There were nods in all directions with the sole exception of Ben Cole, who was looking ill as Martin continued. “We add whatever safeguards we need to make absolutely sure the damn thing doesn’t misbehave tonight, and then we fly it and sign off the final acceptance test. MacAdams is ready. I’ve already talked to him and assured him that we’d have an answer on what the problem was in a few hours, and now we’ve got it. A bad circuit board in a single computer. And, Ben?”
Ben Cole looked up, startled. “Yes, sir?”
“If you’re still worried after tonight, you and your team can keep looking for the glitch. It’ll take the Air Force three weeks to gear up to install the first black box on a real airplane anyway. That should give you time.”
“Mr. Martin, I don’t want to be a roadblock,” Ben Cole began.
“Then don’t,” Martin said, flashing a perfunctory smile. “Let’s find a way to get this accomplished.”
“Sir,” Ben began, but Martin cut him off.
“Ben, I need solutions overriding cautions now. Are you really prepared to tell me there’s no way to safeguard the system against diving the Gulfstream during the test, or once again failing to release the controls, once that circuit board is fixed?”
“Well, no… the circuit board was probably… almost surely… the reason we couldn’t disconnect. And I can rig a protective circuit that we didn’t have last night to prevent any dives or turns.… But this is almost certainly a compound problem. I mean, there’s a software logic problem somewhere. We wouldn’t have leveled at fifty feet otherwise.”
Will Martin got to his feet and looked across the electronic divide.
“You were aboard the Gulfstream last night, weren’t you, Ben?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And… that must have been a pretty terrifying episode for a non-pilot.”
“I think it was terrifying for the pilots, too, sir.”
Martin looked at the table and nodded before snapping his eyes back to Ben’s.
“When something shakes you that badly, it can affect your judgment. I understand that’s where your passion is coming from regarding tonight’s test flight. That’s why I want you to sit this one out. Stay home. Have a beer, watch TV, chase your wife to the bedroom, and let someone else from your team fly the test.”
Ben started to protest but the chairman had his hand out in a stop gesture. “No, I mean it. In the aftermath of last night’s problem, you’re not going to be as cool and focused as you should be. Hell, I wouldn’t be either.”
Will Martin turned and left the room, leaving Ben Cole searching for a reply as Joe Davis leaned over and put a hand on his shoulder. “Come on, Ben. Cook up that protective circuit you mentioned, pick your crew for tonight, and go home.”
“Joe, this could be a disaster,” Ben began, but the project manager waved him away.
“We’ve got our orders, Ben. Let’s get moving. We’re not going to let it be a disaster.” The older man picked up his coffee cup and hurried away, leaving Ben alone in the teleconferencing chamber. The screen went dark, making the enclosure suddenly feel half its size, and Ben looked at it in a quandary. A half dozen things he should have said to Martin were echoing through his mind, including the useless but vital fact that he was no longer married.
But Martin should have remembered that, Ben thought. He’d flown to Anchorage two years before for Lisa’s funeral.
FOUR
TUESDAY MORNING, DAY 2 VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA
April scooped up the receiver on the first ring and snapped off an urgent hello, instantly relieved to hear Gracie’s voice on the other end.
“Okay, the Coast Guard’s launching a search for your folks.”
“Thank God!” April Rosen sighed as she massaged her temple and sank onto the edge of her bed. “I couldn’t get their headquarters in Juneau to do anything, since the FAA claims Dad didn’t file a flight plan and no one’s heard a distress call.” She reached for a Kleenex as the tears escaped her self-control. “Where are you?”
“In my sensory deprivation chamber. My windowless baby-lawyer office.”
“How’d you get the Coast Guard to listen?”
There was a chuckle on the other end and April pictured Gracie O’Brien leaning back in her plush leather office chair. April had surprised her with the expensive chair when her best friend landed the coveted junior associate position with the mega law firm of Janssen and Pruzan.
“Well, I had a little help from one of the senior partners, Dick Walsh,” Gracie was explaining. “Dick put pressure on the right people in Washington, D.C., for me.”
“Wow. You work with someone that powerful?” April asked.
“You could say that. Until last year, Dick was the Secretary of Transportation, and they kind of own the Coast Guard. Now he plays golf and calls in favors.”
“However you did it, thank you. Oh. You did give them the coordinates of the last fix I got, right?”
“No, April Rosen, I told them to look for your folks somewhere in the North Pacific where the waves are blue and fish swim. Of course I gave them the coordinates. They’re launching both a C-130 and something called a Jayhawk chopper out of Kodiak, which is only two hundred miles away, so they’ll be all over the area in a couple of hours. It’s just a matter of a little waiting time now.”
“I’m pacing a hole in the floor up here.”
“April, I’m sure your mom and dad are okay. I just feel it After all, you said yourself that there’s been no distress call and no emergency locator beacons heard in the area, and you know those beacons are picked up by satellite almost immediately.”
“I know, but…”
“This is premature panic, Miss Icewater-In-Her-Veins Newly Minted Cruise Line Vice-President. Take a deep breath.”
“Seriously, I’m scared, Gracie,” April replied. “I’m sorry. I know I’m overreacting, but I love my folks and this is exactly why I paid for that GPS tracking system Dad didn’t want… so I could make sure they had help if anything happened.”
“The day’s clear up there. If your folks are floating around, they’ll find them.”
“Think so?”
“Yes, I think so. But I also think that when they’re found, they’ll be aboard the Albatross tied up to some obscure pier with a dead battery waiting for a passing boat and boinking their brains out in the meantime.”
“Gracie!”
“Well, your parents are pretty lusty. You know that.”
“Yeah, I know. They embarrass me.”
“That’s their mission as parents. Especially yours. I just hope I still feel that lusty at their age. Of course, it would be nice to be married to a male of the species by that time, too.”
The comforting, familiar banter trailed off for nearly half a minute until April broke the silence with a sigh. “Gracie?”
“Yeah?”
“What… do we do if the Coast Guard can’t find them?” she asked, the words constrained by the sudden lump in her throat. “What if… something terrible’s happened?”