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. The 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.
CHAPTER 7
PANAMA CITY, Panama
he most striking feature of Eusebio Rivera’s seventieth floor penthouse — something all visitors to it beheld with wonder — was a massive saltwater fish tank.
It occupied an entire wall’s worth of space, and it separated his home office from his bedroom suite, meaning he could see it whether he was at work or at leisure. It was filled with fish in every color of the rainbow: clown fish and angelfish, hawk fish and lionfish, hamlets and grunts, all swimming happily above a plastic reef that had been made to look just like the real thing.