Skyhook

by John J. Nance

  Oh my God, this is sabotage! And this is the version of the program that nearly killed us the other night!

  Ben realized he was shaking, perhaps as much from waking up too fast with too little sleep as from fear. He forced himself to sit back down and concentrate.

  This could still be an error. Don’t be too hasty. Stray lines get into programs all the time, and we’ve patched the hell out of this one, and my original comparison copy comes from, what, eight months ago.

  Maybe he was overreacting. After all, the new code could be something as mundane as an encrypted recipe for brownies. It wasn’t necessarily responsible for the failed test and the locked system two nights before.

  Another horrific thought crossed his mind, and he tried to shake it off. What if one of his own team were some sort of renegade foreign agent?

  Impossible. I know my people better than their mothers know them.

  The background checks had been witheringly thorough, yielding embarrassing details ranging from youthful sexual exploits to sometimes disgusting personal habits. His own file had shocked him. Apparently, the National Security Agency had employed agents in his preschool and had been inside his ’54 Chevy during his first, fumbling attempts at lovemaking in the back. They even had her name right.

  No, he knew his people. There were no moles.

  Ben felt his pulse slowing as he focused on how little he knew about the puzzle he’d discovered. He couldn’t go off half-cocked, but then again, he couldn’t just erase the evidence and go to work as if he hadn’t found it.

  Maybe I can erase it here and just replicate it there. After all, at the lab, all the files are available and authorized.

  He entered the preliminary keystrokes to destroy the entire series of files, and paused with his finger over the “enter” button. He had the evidence in front of him. What if something happened to his data at the lab and he couldn’t duplicate it? The urge was strong to punch the button and remove all possibility of prosecution for what had, after all, been the criminal act of breaching a top secret project. But he had a responsibility to find out what this was all about.

  Ben pulled his finger away and carefully hit the escape key to cancel the process. Regardless of the enormous personal risk, he had to keep the files until he could duplicate them legitimately at the lab.

  A dozen ideas on where to store the thousands of lines of the anomalous code marched through his thinking, and he settled on the least probable, entering the appropriate commands before erasing all traces of the downloaded program files.

  One single number remained, and he memorized it before removing it from his laptop. He headed for the shower, pausing to dump some food out for his unhappy cat and wondering if he could hide his agitation when he walked in the door in a half hour.

  THIRTEEN

  WEDNESDAY, DAY 3 ANCHORAGE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

  April hated the airport security procedures that kept friends and family from going to the gates. She’d always loved being the first to catch the eye of someone she’d come to meet as the passengers rounded the corner of the jetway. Now she was forced to join the throng of hopefuls waiting for inbound passengers outside the security perimeter, and it seemed an indignity. Still, she managed to spot Dean as he came into view down the concourse, pouncing on him the second he emerged from the security portal.

  “Hey, bro!”

  “Hey, sis!” He hugged her, a weary look on his face. “How’re they doing?”

  “They’re doing okay, considering what they went through. You know the Albatross was destroyed?”

  “You told me on the phone last night, remember?”

  She nodded. “I’m not sure what I’ve told anyone.”

  “Any physical problems?”

  “Bumps, a few contusions, and a mild concussion for Dad, but overall, they’re okay.”

  “That’s a huge relief.”

  “It’s just hard to picture their airplane sitting on the bottom of the ocean.”

  He pointed the way toward the front of the airport and they began walking in that direction. “You said last night there were other problems and you’d tell me when I got here,” Dean prompted.

  She gave him a detailed rundown of the encounter with the FAA and NTSB as they walked to her rental car in the airport garage.

  Dean sat in silence for a while in the right front seat as his sister wheeled them out of the airport drive for the trip across town to the hospital. She waited for him to break the silence.

  “April, you said you’ve got Gracie looking for a lawyer for Dad, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Which means you think he’s going to need one.”

  “If you’d seen the hate in the eyes of that FAA inspector, Dean, you’d have no doubt. I don’t understand what the man’s problem was. I mean, most FAA people I’ve met, including inspectors, are just good, hardworking folks, but this guy …”

  “He was giving you attitude?”

  She grimaced and shook her head. “Not you, too?”

  “What?”

  “I hate the misuse of that word, Dean!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What you just said. ‘He’s giving me attitude,’ that’s nonsense. Gracie and I go around about this all the time. Attitude, attitude. Everyone has an attitude at any given moment, but that sort of stupid misuse makes it sound like just having one is bad. Talk about the bastardization of English!”

  Dean had a hand up, laughing. “Okay, okay. I will refrain from colloquial usage in the future.”

  “That’s not even colloquial. It’s just plain guttural.”

  “But your point was,” Dean continued, “that this FAA inspector had an agenda, and the destruction of Arlie Rosen’s license to fly airplanes was on it?”

  “Something’s up with him, that’s certain.”

  “And that’s one of the phrases I hate,” Dean chuckled. “‘Up with,’ as in ‘whazzup wid yew?’”

  April turned the car into the hospital entrance.

  “Touché. Point well taken. And we’re talking obliquely about a certain nephew of mine, right? Little runt who pretends to like rap and answers to the name of David?”

  “Ah, yes,” Dean said. “The teen monster of Bellevue. Night of the living bored. Now six feet tall, by the way, and his linguistics are atrocious.”

  “Like, you do realize, like, don’t you, that he’s, like, just trying to irritate his, like, dad?”

  Dean smiled as she braked smoothly to a halt in front of the main entrance. “I seem to recall, little sis, that you were the unchallenged champion in that department in our family.”

  “I reformed,” she replied, looking hurt. “It was a brief rebellion.”

  “Yeah, such as the time in high school you flew to Europe during a school break without telling anyone.”

  “Amsterdam.”

  “That’s still in Europe, last time I checked.”

  “Dean,” April said, her hand up to stop him. “Something about Mom and Dad’s memory of yesterday is bothering me.”

  “What do you mean? You’re not suggesting they’re coloring the truth?”

  She shook her head vigorously. “No, no, no! But something about the way they both remember the beginning of the accident sequence doesn’t make sense.”

  “So, what are you thinking? Something else happened? You said that he said a propeller broke.”

  “I’m thinking that I want to ask you a favor.”

  “Sure.”

  “Let me just drop you off here to go take care of Mom and Dad while I … do a little research. Find out when they’re going to be released and call me.”

  “I can, but why don’t you just come back here when you’re through? I’ll need to arrange a hotel—”

  “Dean, they’ll be released this afternoon. Didn’t I mention that?”

  “No. Today?”

  “Yeah. Isn’t that great?”

  “Well … of course, but …”

&n
bsp; “Unless something’s changed in the last hour.”

  He looked off balance.

  “I’ll be on my cell phone,” she added. “When we’re sure of the release time, I’ll arrange the flight home.”

  “I hate to say this, April, but if they’re okay and they’re getting out of here in a few hours and flying home, why am I here?”

  “In other words, why did the extremely busy Boeing executive have to cancel some really important appointments when little April could drop everything and take care of it?”

  He nodded. “Okay, that did sound pretty selfish.”

  “They’re really shaken up, Dean, and they need our support. They need to see you here. They can understand why between you and Sam, only one of you might be able to race up here—”

  Dean held his hand up to stop her. “I’m sorry. I make this mistake more often than you know, thinking of you as still being in school, not the vice-president of a corporation.”

  “Times change, bro.”

  “Imagine that! My little sister a corporate officer.”

  “Yeah. Strange, isn’t it? Look, call me when you know the projected release time, okay?”

  He opened the door and hesitated, turning back to search her eyes. “What are you concerned about, April? Is this something to do with the broken propeller?”

  “Maybe. I don’t want to go into it yet. I just need to know more.”

  “All right.”

  “And please, Dean. Don’t say anything to Dad. He’s upset enough.”

  “So … where are you if they ask?”

  “Tell them I’m using the opportunity of being in Anchorage to check up on one of my company’s cruise ships. That way, Empress pays for my airline ticket.”

  Dean smiled. “You’ve always known how to speak Dad’s language.”

  “Don’t start with the ‘airline pilots are cheap’ thing again.”

  “No, no. Not cheap. Just … cost-conscious.”

  “And generous to a fault. Dad’s living proof of that.” She waved goodbye as he closed the door.

  April turned the car north toward the downtown area, her mind on the city’s relatively small port facilities and the Coast Guard’s Marine Safety Office. She’d had difficulty locating anyone to talk to when she’d called them an hour before. A Lieutenant Hobbs had finally agreed to meet with her, and she found him in his office now, receptive but slightly suspicious.

  “What, exactly, do you want to know, Ms. Rosen?” Hobbs asked.

  April explained the loss of her parents’ plane and her need to find a radar site that might have seen what happened. She passed him the crash-site coordinates.

  “Why do you need to see radar tapes?” he asked.

  “Because I think my father’s airplane may have hit something on the water two nights ago, like the superstructure of a passing ship. If the fog was thick enough, the crew might not even be aware of it. Propeller blades are relatively fragile compared to nautical structures. Just a tiny touch could break a blade off and leave almost no marks on the structure below.”

  “If he clipped a ship because of flying too low, isn’t that negligence?”

  She shook her head and explained the difference. “It’s not a violation to accidentally fly into fog. It’s what you do in response that counts.”

  She could see Lieutenant Hobbs glance around carefully before coming forward in his chair to pull out a small pad of paper. He opened an ornate Mont Blanc fountain pen, noting April’s curious expression. He glanced at the pen, then back at her.

  “A gift from my dad,” he explained. “I told him I needed a basic word processor and he gave me this. He’s a professional comedian.”

  “Aren’t all parents?”

  “No … I mean, he really is a professional comedian. He lives in Vegas, was on the old Carson show a bunch of times, and still shows up on Leno every now and then. He’s had a good career.”

  “I don’t recall a comedian named Hobbs,” April said.

  “There’s a divorce and a name change in my background,” he replied. “I’m going to check with our radar guys for the time period involved and see what they have in the way of vessels in that general area, and whether I can get you a copy. I’ll also check on what ships might have been in the vicinity.”

  “How long will it take?”

  He was already on his feet, the interview obviously over, his discomfort at discussing the subject showing. “I’ll call you.”

  She paused at his office door and turned back. “One more question. Can the Coast Guard bring the wreckage of our airplane up from the bottom?”

  Jim Hobbs shook his head. “No. But why would you want to salvage it? The aircraft is undoubtedly totaled.”

  April nibbled her lip for a few seconds in thought. “My dad’s propeller threw a blade. I need the remains of that propeller hub to prove it happened in flight.” She felt a chill as he shook his head.

  “Won’t help you. Hitting the water could snap off a propeller blade. Water’s like concrete above a hundred miles per hour.”

  She returned to the rental car too deep in thought to think about where she was heading, and realized she needed a few moments to figure out the next step. What could she accomplish in Anchorage in person that she couldn’t do from Vancouver?

  April braked and pulled to the curb suddenly, deciding to park and get some coffee while she called Gracie. The sudden change of course prompted an angry honk from the minivan driver behind her, but she waved at the man with a smile as if he’d done something friendly. April put the car in park and got out, oblivious to the dark blue sedan that had pulled out of the parking lot several car lengths behind her and was now moving to the curb as well, the occupants’ eyes carefully following the raven-haired young woman ahead.

  FOURTEEN

  WEDNESDAY, DAY 3 UNIWAVE FIELD OFFICES ELMENDORF AFB, ALASKA

  Normally, teamwork delighted Ben Cole, even when performing under the sword of a make-or-break deadline. A lab full of happily collaborating professionals was always a joy of intellectual synergy—except today. For the previous four hours, dealing with the constant communication of his team when he wanted to work alone had created perhaps the most agonizing challenge of his professional life.

  “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go sit down and work quietly for an hour or so,” Ben said at last, triggering no objections as his people continued their intense efforts, going back and forth over the various ways the program might have failed.

  At any moment, Ben figured, one of his team was bound to make the same discovery he’d made, stumbling onto the thousands of lines of inserted, renegade code. If not, he would have to make the “discovery” himself and pretend to be astounded.

  First, however, he needed time alone in his office, which was little more than a larger cubicle in a “cubeville” collection of partitions on one side of the lab. He retreated there now and entered the necessary access codes, quickly retrieving the comparison copy of the program from a half year before and entering the now-familiar commands to run a general line-byline comparison with the latest version. The supercomputer began working as Ben sat back and waited for the results, which finally flashed on the screen: “No differences.”

  He leaned forward, wondering where the lines of code could be.

  What did I screw up?

  He checked the dates on the program copies and started the comparison again.

  Once more it yielded no differences.

  Ben felt his pulse accelerating. There was no doubt he was working with the very same copies he’d illicitly transmitted home the day before. He opened the machine-code list on the latest version and entered the memorized line number which should take him straight to the first section of the illicitly added computer codes. But that particular line came up completely normal and identical to the original program.

  This can’t be!

  He ran through the lab’s secure program files, checking several more developmental copies and finding nothin
g out of the ordinary before sitting back, a cold sweat forming on his brow.

  It isn’t here! But … I didn’t just imagine it. If I saw what I saw and I still have the evidence safely stashed away, and these are the copies they came from …

  There was only one remaining explanation, and the realization coursed through his veins like ice water: Someone had electronically entered their main databank and erased the renegade lines of computer code. Hacking from outside was effectively impossible. Only someone within Uniwave could be responsible.

  Ben stood up and looked through the opening of his cubicle, watching his team members for a moment as his thoughts raced around the problem of what to do and who might be responsible. The main evidence was gone, and he’d come within a finger stroke of destroying the only remaining record before leaving his house.

  But that remaining record was no threat to whoever was behind the sabotaged code, and they had to know it. Ben shuddered at the symmetry of the dilemma. He was checkmated. If he revealed what he’d found, his career would be over and he’d end up in a federal prison somewhere. But if he didn’t blow the whistle, the saboteurs would succeed, probably causing the crash of all aboard during the final test flight in the Gulfstream, himself included.

  He thought about going straight to Joe Davis and reporting the existence of the renegade code, and then pretending to “find” it missing when he brought Joe back to the lab.

  Impossible, Ben concluded. Without the concrete evidence he had but couldn’t reveal, there was no way he’d convince Joe or Martin or anyone else in authority to stop the re-test and risk bankruptcy.

  “Ben?” Gene Swanson had been standing next to Ben for several minutes, invisible to him, wondering where Ben’s mind was. “You okay? You looked zoned out there,” Gene said.

  Ben sighed and rubbed his brow as he tried unsuccessfully to laugh. “Yeah. I do feel a little strange.”