Blackout

CHAPTER 34

For nearly two hours, Robert MacCabe had tried various ideas through the connection of his computer to the seat back phone system. Personal E-mail, his electronic mailbox at The Washington Post, a manual search by his secretary ordered by E-mail, and an hour’s worth of attempts to hack into Walter Carnegie’s E-mail account had turned up nothing. With the DC-10 beginning its descent for landing in Seattle, frustration was growing.

“Do you have any other Internet accounts or E-mail accounts?” Kat asked.

“No,” he replied, sitting in thought for a few seconds. “Wait a minute.” He entered a series of commands and the computer began dialing another number.

“What?” Kat asked.

“A brainstorm, and probably useless,” he replied. The logo of an Internet service appeared on the screen, and Robert waited with his fingers poised over the keyboard.

“YES!” he said in a loud voice, startling Kat.

“Yes what?”

“Just… a second,” he said, typing in a response to a password request. The first two attempts were rejected, but the third worked, and he turned to Kat with a triumphant look. “Walter created a new account under my name at his Internet service, and used his own name as the password.”

“How’d you figure that out?” she asked.

“Pure guesswork.”

“Pretty impressive, Watson,” Kat replied. “It says there’s a message waiting.”

“I’m pulling it up now,” he said, as it assembled itself on the laptop screen.

Kat pulled out a steno pad and copied the message carefully. “Okay,” she said at last, looking at Robert. “What the heck does he mean?”

“The Desert Storm discussion and the reference to Uncle is probably about new military hardware, but… I don’t really remember. It’s been a long time.”

“How about his favorite hangout?”

“I suppose he means a restaurant, and probably the one at the Willard Hotel, but why would he store a disk or something there?”

“You’re assuming it’s a disk, right?”

“Yeah, knowing Walter. He thought best on a computer.”

“But why the spelling ‘LOC’?”

Robert sat scratching his chin for a few seconds, then shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m going to have to think about that. I wonder if he means his house?”

“Where is it?”

“Arlington, Virginia. A small house. He divorced a few years back. She wanted to enjoy life, he wanted to enjoy work. The house suits—suited him, poor guy. It’s furnished in Early Federal Disaster Area.”

“He’ll probably come back and haunt you for that slam. One more question, Robert. He referred to a message you should already have received, but you’ve checked every message service you have, right?”

“Aha!” Robert disconnected his computer from the phone and raised the handset to dial in an 800-number. He punched in some additional numbers and looked at Kat while waiting for it to answer. “I lost my beeper somewhere in the jungle back there in Vietnam, but the host system stores messages for weeks.” He hunkered down to listen as the distant computer replayed the messages of the previous week, then reached over to write them on the steno pad in her lap. He sat up suddenly, smiling as he wrote down another name and the words “Las Vegas,” then disconnected.

“That was it, Kat! Walter sent it through my beeper. The name of his deep-throat source is Dr. Brett Thomas of Las Vegas. The message ended in forty-three.”

“We’d better find him quickly. We won’t be the only ones looking.”

Kat had returned to the cockpit jump seat as the big DC-10 rounded the south end of Puget Sound. She watched as the copilot reached up and pulled the pillow and map off his glareshield as the aircraft made a wide right turn over Elliot Bay and settled on to the ILS approach for Runway 16 Left at Sea-Tac Airport.

“Landing gear down, before landing checklist,” Holt called as they intercepted the glide slope and began the steady final descent to the runway.

“Jerry?” he said to the copilot. “I want you to bottom your seat out and make sure you’re not looking outside, just in case.”

“All the way to touchdown?” the copilot asked.

Holt nodded, turning to the flight engineer. “You, too, Joe. Stay sideways. I know it’s against procedure to land that way, but I want you shielded, too.”

“You’re worried someone might fire at us from the buildings off the approach end of the runway, right?” Kat asked.

The captain nodded. “Any air crew is vulnerable on final approach. With what you told us, and having you on board…”

She nodded. “Understood. I appreciate the caution.”

“Five hundred feet, no flags,” the copilot called, reading the instruments as the three engine jumbo jet descended through an altitude of 500 feet above the housing areas below.

Without incident, the DC-10 transitioned smoothly over the highway bordering the north of the airport and settled gently onto the runway. Holt deployed the speed brakes and lifted the thrust reverser levers as he kept the nosewheel on the center line.

Kat’s attention shifted to the North Satellite terminal on their left. She could see the large sign designating the gate they were supposed to taxi into, and she could see a significant number of black sedans and police cars arrayed around the jetway.

A cold chill of reality reverberated up and down her spine. She had briefed Robert and the others to stay seated and arranged for the crew to close the main door after all other passengers had left, but was that enough? Judy said she would leave it closed until Kat could call and verify the names of the agents meeting them.

Even so, Jordan James’s warnings were ricocheting around her mind, mocking her decision to trust Jake’s assurances. They’re there, as Jake promised. But what if Jordan is right?

They were rolling past the North Satellite now, adjacent to the main terminal and decelerating smoothly. The tower controller directed the captain to turn off the runway at the very end, adding a postscript Kat almost missed.

“… and your company operations need you to contact them immediately.”

The copilot toggled in the company frequency and called in.

“Roger, Seven-thirty-two,” operations replied. “Change in plans. Due to… a request from U.S. Customs and the FBI, we need to park you briefly at the South Satellite, Gate S-ten. Keep everyone on board. When the powers that be are finished doing whatever it is they’re there to do, we’ll have a tug tow you to N-eight.”

Kat could feel her heart rate accelerating as the captain turned around in his seat to look at her. “Kat, it looks like your people are taking extraordinary precautions for you. We never park at the South Satellite on domestic flights.”

He guided the DC-10 through a left turn off the runway as Kat sat in stunned silence behind him, thinking as fast as she could. There were police and unmarked cars at the north gate. Suddenly they change us to the south terminal. Why?

Jordan’s words came back to her: “Whoever these people are, they’ll find a way to divert, contain, distract, or otherwise neutralize whomever Jake sends. We do not know who is trustworthy.”

The DC-10 was on the taxiway moving northbound, with less than a quarter mile separating them from the South Satellite terminal.

Kat leaned over Holt’s right shoulder. “Captain, please listen to me. I believe my people and I are being set up. I saw the police cars at the north gate. This diversion has to mean the people we don’t want to meet are waiting at the south.”

He turned. “No problem. We’ll just taxi to the north gate and ignore them.”

“No!” Kat said. “That… that could put everyone aboard in jeopardy. No. Stop just ahead here, then go toward the south gate.”

“What are you planning?” he asked.

“We’re… going out your right rear door on the escape slide.”

The captain thought for a minute and nodded. “Okay. I’ll stop where that maneuver can’t be seen from the terminal, then have Judy pull the pins after you’re off. We’ll just let the slide blow off, but I’m going to need your corroboration within a week, because my company’s going to want to fire me for throwing a slide out.”

“I will. I promise.”

“What do we tell them at the gate?” Holt asked.

“That you have no idea what they’re talking about. You saw nothing. Buy me some time. One of those groups will not be legitimate FBI agents. If you say you’re going to check their names with FBI headquarters and they leave, you’ll know.”

“You got it. Go. Call me on the interphone before you open the door.”

Kat patted his shoulder and thanked him as she turned and left the cockpit. She tried not to look panicked as she collected the others. Steve grabbed her suitcase from the overhead compartment without being asked and hurried after her toward the back of the DC-10.

The aircraft was moving too slowly, and the ground controller had noticed. “Seven-thirty-two, Seattle Ground. You have a problem, Sir?”

“Negative, Ground. Just a passenger out of his seat too soon. We need to hold here until we coax him back in.”

Kat had briefed Judy on the way to the rear of the aircraft as they tried to avoid the startled looks of the other passengers. Judy pulled a curtain separating the last row from the entryway and placed her hand on the door lever as Kat phoned the cockpit.

“Captain? We’re ready,” Kat reported.

“Okay,” Holt told her on the interphone. “We’re depressurized and stopped. Do it. Be careful going down that slide, and Godspeed.”

Kat breathed a thank-you as she hung up, and Judy opened the door, letting the large emergency escape slide fall from its housing and start inflating.

“Stand by!” Judy said. “When I give the word, jump and sit, and run when you hit the bottom.”

“Jump, then sit?” Dallas asked. “Are you sure that’s the right sequence?”

Judy nodded. “We do it all the time.”

Dallas looked genuinely startled. “Passengers leave like this all the time?”

Judy smiled and shook her head. “Only in training. Now GO!”

Steve went first, followed by Graham and Dan, who was helped to the edge and guided by Judy. Robert followed, but Dallas stood to one side of the open door virtually immobile, her eyes following the others.

“DAMN, that’s a long way down!” Dallas said.

“We don’t have time to debate it, Dallas,” Kat told her.

“Honey, you guys go on, and I’ll just hide in the rest room till spring.”

“No.”

“I don’t want to go down that slide, Kat! Gravity and I don’t get along.”

“It’s simple,” Judy offered.

“Then you go in my place. A little dark makeup, you could pass for me. I could stay here and serve the drinks and pamper the pilots.”

“DALLAS!” Kat snapped, taking her by the shoulders. “NOW!” She half kicked Dallas out the door, listening to a war whoop as Dallas’s rear landed on the slide about a quarter of the way down. She slid off the bottom to the waiting arms of Steve and Robert as Kat turned to Judy. “He said to release it after we’re gone.”

“I will. Go. The bags come next. Good luck.”

Kat’s trip down the slide was fast. She stumbled at the bottom and righted herself, then turned around in time to see Steve’s backpack, Robert’s computer case, and her roll-on bag coming down behind her, followed by the large emergency slide fluttering away as Judy jettisoned it, waved, and closed the door.

“Okay, Kemosabe,” Dallas yelled in Kat’s ear, trying to be heard over the noise and jet blast of the engines as she brushed herself off. “What do we do now?”

Kat had seen the makeshift private aircraft facility at the south end of the field before. They had bailed out next to it, unobserved in the darkness.

“This way!” she said, running toward the trailer that doubled as an office, past two Learjets, a Cessna Citation, a King Air, and a Gulfstream, all of them parked on the small corporate ramp bordering the large Alaska Airlines maintenance complex.

With Robert running in step beside her, she glanced back, satisfied that all of them were keeping up. She slowed her own pace to keep everyone close.

“Hurry! Come on!”

Kat slowed to a walk as she climbed the steps to avoid bursting through the door of the office, where two men were working on a computer behind the counter.

Both of them jumped from their chairs. “Hi! We… didn’t miss an arrival out there, did we?” one of them asked.

Kat smiled and shook her head. “No, we’re from the Gulfstream. You fellows have a way to get us to the terminal?”

“Sure,” the older man said. “Right out back. Come on.”

Robert was giving her a quizzical look as they all followed the man through the doors to a van with the facility’s name printed in bold letters on its side.

“What are you doing, Kat?” he half whispered. “I thought we were trying to avoid the terminal.” She put a finger to her lips and motioned him inside the van, bringing up the rear and closing the door.

The driver dropped them off inside the airport’s parking structure adjacent to the terminal, and Kat handed him a twenty-dollar bill as they got out.

“Hey, not necessary!” he told her.

She leaned over and lowered her voice. “No, but it’s both a thank-you and silence money. You didn’t see us, and neither did your coworker.”

He smiled and put the van in gear. “You got it, Ma’am, and Jerry’s going off duty as soon as I get back.”

With Steve and Dallas bringing up the rear, Kat quickly guided the little group to the northern-most parking elevator. They rode it down to the first floor, and she briefed them urgently before the door slid open.

“Okay. Walk to the right, all the way to the end of that driveway where it rejoins the main drive. Wait there and be ready to jump in when I get there.”

“What are you doing? Renting a car?” Robert asked.

“Sort of,” she said, smiling. “We broke up a ring of car thieves doing exactly what I’m about to do. So don’t ask, and don’t hesitate when I reach you.”

Kat found the appropriate part of the rental car return drive, positioning herself well away from where the other rental car company employees were standing. There would only be minutes left before the men waiting for them at the South Satellite realized they’d been outfoxed. With Jake’s team converging as well, they had one chance to escape before even the airport exits might be closed.

A subcompact car entered the car-return area, and she let it pass, along with a midsize car behind it. A minivan turned in with a couple and three kids, and Kat stepped forward, checking a clipboard she’d taken from an unattended counter.

“Hi! And you folks would be the…”

“Rogers,” the man volunteered.

She looked at the clipboard and smiled. “Yeah. The Rogers clan. You guys are the last customers I’ve got today before I can go home. Okay! We’ve got a new program for families, to get you into the terminal with less stress by getting you on this north elevator. You have your contract?”

The man nodded as he put the minivan in park and unstrapped his seat belt.

Robert squinted to see who was inside the dark-green minivan that slowed to a halt beside them. The door swung open, revealing Kat frantically motioning them inside. In five minutes they were speeding onto the northbound lanes of Interstate 5.

Dallas Nielson leaned forward from the middle of the bench seat in the second row and shook her head. “Honey,” she said to Kat, “I’ve been on some scary adventures in my time, but that slide ride takes the cake. In fact, I could’ve sworn someone shoved me out the door back there.”

“No!” Kat said, feigning shock. “Really?”

“Yeah, really. I was thinking of complaining to the FBI, but what the heck.”

Kat grimaced. “Probably just some pushy teenager.”

“Hey!” Steve said from directly behind her.

Dallas patted Steve on the right knee as she craned her neck to look at Kat. “All seriousness aside, Kat,” Dallas said.

Kat glanced at Dallas. “What?”

“Sorry. Old radio term we’d throw out when we got bored.”

“You were a DJ?”

“Broadcast engineer, actually. In New York. But I DJ’d, too. But then I won six million in the lottery and retired.”

“The lottery. Really?” Kat asked.

“Yep. Really. But now I have a question for you, Jane Bond.”

“And that would be?” Kat asked, shaking her head.

“Having survived a major plane crash,” Dallas began, ticking off the points on the fingers of her left hand, “watched Graham’s wife fall to her death and my friend Britta being blown to bits, been rescued under fire in a helicopter flown by someone who didn’t know how to fly one, escaped from a commie country in a stolen business jet with a criminal for a pilot, fled from a team of FBI agents who weren’t, and sneaked onto a flight that threw us off in the middle of the night somewhere short of the gate in Seattle, could I please ask when the hell this ride is going to be over? I mean, enough is enough, okay?”

“Did I forget to mention,” Kat said, chuckling and holding the palm of her right hand out parallel to the floor, “that you have to be this tall to go on this ride?”

“So that’s the problem!” Dallas snorted.

“I think what Dallas is trying to say,” Robert began, but Dallas turned and glared at him in mock indignation. “Hey, my man! Dallas can say what Dallas was going to say, okay?”

“Yup. Sorry,” Robert replied.

“I should think so!” Dallas sat for a few seconds, then turned back to Robert. “What was I going to say?”

The comic relief broke them all up, all except Graham, who sat silently, staring out the window.

“Oh, yeah. I remember,” Dallas went on. “You appear to be heading someplace, Kat. Would you please tell us where?”

“A cash machine first, then an all-night grocery store,” Kat said.

Dallas looked at Robert and nodded with an exaggerated thumbs-up sign as if affirming a great new idea. “Right. Then what do we do? Buy a quart of milk?”

“In part, yes. We’re going to buy enough groceries for a week. Food, milk, coffee, paper products, personal items. Everything. Then we go to the upper end of a fifty-mile-long inaccessible lake on the other side of the Cascade Mountains where there are virtually no telephones, no traffic, and no assassins, and we hole up there while I try to figure out exactly whom we can trust, and who, on the other hand, is trying to kill us… not to mention shoot down airliners.”

Kat turned to the others. “I… can’t force you to go, but Graham, Steve, Dallas — you’re all in grave danger if you try to go home or call anyone.”

Steve shrugged his shoulders. “My mom will already have freaked.”

Dallas nodded, but Graham Tash spoke for the first time in hours. “I’m… in no hurry, Kat.”

“And Dan?” Kat continued.

“Whatever you think best,” he said firmly. “I’m single.”

Dallas raised her hand. “’Scuse me. One amenities question, please. Are we talking tents, sleeping bags, a Motel Six, or is there, perhaps, a four-star resort nearby?”

“My mother’s brother owns a cabin there,” Kat replied. “He’s never there this time of year, and I have access.”

“Kat,” Robert said. “Are you saying no phones, no sheriff, and no escape?”

Kat nodded. “Except for park rangers. It’s a National Recreation Area.”

“Are you sure we want to be that isolated?”

She negotiated a turn onto the freeway and looked over at him with a sigh. “Robert, I’m making this up as I go along, but the only person in D.C. I can trust my life to told me to find a hole and pull it in after us for a few days while he tries to sort out what’s going on. The best hiding place I know of is Stehekin, Washington.”

“Somehow,” Dallas said, “I get the impression you know this area.”

Kat nodded. “I love the Pacific Northwest, and the Seattle-Tacoma area. I’ve come here many times over the years.”

There was a small, insistent beeping from Kat’s purse, and she fumbled with her right hand to extract the pager while keeping her eyes on the road. She handed it to Robert, motioning for him to read the message out loud.

“It says, ‘Where are you? What happened in Seattle? By the way — NTSB pathology confirms destroyed/burned retina one SeaAir pilot.’”

“Good grief!” Kat muttered.

“What does that mean?” Dallas asked from the back.

Kat turned her head slightly. “It means that the same type of attack that hit you, Dan, and killed your captain, hit at least one of the pilots in the SeaAir crash near Cuba. And that confirms we’re dealing with serial terrorism.”

“Kat,” Robert continued, “he’s also ordering you to call ASAP.”

She shook her head. “That I cannot do.”