He sent the e-mail and sat in thought for a moment, wondering what was motivating him so urgently to find out whether the lost amphibian had been close to Sage 10 Monday night. The answer was ridiculously simple and naive and altruistic: revulsion at a senior pilot losing his livelihood to the unknown force of a passing aircraft whose interference might be cloaked in the secrecy of a black project. It was too much to bear, and too great a price to pay. It wasn’t his problem, of course, but in some ways it seemed like it. It was as if the ultimate cause of the Gulfstream’s dive had been his failure to spot the flaws in the program.
Hey! Don’t forget the fatal flaw was the autopilot system. You had nothing to do with that.
But the expected relief from feelings of guilt wouldn’t come.
A “new message waiting” notice was flashing on the screen. Ben clicked through the appropriate sequence to bring up the email, which was from Hank.
That was fast! he thought.
The message was vintage Hank:
Good to hear from you, Benji! Yes, I have a backdoor for what you need, though I wouldn’t trust just anyone. They keep those tapes on computer in several places. I know the one they seldom guard. Give me 30 minutes and I’ll send you a temporary web address that will interface for precisely 12 minutes. After that, it goes poof and can’t be used again. Be ready with the right questions, among which are not How did you do this? Naturally, if you or any of those minions around you are caught or chastised, I will expect you to self-destruct. Goes for that damned cat of yours, too!
Mastermouse
As promised, within a half hour the follow-up e-mail arrived with a lengthy address and additional instructions, which Ben carefully entered. A long listing of database storage disks covering various dates and radar sites suddenly appeared under the FAA’s logo, and he tried to ignore the reality that somehow he was almost instantly inside an FAA computer.
The names of the various air traffic radar sites were unfamiliar, but he called up an Alaska map and quickly scanned back and forth between the place names for the area south of Valdez and what was on the radar list. One name in particular stood out, and he selected it. The screen indicated a download of the requested clip, and Ben waited in apprehension, wondering if there was any way the altered identification codes his computer was sending could be discovered and the connection traced back to him.
The download complete, Ben broke the connection, collapsing the communications program and changing his computer’s individual ID code back to normal. He called up the radar information for Monday night then and worked to convert the format to something he could display, finally succeeding. A few more keystrokes and the picture enlarged to full size before him, each recorded sweep of the radar beam bringing a vastly clearer picture than what he’d seen from Herndon.
This was, after all, the raw data. He worked to refine it before identifying the Gulfstream, a task that proved simple once he’d located the AWACS on the screen.
Ben worked through the data, isolating the various blips as they appeared and disappeared, creating projections of their positions and moving them back and forth until the conclusion became obvious.
My God, if that’s the amphibian coming from the southeast to the northwest, we crossed right over or under him at fifty feet! And immediately after that encounter with us, he disappeared for good.
The newspaper article he’d cut out earlier about the crash was sitting next to the keyboard. He reread it now, memorizing the name of the grounded pilot and querying an on-line phone book for his phone number.
Rosen, Arlie. Sequim, Washington. The phone number followed.
Ben copied down the number and punched it into the desk phone before thinking about the possibility that Uniwave — or someone else — might be bugging it. He hung up quickly. The cell phone would be safer, though even digital phones could be monitored by sophisticated agencies. Ben dialed the number and heard the line ring through to a voice mail message. “Ah, Captain Rosen, this is… Ben Cole in Alaska. I’m in Anchorage, and I noticed an article about the loss of your aircraft earlier this week, and there’s something I think you need to know as soon as possible.” He left his number and broke the connection, not entirely sure what he would have said had the pilot answered in person.
Schroedinger was sitting on the adjacent windowsill, watching him with intense disinterest, and Ben looked at him thoughtfully.
“So what do I say to him, boy, when he calls back? ‘Hi, I’m with a government project I can tell you nothing about, but Monday a private jet registered somewhere else making a flight that officially never existed may have theoretically knocked you out of the sky? All you have to do is illegally hack into a government computer and risk ten years in prison and you’ll find the evidence?’ Not exactly a brilliant move.” Ben shook his head in true confusion, acutely aware of the danger.
But the alternative of silence was even worse.
THIRTY EIGHT
SATURDAY, DAY 6 OLYMPIC NATIONAL PARK, WASHINGTON
Gracie’s cell phone began ringing as she left the main road through Port Angeles and started up the mountainside toward Hurricane Ridge, twelve miles into the Olympic Mountain Range.
“Rachel, would you answer that for me?”
Rachel Rosen nodded and pulled the phone out of Gracie’s purse, catching it on the fourth ring.
“Mom? Is that you?” the feminine voice on the other end asked as soon as she heard Rachel’s “Hello.”
“April! Oh, honey, where are you?”
“What’s wrong? Where’s Dad? I’ve been trying to reach him.”
Rachel gave her a surprisingly cogent summary. “We’re halfway up the ridge road right now.”
“Gracie saw him?”
“Yes. Sitting, or standing—”
“Standing,” Gracie filled in.
“She says standing by a parking area on the ridge. There was a ranger with him. Where are you?”
“On a small tug headed back to Valdez. Mom, let me talk to Gracie.”
Rachel handed the phone over and Gracie shook her head. “Push the speakerphone feature, Rachel.”
“Where?”
“Lower right-hand corner of the little window. The LED display. That one. Yes.”
Rachel activated the button and held the phone out.
“April? Where are you?” Gracie asked.
“She’s on a tug,” Rachel said in a low voice as April repeated the same information.
“I just now got a good cellular signal,” April added. “What’s all that noise in the background?”
“We have you on speakerphone,” Gracie replied, maneuvering the car around a hairpin turn to the right.
“Oh. Okay. Mom, you’re still there?”
“Yes.”
“All right. I… was only going to tell Gracie this, Mom, because I’m not sure it makes any difference, but the wreckage of the Albatross has apparently been, for want of a better word, stolen.”
“What?” Gracie said, involuntarily looking at the cell phone speaker as if she could discern April’s meaning.
April summarized what had happened. “We think the most likely culprit is the Coast Guard or the Navy. Scott has flown off to check on any ships still outbound, but if they snagged the wreckage two days ago, they could have it most anywhere by now.”