Wild Storm (4 page)

CHAPTER 5

HERCULES, California

he handkerchief in Alida McRae’s left palm had started the day dry, clean, and crisply ironed, but it had since devolved into a rumpled, sweat-soaked wad.

Sitting in the now-familiar waiting room at the Hercules Police Department headquarters, she pulled the cloth slowly from her balled-up left hand until it was straight. Then she repacked it into her right hand and pulled with her left. She had been repeating this nervous gesture for several minutes as she waited for her fourth—no, fifth—appointment with the police chief.

White-haired and sixty-seven, Alida was always nicely dressed and perfectly coiffed. She was what people liked to call a “handsome woman,” a phrase she quietly detested. Men were handsome. Dogs were handsome. Women were either beautiful or not beautiful, and if she had reached an age where she could no longer be described by that word, she could accept that. She just didn’t want to be patronized when it came to her looks—or anything else for that matter.

And patronized was the perfect word to describe what she felt like every time she came to the Hercules Police Department.

It had now been twenty days. Twenty days since her life had been turned upside down and shaken. Twenty days of worrying and wondering what had happened. Twenty days of dread.

Twenty days ago, her husband, William “Bill” McRae, a sixty-eight-year-old retired father of three grown sons and grandfather of seven, had gone for his daily jog. A creature of almost comically well-ingrained habits, he left either shortly before or shortly after seven o’clock each morning. He followed the same five-mile course each day, a long loop that began and ended at their house and typically took him anywhere from forty-five to forty-seven minutes, depending on how frisky he was feeling. Other than Sundays—and the occasional holiday—he had been doing it the same way for years.

Except for twenty days ago. He went out like usual, at 7:02
A.M.
By eight, Alida had first noted his absence. By 8:15
A.M.
, she had decided to do something about it. Every now and then, when he hadn’t hydrated properly or had eaten too much salt the night before, his calves cramped. She once found him a half mile from home, crawling home rather than accepting rides from passing motorists.

As she drove his route, she had expected to find him doing something similar. Maybe limping along with a sprained ankle, or perhaps something even more stubborn and silly. Instead, she did not see him.

She returned home. He still wasn’t there. She called one or two folks she knew who lived along some of the roads he jogged. They were friends who had often joked about how the “Bill Train” was a minute early or two minutes late on any given day. But, no, they all said they hadn’t seen him.

By nine o’clock she called the Hercules Police Department in a state of high anxiety. Something horrible had happened to her husband. If it wasn’t a natural occurrence—he had suffered a heart attack or stroke somewhere and fallen into a ditch—it was an unnatural one. He had been beaten by wilding youths. He had been mugged. Something. She felt it deep in her bones.

How long has he been missing, ma’am?
the dispatch asked.

He should have been back an hour ago,
she heard herself say.

The young dispatch had been polite enough not to laugh, but just barely.
Nothing to worry about, ma’am, I’m sure he’ll be back shortly.

They had treated her like an old hen who was pecking after her husband. And even now that the disappearance had stretched to nearly three weeks, she felt like their attitudes had not improved much.

Yes, they had made an effort to find him. Perhaps even a lot of effort. But in some fundamental way, she still felt as though they viewed her as a batty old lady.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. McRae,” the chief said, appearing in her line of vision just as she had the handkerchief balled up in her left hand again.

“Good afternoon, Chief,” she said.

“Why don’t you come with me? We can talk in my office.”

Alida rose and followed the chief, determined to stand her ground and get some results this time. She had done her homework on him. He had been one year away from retirement for four years now, but his wife kept saying they couldn’t afford it. He had moved to Hercules because it was near the wine country and he enjoyed trips up that way. He was, everyone kept telling her, a “good cop.” She just wished she had seen more evidence of it.

When she reached his office, she sat in the same chair she had the previous three times. He closed the door. She did not wait for him to sit.

“Have you heard anything?” she asked, hating the desperate quality to her voice but knowing there was nothing she could do to make it go away.

The chief said nothing as he crossed the room, rounded his desk, and settled heavily in the chair behind it. He put his elbows on the desk, crossed his hands, and fixed her with a sincere gaze.

“Mrs. McRae,” he said. “I hope you know by now that if I
had
heard anything about your husband, I would have called you immediately.”

“So you’ve said, but I—”

“Mrs. McRae,” he said again. And there it was: that patronizing tone. He continued, “I know you don’t think we’re doing anything, and I know you think we don’t care. But the fact is, we’ve dedicated an incredible amount of resources to this case. We’ve done everything I know how to do. We filed a missing persons report with the feds. We did the canvass. The dogs. The media.”

She nodded. “The canvass” had started the afternoon after he disappeared, after Alida had made her first foray down to the police station and managed to impress on them the strangeness of what had occurred. The chief had sent four officers out to cover Bill’s entire jogging route, knocking on doors, showing his picture, and asking if anyone had seen him. They all had. A thousand times. Just not that morning.

“
Th
e dogs” came the next day.
Th
e chief had his own K-9 unit, plus one that had come from nearby Richmond.
Th
ey let four German Shepherds sni
ff
some of Bill’s jogging clothes, then sent them running along his route, their hypersensitive noses leading the way.
Th
ey le
ft
, barking and full of energy, did the entire circle, and came back an hour and a half later with their tongues dragging. Because he had done the route so many times, they never lost his scent. But they also never found any deviation from his course. As far as the dogs were concerned, they had done a bang-up job tracking the man along
fi
ve miles of sidewalk and roadway. It was just their human partners who remained mysti
fi
ed.

“The media” was the final step. The chief had held a press conference, holding a blown-up picture of a smiling Bill McRae for all the local stations to put on the air. It was a story that played well: a genial grandfather who simply vanished one day. The
Hercules Express
had run two articles about it. Millions of people in the Bay Area had been told to alert authorities if they saw him. None did.

“I know we’ve done a lot already,” Alida said. “I just feel like…there must be something else we can do. I heard about a kidnapping case in Oregon where they issued an Amber Alert. Maybe we could—”

“Mrs. McRae, Amber Alerts are for children. Your husband was a grown man.”

Was.
The last two or three visits, the chief had mistakenly slipped into past tense when talking about her husband.

“You don’t understand, Bill is—”

“I know, I know. He is just not one to just disappear,” the chief said, echoing the words Alida had apparently said too many times now.

The chief fiddled with something on his desk, keeping his head down for a moment.

“Mrs. McRae, this is difficult for me to say. But with everything happening on the East Coast today with those airplanes, we’re going to be on terrorism watch for the next couple of days at the very least, and I don’t have the resources to…”

He let his voice trail off. He was shaking his head. He finally looked up. “Mrs. McRae, we checked everything on that jogging route ten times and we never found the slightest hint that anything was out of place. We interviewed more people than I can count. We haven’t heard a whiff of anything resembling a ransom demand. We haven’t found any bloodstains or anything suggesting foul play. We’ve got those notifications on all his credit cards and bank accounts. There’s been no activity. I think you’re going to have to seriously consider the possibility that your husband has simply wandered off, for whatever reason, and he won’t be found until he wants to be found.”

Alida squeezed the handkerchief tightly. The chief had hinted around this several times. This was the most direct he had been about it.

“I know, I know, you think that’s impossible,” he continued. “And this is hard for me to even suggest. But there was a man down in Van Nuys a few years ago, same thing. Damon Hack was his name. A gentle family man who liked to play fantasy football with his buddies. He lived quietly, no enemies, no debts, never a hint of dissatisfaction with his life—just like your husband. And it turned out he had been squirreling away cash for years, twenty, forty bucks at a time until he had enough to flee. They found him in Las Vegas a few months later, living on the street, having blown through all his cash but still with no plans to go back. And there was nothing anyone could do. He was a grown man who had made a decision to live a different life, which was his choice.”

“No,” she said. “You don’t understand. Bill was the most reliable man who ever lived. He was like sunrise in the east. He was a scientist. Life was logical and orderly with him. He was not just—”

She stopped. She realized she was repeating herself. She had slipped into past tense, too.

She had been relying on this police chief too much. A police chief who had clearly given up. And that was fine for him.

She would not give up. Not as long as her Bill was out there and in danger.

CHAPTER 6

GLEN ROCK, Pennsylvania

errick Storm had done disguises. He had been a Venetian gondolier. He had been a reporter for a soy-related trade publication. He had been a doctor, a lawyer, a barista, a math teacher, a race car driver, a Hollywood screenwriter, a ditchdigger, and so many more they blurred together.

Every time he assumed a new identity, he did as much research as possible so he could credibly carry off his cover. Sometimes, he studied his “role” for a week or more, to the point where he felt like he understood the person he was trying to become almost as well as someone who had actually lived that life.

This time he had no such luxury. As he made the ninety-minute drive from Langley up to the rural Pennsylvania town where Flight 76 had come to a tragic rest, he took a crash course in the Federal Aviation Administration, courtesy of “Professor” Kevin Bryan.

But, really, all Storm had to convince the world that he was George Faytok from the FAA’s Office of Accident Investigation and Prevention was a flimsy white badge and his own chutzpah.

His orders from Jones were to figure out what made the plane go down and figure it out fast. He was driving in a white Chevrolet with an FAA seal that one of the nerds had gotten by hacking into an FAA public relations guy’s computer, downloading it, and turning it into a decal that another one of Jones’s agents had hastily slapped on the side. On the back was a bumper sticker that instructed other motorists to call a 1-800 number if they saw the vehicle being driven unsafely.

Like that was even possible, given how underpowered the engine was compared to Storm’s usual standards. Storm hated Chevys. He was a Ford man for a reason.

It was dusk, heading on full darkness, by the time Storm reached Interstate 83’s exit 4. He turned off the highway on Forrest Avenue, which wasn’t actually forested at all. He passed through a small town, then some typical modern housing subdivisions, and then made a turn on Kratz Road. In the way that this part of Pennsylvania did, it quickly transitioned from suburbia to farmland. He followed the winding road through a patchwork of woods and fields until he reached a police checkpoint.

This, Storm knew, was to keep out the riffraff—reporters, especially. Not that the fallen cargo plane had been as interesting to the media. The other crash sites of what were collectively being called the “Pennsylvania Three” were already becoming magnets for grieving family members; and, hence, for cameras. This site had no such hysteria. It was the quietest of the Pennsylvania Three.

Storm rolled down his window and presented his George Faytok badge. The local cop manning the roadblock had no idea that the FAA actually had little to no business at a crash investigation site being run by the National Transportation Safety Board. They were two completely separate federal agencies. The NTSB wasn’t even part of the Department of Transportation.

Luckily for Storm, such administrative distinctions were lost on a young patrolman who was just trying to get to the end of his shift. The cop waved Storm through and told him to park the car along the side of Kratz Road.

Storm followed the instructions and was soon walking toward the crash site, which rose above the road on a small hill. He could already see the temporary light stanchions that had been erected over the field so investigators could continue working through the night. Their sodium halide glow cut through the advancing darkness.

Underneath, a small horde of humanity, moving in no discernible pattern, scurried about. Storm could already make out some of the larger pieces of the plane, strewn in a long line from the point of initial impact to their final resting places. The main fuselage had broken into several parts. He saw an engine here, a wing piece there, a tailpiece somewhere else. There were a lot of other plane parts that were even less identifiable. Confusing matters further was the plane’s cargo, which was scattered over a wide area.

If Storm had an advantage going into this melee, it was simply that there were so many people—with so many different parts to play—and most of them didn’t know what the others were supposed to be doing. It would allow him a certain amount of anonymity. All he had to do was act like he belonged there and had a job to do.

He bypassed the large tent that he could guess was serving as a temporary command center. Most of the people who would have known the FAA had no direct role in the initial phases of an investigation—and would have told him to get lost—were likely under that canvas awning.

Storm made a direct line toward the field. He moved from broken piece to shattered bit, not knowing exactly what he was looking for but, at the same time, not wanting to miss anything. He made brief eye contact with any number of NTSB employees, none of whom seemed to register that he wasn’t one of them.

He stopped to eavesdrop on a few conversations without being obvious. He heard bits of the jargon that Agent Bryan had hastily tried to teach him. But nothing really popped out. Much of it was just loose talk about colleagues, accommodations, travel, or other things that did not interest Storm.

He had started at the back of the debris field and was working his way forward, if only because that was the opposite direction that most of the other people were going. That way, he wouldn’t see the same person twice. Eventually, Storm knew he might have to risk making contact with one of the men or women scurrying around him. For now, he wanted to be a fly on the proverbial wall.

He had just reached a particularly interesting piece of metal and bent over to study it when someone decided to swat at the fly.

“Excuse me? Who are you?” someone asked.

“George Faytok,” Storm said, without a moment’s hesitation. “I’m with the FAA.”

Storm stood. And then, because he had long ago learned the best defense was a good offense, he added, “Who are you?”

“Tim Farrell. I’m with the Structures Working Group.”

Storm nodded, knowingly. Bryan had explained this part to him. The NTSB’s “Go Team” consisted of eight working groups, each responsible for investigating certain aspects of a crash—everything from the Systems Working Group (which studied the plane’s hydraulics, pneumatics, and electronics) to the Human Performance Working Group (which studied the crew’s drug, alcohol, and medical problems).

“Hell of a thing, isn’t it?” Storm said.

Farrell wasn’t distracted. “I’m sorry, Mr. Faytok, but what is the FAA doing out here?”

“Oh,” Storm said. “We’ve had some changes to 8020.11C. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about them.”

“Excuse me?”

“Sorry, 8020.11C. That’s the number for our Aircraft Accident and Incident Notification, Investigation, and Reporting Policy. There have been some changes to Chapter One, Section Nine, Part…oh, jeez, C or D? I can’t even remember anymore. Don’t ask me to quote line and verse. It’s the part that governs our interactions with the NTSB. What it says is I actually have to lay eyeballs on what you guys are doing.”

Farrell jammed his fists in his side. “I hadn’t heard about that.”

“It’s still your crash site,” Storm said, raising his hands as if to surrender. “That hasn’t changed, obviously. It’s just one of those typical cover-your-ass things. I guess there was a superlight that went down in Ohio or something and some wires got crossed between you guys and us. Some higher-up who felt the need to justify his job decided we had to tighten up on our monitoring. Hence, policy change.”

Farrell fingered a cell phone clipped to his belt. “I think I have to call the IIC.”

Bryan had taught Storm this, too.
Th
e IIC was the Investigator-
in-Charge, the person responsible for coordinating all the working groups, the highest ranking official at the site. If the IIC got involved, Storm might as well slap handcuffs on himself. Impersonating a federal official to gain access to a secure crash investigation site broke at least four laws he could think of off the top of his head. It would certainly land him in the local jail for a spell. Jones would probably let him rot there as punishment for allowing himself to get caught.

“I already talked to him,” Storm said, breezily. “But waste his time if you want to. I’m sure he’s got nothing better to do.”

Storm bent back over the piece of metal he had been studying. Farrell unclipped his cell phone. Storm readied himself to flee.

Farrell pushed the two-way talk button on the phone and said, “Hey, I’ll be back in a second. I’m just looking at something with this guy from the FAA.”

“The FAA?” the voice on the other end said.

“Yeah, I guess they’ve had some kind of policy change.”

“All right. See you back here in a bit.”

Storm felt his insides relax. He focused his attention—for real this time—on the piece of metal that had caught his eye previously.

“Pretty weird, huh?” Farrell said.

“I’ll say,” Storm replied.

“What do you think? It’s a piece of the forward pressure bulkhead, right?”

“Sure looks that way to me,” Storm said, as if he had personally studied hundreds, if not thousands, of forward pressure bulkheads.

“What do you think did
that
?” Farrell asked, pointing to a line that had been cut in the metal.

In a field full of things that had been twisted and sheared by the force of impact, this line was perfectly straight. Even Storm’s untrained eye could tell the angle was wrong. And yet the cut was incredibly precise.

“I don’t know,” Storm said.

Except he did know. Among Storm’s abiding interests were high-tech weaponry and gadgets, which he jokingly called “toys.” He was constantly pressing Jones to give him an inside line on the latest toys—the classified stuff that no one else got to see. Not long ago, Jones had arranged for Storm to make a visit to a military contractor for the demonstration of a new high-energy laser beam.

You could take down an airplane with this thing
, the engineer had told him.

The words came back to Storm now. The weapon he had seen was still in beta version. It needed to be shrunk down to a more usable size and then made sturdy enough for the battlefield. What it didn’t need was more power. It was already a hundred kilowatts—the equivalent of one thousand 100-watt lightbulbs being focused in one tiny beam, only a few hundred nanometers wide.

The heat that resulted was incredibly intense. Storm had watched a demonstration of the laser easily slicing through a thick sheet of metal.

The incision looked exactly like the one that had been cut in the piece of metal in front of him.