Fly by Night

CHAPTER TWENTY

Thunderstorms, for all their apparent chaos, are quite predictable in design. In the downpour stage, air and water rush down from a central column, hit the earth, and flow uniformly outward in a shape resembling an inverted mushroom. At the base are horizontal wind flows known as microbursts, sudden gusts that can reach hurricane force. Davis knew all about the phenomenon because it had caused any number of spectacular aviation disasters. A gust of wind, though, irrespective of severity, is a relative event. One that comes from behind your airplane causes a loss of airspeed, never a good thing when close to the ground. The gust that struck at that moment, fortunately, was quite the opposite.

Davis watched the airspeed indicator jump from ninety knots to a hundred and fifty in a matter of seconds. This increase in airflow gave the airplane all the aerodynamic purchase it needed, and it seemed to levitate as if riding on some invisible elevator. Davis felt a mild impact as they clipped something, and then the world disappeared in a gray curtain of swirling cloud and rain.

Boudreau reverted to the instruments, flying blind, and Davis did the same. He paid particular attention to the altimeter. Two hundred feet above the ground and steady. Then a torturously slow climb. Three minutes later they had a thousand feet between their wheels and the jungle.

An ashen Boudreau looked over, and said, “Landing gear up.”

Davis reached for the gear handle, but paused.

“Did it sound to you like we hit something?”

“Yeah,” Boudreau said, “I heard it.”

“There might be a tree branch hanging from one of the gear assemblies. If we retract it now we might damage something, maybe break a hydraulic line.”

Boudreau pointed to the fuel gauge. “Yeah. But if we don’t lift it, then we leave all that drag hanging. She’ll run out of gas before the next station.” He grinned and repeated, “Landing gear up.”

The captain was right. Davis pulled up the landing gear handle and held his breath. Everything seemed to work.

“There, see?” Boudreau said. “They don’t build ’em like this anymore.”

Davis said nothing.

The flight to Kampala, Uganda, took two hours. Boudreau parked the airplane at a fixed base operator, or FBO, that was already hosting a handful of private jets. A guy holding two orange batons directed them to a parking spot and shoved chocks under their wheels, and within seconds of shutting down a fuel truck pulled up.

Once everything had been secured, Boudreau threw down the boarding stairs, had a short conversation with the fueler, then motioned for Davis to join him. They’d flown the last hop at eight thousand feet — down in the dirt by modern standards — yet even at that altitude the air in the cargo bay had gotten cooler and dryer. So when Davis stepped out onto the ramp, the humidity wrapped around him like a wet blanket.

“Time for a BDA,” Boudreau said.

BDA was Air Force for “battle damage assessment.” In the fighter world it was an inspection you performed after you departed a combat zone. You’d join up close and look over your wingman’s airplane for damage. But in a big airplane you didn’t have a wingman, so the BDA had to wait until you landed.

Boudreau pointed up, and Davis saw two bullet holes high on the fuselage. “I don’t think we’ll be anywhere near the record,” the skipper said in mock disappointment.

“What’s the record?” Davis asked.

“Ninety-one.”

“Ninety-one bullet holes?”

“Well, not all of ’em was from bullets. There was some shrapnel damage too, a rocket propelled grenade, we think.”

Davis thought, What the hell am I doing here? He said, “Terrific.”

After a full circle around the airplane, Boudreau announced, “Seventeen.”

“Not even close. Should we go back and try again?”

Boudreau grinned.

As he looked over the airplane, Davis was struck by what wasn’t going to happen. There would be no corporate incident report or diplomatic complaint. No police investigation or insurance claim. Not even a safety inquiry. He and Boudreau would top off with fuel, then fly back to Khartoum. Tonight a mechanic would put some aluminum speed tape over the bullet holes, and tomorrow the airplane would be back in service.

Boudreau leaned into the right main landing gear well. He came out with a handful of vines that had been tangled around the strut. “There’s a service door missing,” he said. “Ripped right off the damned hinges.”

“So we clipped a tree after all,” Davis said.

“Yeah, but the damage is cosmetic. She’ll fly. Come on, let’s go get some lunch.”

Boudreau led the way to an administration building, a relatively new structure that was nicely air-conditioned. Inside, they found free coffee and pastries. Put eight hundred gallons of 100-octane fuel on a company credit card, and the crew got all the sugar and caffeine they could stand. Everybody was happy.

They sat in a lounge that was as comfortable as any Davis had seen in the States, big leather lounge chairs parked in front of a wide-screen TV that was presently showing a cricket match. He was beginning to see why Boudreau had chosen the place. When the skipper excused himself to the head, Davis figured he’d have a few private minutes.

He pulled out his phone, confirmed he had decent reception, and made a call.

Larry Green answered right away, and after a few pleasantries dove into his briefing.

“I got a few things on those tail numbers you asked about, Jammer.”

“I’m listening.”

“X85BG was purchased by FBN three months ago. It was built in 1952 and had at least ten owners over the years.”

Davis thought, It’s way older than I am. He said, “Who was the most recent?”

“FBN bought it from long-term storage, one of the boneyards out in California.”

Davis remembered Boudreau telling him that he’d picked up an airplane in Mojave. “But who bothers to put an airplane that old in storage?” he pondered aloud. “It should have gone straight to the scrap heap — couldn’t possibly have had any value.”

“Actually, this one might have. It was a special airplane, one of a kind. The previous owner was a flight test company called Flightspan. They’re based in Utah, do a lot of contract work for the government and big aerospace contractors.”

“Doing what?”

“Flight testing software. This airplane was a flying testbed. It had two complete sets of flight controls — the normal one, and a secondary set that was used to check out developmental flight software and electronic suites. It could be programmed to simulate any kind of airplane. Manufacturers would rent it out, install their software, and iron out kinks in the flight control code before risking it in an expensive new airplane.”

“So FBN bought a testbed airplane?”

“Not quite. This thing had been in the boneyard for a long time, over ten years. It’s old school, as things like that go. Most of the fancy electronics had been removed.”

Davis decided to chew on that for a while. He asked, “What about the accident airplane, N2012L? Do you have anything on that one yet?”

“It was purchased by FBN last May from a broker in Ecuador. Nothing remarkable in its history. The last operator was a cargo outfit in Antigua. FBN only paid twenty thousand U.S. for it.”

“I spent more on my last car.”

“Me too,” Green said.

“So it was just your basic airplane.”

“As far as I can tell. What do you make of it?”

Davis thought long and hard. “I don’t know, but I’ll tell you why I asked about these tail numbers. The accident airplane, N2012L–I found it.”

“How the heck did you manage that?”

“Easy. It was sitting on the ramp outside FBN Aviation. The registration had been altered to X85BG, including the tail number — you could see where it had been painted over on both sides.”

Davis heard a whistle from across the ocean. Green said, “So if that’s the real N2012L, then where’s X85BG? You think maybe that testbed airframe is the one in the drink?”

“I have no idea. I don’t know if any airplane went down. But N2012L was right there in front of me. I’m sure of it.”

“But this doesn’t compute,” Green said. “Why go to all the trouble?”

“The usual reasons don’t fit, do they? It’s not an insurance scam, because neither airplane is worth anything. Same with a resale angle. If you had an airframe that was due for an expensive maintenance check, and another that wasn’t, you might switch them out before a sale. But here there’s no incentive, no value in either airframe.”

Davis asked, “What about flight plans? Did you track those down?” He heard papers shuffling over the phone.

Green replied, “N2012L was pretty active before the crash, flew all over Africa and the Middle East. One trip to Bulgaria. Pretty much the same routes all their equipment flies.”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Davis surmised.

“Nope. Nothing at all.”

Boudreau came back from the latrine with things on his mind.

“So you really think Achmed started that whole thing?” he asked.

“I’m sure of it,” Davis said. “I saw him with a rifle. He was shooting from a position near the hut.”

“I guess it wouldn’t have been hard to get a gun. Hell, they were everywhere.”

“He was acting pretty strange on the flight downrange this morning.”

Boudreau shook his head. “But I just don’t get it. I’ve flown with him a bunch of times. The kid never says much, but I’d never have figured him for the violent type.”

“There was one thing different about today’s mission.”

“You?”

Davis nodded. “I spent some time in the military as a ground-pounder, long enough to recognize when I’m being used for target practice.”

“You think you were set up?”

“I can’t see it any other way.”

“Schmitt?”

Davis shook his head doubtfully. “He and I have a history, but not the kind of thing you’d kill a guy over. I think I’m hitting a nerve somewhere else.”

“Your investigation?” Boudreau asked.

“That’d be my guess.”

Davis reached for a pastry from a cardboard platter. He had to pull hard, the sugary drizzle having glued it in place. He took a bite and the sugar hit right away.

Davis said, “But we did have one thing on our side today when Achmed was shooting at us.”

“What’s that?”

“He’s no better an assassin than he is a pilot.”

Larry Green had never been to the White House. To be precise, he wasn’t there now, but the West Wing annex was close enough that he’d consider the square filled.

He was escorted to Darlene Graham’s office by a Marine, a square-jawed young man who addressed him as “General,” a title he hadn’t heard much since retiring from the Air Force. Graham was at her desk, and rose to meet him. Her handshake was warm, but Green thought she looked stressed.

“Good morning, Larry.”

“Hello, Darlene.”

Green looked around the room appreciatively. It wasn’t overdone in a wasteful way, but definitely first class. Freshly painted walls, a few high-end knickknacks and paintings. Everything was clean and well lit, but there wasn’t much to put Graham’s signature on the room. It had an air of anonymity — which, if you were chief of the nation’s combined intelligence services, was probably the way to go.

She said, “I just got back from giving the president his daily intelligence briefing. It was hell.”

“What’s up?”

“This Arab League conference in Cairo next Tuesday has got everyone in a tizzy. The Arab world has been in a state of flux since all the uprisings, but now that things have settled there’s a lot of optimism. We see this as a rare opportunity, a chance to lay a long-term foundation for peace in the region. Israel has been dropping hints that they might ease up on the West Bank settlements, and maybe even talk about Jerusalem. Egypt has long been the heart of the Arab world, and they’re trying to convince the more hard-line players to fall in step. The potential exists for a real agreement. That being the case, the president is pushing hard. He wants us to keep track of everything that’s going on in the area.” Graham went to her desk. “Which leads us to Davis — have you heard from him?”

“He called this morning. No luck getting into that hangar yet, but he did run across some documents you might find interesting.” Green explained about the inbound shipments of old drone hardware. Graham listened intently, particularly when he explained the theory that it was done to disguise Blackstar parts going out.

“And this took place two months ago?” she asked.

“Roughly. It’s a little circumstantial, but Khoury was definitely up to something.”

“So we might be too late.”

“Possibly.”

“Our most recent surveillance shows that there’s still a lot of activity around the hangar,” Graham argued. “If Blackstar is long gone, then what are they working on?”

“Jammer and I were wondering the same thing. What about your source, the one who told you about Blackstar originally? Have you gotten any updates?”

That question hung in the air like an overfilled blimp before the DNI said, “No, we haven’t heard from our source in some time.”

She left it at that, and Green didn’t press.

The DNI sat behind her desk and began working her computer. “I have some of the information Davis was asking for,” she said. “First is the emergency frequency record. There’s one part you might find interesting.” She swiveled the computer’s monitor sideways so they could both see it. Graham dragged the cursor back and forth over a progress bar until the reference read 1923:50Z. She hit play. For thirty seconds there was nothing, then on Channel 16, the marine VHF emergency frequency:

“This is the Ocean Venture transmitting on emergency frequency. Is there any craft in distress? Our lookout reports seeing a large splash and explosion in the vicinity of Alam Rocks.”

A pause, then thirty seconds later: “This is Ocean Venture, is there any craft in need of assistance?”

Again, silence.

Graham stopped the recording. “That’s all we could find,” she said. “No more mention of the incident. I checked on the Ocean Venture. She’s at sea right now, supposed to make port in Stockholm in two days. We could interview the crew, I suppose, maybe check the ship’s log when they arrive.”

Green cocked his head. “I don’t know if that’s going to tell us much. The most relevant part is right there — her crew saw something hit the water.” He thought back to the radar data he’d seen yesterday. “The time is right,” he said. “But like I told you, I watched that radar tape over and over. The airplane I saw did not go down. It went right back to Khartoum International and landed.”

Graham said, “When I heard this VHF data, I called the National Reconnaissance Office and had them dig up one more thing.” She switched to another file on her computer, and a sequence often photos came to the screen. She enlarged one. “As I’m sure you know, we have a considerable array of satellite assets covering this part of the world. These are composite images, radar and infrared, for the area in question right before the ship made that radio call.”

Green looked closely as the DNI stepped through the series. The images were virtually blank — cold, featureless ocean — except for one where there was a clear disturbance, a spray of white near the center.

“What’s that?” Green asked, pointing to the blob of white.

Graham pointed to the central five photos in sequence. “Nothing, nothing, splash, nothing, nothing.”

“So something did go into the water,” Green said.

“Something big,” Graham confirmed.

“But I still can’t get past those radar tapes. That airplane landed back in Khartoum shortly after this picture was taken.”

Graham shrugged. “Doesn’t make sense, does it?”

“I’ll need to tell Jammer about this right away.”

The DNI gave him a circumspect look. “Larry, listen. I appreciate all that Jammer is doing, but you both need to remember one thing — he is there to find Blackstar, or at the very least figure out where it went. This DC-3 crash is only a license for him to go poking around. Nothing more.”

Green shook his head. “You’ve got to understand him, Darlene. If I tell Jammer to blow off this crash, he’ll dig in his heels. Just how he is. I’ve always trusted his instincts in situations like this, and he hasn’t disappointed me yet.”

Graham didn’t reply, and in the ensuing silence Green began to ponder. There had been something nagging him, ever since he’d seen it on his own screen.

He said, “That radar stuff you gave me — do you think it was good data?”

“You mean as far as quality?”

Green nodded.

“Our best stuff is in the Middle East. If two ducks have a midair collision, we know about it.”

Green gestured to the computer, and said, “Do you have a copy of it here?”

“Larry, are you not listening? I told you to forget about this crash!”

Green said nothing, only stared at the DNI.

She sighed and began typing. Soon the radar sequence began playing out on the screen. On Green’s prompt, she advanced to a point midway in the flight. The airplane symbol turned circles over the Red Sea, and both watched closely when it reached the point in time when the radio call and satellite data indicated that something had hit the water. Nothing happened.

Green felt as if he was missing something. Watching Air Sahara 007 turn south and head for home, he realized what was different. Realized what wasn’t there.

“Go back,” Green said, “ten minutes.”

Larry Green had a lot of flying time under his belt, so he had a lot of experience with radar. The equipment could be temperamental, prone to spurious strobes and false returns. That was what he had initially thought he’d seen on this tape — a false echo. The second white square that had come and gone, like an intermittent shadow on a partly cloudy day. Green had figured it for a nuisance reflection or a software glitch. But as Graham ran the loop, he could see it was real, consistently in and out. Until, as now confirmed by the other data, the moment of impact. Afterward, on the way back to Khartoum, no more ghost. Which meant that the secondary reflection wasn’t a ghost at all.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.