“Caution noted. But like I said, right now he’s just another guy out there looking for Jen.” Davis pushed back from the table. “I need a ride back to headquarters. I want to head out to the crash site.”
“I can take you.”
Before they left, Davis went to the cashier’s counter. He bought six cups of coffee and was given a cardboard tray to carry them in.
“What is that for?” asked Marquez.
“Your headquarters team.”
“A display of kindness?”
“Not really. I just thought it might make everyone work a little faster.”
“He just bought a gallon of coffee with his credit card,” said the man.
The woman across from him in the G Street suite said, “The guy is huge. He could drink that much.”
The man, noted for having a stunted sense of humor, frowned and glanced toward the open hallway door. “Should we tell them?”
An emergency meeting had convened down the hall, in the electronically swept main conference room. Neither of them had been invited because decision-making was not their realm. They were cyber-specialists, here to gather, filter, and forward raw data. Since there had been precious little of that so far, there was a serious temptation to pass along the coffee purchase.
Muted shouts rose from the conference room down the hall, the second outburst from a meeting that had been in session only five minutes.
“I’ll leave it up to you,” she said.
The man sunk back in his chair. “I’ve never seen them this agitated. What do you think has got them so riled? Something to do with the crash in South America?”
She shrugged. “All I know is that I’d hate to be Davis. The guy has stumbled into a hornet’s nest and doesn’t even realize it. Whatever’s happening,” she cocked her head toward the hall, “it’s making some important people very nervous.”
They both heard a door slam.
“I think I’ll log the coffee purchase with the afternoon brief,” he said, dragging and dropping the electronic file into a slim group of findings that would be forwarded en masse later that day. His favorite capture was a cache of photos from the morgue at Hospital Occidente de Kennedy. The hospital’s password protection for their security system had been laughable, but then imagination clearly wasn’t a long suit in Colombia if they were naming their hospitals after dead American presidents. There was more, of course, including the exact times Davis’ hotel room door had opened — indicators of when he’d returned last night and left this morning. They had already correlated those events with raw position data from the phone, which was pinging every sixty seconds.
The woman said, “Did you add in what he ran through the copy machine?”
“Of course. By the way — that was good. I never knew we could do that.”
“Simple enough. The copier is wireless, connected to the network. Most are these days. But I don’t know what to make of the stuff he copied. An old medical application from the captain, photographs of both pilots. What do you think he’s on to?”
“I don’t know. Davis is the expert.”
“Let’s hope.”
“Should we try again for a voice stream from the mic on his phone?”
“No, don’t bother, it puts too big a drain on the battery. As long as he keeps it in his back pocket the audio pickup is marginal anyway.”
They began tidying up, their shift nearly over. The man had just finished the checklist for the afternoon changeover briefing when a two-tone chime sounded on his partner’s desktop.
She held up a finger to tell him to wait. “Hold on… we might have one more thing to add. He’s making a phone call.”
THIRTEEN
Larry Green was slogging through his next year’s budget request when the phone on his desk rang. He saw the caller ID and picked up immediately.
“Talk to me, Jammer.”
“Hey, Larry. It’s good to hear a familiar voice.”
“Tell me about Jen.”
Green heard a heavy sigh. “It’s not bad, not good. We have two bodies unaccounted for, and she’s one of them. They’re searching a marshy area where the tail separated. The two missing passengers were sitting in the last row, so the standing theory is that they were ejected.”
“What do you think?”
A pause. “I don’t know… it’s possible, but I’m not giving up.”
“You never do. I’m glad you called, the chairman is getting pressure for an update.”
“Chairman… as in the chairman of NTSB? Since when is an RJ going down in South America such big a deal?”
“Maybe things are slow. Then again, it’s that time of year. Congressmen always get nervous around election time, not to mention all the agencies fighting for next year’s funding. Maybe NTSB didn’t have enough high-profile crashes this fiscal year to justify our budget.”
“Speaking of budget, am I getting paid for this?”
Green chuckled. “Let me guess — you ran out of cash and you’re getting hungry. Let’s call it your usual consulting deal. I’ll push the paperwork through. So what’s the latest on the crash?”
“The latest is that our investigator-in-charge, Colonel Marquez, is convinced we’re looking at a hijacking.”
“Hijacking?” The retired general went stiff in his seat.
“The cockpit door appears to have been forced open. And the first officer was killed execution style, a bullet to the back of his head.”
“Jesus. What about the captain?”
“His story is a little less clear. I’m working on it.”
“Do we know who’s responsible?”
“No idea. But one of the passengers was found in the copilot’s seat.”
“That’s not good. The feds over at JTTF will want to know about this. Any idea who the alleged hijacker was? Any terrorist ties? Did he have any flying experience?”
“Marquez has just started looking into his background, but so far there’s nothing of note. Before Saturday he was a sixty-two-year-old chef from Cartagena.”
Green stared blankly at the wall. “A chef.”
“Pastries, apparently. You know—éclairs and cream puffs.”
“Cream puffs? That’s my briefing point to the directors of Homeland Security and National Intelligence? I’m telling you, Jammer, for reasons I do not understand this crash is raising a shitstorm, and I’d sure like a little more than that when I dance on their carpets this afternoon.”
“I could give you some lessons.”
“No thanks, I’ve seen your moves and they’re not pretty.” Green blew out a long breath. “This hijacking theory — you say it’s being put out there by Marquez. Do you buy it?”
The pause was too long.
“Jammer?”
“I don’t know. Just trust me, skipper. I can tell you that Marquez is keeping the hijacking angle quiet for now. We need time to confirm some things. Oh, and one of the passengers was also shot.”
“Do you have a name?”
Another hesitation. “No, there was some confusion in the seating assignments — you know how that goes. I’ll pass the name along when we have a firm ID.”
“All right,” Green said.
“I should also tell you that the Colombian Police have gotten involved.”
“That’s never good, but I suppose it’s no surprise given that bullets were flying.”
“Right. Listen, Larry, I gotta get back to work. I’ll call again when I have more.”
“All right, Jammer. Good luck finding Jen.”
“Yeah… thanks.”
After the click Green sat still, his hand glued to the phone. Davis had told him a great deal, yet one sentence lodged in his head.