The morning sky was clear and the rising sun lit up the gold dome on the top of the Savannah City Hall, reflecting it directly at the Westin. Jake squinted as he looked out over the city. The spires of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist towered above the trees and stood prominently in the Savannah skyline. The early morning temperature was a cool forty-two degrees with an expected high of seventy-four, perfect for a St. Patrick’s Day celebration in Savannah.
Across the river along River Street, vendors had started setting up for the day’s festivities. Exhaust from the few vehicles allowed on River Street billowed from their tail pipes. Pedestrians’ breath was clearly visible as they spoke to one another on the street. A young boy swept the sidewalk under the yellow and white striped awning of Spanky’s Restaurant, a cloud of dust rising up with every stroke of his push broom. Next to the sweeper Jake saw a young girl in shorts and a jacket under a red and white striped awning, wiping off the benches in front of the Shrimp Factory. Two men were opening the windows at the twin buildings that made up the River Street Marketplace.
He knew there was something else, something he was missing. His gut told him that the unknown man was right, the crash was a result of sabotage. But how could he prove it without riling McGill and getting tossed from the investigation? And how could he explain the other aircraft and the midair?
The odds were staggering that it was just a coincidence. Yet he knew it couldn’t be just a midair.
There was more.
He was determined to find out what it was.
He heard Beth protesting behind him.
“Jake Pendleton, it’s cold. Close the door.” She rolled over on her stomach and pulled the covers over her head.
He turned and went inside, closing the sliding glass door behind him. He sat on the edge of the bed and said, “Babe, I’m going to run out to the airport. I’ll be back in a couple of hours, probably less, and then we’ll go have breakfast.”
“You’re not leaving me here alone. That, that weirdo might come back. Besides, I thought Pat gave everybody the day off.”
“He did, but there are a couple of things I want to look into, then I’ll come right back. Look, you’ll be just fine here. Deadbolt the door when I leave and no one can get in, not even me and I have a key.”
“You promise you’ll only be gone a couple of hours?”
“Of course.”
She grumbled from under the covers. “Say it, Jake.”
“I promise,” he replied.
“Jacob Pendleton.”
“All right, all right. I promise I’ll be back in two hours — or my ass is yours and you can have your way with me.” He grinned.
CHAPTER 35
The guard at Gulfstream stepped out of his guard shack, held up his hand and stopped the black Mustang. He pointed to an old white Ford F150 long-bed pickup truck with homemade wooden bed walls parked in a visitor’s parking spot.
The guard said, “He’s been waiting here since sunrise. He said he will only talk to an NTSB agent.”
“Agent?” Jake smiled. “Did he say what he wanted?”
“No. He’s got a lot of junk piled in the back of his truck and threatened to dump it in the parking lot if someone didn’t show up soon.”
He walked over to the pickup. An elderly man sat behind the wheel, his head leaned back on the headrest, and his hat pulled down over his eyes. Jake tapped on the window and the old man jumped. He held his NTSB identification badge up to the window. The old man rolled down the window.
He stepped back and said, “I’m Jake Pendleton with the NTSB. The guard there said you’ve been here a while. Is there something I can do for you?”
“It’s about time one of you boys showed up. You boys must work banker’s hours.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Never mind. I think I found something you might need,” the old man said. “It’s in the back.” He pointed with his thumb.
Jake and the old man walked around to the back of the truck. The bed was filled with debris. A lot of debris. Many shapes and sizes — all of it twisted and torn.
One piece in particular caught Jake’s eyes. It was a large burgundy piece that almost filled the bed of the truck. One end was curled back and shredded into smaller strips of the metal, each about eight inches wide, twisted backward nearly a hundred and eighty degrees.
He looked at the old man’s tired face, his bushy gray eyebrows, over a decade in need of a trim, reminded him of Andy Rooney. “Where did you find this?”
“On my property, over in South Carolina just across the river. It looked like something off of an airplane and I heard about a crash over here so I figured I’d bring it on over. I busted a shear pin on my bush hog when I hit some of it,” the man said, pointing to a blue piece of the tail section of the Skyhawk. “It stopped my mower blade just like that.” He snapped his fingers for emphasis.
“You ran over it? You hit it with the mower?”
“Not the big piece — I ain’t blind, sonny. Some of the smaller chunks were hidden in the taller grass. I bumped over something with the tractor, then I heard the mower blade whack something hard. That’s when the pin sheared. It took me nearly a half hour with a crowbar to get that piece off my blade.”
“You found it this morning?”
“Naw. I did this yesterday right after dinner.”
Jake leaned over to look closer at the big chunk of wreckage. “Why didn’t you bring it yesterday or call or something?”
“Well, young feller, I ain’t no government worker like you. I had a lot of work to do. I picked up as much as I could find and then finished my mowing. I hit a few other smaller pieces but I could never find ’em after I hit ’em.”
“Can you show me where you found this?”
The old man looked up at him and shook his head. “Can’t right now, but I figured you boys would want to go look see for yourself so I drew you a map to my place. Yer welcome to go look around all you want, take whatever ya need.” He pointed at the bed full of debris and asked, “Where do I dump all this trash?”
He rode with the old man back to the recovery hangar where they unloaded all the debris. He escorted the man back to the gate, took his name and phone number. The old man pulled out of the parking lot, blue smoke billowing from the back of his pickup as he accelerated down Gulfstream Road.
Jake returned to the hangar and laid the debris on the floor, separating the pieces as best he could. Then he studied the largest piece. It was the missing section from the underside of the Challenger. The section below and just behind the cockpit. The strips of metal on one end were curled backward and outward. The green side of the metal was the inside and the burgundy side was the painted side of the metal, the exterior.
He studied the green side and noticed something peculiar. What he saw made his heart jump in his chest.
Residue.
Residue from a fire — or an explosion. He preferred explosion. But he had to be sure.
He grabbed his field kit and started the preliminary tests. An excitement took over when he saw the results, explosive residue.
He was right all along. Sabotage. A stretch maybe to call it sabotage at this point, but his instincts told him otherwise. And better yet, it confirmed what the strange man had said. He needed to call McGill. They needed to call the FBI.
On the fourth ring, McGill answered his cell phone. “Hello, Jake, what do you want?”
“Pat, I’m at the Gulfstream hangar—”
“Jake, I said take the day off. I meant it.”