“Okay. I think you probably are who you say you are.”
He grinned. A good sign, she thought. He was in his mid to late thirties, nicely dressed and groomed, and altogether a good-looking man who would look even better with contact lenses. She was well aware that he’d been careful not to walk his eyes up and down her chest, and that restraint was appreciated. Instead, he met her gaze dead on.
“I assure you that I’m me, although quite often I’m also beside myself.”
“Yes, me too,” April chuckled. “You want to stay here, or…”
“If you don’t mind, let’s… just drive somewhere close.”
“Fine.”
He maneuvered the car out of the lot and turned northeast on Spenard.
“My dad briefed me on your call,” she said.
“Good. I understand you have a flight to catch tonight, right?”
She nodded. “In about two hours. We don’t have long.”
“Okay.” He pulled into the crowded parking lot of a restaurant called Gwennie’s, letting the motor run. He turned to begin talking at the same moment her cell phone rang. April glanced at the screen, recognizing her father’s number.
“Could you excuse me to answer this? It’s my dad.”
“Certainly. Should I step outside?”
She shook her head as she punched the button, her face hardening as she listened to Arlie’s unexplained request that she come home immediately.
“Dad, I’ll be on my way in an hour. What on earth is spooking you? Gracie said…”
She nodded in response several times before speaking again. “Look, let’s… let’s discuss this when I get home, okay? No… later, Dad. Just hang tight. Whatever’s got you worried, we’ll get past it. I love you, Dad.”
She disconnected and tried in vain to turn her full attention back to Ben Cole, but a significant portion of her mind was churning over the panic she’d just heard in his voice.
“I’m sorry. Go ahead.”
“Ms. Rosen, what I need to tell you has some big gaps in it because I am under severe legal constraints from my company because we do a lot of top secret defense work. If I cross a line and say too much, I could lose my job and go to jail, so I’ve got to be careful.”
“Okay. You’ve got me very curious.”
He looked around carefully and checked the rearview mirrors before continuing.
“You are concerned, aren’t you?” April asked, immediately chiding herself for needling him, then feeling a flash of unfocused apprehension herself.
“I have a lot at stake,” he replied. “Okay, this is what I can tell you. I’ve seen the raw radar data from the air traffic control radar station nearest to where your father went down. I have a copy of it on a CD, but it’s only for you to see, because you can’t use it in court or even admit you have it. If you can obtain the same thing directly from them, you’ll see that your father’s aircraft crossed the path of a jet Monday night just before his aircraft disappeared from radar and crashed. The jet aircraft can be seen clearly continuing on. He doesn’t.”
“Does the tape show the altitudes as well?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No. But I know for a fact that the jet was at precisely fifty feet above the water until just before its course change, and then he began climbing.”
“My dad was flying under a hundred feet.”
“I thought so.”
“What was a jet doing that low?”
“It’s… a long story, and one I absolutely cannot tell you.”
“Was this a private aircraft?”
“Uh, yes and no. It’s… a civilian aircraft, but it’s involved in some, ah, government research.”
“It’s a modified business jet, right?”
She could see the color draining from his face. “What?”
“It has a T-tail, like a Beachjet, or a Gulfstream?”
“How… I mean… maybe.”
“But I’m not supposed to know that?”
He nodded. “Look, what’s been keeping me awake at night is your father’s plight. I read the newspaper story. I know your dad said he didn’t know why his propeller broke, but that the accident stemmed from that. And I know the FAA is trying to hang him and is discounting his version.”
“They sure are. Among other things, they’re saying he was reckless and just flew it into the water, which is absurd.”
“That’s why I called. That’s why I had to call. The story I read indicated that they didn’t believe the propeller broke. But, even though I can’t prove it did, I can tell you a midair collision is a real possibility because there absolutely was another aircraft right there that night.”
April shook her head and sighed. “I went to the FAA two days later, and they told me the tapes would show nothing because their radar wouldn’t be able to see an aircraft that low. So I didn’t push.”
“Not being a pilot or a controller, Miss Rosen, I don’t know whether that was a lie or an uninformed statement.”
“April.”
“Okay, April. Frankly, the FAA may not even know what they have.”
“Tell me how you got to look at this information.”
A trapped look clouded his face and he turned away.
“Are you protecting the FAA?” April challenged.
“No.”
“Then who?”
“Me, primarily, since I can be… arrested if I say too much.”
“Arrested? How could anyone arrest you?”
“Well… when your company works for the military, there are certain projects that require a higher level of secrecy.”
“So, it’s your company or whatever government agency they’re working for that’s hiding this computer record?”
“No, no, no. They’re not hiding it. They don’t even have possession of it. It’s just that the computer record I looked at and copied for you is still in the FAA facility. I had a friend show me how to electronically sneak in the back door of their computer and get the file so I could look at it. Not change or damage it, but just… just view it, right from the database.”
“And that’s illegal, even though it’s public record?”
“Probably.”
She looked away and nibbled her lower lip for a moment. “All right, so what you’ve seen tends to establish that the planes crossed, number one, and number two, you know the jet was at my dad’s altitude, as bizarre as that seems.”
“I know that for a fact.”
“At first, we thought he might have clipped the antennas of a passing ship,” April said. “Now, I’m not so sure.”
“Hitting a ship is possible, I suppose, but if the radar target on that computer record was your dad’s plane, the most likely scenario is that he clipped the jet.”
“That could certainly break a propeller blade.”
“I would think so.”
April turned sideways in the seat to look him in the eye. “I don’t understand something, though, Ben. You say there was no data block or altitude information, and yet you know for a fact that the jet was fifty feet above the water. How?”
“I can’t—”
“Yes you can! You’ve come this far, you’ve told me this much, and I need to know. My father’s coming apart with worry down there in Washington state.”
“Look, April, please listen. My purpose was to give you and your dad the best lead I could. You have to take it from here. I can’t stand to see someone railroaded, but I’m also in serious jeopardy here if I say much more.”
“But how can I use what you’ve told me?”
“Now you know what information you need to get from them. Maybe you need a lawyer.”
“We have one, and we’re filing actions. Can you come testify if we sue the FAA?”
“Good grief, no!”
“What if we sue your company? What was the name?”