by Ward Larsen
They hit another security podium, this one staffed by a pair of guards that looked more serious. Davis figured they had to be getting close. “You know, I never asked,” he said. “How did you end up working here?”
“I met a recruiter at Dartmouth. He asked me if I had any language skills, military training, or if I was a genius with computers. I said no, no, and not a chance.”
“So what did they see in you?”
“I told him I took a profile test in freshman psychology that proved I was certifiably paranoid. He made me an offer on the spot.”
Davis smiled.
They reached the director’s office, and the receptionist asked them to wait.
Sorensen pulled back a step and studied him. Davis was carrying the binders he’d appropriated under one arm, but was otherwise unencumbered. She reached up to his collar and tugged something straight. “I jumped a lot of bubbles in the organizational chart to get you this ten minutes, so please don’t embarrass me. I’ve never had a one-on-one with the director before, and I’d like to make a positive impression.”
“If I say anything stupid, I promise it will reflect only upon me.”
“You really know how to instill a girl with confidence.”
“Look, Anna, once he hears what I’ve got to say, he won’t give a damn about my tie.”
“What tie?”
Davis looked down. “Ah, crap. Must’ve left it in the car.”
The receptionist announced that the director was ready to see them.
Sorensen issued a stern look, like a teacher warning her loudest troublemaker on the library steps. When she moved toward the door Davis didn’t follow. He just stood there with a grin on his face.
“What?” she asked impatiently.
After a pause, he said, “The guy in Oregon—he really said that? Six foot eight?”
Sorensen heaved a sigh and opened the door.
Davis was still smiling when he followed her through.
* * *
Thomas Coltrane was an oddity at the new CIA, a director who was not a political appointee, but rather a rank-and-file employee who’d risen to the top. He was a thirty-year man, ten in the field and the rest spent mostly in the halls of Langley. Davis shook hands with a tall man in his early sixties who was aging well, the kind of well-groomed silver fox who’d look right at home in a Cialis commercial. He also sensed a certain weather in his gaze, suggesting a man for whom life held few remaining surprises.
Coltrane greeted them enthusiastically, no undercurrent to say, My time is precious so this had better be good. He did, however, get right to the point. “I understand this involves an airplane crash.”
“Yes, sir,” said Sorensen, naturally taking the lead, “an MD-10 crash off the coast of Brazil.” She glanced at Davis. “I should advise you from the outset that Mr. Davis, while he is a former Air Force officer, doesn’t have an active security clearance.”
Coltrane spun his hand in the air to tell Sorensen her ass was covered, and that she should get on with it.
“Last week we received an alert from NSA regarding seven names they’d mined from a targeted computer in Iran. They were convinced, and my department concurs, that they’d uncovered a high-end identity forgery operation.”
“Official or freelance?” the director asked.
“At this point, we can’t say. But right after we started looking, people on this list started turning up dead.” Sorensen covered the shootings in Malta and Switzerland, all of which was as much news to Davis as it was to Coltrane. “As we began to look more closely, two more names popped up from the NSA’s list—both of the pilots from this crash in Brazil.”
Coltrane shifted in his seat. Having spent a career chasing small coincidences, such a spectacular correlation naturally piqued his interest. Davis was less enthralled—he was learning things he should have been told from the outset.
“My assistant and I focused more closely,” Sorensen continued. “As you know, since the September 11 attacks our Office of Terrorism Analysis has quietly undertaken a program to track the ownership of civilian airliners across the globe. There are over ten thousand, but it’s not as big a job as it might seem. The vast majority are owned and operated by reputable airlines in First World countries. OTA monitors leasing and sales, retirements and long-term storage, with particular attention to wide-body aircraft. Only a handful of big jets change hands each year in a way that gets our attention.
“As it turns out, this MD-10 in Brazil was already on OTA’s radar. It was an old jet nearing the end of its service life, and had been grounded in a legal battle. For the last year it was parked at a small airfield in the central Amazon basin. Then just recently a company we’ve never heard of, Perseus Air Cargo, purchased the airframe. The deal went through quickly, and Perseus wasted no time. They brought in mechanics to get the aircraft in shape, and early Saturday it took off on what was supposed to be a maintenance test flight. The jet had been airborne for about two hours when it disappeared over the Atlantic. There was one distress call, but no indication of what went wrong. No survivors were found, but the Brazilian Coast Guard did find wreckage, along with one body.”
Coltrane said, “Yes, I think I heard something about it.”
“OTA put a small mention in your daily brief yesterday. Anyway, when I discovered that both pilots were tied to our forgery-mill list, I thought we should take a closer look. That’s where Mr. Davis comes in. He’s a former Air Force pilot, and also an accident investigator. Technically he’s an NTSB contractor, but he has worked with us in the past.”
“Yes, something over in Sudan, as I remember. I’d like to hear your version of that event someday, Mr. Davis.”
“It’ll cost you a beer,” Davis replied. “And call me Jammer.”
The director raised one eyebrow, but deferred comment. Clearly a martini man, Davis thought before saying, “I left for Brazil Saturday night, and arrived yesterday, the day after the incident. Miss Sorensen tasked me with three objectives. First she wanted any information I could find regarding the identities of those who purchased and operated the aircraft. She wanted to know if the jet was carrying anything suspicious. Finally, she asked for my opinion on what caused this jet to go down. On the first question, I didn’t find much. The captain’s name, real or not, was Gianni Petrecca. He negotiated the purchase of the airplane.”
“Isn’t that unusual,” Coltrane queried. “A pilot acting as a buyer?”
“Not necessarily. We don’t know much about Perseus, but it’s clearly a small operation. For all we know this man could be a part owner of the company or a chief pilot. The only other Perseus employee we could identify was the copilot who showed up on the day of the flight.”
Coltrane said, “Miss Sorensen said something about a body being recovered. Was it one of these men?”
“No,” said Davis. “The flight plan listed only the two pilots on board, but there was a passenger—it’s been verified by witnesses. The Brazilians positively identified the recovered body as that passenger. He was the local airport caretaker. Apparently he’d been helping the Perseus crew get the airplane ready, and they took him along for the ride.”
“As sort of a favor?” Coltrane asked.
“Could be. As to whether the jet was carrying any cargo, I saw no indication of it. On a maintenance test flight it would typically be empty.”
“All right,” Coltrane said. “Any ideas about the cause of the crash?”
“That’s why I’m here. To begin, when I arrived in Brazil I expected the investigation team to have already interviewed the mechanics who’d been working on the jet. Unfortunately, nobody’s talked to a single one.”
“Why is that?” the director asked.
“Because no one can find them.”
“How could that be?” Sorensen said, this being news to her as well.
“They were foreign contractors, and apparently all have left Brazil. That didn’t sit right with me in a number of ways. When you ru
n a maintenance test flight on a jet that hasn’t flown in a long time, you expect gripes after landing.”
“Gripes?”
“Maintenance write-ups, things that don’t work. Bad oil pumps, a radar that needs calibrating. Leave a jet in the Amazon for a year, and systems will go south. It’s not uncommon on a flight like this for one of the wrench-turners to go along on the flight just to keep a running list of what needs to be fixed. At the very least, these mechanics should have been there when the jet landed. Three teams had been brought in from two different contractors in Guatemala and Peru. They showed up as soon as Perseus got approval to work on the airplane, and they got the jet airborne fast. Then … they just went home.”
“The airplane crashed. Maybe they were worried about being held responsible.”
“I considered that too, so before I left Santarém I stopped at the airfield office and asked around. Apparently the mechanics all departed on two charter flights that left right after our MD-10 got up in the air.”
“What do you make of it?” the director asked.
“Let me tell you the rest.” Davis covered how the wrong kind of oil slick had been found, and that radar data showed an airplane in a four-hundred-knot dive when contact was lost. “When a jet hits the ocean at that speed it’s like hitting a brick wall. Only there wasn’t a single piece of airframe wreckage recovered. No fuel tank remnants, no honeycomb composite from a horizontal stabilizer—the kinds of things that would usually break clear and float. I also saw the medical examiner’s preliminary report on the body that was recovered. There was evidence of one crushing blow to the posterior skull, and the extremities all had broken bones. Otherwise the body was in decent shape.”
“Isn’t that what you’d expect in an air crash?”
“Not one like this. According to the radio calls and radar data, this jet was going down like a greased brick. A high-speed impact like that—it’s catastrophic. Explosions and fire, lots of jagged metal. The body that was recovered had different injuries, the kind you might get from jumping off a bridge.”
Davis paused and gave Coltrane a moment.
“So you’re saying the evidence on this crash is contradictory, that it doesn’t make sense?”
“Actually, just the opposite. This crash makes perfect sense. In fact, it might be the easiest accident I’ve ever investigated.”
The director raised an eyebrow to ask the question.
“Because there was no crash,” Davis said. “None at all.”
THIRTY-NINE
Director Coltrane sat stunned. “How can you be sure?”
“Sure?” Davis said. “That’s a strong word. I can’t use it yet. But if I’m right, you need to find this airplane fast.”
“You think it’s a threat?”
“I do, and in a way we’ve never seen before.”
Davis took one of the binders he’d brought and dropped it on Coltrane’s desk. It landed with a thud, and the director and Sorensen stared at it. The title was MD-10 VLAT. Curiously, there was a dime-sized hole just off-center on the front cover.
Coltrane lifted it, turned the manual sideways, and leafed through pages until a flattened slug of metal fell onto his desk.
“Is that what I think it is?” Sorensen asked.
Davis shrugged. “Let’s just say I’m glad I wasn’t looking into a Cessna crash—those manuals are a hell of a lot thinner.”
Sorensen said, “Now I know why that guy in Oregon had such a cold night.”
Coltrane asked what that meant, and Sorensen, realizing her mistake, was forced to fill him in on Davis’ indiscretions. An indifferent director set the binder back on his desk. “VLAT,” he said, looking at the manual’s title. “What does that mean?”
“Very large air tanker. It’s designed as a firebomber, a unique airframe that’s been modified to drop five thousand liquid gallons in a matter of seconds—enough to cover a football field. It’s effective in dealing with forest fires, although the idea never exactly took off. MD-10s are expensive to operate, and they have operational limitations, things like how low and slow you can drop. It’s all right there in the manual.”
“What else could you use it for?” the director asked warily.
“A good question. Maybe anthrax or plague … if you’ve got the right agents and could put them in solution. Drop it high enough, you could cover a whole city, even a small country. I’m sure there are people in this building who could come up with some pretty frightening scenarios. We’re talking about a highly specialized airplane—only a handful like it exist. Now, out of the blue, somebody goes to a lot of trouble to buy one and make it airworthy. Then they want everyone to think it crashed.”
“But it didn’t,” said the director.
“That’s how I see it. She’s out there somewhere, maybe on a quiet airfield in some small, out-of-the-way country. Those drop tanks could be getting charged right now with something that will make September 11 look like child’s play.”
The director’s well-groomed façade vanished. Davis had given Sorensen hints to his concerns, but even she was speechless. The two stared at the bullet-shot binder as if it were the devil’s playbook.
“If I were you,” Davis prompted, “I’d drop everything and find out where the hell this airplane went.” He stood and reached out a hand to the director as if expecting a shake. “So that’s my report. I’m sure you both have work to do.”
Director Coltrane remained frozen. He finally said, “I appreciate your help on this, Mr. Davis. Will you stay on a little longer? We could use your expertise.”
Davis paused. “I did have a rugby match this afternoon, but I suppose I could put it aside … in the name of national security, and all. But there’s also the matter of dinner with my daughter tonight. She’s a student down at Duke and has to head back to school tomorrow.”
Coltrane rubbed a finger over the hole in the binder on his desk. “This trouble you had out west—I’m not sure exactly what happened, but it looks somewhat serious. If you were to help us find this aircraft … I’m sure we could make any repercussions go away.”
Davis leaned forward and hovered over the director of the CIA’s nameplate—much as he’d done the previous day over another nameplate, one whose owner spent the night hog-tied and freezing inside a scrapped helicopter. “With all due respect, Director, if I miss dinner with my daughter there’s going to be trouble in the east.”
“Jammer,” Sorensen intervened in a tight voice, “I think what the director is trying to say is that—”
Davis held up a hand to silence her. He waited for Coltrane.
The director grinned. He was a man not used to being challenged, here of all places. But no one reached the seat he was sitting in without understanding the art of negotiation. “All right. Perhaps I should put it differently. I’ll make certain this trouble from Oregon gets lost. No strings attached. But I’m scheduling a briefing on this matter for three this afternoon. I’d very much like it if you’d be in attendance.”
Davis smiled. “Well, since you put it like that—how could I say no? In the meantime, sir, you really need to start a search for this airplane. SIGINT, HUMINT, CYBER. Whatever it takes.”
“Any suggestions where to look?” Coltrane asked.
Davis looked up as if calculating. “We can take out some time for refueling, but they’ve had roughly a forty-hour head start. At five hundred miles an hour—the average cruise speed of a jet like that—your search radius is close to twenty thousand nautical miles. Which, of course, is nearly the circumference of the earth. Meaning—”
“Meaning,” Sorensen said, breaking in, “it could be anywhere in the world.”
* * *
The aircraft they were looking for was, at that moment, six thousand miles southeast and six miles up. It was going nowhere with the greatest possible precision.
There are two hundred million square miles of sky above the earth, and while certain air corridors see continuous traffic, wide swathes
of airspace remain effectively a void. These are the black holes, areas where radar coverage is minimal or nonexistent, and where aircraft are not watched, tracked, scanned, or monitored. As a consequence, pilots rarely venture into these frontiers unless absolutely necessary, and then at their own risk. Government oversight is dubious—where there is any government at all.
The tropical air thirty-four-thousand feet over the west African nation of Gabon is just such a place. Surrounded by the likes of Equatorial Guinea, Congo, and Angola, the federation’s very name is derived from gabão, the Portuguese word for cloak. Gabon wears its name well, resting on the equator in a seasonless languor, blanketed year round by heat, humidity, and an unrelenting sun.
CB68H had been there for the best part of thirty-six hours, boring holes through blue sky and thunderstorms, night and day, clinging to the dense air at its best endurance airspeed—a ponderously slow 230 knots, this being the aerodynamic sweet spot at which its massive wing and engines merged to the point of maximum efficiency. The jet had so far made four landings at Leon M’Ba Airport in Libreville, each time remaining on the ground only long enough to take on fuel and oil, and to meet briefly with a mechanic who’d been contracted in advance to address technical discrepancies. So far, fortunately, there had been few.
By way of a satellite link, Tuncay was in regular contact with the chemist, Ghazi, who would provide the coded signal to send them to their next destination. Ghazi also gave updates on the reports of their demise; so far, there was nothing in the news to suggest that their staged crash off the coast of Brazil had been debunked. But then, they assumed that if the ruse had been discovered, it would not be made public knowledge—particularly if anyone realized the significance of the airframe they’d stolen. If that happened, the hunt would be on.
The critical thing was keeping the airplane out of sight for as long as possible. Unfortunately, to conceal a wide-body airliner from the world’s finest surveillance assets was no easy trick. After considerable debate in the planning stages, it was Tuncay who had made the case, to good effect, that the best place to hide an airplane was in the sky.