Maybe he was overreacting. After all, the new code could be something as mundane as an encrypted recipe for brownies. It wasn’t necessarily responsible for the failed test and the locked system two nights before.
Another horrific thought crossed his mind, and he tried to shake it off. What if one of his own team were some sort of renegade foreign agent?
Impossible. I know my people better than their mothers know them.
The background checks had been witheringly thorough, yielding embarrassing details ranging from youthful sexual exploits to sometimes disgusting personal habits. His own file had shocked him. Apparently, the National Security Agency had employed agents in his preschool and had been inside his ’54 Chevy during his first, fumbling attempts at lovemaking in the back. They even had her name right.
No, he knew his people. There were no moles.
Ben felt his pulse slowing as he focused on how little he knew about the puzzle he’d discovered. He couldn’t go off half-cocked, but then again, he couldn’t just erase the evidence and go to work as if he hadn’t found it.
Maybe I can erase it here and just replicate it there. After all, at the lab, all the files are available and authorized.
He entered the preliminary keystrokes to destroy the entire series of files, and paused with his finger over the “enter” button. He had the evidence in front of him. What if something happened to his data at the lab and he couldn’t duplicate it? The urge was strong to punch the button and remove all possibility of prosecution for what had, after all, been the criminal act of breaching a top secret project. But he had a responsibility to find out what this was all about.
Ben pulled his finger away and carefully hit the escape key to cancel the process. Regardless of the enormous personal risk, he had to keep the files until he could duplicate them legitimately at the lab.
A dozen ideas on where to store the thousands of lines of the anomalous code marched through his thinking, and he settled on the least probable, entering the appropriate commands before erasing all traces of the downloaded program files.
One single number remained, and he memorized it before removing it from his laptop. He headed for the shower, pausing to dump some food out for his unhappy cat and wondering if he could hide his agitation when he walked in the door in a half hour.
THIRTEEN
WEDNESDAY, DAY 3 ANCHORAGE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
April hated the airport security procedures that kept friends and family from going to the gates. She’d always loved being the first to catch the eye of someone she’d come to meet as the passengers rounded the corner of the jetway. Now she was forced to join the throng of hopefuls waiting for inbound passengers outside the security perimeter, and it seemed an indignity. Still, she managed to spot Dean as he came into view down the concourse, pouncing on him the second he emerged from the security portal.
“Hey, bro!”
“Hey, sis!” He hugged her, a weary look on his face. “How’re they doing?”
“They’re doing okay, considering what they went through. You know the Albatross was destroyed?”
“You told me on the phone last night, remember?”
She nodded. “I’m not sure what I’ve told anyone.”
“Any physical problems?”
“Bumps, a few contusions, and a mild concussion for Dad, but overall, they’re okay.”
“That’s a huge relief.”
“It’s just hard to picture their airplane sitting on the bottom of the ocean.”
He pointed the way toward the front of the airport and they began walking in that direction. “You said last night there were other problems and you’d tell me when I got here,” Dean prompted.
She gave him a detailed rundown of the encounter with the FAA and NTSB as they walked to her rental car in the airport garage.
Dean sat in silence for a while in the right front seat as his sister wheeled them out of the airport drive for the trip across town to the hospital. She waited for him to break the silence.
“April, you said you’ve got Gracie looking for a lawyer for Dad, right?”
She nodded.
“Which means you think he’s going to need one.”
“If you’d seen the hate in the eyes of that FAA inspector, Dean, you’d have no doubt. I don’t understand what the man’s problem was. I mean, most FAA people I’ve met, including inspectors, are just good, hardworking folks, but this guy…”
“He was giving you attitude?”
She grimaced and shook her head. “Not you, too?”
“What?”
“I hate the misuse of that word, Dean!”
“What are you talking about?”
“What you just said. ‘He’s giving me attitude,’ that’s nonsense. Gracie and I go around about this all the time. Attitude, attitude. Everyone has an attitude at any given moment, but that sort of stupid misuse makes it sound like just having one is bad. Talk about the bastardization of English!”
Dean had a hand up, laughing. “Okay, okay. I will refrain from colloquial usage in the future.”
“That’s not even colloquial. It’s just plain guttural.”
“But your point was,” Dean continued, “that this FAA inspector had an agenda, and the destruction of Arlie Rosen’s license to fly airplanes was on it?”
“Something’s up with him, that’s certain.”
“And that’s one of the phrases I hate,” Dean chuckled. “‘Up with,’ as in ‘whazzup wid yew?’”
April turned the car into the hospital entrance.
“Touché. Point well taken. And we’re talking obliquely about a certain nephew of mine, right? Little runt who pretends to like rap and answers to the name of David?”
“Ah, yes,” Dean said. “The teen monster of Bellevue. Night of the living bored. Now six feet tall, by the way, and his linguistics are atrocious.”
“Like, you do realize, like, don’t you, that he’s, like, just trying to irritate his, like, dad?”
Dean smiled as she braked smoothly to a halt in front of the main entrance. “I seem to recall, little sis, that you were the unchallenged champion in that department in our family.”
“I reformed,” she replied, looking hurt. “It was a brief rebellion.”
“Yeah, such as the time in high school you flew to Europe during a school break without telling anyone.”
“Amsterdam.”
“That’s still in Europe, last time I checked.”
“Dean,” April said, her hand up to stop him. “Something about Mom and Dad’s memory of yesterday is bothering me.”
“What do you mean? You’re not suggesting they’re coloring the truth?”
She shook her head vigorously. “No, no, no! But something about the way they both remember the beginning of the accident sequence doesn’t make sense.”
“So, what are you thinking? Something else happened? You said that he said a propeller broke.”
“I’m thinking that I want to ask you a favor.”
“Sure.”
“Let me just drop you off here to go take care of Mom and Dad while I… do a little research. Find out when they’re going to be released and call me.”
“I can, but why don’t you just come back here when you’re through? I’ll need to arrange a hotel—”
“Dean, they’ll be released this afternoon. Didn’t I mention that?”
“No. Today?”
“Yeah. Isn’t that great?”
“Well… of course, but…”
“Unless something’s changed in the last hour.”
He looked off balance.
“I’ll be on my cell phone,” she added. “When we’re sure of the release time, I’ll arrange the flight home.”