Griffin swallowed hard, catching her breath.
“What was that for?”
“Your perfume does something to me. I can’t think straight.” Ross ignored his phone. “I just want you to know that this is something that I’m not used to. I’ve never been through anything like this before, at least in a while. And I feel good knowing that you’re the person I’m involved with. I mean, that you’re the person who’s involved with me. I mean, the one working with me on this investigation. I’m glad I met you.”
She held back laughter. “I’m glad I met you too.”
Ross was noticeably relieved. “We never really had the chance to… well, if both of us could find the time, would it be all right if we had dinner?”
“Are you asking me out on a date?”
He paused thoughtfully. “I want to be sure that I thoroughly researched the issue using approved NTSB procedures. Let’s see… a subject male has just invited a subject female to partake in the consumption of nutrition at a public establishment that serves such nutrition. Personally, I told myself that I would never become involved with anyone at work, but that referred to employees within the same company. And finally, the subject female is kind, intelligent, caring, and very attractive. Yup. I’m asking you out on a date. For the second time. And I really hope you’ll accept.”
She smiled sympathetically. “I’m sorry, but someone called me earlier. I’ve been invited to do something special.”
Ross’s heart sank. “Special?”
“Uh-huh. The Fox News Channel. The cable people in New York,” she clarified. “I think they’re going to offer me a position.”
“That’s wonderful,” Ross offered weakly. He was comforted by the suitor’s name but not the location.
“I have to drive out there, but I’ll take a rain check on dinner, okay? I promise I will when I get back if you let me listen to that CVR.”
Ross cocked his head suspiciously. His phone buzzed again.
Chapter 31
Ross hurried downstairs to an NTSB staffing room.
Ron Hollings was talking with Ian Goodman from the Association of Retired Aviation Professionals. On the surface, such a meeting would seem like an unholy alliance based on the grief Goodman had caused the NTSB and the FBI on prior investigations — namely his theory that a SAM-6 missile brought down the infamous TWA Flight 800. But Ross didn’t care. Goodman was an expert in jet armaments, including handheld surface-to-air weaponry.
Hollings turned off the room lights and clicked on a TV monitor.
The video showed an FBI diver descending into Lake Michigan just two hours earlier. Armed with a JW Fishers DHC-1 handheld camera, the diver straightened a tangle in his one-hundred-foot cable and drifted down forty feet, to the right side of the Delta fuselage. As with all underwater filming, the light conditions tended to filter out yellow and red, thus giving images a bluish-green tint. The lake’s maximum visibility at that depth was less than twenty feet.
The camera revealed that the main wreckage was contained within one square mile. The diver fanned his spotlight and caught the silvery flash of a Coho salmon cruising past, following the oxygen-rich layer of the lake’s thermocline. He concentrated the light beam at a large piece of wreckage in the distance. The cockpit was on its side.
Incredibly, there didn’t seem to be much damage until the diver spotted a black, starlike streak. He swam closer and ran his hand along the exposed edge of a large gaping hole where the nose landing gear used to be. He panned up to the roof.
“Pause it right there,” Goodman requested. “I think I’m wasting your time, gentlemen. This was definitely caused by an explosion, but based on the apparent direction of the blast, I think it came from inside the plane. There’s not a single impact point or trauma anywhere else. It’s all on the bottom side of the hull at the gear.”
“Is there any possibility that internal sparking ignited the fuel?” Hollings wondered.
Goodman crossed his arms defensively and shook his head. “You and your sparking. Is that all the NTSB ever thinks about? Let me be frank: there’s no way. Jet fuel vapors are not explosive until the temperature reaches 185 degrees. Even then, it’s not enough for a violent explosion. And really, Ron, this plane was full of fuel. Certainly, anything set off inside the wiring or air conditioning compartments or even the center tank would have taken out that entire section, but it’s all still there. And you can unequivocally rule out a missile.”
“How so?” Ross asked
“A blind man could see it in a minute,” Goodman said confidently. “First, the roof. A missile would’ve blown right through the cockpit, windshield and all. There’s simply too much of it intact.
“Second, stingers — the most common weapon to use here — are heat seekers. Not super-efficient, but enough to do the job, especially at low altitudes, slow target speeds, and defined heat sources—and that’s the clincher. There’s no heat anywhere near the point of impact, and this jet certainly wasn’t taking any evasive maneuvers. Besides, witnesses would have seen a vertical smoke trail from ten miles away. Gentlemen, you’ve got a real problem on your hands. It almost seems as though something was placed in there.”
“Placed there?” Ross asked.
“I bet the physics would support it,” Goodman said.
“Inside the cockpit?”
Goodman shrugged. “It’s as good a place as any to start investigating. If I were you, I’d tell your FBI friends to take a hard look at two groups of people in particular.”
“Who?” Ross asked.
“The flight crew and the mechanics.”
Akil was westbound on Interstate 15. He lowered his eyes and squinted into his dashboard at the Camry’s odometer. He’d recently had it repaired, but it was stuck again.
In daylight, the Nevada desert was hauntingly colorful. The sun had nearly disappeared below the horizon, and the scenery reminded him of Al Khadra, Saudi Arabia. The desert east of Mecca also radiated black from the rocks that littered the landscape. They were rocks with imprints of strange fossilized animals. On their first pilgrimage, his father told him that the desert was once an ocean, but some animals had lost faith so Allah dried the water and turned them into stone. His father said that would happen to anyone who lost faith.
Akil noticed the distant glow of Las Vegas. He would stop there for the night.
Rosie Burke locked the wheel brake lever of her cleaning cart and then pressed numbers on Suite 200 West’s door keypad. She paused at the signage and the letters LLC. Probably some legal mumbo-jumbo, she thought.
“Not that one,” a supervisor shouted from the other end of the corridor. “Computer Doctors never signed up for cleaning.”
She glanced around the room briefly, curious at the fact that there was nothing there. Nothing on the desk — no computers, no pictures, no papers, no sign of use or occupancy at all. Just a vase of wilted flowers and an empty office that someone rented for the next twelve months.
She closed the door and moved on.
Chapter 32
Jack Riley paced the floor in his command center office, cell phone at his ear, impatiently waiting for his home answering machine to beep. His daughter had recorded the announcement and was into long-winded greetings. She’d make an excellent lawyer.