The Zero Option

by David Rollins

  ‘You’ve never tried to dig into MISREPs before, have you?’ he asked.

  ‘MISREPs?’

  ‘Mission Reports.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Looks like missions flown by RC-135s from Shemya on that date have been sequestered and coded SAR—special access required. You can only get into SAR-coded files if you’re authorized for that compartment.’

  ‘So you’re saying that the MISREPs have been buried. Should I be suspicious about that?’

  ‘As in maybe they contain some deep, dark secret?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Not necessarily. That mission happened back in the Cold War days. The MISREPs could well have been sequestered not because of what they contained, but rather how the information was obtained. The methods of intelligence-gathering back then were often more closely guarded than the intelligence itself. You wanted the other guy to think you held four aces in your hand, even if you had nothing—especially if you had nothing.’

  ‘So how do I get access to Foxx’s MISREP for September 1, 1983?’

  Kradich swung around to face her. ‘Access for a compartment isn’t granted by clearance. If you’re not in a billet that requires that information to do your job, or because your need-to-know isn’t high enough, you won’t get access.’

  ‘And being an NSA investigator on a case looking into events around the mission flown by a particular pilot from a particular base on a particular day doesn’t qualify as need-to-know?’

  ‘Don’t ask me, lady, I just work here.’

  ‘Call me Lana.’

  ‘Sure—Lana.’

  ‘Who decides need-to-know on this?’

  ‘Well, Lana, you could try the people on the billet.’

  ‘Who are they?’

  ‘I don’t know. Their names are also compartmented and protected by codeword.’

  ‘We’re getting nowhere on this,’ Lana said, frustrated.

  ‘Sorry. You’ll have to find another way in, I’m afraid.’

  ‘What about Curtis Foxx’s crew members from September 1983?’ said Sherwood. ‘Are any of them still around?’

  ‘Okay,’ said Kradich. ‘Give me a minute . . .’

  File photos of five men came up. ‘All smoked except for this guy, Dallas Mitchell. He lives in Homestead.’

  Oh great, thought Lana. Back to Florida we go.

  ‘We’re about ready to roll here,’ said Kradich.

  They watched the software finish constructing a wire frame of Ben Harbor’s head and shoulders, based on the photos. Saul tapped a few keys and flesh and coloring began to overlay the wires as the bust revolved in three axes.

  When the image was complete, Kradich asked, ‘Look familiar?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Lana. ‘In a creepy kind of way.’

  ‘Now, we just feed this re-creation into the face-recognition program and the software will start scanning all the surveillance-camera footage in the airport’s hard drive, looking for a match. They’ve got a few hundred cameras there so it’ll take a minute. Let’s just hope he’s not wearing a hat. Ceiling-mounted cameras hate hats.’

  ‘Is that why you wear one?’ Investigator Sherwood asked him.

  ‘No, I wear this because I’m a fan.’

  ‘Right,’ said Sherwood. ‘A fan of the Indians?’

  ‘Yes, as a matter of fact. You know, you could go get a coffee or something while I do this,’ Kradich suggested, offended.

  ‘No, it’s okay. Happy to wait,’ Sherwood said.

  Kradich shrugged and said, ‘Okay, Happy, suit yourself.’

  Lana smiled. Sherwood grunted.

  Kradich’s fingers issued a few commands and then he sat back in his chair, one foot up on the edge of his bench. His Nikes were as old as his baseball cap.

  Up on the main screen, small thumbnail stills from video clips began filling a separate window. Within a minute the cursor flashed in the bottom right-hand corner of the frame, the search complete. Kradich gave the software permission to edit the clips together in sequence.

  ‘You ready?’ he asked.

  ‘Hit us,’ said Sherwood, who’d been passing the time cleaning his fingernails with a plastic fast-food fork left behind by someone from a previous session.

  Kradich tapped away and the footage began playing at double the normal speed, like a film from the silent movie era. He said, ‘Okay, your target flew US Airways Flight 4062 to Orlando. After he arrived there, he took a cab. I’ve got the license number of the cab. You want to tail it? Orlando is crawling with surveillance cameras.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Lana. ‘We want to know where he went and who he saw. And then we want to know when he returned home, and what he was doing until he arrived at Captain Tony’s Saloon, Greene Street, Key West.’

  ‘Scary—you’re starting to sound like my ex,’ Kradich said. ‘And after that?’

  ‘I know where he was after that,’ Lana said, once more feeling the heat rise into her face.

  January 14, 2012

  Homestead, Florida. A cowboy wearing a ten-gallon hat, spurs on his boots and a couple of fake revolvers belted low on his hips, walked from the shadows of the Radio Shack’s front entrance carrying a sale sign under his arm. Apparently, cell phones and audio systems were on special today.

  Sitting in his car, Ben watched the man go to the highway, set up the sign and position it for the passing traffic, then walk back. With a name like ‘Tex’ this had to be Mitchell, though from a distance he didn’t look anything like the man in the photo. But then, Ben considered, the man in the photo with Curtis wasn’t dressed for a rodeo.

  He gave the guy a minute’s head start before following him into the store, and found him near the cash register, twirling two nickel-plated six-shooters around his fingers for the entertainment of a customer’s small child. Closer up, the man did look familiar. Same height, a few more pounds and lines, the same amused mouth and eyes.

  ‘How can I help you, sir?’ he asked when Ben approached.

  ‘Dallas Mitchell?’

  The man hesitated, seemed uncertain. ‘Er, yes . . . ?’

  ‘Do you mind if I have a word with you? In private.’

  The man hesitated, unsure what to make of the request.

  ‘It’s about Curtis Foxx,’ said Ben.

  The added information seemed to do the trick.

  ‘Curtis? Sure. Let’s, er, go into my office.’

  Tex gave the little girl a lollipop from under his hat. She snatched it and then ran off. Ben followed Tex past displays of auto navigation systems, video cameras and computers to a small room with high, narrow windows that opened onto the highway. Drifting through them was a high-speed traffic hum that sounded like overworked air-conditioning. Mitchell ditched the hat and unclipped the spurs.

  ‘You know, I’ve never ridden a horse,’ he confessed. ‘The damn things give me a rash. Closest I’ve ever been to a horse was eating it one time in France.’

  ‘Not from the Lone Star state?’

  ‘Boston, born and bred, partner.’

  ‘Then why the fancy dress?’

  ‘There are eight Radio Shacks between here and Miami-Dade. Folks keep coming back to this one. Maybe it’s to see the fool who looks like Gene Autry and keeps candy on his head. Now, what’s this about Curtis?’

  ‘Curtis Foxx was my father.’

  ‘You’re Curtis’s boy?’

  Ben nodded.

  ‘Now that you mention it, I can see the resemblance. So, you’re Ben Foxx . . .’

  ‘Ben Harbor,’ Ben corrected. ‘My parents were divorced.’

  ‘Right.’ Tex cleared his throat. ‘You know, I was flying with Curtis the night you were born. If I remember rightly, he was pretty excited about it.’

  ‘September 1, 1983,’ Ben said.

  At the mention of that date, something rippled across the man’s face, as if the power to every muscle had been cut for the briefest moment.

  ‘So, what brings you here? Just in the neighborhood?’


  ‘I live in Key West,’ Ben replied.

  ‘Nice part of the world.’

  ‘Curtis died recently,’ Ben said, small talk not his favorite activity with anyone other than paying customers.

  Tex sat heavily, the news appearing to hit him in the solar plexus. ‘Oh . . . that’s . . . I’m very sorry to hear that. Curtis was an original. We were all pretty close back in the day.’

  ‘I came across this photo.’ Ben took the group shot from his pocket and showed it to him.

  Tex shook his head. ‘Seems like yesterday. This was taken at Eielson.’

  ‘Who are the guys in the middle?’

  ‘Jim Svenson and Mark Harlow—both pilots. They were killed along with Eli Grogan, the man standing beside Curtis here, in a C-130 crash. Happened in ’89.’ Mitchell handed back the photo with another shake of his head. ‘Military aviation is a high-risk pursuit.’

  ‘So I’ve heard. Curtis left me his service dress uniform,’ said Ben. ‘I was wondering what he won the Airman’s Medal for.’

  Tex leaned back and pondered the ceiling. ‘Your old man was a born hero. He was at the Austin municipal airport updating his landing currency. The way I heard it, on the way home Curtis saw smoke coming from an apartment building just beyond the airfield fence, so he raced over there, climbed the fire escape and entered the burning building. Brought out a child and an infant. Then he turned around and went back in, carried out the mother and resuscitated her. They were saying that the fire was so big the air traffic had to be diverted.’

  The picture Ben conjured up was of Curtis, covered in black soot, running through fire, shielding a baby in his arms. His father a hero? That was a man he never knew.

  ‘Curtis also won the Air Medal,’ Tex continued. ‘I was there for that. He landed an RC-135 in severe weather with nothing but fumes in the tanks and almost no communications or navigation equipment to speak of. We’re talking about a big aircraft here. The RC was basically a Boeing 707. And at the time we’d suffered a complete and total electrical failure. Yep, your old man was the best aircraft commander—the best pilot—I ever flew with.’

  ‘So what happened to him?’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘What happened to him?’ Ben repeated. The question hadn’t sounded quite so blunt when he’d practiced it on the drive up, but that was how it came out.

  ‘I’m not with you,’ said Tex.

  ‘From what you’ve said, Curtis was quite a guy. And yet one day he just dropped out and took up alcohol. What sort of man who’s prepared to jump into a burning building and risk his life to save complete strangers walks away from his career and his family and becomes a bum?’

  What kind of a man leaves his one-year-old son and never comes back?

  ‘I . . . I don’t know,’ Tex said.

  ‘You were his buddy, his navigator.’ Ben paused for rehearsed effect. ‘It had something to do with Korean Air Lines Flight 007, didn’t it?’

  Tex went pale, the color sucked out of his skin. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I think you do,’ Ben insisted. ‘There was a mission and it went wrong, and it happened on September 1, 1983—the night KAL 007 was shot down, the night I was born. You admitted it—you were there!’

  ‘Look, I don’t know what you want me to say,’ said Tex, looking uncomfortable. ‘There was no mission that differed from any other. We went out, we took pictures of Soviet missile re-entry vehicles, and then we came back. That was our job. And I don’t even think I’m allowed to tell you that much.’

  ‘I’m not leaving till you give me some answers.’

  ‘Your father was like a brother to me, Ben.’

  ‘So, that makes me like your nephew?’

  ‘Look, what happened back then happened. No one can change it. We’ve all moved on and that’s something you’re also going to have to do.’

  Ben remained seated. ‘I start asking the hard questions and down come the shutters. You do know something. I know you do.’

  Mitchell picked up a phone handset and held it to his ear. ‘Security? Yes, could you come to my office . . .’

  ‘In case you change your mind,’ said Ben, placing a Key West Sea-planes business card on the table as he got up.

  He opened the door and walked out. A big soft guy with acne and a wispy goatee, wearing a branded Radio Shack knitted shirt, approached him. ‘Sir . . .’ he said as Ben brushed past.

  Ben saw Tex in his rear-view mirror as he drove off, standing at the entrance, feet apart, hands resting on the nickel-plated six-shooters in their holsters, staring after him.

  ‘You’re late,’ said Cecilia, impatiently tapping on the booking schedule with a pen.

  ‘Yeah, sorry. I got held up,’ said Ben.

  ‘Akiko’s here.’

  ‘She is? Where?’

  ‘I set her up in the spare office.’

  ‘Thanks, Cecil.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ she said, peeking out between the slats of a window blind. It was dark outside. ‘Can I go home now?’

  ‘Why ask me? You’re the boss.’

  ‘Yeah? Sometimes I wonder.’ Cecilia stood up. ‘Akiko seems like a nice lady.’

  ‘She does.’

  ‘What’s going on? You want to fill me in?’

  Ben leaned on the reception counter. ‘Do you remember an incident back in 1983 when the Soviets shot down a 747?’

  ‘Yeah, I do. It was somewhere off Japan, I think. If memory serves me correctly, it was full of civilians. The Soviets put a couple of missiles into it, and there was some talk about it being a spy plane, on a mission for the CIA.’

  ‘Really? Well, you know more about it than me.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Akiko’s mother was on that plane.’

  ‘Oh, Lord . . .’

  ‘She believes the business had some connection with Curtis.’

  ‘Is that why she’s here?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Cecilia whistled softly. ‘Well, if you need any help from me, just ask.’

  ‘Thanks, Cec,’ said Ben as he turned and walked down the hall. ‘As you’re offering, you could order us some take-out before you go. Maybe some Japanese,’ he added with a grin.

  He found Akiko playing solitaire on a desktop computer. ‘Hi,’ he said, closing the door behind him.

  ‘Hello,’ she replied, her face brightening.

  ‘Sorry. Took longer than I thought.’ Ben pulled up a chair and sat beside her. ‘Been here long?’

  ‘No. I walked around, went for a swim. The water was so clean. And then I had lunch at a bar, a funny place with bras all over the walls. Have you been there?’

  ‘Once or twice,’ he said as he took the photo of Curtis and his crew out of his top pocket. ‘I’m late because I went to see this guy here.’ He pointed to Tex. ‘He has a shop a few miles up the road. He was flying with Curtis in an RC-135 on the night of September 1, 1983.’

  Akiko examined the face in the photo with interest.

  ‘I was hoping he’d tell me what happened.’

  ‘And did he?’ she asked.

  ‘No. He kicked me out. It might have helped if I knew more about what happened that night. ’

  ‘You should have asked me. I’ve read everything there is.’

  ‘You’ve studied it?’

  ‘I wanted to know as much as I could. I lost my mother in that crash.’

  ‘Your English is perfect,’ said Ben.

  ‘I hope so. I teach it in a school in Tokyo. Russian, too.’

  ‘Russian. Is that a coincidence?’

  ‘No, I thought learning the language would help me understand the people, why they acted as they did.’

  ‘And has it?’

  ‘No. I went to Sakhalin Island, and for the same reason. I was four when I lost my mother. I remember the day. I don’t remember the day before, but I have been aware of every moment since. Perhaps September 1, 1983 was the day I grew up. My father and I, we looked
after each other. He was devastated.’

  ‘Did he remarry?’

  ‘Yes, when I was ten, but he divorced two years later. I don’t think he was ready. In his case, six years of mourning was not enough.’

  Ben didn’t comment. ‘What about you? Not married?’

  She held up her ringless left hand. ‘I’ve had boyfriends, but it never seems to work out longer than six months. I get bored with them. Or they get bored with me. You’re not married?’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Life’s a party.’ He shrugged. ‘Why spoil it?’

  She gave him a smile.

  There was a moment of silence and Ben’s eyes slid off her face.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

  ‘What am I getting into here?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Just like the search for the plane found. I’m sorry . . .’ The meeting with Tex was still fresh in his mind. ‘Look, Akiko, bottom line: I don’t think I can help you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about this. I don’t know any of the people involved. It’s not my problem.’

  ‘It’s not your problem?’ Akiko asked, anger now in her voice and face. ‘We have a lot in common. I think you also lost your father because of what happened on September 1, 1983.’

  Ben hadn’t looked at it like that. If the mission no one would talk about really was somehow involved with KAL 007, then Akiko could well be right. But did that really change anything? Curtis had left a long time ago. They’d never had any kind of relationship, except for a dull resentment he’d felt for a father who’d taken off and never made any attempt to contact him. Until he’d passed away. And that, as far as Ben was concerned, was just too damn late.

  ‘What exactly do you want from me?’ he asked. ‘What were you expecting when you came here?’

  ‘I was hoping you would know what happened.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘The letter—because Yuudai said you could help, and he knew your father.’

  ‘I wish people would stop calling Curtis Foxx my father, for Christ’s sake.’ Ben got up, walked to a bench on the far side of the room and sat on the corner of it. ‘The crash happened a long time ago. All we have is that tape and there’s nothing on it. Maybe there never was anything on it. There’s one guy alive who can tell us what happened that night and he won’t talk. What am I supposed to do? What more do you want from me?’