Changeling

by David Wood

  “So the crew did not report any problems.”

  “Not a peep. The odds are that this was a mechanical failure, not a deliberate act, but we won’t know what happened on that aircraft until we find it. So while I understand that you have a job to do, Agent Chapman, you’re just pissing into the wind.”

  Professor didn’t back down. “And why haven’t you found it?”

  “Didn’t you hear what I said? We don’t track these planes in real time so we don’t know where it went down.”

  “But that particular plane was equipped with both a radio transponder and a GPS locator, right? I heard those systems were shut down by someone on the plane.”

  Sousa sighed again as if weary of answering these particular questions. “If the aircraft experienced a major failure, like a fire in the electrical bay, those systems would have been disabled along with the radio. That doesn’t mean someone aboard intentionally shut them off.”

  “Okay what about the black box? That’s supposed to be indestructible, right?”

  “The cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder are designed to survive a crash, and yes, they do broadcast a 37.5 kilohertz locator ping, at least until the batteries die. Right now, search vessels are deployed in the projected crash area listening for that signal, but in case you haven’t looked at a map lately, it’s a big bloody ocean.”

  “If the plane’s disappearance was a deliberate act,” Professor said, “say, an act of terrorism, it might have deviated from its course. A difference of even a few degrees would put it thousands of miles from where you’re looking. That would explain why you haven’t found it, right? I’d say that’s a pretty compelling reason to at least investigate the possibility that this was an act of terrorism.”

  Sousa rolled his eyes. “I thought you wanted to know what really happened.”

  “What makes you so sure this wasn’t a deliberate act?”

  “Occam’s Razor. Look, if the aircraft broke up suddenly in mid-flight, whether because of a bomb or a system failure, we probably would have found the wreckage by now. That means that the plane continued to fly after the communications system went down. Here’s my theory. A fire in the E and E bay—that’s Electronics and Equipment—takes out the radios and the cockpit fills with smoke. Captain Norris is unable to send a distress call, so he immediately changes course, looking for the nearest place to set down, but the flight crew, and probably everyone else aboard, is overcome by the smoke and the plane keeps flying with no one at the stick until it runs out of fuel and crashes into the ocean. It’s happened before.”

  Sousa’s expertise was eroding the foundation of the assumption that had brought Professor to the opposite side of the world, but there was something he knew that Sousa did not. “What if I told you there was credible intelligence indicating that one or more of the passengers on that plane had been specifically targeted for assassination?”

  Sousa remained unmoved. “You aren’t hearing me, Agent Chapman. The plane was not destroyed along its flight path, which means that someone manually changed course. Only the flight crew could have done that.”

  “The 9-11 hijackers took flying lessons.”

  “If anyone had attempted to take over that plane, the captain would have immediately sent a distress call. The same goes for a passenger trying to sabotage the plane.”

  “What about the crew? Maybe one of them was the perpetrator. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “We’ve already looked into that. Captain Norris and First Officer Carrera had impeccable records and no ties whatsoever to extremist groups. We’ve even done voice stress analysis of the recorded radio transmissions. There’s nothing at all to indicate that either one of them was suicidal or under coercion. No, I’m sorry. The simplest solution is almost certainly the correct one. All the evidence points to this being an accident. A tragedy to be sure, but not a crime.”

  Professor’s certitude began to crack apart like thin ice. He had made the same mistake as Roche and Jeremiah Stillman and all the other kooks who saw conspiracies in every coincidence. Maybe Sousa was right.

  “Can I ask you a question, Agent Chapman?”

  It took Professor a moment to process Sousa’s request. He met the other man’s gaze and nodded.

  “Who?”

  Professor blinked. “I’m sorry?”

  “You said you had credible intelligence.” An odd gleam, more than mere curiosity, had entered Sousa’s dark eyes. Professor thought he looked like a cat contemplating a goldfish in a bowl. “I’ve become intimately familiar with ever name on the manifest of that aircraft. There were no red flags. Who was being targeted?”

  “It’s not something I can talk about just yet,” Professor said with a tight smile. “Besides, you’re probably right. It’s most likely a dead end.”

  Sousa regarded him a moment longer, then laid his palms flat on his desk. “You got what you need here?”

  A low buzzing in Professor’s pocket signaled an incoming text message. He resisted the urge to check it immediately. “I’d like to talk to a few more people. Get a broader perspective. Like I said, I don’t want to be in the way. I just want my report to reflect that I did my job. Can you point me in the right direction?”

  “I’ll make a list,” Sousa said. His tone was indifferent but the glimmer had not faded from his eyes. “You know, if you really want to understand what’s going on here, you should get your hands dirty.”

  “Meaning what exactly?”

  “There’s an Orion leaving in about an hour. A search plane.”

  Professor knew what an Orion was. The venerable Lockheed P-3 Orion was a four-engine turboprop anti-submarine/surveillance aircraft, developed in 1959 but still in service throughout the world.

  “You should ride along,” Sousa continued. “Talk to the men who are actually out there looking. Besides, I can’t think of a better way to get a broader perspective than looking down from a search aircraft over a hundred thousand square miles of open water.”

  Before Professor could respond, his phone buzzed again, another message or perhaps a reminder for the first. He dug it out and glanced at the notification, a single message from Tam Broderick: “Did you see this???” followed by a truncated Internet URL.

  It was not Tam Broderick’s style to forward funny cat videos.

  He rose from his chair. “I’ll get back to you on that, Mr. Sousa. Right now, I need to take this.”

  Sousa rose as well and moved toward the door while Professor tapped his screen to see what Tam had sent him. The URL directed him to a familiar website, the Crescent Defense League’s “Enemies of Islam” page. The page had been updated since his last visit. There was a new name on the CDL hit list.

  Frigid adrenaline surged through Professor’s veins.

  Jade.

  The picture of her was a recent one, taken in Peru, probably a production still from the Alien Explorers website. Underneath, a short article outlined the reason Jade Ihara was considered an enemy to the faith, which mostly boiled down to her alleged collusion with Gerald Roche, in the pursuit of spurious evidence to support the “lie” that the Prophet Muhammad never existed.

  While the article did not explicitly call for violence against Jade, the implicit message was hard to miss. Enemies of Islam like Roche and Jade needed to be silenced.

  It was the last sentence that made Professor’s blood run cold.

  Ihara is believed to be in Scotland, near Glasgow.

  He jumped to his feet but before he could turn toward the door, he felt a sharp stinging at the back of his neck. He jerked away reflexively, spinning on his heel even as the sting transformed into a spike of cold, like an enormous icicle stabbing through his upper torso. He whirled around to face his assailant, but whatever Sousa had injected was already robbing him of motor control. Professor’s legs collapsed under his weight and he crashed into the wall.

  He clung desperately to consciousness but knew that it was a losing battle. The last thing he heard
before the fog closed over him was the distant sound of someone speaking. It was Sousa’s voice, but without any trace of an Australian accent.

  “I need a replacement… No. Take him to the facility. We’ll get what we need from him there.”

  TEN

  Kilmaurs, Scotland

  As her flashlight beam illuminated the face of the man standing in the passage, Jade managed to stifle her shriek of alarm. The noise that issued from her sounded more like a burp of displeasure.

  “Kellogg! Damn it! What are you doing here?” She paused a beat, though not nearly long enough to allow him to respond. “Wait, did you…follow me here? You did, didn’t you?”

  A guilty look flickered over his face, but it was replaced almost immediately by an expression of triumph. He pointed a finger at the object peeking from Jade’s clenched fist. “You found it. Roche’s book. I knew you would.”

  She jammed the thumb drive into a pocket and took a step toward him, hands on her hips. “You followed me,” she repeated. “What the hell?”

  “I didn’t follow you. But when you kept asking about Mr. Roche’s hunting lodge, it wasn’t hard to figure out that you would come here. And I realized that it was the obvious place to look for his manuscript.” His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I do hope you weren’t trying to cut me out of the picture.”

  “I didn’t keep asking and I never told you about the fogous, so how did you find me here?”

  “The innkeeper said I’d find you here or at the tavern. You weren’t at the tavern.”

  “He just told you where I was?” Jade stopped herself, realizing there was nothing to be gained by hammering at the issue. “Never mind. I wasn’t trying to cut you out of anything, Kellogg. Roche wanted me to find this. That’s what I’m doing. As soon as I figure it out, the book is yours.”

  Kellogg spread his hands as if genuflecting. “That’s all I wanted. That, and for you to start calling me Jordan.”

  “Quit while you’re ahead.” She shone the light up the length of the tunnel. “Come on let’s get out of—”

  She broke off abruptly as she spied movement directly ahead. Something—an animal perhaps, or possibly a person—had drawn back into the shadows at the first touch of light, like a sea anemone shrinking from contact. She turned to Kellogg. “You saw that, yeah?”

  “I didn’t…I wasn’t really looking.”

  Jade frowned. Another ghost? She didn’t think so. Whatever she had spotted had seemed more substantial. More real. “You bring a date, Kellogg?”

  Kellogg’s only answer was a bewildered stare.

  Jade was pretty sure no one had seen her enter the fogou, but she doubted Kellogg had been as discreet. Maybe a local farmer or shepherd had spotted him tramping through the woods and followed. She waggled the light back and forth, creating a stroboscopic effect. “Hey you,” she called. “Don’t be shy. Come and say hi!”

  Several seconds ticked by. After half a minute, Jade was starting to believe that she had imagined it but then a man stepped fully into view. At least, she assumed it was a man. The build looked decidedly masculine, average height and weight, not overly muscular, but definitely not dainty. The facial features would probably have resolved any remaining doubt about the gender of the new arrival, but those remained mostly hidden behind a black ski mask. That, and the two-foot length of steel pipe in the man’s hand, told her this was no mere curious passerby.

  Jade kept her light pointed at the man’s face. The flashlight was an older, low intensity affair, bright enough to irritate but not blind the would-be attacker, but in its glare, Jade could see the man’s eyes, and read the fear written there. This man was no killer, had probably never even been in a serious fight.

  Why’d you pick today to start something? Jade thought.

  Another figure, similarly attired and equipped, stepped into view behind the first. The second man’s eyes were harder than his companions but only a little. Of the pair, the second man was clearly the instigator, pushing his timid friend forward to ensure that he would not run away.

  Jade took a deep breath. “Okay, boys. I’m not sure what this is about…”

  She trailed off when she realized that the first man was muttering something. She could just make out the outline of his lips moving under the fabric of his mask, but the words were nonsense. “La-la-la…”

  The man abruptly lurched forward, raising his cudgel even though he was still a good ten steps away. Jade took an instinctive step back and bumped into Kellogg who was also retreating. She didn’t need to look behind her to know that there was nowhere to go.

  Okay. Fight, then, but with what? It wasn’t like she could just pull a weapon out of thin air.

  She straightened her back and widened her stance, trying to remember all the self-defense courses she had taken, all the martial arts instruction Professor and her ex-boyfriend Dane Maddock had tried to impart to her.

  Maddock’s new girl was some kind of professional cage fighter.

  She’d know what to do, Jade thought mordantly.

  The man seemed to be moving in slow motion, as if every step, every action, was being stretched out deliberately to accentuate the dread Jade now felt. She saw his muscles tensing like a clockwork spring being wound tight, and then the subtle shift in his balance as he reversed direction and swung the cudgel at her.

  Jade easily side-stepped the attack and thrust outward with both hands, planting the heels of her palms in the man’s chest. A hard shove sent the man stumbling back, his cudgel swiping empty air, yet even as he went reeling, the second man moved in, aiming his pipe at Jade’s head. She tried to duck away, but inertia conspired against her. She had invested too much momentum in repelling the first attacker to change course now. The bludgeoning instrument swung toward her cranium with the precise angle and timing required to deliver a crushing blow, and there was nothing she could do to avoid it.

  Something clamped onto Jade’s wrist, pulling her arm taut with such ferocity that Jade thought her shoulder would be dislocated. The violence of the unexpected seizure caused her head to snap sideways. The sound of cracking vertebrae was so loud, she didn’t ever hear the length of pipe whooshing through the space where her head had been only a moment before.

  It took her a moment longer to realize what had just happened. Kellogg had yanked her out of the way of the crushing blow. Unfortunately, in so doing, he had also whipped her around and sent her careening into the wall of the fogou.

  The impact shuddered through her, rattling her teeth, but it wasn’t as bad as hitting solid stone. The battered rocks shifted like a pile of gravel, and then something broke under her and she spilled forward into a cavity that had been concealed behind the wall. Kellogg, his hand still locked around her wrist, was pulled along with her into the newly opened hole. The flashlight tumbled from her grasp and hit the ground with sufficient force to snuff out the light, plunging the cave and all its newly revealed secrets into darkness.

  The darkness offered only a brief respite. A light, probably from a smart phone, flared to life in the circular main chamber, revealing the irregular break in the wall through which Jade and Kellogg had crashed. The light shifted, filling the opening with blinding radiance, forcing Jade to look away, but as she did, Jade realized that the space beyond the wall kept going.

  “A tunnel,” Jade gasped. She hoped it was a tunnel at least, and not just a dead end passage. “Come on!”

  Jade thought about digging her own phone out for light, but doing so would have served only to give the club-wielding men something to focus on. As long as she and Kellogg could avoid being illuminated, they would be safe.

  She started forward, one hand stretched out before her in order avoid colliding with another wall, the other gripping Kellogg’s hand and pulling him along. After a dozen steps, her groping hand encountered something. A wall, but not the dead end she feared. Instead, it was merely the oblique angle of a bend in the tunnel. She shifted direction and continued forward, following the
turn. For a few seconds, the darkness was absolute, but then a faint glow from behind signaled that the two attackers were still in pursuit.

  The retreat, fumbling along one cautious step at a time, gave Jade time to process what was happening. If the third time was enemy action, then this could only be construed as a declaration of war, yet something about that explanation didn’t ring true. She did not doubt that the disparate events were somehow connected, but each successive link in the chain seemed weaker, as if the enemy was intentionally deescalating the conflict.

  The enemy.

  Who the hell was the enemy? Islamic extremists? Changelings? Neither felt plausible, but regardless, it was hard to believe that all of the incidents were being carried out by the same group. After disappearing an entire jet full of people, a couple of thugs with crude clubs was almost embarrassingly unsophisticated.

  Jade came to an abrupt stop.

  “What is it?” Kellogg hissed.

  “This doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What?”

  Jade turned, pushed past him and started back up the tunnel, toward the diffuse glow of her attackers’ light. “Hey! Who the hell are you, huh? What do you want?”

  She knew she was shouting but could barely hear herself over the sound of blood rushing in her ears. Every step forward brought her closer to what might very well be a fatal encounter, but instead of fear, she felt only anger. She had faced life or death situations plenty of times before. She could handle the threat, but she absolutely hated not knowing why.