“Barring some other evidence, it would officially be classified as reasons unknown.”
Ghami looked to the Ambassador. “Charles, I promise you that it will be located and the reason for this tragedy explained.”
“No offense, Minister,” Jewison interrupted, “but that may not be a promise you can keep. I’ve been a crash investigator for eighteen years. I’ve seen everything there is to see, including an airliner that exploded in midair and was pulled out of the ocean off Long Island. That was a relatively straightforward investigation compared to this. We can’t tell what damage was done by the crash and what was done by your people.” Ghami made to protest, and Jewison staved him off with a gesture. “I mean the nomads. They’re Libyan so they’re your people, is all I mean.”
“The nomads are citizens of no country but the desert.”
“Either way, they messed with this scene so badly I don’t know if even finding the tail will give us a definitive answer.”
Ghami held the aviation expert’s stare. “Ambassador Moon and other representatives of your government have explained to me that you are the best in the world at what you do, Mr. Jewison. I have their assurance and thus their confidence that you will find an answer. I am certain that you treat each and every airline disaster with your utmost efforts, but you must surely know the gravity of this situation and the importance of what you find.”
Jewison looked from one man to the other. His expression was even more dour as he came to understand that politics was going to play as large a part in his search as forensic science.
“How long until the conference?” he asked.
“Forty-eight hours,” Moon answered.
He shook his head with weary resignation. “If we can find the tail and if it hasn’t been further damaged by nomads, I might have a preliminary report for you by then.”
Ghami held out his hand, which Jewison took. “That’s all any of us ask for.”
THE OREGON HAD BEEN rigged for ultraquiet. There was little that could be done about the sound of waves lapping against the hull except to keep her bow into the wind. Other than that, nothing about the ship’s position was left to chance. Max Hanley had surrounded the vessel at a distance of thirty miles with passive buoys that collected incoming radar energy and relayed that information via secure burst transmitters to the onboard computer. This gave them ample warning if another ship was in the area without the use of their own active radar suite. If a target appeared to be headed in their direction, the ship’s dynamic positioning system would move the Oregon using power supplied by her massed banks of silver-zinc deep-cycle batteries, so she crept along with the barest whisper of water forced through her pump jets. With her hull and superstructure doped with radar-absorbent material, a passing ship would almost need to be in visual range to detect her.
A passive-sonar array dangled from the moon pool down at her keel. Capable of listening three hundred and sixty degrees, the acoustical microphones covered any threats lurking below the surface. Other sensors were vacuuming up electronic data and radio chatter from shipping, aircraft, and shore-based facilities along Libya’s coast. This ability of drift and lift, or as Murph called it “lurk and work,” was the exact type of mission Juan had designed the Oregon to perform. Her stealth capabilities allowed the crew to station the ship off a hostile coast for days—or weeks, if necessary—gathering intelligence on fleet movements, electronics signaling, or anything else her clients demanded.
They had lain off the coast of Cuba for twenty-eight days during the time that Fidel Castro’s illness made it necessary for him to transfer power to his brother, Raul, listening in on everything taking place behind the closed doors of the communist dictator’s private retreat. They had provided the American intelligence services unprecedented knowledge of the inner workings of the secretive regime and eliminated any uncertainty as to what was taking place.
Rigging the Oregon for ultraquiet also meant suspending all routine maintenance, which no one on the crew minded. However, the ship’s fitness facility was closed to prevent weights from accidentally clanging together, and meals were reduced to prepackaged pouches boiled in a pot clamped to the stove in the galley. The culinary staff had outdone themselves in preparing the meals, but they remained a poor substitute for the gourmet dishes to which the men and women of the Corporation had grown accustomed. The normal silverware and fine china were replaced with paper plates and plastic knives and forks, and any television or radio had to be enjoyed with headphones.
Max Hanley was in his cabin working on a scratch-built model of a Swift boat, one of the fast riverine crafts he had commanded during Vietnam. Hanley wasn’t a man who dwelled much on his past or gave in to the siren song of nostalgia. He stored the medals he’d won in a Los Angeles safe-deposit he hadn’t visited in years and met up with former shipmates only at funerals. He was building the model simply because he could do it from memory and it kept his mind occupied with something other than his responsibilities.
Doc Huxley had suggested the hobby as a way of reducing stress and keeping his blood pressure in check. So far, he’d managed to stick to it longer than the yoga she’d prescribed before. He’d already built and presented a beautiful replica of the Oregon to Juan, which now sat under a plastic case in the executive conference room, and had plans for a Mississippi paddle wheeler when he was finished with the Swift boat.
The knock on his door was so soft that he knew it was Eric Stone taking the whole silent-rigging thing to the limit.
“Enter,” Hanley called.
Eric stepped though the doorway, carrying a laptop computer and a large, flat portfolio. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week, which probably wasn’t too far off the mark. Stone usually maintained a semblance of the military comportment drilled into him at Annapolis, but today his shirt was untucked, and his chinos were as wrinkled as a balled-up piece of aluminum foil.
While Max worried whenever they had people stuck out there in a hostile environment, Eric took it even further. Max had been Stoney’s mentor when he’d first joined the Corporation, but since then he’d grown to idolize Juan Cabrillo, and Mark Murphy was like the brother he’d never had growing up. Fatigue lines etched his normally smooth face, and while he’d never had much of a beard it was obvious he hadn’t shaved in a while.
“You have something?” Max asked without preamble.
He showed off the portfolio. “Detailed maps of Juan’s location and a rundown of the place’s history.”
“I knew you could do it.” Hanley cleared a wide space on his desk for Eric to lay out the map. He stood to give himself a better perspective. “Tell me what I’m looking at.”
He could see a small training facility, built high in the mountains, roughly twenty miles from the coast. The camp was well hidden by the peaks, and, had it not been for its proximity to a large open pit of some kind, it would have been easy to overlook, even knowing its location because of Juan’s implanted GPS transponder. There was a dark line snaking up from the shore to the pit that closely followed the contour of the land. Where the line met the coast were a couple of old buildings and a long jetty. There were other buildings along the rim of a valley where the earth had been excavated.
Eric pointed to the port area first. “This is what remains of a British-built coaling station dating back to the 1840s. It was updated with a bigger pier in 1914, possibly in anticipation of World War I. That pier was partially destroyed during Rommel’s North Africa campaign, and the Germans rebuilt it to use as a staging area for their push toward Egypt. The dark line here is a railroad that linked the station to the coal mine here.” His finger followed the railroad tracks to the buildings overlooking the open-pit mine. “There used to be a barge canal to transport the coal, but the aquifer dried up and the railroad was laid in.”