“The Iridium customer you have called is not currently available,” a voice intoned. She disconnected and tried again, harvesting the same result.
The lure of coffee and breakfast completely forgotten, she returned to the computer and launched a search for the FAA’s regional facility in Anchorage, punched the resulting number into the telephone keypad, and worked her way through several people before receiving a definitive no.
“We have no record, Miss … Rosen?”
“Yes. April Rosen.”
“No record of any accidents or incidents last night, or calls for help, or even an emergency locator transmission.”
“You would know if one had been received, right?”
“Well, someone would. You say that’s an old Albatross, right? They could easily land out there on the water.”
“I know, but—”
“That’s why the Navy built them. Not as effective as the old PBY Catalina on open ocean, but they can handle it. The Coast Guard used them for years as—”
“Excuse me,” April interrupted.
“Yes?”
“My dad always files a flight plan. Is there any record of his flight plan and where he was going?”
“VFR or IFR?”
“He’s … an airline captain. Very experienced. Usually it’s a visual flight plan, I think, because they stay so low.”
“Okay. Hang on, and I’ll check.”
He put her on hold and returned several minutes later. “Miss Rosen … April … apparently your dad didn’t file a flight plan. Anchorage Flight Service tells me there’s nothing on the computer.”
“That’s really unusual.”
“I’m sure they’re just fine, but if you’re still worried, I’ll give you the number of the Coast Guard’s regional command post, and you can double-check with them.”
April wrote down the digits absently, her mind racing around the entrance to Prince William Sound for an explanation and a reassuring image of her parents floating and fishing or making love or whatever else they might be doing. She thanked him and disconnected before turning to the computer to send an e-mail to Gracie in Seattle, routing it to Gracie’s beeper, cell phone screen, and office and home computers simultaneously.
THREE
TUESDAY, DAY 2 RESEARCH TRIANGLE RALEIGH-DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA
“Sir, they’re waiting for you.”
Will Martin, chairman of the board of Uniwave Industries, forced himself to turn away from the pleasant vistas of wooded countryside spread out beyond his office windows and glanced at his secretary of six years.
“What, Jill?”
“Did you get my computer message that the teleconference is ready?”
“I’m sorry, no,” he said, permitting himself to notice the lovely contours of her body as his mind replayed a little fantasy about her, a repeated private indulgence that always ended with a flash of fear that she might someday decipher his thoughts. “You … say they’re already waiting?” he added.
Jill nodded. “Yes. Shall I tell them you’ll be right in?”
He smiled back at her and nodded in return, his mind still on the sexy fantasy and wondering if prurient thoughts ever crackled behind her professional facade. He watched her as she turned and left the office, a gentle wave of femininity singularly unburdened by the corporate anvils weighing him down.
Martin turned to pick up a stack of papers and messages on his desk, feeling the strong tug between what he wanted to do and what he had to do.
He wanted to run, but running had never been in his nature.
He wanted to study the expensive paintings on the wall, or watch the squirrels playing in the trees outside, or contemplate the sweet taboo of making love to his secretary—anything to avoid the intense apprehension he would have to skillfully hide in a few minutes from the others.
Martin willed his hand to scoop up a stack of papers on his desk that pertained to the critical black project they’d agreed to build for the Air Force more than three years ago. Back then, all he’d feared were the heavy security procedures the company would have to follow. He’d never questioned their ability to produce the so-called Boomerang Box, the heart of the Skyhook Project, a system designed to safely land by remote control a military aircraft whose crew had been disabled. The system had made good sense, but within months, the task of completing it had rapidly become a nightmare of delays and technical insufficiencies.
Will Martin moved toward his office door, but the urge to stop and turn back was irresistible. Once more he stood quietly, memorizing the details of the peaceful vista outside his window.
The conference could wait a few seconds more.
The new teleconferencing suite had been complete for less than a month. The entire setup—from the long, rectangular mahogany table to the wallpaper and state-of-the-art video equipment—had been leased to Uniwave by a company called Simulight, a rapidly growing corporation that was wowing Wall Street and changing the idea of teleconferencing from a novelty to a necessity. The suite had cost Uniwave practically nothing, and Martin was proud of that deal. Since he had dearly wanted the technology, and Simulight had dearly wanted their business, it had been a win-win situation.
Martin walked into the room wearing his trademark air of seriousness and nodded to the six senior executives who would be sitting with him on the Raleigh-Durham side of the table. The room itself was twenty-five feet long by what appeared to be sixteen feet, but in fact the real width was only eight feet since the room was divided in half lengthwise by a solid panel of high-definition liquid crystal glass. The team in Anchorage appeared in living color, sitting on the other side of their half of the table in the composite room, which was adorned with matching paintings, wallpaper, and even matching coffee cups and pitchers. He had entertained the idea of trying to buy Simulight, but his board had vetoed the idea, which was a shame, he thought. The new technology would eventually make billions by setting the worldwide standards for teleconferencing, but his board was too panicked about whether Uniwave itself could survive.
“We all here?” the chairman asked the assemblage on both sides of the screen, surveying the nodding heads and noting the fear in the eyes of those in Anchorage. It would be a challenge getting the truth out of the Alaskan group, he thought. They were well aware their jobs were on the line.
Maybe, he thought, I should have entered the room a little more pleasantly.
Martin cleared his throat and the conversations ceased.
“Okay, team. We’re in deep excrement here and up against the deadline. What happened last night, why did it happen, and how are we going to fix it and retest it in the next forty-eight hours? I also need to hear any lingering concerns anyone might have over the system’s safety before we give it to the Air Force and ask for our check.” All but two of the Anchorage contingent appeared ready to bolt from the room in fear. Tone it down, he warned himself, as he pointed to the senior project manager in Anchorage.
“Joe? Why don’t you give me the basics.”
Joe Davis scooted his chair forward and narrated the sequence of events over the Gulf of Alaska the night before, describing Dr. Ben Cole’s ultimate solution, which had been to simply turn off the main computer.
“So, Ben’s computer was the culprit?” Martin asked. “Not the software?”
“We think so. We’re running all kinds of diagnostics. Have been all night. Our best guess right now is a hardware fault of some sort.”
Martin could see the look of alarm on Ben Cole’s face. He turned to him. “Ben? You look upset.”
“Well …”
“You agree with Joe’s assessment?”
Ben shot Joe Davis a worried look before answering. “Ah … turning the computer off did unlatch the relays, Mr. Martin, so, technically …”
“Your on-board computer was sending signals to lock the aircraft in its control, right?”
Ben nodded without enthusiasm.
“But,” Martin continued, “why was it
diving you to fifty feet and then skimming the water?”
“We don’t know,” Ben answered cautiously.
“Well, hardware or software? Or both?”
There was a flurry of activity to one side of the suite in Anchorage and a woman entered with a note for Joe Davis, withdrawing quickly. Martin saw a broad smile spread over Davis’s face as he shared the note with the others and gestured for the chairman’s attention.
“I think we’ve got it!” Davis said, looking at Ben. “Our guys just found a bad circuit board in Ben’s computer aboard the Gulfstream, and it’s the board that governs pitch and altitude as well as the latching relays for the flight controls.”
Martin smiled and exhaled as he flashed a thumbs-up gesture. “Great!”
But Ben Cole was not smiling, and the chairman noticed.
“Ben? You look unconvinced.”
“Well …”
“Spit it out.”
Ben pursed his lips and smiled as he shook his head. “I hate to be the skunk at the party, and, of course, I haven’t seen what they found, but I really think we need to finish looking through the program to make sure there’s nothing else going on.”
“Ben,” Joe Davis began, reaching a hand toward his sleeve, but Ben Cole’s eyes were locked on Will Martin’s across the transparent divide of the screen.
“Leave him be, Joe,” Martin ordered quietly. “Everyone gets their say here. Go ahead, Ben.”
“Well, first, we shouldn’t try to fly the acceptance test tonight, just in case I’m right. If we blow this one, as I understand it, we blow the on-time acceptance.”
Will Martin was nodding slowly as he watched the young engineer and made quiet note of the perspiration glistening on his forehead.
“Okay,” Ben continued. “This has nothing to do with the fact that we almost died in that Gulfstream last night. I just want to make sure we get this right, and the logic here—that it would be just a circuit board and not involve the software—really scares me. And after all, we’ve been moving awfully fast.”
“So you think it could be software. Isn’t the software your responsibility as lead engineer, Ben?” the chairman asked. His words and tone were gentle, but the implication was devastating. Here was the chief software engineer for the project giving his boss a “no confidence” rating on two years of his own work, and in the eleventh hour.
“Yes, Mr. Chairman,” Ben managed, “but what happened last night was too precise—the fifty-foot altitude, I mean—to be explained by a fried circuit board, in my opinion.”
“Is that a guess, Ben, or do you have some hard evidence?”
“It’s all guesswork, Mr. Martin, until we find a faulty line of code … but it’s good guesswork. Bad circuits don’t stop a jet at precisely fifty feet. At least, I don’t think they would. Look, I’m sorry—”
“You made reference a second ago … what’d you say? That we’ve been moving too fast? What do you mean by that, Ben?”
The fact that Joe Davis was looking at Ben Cole with a frozen expression had not escaped Will Martin’s attention.
“What I mean, or meant, sir, is that we’ve been under tremendous pressure on this project, and while I know everyone’s done their best to get it right the first time, the truth is, this is a very complex software program with millions of lines of code, and I’m worried that we haven’t fully tested it yet. At least, not enough to deploy.”
“Okay, thanks for the caution,” Martin began, nodding dismissively at Ben Cole as he straightened his back and surveyed all of them in turn around the table. “Here’s the deal, folks. By the contract, we have until Saturday night to hand this system over to General MacAdams and proclaim it ready, or two very undesirable things are going to happen: One, we don’t get paid the little green government check for one hundred ninety-three million dollars this company has to have by Wednesday to avoid default and stay afloat, as well as pay your paychecks. Two, we go into contract penalty clause territory for late delivery and start losing two hundred fifty thousand dollars per day, which is a million seven hundred fifty thousand a week. We can’t afford either occurrence. We’ve lost two other contracts this year, as you know, our bond ratings are in the toilet, we’ve used up all but a pittance of our credit lines, and we’re down to the crunch. So, if we’re not sure we can be safe, we don’t fly. But if there’s any way we can patch the situation together sufficiently so we can be safe and still dazzle MacAdams and get this damn Boomerang Box system accepted, I say we find a way to do it. Now. Tonight. We need creative thinking, but with lightning speed. Understood?”
There were nods in all directions with the sole exception of Ben Cole, who was looking ill as Martin continued. “We add whatever safeguards we need to make absolutely sure the damn thing doesn’t misbehave tonight, and then we fly it and sign off the final acceptance test. MacAdams is ready. I’ve already talked to him and assured him that we’d have an answer on what the problem was in a few hours, and now we’ve got it. A bad circuit board in a single computer. And, Ben?”
Ben Cole looked up, startled. “Yes, sir?”
“If you’re still worried after tonight, you and your team can keep looking for the glitch. It’ll take the Air Force three weeks to gear up to install the first black box on a real airplane anyway. That should give you time.”
“Mr. Martin, I don’t want to be a roadblock,” Ben Cole began.
“Then don’t,” Martin said, flashing a perfunctory smile. “Let’s find a way to get this accomplished.”
“Sir,” Ben began, but Martin cut him off.
“Ben, I need solutions overriding cautions now. Are you really prepared to tell me there’s no way to safeguard the system against diving the Gulfstream during the test, or once again failing to release the controls, once that circuit board is fixed?”
“Well, no … the circuit board was probably … almost surely … the reason we couldn’t disconnect. And I can rig a protective circuit that we didn’t have last night to prevent any dives or turns.… But this is almost certainly a compound problem. I mean, there’s a software logic problem somewhere. We wouldn’t have leveled at fifty feet otherwise.”
Will Martin got to his feet and looked across the electronic divide.
“You were aboard the Gulfstream last night, weren’t you, Ben?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And … that must have been a pretty terrifying episode for a non-pilot.”
“I think it was terrifying for the pilots, too, sir.”
Martin looked at the table and nodded before snapping his eyes back to Ben’s.
“When something shakes you that badly, it can affect your judgment. I understand that’s where your passion is coming from regarding tonight’s test flight. That’s why I want you to sit this one out. Stay home. Have a beer, watch TV, chase your wife to the bedroom, and let someone else from your team fly the test.”
Ben started to protest but the chairman had his hand out in a stop gesture. “No, I mean it. In the aftermath of last night’s problem, you’re not going to be as cool and focused as you should be. Hell, I wouldn’t be either.”
Will Martin turned and left the room, leaving Ben Cole searching for a reply as Joe Davis leaned over and put a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, Ben. Cook up that protective circuit you mentioned, pick your crew for tonight, and go home.”
“Joe, this could be a disaster,” Ben began, but the project manager waved him away.
“We’ve got our orders, Ben. Let’s get moving. We’re not going to let it be a disaster.” The older man picked up his coffee cup and hurried away, leaving Ben alone in the teleconferencing chamber. The screen went dark, making the enclosure suddenly feel half its size, and Ben looked at it in a quandary. A half dozen things he should have said to Martin were echoing through his mind, including the useless but vital fact that he was no longer married.
But Martin should have remembered that, Ben thought. He’d flown to Anchorage two years before for Lisa’s funer
al.
FOUR
TUESDAY MORNING, DAY 2 VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA
April scooped up the receiver on the first ring and snapped off an urgent hello, instantly relieved to hear Gracie’s voice on the other end.
“Okay, the Coast Guard’s launching a search for your folks.”
“Thank God!” April Rosen sighed as she massaged her temple and sank onto the edge of her bed. “I couldn’t get their headquarters in Juneau to do anything, since the FAA claims Dad didn’t file a flight plan and no one’s heard a distress call.” She reached for a Kleenex as the tears escaped her self-control. “Where are you?”
“In my sensory deprivation chamber. My windowless baby-lawyer office.”
“How’d you get the Coast Guard to listen?”
There was a chuckle on the other end and April pictured Gracie O’Brien leaning back in her plush leather office chair. April had surprised her with the expensive chair when her best friend landed the coveted junior associate position with the mega law firm of Janssen and Pruzan.
“Well, I had a little help from one of the senior partners, Dick Walsh,” Gracie was explaining. “Dick put pressure on the right people in Washington, D.C., for me.”
“Wow. You work with someone that powerful?” April asked.
“You could say that. Until last year, Dick was the Secretary of Transportation, and they kind of own the Coast Guard. Now he plays golf and calls in favors.”
“However you did it, thank you. Oh. You did give them the coordinates of the last fix I got, right?”
“No, April Rosen, I told them to look for your folks somewhere in the North Pacific where the waves are blue and fish swim. Of course I gave them the coordinates. They’re launching both a C-130 and something called a Jayhawk chopper out of Kodiak, which is only two hundred miles away, so they’ll be all over the area in a couple of hours. It’s just a matter of a little waiting time now.”
Skyhook Page 3