Skyhook (31 page)

April looked at the twenty-five-foot-high iceberg soaring above their nose, words failing her for a few seconds.

“You okay?” Scott asked.

She turned to him, emotionally exhausted, and weakly flailed her right hand in the general direction of the iceberg. “Other than the fact that I think both the Air Force and you were just trying to kill me, yeah. Other than the fact that we’re sitting God knows where in the middle of an icy lake in which no sane pilot would have tried to land, and from which we won’t be able to take off. Yeah. Sure, Scott. I’m fine.”

“Good.” He grinned. “Quite a show, huh?”

She looked around again, out the windscreen and the windows on each side. The overcast above them was darkening.

“Scott, we’ll never get your airplane out of here, and if you haven’t noticed, it’s already nightfall.”

“Yeah.”

“We’re stuck! I mean, what do we do? It’s cold out there!”

He was nodding, a more appropriate look of seriousness crossing his face as he looked around. “Yeah, takeoff will be a challenge.”

“A challenge? How … ? Where … ?”

He was grinning again, and the expression fed her growing anger.

“Damn you! How are we going to get out of here? Huh? It’s nightfall, there are armed fighters trying to shoot us down, my family will think I’ve been killed, and …”

Scott reached out and tried to put a hand on her shoulder but she shrugged it off.

“Don’t touch me!”

He withdrew his hand. “Yes, ma’am.”

“I’m serious, McDermott. What do you propose we do to survive, let alone get back? I was out here trying to help my dad, not give him a heart attack when he hears I’m missing.”

“April, calm down.”

“Calm down? I’m very calm. Considering what you just put us through, I’m incredibly, awesomely calm.”

“Then listen to me, okay?”

“Do I have a frigging choice?”

“Not really.”

She folded her arms, trying to retain some professional control.

She was the client, after all. And for all his on-again, off-again help, she had apparently retained a maniac. “Go ahead.”

“I had a good reason for not complying with that fighter pilot’s orders, April.”

“I’d love to hear it,” she said, shaking her head.

“Whatever’s going on out here is very clearly a military project, and classified. Probably top secret classified.”

“So?”

“I’ve already told you I think whatever they’re doing is tied in to what happened to your dad. Remember?”

She nodded.

“Okay. If I had followed them back to Elmendorf like a good lit

tle pilot, not only would I be out of the ball game and unable to help you get a camera back on your old man’s plane, you’d be out of the game as well. Hell, they might even lock us both up for awhile.”

“You’re trying to tell me you almost got us killed to protect me?”

“And your mission, yes.”

She turned to him, nursing the scowl on her face. “You know, you’re so full of it, McDermott. You must think I’m a brainless bimbo.”

“No, I don’t think you’re brainless,” he said, almost under his breath.

“Oh. Just a bimbo, huh?”

“No, no, no! I misspoke. I don’t think you’re either a bimbo or brainless.”

“Right.”

“A real babe, perhaps,” he said with a smile.

April shot him a scathing look. “Enough of that!”

Both palms went in the air. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry.”

She leveled an index finger at him, sighting along it as if it were a gun. “No, the real reason you ran from those fighters up there is very simple. No one tells Scott McDermott what to do.

Right?”

“Now, wait…”

“Am I right?”

He sighed. “Okay, maybe a little of that is true, but, honestly—”

“Honestly? I’m not sure you know the meaning of that word.”

“Hey.

Let me finish, okay?”

She paused, staring him down, before responding. “Go ahead.”

“The truth is, I was very irritated at their trying to ensnare me illicitly when I’d been surgically careful to stay out of their restricted area, and … just as I said… I knew if they’d grounded us, you’d never get the wreck videotaped. Besides, tonight told us a lot.”

“Oh? Such as?”

“April, that aircraft that almost hit us was coming out of their restricted area.”

“Were the fighters chasing us by mistake, then? You’re saying they should have been chasing the jet?”

He was shaking his head as her eyes flared in sudden understanding and her arms came unfolded. “Oh my God! You’re saying that jet was coming out of the restricted area because it was part of whatever they’re doing!”

“Exactly. He came out at an angle, but that’s where he came^rom.”

April sat back heavily. “And the same restricted zone was created on Monday night when my folks were there, but then it didn’t extend to the surface.”

He was nodding more forcefully now. “Right. So now they rein stitute the same restricted area with one significant change. Now it extends all the way down to the surface. Why the change?”

“Because,” she finished the thought, “the change was an incorporation of a lesson they learned Monday night.”

“Yes! Dammit, yes! That’s what I was trying to tell you before, April. Something happened to them Monday night that prompted them to restrict the airspace all the way to the water tonight, and that something was your old man.”

“I hate that reference.”

“Okay, your dad.”

She nodded, her eyes on the rapidly darkening field of icebergs floating around them, her ears picking up the gentle sounds of the water lapping at the Widgeon’s hull. “So, do you think the same aircraft or something like it came streaking out of the blue Monday the same way and hit my dad’s Albatross?”

He shrugged. “I wish I knew. I do know they’re testing an aircraft at low altitude and high speed, as we saw. Maybe that same aircraft we saw traded paint with your dad.”

“But how, Scott? He lost a prop, and that’s most likely the cause of the right engine rotating off its mount and the prop blades chopping into the right wing.”

“Some of that damage could have been from a collision,” he said.

April was nibbling her lower lip in thought. “Yes… or maybe . .

. one small spot on the jet contacted one single prop blade, causing it to fail.”

“Did your father report another aircraft in the area?”

She was shaking her head no, then stopped. “Wait a minute. I seem to recall Dad mentioning some sort of rushing or whooshing noise just as the prop broke.”

The sound of Scott snapping his fingers caused her to jump slightly.

“That’s it, April! He heard a jet go by as one of the blades hit it and broke off!”

She thought for a second. “Could be.”

“No, that has to be it. Whoever’s doing these tests—Air Force, Navy, Army—they had to know they clipped a civilian aircraft.

April, you want to know what all this is about? Why they had the Coast Guard jump us and take the tape? Why the FAA seems to be on a vendetta against your old … your father? Because they’re covering up a midair collision.”

“Why would they try to cover it up?”

“Because they were doing a high-speed, low-altitude test run of some sort without making sure the restricted area was completely empty of all aircraft at all altitudes. They screwed up and failed to extend the prohibited area all the way to the surface.”

“You think the FAA’s in on this, too?”

“Oh, yeah. Doesn’t it make sense, April? If our government can prevent any photos of the wreckage, or any other examination of it, then they won’t have to admit to making a big mistake.”

“A government coverup is hard to pull off, Scott. That sounds like a conspiracy theory.”

“No, look. What’s the first thing frightened people try to do when they’ve made a huge mistake that no one’s caught as yet?

They cover it up. They try to pretend it didn’t happen. Make it go away. Sometimes repairing a problem and then pretending there never was any damage to begin with is part of the syndrome, but the tendency is always to pretend it didn’t exist.”

“This is so hard to believe,” she said.

“Yes, but trust me. We’re just as good at it in the military as the civilian world.”

She sat in thought for a few seconds. “If your theory is right, Scott, they won’t just stop with preventing me from taking pictures or video. They’ll come in there and raise the wreckage themselves and steal it.”

“You could be right.”

“Which they could be doing right now while we float around on some nameless lake,” she added, turning to him. “Seriously. How do we get out of here? And when?”

Scott was smiling and nodding as he looked around, then met her eyes. “We’re okay until morning. I’ve got sleeping bags in the back, emergency food, a small stove that’s carbon monoxide—safe to keep us warm, coffee, and even a satellite phone to let your parents know you’re okay.”

“We … don’t need to call for help?”

“

ast thing we need to do. That would bring the Navy and Air Force and whoever else is involved right down on our heads. No.

Just pray the cloud cover remains until morning.”

“And then what? We swim out?”

“No, we fly out.”

“Using what for a runway? There are enough icebergs floating around in this lake to sink an aircraft carrier!”

“We’ll take off between the icebergs.”

“Between the … How?”

He had a finger in the air. “Trust me.”

April sighed and shook her head. “I was truly afraid you were going to say that.”

rlie had grabbed for his cell phone as soon as the blue van disappeared around the corner. He punched in 911 with the words forming in his head to report an armed assailant in a utility van with no license plate. Port Angeles was fairly small, with limited roads in and out. The State Patrol could find him.

But an inner voice stayed the call, and he replaced the phone on the seat. If the warning was genuine, a manhunt for the messenger wasn’t the best solution.

Arlie drove home in a fog of agitation, each automatic glance at the now-shattered side mirror a slap in the face, a stark reminder that the bullet had been momentarily aimed at his heart.

The gun was real, the silencer was real, and the warning had to be considered real.

And if so, Arlie thought, April and Gracie were sailing in harm’s way. It could be a bluff, but he couldn’t take the chance. A growing sense of dread was seeping into the cracks of his resolve, propelled by the promise that heeding the man’s warning would bring his license back.

By the time he wheeled into his driveway, the urge to call both

April and Gracie was growing exponentially. Maybe he could keep from alarming Rachel. The man was right. He didn’t want her anywhere near as frightened as he was.

UNIWHUE HHNGRR,

MENDORF RFB, R

The Gulfstream had already been moved inside the large Uniwave project hangar and the doors motored closed behind it when General MacAdams arrived with three of the test crew from the AWACS. A small ready room full of folding chairs and a long, government-issued table was already filled with the Gulfstream pilots, Ben Cole, and Joe Davis, who had been rousted from his home by a phone call from the general on the return flight.

Mac ushered Master Sergeant Bill Jacobs, the test director, and the remote pilot into the room and closed the door behind them, waiting for them to pull up chairs before speaking.

“All right, gentlemen,” he began. “The contents of this briefing are top secret, just like every other aspect of this project. I know you’re all tired and want to go home, but I need this immediate postmortem for two reasons. First, this system is either operable or it isn’t, and as we all know, Uniwave hangs in the balance. Second, I want to know what the hell happened tonight.” He looked at Ben Cole, who was still a bit pasty. “You first, Dr. Cole.”

“Where do you want me to start, General?”

“Question one. Is Boomerang viable and ready for deployment, or not?”

“Yes, sir. It is viable and operable and ready to go. The repeat performance tonight of our unscheduled dive had virtually nothing to do with the Boomerang master code or system.”

“Very well, Dr. Cole. Why not?”

Ben took a deep breath and gulped a bit of his soft drink before

beginning. “In customizing the Gulfstream’s autopilot to work with our remote control Boomerang system, we apparently overlooked something very small, and very significant, General.”

Ben reached for a thick technical manual and flipped it open. “We failed to catch the existence of a particular added function of this autoflight system. It’s a smart little feature designed to save the lives of an aircrew who can’t get their oxygen masks working in time during a rapid depressurization emergency.”

“What do you mean, feature,” Ben?” Joe Davis asked.

“You might call it a mode,” too. It’s called an EDM, an Emergency Descent Module. It only activates within the autopilot computer’s logic circuits when it senses a rapid depressurization coupled with an indication that the pilots aren’t functioning. In other words, no control inputs for a certain number of seconds.

If that happens above twenty-seven thousand feet, the autopilot begins a steep, controlled descent and automatically levels itself off at whatever altitude is safe for that area as dictated by the GPS system. That gives the pilots and passengers time to regain consciousness if they’ve passed out. We didn’t realize the feature was in this autopilot, so when we were modifying the autopilot’s logic circuits, we didn’t take this out. Instead, we confused it.”

“How do you mean confused it’?” Mac asked.

“Well, because when we disconnected its prime altitude reference, we not only left the emergency descent system activated, we inadvertently, electronically led it to think that sea level was where it ought to descend to if it ever had to take over. Now, what we call a standard day’ at sea level is when the altimeter setting is two-ninenine-two, or twenty-nine point ninety-two inches of mercury. On Monday, the actual outside atmospheric pressure was a bit higher at sea level than two-nine-nine-two, so when it leveled the airplane at what it thought was precisely sea level, that was actually fifty feet above the water, thank God.”