“We had boats out to bar entry to this area, but apparently the brass didn’t think about a seaplane.”
“Apparently.” Scott reached back and started the generator, turned on the VCR, and ejected the tape from the machine before turning it all off again and handing the tape over. April felt her heart sink as she saw the transfer.
“That’s the only one?” the officer asked.
“Only one in there,” Scott replied. “It’s a new toy for Jim, and we were helping him try it out.”
The lieutenant looked Scott in the eye for a few seconds, gauging his answer and whether there was any reason to probe further, then nodded. “Okay. Mr. Dobler, Mr. McDermott, Ms. Rosen? You’re all free to go.” He turned and squeezed his way out of the plane and back into his boat.
Jim had the camera hauled in and secured, and Scott fired the engines before the cutter crew had finished hauling out their boat. The takeoff was made in relative silence, the long rays of the setting sun just disappearing as they flew up the channel. Forty minutes later, Scott opted for a landing on the hard surface of the Valdez airport rather than risk the water in the dark.
They were waiting for a taxi back into town when Scott sat down on a log by the edge of the tarmac and handed something small and plastic to April.
“What’s this?”
“The VCR tape.”
“What? I thought you gave it to—”
“I gave him the one that was in the machine. This was the one I ejected from the machine before he came aboard.” She could see an almost ear-to-ear grin in the subdued light of a nearby sodium-vapor lamp.
“I don’t believe this! Thank you!”
“So… that make up for the cigar?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation.
“And.… maybe I could take you to dinner?”
“Let’s not get carried away.”
“The mind boggles at the possible replies to that statement, April.”
“Seriously, thank you!”
“Think that’s enough?”
“Sorry?”
“To help your dad? Is the tape enough?”
Jim was seating himself on the same log, having listened to the exchange.
“I don’t know,” April replied, “but something besides negligence knocked that engine off its mounts, and I think this tape will show that. I can’t tell you how relieved I am.”
“We can take a better look at the tape when we get back to my place,” Jim said. “Also, there’s a small hotel in town, April. I mean, I’d be honored to have you stay at my house, in my so-called guest room, and I’d even kick Junior here out on the streets to accommodate you, but it’s really not fit for a lady.”
“Hell, Jim,” Scott laughed, “it’s not fit for a pig, though I’m not complaining. But I’ll be happy to share my space.” Scott winked at her and waited for a response.
“Now that you mention it, the hotel sounds nice,” April said with an even expression. “Wouldn’t want to crowd you, or see you sleeping in the street.” April opened her cell phone and started to dial Gracie’s number, but a beeping noise greeted her when she pressed the “send” button.
“Damn. No signal.”
A pair of headlights cut through the twilight and turned toward the airport road in the distance.
“Here comes our taxi,” Jim said. “Probably the only fare he’s had all day.”
“I may still need to raise the wreckage,” April said suddenly.
Both men looked around at her, but Jim spoke first, shaking his head. “You know, the honor of a boarding party from the Coast Guard usually leads to courtrooms and big, ruinous fines. I’d say we were pretty lucky today, but we stumbled onto something. With all due respect and apologies, April, I don’t think raising that bird’s going to be possible until they get through with their war games and clear the area and give the okay. I’m sorry.”
The silence grew as the cab moved closer, and April heard Scott McDermott sigh deeply.
“What?” she asked.
“It’s not war games,” Scott said.
“No? What, then?”
“They’re trying to keep us, and everyone else, away from what we just found.”
She sat in silence for a few seconds looking at him. “My dad’s plane?”
Scott nodded.
“No, that can’t be it. It took political pressure just to get my folks rescued, and the Coast Guard already told me they weren’t interested in raising the wreckage or having anything to do with it.”
“They knew you were out there with us,” he said flatly.
“Why… why on earth do you say that?” April asked.
The car was turning the last corner before reaching them as Scott sighed again.
“When that lieutenant left, he told Mr. Dobler and Mr. McDermott, and one Ms. Rosen that we could all go.”
“I remember. So?”
“So, I introduced Jim and me by our first and last names. I never mentioned your last name.”
The sound of tires crushing gravel and bright headlights prompted Jim and Scott to get to their feet. April remained sitting, thoroughly stunned, as Scott reached out to help her up. There was the sound of a car door opening.
“That you, Jerry?” Jim called to the driver as he squinted into the headlights. “What took you so long? And get those damned lights out of our eyes!”
The passenger door opened, and someone stepped around the front of the car.
“This isn’t Jerry, Jim. This is Trooper Joe Harris of the state police. Coast Guard says you folks may have a tape that belongs to them.”
TWENTY FOUR
THURSDAY, DAY 4 UNIWAVE FIELD OFFICES ELMENDORF AFB, ALASKA
Notification that the final acceptance test flight had been postponed one more time came in the form of a note Lindsey White left on Ben’s office computer.
At first Ben didn’t see it when he returned from Dan Jerrod’s office. It was a folded piece of paper literally taped to the upper right side of his computer monitor, and it was a measure of his current state of distraction that he could miss it for more than an hour. That hour had consisted of stressing out over ways to deny the would-be saboteurs a means of recontaminating the master program on the test flight.
The delay note, when he found it, was tantamount to a stay of execution. All of which meant that Schroedinger would get fed in person for at least one more evening.
The team was growing exasperated with him, Ben could tell, though no one had been bold enough to say anything. His extreme distraction, moodiness, fatigue, and otherwise un-Ben-like behavior was prompting equally uncharacteristic group behavior in response. The room fell silent now when he walked in, and he could feel their eyes following him. Where normally he was a full member of his own team, suddenly he was an oddity, and more of an annoyance than a team leader. That recognition, however, was doing little to cure the underlying malady of frustration and fear.
Ben reread Lindsey’s message, wondering what had prompted this new postponement.
Am I somehow out of the loop and don’t know it? he wondered. It depended on who had made the decision, and that almost certainly would have come from above Joe Davis.
The basic fact remained, of course, that he did not know who fit the description of enemy. Lindsey and Joe had lied about fitting the emergency disconnect to the Gulfstream. “Hey, Ben,” they could have said, “there’s some major problem in getting that installed in time. Would you agree to fly without it?”
Ben snorted, startling himself, as he wondered what his answer would have been. He was too compliant, too cooperative to have said no. But they should have asked, because now they, too, looked like the unseen enemy.