The cell phone would be safer, though even digital phones could be monitored by sophisticated agencies. Ben dialed the number and heard the line ring through to a voice mail message. “Ah, Captain Rosen, this is … Ben Cole in Alaska. I’m in Anchorage, and I noticed an article about the loss of your aircraft earlier this week, and there’s something I think you need to know as soon as possible.” He left his number and broke the connection, not entirely sure what he would have said had the pilot answered in person.
Schroedinger was sitting on the adjacent windowsill, watching him with intense disinterest, and Ben looked at him thoughtfully.
“So what do I say to him, boy, when he calls back? ‘Hi, I’m with a government project I can tell you nothing about, but Monday a private jet registered somewhere else making a flight that officially never existed may have theoretically knocked you out of the sky? All you have to do is illegally hack into a government computer and risk ten years in prison and you’ll find the evidence?’ Not exactly a brilliant move.” Ben shook his head in true confusion, acutely aware of the danger.
But the alternative of silence was even worse.
THIRTY EIGHT
SATURDAY, DAY 6 OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK, WASHINGTON
Gracie’s cell phone began ringing as she left the main road through Port Angeles and started up the mountainside toward Hurricane Ridge, twelve miles into the Olympic Mountain Range.
“Rachel, would you answer that for me?”
Rachel Rosen nodded and pulled the phone out of Gracie’s purse, catching it on the fourth ring.
“Mom? Is that you?” the feminine voice on the other end asked as soon as she heard Rachel’s “Hello.”
“April! Oh, honey, where are you?”
“What’s wrong? Where’s Dad? I’ve been trying to reach him.”
Rachel gave her a surprisingly cogent summary. “We’re halfway up the ridge road right now.”
“Gracie saw him?”
“Yes. Sitting, or standing—”
“Standing,” Gracie filled in.
“She says standing by a parking area on the ridge. There was a ranger with him. Where are you?”
“On a small tug headed back to Valdez. Mom, let me talk to Gracie.”
Rachel handed the phone over and Gracie shook her head. “Push the speakerphone feature, Rachel.”
“Where?”
“Lower right-hand corner of the little window. The LED display. That one. Yes.”
Rachel activated the button and held the phone out.
“April? Where are you?” Gracie asked.
“She’s on a tug,” Rachel said in a low voice as April repeated the same information.
“I just now got a good cellular signal,” April added. “What’s all that noise in the background?”
“We have you on speakerphone,” Gracie replied, maneuvering the car around a hairpin turn to the right.
“Oh. Okay. Mom, you’re still there?”
“Yes.”
“All right. I … was only going to tell Gracie this, Mom, because I’m not sure it makes any difference, but the wreckage of the Albatross has apparently been, for want of a better word, stolen.”
“What?” Gracie said, involuntarily looking at the cell phone speaker as if she could discern April’s meaning.
April summarized what had happened. “We think the most likely culprit is the Coast Guard or the Navy. Scott has flown off to check on any ships still outbound, but if they snagged the wreckage two days ago, they could have it most anywhere by now.”
“Dammit!” Gracie said, slamming on the brakes to slow for a turn she’d misjudged.
“I know it,” April responded.
“No … I meant the road, here. But as to that news, yes, another dammit is in order.”
“I’m more or less out of ideas,” April said, amid the sound of wind roaring through the microphone as she stood on the tug’s bow.
“Okay, let me think. I’m trying to drive, too.”
“You want me to call you back, Gracie? After you find Dad?”
“Watch out, dear,” Rachel said, pointing to a couple of bikers in the right lane ahead inching their way up the road. Gracie steered around them with squealing tires and accelerated up the next straight section.
“Okay, April, I think you’re probably right,” Gracie said. “The Coast Guard or the Navy. I’ll have to go find the federal judge at home and file an amended complaint this afternoon … as soon as I can get back to Seattle.”
“You’re … we’re going to sue them?” April asked.
“Kind of. I’m literally thinking out loud now, but … probably another temporary restraining order, and … best I can describe it without thinking this through … kind of a habeas corpus action for the Albatross. You know, demand they produce the actual body of the thing?”
“Gracie, I’m obviously not a lawyer, but even I know that a habeas corpus writ only applies to people, not things like wrecked airplanes.”
“Yeah … I said kind of. I don’t know, kiddo, but we’ll figure it out. More important, we’ll smoke them out and get to the bottom of who’s doing this.” Even with the tidal wave of bad news and driving demands crowding her brain, she ached to lean on April’s shoulder and cry over the acidic tongue-lashing she’d received from Janssen a few hours before. But April and Rachel had enough to deal with. Her angst would have to wait.
“We’re almost there, April. Let me call you back,” Gracie announced. April clicked off on her end and Rachel folded the cell phone as Gracie negotiated the last curve to the parking area and slammed on the brakes, bringing the car to a stop in a cloud of gravel and dust. She jammed the gear shift into park and yanked the door handle, forgetting her seat belt and cursing the existence of the thing as she fought to untangle herself and find the release.
Rachel was already out of the car as Gracie alighted and motioned her in the direction of the slope where she’d seen Arlie. The incline down from the parking area was far steeper than she’d noticed from the cockpit of the Cherokee, and she slowed herself after vaulting over the guardrail.
He was thirty yards or so ahead, sitting on the gro
und and looking east, and she slowed to a fast walk as she approached, surprised his hair had become so thin.
“Captain?” she called.
There was no answer.
She closed to within fifteen feet before trying again, wondering why he looked so strange.
“Captain?”
He turned suddenly and looked at her with a blank expression on a face she didn’t recognize.
“Sorry?” the man said.
Gracie came to halt in total confusion. “I … ah … thought you were someone else,” she stammered. Rachel came up behind her and put a hand on Gracie’s shoulder.
“That’s not our car up there, Gracie.”
She turned to Rachel. “No?” Then back to the man, whose curiosity had been piqued. “I … saw you from the air and thought you were … a friend.”
He nodded. “I saw you fly over.”
“You haven’t seen another fellow out here in the last few hours, have you?” She described Arlie Rosen and he shook his head.
“Okay, thanks. Sorry.”
The man resumed his contemplative position as Rachel put an arm around Gracie and headed them back to the car.
“I’m sorry, Rachel, I thought …”
“He’s the same build as Arlie. He would look the same from the air.”
“That explains why he didn’t wave. I mean, here he was seeing his airplane and such.”
They got the car in gear and started back as Rachel’s cell phone rang, the three bars of Beethoven’s Fifth symphony sending her hand into her purse in a lightning-fast movement. Gracie could hear the distraught male voice on the other end, despite the road noise, as Rachel held it to her ear.
“Rachel? Baby, where are you? Are you okay?”
The reply was a choked-back sob. “Arlie! Where are you?”
“Here at home. I just got back. What’s happening?”
Rachel was crying openly now, waving her hand but having trouble forming words. She struggled back the tears and spoke, telling him how panicked they’d been.
“Honey, didn’t you get my note?”
“No.”
“On your laptop. I had it running like a banner to tell you I was going to go up to Elwha Dam and just think for a few hours.”
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