Lauren’s hand shot to cover her mouth, as if she needed to stifle a scream. Her eyes were drawn to Meredith, her face turned upward toward Robert’s. Lauren advanced the scene several more frames and then froze it. Robert’s face filled the screen. Though twenty years had passed and surgeries had altered his facial structure, his eyes were unchanged. Lauren sat back and studied the image. She flashed back on moments in her marriage, not wanting to accept what she was seeing. She wallowed along in self-imposed denial until a definite sense of clarity finally overwhelmed her. She hadn’t imagined it and she couldn’t ignore it—the truth was right in front of her. Lauren couldn’t stand it anymore and she mashed the button to eject the disk and in that split second before the screen went dark, Meredith and Robert moved together and kissed. Lauren closed her eyes. She felt hollow, gutted, and knew for sure that her world had just shifted on its axis.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Donovan had survived the evening. He’d met everyone, thanking each and every one of them for the difficult job they were doing. He’d finally left Montero in the mess hall and escaped into the aft storeroom, where the recovered debris was being stored. He’d been around wrecked airplanes before, but not so soon after the accident and never on this magnitude. A Boeing 767 was a large airplane, piloted by highly trained and skilled individuals, yet they were unable to stop the process that brought this airplane down. Donovan always felt a tragic bond with fallen aviators, especially with those he considered his peers. He, too, flew day in and day out in high-performance jet aircraft, and he couldn’t help but wonder if he were put in the same situation would he have fared any better than the now silent crew of the 767.
Donovan slowly made his way amongst the recovered debris. Meticulously affixed to each object was a tag that offered latitude and longitude, plus a time stamp of when it was recovered. Smaller pieces were bagged so the NTSB would be able to identify the seemingly random parts and use the information to construct a detailed map of what ended up where. He examined several of the transparent bags and was saddened to find a cluster of personal effects. A purse, a shoe, a soaked boarding pass, all giving sad testament to the people who were aboard the airliner when it crashed.
The human remains were below in the infirmary. The Jamaican Coast Guard was scheduled to receive the bodies tomorrow and deliver them to a makeshift morgue in Kingston for autopsy.
Many sections of the twisted metal were coated with zinc chromate, a yellowish-green anticorrosive agent that easily identified them as internal parts of the aircraft. Bare aluminum marked surface skin. The largest piece in the room was about the size of a mangled canoe, its aluminum edges jagged and scratched from the crash. He ran his hand over the once smooth surface and felt the aberrations and the gouges in the metal.
He spent time studying each of the larger pieces and tried to picture what part of a 767 he was looking at, but couldn’t. The only reason any of it had floated was from rubber or foam sections that had created a modest amount of buoyancy, or a sealed section had trapped an air pocket. When he pictured an intact Boeing 767 and then compared it to the amount of wreckage before him, he was beset by the enormity of the recovery job that lay ahead.
“Mr. Nash, there you are. I’ve been looking for you.” Mary announced with an air of excitement in her voice. “ROMEO is approaching the debris field, and I thought someone with your aviation expertise should sit in on this.”
“Thanks, Mary.” Donovan said, as he fell in step behind her. They wound through the maze of gangways, and he held open a watertight hatch for Mary to pass through, then ducked and went through himself. They went down a passageway and through another hatch until Donovan found himself in a room that resembled a home theatre. At the front of the space was a wall full of screens. Situated below the monitors were computer keyboards as well as an assortment of controls and smaller screens. Off to the side was a stack of electrical components and computer hard drives, small green lights glowing in the semidarkness. Technicians were positioned at strategic stations around the largest work area, and Donovan knew they were the ones guiding ROMEO. Rising up at a gentle slope were six rows of large padded chairs—the observation section. In the second row sat Montero.
Donovan took a seat next to her.
“We’re almost there,” a technician reported. “Sonar is showing what looks like a significant amount of metal on the bottom. It’s fairly scattered, but the echoes concur with our earlier estimation of where the tail section may have come to a rest. The signal strength from the locator beacon inside both the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder confirms our data.”
In the background, Donovan could pick out a faint pinging sound, ROMEO’s relay of the directional beacon.
Montero leaned over and whispered, “I didn’t know the black boxes had homing beacons.”
Donovan nodded. “Immersion in water automatically triggers the beacon. They are designed to operate for thirty days before their battery runs out.”
“We’re fifty feet from the bottom,” the technician reported, careful to speak into a microphone as all operations were recorded. “Total depth is almost forty-seven hundred feet, and I’m bringing the lights up to step one.”
Donovan watched as the largest of the screens flickered to life. At first, all he could see was what looked like snowflakes, tiny organisms that threatened to block the view, but seconds later he began to make out the subtle contours of an unremarkable ocean floor. Smooth brown mud stretched out in every direction and vanished into the darkness.
“The first object should be visible shortly,” one of the technicians said.
“Very good.” Mary nodded. “Maneuver slowly.”
Donovan leaned forward as he started to see a vague shape materialize in the murky haze of the deep.
“I think we’ve got something here,” Mary said. “Roll video.”
Donovan knew there would be a video record made of everything they saw. There were also several still cameras that could be used for photographing specific objects of interest. As ROMEO silently approached the object, Donovan was the first in the room to understand what they were seeing.
“It looks to me like we’re seeing a section of the fuselage. It’s upside down, the top of the plane is partially submerged in the sediment.”
“You have a good eye, Mr. Nash.” Mary made a note on her clipboard.
“Can you maneuver us all the way around it?” Donovan asked. “I’d like to get a closer look at where this section separated.”
“Slowly, we don’t want to raise a cloud of silt from the sea floor,” Mary said to her team.
As ROMEO was guided in a slow circle, Donovan could finally see where the smooth aluminum gave way to the harsh tearing of the metal. Insulation, fragments from seat cushions as well as wire bundles were strewn everywhere. They could now peer into the interior of the airliner itself. ROMEO’s bright lights cast harsh shadows into what was once part of the cabin. Donovan braced himself for the sight of bodies. Most would have been sucked out when the fuselage ruptured or thrown clear when the wreckage hit the sea, but there was always the chance that some unfortunate souls would have ridden the wreckage all the way to the ocean floor. Initial inspection showed the small section devoid of passengers.
“The masks have dropped,” Montero said, pointing to the tangle of plastic tubing and yellow face masks floating inside.
“They could have dropped from the impact with the water. Even a hard landing can pop them out sometimes,” Donovan replied, his attention focused on where the metal had separated. The amount of force required to rip the metal apart had been enormous.
“Mr. Nash,” Mary asked, “can you positively identify the aircraft or airline from what we’re looking at here?”
“No,” Donovan replied. The room was quiet as ROMEO made a slow three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle. The image told of a massive impact.
“If everyone is finished here, we’ll move to the next location.” Mary looked around th
e room and everyone agreed.
“How long?” Donovan asked.
“Just a few minutes,” Mary said, glancing at a screen. “This next debris field is larger, or at least appeared that way on the sonar returns.”
The steady one-ping-per-second beacon sounded in everyone’s ears as ROMEO motored along the ocean floor toward the next contact.
“Object is dead ahead, fifteen meters,” the technician called out. “I’m switching on the video cameras.”
As before, the object came into view as though it were shrouded in a dense, snowy fog.
“What is it?” Montero said.
“Can you pan upward?” Donovan asked, as he too tried to make sense out of what he was seeing on the screen. He couldn’t find a point of reference to determine what it was they’d found. Slowly, the perspective shifted, but it wasn’t until Donovan spotted the distinct shape of an airfoil that he understood.
“According to the directional microphone we’re getting close to the black boxes,” Mary said.
“It’s what’s left of the tail,” Donovan announced. “That smooth surface is the vertical stabilizer. Below that, partly sunk in the mud, is the section of the fuselage where the horizontal stabilizer is attached. You can just start to make out the gray-and-red stripes of Pan Avia Airlines and there’s the registration number, PR-GFT.”
“Okay, good work, people. We have positive verification that this is indeed the Pan Avia Boeing 767. Now, let’s do a three-hundred-sixty-degree survey and figure out the best way to get at the black boxes.”
“Can ROMEO cut through the metal and reach them?” Montero asked.
“Doubtful,” Mary replied. “We’ll, of course, have to confer with both the NTSB and Boeing, but my best guess is we’ll end up raising this entire section to the surface.”
A phone next to Mary rang and she answered immediately. “Yes, Captain. I understand. They’re both right here. I’ll pass the message along to her.”
“What’s going on?” Donovan asked.
“Captain Pittman just received an urgent message for Special Agent Montero from a Mr. Hamilton Burgess at the FBI,” Mary replied. “He’s requested a video conference. The two of you need to go to the computer lab.”
“Follow me,” Donovan said.
They went down the passageway, up two flights, and into a long, narrow room lined with computer workstations. At the end of the space was a glassed-off room with a large flat screen on one wall.
“Right in there,” the computer tech said as the two of them drew closer.
Donovan trailed Montero and walked into the room and was greeting by a life-sized image of Montero’s boss. He didn’t look happy, but then Donovan didn’t think he’d ever seen the man when he didn’t have a scowl on his face.
“Mr. Nash, I invited you to this meeting since it pertains to you as well as Special Agent Montero.” Burgess cleared his throat. “Earlier today we were called to a crime scene. Ricky Lee Vaughn, one of your confidential informants, was killed in his gun shop. We know from the time stamp on the security footage that he was killed last night at 8:25 p.m.”
“Ricky,” Montero said. She lowered her head for a moment before she looked up at Burgess. “You have whoever did this on video?”
“Seems Vaughn was kind of a computer nut and the whole place was wired. There’s no audio, but I have some video to show you.” Burgess nodded to someone off camera. “Watch this and then we’ll talk.”
The image jumped from color to black-and-white, and Donovan realized he was looking at the inside of the gun shop he and Montero had been in yesterday afternoon. Ricky was behind the counter when a customer wearing a baseball cap, the visor pulled low, entered the front door. Despite being slightly pixelated, Donovan instantly recognized Nathan Strauss. With no wasted motion, Strauss drew his weapon and pointed it at Ricky’s forehead. Words were exchanged, and Ricky reluctantly removed the pistol from a holster on his hip and placed it on the countertop and raised his hands in the air. Strauss motioned for Ricky to lead the way into the back room.
The picture jumped as the feed from a different camera came into view. Ricky was seated at a laptop and Strauss was standing behind him. The gun was pressed into the folds of Ricky’s neck. The camera was mounted high enough that over Ricky’s shoulder Donovan could see the computer screen. It looked like Ricky was fast-forwarding through recorded video of some kind, maybe searching for something. Ricky clicked the mouse and the image froze, then he backed it up slowly until two people were shown coming into the gun shop. Donovan didn’t need audio to know what was being said. He’d been there—Montero was doing the talking while laying down one hundred dollar bills.
Ricky turned and said something to Strauss. Then Donovan saw the carnage that had been exacted on Ricky. Momentarily confused, Donovan’s eyes darted to the time stamp; thirty minutes had elapsed since Strauss had walked into the shop. Ricky’s bloody and swollen face told of a half hour of savage violence at the hands of Strauss. The silent, one-sided conversation went on for another sixty seconds and then without flourish Strauss pulled the trigger. Ricky’s blood splattered on the computer screen and the big man toppled sideways out of his chair and collapsed to the floor. Strauss turned and glanced up briefly for the first time, though his features were still mostly obscured by his cap and beard. He studied the camera installation momentarily, reached for the connections, and then the screen went black.
“Care to elaborate?” Burgess asked as his face once again materialized. We edited out the beating, but I can tell you that the assailant knew what he was doing. According to our experts, he’s been trained by professionals.”
“I gather he walked off with Ricky’s hard drive. How is it we have these images?” Montero asked.
“All of Vaughn’s security feeds were sent to the hard drive that was stolen, but the stream was also sent in real-time to an off-site server. The local police located the security firm that did the work and they surrendered the files.”
“Did anyone figure out what Ricky said at the end?” Montero asked.
“He gave the gunman two names, Sasha and Roberto. Mr. Nash, I gather that Roberto is the name you use when you’re out playing cop?”
Donovan said nothing and waited for Burgess to continue.
“We know who Sasha is; she was killed within hours of this murder. What I don’t understand is why the gunman didn’t ask what your name was, Special Agent Montero.”
“I don’t have the slightest idea,” Montero said. “Maybe Ricky told him when his back was turned to the camera.”
“Possible,” Burgess nodded. “I don’t happen to think so. I think you’re holding out on me, Veronica. The only way I even heard about this debacle was the local cops recognized you on the tape and called me. Do either of you know who this killer is and why he was interested in the two of you?”
Donovan knew that Montero wasn’t going to give up Strauss’s name. She wanted the guy all to herself.
“I’ve never seen the guy,” Montero said. “I take it you didn’t get anything when you ran him through facial recognition?”
“We’re still working on it, but preliminary reports are we don’t have enough to go on.”
“Is there any footage of the parking lot? Was this guy driving a Lexus?” Montero asked. “He finds out about Sasha, kills Ricky, and thinks he’s removed all the evidence by taking Ricky’s computer.”
“No camera coverage of the parking lot. Police are going door to door in the area. But so far no witnesses have been found.”
“Sir, might I suggest I be brought back to Florida to assist in finding the man who killed my informant. I have other sources that I might be able to lean on. Maybe we can use my presence to draw this son of a bitch out from hiding.”
“Officially, you’re still on administrative leave, but for the moment I’d rather have you back here even if it is behind a desk. Mr. Nash, I’ve been entrusted with your safety. Do you feel like you’re secure on your ship or sh
all I make some other security arrangements?”
“I’ll be fine,” Donovan replied.
“Veronica, make the necessary travel plans and let me know the minute you’re back home. Good luck out there, Mr. Nash.” Burgess drew a finger across his throat and the picture went black.
Donovan turned to Montero. “Strauss isn’t after us. He saw us at the club after he killed Ricky and did nothing.”
“I know that, and you know that, but Burgess doesn’t know anything. There’s still a chance we can find Strauss before anyone else. That’s all I need. Pack your stuff. We’re out of here.”
“What are you thinking?” Donovan snapped. “You heard your boss. You won’t be able to do anything from your office.”
“That’s why I have you. We’ll let Burgess believe you’re still out here on this ship, when, in fact, you’ll be my eyes and ears on the street. I’ll be plugged into the investigation again, that’s the only way we’re going to be able to find Strauss before anyone else does. Now, how soon before we can be airborne?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Despite being strong-armed by Montero, Donovan was thrilled to be off the ship. After telling the crew of the Atlantic Titan that Montero urgently needed to return to West Palm Beach, they were in the helicopter, flying back to Kingston. He and Montero had been in such a scramble to depart the ship that he hadn’t had time to call Lauren. As soon as they were airborne in the da Vinci, he’d try to reach her.
Montero had once again elected to ride up front with Eric. Donovan switched on a small overhead reading lamp and pulled out the flight plan that had been faxed to him just as they were leaving the ship. He studied the route, which would take them north over Jamaica, across one of the designated corridors over Cuba, then up the eastern seaboard into West Palm Beach where they’d land and clear customs. The weather in Florida was nearly perfect, mid-seventies with clear skies and light winds out of the west. When he switched off the light, he discovered the glow from Kingston low on the horizon and silently urged Eric to fly faster.
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