Skyhook

THIRTY FOUR SATURDAY, DAY 6 ANCHORAGE, ALASKA 6:50 A.M.

Schroedinger had been trying fruitlessly to awaken Ben for at least fifteen minutes when the telephone rang.

“Dr. Cole?”

“Yes?”

“Sorry if I called too early, sir. This is Jim Lucavitch in security at Uniwave.”

Ben pulled himself upright on the bed, forcing his mind to accelerate to full consciousness.

“Yes, Jim.”

“You were by here last night trying to locate Mr. Jerrod, I understand, and I’ve been following up on that.”

“Good. Is he in this morning?”

“No, sir. Mr. Jerrod is out of the country. That’s all I’m at liberty to tell you.”

“Do you… have any idea when he’ll be back?”

“No, Dr. Cole, I don’t.”

“Well, it’s really urgent that I at least speak with him. Can we arrange that this morning? I can come in for security purposes.”

“No, sir, that won’t be possible.”

Ben felt himself pass the fully awake point, a slight warning buzzer going off in his head announcing the need for immediate caution. Something was very wrong with this response.

“Okay, Jim. Let me put this to you as clearly as I can without breaching any security rules or regulations. It is imperative that I speak personally on a secure line with Mr. Jerrod today, and it involves a matter of national security of the highest interest to Uniwave. Understood?”

“Dr. Cole, I understand, but I’m not a magician. I quite frankly have no idea how to reach Mr. Jerrod at the moment, and all I can say is that we’ll keep trying. If you need some emergency protection, we can come get you in fifteen minutes.”

“That’s not necessary. It’s not a protection matter. At least, not about protecting me.”

It was going to be futile to pressure the man further, Ben realized. He terminated the call and sat rubbing his eyes for a minute, working to bat down the hopefully fictional scenarios that could explain Dan Jerrod’s sudden disappearance.

Schroedinger was making it very clear that a formal charge of feline abuse was in the offing if his breakfast was not served within the next few minutes. Ben gave him a conciliatory head scratching before following the aggravated cat to the kitchen. He made coffee and reached out the front door to retrieve the Anchorage Times, opening it on the center island in the kitchen as he settled onto a stool to catch up with the world. He was into the third section before a small article about a recent plane crash caught his attention.

That’s a shame, Ben thought, feeling an uncharacteristic bridge of camaraderie to anyone alleging government overreaction. He reread the next-to-the-last paragraph, his mind latching onto the mention of a possible midair collision, as the subtitle had bannered.

Monday night. Where was this?

He searched out the part that mentioned the location, some sixty miles south of Valdez, and moved to his laptop to call up a detailed Alaska map program. He pinpointed the area and sat back, his thoughts accelerating.

Where were we? And when did this occur?

The article hadn’t mentioned the exact time of the crash, he discovered, but a quick check of his own test notes pinpointed the time of the Gulfstream’s harrowing dive to fifty feet, and its deadeye aim at the oil tanker miles ahead.

The tanker was coming out of Valdez. That would put him about here, which means we were about here.

Ben shook his head to expunge the unwanted conclusions. He had been there, after all. If they’d hit anything, including some lumbering warbird’s propeller, he would have heard it and probably felt it. Besides, the fact they were in the same area on the same evening was hardly evidence they’d come close to each other. There were probably dozens of airplanes out that night, and who knew how many might have been nearby?

Just a tantalizing coincidence, he told himself.

But, just in case, he decided to clip and save the article.

Mac MacAdams was in a grumpy mood from waking up over and over during the night, and his wife, Linda, knew the warning signs. The fact that her sleep had been all but sabotaged by his insomnia was best suppressed for the moment, she figured. Mac was a compassionate and caring husband, but she knew the energy it took for him to be reasonable when the storm warnings went up from lack of sleep. Something was troubling the general, and the general’s wife was smart enough to know how to quietly fix his breakfast, serve it with the morning paper, and judiciously withdraw.

He would, she knew, be contrite later, and that was always useful.

Mac knew very well what was bugging him, and it made him even more irritated that such a small, potentially useless suspicion was leaching away so much of his attention. So what if they might have covered up a small ding on the right winglet of the Gulfstream? No way could that be evidence of some midair collision.

But the issue wouldn’t leave him alone, and the toll it was taking on his concentration reached a new level when he opened the Anchorage Times and came across the same article Ben had read about the FAA’s alleged overreaction.

Goddammit! Mac raced through the article, fixating on the subtitle and the ending reference to the possibility of a midair. He put his coffee mug on the counter with a thud and launched himself toward the secure Air Force official phone in the living room of the large, comfortable base house.

“Yes, sir?” a captain at the command post answered.

Mac checked a small notebook for the name. “The test flight manager for Uniwave, Richard Wilcox. Get him on the phone, tell him someone from the command post will pick him up in a staff car in ten minutes. Send someone to do exactly that, get him on a secure line there and call me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sometime yesterday. Understood?”

“Yes, General. Immediately, sir.”

He replaced the receiver and began pacing in a predictable pattern around the living room. His oldest son, who had already graduated from Air Force pilot training, loved to kid him about his pacing, which always aided his thinking.

“Mom? Dad’s flying a holding pattern around the living room again,” Jerry would announce. “Standard right-hand turns, one-minute legs.”

Mac stopped and took a deep breath as he planned the conversation he was about to have, wondering if it would be more effective to face Wilcox down in person.

No. I can terrify him on the phone better, he concluded.

He’d had a few contacts with Dick Wilcox and none of them had been a confidence builder. Wilcox was a glib and slightly arrogant man Mac neither trusted nor liked, and the fact that he was a non-pilot running a flight test unit exacerbated the impression.

The secure line rang again in twenty minutes and Mac yanked it to his ear.

“General MacAdams.”

Judging by his voice, Mac figured, the civilian on the other end had been appropriately chastened by the summons and the quick trip to the command post.

“Ah, this is Dick Wilcox, General. I… is there an emergency?”

“You’re the one who’s going to answer that question, Mr. Wilcox.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I had you brought in to use a secure line for a reason. What I’m about to discuss with you is classified, but I also want to warn you very sternly that if the answers you give me are anything but the complete truth, losing your job will be just the start. Understood?”

“I don’t understand what you’re talking about, General. I can assure you that threats aren’t necessary to get me to tell you the truth.”

“Okay, here’s the problem.” Mac related the inconsistency in the paint on the Gulfstream’s right winglet and the roughness in the leading edge. “The question is this, Wilcox. Did your maintenance team, or anyone on it, conduct a repair of any sort to that aircraft following Monday’s test flight?”

“Repair?”

“I think you understand the word and the concept, and asking a one-word question like that is a stalling tactic.”

“No, it isn’t! Sir, you really have no cause to be this hostile with me.”

“Answer the question, Mr. Wilcox.”

“No, we didn’t repair anything! At least… I’m not aware of any damage, any repair, or anything in the maintenance log following Monday’s flight that would indicate such. Did you look in the log?”

“Yes, and as we both know, logs can lie.”

“Not on my shift, General. And I professionally resent that implication.”

“Mr. Wilcox, a repair of some sort exists in the history of that aircraft. I need the absolute truth of when and where and by whom it was made.”

“Today, sir? Well… of course today.” There was a tired sigh on the command-post side of the connection. “Okay. I’ll go over there and get right on it. We’ve owned that airplane for four years, but I may have to delve into the history before we acquired it.”

“Be careful and precise about this, Mr. Wilcox. There is always a possibility something was done without your knowledge, and there is also a possibility that this is a case of planned, plausible deniability. In either case, I will hold you personally responsible for the accuracy of the answer.”

“General, may I ask what this is all about?”

“No. Get to work. I’ll expect a call back by this afternoon.”

Mac replaced the receiver and resumed pacing for a few minutes, deciding instead to go for a walk. The day was overcast and cool, the temperature in the mid-thirties, and he pulled on his parka before telling Linda he would be out walking for a while. He didn’t have to announce he would be taking his cell phone. He was well known for being all but surgically attached to it.

Should have a damn dog to walk! he thought, regretting once again his long-standing promise to buy a dog for the kids when they had a place big enough to accommodate one. Over an entire career the right place had never happened, and the kids had grown up with cats, ferrets, canaries, assorted rodents, and the eternal hope of a dog at the next base.

Elmendorf Air Force Base was a beautiful place for walking and jogging. Not as beautiful as the tree-lined streets of McChord Air Force Base in Tacoma, Washington, or the old-world elegance of Langley Air Force Base just north of Norfolk, Virginia, but one of his favorites, nonetheless. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and started out in a brisk stride to the south, toward Fort Richardson, letting his thoughts circle around the true nature of the threat presented by the article he’d just read.

With a newspaper interested in the story and an aggrieved pilot and his daughter fighting for justice, the possibility of exposing the project by nosing their way to the existence of Monday’s test flight had grown another notch, and it was his responsibility to make sure the project stayed black and invisible. Certainly thousands of Alaskan residents and Air Force personnel knew there was a Gulfstream on the base, and many knew Uniwave had offices there. Uniwave even had a listing in the local phone book. But the cover story had always involved Uniwave’s development of electronic systems for the AWACS aircraft on the base, and there had been very few anxious moments in keeping the cork in the real bottle.

The radar tapes were taken care of, Mac reminded himself. No matter how enterprising any local reporters might be, there was nothing to find, other than a radar target with an innocuous call sign flying with an AWACS, which was wholly consistent with the cover story.

So why am I worried enough to beat up Wilcox? he asked himself as his cell phone began ringing.

Mac stopped and pulled the instrument from a pocket in his parka, barely punching the answer button in time.

“Mac? That you?”

“Yes. Who’s…”

“This is Lou Cassidy.”

The voice of the four-star general he reported to was a mild shock.

“Yes, Lou.”

“What the hell are you doing up there?”

“Excuse me?”

“Mac, we’ve got to maintain reasonably good relations with Uniwave’s people, and I’ve just been gnawed on by their chairman, with whom I play golf. His damn call was inappropriate as hell, but I don’t like what he was complaining about either.”

“What was he chewing on you for, General?”

“About you insulting his man up there a little while ago. I’m told you accused him of performing some illegal maintenance and then lying about it, and that you were pulling rank and being extremely abusive to the man.”

“Lou, that is completely inaccurate—”

“Look, dammit, it’s Saturday. Let’s make this brief. Make it go away, Mac. Uniwave’s chief assured me there was no damage to their airplane, no repairs, no cover-ups, and no grounds for upsetting their people.”

Mac took a deep breath, his mind racing over the elements of the situation.

“Lou, you’ve never questioned my judgment before based on a civilian contractor’s complaint.”

“Doesn’t sound like you used much judgment, Mac. Or am I missing something. Did you call the man?”

“Yes, I called him, and yes, I’m suspicious, and yes, I’m using the power of my position to hopefully force an honest answer, which I think is critical.”

“About what? Something you haven’t told me?”

“No… at least, right now it’s just a worry. Remember when I was there I told you we had a small glitch on the next-to-last flight test?” He detailed what had happened and his caution about any possible interaction with the lost Albatross.

“Well, hell, Mac. I’ve seen bug strikes that could mess up paint.”

“This wasn’t a bug strike, Lou, nor a bird strike. Something dented metal and was repaired. I think I’m being lied to, but I’ve got to be sure, and I’ll tell you, the fact that Wilcox would call his chief and the president of the “company—”

“Chairman.”

“Okay, the chairman. The fact that the chairman would risk calling you on a Saturday to get you to chew me out makes this even more suspicious.”

“Give it up, Mac. Nothing happened, except that we’re stupidly saying too much on a non-secure line. Fix it.”

“Sir…”

“Goddammit, Mac, fix it! I don’t want calls like that.”

“Yes, sir.”

He heard the Washington end of the call go silent and folded the phone, fighting a flash of anger and struggling to concentrate on any deeper meaning. Whichever way he looked at it, the implications were disturbing.

This has nothing to do with personal insult. I touched an exposed nerve, and this was the reaction.

He turned and looked back, startled to see his house less than a hundred yards behind him. An AWACS was lifting off from Runway 05 and clawing for altitude, the throaty roar of its engines trying unsuccessfully to distract him.

Mac resumed walking, calculating a path to the jogging trails around the base. He’d been given a direct order to “fix” the upset, which meant apologize and withdraw his demand for information. He could do that on the cell phone in a few minutes, but first there was something more important to figure out. The front-door approach had backfired. The information he needed would now have to be obtained clandestinely and fast, and that meant he needed unofficial help.

He closed his eyes for a few strides, then opened them and picked up his pace as he remembered the presence of a pay phone just ahead.

A pay phone would be a lot safer. He picked up the receiver and dialed a carefully memorized number.