by Jim DeFelice
“Double the search assets in this sector. Use this point as a starting point and assume the plane broke up as it went north,” Bonham told the major when he returned to where he was standing.
“Sir, uh, with respect, Colonel Gorman is in charge.”
Bonham glared at him.
“Yes, sir,” said the major.
One of the crew members from the Pave Hawk came hustling down the hill toward them. “General! Search teams are reporting a find about a hundred and fifty miles from here, due east.”
“A hundred and fifty miles?”
“Yes, sir. They think it’s the F/A-22V.”
“Let’s go,” said Bonham, starting back toward the landing area.
* * *
One of the other helicopters had just brought in a small ATV with a plow on it, and a pair of airmen were using it to cut a narrow zigzag trail down to the mountain crevice where the airplane had been found. The trail looked to be about wide enough for a shopping cart, but the two men certainly seemed to be having a hell of a time running the vehicle, and Fisher saw no reason to tell them their effort was probably a waste of time, since a heavy-duty lift helicopter was already en route from the base. Crushing personal initiative was a military job, and besides, one of the airmen had lent him a lighter.
Fisher also saw no need to go down and look at the wreck; it would be fairly jumbled, and his naked eye wasn’t going to tell him anything the technical people couldn’t. Besides, the one person worth talking to about it wasn’t going to answer any more questions in this lifetime.
What was interesting, however, was watching Bonham direct the response teams down toward the wreckage. Though well into his fifties, the ex-general hustled around as if he were in his mid-twenties. He wasn’t a stay-on-the-top administrator: The arms of the denim shirt were covered with grime, and his work shoes were well scuffed. Fisher had had a boss like that once, a real pain in the ass who basically wanted to solve every case himself. Had it ended there, it wouldn’t have been bad, but he was such a control freak that he had informants in every diner in the city, making it difficult to cop a cup and a smoke on Bureau time. And as far as he was concerned, every minute you breathed was Bureau time.
A doctor had gone down to check on the pilot’s body before it was removed. He trudged up the hill now, his green T-shirt soaked with sweat. As soon as he got to the apex of the trail, he collapsed on the pile of rocks there. Fisher slid down from his vantage point and went over to him.
“Hey, Doc. Hot down there?”
The doctor grunted something. It was summer, but it was probably only about sixty degrees.
“So, it was Williams, right?” asked Fisher, taking out his cigarettes. “Still strapped in, right?”
“You’re Fisher.”
“That’s what the cred says,” said Fisher. “Picture kind of looks like me, if you squint.”
The doctor grimaced. “Those things’ll kill you.”
Fisher held out the pack. “Want one?”
The doctor hesitated, then reached for the pack.
“Pretty gruesome, huh?”
“Let’s just say severe trauma,” said the doctor. He took a long breath on the cigarette, held it nearly thirty seconds, then exhaled. “Autopsy’ll have the details.”
“You think he was dead before the crash?” asked Fisher.
The doctor’s hand shook as he brought the cigarette to his mouth and took a drag.
“Was his body bruised?” Fisher prompted. “I’m kind of wondering, because if he was dead, well, then obviously that’s one line of expectations, and if he was alive, well, that’s another. It’d be pretty obvious on the face—”
The physician turned abruptly and began to vomit. Fisher had never met a weak-stomached doctor before, and looked on with scientific interest.
“You all right?” Fisher asked when the doctor finally stopped retching. He appeared to have had some sort of meat dish for lunch.
“Ugh,” muttered the man. Fisher took out a handkerchief and gave it to him.
“Not much left of the face,” managed the doctor.
“Warm?”
“I think he was alive at impact, yes,” said the doctor. “My g-guess would be unconscious. I’ve never seen such, such — The impact tore—”
He turned away and began to retch again.
“Fisher, what the hell are you doing? Why are you bothering my people?” demanded Bonham. “Why are you even here?”
“You commandeered my helicopter, remember?”
“Your helicopter?”
“I’m a taxpayer. When I remember to file.”
“There’s a time and place for everything. Show some respect.”
Fisher put his cigarette into his mouth, considering Bonham’s words. They seemed almost biblical.
Psalm-like, actually.
“So how do you figure the plane got so far north?” he asked Bonham.
The general gave him as exasperated look.
“Blacks out like Colonel Howe’s did, but then keeps flying?” asked Fisher. “Two hundred miles?”
“It’s probably less than one-fifty,” said Bonham. “I’m sure the crash experts will be able to compute it.”
“Yeah, they’re whizzes at this stuff. God bless ’em.” Fisher heard a helicopter arriving at the LZ and decided to see if he could hitch a ride back. “Keep the handkerchief,” he told the doctor. He looked up the hill for his bodyguard. “Come on, Johnson. Time for us to head home. I’m down to my last pack of cigarettes.”
* * *
Flying back on the helicopter, Fisher got involved in a philosophical discussion with the crew chief about whether the inventor of lite beer ought to be hanged or simply jailed for life. Because of that, he wasn’t prepared for the attack that met him on the tarmac.
“Fisher, who the hell do you think you are, screwing up a rescue operation?”
“Hey, Jemma. You’re looking particularly pallid today. Wanna cigarette?” said Fisher, walking toward the pillbox that housed the elevator into the bunker complex.
“You can’t smoke on this base,” said Jemma. “There’s all sorts of jet fuel and flammable materials.”
“Write me up.” Fisher poked out a Camel and lit up. He had a hankering for a Marlboro, but his Indian suppliers didn’t go for the image, so they were hard to get. “How come you’re outside during the day? Aren’t you afraid of melting?”
“Fisher, what the hell were you doing?” She placed herself in front of him in a pose that convinced Fisher she had been a linebacker in a previous life.
“Looking at a piece of metal from our plane,” he said. “Then Bonham decided to have me tag along to the F/A-22V crash. Damn far north, don’t you think?”
“They have the course already computed.”
“Sure,now they do: Why the hell didn’t they figure that out before? Would’ve saved a lot of trouble. You’re going to have to get all your little men on the situation board to shift north, right? What are the Canadians saying about this?”
“Computing crash sites isn’t as easy as you think.”
“Which is why Cyclops is still missing, right?”
Gorman pulled the bottom of her uniform jacket down, smoothing it.
“Better off pressing it,” said Fisher. “That’s what you get for sleeping in it.”
“I don’t sleep in my uniform.”
“Pink jammies with fuzzy feet?”
“What did you see up there? Was the pilot alive when the plane hit, or what?”
Fisher studied his cigarette a moment. It seemed to him that the burn tilted slightly to the west, no matter how he held it. Maybe it was a magnetic thing.
Figure it out and he could use it as a compass.
“Well?” asked Gorman.
“Doc thought so. I don’t think he has much experience, though. Make sure they check the blood for carbon dioxide levels, but I’d almost for sure rule that out. Say, tell me about Bonham. How old is he?”
“H
ow the hell do I know?”
“If he’s not in the Army—”
“Air Force.”
“Yeah. So he’s retired, right? But everyone calls him general and acts like he’s hot shit.”
“It’s an honorific. And he’s head of the NADT. He is hot shit, as you put it.”
“He’s a pain in your ass, isn’t he?”
Gorman’s cheeks shaded dark red. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“He thinks he’s running the investigation.”
“This is an Air Force investigation. I am in charge here.”
“I didn’t say you weren’t. Getting any pressure from Congress?”
“Congress? Why?”
“York’s cousin’s a congressman.”
Gorman shrugged. She obviously hadn’t known that, though she was about as likely to admit that as the pope was to confess he’d smoked pot in seminary. “Tell me about that piece of metal,” she said, changing the subject. “Was it from Cyclops One or not?”
“Oh yeah. We can discard the accident theory. Plane was definitely stolen.”
“What?”
“I’m going to start going through the personnel files. I was afraid it would come to this.” Fisher tossed his cigarette down. Mindful of Jemma’s concern about starting a fire, he crushed it out with his heel. “I hate using the Air Force computers. Maybe I can bribe somebody to do it for me.”
“Andrew—”
“I’d ask you but I know you’re busy.”
“For the record, your clearance on this case is strictly limited. It doesn’t cover the weapons system.”
“Jemma, my clearance is higher than yours. You know, maybe you should put a little starch into your shirt. Get rid of the wrinkles. They dock you for that, right? Demerits or something? Take away your cigarette privileges.”
* * *
Kowalski was heading the section reviewing the personnel records, which was, as Fisher predicted, using Air Force computers. The DIA agent took one look at him and shook his head as he entered the room. Fisher ignored him, walking toward the side of the large room where the coffee was sequestered.
“What’d you find in Canada?” Kowalski asked.
“Who the hell’s making the coffee here? You?” Fisher held up the pot. About half-full, it was as thick as Texas honey.
“I’ll send out if you tell me what’s going on in Canada,” said the DIA agent. “We’re just reading electrons here.”
“Found a part of an airplane.”
“And?”
“And it was obviously planted there. So whose bank account just grew by a billion bucks?”
“Fisher.”
“Come on. You’ve had enough time to dig up some dirt by now. A bank foreclosure, at least.”
Kowalski glanced at the sergeant who had accompanied Fisher into the room. “I’m afraid Sergeant Johnson shouldn’t be in on this discussion. Personnel matters are private.”
“Sean’s not going to talk, right? Besides, he doesn’t speak English.”
The sergeant gave a little smirk.
“Seriously, we can’t talk about this in front of anyone who’s not part of the investigation.”
“Maybe I might find something to eat,” said the sergeant. “Down the hall.”
“See, now you hurt his feelings,” said Fisher after the sergeant left. “Who’s our perp?”
“What happened in Canada?” asked Kowalski.
“Piece of the wing from the 767 that has some sort of serial number on it. Looked to me like it was dropped from five feet off the ground.”
“The engineers assessed it already?”
“No, but you know what they’re going to say: ‘No definable parameters’ or some such bullshit. They might get something from looking at the side — the metal has a shear I don’t think could’ve happened if it just ripped off. Anyway, it’s definitely there as a red herring. The F/A-22V was over here about a hundred and, what, fifty miles?” He diagrammed it in the air. “Bonham went up there to check it out.”
“Bonham went there himself?”
“Yeah, my kind of guy. Except he don’t smoke. Can’t be perfect.” Fisher took a sip of the coffee, which was starting to grow on him: It was now merely undrinkable, as opposed to hideously undrinkable. “Slip a couple of lead plates in here and you could start a car,” he told Kowalski.
“That far north, huh?”
“That’s what I’m thinking. How the hell did it get way the hell out there, huh? Modelers screw up?”
Kowalski shrugged. “I had this A-10A case once. It flew for something like two hours before it pancaked in. Incredible.”
“Yeah, but our plane missed some serious mountains.”
“Talk to the experts,” said the DIA agent. “Don’t talk to me.”
“So what I’m thinking, then, is if the Velociraptor could go that far, then the 767 could go even further, because it has a clearer path and it’s higher. Right?”
“Presumably.”
Fisher took another sip of coffee. He must’ve hit a good spot in the cup before: It was back to being hideously undrinkable. “So, who’s the prime suspect if the planes were stolen? York?”
“No way,” said the DIA agent. “All the crew people are clean. This could be an NSA operation, with all the background checks they put these people through. They didn’t trust the DSS backgrounds. Special checks were done by an FBI unit after the DSS’s came back clean.”
“Oh, that fills me with a lot of confidence,” said Fisher.
The DSS was the Defense Security Service, whose checks included not only searches of data records but visits to former neighborhoods. The FBI checks would have been similar but in theory more in-depth.
The FBI agent walked over to the two long tables at the center of the room where Kowalski and the people helping him had set up several computers. Two had hardware keys — actually, special circuits that acted as encryption devices — enabling them to directly access a government top-secret intelligence network known as Intelink. The network worked like a highly secure Internet; hypertext links connected to several sources on different subjects. There were limits: Intelink information did not extend to Sensitive Compartmented Information, ultrasecret data available on a very restricted basis. Cyclops, for example, would not be found in a query there. Nor could the computers access SpyNet, which was another top-level network used more for strategic security information.
Special authorization was needed to get into the personnel files Kowalski was using, and Fisher had to go through the biometrics ID routine twice, squinting into what looked like a set of stationary binoculars.
“Who are you interested in?” Kowalski asked.
“York.”
“Why?”
“ ’Cause she’s not here. I only talk about people behind their backs.”
“Weren’t you saying a couple of hours ago that Williams was the prime suspect?”
“Sounded like me.”
Kowalski snorted.
“See, that’s why it’s got to be York,” said Fisher. “What do you figure the odds are of me being wrong twice in a row?”
“Astronomical,” said Kowalski.
Chapter 7
McIntyre took some pleasure in seeing Clayton T. “I’m More Connected and Twenty Times More Powerful Than You’ll Ever Be” Bonham squirm as he tried to explain why the Cyclops aircraft had not yet been located.
Some pleasure. He was, after all, in Montana, not Hawaii.
“Colonel Gorman is in charge of the investigation and the search assets,” said Bonham, gesturing toward the large grid map at the front of the Test Situation Room, which had been commandeered to coordinate the search operation. “The Air Force took over the search a few hours after the accident.”
“What’d you do in the meantime?” said McIntyre.
Bonham glared at him, but said nothing. Calling NADT its own empire was an understatement; the ex-general had more power than Napoleon and was
answer-able only to a board of directors that met once every millennium. The board members were, for the most part, low-key, old-line big shots with massive stakes in various defense companies. On the other hand, even McIntyre had to admit that NADT had an excellent track record making things work; even with the accident, Cyclops and the Velociraptor were impressive war machines.
Gorman was conferring with one of the search coordinators in the front of the room, which looked a great deal like the mission control facility that tracked Shuttle missions. Three long banks of workstations arranged stadium-style in a backward semicircle out from the front wall, where a large multiuse projection panel was framed by a number of small displays, each of which could be slaved to different input systems.
McIntyre took a few steps toward the center of the room, looking at the main map as he oriented himself. The F/A-22V had been found well north in Canada. They now expected that the 767 would be found there as well.
Gorman came over and McIntyre, who’d never met her before, introduced himself. She was a bit abrupt, clearly not happy that someone from the NSC had been sent to look over her shoulder.
Not that he blamed her.
As Gorman explained why the earlier parameters had been wrong — the complicated explanation actually made it seem as if they were right and the plane simply got up and walked northward — McIntyre’s eyes strayed toward one of the young officers in the front row. She was Air Force, a lieutenant with short, dirty-blond hair and military breasts. Feigning interest in the map, McIntyre began walking toward her, nodding as Gorman continued. The young officer looked up and smiled at him as he approached.
Dinner, a movie, a motel. Something with a hot tub — a little class for the woman in uniform, or out of uniform, as the case may be.
McIntyre was about three stations away when one of his cell phones rang. Unfortunately, it was the only one he absolutely had to answer.
“I have to take this,” he said, looking first at the lieutenant and then back at Bonham. “Someplace secure?”
* * *
Bonham’s office was austere, its furniture made of metal and the seats covered with what looked and felt like indoor-outdoor carpet. It was a sharp contrast to NADT’s Washington-area office, and in fact quite a bit plainer than really necessary; no one would have begrudged the former general leather upholstery and cherry accents.