Fly by Night

by Ward Larsen

  Christ.

  Davis hunched forward on his chair, elbows on knees and chin cupped in his hands. He stared at the names. The information did nothing to help solve the crash. But it did a lot to complicate things. It always did. Davis had been brought here to find a missing drone, a mangled pile of high-tech hardware. Yet things were never so simple. Larry Green should have known better. He should have known better. An airplane had gone down and two pilots were dead. Nobody knew why. Not their boss, not their fellow pilots, not the mechanics who’d worked on the airplane. Worst of all, not their families.

  It was a terrible thing to be in the dark about something like that. Davis had felt it when Diane had been killed. He’d wondered why. Her car had been T-boned by a delivery truck. On first glance, a straightforward tragedy, yet it had been all he could do to stand back and let the state police run their investigation. When he eventually got a look at the final report, Davis had to be restrained from taking the investigating officer’s head off. The delivery truck had recently been in for brake maintenance, but nobody at the scene had bothered to check if the brakes were working. Nobody had checked phone records to see if the driver had been talking on his cell phone or texting at the time of the crash. Loose ends everywhere. The supervisor had tried to convince Davis that it had just been an accident, one driver missing a stop sign. The who and the when and the how were all right there, clear as day. But the why was left unanswered. Davis and Jen had been forced to live with that, and they had. But right now two families in Ukraine were asking that same agonizing question. Why? In a place like this, a dysfunctional corner of North Africa, Davis knew that if he didn’t find the answers, nobody ever would.

  And then there was the other part, the thing he’d mentioned tauntingly to Schmitt. Aviation really was a small world. A brotherhood, even. If Davis didn’t get to the bottom of this crash, he would be haunted by questions. Could the same disaster happen to another crew? Possibly someone he knew? Would another pilot lose his or her life to the same faulty part or shoddy procedural screwup?

  Not if Jammer Davis could help it.

  He would find the CIA’s drone—find it if it still existed. But at the same time, he was going to get to the bottom of this crash.

  When he entered the familiar hangar, Khoury took off his sunglasses and paused to let his eyes adjust. The light inside was good, but no match for the brilliant desert sun. The place was cavernous inside, and while an attempt was made to cool—big fans overhead stirring and blowing—the system never quite kept up. Until eight months ago, Khoury had never been in an aircraft hangar in his life. Now he had come to appreciate their utility. It was a Spartan place, naked light and ventilation fixtures mounted openly to the walls and rafters, no effort made toward a tidy appearance. Benches and toolboxes and work stands encircled the perimeter, all of it bathed in the brazen fragrances of machine oil and rubber.

  As he walked around the old airplane with the crazy antennae, he encountered Muhammed. The mechanic was tending to something underneath an engine, and when he saw Khoury he clambered to his feet and bowed respectfully. Khoury gave him the wave, but said nothing. The Jordanian recruit was at one end of Khoury’s spectrum, the last man he would ever have to worry about. Raised in a strict madrassa, he was as devout an extremist as Khoury had ever seen. If Muhammed were not here, he would certainly be in Kandahar or Lahore being fitted for explosive underwear.

  The hangar’s second working area was well defined, separated by a high partition of plywood and cloth. Inside he found Fadi Jibril. By training, the man was an engineer, years spent in university learning things Khoury could never hope to understand. His freshly earned doctorate in aerospace engineering was taken from a top school in America, and while Khoury did not know Jibril’s exact age, the man was young, certainly no more than thirty. Presently he was standing at a workbench, smoothing a long bundle of wire with his thin fingers. Everything about Jibril was delicate, almost feminine. There was no question about his sexuality—he was married to a thick, matronly woman who was, rather predictably, five months pregnant with their first child. Still, Fadi Jibril was not a man’s man. His limbs seemed to swim in the loose-fitting shirts and trousers he preferred. His shoes looked too big, like those of a clown. Yet there was no doubting his intensity, the focus that encompassed everything he did. This was forever etched in his eyes, a thing Khoury appreciated, yet never quite understood. Religion was part of it—that was why he was here, indeed why any of them were here—yet for Jibril there was something more. Khoury sensed it at this very moment as he watched the engineer caress the insulated wire, watched his sharp black eyes critique his work. Khoury could not dismiss the idea that he was watching a man who was, at heart, more an artist than a scientist.

  He cleared his throat and Jibril straightened.

  “Sheik,” he said, “I am honored.”

  This was what Jibril always said, each day when Khoury came to check his progress. He supposed Jibril was not being polite. He truly was honored. Khoury smiled inwardly.

  “And how does our work progress?” the imam asked, the pronoun covering not only the two of them, but God as well.

  Jibril sighed. “Certain parts have been difficult to work with. Our lathe is not the best. If we had a better machine—”

  “Fadi, Fadi,” Khoury interrupted, acquiring his most patient tone. “You know our troubles. We must make do with what we have. You have made great strides, no one can deny it.” He swept an arm across a work area that was surrounded by tools, machinery, and electronics. “Six months you have been at that bench, hammering and turning screwdrivers. Time, however, is not our ally.”

  The young man relented. “Yes, sheik, I know. But things are always more difficult when one turns the screws clockwise.”

  Hand tools had never been a friend to Khoury, but the metaphor was clear enough. It is easier to take apart than to build. He committed this thought to memory, recognizing its potential for a future sermon.

  “The schedule cannot be altered,” Khoury insisted. “You must distinguish between what you would like, and what you must have.”

  Jibril’s put his hands to his temples. He looked defeated, near exhaustion.

  Khoury put a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “Fadi, look at me.”

  The engineer did, and Khoury asserted his most persuasive gaze.

  “Always remember—you will be to Sudan what A.Q. Khan was to Pakistan. The father of a nation’s technical might.” Khoury watched the young man swell, his ego stoked by the bellows of his words. Khoury thought perhaps he might have struck upon it. What was different about Jibril? Scientist and artist—what combination could breed a more outsized ego?

  “Now,” Khoury suggested, “tell me where your troubles lie.”

  Jibril picked up his gaze and led Khoury to a bench where circuit boards and test equipment were strewn haphazardly. Khoury recognized a pungent electrical odor, burnt insulation or arcing wires. The engineer picked up a metal box the size of a bread pan. Three wires dangled freely, their loose ends stripped of insulation and scorched with solder.

  “This is the telemetry interface module,” Jibril said. “I told you yesterday it was giving me trouble. This unit is defective. I now suspect they are all defective.”

  Khoury sighed. “Yes, the Chinese do not have a reputation for reliability.”

  “Which is the very reason they paid us such a favorable price for the unit we removed.”

  “Indeed,” Khoury said. He pointed to the electronic box. “Can you fix it?”

  Jibril acquired a fresh air of enthusiasm. “I think it will not be necessary. I began to lose confidence in the Chinese equipment some weeks ago, so I went to the trouble of ordering a wholly different device from a German manufacturer. It should arrive today on the flight from Hamburg.”

  Khoury was impressed. For a young man, the engineer displayed an uncommon balance of patience and initiative. He was working twenty hours a day in this place, moving heaven and earth to
bring success. Yet the purchase from Germany was a concern. Much of Jibril’s hardware had already been acquired at considerable risk. Some clever, promotion-minded bureaucrat behind a customs desk might make uncomfortable connections.

  “Hamburg?” Khoury said hesitantly. “Is this not dangerous ground, Fadi? The West watches certain exports very closely. This device you have ordered, might it be on someone’s list of sensitive technology? Are you sure there will be no questions?”

  The engineer shrugged to say no. Or perhaps to say that he hadn’t really considered it.

  Khoury let it go and moved to more familiar ground. He asked the question he always asked. “Will the deadline still be met?”The edge in his voice was clear.

  “Yes, sheik. I will install the part as soon as it arrives. Yet …” Jibril hesitated, “I can only perform the most basic of bench tests. If there were more time—”

  Khoury chopped his hand upward to cut the engineer off. There was a time for coddling and a time for discipline. He gave Jibril his most solemn gaze.

  Jibril was duly inured. He bowed, and said, “It will be done, my sheik.”

  The bed was surrounded by paper as Davis studied the maintenance records for a second time. Every airplane has a logbook, a bound record of that airframe’s flight and maintenance history. Since they always stay on board, the original logbook for the mishap aircraft was now resting on the bottom of the Red Sea. Fortunately, logbooks also have duplicate pages that are removed and kept as a permanent record. This was what Davis had in his hands.

  The tear-out sheets were dry and brittle, like the paper had been baked in an oven. Arranged in chronological order, he was able to see where the airplane had been. Ten days prior to the crash, a hop from Dubai to Khartoum. The next day, an oil service and tire pressure check, then off to Lagos, Nigeria. On it went, bouncing around Africa and the Middle East. Two tires changed, a landing light replaced. A few gripes written up by pilots, subsequently addressed by maintenance.

  Every write-up he saw was entered after a landing in Khartoum, so there had never been any contract maintenance performed at a faraway airport. In an outfit like this, Davis knew, 95 percent of pilot complaints regarding inoperative systems came after landing at the home field—not a function of where things broke, but a function of the five hundred U.S. dollars FBN Aviation would have to pay for a contract mechanic in Cape Town or Mombasa. Or the five hours the crew would have to wait for them to show up, if they showed up at all.

  The logbook pages advanced chronologically until Davis reached the day before the crash. He saw a pilot-entered discrepancy: Ailerons out of trim—five units right of neutral required for level flight. Signed legibly at the bottom: Captain Gregor Anatoli. Then below, the corrective action: Ailerons rerigged and centered to zero units in accordance with maintenance manual procedure 56–7. Test flight required.

  So there it was in black-and-white. The ailerons were long tabs that ran along the trailing edges of the wings, the surfaces that made an airplane roll and turn. A critical flight control. The pilot had reported that they were out of adjustment. The attending mechanic had certified that he’d realigned them to perfection. Everything in order. Everything by the book. Davis looked at the signoff block and checked to see if the time and date made sense. They did. Then he checked the signature, saw the mechanic’s name, along with his Airframe and Powerplant certificate number. Muhammed al-Fahad. The Jordanian, no doubt.

  Then something hit him.

  Davis shuffled back to the crew profile sheet and compared it to the logbook write-up. Gregor Anatoli. The captain’s signature was right there on the logbook page, clear and legible. Maybe a little too legible. Anatoli, with one “i.”The captain had spelled his name wrong.

  Davis looked closer. He was no expert in handwriting analysis—it wasn’t the kind of thing that usually came up in aircraft accident investigations—but this one didn’t look right. A pilot like Anatolii would have a signature that was smooth and quick, like he’d done it before fifty thousand times. Which he certainly had. A captain was always signing for something—a flight plan, cargo paperwork, crew accommodations, fuel slips. But the signature on this logbook page had perfect lettering, slow and deliberate. Not like any pilot Davis had ever known. He went back over some old pages in the logbook, and a week before the crash found another write-up by Captain Gregor Anatolii. Correct spelling, two i’s, different signature. Completely different. Barely legible from the speed. Probably whipped out in a second, two at the most.

  Davis leaned back in the tiny chair and rubbed his temples. The more he found, the less sense everything made. The write-up for the ailerons—the purported reason for the accident—was almost certainly bogus. Which meant that the corrective action by the Jordanian mechanic had to be equally bogus. But why? An excuse for the crash, inserted into the records after the fact?

  The elevator rumbled past, and his little pile of papers vibrated. Frustrated, Davis stuffed them back in the folder, put the folder on the nightstand. He got up and stretched, thought about sleeping but knew he couldn’t. He was restless. It was the same feeling he got when he took a spell on the bench in a rugby match. There was a lot you could learn from sitting back and watching a game flow. You could study and theorize. See who was fast and who was slow. Who held formation and who didn’t. But after a time, sitting and watching was a pursuit of diminishing returns. There came a time to lace up, trot back out on the pitch, and start throwing yourself around.

  So Davis switched to his work boots and laced them up. Grabbed his room key and headed for the flight line.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The heat was everywhere as Davis walked across the tarmac, as if the world had a fever. It radiated down from the sky, up from the earth, into everything. His shoes, his clothes, his lungs. And there was probably no worse place in all Sudan than right where he was standing—on a busy flight line. Superheated exhaust from big turboprops, jet engines at takeoff power, brake assemblies smoking after high-energy landings. It was all there, seared into the breeze.

  He saw two FBN airplanes in the process of being unloaded, men pushing cargo out of the openings, stacking crates on the concrete ramp. Davis adjusted his vector in that direction. Just as Schmitt had said, there was no security in sight. Just two DC-3s parked on a broiling ramp, their cargo doors open wide like a pair of mouths straining for air.

  It was for aircraft like the DC-3 that the word venerable had been created. Davis knew they’d been around since before the Second World War, and that tens of thousands had been built. Three quarters of a century later, hundreds were still in the air, plowing through equatorial thunderstorms and landing on Arctic tundra. Davis hadn’t seen one in a long time, and he figured there were more in museums than in the air.

  Different airplanes had different looks. Some, like the F-22, looked fast. Some were pretty, like the Boeing-757. The DC-3 in front of him wasn’t any of those things. It was all business, functional and boring. From a distance, these two specimens looked in decent shape. They were dressed in a generic paint scheme, a coat of eggshell white that had been faded by dust from the Sahara and rain from the Amazon and soot from China. There were no corporate marks or logos, no gaudy fin flashes to establish ownership. For a company like FBN Aviation, that was probably the idea—anonymity. From where Davis stood, the only way to tell the two airplanes apart was by their registration numbers, this an unavoidable acquiescence to international law. X85BG and NH33L. Big airlines often paid a little extra to get sequential registration numbers, which helped to keep a fleet organized. These two numbers looked like they’d been chosen using Ping Pong balls from a wire tumbler. As random as you could get. Once again, maybe by design.

  When Davis got closer to the airplanes, he started to see differences. Dents on cargo doors and fuselages, hail damage on the wing leading edges. The front aircraft’s radome was pocked, and the paint looked like it had been sandblasted off, probably from flying through a sandstorm. Such minor damage was i
nevitable on two aircraft that had over a hundred years of service between them. All the same, given their far-flung histories, these DC-3s were about as much alike as any two could be.

  The airplane to the rear had already been unloaded, and a flatbed truck parked next to it was piled high with boxes and shrink-wrapped supplies. It looked like a legitimate load, some of the boxes having red crosses, others bearing the caduceus emblem, two snakes around a winged staff, to signify medical supplies. The loading crew was walking away, leaving two people near the truck, a teenage boy and a woman. The woman was securing the load with tie-down straps while the boy buttoned up the cargo door on the airplane.

  Davis went the other way, toward the lead airplane, where a guy was sitting on a forklift with his thick arms crossed over the steering wheel. He was watching closely, giving a few directions, as a large wooden crate was being eased out through the cargo door. The box’s length was longer than its width, and with a little tapering at the sides might have passed for a coffin. It was obviously heavy, and the three guys struggling to move it had one edge jutting out into the air. The side panel was covered in Cyrillic writing, which was a mystery to Davis. The translation could have been MEDICAL EQUIPMENT or MOSQUITO NETTING. More likely ROCKET PROPELLED GRENADES OR SURFACE-TO-AIR MISSILES. He hoped they didn’t drop it.

  The three guys in the loading crew looked local. The forklift driver didn’t. He was straight from central casting—burly, two-day growth of black beard, brown watch cap, cigar in his mouth—a longshoreman from the docks of Jersey.

  Davis walked up to him, and said, “Need any help?”

  The guy looked at him, up and down. “Don’t worry yourself, buddy.”

  Davis thought, Yep, definitely Jersey. He pointed to the cigar, and said, “That thing’s not lit, is it?” He jabbed a thumb toward a fuel truck parked fifty feet away. The side of the truck had a warning stenciled in bright red letters: NO SMOKING WITHIN 100 FEET.