Skyhook (18 page)

“Do we have that Coast Guard radar tape?” Mac asked.

“Yes, sir. Racking it up now,” the sergeant answered.

Once again a series of computer-generated images filled the screen, this time of surface vessels in the form of large targets crawling along sea lanes into and out of Prince William Sound.

Jacobs consulted a briefing sheet sent with the tape and studied the screen for a few seconds before highlighting an area south of Valdez.

“Again, this is approximately the crash site, sir, based on rescue data cross-referenced to emergency locator data, corrected for … I guess they call it the prevailing currents. It pretty well matches the projection of the Albatross’s flight path from the previous tape.”

“How close can we come to a time for the crash of that Albatross?” Mac asked.

Jacobs was shaking his head. “Unknown, sir, from the data I’ve got.”

Mac was on his feet, stretching as he pointed to the screen.

“Sergeant, run that through on fast forward and see if you see anything we need to see. We’ll be pacing around the hallway.”

Mac and Anderson had barely reached the Coke machine down the corridor when the sergeant stuck his head out the door.

“General? You gentlemen need to see this.” They followed him back inside.

“Remember, this is a surface radar,” the sergeant said. “It’s not like our aviation radars that really can’t effectively track someone below a thousand feet.”

“Understood,” Mac said, more impatiently than he’d intended.

“Okay,” the sergeant said. “Watch this target appear from the south margins of the coverage area. See it moving north?”

Mac nodded.

“How fast?” Anderson asked.

“I estimate around a hundred twenty to a hundred forty. The Coast Guard system doesn’t put data blocks on air traffic. Here’s that huge tanker over to the northwest of the target, about eight miles at this point. And you can see several other sizable vessels down here in the same vicinity the Albatross is approaching.”

“Okay. So you believe that’s the … whoa!” Mac said as a new target rushed in from the left side of the screen at twice the speed, its radar return a crisp white blotch closing on the northbound track of what had to be the Albatross. “Slow that down,” Mac commanded.

The tape was slowed to quarter-speed, the respective radar tracks showing the Albatross and the Gulfstream closing on each other every four seconds with each sweep of the radar beam.

“Our guy is running without lights, of course,” Anderson muttered, and Mac nodded. “We weren’t supposed to be just fifty feet over the water, or out of our own control area.”

“There’s the oil tanker,” Jacobs added, using his laser pointer.

“If you extend the Gulfstream’s track dead on another five miles, it intersects the tanker.”

“What’s that?” Mac asked, flashing his own pointer on the screen at a spot north-northeast of the Albatross, but barely a hair’s breadth south of the approaching Gulfstream’s west-to-east track.

“That’s another ship, I think,” Jacobs replied. “The Albatross will pass to the west of it. Looks like a large enough return to be a large freighter or cruise ship.”

“Good Lord,” Mac said, his eyes on the screen. “Our Gulfstream’s going to barely miss whatever it is.”

Jacobs was nodding. “Sir, look at this. Remember we couldn’t track the Albatross on the other tape inside ten miles? Look at him here at eight miles out on the Coast Guard tape. He’s changing course. Right here. See? He’s changing course to the east by …

twenty degrees. That completely alters the equation. He’s now headed squarely for that freighter, and … the point at which the Albatross’s projected flight path will cross our Gulfstream’s flight path has moved east, and … I’m trying to figure out the time, but they’re going to arrive at that intersection about the same time.”

General MacAdams, Lieutenant Colonel Anderson, and the two sergeants watched transfixed as the targets converged on each other, the Albatross’s radar return disappearing for several sweeps of the radar beam as it approached the unidentified new ship, then reappearing brightly on the north side of the ship just as the Gulfstream’s target crossed the same point.

“Here the Gulfstream seems to be m a right turn,” the sergeant said.

“He was climbing. He’d unlocked the computer and pulled up.”

“Okay, the Albatross continues on for two sweeps of the radar and then appears to slow and get more faint… finally disappearing, probably when he sinks.”

“Again, please,” Mac asked as the tape was rewound slightly and the point of convergence played once more.

After the fourth repetition Mac sat back and shook his head, his mind accelerating into the problem. “Oh, shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Dammit, Jon, you said they weren’t that close.”

“I … told you, sir, the best I had at the time. That isn’t the same position the Coast Guard plotted as the crash site.”

Sergeant Jacobs was consulting the note sent with the tape. “They apparently noticed this too, sir. They’ve got the corrected coordinates on this note. And … remember I warned you that my projections were based on no turns.”

Mac waved them down. “Don’t worry, fellows, I’m not looking to blame anyone for anything. But now we’ve got a potential problem.”

“The tapes don’t have to leave here alive, General,” Jon Anderson said.

“Not the point, Jon. The FAA’s trying to string up that pilot and this shows he could have hit not one but two objects out there.”

“Well, what was he doing that low, y’know?” Anderson asked.

“He’s flying a bloody seaplane, Jon. You have to get low to find the sea. No, the question we’ve got to grapple with is whether or not there’s any chance the Albatross hit our Gulfstream.”

They looked at the sequence again, rolling it back and forth past the same spot until Mac shook his head. “Jon, was the Gulfstream inspected for any damage?”

“I … don’t know, General. I assume they’d find any damage when they got back here and did their normal postflight inspection, and I assume the pilots would have heard any collision. Metal to metal in an airplane isn’t subtle.”

Mac glanced at him with a smile. “Tell me about it. I survived a glancing blow from pieces of an exploding surface-to-air missile in my F-105 just south of Hanoi in 1973. The memory of that noise still scares the … scatology out of me.” He pulled himself back out of the chair as he glanced down at Anderson. “We’re going over to the hangar immediately. I want inspection stands and lights.”

Jon Anderson stood as well. “Sir, we’d better warn Joe Davis what we’re looking for.”

Mac was shaking his head. “No. No explanations.” He turned to the sergeant. “And no leaks to Uniwave, understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay. By the way, Sergeant Jacobs?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, it’s a real shame, Bill, about that accidental erasure on the Coast Guard tape,” Mac said with a set jaw, looking the man in the eye.

“Sir?”

“I say … it’s a real shame that when that particular tape was returned to the Coast Guard, it had accidentally been bulk erased. Right?”

Sergeant Jacobs’s eyes fluttered open in sudden comprehension.

“Oh! Yes. Yes, sir, I’m … terribly sorry about that.”

“Just normal human error, I suppose,” Mac said, giving the man a tired smile, which was tentatively returned.

Lieutenant Colonel Anderson was already in the hallway as Mac paused in the doorway and turned back to the two men. “This isn’t dishonesty per se, gentlemen. Keep that in mind, please. This is a black project, and there are things we have to do that are for solid reasons of national security.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, and Jacobs, one other thing?”

“Sir?”

Mac motioned him over and issued a verbal order quietly in his ear, outside the hearing of the other man, before waving a quick farewell and joining Anderson, down the hall.

April pulled the tarp from the wings and cockpit of the small Piper Cherokee Cruiser and began folding it as her dad had taught her. Once again she felt a familiar rush of excited anxiety, a feeling that sparkled through her every time she flew, the flash of adrenaline triggered by the knowledge that flying an airplane by herself was a form of tightrope walking in which only she was responsible for the outcome. She inhaled sharply, breathing in the invigorating aroma of freshly cut hay from an adjacent field and remembering so many afternoons of flight training with her dad. Flying, to Arlie Rosen, was a form of breathing, and he’d instilled the same feelings in his daughter, and later on in Gracie. Dean was another matter.

The exhilaration was suddenly overshadowed by a wave of guilt.

She was, she realized, getting ready to enjoy something her father could no longer do.

April stepped back a few paces and looked at her father’s four-seat Piper 140, a tiny, basic craft. He was a senior 747

captain, yet he was no longer licensed to fly even something this small.

The nightmare precipitated by the FAA had forced her last minute decision to fly to Seattle from the small airport in Sequim, a proud little airfield built by a family friend and former Braniff captain named Jack Sallee.

The conversation with her mother had been quick.

“Mom. I’m taking the Cherokee and flying over to confer with Gracie. Dad’s up there sitting on the ridge. I think he needs you.”

Rachel had shaken her head. “I know when he needs me, honey, and it’s not yet. I’m watching.”

April described the scene in the workroom, explaining the broken fifth of bourbon, in part to alleviate the fear her mother might feel if she opened the door and smelled the liquor. She nodded silently.

“Mom? Did you know about the liquor purchase in Anchorage?”

“Yes. It was for the planned party in Sitka and another get together in Ketchikan.”

“And he wasn’t…”

“No.”

“You were there the whole time, right?”

She nodded, but her eyes had shifted away, and April felt a shiver of apprehension.

“Mom? You were there every minute, right? He couldn’t have slipped?”

“I was there.”

April could see the troubled expression on Rachel’s face. “Mom, what?”

Rachel sighed and studied her hands for a few moments before looking at her daughter. “They won’t believe me, April. I’m his wife. And I was asleep.”

“In flight?”

She nodded. “In the right seat. I kept a pillow up there.”

“You don’t recall the crash?”

“I was asleep until everything began coming apart. It was a blur.

But… I’d seen no signs of any drinking.”

“Oh, God, Mom, then he really doesn’t even have an eyewitness.”

“Are you taking your things, April?”

“What? I… hadn’t thought…”

Rachel was nodding. “Take your things. You may need to go back to Vancouver from there. The plane can stay at Boeing Field. I can fly it back later.”

“I,” rather than “we,” her mother had said. It was an acknowledgment of how serious the situation really was.

April borrowed the old jeep to get down the two miles of road to the airport. She hurried now through the preflight, replaying in her head the cell phone conversation with Gracie.

“If I fly over there in a few hours, can you take time to pick me up at Boeing Field?” she’d asked. “We have some things to discuss.”

“Of course,” Gracie had replied. “Call me when you get in.”

“You sure this isn’t jeopardizing your position?”

“I talked to my senior partner this morning, April. He’s approved a certain amount of pro bono work. Not unlimited, but enough to be your father’s basic lawyer. And, I’m working on the salvage thing.”

“You said we had to recover the Albatross, right?”

There was a long sigh from Seattle. “Yes, I think it’s going to be the key, regardless of cost. But we’ve got another potential problem. Until this drinking thing is resolved, I doubt the insurance company is going to pay for the Albatross.”

fTpril ran through the laminated checklist items and fired off the Cherokee’s engine, staying focused on the process of taxiing and doing the appropriate runup before allowing herself to notice how beautiful the day had become. Sequim was often called the banana belt of the Puget Sound area because it sat in the rain shadow of the northeast shoulder of the Olympic Peninsula, which generated more than 240 days of sunshine a year—while the rest of Puget Sound sat more often than not under a veil of gentle fog and mist.

A fresh westerly had cleared the entire region, and the sky was cobalt blue as she stood by the Cherokee and used her cell phone to file a visual flight plan to King County Airport, which was also known as Boeing Field. April loved landing at Seattle’s original airfield. There was always an inherent thrill in settling onto the runway in the tiny Piper in sight of dozens of brightly colored Boeing jets awaiting delivery on the western side. She looked forward now to the same experience.

The Cherokee lifted off at sixty-five knots and climbed steadily, soaring over the blue waters of nearby Sequirn Bay, south of Port Townsend, and across the Hood Canal. The runway at Boeing Field kissed the tires of the little single-engine all too quickly, ending a conflicted hour of trying not to enjoy the beauty unfolding before her as she searched for ways to help her father.

With the unfolding legal problems, the physical peril of the crash had been all but forgotten. The bruises her parents had suffered were trivial compared to the emotional blow her dad had taken with the complete revocation of his pilot’s license. The potential financial impact alone might be ruinous. Captain Arlie Rosen’s two-hundredthousandper-year airline salary would be on hold for however long it took to regain the legal right to fly, and with the evidence that the FAA was amassing and purposely misinterpreting, that might be never.

April had phoned her arrival time to Gracie just before takeoff from Sequim, and, as she taxied in, she could see her longtime friend standing beside another small single-engine, waving as she spotted the familiar Cherokee.

The image brought a smile to April’s face. Gracie was always complaining that she couldn’t attract the male of the species, but they both knew it was a joke. Gracie was an extremely attractive young woman, and a bundle of energy. Her petite five-foot-three frame next to April’s taller five-foot-eight had made them a distinctive team in high school, especially since Gracie insisted on playing every sport her friend took up, including basketball.