Fly by Wire (2010)

by Larsen, Ward

  What the hell?

  Then Whittemore heard a new sound. Retching. Coughing. He couldn't see her face, but she was doubled over on the chair. Fatima Adara was puking her guts out. Jesus, he thought, this woman is a piece of work.

  It went on for ten minutes. She would blow and hack, sit slumped on the chair for a time, then do it all over again. Whittemore considered his options. Fatima had definitely been busy, digging into the wall. He figured it for a dead drop, a makeshift post office box for messages either to or from Caliph. With this realization, Whittemore s spirits soared. He had just hit sevens. As soon as Fatima got her legs back, she'd come up the alley, walk to the hotel, and pass out.

  Which made everything simple. When Fatima emerged, he would duck into the espresso bar, wait for her to pass, then head down the alley fast and find the dead drop. If there was a message, he'd read it, maybe take a picture with his phone. Or even call it in if he thought Caliph's arrival was imminent -- Whittemore was ambitious, but he wasn't a fool. If the drop was empty, he'd catch back up with the lumbering Fatima. Then he'd have more decisions to make. But so far, Whittemore was sure he'd made all the right calls.

  He took a look around the corner. Fatima was still saddled miserably in the chair. Whittemore eased out of sight and his attention drifted to the church. A woman, tall and slim, was making her way up the sidewalk. She wore a long jacket, but the sway in her hips told Whittemore she was wearing heels, while the jaunty angle of her head and flow of dark hair in the breeze told him she was young. A streetlight cast over her face at the alley entrance. She was a goddess -- fiery eyes, high cheekbones, pouty lips. He looked at her openly, and as she passed her eyes flicked to his for just a moment. She entered the espresso shop. Whittemore turned back to the alley with a smile.

  A smile that evaporated instantly when he saw the empty chair. Fatima was nowhere in sight.

  Dammit! Not again!

  Whittemore took in everything. He saw no movement, heard no sound to indicate where she'd gone. He eased to his left, hoping to find her leaning against the wall behind an obstruction. Nothing. Squinting, he tried to make out the other end of the alley. Did it open to a different street? Or was it a dead end? He couldn't tell.

  He moved into the alley, slow and alert. He eyed every shadow, every dead spot. Whittemore stepped as lightly as he could, but gravel crunched under his feet, each step sounding like a snap burst from a rock crusher. He reached the chair she'd been sitting on. It was crooked, the high back broken. Whittemore looked to the far end of the alley. There had to be a second way out, he decided, another access. His nerves began to settle, and Plan A fell right back into place.

  You're still in control. You know where she's going. Check the dead drop, old boy, then follow her if you need to.

  Whittemore knew exactly where to look -- waist high, in front of the chair. It turned out to be an old window frame embedded in the church's stone wall, the opening having been mortared and plastered over by some ancient clerical administration. He ran his hand along the base, felt for a loose section. As he did, something registered in the back of Whittemore's mind, a vague discomfort he couldn't quite specify. The impulse was discarded when he found what he was looking for -- a dull red brick the size of a man's shoe. Whittemore pulled, the brick moved. It was tight, but began to slide out with the same scraping noise he'd heard earlier. Stone on stone. Working it free, he saw a recess behind, a fist-sized hole. He dropped the brick, twisted his hand inside and hit a home run.

  Whittemore pulled out a folded note.

  His training kicked in -- this was evidence. He handled it by the edges, patiently unfolding. Once. Twice. Again something seemed wrong, and finally Whittemore realized what it was. He was standing right where Fatima had been puking, yet he saw and smelled no sign of it. Whittemore turned the note right side up and read. Felt his blood go cold.

  .

  DO NOT MOVE

  HANDS AT YOUR SIDES

  Whittemore heard quiet footsteps behind him. Then he heard an even more disconcerting sound. Chink-chink. Absolutely unmistakable. He'd heard it a thousand times before on the firing range. The sound of a slide being racked on a handgun. But it made no sense. Who carries a gun without a round in the chamber? An idiot. Or ... someone who was trying to instill fear.

  The voice came as a whisper, colder than the midwinter wind rushing down the alley. "Turn slowly."

  Whittemore did, and he saw the one thing he had hoped to never see. A gun sight from the wrong end -- front post ahead of the U-notch. Perfectly in line, perfectly steady. Then he saw the sharp eyes behind.

  "You seek Caliph?" the voice hissed.

  Frozen with fear, Whittemore could not respond. The gun lowered to his chest and his eyes went wide.

  A lifeless smile, then, "You have found him."

  The first explosion sent him reeling. It seemed to tear his chest apart and he fell against the wall in blinding pain. Two more blasts and a fog descended. He slumped to one side, his face compressed on the gravel-strewn dirt. He saw heavy shoes receding, trotting briskly away.

  Whittemore tried not to panic. Tried to ignore the searing pain. His left side was useless, immobile, so he went to work with his right, putting every effort into his only chance. He clawed into a pocket and found his phone. It fell to the gravel, and Whittemore groped and pawed and scooped it closer.

  God the pain!

  His fingers fumbled on the keys as he tried to focus. It seemed he could barely breathe -- liquid in his chest, in his mouth. He was drowning.

  A stern, beautiful female voice burst from the phone. "Authenticate."

  Whittemore croaked, "Help. Ca--" the word was lost in a gurgle. He tried one last time, "Caliph is--"

  And then his world went black.

  Davis and Sorenson were about to leave the hangar when his phone rang. He saw that it was Larry Green.

  "It's my boss," he said.

  "I didn't think you had one." She gave him a shrewd look, then, "But maybe you should take the call." Sorensen excused herself, claiming she needed a bottle of water.

  He picked up the call. "Hi, Larry."

  "Hello, Jammer. How are you?"

  Davis thought, Pretty damned lousy. The CIA is trying to recruit me as a spy. He said, "I'm just great."

  "How about the investigation -- running smoothly?"

  "Nothing a little napalm wouldn't fix." Davis thought he heard a slight chuckle beam across the Atlantic. He gave Green a rundown on Bastien, followed by his take on the voice recorder tapes. He didn't mention his suspicion that somebody was tampering with evidence.

  A no-nonsense retired general like Larry Green might react badly to that, raise a fuss from the top. The resulting intergovernmental fallout could get in the way of Davis' preferred method of assault -- start low, in the trenches, and fight your way up.

  "Jammer, I've got that info you were asking for, about the skipper getting in trouble last week."

  "Okay."

  "It turns out there was a traffic stop, but it wasn't Moore. He was leaving a bar with one of his buddies, another pilot. The other guy was going to do the driving. They got stopped in the parking lot and an HPD officer made him walk a line."

  "Did he pass?"

  "That part's a little murky."

  Davis suggested, "Maybe he didn't, and that's why Moore went to see his flight doc. Advice for a friend. Black is as much a lawyer as he is a doctor."

  "Could be. But the point is that Earl Moore wasn't in any trouble here."

  "All right -- that's a good thing. But keep checking for me, will you, Larry? Find out exactly what happened."

  "You've got it."

  "Oh, and there's one other thing."

  "Shoot."

  "You said I got this assignment straight from the director, right?"

  "Collins gave me your name personally, told me to accept no substitutes."

  "Any idea why?"

  "Sorry, Jammer. Not my bailiwick. You think something is screwy
?"

  Davis thought, Everything is screwy. He said, "Nah, don't worry about it."

  They agreed to talk again soon, and Davis ended the call.

  He was sure Green was being straight with him, that he knew nothing about an interagency loan to the CIA. Part of him seethed at the lies involved, the backroom dealing. Another part said, To hell with them, just do what needs to be done. His internal strife didn't last long. It rarely did.

  Davis pocketed his phone and went to find Sorensen.

  He found her sitting at a table in the break room. She'd gotten two bottles of water and held one out.

  "Thanks," he said, picking it up.

  "That was quick," she commented.

  "Neither of us are the chatty type."

  The water had a fancy name and claimed to be from a hidden spring in the South Pacific -- water from halfway around the world. Davis twisted off a very unfancy plastic cap and took a long swig. It tasted like any other water.

  "What did he want?" she asked.

  "He wanted to know how the investigation is going."

  "And?"

  "I told him it made that whole Amelia Earhart thing look pretty straightforward." "Right."

  "But he did have some useful information. Larry checked with the Houston Police and found that Earl Moore and a buddy actually were out drinking last week. But it was his buddy who was doing the driving and had a little run-in with the law."

  "What happened to him?"

  "That part's not clear, but the important thing is that Moore wasn't in any trouble. The whole thing might have scared him. Maybe his buddy was in the same sad boat, a pilot who'd already been to rehab. I don't know. But the situation wasn't something that was going to put Moore's career on the line."

  Sorensen finished her water and tossed the empty neatly into a trash can ten feet away. She said, "So who do you think is messing with our evidence?"

  Davis shrugged. "Hard to say. There are a lot of reasons why somebody might pull that circuit breaker. I don't like any of them."

  "Bastien?" she suggested.

  "He and I won't be exchanging Christmas cards, and I don't think he's much of an investigator. But manipulating evidence like that -- it'd be crazy."

  "His accusations about Earl Moore are bound to have a lot of people talking, considering the suicide angle."

  "Yep," Davis agreed. "That popped circuit breaker helps prove Bastien's case. But besides him, who benefits?"

  Sorensen thought about it. "Practically everybody. The contractors, CargoAir, World Express, air traffic control. If Earl Moore pleads nolo contendre from the grave, they're all in the clear. Everybody wins."

  "Exactly. Everybody but Luke."

  "Who?"

  "Luke Moore. Earl's son. He's probably the only person on earth in his dad's corner right now."

  "Aside from you."

  Davis tipped back his water bottle, drained it, and took aim at the same trash can. He missed badly, the hollow plastic bottle bouncing off a window before clattering to the linoleum.

  Sorensen looked straight at him and smiled. She was starting to give as good as she got. Davis liked that.

  He got up, retrieved his miss, and said, "Come on, Honeywell. Let's head back."

  Chapter TWENTY-FIVE

  It was nearly eleven o'clock when Davis and Sorensen left the hangar.

  Winter was taking its grip on the night. The temperature had fallen precipitously and a frigid wind was misery itself. The streetlights overhead blazed bright and a cold drizzle danced in the halos, cyclonic swirls that seemed to spin without ever reaching the ground.

  They kept a brisk pace to generate heat, kept their jackets fully zipped to hold it. Davis liked being out in the elements, and so he was glad they hadn't driven. The street they used as a guide ran through a quiet residential district, and Davis was struck by the flow of the place -- or lack thereof. It was a spaghetti layout, a thousand-year stitch-work of trails, shops, and homes. Some of it had probably endured Napoleon and the Revolution. Much of it had seen two World Wars. But on this day in history's timeline it was just another neighborhood, patient and still, waiting to witness whatever chaos people thought of next.

  Sorensen said, "So tell me, are you going to make a career out of the NTSB?"

  He thought about it, but confessed, "I don't really plan that far ahead. I tried to quit a few days ago, but it didn't work out."

  She smiled.

  "But it s just a matter of time. I'll get fired long before I qualify for any kind of pension."

  "Yeah. I bet you will."

  "Thanks, Honeywell. I appreciate your confidence."

  "And then what?" she asked.

  'I'll move on to something else."

  "Another temporary job?"

  "Like I said, I try not to plan too far ahead. Today, I'm in the field making things a little better. I'm a happy guy. But in my experience, if you stick around any place too long, somebody will try to put you behind a desk. That's the day I move on."

  "You'll never get promoted that way."

  "That's my advantage. I don't want to get promoted. I've got plenty of friends who are still in the Air Force -- lieutenant colonels, full birds, even some one-stars. Most of them are parked on their butts in the Pentagon, writing mission statements and sitting in conferences."

  "It can't be all that bad."

  "Are you kidding? It's a military officer's gulag. On your performance report they call it 'career broadening.' For me it'd be more like career waterboarding. Nope. I'm right where I want to be -- out here in the cold getting things done. But Jen is my wild card. She comes before any of it. With Diane gone, I'm all she's got."

  Sorensen nodded. "Your daughter is a lucky girl."

  "I don't know. Our home life isn't exactly something Norman Rockwell would have painted."

  "Not many are these days."

  "Look at me right now. I should be home reading her the riot act about -- something." Davis looked skyward. "Or maybe shooting a few hoops in the driveway."

  "A good parent has to do both."

  He pulled up the collar on his jacket. "Yeah."

  They walked in silence for a time. An ancient building of indeterminate use butted up against the road. It looked abandoned, dark, and empty, and its chipped walls rose high, topped at the crest by carvings of leering gargoyles. Farther on, the lane doglegged right and came to be bordered by an amalgam offences and gates and a stone wall that had to be four feet thick, great slabs of Alpine granite. In any big city in the States it would all have been plastered with graffiti and topped by razor wire. Here, unadorned by blight, the borders engaged an Old World feel, a reminder that virtually everything predated those walking past.

  Davis finally said, "That file you have on me, Honeywell -- it probably didn't explain how I met Diane, did it?"

  "No."

  "It was during my first assignment after pilot training. One day I was out flying with a new guy in the squadron, Rick Foster. I was a brand new flight lead, Ricky was a lieutenant. Just two kids out having the time of their lives in a couple of F-16s. We were doing a few practice bomb passes--just dry, not releasing anything. I said something on the radio and got no reply. When I looked over my shoulder I saw a smoking hole. No warning. One second he was there. The next he was gone. Just like that."

  "What happened?"

  "I hadn't gotten into the investigation business yet. The team that looked into it determined that Ricky had his head down, probably distracted by something in the cockpit. Maybe he dropped a pencil or was fiddling with a screwy gauge. He just flew into the ground. Chances are, he never knew until the last moment."

  "That's awful."

  "Yeah, it was. Unfortunately, it happens all too often." Davis stopped. A few steps on, so did Sorensen. "But the story doesn't quite end there. You see, Diane was Rick's wife."

  Sorensen stared at him, clearly searching for something to say. "You married your buddy's widow?"

  "Yes."

  "
That sounds incredibly ... chivalrous or something."

  "There were people who saw it that way. Others were sure the two of us already had something going on. But none of that was right. I guess I felt some degree of responsibility. Diane and I drank a lot of coffee, had some long talks. It took over a year, but we eventually fell pretty hard for each other. What she and I had was the real thing."

  "Was this the reason you got interested in accident investigation?"