“Help me out here. What am I looking for?” she asked Naya.
Naya flipped to the schedule of assets purchased. She leaned over Sasha’s shoulder and pointed at a series of strikeouts.
“See these five planes? They were originally part of the deal, but in this version all five were removed.”
Connelly came and stood behind her. He craned his neck to see over her shoulder. Sasha knew she should tell him not to try to see the documents, but she ignored him.
“Okay. Do we know why?”
Naya flipped the pages forward. “There’s a reviewer comment here that they were taking out five planes that didn’t conform to Boeing’s standards.”
Sasha looked up at her. “You think they were modified with the RAGS link?”
Naya said, “I know one of them was.” She flipped back to the schedule. “Look at the tail number on the third one.”
The tail number was a plane’s aircraft registration number. It functioned like a car’s license plate, and every civil aircraft has one. And the tail number for the third deleted plane did look familiar.
“You’re sure that’s Flight 1667?”
Naya nodded. “I’m sure. But, we can check.”
Connelly grabbed the laptop and opened the browser to the Federal Aviation Administration’s N-number/tail number lookup. All planes registered in the U.S. had a tail number that began with the letter
N
. And the FAA was kind enough to make public a database that cross-referenced planes with their N-numbers.
“Give me the number.”
“N-247AA.”
Connelly typed it in. They waited. Sasha realized she wasn’t breathing. She went ahead and breathed.
“Boeing 747, registered owner, Hemisphere Air Lines, Inc., out of service as of two days ago.” He looked up.
“Go to planespotters,” Sasha said.
Several websites existed that would spit out a list of flight numbers that a given plane had flown under, along with cities of origination and destination. All they needed was the tail number.
Connelly went to the site and typed in N-247AA. A list of flights, in reverse chronological order by date, appeared. N-247AA’s last recorded flight was Flight 1667 from DCA to DFW, the night of the crash.
“How did you know about this website?” Connelly asked.
“There are several of them. Some frequent travelers like to see where their planes have been, how often they’ve been taken out of service, and for how long,” Sasha said.
She had once deposed a plaintiff who’d been on a Hemisphere Air flight when a bird had gotten sucked into the engine. The pilot had executed a textbook emergency landing; no passengers were injured. Undeterred, the plaintiff claimed the incident had left him shaken and emotionally scarred. He maintained, however, he had no choice but to continue to fly because his job entailed heavy travel.
In response to a document request, his lawyer had provided the guy’s meticulous logs of his flights—complete with printouts from the planespotters website showing the flight histories of all the planes he’d flown on after the incident. Sasha had noted that almost all of the guy’s flights were short hauls on regional puddle jumpers.
She’d spent most of his deposition asking him questions about why he frequently flew from Pittsburgh to places like Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Baltimore if he was so terrified of flying. California or Texas, sure. But Pittsburgh to Wheeling, West Virginia, was an hour-long drive tops. She’d waved those logs around in front of him like she was a matador.
He ended up settling in exchange for two free round-trip tickets, completely putting the lie to his emotional distress claim.
Connelly tensed his jaw. “These websites could aid terrorists. Just like those real-time flight tracker websites. Why don’t people think before they make this information accessible?”
Sasha raised an eyebrow. It was news to her that terrorists had time machines. “Connelly, the information is
historical
. You know what, never mind. Go back to the FAA site, okay? Naya read him the other four tail numbers.”
She didn’t have time to argue with him about access to information or indulge his Patriot Act-induced delusions.
Naya read them off and Connelly typed them into the search box, one by one. All registered to Hemisphere Air. All still in service.
Sasha called Metz and got his voicemail. She hung up without leaving a message and contemplated her options.
Four planes currently in service almost certainly had been outfitted with the RAGS link. Four vulnerable planes. Hundreds, if not thousands, of passengers.
With Metz’s warning not to call Vivian in her ears, she left Naya and Connelly in the conference room to map out the itineraries of the three compromised planes. As an afterthought, she handed off Metz’s flight information and asked them to check it out.
She plunged down the hall to the stairwell and raced to her office. She passed Flora, who was putting on her coat.
“Oh, Sasha, I thought you had left for the day. Um, do you still need me?” Flora stopped with one arm in her coat sleeve; the other sleeve flapped around, red and manic.
“No,” Sasha called over her shoulder. “I have an important call to make. Good night, Flora.”
She raced into her office and pulled the door shut.
Flora shrugged and slipped her other arm into her coat, sending the pile of legal journals flying off the ledge behind her.
“Shoot!”
She bent to gather them up. As she squared them into a stack, she saw the slim UPS envelope alone on the ledge. She closed her eyes for a minute. Opened them. The package was still there.
Flora looked at the phone. Sasha’s line was already lit up; she was on her important call. She could wait a few minutes, see if Sasha hung up. She checked her watch. But, if she left now, she could catch an earlier bus, change into jeans, and meet her girlfriends for happy hour.
She peeked at the phone again. Still lit up. She chewed her lip for a minute, unsure. Then she put the envelope on top of the neat stack of journals so Lettie would see it first thing in the morning and turned off the desk lamp.
Having made up her mind, she hurried past Sasha’s closed door on her way to the elevator.
Inside, Sasha stared at the phone on her desk, shocked into silence and wishing she’d listened to Metz.
Vivian Coulter’s anger was booming through the phone’s speaker.
“Do I make myself clear? We are not going to ground four perfectly safe planes because you have some wild theory that they might have been outfitted with the RAGS link. We are working to determine which planes actually have the RAGS links installed, of course, but it’s going to take some time. Right now, we have no reason—
none
—to believe that any of our planes pose a danger of any kind to the flying public. And even if these four planes do have RAGS on board, there is no basis for thinking someone would or could attempt to access the system. The cause of Monday night’s crash remains unknown. I will
not
jeopardize the economic health of this company and the interests of our shareholders unless and until someone in the federal government gives me a reason why I should. And, by the way, I note no one from Homeland Security or the NTSB has suggested any such thing.”
Either the tirade was over or Viv was taking a breath.
Sasha took the opening, “I understand your position, but the government appears to have no record of Hemisphere Air reporting that the RAGS link was on Flight 1667.”
No response. A few seconds later, a dial tone. Apparently, her client had hung up on her once her venom had run dry.
There was a light tap on the door, and then Naya cracked it open. Connelly loomed behind her in the hallway.
“How’d it go?”
“Not well.”
“Viv didn’t agree to ground the planes?”
“In a word, no. And then she hung up on me.”
“Well, this is gonna make it worse: Metz’s red eye on Friday is on the list. It’s one of the four.”
Sasha closed her eyelids and pressed her fingers hard against her tired eyes for a minute. Then she stood, picked up her purse, and put on her jacket. “Let’s go.”
“Food?” Connelly asked, hopeful.
“We’ll get food later. We’re going to see Mickey Collins.”
They took the elevator down in silence and crossed the empty lobby in silence. Their shoes on the gleaming floor and the hum of the building’s mechanical systems were the only sounds. The security guard gave them a bored half-wave and went back to his Sudoku puzzle.
After the revolving door spit them out on the sidewalk, Naya finally spoke.
“Do you have a plan?”
Sasha pulled her wool suit jacket close to keep out the wind and checked the street for traffic.
“Nope.”
Chapter 28
Hoping the element of surprise would work in the absence of an actual plan, they breezed past the front desk in the Frick Building like they belonged there and made a beeline for the elevator. Connelly jabbed the up button and they hustled into the waiting elevator before anyone could stop them.
When they reached Mickey’s office suite, the receptionist was gone for the day. Her station was empty and her computer monitor dark.
Naya grabbed the arm of a paper-laden associate passing through, and he pointed them toward Mickey’s office.
They marched down the uninspired hallway. Mickey might have spent his cut of his verdicts on an expensive car—and maybe alimony for Judge Dolan, considering an Article III judge, appointed by the President of the United States, earned less per year than a first-year associate at Prescott & Talbott (before associate bonus)—but he definitely did not spend it on interior decorating. Unless he was going for a drab motif. Tan carpet that was worn and dull, blank walls, save for some scuff marks, and fluorescent lighting that made everyone—even Naya—look a little green.
It was all part of the game. Just as Prescott & Talbott’s clients expected their attorneys’ offices to be well appointed and refined, Mickey’s clients expected his office to be a barebones, threadbare operation. He was their champion, a fighter for the little guy. The fact that he belonged to Oakmont Country Club and sent his kids to Shadyside Academy was his dirty little secret.
The door to his office was ajar, so they sailed right in.
Mickey was packing up to leave for the day. When he saw Sasha, he put down his battered leather satchel and gave her a big smile that faded into a look of concern as he remembered the news about Noah.
He came around the front of his walnut desk and grabbed both her arms, more than a handshake, but not quite a hug. “Sasha, I’m so sorry about Noah.”
Then he focused on her bruised face. Flicked his eyes to Connelly’s injuries. “What happened to you?”
“Mickey, we need to talk.”
He gestured for them to have a seat on the worn green couch along the wall. Naya and Sasha sat, while Connelly shut the door and Mickey dragged over an extra chair from in front of his desk.
He ran a hand through his slightly too long, wavy silver hair. The criminal defense attorneys tended to wear ponytails in an effort to appeal to their clientele. The big firm lawyers were all clean shaven with haircuts that conformed to military regulations to appeal to theirs. The plaintiffs’ bar straddled the middle. Some had beards. Others, like Mickey, grew their hair until it touched their collars.