Without preamble, Mykel said, “The fake aircraft was put together from spare airplane parts, and a purpose built steel tube to make the fuselage.”
Sam asked, “Any idea where the fuselage was constructed? I mean, someone’s going to remember building something like that. If it was built out of steel, there’s no way anyone would have expected it to fly.”
“No. We have two theories. One, that the steel fabricators were informed that the fuselage was intended for another purpose, say, an aviation themed restaurant or motel. The second idea was that whoever’s responsible for this, manufactured the entire fuselage themselves.”
Tom weighed in on the idea. “It takes a fair amount of technical know-how to construct something this big out of steel.”
Mykel steepled his fingers and set his jaw firmly, with what might be construed as arrogance, or certainty. “It takes a lot of know-how to pull off exhuming bodies, setting up the interior décor to pass the first impression by ROVs, not to mention fooling all of us by making us believe we were all tracking the Phoenix flight 318’s transponder.” He took a deep breath. “Yeah, I think it’s fairly safe to say that whoever is responsible for this, they have a reasonable amount of know-how as well as the financial and technical resources to pull it off.”
Sam spread his hands to cut him short. “Okay, we get the idea. So how did someone get the wreck here in the first place?”
“By boat. An old ocean liner to be exact. The T/S Raffaello.” Mykel brought up an image of the vessel.
Sam’s eyes widened. “You’ve impounded the ship?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
Mykel tilted his head to the side and grinned. “Well, for a start, the T/S Raffaelo sank in 1983.”
“Which means the ship was intentionally disguised.”
“Right.”
“Still, you must be able to find a large ocean liner that meets that description. Where did it go after the Phoenix disappeared?”
“It was last seen leaving the Strait of Gibraltar twelve hours after the Phoenix went missing.”
Sam said, “If we can find the crew of that ship, we can get answers.”
“That might be difficult. The ship hasn’t been seen since.”
Sam said, “I have someone who can run an Artificial Intelligence search program over the thousands of satellite photos taken on the day the Phoenix disappeared, as well as since then. It shouldn’t be long and we’ll find that ship.”
“All right,” Mykel agreed. “I’m told you’re somewhat of an expert in locating lost ships. If you’re happy, we’ll leave that task to you.”
“No problem,” Sam replied. “Great, so now we’re looking for a ship and an aircraft.”
Tom smiled. “Hey, look on the bright side, now we have two needles in the haystack we’ve doubled our chances of locating one of them.”
Sam grinned at Tom’s joke. Turning to Mykel he asked, “What about the second aircraft? Do we know where that went?”
Mykel looked blank. “What second aircraft?”
Sam filled him in on his theory about a smaller aircraft, transmitting the Phoenix Flight 318’s transponder and security code. It even followed an exact route that made it impossible for any of the radar towers to get a good fix. Then, after transmitting flight data that suggested the aircraft went into a dive and crashed into the Ionian Sea, the pilot simply switched off his transmitter, changed course and speed, and flew out of the airspace above the Mediterranean Sea.
Mykel listened to the whole thing. When Sam had finished, he said, “Good God. You’re right! We need to make a list of every aircraft that flew in or out of that airspace on the day.”
“You have someone who can do that?” Sam asked.
“Yes of course. I’ll get my people on it.”
Sam arched his eyebrows. “If I’m right, you know what this means?”
Mykel sighed heavily. “Yes. It means that Phoenix Airlines flight 318 never entered the Mediterranean Airspace… or for that matter, crossed the Atlantic!”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sam and Tom spent the next four days pouring over satellite images of the Mediterranean Sea on the day the Phoenix disappeared. Elise, Sam’s computer whiz and hacker, had provided them with a list of all ship’s that passed the Strait of Gibraltar from the week before through to the week after the event.
On the day the Phoenix disappeared, the entire region was shrouded in dense clouds, like a cloak of darkness, which hid the movements of all maritime vessels. Assuming that the ship entered the Mediterranean Sea sometime in the week before the event, there were potentially thousands upon thousands of vessels to search. They cut the thousands of ships down into a list of hundreds, based on the size. No matter which way you looked at it, a vessel capable of bringing in something the size of an A380 — even in three separate pieces — was going to have to be big.
That pretty much left them with cargo ships.
Sam inputted the dimensions of the aircraft into the computer. An A380 was 240 feet long, with a wingspan of 262 feet. The AI program that Elise had designed, utilized images of all known vessels within the area during the time of the Phoenix crash.
Elise called up. “I have an idea.”
“Shoot. I’m open to suggestions.”
“What if they dropped the aircraft a month earlier?
Sam said, “I don’t understand… there was debris and flotsam — oil, luggage, lifejackets from the Phoenix on the sea’s surface.”
“And all of that was placed there — possibly even by the aircraft that carried the fake transponder.”
Sam closed his eyes, trying to picture how he would have done it if he were trying to pull off such an extraordinary hoax. He opened them again, the hint of a smile on his lips. “You’re suggesting the counterfeit Phoenix aircraft was dumped there, weeks if not months earlier?”
“That’s right. They knew it would be difficult to hide anything on the day of the event, with the waterways packed with search and rescue vessels, navy ships, and aircraft.”
“So they sunk the largest part earlier, and then sailed out of the region so that the ship wouldn’t be connected to it.”
Sam inserted the new parameters into the program and pressed enter. The program ran for twenty-five minutes and stopped.
The results, just one vessel. The T/S Raffaello.
During a period of thick fog, the captain had the ship painted another color and transformed into a standard cargo ship. On the deck it showed its true name in bold lettering six feet high — San Juan.
Sam handed the printed photo of the San Juan to Gerry Emple and said, “I want that image distributed to every marina, coast guard, and navy in the world. Someone’s seen it. Someone’s going to know where it went. That’s our ship. Find that ship, and we’ll find out where the Phoenix is.”
Two hours later Sam got a phone call. He listened for a couple seconds and then hung up. A second later, he swore vehemently.
Tom asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Someone sunk the San Juan an hour ago.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere in the Tyrrhenian Sea.”
“Shit!” Tom cursed. “Most of the Tyrrhenian Sea is deeper than 4,000 feet — much too deep for any useful recovery. Do you know where exactly?”
“Near the Island of Capri… the Italian Navy tried to intercept before they got into the deeper water. In the end the crew sank the San Juan off the coast of Capri before a Navy team could board.”
“Where exactly?”
“South of Capri.”
Tom stood up, his voice rising, “How deep?”
Sam grinned. “A hundred and thirty feet!”