Skyhook (24 page)

“I need you in the field. I want you shadowing the situation, too, in person. I don’t trust Jerrod to react in time. This is too serious a situation to take lightly, Todd. Congress is looking for victims among black projects, and if this grounded pilot manages to blow our cover, even a successful flight test won’t save us. I mean, this is survival.”

Jenkins had nodded and said nothing before taking his leave. His greatest challenge had been to keep a large smile off his face.

With twenty-eight years in the CIA covert operations, being confined to a desk job had been killing him.

Major General Mac MacAdams walked from the JCS meeting room with General Lou Cassidy after finishing the top secret briefing on the Boomerang system.

“Surprised, Mac?” Cassidy asked when they were back behind his office door.

” Flabbergasted’ would be a good word, Lou. I expected we’d have at least a month for the first installation, but fifty units installed within the next ten days?”

“Right from the Oval Office, Mac. Can we do it?”

Mac nodded. “Well, yes … physically. I mean, part of the planning quite a while ago was to have black boxes made up and ready to receive final circuit boards and hard drives for immediate installation.”

“Great thinking, too. I’m still impressed that you got it down to the level of such industrial simplicity, with over a year to test all the subcomponents.”

“Thanks. The parallel effort out of Wright-Patterson has been handled very efficiently. My latest count shows the entire C-17

fleet, one hundred eighty C-141s, and all the operational C-5s have completed the hardware retrofit.”

Cassidy nodded. “Just slide the little sucker in the bracket, turn the cyberlock, and she’s operational.”

“With codes as secure as the President’s launch code.”

Cassidy nodded. “I think it was a much better idea to have the same established office that handles the nuclear codes choose the codes for Boomerang. One-stop shopping with proven security.”

“Are we ready for the bomber fleet? Do we really want to do that?”

Cassidy shook his head. “No. We have another system planned for which you have no immediate need to know.”

“Yes, sir,” Mac replied, glad that he hadn’t been handed one more weighty responsibility on the spur of the moment.

Cassidy leaned forward. “Mac, really good job in there, by the way.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re headed back to Anchorage?”

Mac nodded. “Immediately. A few loose ends have to be sewn up, including tonight’s final acceptance test, but otherwise, we’ll make it work.”

Cassidy showed him to the door, and Mac collected his aide from Cassidy’s outer office and headed down one of the maze of corridors past a portion of the Pentagon’s rebuilt western side, which had been hit in the 9/11 attacks.

Lieutenant Colonel Anderson caught his sleeve at one point. “Sir?

The car will be waiting on the north side.”

“I’m going in a different car, Jon.”

“Sir?”

“You take the car you arranged. I’ll take the other one.”

“Okay. We go separately.”

“Yep,” Mac said, rather enjoying the confusion on Anderson’s face as he tried to keep up.

“If it makes a difference, sir, I did bathe and use deodorant this morning.”

“At long last!” Mac joked. “But you still can’t go with me.”

“Very well, sir. But I assume plausible deniability,” Anderson said.

Mac stopped him and turned to put a hand on his shoulder. “No.

Complete deniability. Take your car, Jon. I’ll see you on board.”

He started to turn away, then looked back at the colonel. “Jon, I’m pulling your chain. I’m actually going over to Arlington National to pay my respects to an old friend I lost long ago.”

“Understood, sir. I’m sorry I pressed.”

Mac watched his aide disappear in the right direction before walking to an interior courtyard driveway, where his driver was waiting. The unmarked car moved immediately into the throng of traffic around the Pentagon and smoothly accelerated to the north, pulling up to a back gate into Arlington National Cemetery a few minutes later. The guard verified the credentials the driver held up and waved them through.

Mac had visited Arlington many times during his career. Robert E.

ee’s home, the Custisee Mansion, was his favorite spot, but the revered anonymity and peace that permeated Arlington was something he’d always sought.

“We’re here, sir,” the driver announced.

“Thank you. You know where to wait for pickup.”

“Yes, sir.”

Mac removed his hat and put on a light, non-uniform raincoat to hide all vestiges of a uniform.

The day was cloudy and cool, but invigorating nonetheless, and he made his way down a familiar path, stopping for a second near the Coast Guard Memorial, then proceeding to a grove of trees near the end of Dewey Drive, where a tall, blond woman in a long black coat was standing, reading the inscription of a large headstone.

Mac came up beside her quietly, reading the same headstone.

“He died the day before the Normandy landing,” Mac said quietly.

“So I see,” she replied, not looking at him.

“How are you,

ucy?”

“On a four-year-long, exhilarating, exhausting high. How about you?”

“The atmosphere isn’t as rarified as where you’ve been living, but… it’s been an interesting couple of years.”

“Is the program ready?”

Mac sighed, a thousand worries tied into one moment of decision.

“Yeah. We’re ready if we have to be. The list still the same?”

She nodded. “It is. Discovery would destroy us, Mac. We need to get it right the first time. You realize how important this is to the President personally, don’t you?”

“I believe so.”

“Maybe, but I’m not sure you fully understand the depth of his resolve.”

“The timetable?” he asked.

“It’s concurrent with the Pentagon’s schedule. I assume the plan is the same for the containers?”

“Yes. Two per crate, manifested as one, and handled the way we agreed.”

“And no problems as yet?”

“I’ve … had a few anxious moments, including this morning in Cassidy’s office, but they’ve all been containable questions, no pun intended.”

She chuckled. “Right. Good luck, Mac,” she said, turning away and strolling casually toward the adjacent roadway. Mac forced himself to stay focused on the gravesite before him, even kneeling down and putting on his reading glasses before standing and stealing a look around.

She was nowhere to be seen.

Mac checked his watch and turned to the south. He could see the car waiting at the appointed spot through the trees. With luck, they

could lift off from Andrews by 11:30 a.m. local for the nearly seven hour flight, putting them into Elmendorf at 2:30 p.m. He caught himself sighing and longing for sleep. There was a comfortable couch on the Air Force Gulfstream, and he’d have to take advantage of it, since the evening would involve some very long hours aboard an AWACS.

A telephone rang somewhere in the darkened hotel room, jangling April back to consciousness. She rolled to the left to reach for it before remembering that she wasn’t in her apartment. She sat up in the pitch darkness, feeling for the edge of the bed, unable to dredge up a memory of the previous evening, or where she was now.

Okay, wait… I was in Sequim, then …

As if flipping a switch, her memory flooded back, bringing with it a depressing recollection of the previous night.

Valdezl I’m in a hotel in Valdez.

Ť

The phone was still ringing somewhere to the left and she flailed around in search of it, knocking something off the nightstand as her hand found the receiver.

“Hello?”

“April? Gracie. I’m sorry to wake you,”

“S’okay,” she said, rubbing her eyes, then trying to find the lamp. “I had to get up anyway to answer the phone.”

She could hear Gracie sigh in response. “You awake enough to talk to me about last night?”

“You got my message, then,” April said.

“Yes, but… I can’t figure out why you couldn’t get hold of me last night.”

“Maybe … cause someone else had hold of you last night?”

April smiled to herself as Gracie squirmed on the other end and cleared her throat. “I was on my boat, alone.”

” Kay. I’m awake now, and we’ve got a big problem. We found Dad’s plane, I got pictures of it on an underwater video, and the Coast Guard took it.”

“Wait!” Gracie interrupted. “Slow down. Tell me everything that happened, in order. You say you found the Albatross and had a tape of it, and the Coast Guard took it?”

April related the entire sequence of events, including the embarrassing experience of being hauled into the state police office with Jim and Scott and being searched.

“They searched for the tape, then?” Gracie asked.

“He.”

“Okay, he. But he found it? You didn’t volunteer it?”

“The salvage guy–Jim—told him he had several tapes, and he produced, I think, four, but it was obvious the trooper wasn’t going to stop until he found the one the Coast Guard wanted, which was in my pocket.”

“So, you volunteered it?”

“Well, I told him I didn’t believe that the State Patrol or the Coast Guard had a legal right to claim that tape, and that I’d turn it over only if we watched it first, and then under protest.”

“And he, of course, tried to convince you that he didn’t need a warrant.”

“Yes. Did he need one? I mean, he was nice, but he was threatening arrest.”

“I’m not sure whether he needed one or not. I don’t even know under what coloration of law he was claiming to act as an agent for the Coast Guard. I’m going to have to think this through and research it quickly.”

“It was pretty confusing.”

“I’ll bet. Did he let you watch the tape?”

April shook her head, her eyes closed, her head full of cotton.

“No. He wouldn’t let us look at it. Even when I explained how incredibly important it was.”

“Well, the other two guys saw it, though, right? As you filmed the wreck?”

“No. / saw it. They never did.”

“Are you sure? Where were the other two?”

“Jim Dobler, the fellow with the salvage company, was up front in the Widgeon with his back to the screen at the moment I saw the aircraft come into view, and Scott—the pilot you hired for me—was in the back.”

“I see,” Gracie replied, her professional and personal concern painfully apparent.

“Gracie,” April said, “don’t worry, /can testify that I saw it clearly. The plane’s a mess, of course, but that engine was an indelible image. Frankly, it scares me to say this, but I’m surprised Mom and Dad survived.” She related the details: the right engine hanging off its mountings and cocked to one side, the heavily damaged right wing, the bent propeller blades. “So we can blow the FAA out of the tub on this one. I mean, we need to get those unopened liquor bottles, too, but as for the reckless flying thing, no way could that engine have been knocked off just by impact with the water and still chew up the wing. The props would have stopped instantly.”

“And … they didn’t?”

“Gracie, the right wing was shredded metal. It could have collapsed.”

“Of course, we can expect the FAA to look at it differently.”

“I don’t give a damn what the FAA says. You can’t argue with facts. I know what I saw. That wreckage is down there right now giving mute testimony to the fact that their charges are ridiculous.”

“How many blades did you see, April? Two or three?”

“I don’t know. That I couldn’t make out. I was hoping that once

we got back here, the tape would have enough detail to tell us for certain. But we should have enough now, right? I told Dad last night by phone we did.”

“Enough to exonerate him?”

“Yes. Not the drinking charge, or at least not yet. But the reckless charge.”

“Not without that tape, April. I mean, we need to get Ted Greene, the D.C. lawyer, on this immediately. Did the state trooper say why the Coast Guard wanted it?”

“No. Grade?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re scaring me. Why are you so negative? What am I missing here? I told you I can clearly testify to what I saw even without the taped evidence.”

“I know, kiddo, but think about it from the point of view of a neutral third party. You’re the loving daughter of the accused, presumably ready to do anything for your dad. Same problem Rachel has testifying he wasn’t drinking. You’re smart, you’re a pilot who knows the ropes, and you’re the one who’s going to swear you saw evidence that would magically clear his record.

Unfortunately, it’s evidence that virtually no one else saw, that’s no longer available, and that’s recorded on a tape that may not exist.”

“Okay. I can understand that kind of prejudice, but the tape does exist and the Coast Guard has it. Can’t we get a court order to force them to hand it over?”

“If they don’t have a magnetic accident and erase it, or make some claim of national security, which might or might not block us, then probably so. But if there’s something down there on the ocean floor they don’t want anyone to see, and they want to claim that the tapes show whatever that is, then we may never get it back intact. And, April, the more time that elapses between when you shot the tape and when it’s finally sealed as evidence, the more opportunity the FAA has to say that it was electronically altered or even staged.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“No, it’s not. Remember what you showed me on your computer? Even you carry around a computer program that can completely alter a photo.”

“Well, yeah. A still photo.”

“Videotapes are just a series of stills, April. And you’re Ms.

Electronics. They’d have a field day.”

April was rubbing her forehead, her attempts to find the lamp switch unsuccessful. She felt like bawling. “Why, Gracie, are we now fighting both the FAA and the Coast Guard? What is this, some sort of bizarre conspiracy to get Dad?”

“I haven’t a clue why the Coast Guard would come out and harass you and seize the videotape,” Gracie replied. “But suppose they’re testing some new submarine or laying an underwater cable or who knows what?”