The Ghost Pattern

…39

Despite the very late hour, none of them felt anything but eager anticipation. Alex had been so anxious to get there after receiving the call, that she didn’t even replenish her coffee. She’d just grabbed her jacket and left, waiting for Blake and Lou with her engine running, muttering “C’mon, c’mon,” every ten seconds.

Now the three of them stood in front of DigiWorld’s huge screens, squinting hard and trying to see what the operator was saying.

“We’ve brought you here,” the operator said, “because we’ve captured an image, a ghost as we call it. See? It’s right here.”

They stared some more, but were unable to discern anything.

“It's a faint haze, almost thin as clouds, but the haze shown on the image is displayed in a pattern compatible with that of a plane,” the operator clarified. She looked very young for her job, but seemed sure of herself.

“Where?” Alex asked.

The operator moved her mouse and circled a certain area on the huge screen that showed a stretch of forested land with small puddles of water, maybe a swamp.

“Right here, see? This is where we think we have what we call a ghost pattern.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that while it’s not really the discernible image of a plane, this haze has a few points in common with the plane’s shape. It’s almost as if we captured the ghost of the plane… that’s why we call these types of images ghost patterns. They look like wisps of thin cloud. Umm… they look just like how ghosts are shown in the movies, but match the pattern, the shape of our search subject, the 747–400.”

She touched a few keys and grabbed the image of a 747–400 from a library of images. Then she rotated it a little around the horizontal and vertical axes, positioning it at a certain angle, then overlapped it on top of the ghost pattern she was seeing.

The screen flickered green dots where the two images matched. There were twelve green dots on the screen, blinking.

Blake was holding his breath. “What does this mean?” he asked, pointing at the screen.

“It means we’ve found your plane, Mr. Bernard. It’s hidden under something, it’s shallow, not buried deep, yet still hidden somehow. Because the plane itself is hollow, not solid, the resonance scanner sees it as a ghost pattern rather than a solid, well-contoured shape. But it’s there.”

“Bring the satellite to focus on that area, as close and high-res as possible,” Alex said. “Give me maximum zoom; let’s see what we can learn about that place. Lou,” she turned toward him, “can you see if there are any drones in Japan we could use? Maybe that military base has some?”

“I’m on it, boss,” he replied, yanking his cell phone out of his pocket and taking a few steps away to make his call without disturbing anyone. “If I remember correctly, NanoLance had a testing program in place in Japan, a dual research project on fully automated UCAVs. I happen to know some people,” he added with a wink, “I’ll make some calls.”

“Where exactly is this place?” Alex asked.

The operator zoomed out, the ghost pattern turning into a tiny red dot on the map.

“It’s in Russia, 200 miles inland from the Sea of Japan coastline, near a small town called Mayak. It’s an abandoned airbase. Has an airstrip too.”

“Get me high-resolution angular shots,” Alex asked the operator. “Let’s see who and what’s down there. Prepare for a long night.”