“He called this morning. No luck getting into that hangar yet, but he did run across some documents you might find interesting.” Green explained about the inbound shipments of old drone hardware. Graham listened intently, particularly when he explained the theory that it was done to disguise Blackstar parts going out.
“And this took place two months ago?” she asked.
“Roughly. It’s a little circumstantial, but Khoury was definitely up to something.”
“So we might be too late.”
“Possibly.”
“Our most recent surveillance shows that there’s still a lot of activity around the hangar,” Graham argued. “If Blackstar is long gone, then what are they working on?”
“Jammer and I were wondering the same thing. What about your source, the one who told you about Blackstar originally? Have you gotten any updates?”
That question hung in the air like an overfilled blimp before the DNI said, “No, we haven’t heard from our source in some time.”
She left it at that, and Green didn’t press.
The DNI sat behind her desk and began working her computer. “I have some of the information Davis was asking for,” she said. “First is the emergency frequency record. There’s one part you might find interesting.” She swiveled the computer’s monitor sideways so they could both see it. Graham dragged the cursor back and forth over a progress bar until the reference read 1923:50Z. She hit play. For thirty seconds there was nothing, then on Channel 16, the marine VHF emergency frequency:
“This is the Ocean Venture transmitting on emergency frequency. Is there any craft in distress? Our lookout reports seeing a large splash and explosion in the vicinity of Alam Rocks.”
A pause, then thirty seconds later: “This is Ocean Venture, is there any craft in need of assistance?”
Again, silence.
Graham stopped the recording. “That’s all we could find,” she said. “No more mention of the incident. I checked on the Ocean Venture. She’s at sea right now, supposed to make port in Stockholm in two days. We could interview the crew, I suppose, maybe check the ship’s log when they arrive.”
Green cocked his head. “I don’t know if that’s going to tell us much. The most relevant part is right there — her crew saw something hit the water.” He thought back to the radar data he’d seen yesterday. “The time is right,” he said. “But like I told you, I watched that radar tape over and over. The airplane I saw did not go down. It went right back to Khartoum International and landed.”
Graham said, “When I heard this VHF data, I called the National Reconnaissance Office and had them dig up one more thing.” She switched to another file on her computer, and a sequence often photos came to the screen. She enlarged one. “As I’m sure you know, we have a considerable array of satellite assets covering this part of the world. These are composite images, radar and infrared, for the area in question right before the ship made that radio call.”
Green looked closely as the DNI stepped through the series. The images were virtually blank — cold, featureless ocean — except for one where there was a clear disturbance, a spray of white near the center.
“What’s that?” Green asked, pointing to the blob of white.
Graham pointed to the central five photos in sequence. “Nothing, nothing, splash, nothing, nothing.”
“So something did go into the water,” Green said.
“Something big,” Graham confirmed.
“But I still can’t get past those radar tapes. That airplane landed back in Khartoum shortly after this picture was taken.”
Graham shrugged. “Doesn’t make sense, does it?”
“I’ll need to tell Jammer about this right away.”
The DNI gave him a circumspect look. “Larry, listen. I appreciate all that Jammer is doing, but you both need to remember one thing — he is there to find Blackstar, or at the very least figure out where it went. This DC-3 crash is only a license for him to go poking around. Nothing more.”
Green shook his head. “You’ve got to understand him, Darlene. If I tell Jammer to blow off this crash, he’ll dig in his heels. Just how he is. I’ve always trusted his instincts in situations like this, and he hasn’t disappointed me yet.”
Graham didn’t reply, and in the ensuing silence Green began to ponder. There had been something nagging him, ever since he’d seen it on his own screen.
He said, “That radar stuff you gave me — do you think it was good data?”
“You mean as far as quality?”
Green nodded.
“Our best stuff is in the Middle East. If two ducks have a midair collision, we know about it.”
Green gestured to the computer, and said, “Do you have a copy of it here?”
“Larry, are you not listening? I told you to forget about this crash!”
Green said nothing, only stared at the DNI.
She sighed and began typing. Soon the radar sequence began playing out on the screen. On Green’s prompt, she advanced to a point midway in the flight. The airplane symbol turned circles over the Red Sea, and both watched closely when it reached the point in time when the radio call and satellite data indicated that something had hit the water. Nothing happened.
Green felt as if he was missing something. Watching Air Sahara 007 turn south and head for home, he realized what was different. Realized what wasn’t there.
“Go back,” Green said, “ten minutes.”
Larry Green had a lot of flying time under his belt, so he had a lot of experience with radar. The equipment could be temperamental, prone to spurious strobes and false returns. That was what he had initially thought he’d seen on this tape — a false echo. The second white square that had come and gone, like an intermittent shadow on a partly cloudy day. Green had figured it for a nuisance reflection or a software glitch. But as Graham ran the loop, he could see it was real, consistently in and out. Until, as now confirmed by the other data, the moment of impact. Afterward, on the way back to Khartoum, no more ghost. Which meant that the secondary reflection wasn’t a ghost at all.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
They took off from Kampala an hour later, at three in the afternoon. Davis watched the city fade away beneath them. It looked like an urban lesion on the jade-green jungle, a handful of roads creeping into the treeline like some kind of concrete kudzu. Just over his shoulder, on the starboard side, Davis could make out Kilimanjaro in the distance, sans Hemingway’s snows.
Dead ahead was a big thunderstorm, classic in its anvil shape. To the left and right, cumulus formations were building in the late afternoon heat, huge vapor dirigibles climbing into the stratosphere. Soon they’d all shoulder up to one another, bond and mix to saturate huge chunks of sky.
Boudreau was working the weather radar. The storms ahead showed up as coded colors. Green meant rain, yellow meant heavy rain, and red was a place you just didn’t go. Presently, Boudreau was navigating through a broken maze of green and yellow splotches, turning left and right to find the path of least resistance. A lot like me, Davis thought.
His thoughts settled on what had happened in the jungle. Davis was pretty sure he’d been set up. Somebody had given Achmed an assassin’s mission, with him as the target. But who? Schmitt was a possibility. But Rafiq Khoury, cleric gone wild, was a much more likely suspect. If that was the case, it meant that something Davis had done, or might do, was making Khoury nervous. It could have to do with his reconnaissance mission last night. Maybe Khoury had discovered that it was the American investigator, not just a pack of wild dogs, who’d stumbled across the bodies of the two missing pilots. Or maybe