Breaking Point (30 page)

“Dee? I'm on my way down.”

She hung up, hit her office door at full clip. She was in the elevator, then in the basement, her ID card on its lanyard gaining her access to the mainframe room as Dmitri grabbed the telephone receiver. “Susan? Hallo?”

“I'm here,” she said and he turned to her. The Russian looked paler than usual.

“Bozhe moi…”

“Excuse me?”

“This shouldn't be.”

She could see the tension in Dmitri's face. “What?”

“The eleventh node. It's not one of ours. The Go-Team has been hacked.”

TWIN PINES

Tommy, Kiki, and Ray sat in Ray's rental outside the real estate office–turned crasher central. Tommy shook his head in awe. “Why, that snarky rat asshole. Can you believe that guy? Okay, what's next?”

Ray extended his hand. “Shake.” Tommy, perplexed, hesitated, then shook. Ray offered his hand to Kiki, too.

“Welcome to the first meeting of the Other Go-Team.”

Kiki smiled. “Like a shadow government, shadow cabinet in England. I like it. Shadow crashers.”

“First, I've got FBI agents in Oregon and D.C. already digging into the deputy marshals who got the black boxes. That's the easy part. Those guys had to sign a document. We'll match the signatures with the real marshals, find out if those guys flew to Montana on Monday.”

Tommy's fingers probed gingerly around his head wound. “You got any experts can tell us if some kinda electro-whatever weapon exists?”

Ray beat a little ditty on the steering wheel with his thumbs. “Maybe. I know a guy. I'll call him.”

Kiki said, “Silver Hair is an assassin. An assassin with enough power to create fake black boxes. I can't believe there are a million people in the world doing that for a living. I can't believe there are a hundred. Is there, I don't know, a clearinghouse for assassins? An FBI team dedicated to watching guys like that? Somebody who might know this guy?”

Ray leaned back against the headrest and sighed. “Yeah. I know who'd know. Crap.”

Tommy and Kiki looked at each other and said, in unison, “Daria.”

Ray nodded glumly. “Daria.”

*   *   *

Gene Whitney and Beth Mancini walked toward the row of parallel-parked rental cars. Beth coughed into her fist. “Um, Gene?”

The big man jammed his fists into the pockets of his windbreaker, turned to her.

She wanted to ask about the interview with the ground crew at Reagan, but equally, she wanted to trust her teammates.

He said, “What?”

“Um…” At the last minute, she changed tack. “Tommy and Kiki? This crazy theory of theirs.”

Gene was working a wad of bubble gum, his lantern jaw rolling. She thought the bags under his eyes had grown deeper.

He winced as if in pain. “Straight up?”

Beth nodded.

“Duvall's auditory skills are for real. The cockpit voice recording is a fake if she says it's a fake.”

She hadn't anticipated that. “Really?”

He shrugged, testing the shoulder seams of his windbreaker. “The whole thing about the power outage? I think Tomzak's an ass but he's got no reason to lie. Our team's being fuckin' played.”

HELENA

Peter Kim returned to his room at the airport hotel and called home. “Hey, honey. It's been a day,” he said, grabbing a bottled water out of the minibar. “Is Pete there?”

“He's at the roller park,” Janice said, her voice neutral.

“You will never believe what we did with the fuselage of the plane today.”

“Did you remember he had a game this morning?”

“Pete? No. How'd they do?”

“They won. Pete had a double and a single.”

“That's great. He's—”

“He was so disappointed you weren't here.”

Peter gulped water. “He understands about my job. We're investigating a crash to make all airliners safer in the future. Today, for instance, we actually flew a wingless—”

“He's twelve, Peter. What he understands is, you weren't here.”

The conversation—if it could be called such—went on for another five minutes of recriminations.

Hanging up, Peter checked his watch. A bit after five. He rolled up his sleeves, sat, booted up his computer, and checked the other crashers' preliminary reports. That done, he pulled out a yellow legal pad and a monogrammed pen and began planning his report for Delevan Wildman and the board. That took an hour, because Peter's reports were always meticulously accurate and clear.

When he was satisfied with it, he returned to the computer, typed his report in Word. He ran spell-check, reread it twice, then copied and pasted it to Hotmail. He shot a copy to Wildman's in-basket, one to his own home in-basket, and one to Beth Mancini.

That task complete, Peter remembered how good the Irish whiskey had been the night before. He threw on his suit coat and headed back down to the ground floor.

He ran into Jack Goodspeed, who had purchased a copy of ESPN's magazine in the lobby gift shop. Impulsively (and Peter Kim was anything but impulsive), he said, “That was good work today with the fuselage.”

“Thanks, boss.” Jack with his perpetual grin.

“I'm going to grab a drink. I'm buying.”

Jack nodded. “Why not?”

*   *   *

Tommy's cell rang when he, Kiki, and Ray were halfway back to Helena.

He grinned. “It's Susan,” he told the others, then listened.

He was quiet for a time. Ray and Kiki heard him say, “Sure. He's right here. Kiki, too. What's up?”

Ray drove. Kiki, sitting shotgun, turned in her seat and watched. Tommy listened, said, “Uh-huh,” a couple of times, nodded as if Susan could see him.

He lowered his phone away from his lips. “Hey, New York? It's Suze. She wants to know whether, if you hear about a crime, you're obligated to report it.”

Ray smiled into the rearview mirror. “Tell her yes, I'm obligated to report it.”

“Yes, he's obligated.” Tommy listened some more. A furrow grew between his eyebrows. Kiki reached back and brushed the comma of black hair off his forehead. He loved it when she did that, the whisperlike feel of her fingertips against his skin. He winked at her.

He lowered the phone. “Ray? Suze hacked the Go-Team's computers. She's monitoring the investigation. Illegally.”

Kiki whistled, high-low. “I love it!”

“It gets better. She wasn't the first one in. Someone else is monitoring 'em, too.”

Ray slapped the steering wheel. “Whoa. Back up. There's someone else in the NTSB computers?”

“Nah. Suze says just the computers assigned to this crash. The Go-Team's been hacked.”

Ray drove, fingers tapping on the steering wheel. “Shit. Guess that makes sense. Say you've got the wherewithal to hire an assassin to wait on the ground and finish off witnesses. It's not a stretch to think, if you could do that, you could hack the investigation, figure out who knows what.”

“That's scary,” Kiki said.

“No, what's scary is that I didn't think to suggest this possibility in the first place,” Ray grumbled. “If we're right about what this is all about, we gotta stop underestimating whoever's behind this.”

He and Kiki listened as Tommy explained their working theory, including the bit about the silver-haired assassin.

“This is good,” Tommy said to the people in the car as much as to Susan Tanaka, seven time zones away. “Let the bastards hack the Go-Team. We're running our own, parallel investigation and we don't got computers to hack. With the help of a little misdirection, we'll catch the bastards nappin'.”

Kiki reached back and tousled his hair. “I like it.”

“Hey, Suze: another thing. Kiki and I ran into Gene Whitney. He's a serious head case.”

“Anger issues,” Susan said. “I've been checking with past Go-Teams. Plus two ex-wives. But, Tommy? I called up an off-duty investigator to conduct the interviews at Reagan National that Whitney didn't do. On the QT. They found nothing. Whitney may be incompetent, but the secret of this investigation isn't at National. It's with you in Montana.”

”Yeah. I been thinking the same. We love you. Bye.”

He hung up.

“Shit,” Tommy said to those in the front seat. “An assassin on the ground waiting. Someone hacking the Go-Team. This is the damnedest thing I ever heard of.”

Ray said, “In your hotel room, you asked that if you ID'd anything as
the damnedest thing ever,
I was to repeat this back to you:
There's a dead deer on the flight deck
.”

Tommy rolled his eyes. “Okay, I walked into that one.”

*   *   *

Like Peter Kim, Beth Mancini typed up her daily preliminary report and sent copies to Delevan Wildman, Peter Kim, and her own e-mail account.

Unlike Peter, she described, in detail, the far-fetched theory of the crash recounted to them by the FBI's Ray Calabrese.

TWIN PINES

Jenna Scott was still stinging from Calendar's off-putting critique of her fieldwork. She sat in the surveillance van in Twin Pines, reading Beth's prelim report.

She got to the part about the theory of an electromagnetic pulse and slid on her headset to call Barry Tichnor.

She connected almost immediately with Barry's cell, but he wasn't picking up. Which meant he likely was in public.

Jenna thought about it for a moment, then hung up and called Calendar.

“Yes?”

She spoke briskly. “Vintner. Intercepted a communication from the Go-Team. The investigators heard a report today that mentioned you, not by name, but describing you pretty accurately. They knew about the device, too, if not the details.”

She listened to the distorted hiss of the encryption software.

“Are you there?”

His mechanical voice said, “Yes. Names?”

She checked Beth's report again. “A Dr. Leonard Tomzak and a Katherine Duvall. Plus, the FBI liaison to the case, Special Agent Ray Calabrese. Right now, these three are being considered as crazy. The Go-Team is not buying in on it.
Right now.
”

Calendar said, “Understood,” and rang off.

HELENA

Teresa Santiago called Hector Villareal and told him she'd found a Catholic church in town that was celebrating a rare Sunday evening Mass. She could tell that he was pleased by the call. He offered to drive.

*   *   *

Reuben Chaykin had dinner with two engineers from the Bembenek Company, maker of the twin turboprop engines on the Claremont. They spread blueprints out over a red-checked tablecloth and tried not to drip pizza sauce on any of it.

Gene Whitney found a sports pub and sat at the oak bar, knocking back Coors and watching soccer on the Fox Soccer Channel. He hated soccer but watched it anyway as the beers came and went.

*   *   *

Calendar used his satellite phone to route the calls through the same chain he'd used before—Thailand to Prague to Nebraska—and called back his two soldiers, Dyson and Cates. They had stayed in close proximity, in case their services were needed again.

*   *   *

Jenna Scott completed the job of leapfrogging onto the frequency of the Go-Team's comm units. She had their personal cell phones, she had their laptops and the server in D.C. dedicated to this investigation, and she had their rally point in Twin Pines.

Now she just hoped Calendar wouldn't screw up anymore.

*   *   *

“The thing is,” Peter said, “the discipline it takes to play the cello is exactly the same discipline it takes to be a crash investigator.”

Jack Goodspeed made a “one-more” gesture to the bartender wearing a Caterpillar hat and a Willie Nelson T-shirt. He took away their empty glasses.

“Cello?”

“Yes. I don't blame Tomzak for being creative. And I don't blame him for being a self-starter. That's all good.”

The waiter, shaped more or less like a wine barrel, brought a third whiskey for Peter and a second Coors Light for Jack. The bar was almost empty tonight. Last night's Sinatra had been replaced by Bobby Darin.

“It's his lack of discipline. His crappy teamwork.”

“So you play cello?”

“Since I was three.”

Jack palmed a fistful of pretzels. “You still play?”

Peter took an appreciative sip. He'd loosened his collar and rolled up his sleeves, something that no other member of this Go-Team had ever seen. “A little. You know. My job, my family. I have a son, twelve.”

“He must be proud of you.”

Peter didn't like talking about his family. “How about you? You're married?”

Jack shrugged. “No. There's a cliché; what is it?… serial monogamy. I'm pretty serious when I'm in a relationship. They just tend not to last.”

“You should do something about that.” This was unlike Peter, giving someone unwanted advice or, for that matter, even asking personal questions.

Jack smiled. “Elephant-in-the-room time. You know I'm gay. Right?”

Peter blinked.

“I mean, we're drifting into the realm of mixed signals here.”

Peter said. “But … you're from Utah.” Then winced.

Jack belted out a laugh. “Yeah, we're a small but enthusiastic bunch.”

Peter's brain whiplash intensified. “Ah. No mixed signals here. Nope. Just two colleagues blowing…” He'd been going for
off steam
. “Not blowing. Not blowing anything.”

Jack smiled, sipped his beer. “Good, then.”

Peter threw a couple of twenties on the bar. “I probably ought to go.”

“Gonna finish your drink, boss?”

“You know what? I'm good.” Peter held out his hand and they shook. He exited quickly.

Jack just shook his head as the burly bartender in the Cat hat picked up the money and the half-finished whiskey. “For what it's worth,” he drawled. “I thought he was cute.”