Wild Storm, Page 3

  “I won’t tell you about Flight 937, because you already know about that one firsthand. So I’ll start with the initial plane to go down. It was Flight 312, coming in from Amsterdam Schiphol.”

  An image of an Airbus A300 appeared in hologram as if it were floating above the table.

  “It was coming in on the same approach path as 937. As a matter of fact, all four planes were coming in on a northeast approach toward Dulles runway twelve-thirty,” Bryan said. “Four-fourteen was using an Airbus A300 that had reported no recent maintenance problems. It was a perfectly routine flight. Then, at 1:55 P.M., its pilot was reporting he had lost his left engine. Pilots spend hours in simulators training for such things, so he began putting engine failure procedures into place, except they didn’t work. The plane began rapidly losing altitude and the pilot said it was responding as if it hadn’t just lost its left engine, but its entire left wing. That was his last communication before he crashed at a steep angle into a wooded area near Interstate 83.”

  Bryan clicked a button and the hologram changed to a McDonnell Douglas MD-11.

  He continued: “Next we have Flight 76, coming in from Stockholm Arlanda. It was a cargo plane registered to a company called Karlsson Logistics. Again, it had been a routine flight. Again, it was a plane with a spotless maintenance record. Three minutes after 312 distress call, at 1:58 P.M., Flight 76 had its last communications with the tower. Then nothing. It was like it simply ceased to exist. It was found in a farm field near Glen Rock, Pennsylvania, a few miles away from the other ones. The theory is that the pilot had no control when the plane hit the ground, because it hit hard and fast. Residents in the area reported thinking it was everything from a bomb to an earthquake.”

  Storm only shook his head. Whatever had happened to Flight 76 had obviously been too catastrophic to be fixed with speed tape. He was thankful there were no passengers, but that would be little comfort to the families of the crew members.

  Agent Bryan had changed the plane floating above the table to a Boeing 747.

  “Finally, we have Flight 494, inbound from Paris Charles de Gaulle,” he said. “Again, there was nothing about this aircraft that would have indicated trouble. At 2:07 P.M.—nine minutes later—it reported a loss of hydraulic pressure in its rear rudder. As I said earlier, pilots are trained for such things, though by this point, flight control was apparently freaking out. They knew what had happened to the first two planes. They were determined to get this one down safely and really thought they could. Then the pilot came back on and said it was far more catastrophic. A pilot can’t see behind himself, of course. But as near as the man could figure, the entire tail section of the airplane was just gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Gone. What was left of the plane crashed into a forested area of Spring Valley Park. Your flight was the final one to report difficulty, about five minutes later, and the only one to survive.”

  “Have any groups claimed responsibility?”

  “Several are trying to, but none that we think have the capability to pull off something like this,” Bryan said. “Whoever is really behind it isn’t bragging about it yet. We don’t know what they want or why they did this.”

  Storm concentrated on the desk in front of him for a moment before speaking. “So we have four different aircraft that seemed to suddenly lose valuable parts at approximately 2 P.M.”

  “That’s right,” Bryan said.

  “And we can be pretty sure it wasn’t some kind of nine-eleven-style hijacking,” Storm said. “There were no hijackers aboard my flight, and none of the other three reported anything. As far as we know, their pilots were still at the controls when the planes went down.”

  “That’s right,” Bryan said again.

  There was more staring at the desk.

  “You think maybe it was sabotage?” Rodriguez asked.

  “Talk it out for me.”

  “Somebody on the ground was able to plant a small explosive at different points on each plane—the wing, the tail, whatever,” Rodriguez said. “The passengers on your flight said they heard a sound when the aileron came apart. Maybe the explosives were all set to go off within a few minutes of each other.”

  Storm shook his head. “I don’t like it. These planes were coming from four different airports in four different countries—four sophisticated countries that have long experience taking terrorism and airport security pretty seriously. It’s hard to imagine what kind of organization could breach all four. And if you did go through all that trouble, why stop at one plane in each place? And why would they fixate on four airplanes that were not only traveling to the same airport but heading there via the exact same location? That’s far too big a coincidence.”

  Rodriguez was nodding as Storm continued: “We need to think about that location. The geography has to be the common link here. Bryan, can you compare the four flight plans and find the places where they overlap within a mile or two?”

  Bryan began typing furiously. On the flat screen on the far wall, Storm watched as Bryan manipulated the four flight plans on top of each other and began searching for points of intersection. Closer to Dulles, there were many of them—all four planes were on the same approach. Farther from Dulles, they were scattered.

  The point of first convergence was slightly south of York, Pennsylvania.

  “What’s there?” Storm asked, pointing.

  Bryan zoomed in on the spot where Storm had gestured. When he got in close enough, they saw a chunk of green that was labeled, “Richard M. Nixon County Park.”

  “Maybe they were enemies of the thirty-seventh president?” Rodriguez said.

  “That wouldn’t narrow it down much,” Storm said. “No, this is our key. This spot. Everyone is talking about what happened in the air. But my bet is it was something on the ground that is responsible for this.”

  “What could do that to an airplane from the ground? Some kind of surface-to-air missile?” Rodriguez asked.

  “Something like that. If it was, you would think someone would have seen it. A rocket is not exactly invisible. It’s loud and bright and leaves a contrail. Can we dispatch some folks to make some gentle inquiries?”

  “Got it,” Bryan said.

  “Okay, so that’s getting us closer to figuring out what happened,” Storm said. “Where are we on the why?”

  Bryan nodded at Rodriguez, who walked over to the large flat screen. Bryan’s jumble of flight plans disappeared with one touch from Rodriguez.

  “Until someone credible claims responsibility, we’re mostly just fumbling in the dark,” Rodriguez said. “The current theory is that this is just random violence by some sick dude or dudes. No one has any clue what they want.”

  “That’s not a very satisfying theory,” Storm said. “Are you sure there’s not anything the victims had in common? Maybe this was more targeted than we realize.”

  “Not that we’ve been able to sort out so far,” Rodriguez said. “There were definitely some heavy hitters on board all the planes.”

  “Like who?”

  “We’ve had the nerds at work, searching for patterns among them. Nothing has popped so far. Not sure I have anything to tell you.”

  “Humor me. Give me the biggest name on each flight.”

  Rodriguez shrugged. “Okay, let’s see here. Flight 312 had Pi aboard.”

  A photo of an unshaven, unkempt young man with a mop for a head of hair appeared on the screen. He vaguely resembled a grown Muppet.

  Rodriguez continued: “Pi is the leader of the International Order of Fruitarians, a quasi-religious group that tries to convince people that fruit is the original diet of mankind—nutrition as God intended. Really, it’s a cult. It slowly lures innocent college kids, especially unsuspecting young women, into its clutches and then eventually brainwashes them into doing things like selling flowers at the airport.”

>   “Maybe the father of one of these kids who lost his daughter to this nonsense decided to seek ultimate revenge and fire a rocket at the airplane the guy was on,” Storm said. “A father would go to any length to protect his daughter from a monster like that.”

  Rodriguez let that pass. “Flight 76 was the cargo flight. Beyond the crew, the only passenger was a Karlsson executive named Brigitte Bildt, who had some business in the States and decided to hop aboard. She was not the company’s CEO, but she apparently ran the day-to-day operations and was also involved in a lot of its strategic decision-making.”

  A photo of a middle-aged woman with blue eyes and kinky brown hair was now being projected. It appeared to be a corporate head shot—no frills, no glamming up. She had been looking at the camera with a certain gravity, almost as if she was aware of the seriousness of the way the photo would someday be used.

  “Is it possible Karlsson Logistics had business enemies?” Storm asked. “Maybe it was involved in some kind of leveraged takeover that Bildt was pressing for?”

  “We’re looking into all possibilities,” Rodriguez said. “Moving on, Flight 494 had a couple of bigwigs, a professional athlete, some business types. But the biggest name was Congressman Erik Vaughn.”

  A new image appeared. It was the beady-eyed, puffy-faced visage of the congressman, topped with helmet hair that never seemed to move.

  “Eww…am I allowed to say I hate that guy?” Storm asked.

  “You wouldn’t be alone. He chaired the Ways and Means committee and he’s one of those small-government zealots. He has used his position as leverage, refusing to bring any matter involving taxation before Ways and Means unless he gets a guarantee of reduced spending somewhere. I don’t think there’s a group whose funding he hasn’t cut. The young, the old, highway funding, the whole concept of foreign aid….You can go on and on with him.”

  “We’d have a long list of people who’d love to see him die in a plane crash,” Storm acknowledged.

  “There were others, too. Some more famous than others. And I guess it depends on your definition of famous. One of the people on the first plane down was Rachel McCord.”

  “The porn star?” Storm burst.

  Rodriguez arched an eyebrow. “Gee, Storm, how did you know about her?”

  “I…I…read about her in a magazine once,” Storm said. “Anyhow, what’s my job in all this? Why does Jones want me here?”

  As if he had the room bugged—and, really, he probably did—a trim man of about sixty with buzz-cut iron-gray hair and steely blue eyes walked through the door.

  JEDEDIAH JONES’S TITLE WAS Head of Internal Division Enforcement. Its acronym was no accident, given that it neatly described his prevailing modus operandi.

  Storm owed his existence to Jones in more ways than one. While it was Clara Strike who first discovered Derrick Storm—then a struggling private investigator who was considering changing his name to Derrick Aarons just to move it up a few notches in the Yellow Pages—it was Jones who took Storm’s raw abilities and honed them into polished proficiencies, turning Storm into a rare asset.

  Their long association had been mutually beneficial in other ways as well. It had made Storm a rich man, one with a contact list of friends and sources that was even more invaluable than all the money he had amassed. And the missions that Storm had been able to complete—often against impossible odds—had been an invaluable boost to Jones’s career.

  And yet there was always tension between the men. Jones knew he could never fully command Storm, who prioritized many things—his own moral code, his sense of patriotism, the welfare of his friends and family—over his orders from Jones.

  And Storm, likewise, knew where Jones’s loyalties lay. And it wasn’t in their tenuous relationship. For all Storm had helped him achieve, for all the times Jones had deployed substantial resources to save Storm, Jones lacked sentimentality toward him. After a botched mission in Tangier, Morocco, Jones had faked Storm’s death, leading the world to think he had perished for four long years, not caring about the impact it had on Storm’s loved ones. What’s more, Storm knew that if it ever became expedient to have his death become real, Jones wouldn’t hesitate. He would leave Storm bleeding in a river full of piranhas if it benefited CIA goals or Jones’s sometimes-warped ideas about what was best for the country.

  “Is he up to speed?” Jones asked, not bothering to immediately acknowledge Storm.

  “As up to speed as any of us are at this point, sir,” Bryan said.

  “Excellent,” Jones said, finally turning to his protégé. “Do you have a vehicle here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great. We’re going to ask you to ditch it for the time being. Where you’re going, you’re not going to be Derrick Storm, and I don’t want you driving some souped-up hot rod, even if it is wrapped in a bland coating.”

  “All right. Who am I and where am I going?”

  “Not far. To Glen Rock, Pennsylvania.”

  “That’s the Flight 76 crash site.”

  “Correct. And it’s also where the National Transportation Safety Board has set up its investigation into what took that plane down. The NTSB will take its sweet time figuring it out, following all their policies and procedures and then coming out with a report in a couple of months outlining what they think might have happened. We don’t have a couple of months. I want to know what they know before they know it.”

  “Why Flight 76?”

  “One, because it’s as good a place to start as any figuring out what happened up there,” Jones said. “Those flatfoots from the FBI allowed this to happen on their turf and we’re going to stick it up their ass by cleaning up the mess for them.

  “And, two, because the woman who owns the plane, Ingrid Karlsson, is a friend of mine. She’s been an aide to me and this agency on numerous occasions. She’s asked me for a favor and I don’t want to disappoint her.”

  Storm looked for telltale signs of artifice from Jones, even though the man was too cagey to give them with any frequency. Still, Storm knew Jones didn’t do favors without the promise of a significant return. Storm wondered what it was this time—or if he’d ever find out.

  There was never just one layer with the Head of Internal Division Enforcement.

  “Okay,” Storm said. “And I’m guessing you have a plan for me beyond waltzing into an NTSB-secured crash site and asking them to show me their underwear?”

  “Of course,” Jones said. “Follow me.”

  CHAPTER 4

  THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA, South of France

  T

  he rug was from the sixteenth-century Ottoman Empire, a perfect and near-priceless specimen restored to a glory not seen since Suleiman I himself last walked on it. Resting on top of it was a desk made from rare, Cuban mahogany, harvested from an old-growth rain forest and hand-carved by a master artisan who toiled for a year on its intricacies. Perched on that was a ringing phone, connected to a network of satellites that guaranteed users global coverage, from the peaks of Antarctica to the icy reaches of the North Pole.

  The woman answering it was Ingrid Karlsson, who might have been fifty—only her birth certificate knew for sure—and who might have been the world’s richest woman. Much as with her age, she would neither confirm nor deny speculation.

  “Yes?” she said, and then listened to several minutes of excited jabbering on the other end of the line.

  When the voice stopped, Karlsson said, “She’s dead? Are…are you sure? There is no mistake?”

  She waited for the reply, then said only “thank you” before ending the call.

  She sat perfectly still for a moment. Her gray-blue eyes stared straight ahead. Her near-black hair, which was chopped in straight bangs across her forehead, fell in shimmering strands down to her shoulders. Swedish by birth, a resident of Monaco for tax reasons, she had written a book—
half memoir, half polemic—entitled Citizen of the World. Nevertheless, she retained the trademark stoicism of her homeland in the face of tragic news.

  She pressed a button on the desk. In Swedish, she said, “Tilda, come in here, please.”

  A statuesque redhead, dressed in brief shorts and a form-fitting knit top, appeared in the door.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “One of our planes has crashed in the United States,” she said. “Brigitte is dead.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “We must make a video. We will share it with the press and on the Internet.”

  Tilda’s head tilted as she hesitated. While once a common request, this was now unusual. But she recovered with, “Yes, ma’am. Right away.”

  Tilda disappeared. Karlsson bowed her head, thinking of Brigitte, thinking of all they had achieved together. Ingrid Karlsson was the only child of a man who bequeathed her a modestly successful Swedish shipping company when she was in her twenties. Over the ensuing three decades, Ingrid had taken it and—one ambitiously leveraged acquisition at a time—turned it into the world’s largest privately held logistics company, an empire that included a massive fleet of container ships, planes, trucks, and railroad cars. All told, Karlsson Logistics had a presence in sixty-two countries and on four continents.

  The press had taken to calling her “Xena: Warrior Princess,” for her aggressive business style, Amazonian stature, and more-than-passing resemblance to the 1990s cult television icon. She detested the nickname at first, then warmed to it when she realized it was meant as a sign of respect, a symbol of her strength and success.

  And the success had been considerable. Her estimated wealth, which started in the many millions, burgeoned into the billions. She freely shared her riches with her employees, both her personal staff, to whom her loyalty was fierce, and her corporate workforce, which enjoyed salaries and benefits beyond what any publicly traded company could offer.

  Brigitte had been her most trusted executive during the last decade and a half. More than just a right hand, she was treated like a partner, even though Ingrid retained sole ownership of the business. There was even talk—since neither was married—that the two may have been more than just colleagues. But that was only speculation.