I am always impressed with how fast they move, though not always with the lack of results.
"Machado and Roberts will take you home. Kiana needs to rest. We'll meet later when the NTSB gets here."
I'd argue, but I know it's useless. Once we're home, we make a quick check of Starbuck, including under the hood, then go upstairs, the agents parking in the kill zone outside. You'd think the Bureau would be smarter by now.
Chapter 25
Kiana goes to the bathroom, I grab her phone and call dad. The NTSB is a few hours out, I am expected back for an interview at six. I don't tell him about Perez, at her request, and she isn't going to tell her folks either.
I yank the bed out, go get two bottles of water from the fridge.
"One of those for me?" I walk over and hand it to her, then help her lie down.
"Nap time. We have to be at the airport at six."
"Story first."
"Nap. You come with me, and then I'll only have to go through it once."
I kiss her, and she accepts it. We take her sling off, and she works to find a comfortable position. She catches me looking at the wounds.
"Don't you even think about fixing them."
"I wasn't," lying, "Just worried about you." I kiss her again, and walk away. I check my tablet, making sure it survived the bouncing. Seems fine. Going to have to modify my plans now to more find the terrorists, less dig up the drug fields.
I read, she sleeps until four, then we get dressed, grab our agents, and sit in the back for the drive. I drag her into the terminal so we can have tacos and sit in an aircraft. I don't think anyone is listening in my place, but it's more fun here. Between bites of shredded beef, we agree on terms and conditions.
The lead investigator from the NTSB is a burley, bald, black man named Adam Jones. He meets me at the door to the conference room in the LAPD office, introduces himself and his three colleagues, then tries to introduce me to Special Agent Flaherty before he catches himself. Dad and Captain Amos are there too.
We start with the pre-flight back in the dispatch office, then my walk around, followed by a step by step through the flight. Perez kicks me a couple times during the good parts. The investigators are recording, sometimes interrupting with questions, but mostly listening. Everyone started fully clothed, but by the end all the ties are on the table, jackets on the chairs, collars open.
An event that took 15 minutes takes four hours to discuss. Which alarm when? Which light when? Which switch when? What did I do every second? What did Don do? They have the flight data recorder and flight voice recorder, both on their way to Washington already, but they want to compare what I say with what the data say.
Jones only says one thing all night, "Hell of a job of flying." Which earns me another kick from my girlfriend.
We finish at 10, with orders to be back at eight out at the bird. The FBI takes Perez and me home, and then back again in the morning. When we get to the jet, the NTSB and FBI crews are already out there. Other than getting the remaining fuel out, no one was allowed near the wreck in the dark.
I am in the way all day, staring over people's shoulders, asking stupid questions. I drag Perez back to the terminal for lunch, try out the new Thai cart in terminal six, get harassed by a couple pilot friends for my blocking the runway with my aircraft, and sit on the flight deck of the aircraft at gate 75 eating and showing Kiana the lights and switches from yesterday's disaster. Or near disaster.
When we get back to the crash site, Flaherty walks over to us, a plastic evidence bag in hand.
"We found this in the left wing."
Fuck me, it's a large caliber shell, slightly deformed, but still recognizable for what it is. No question now that someone is trying to kill us, and in a public way.
"No shell casings, but some forensic evidence rooftop of the office building at Sepulveda and Imperial. Not enough time to drive between the sites, so two shooters. Only two armories in the country, and two overseas, have that particular shell, we've got crews heading to each to investigate."
Aside from two more shells, the rest of the afternoon is quiet. I do get to go in the cockpit, and manage to rescue my cel phone when everyone's back is turned (or really when everyone is pretending their backs are turned). It's not like we don't know what happened and I might be disturbing some vital clue.
We make the FBI guys take us out for Italian, they make us sit in the far back of the restaurant, and they sit in the front near the door. Otherwise, almost like a date. Then home, and I decide not to sneak out. A couple days and the surveillance teams should be less alert, at least that's my theory. It couldn't possibly have anything to do with wanting to cuddle with my injured girlfriend.
In the morning, Perez gets a lift to FBI headquarters, and I tell the FBI guys I can drive myself into work (an LAPD officer, even a reserve officer, can't be driven to work by a couple feds), so they follow me to the parking lot with Perez in their back seat, and then take her into work with them.
We meet up at Ariela's, it seeming odd to me as I sit down that I am doing the police work, have the hands on examples, and Perez is off sitting behind a computer all day. We run through our stories until we're done eating, and her
tia
takes our plates away. She shifts visibly and alarmingly in her chair, reaches up and runs the hand attached to her good arm through the thick mane of hair, and then she hits me with it.
"There are two US commands with the ammo they shot at us. Primary SEAL team base on the east coast, all ammo accounted for, and Air Force UAV Command at Nellis, one case missing."
Fuck me. It can't be a coincidence, can it?
"What about the overseas bases?"
"Won't know until at least tomorrow, but one of them is the UAV Regional Command support base in Afghanistan."
"Do you believe in coincidence?" I ask, already knowing the answer.
"No. You?" Her hand goes through her hair again. I've never seen her nervous like this before.
"No. But if they knew, wouldn't they have done something else?"
"If they really wanted to kill me, they could have waited 20 seconds until I was parked."
I give her one of my better what the frak looks.
"They weren't trying to kill us?"
"Oh, Air Force, they were trying to kill you. They weren't trying to kill me, or they'd have waited until I was walking into the building, not shoot at me through glass in a moving vehicle."
"You sure?"
"Rona thinks I am over thinking it."
"What about the chip in your car? No way that wasn't there to kill."
"That's what she said, but I think the plan changed, and maybe changed because somehow the bad guys and the supposed good guys found each other. This isn't about us anymore, it's about the other you. At least, that's what I think. But there's still missing pieces."
"So how do we figure it out?"
"Don't know, Air Force, don't know, but it's not going to end unless we end it."
I end this piece of the conversation by pouring the last of the wine into her glass.
"You free tomorrow?" She doesn't have to ask, but she does anyway. She knows what my answer will be, regardless of my plans.
"Yes, except for one more meeting. And I'm grounded because I had an accident, so I won't be flying out on Monday, I'll have a week off."
"Good. We need to go through the flight logs again to see if we can find our friends coming to America, now that we know they are here, and maybe we can use an extra set of hands."
A thought. A not too stupid thought.
"Perez, you know we know something nobody else knows."
She looks at me quizzically.
"You've been looking for the names they used to fly from Moscow to LA when they were planning the gas strike, since they always used the same name to fly out that they used to fly in."
"Yes. Made sense for them, because one way tickets automatically get more attention from TSA."
"The FBI knows what flights they came in on from Moscow, and the flights they left on to Vancouver."
Perez finishes my thought, "We know what flights they left on from Vancouver!"
"Exactly."
"Air Force, for once a stupid move of yours may turn out to be smart."
I laugh. "All my moves are smart, temporary special agent Perez."
I know she's thinking about hitting me, but her arm is in a sling.
We make our goodbyes, get home, then get out on the web looking at flight schedules. Every Thursday morning four bad guys would fly in from Moscow, every second Thursday evening the four bad guys would fly out to Vancouver, two sets of four alternating. We know they took the red eye from Vancouver to Toronto because I flew up there one night to check, and, though we don't know for sure, we can assume they left Toronto for Moscow.
Perez and I map out the flight numbers and dates. The question is whether or not the FBI can get access to the Canadian Aviation Authority database.
When we're done, we pull out the lumpy sofa bed and update our own database, carefully so as not to hurt Kiana's arm.
Chapter 26
In the morning, Perez heads off early to work, and I take a run down the beach, an unhappy FBI agent 30 feet behind, then I drive in to the dispatch office to meet with a company review board made up of three of our most experienced captains, and a fourth borrowed from another airline.
Normally, I would expect a thorough re-explanation of all I've been through, but it turns out to be a what was wrong with Captain Don meeting. I try to say as little as possible, but they don't let me get away with that. We practice and practice and practice these situations in the simulator until we should be able to handle them professionally while blindfolded, which is why we can calmly land in the Hudson. Unfortunately, there is no real way to assess character until the moment arises.
The meeting ends after three hours, four handshakes, four remarks about how well I did, with me feeling like a traitor. Not that I liked the man, and I wouldn't want to fly with him again, but still I am uncomfortable with being in this position. The cockpit voice recorder tape should be enough without me having to hurt him.
I grab some tacos and wander out onto the tarmac to watch a crew move the aircraft out of its resting place and take it to a hangar where the FBI and NTSB will take it apart, bolt by bolt, the FBI looking for evidence, the NTSB thinking about ways to make sure everything would work if this happens again.
Perez texts me late afternoon, and I drive north to meet her for Indian food at a little restaurant near UCLA. We are forced to sit inside the small cafe, while the agents take positions outside on the patio. She's already there at a nice table so our backs can be against the wall.
Perez is good with the privacy, because it seems her day has been far more productive. By accessing the Canadian aviation data, they identified eight names we'd never heard before taking that same redeye flight every 14 days, then catching the early morning Toronto to Moscow Aeroflot. Andretti, Stewart, McLaren, Schumacher, Senna, and Juan Manuel Fangio, all allegedly natives of Russia, and two from Afghanistan, Hassan and Naziri.
Naziri, Hassan, Senna and Fangio flew from Moscow to New York, then to LA, two days after Perez and Flaherty returned, paid for with untraceable pre-paid credit cards. The FBI put them on the no fly list and will send their photos to all the Southern California law enforcement agencies as soon as they arrive, though you would think someone would be naturally suspicious when old or dead Formula 1 champions try to board aircraft. Last time it took the Russians three days to produce the photos. Who knows how the Afghans will do.
But the mystery is still mysterious. No identification of their real identities. Our blond friend has a Marine Corps tattoo, but the Pentagon claims never to have heard of him, and the fingerprints, obviously, don't match any military personnel past or present. No police records or other database, no facial recognition, nothing.
The phones that were used to call Ali's phone number in the weeks before the Rose Bowl have all gone quiet, as have the email accounts that emailed him. The credit cards they used are all unused since December.
There was a lot of communication between Ali and his team prior to the attack, but these folks are good at their business, and have disappeared. Their only mistake was assuming they'd not been followed to Canada, and wouldn't be picked out of the database.
Flaherty apparently thinks that they must have been deep cover special forces, so deep that they aren't in any of the public databases. The Pentagon clerks they talk to aren't lying, the men simply don't exist unless you have the appropriate access.
