Free Fall (8 page)

Fourteen

Manhattan, New York

T
his can't be real.

Kate read the email again and a chill coiled slowly up her spine.

It's got to be a prankster or some nut.

Kate had encountered all kinds of people trying to insert themselves into stories: conspiracy types, people with agendas, people who were unbalanced, hoaxers, you name it. Yet she couldn't ignore the concern tightening around her. The phrase “I made it happen” gave Captain Matson's words new meaning:
I don't know what happened, but I know something went wrong.

Kate bit her bottom lip as she continued rereading the message.

And they were threatening to do it again. Only God knows when.

“Hey, Mark, come over here and look at this.”

Mark Reston, a rumpled hard-news reporter who sat near her, moaned, pulled himself to his feet and stood next to Kate, who tapped her monitor with her pen.

“What do you think of this? It's in response to my story.”

Reston scratched his stubbled chin and drew his face closer.

“What's this Lord of the Heavens crap?”

“Mark, come on. What do you think?”

“Likely a lunatic is what I think.”

“What if it isn't? We don't know what really happened on that flight.”

“Likely someone with a tinfoil hat.”

“But what if it's not a nutcase?”

“Did you respond, try to engage them in conversation?”

“Yes. I got the error message ‘Permanent failure, unknown user' message.”

“If this is real, you got a helluva story. Whatever it is, you should alert Chuck.”

“That's the plan.”

Kate printed the email and headed for Chuck Laneer's office. He wasn't there. She found him coming down the hall and handed him the email.

“Just got this.”

Chuck pushed his glasses to the top of his forehead and read. He removed them when he'd finished and tapped one finger to his teeth, something he always did.

“Do you have any idea who sent this, Kate?”

“None. It's anonymous.”

“Did you respond?”

“Yes and I got nothing, a failed-delivery message.”

“Did you share it?”

“No.”

“Make several paper copies and stand by. I'm calling a meeting on how we're going to handle this.”

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Kate, Chuck and several senior editors sat at the big polished table in the newsroom's main boardroom.

They'd reviewed the email and Kate briefed them on all she knew. “So it boils down to this,” she said. “If we don't write a story crediting this person for EastCloud Forty-nine Ninety, they'll harm another flight.”

“Have we had our IT security people try to track the source, verify it?” Marisa McDougal, head of world features, asked.

“Yes, I've got them on it,” Chuck said, “but they're indicating that it'll likely be impossible, given our limited resources.”

“So do we publish this or not?” Kate asked.

“I say we publish it,” Reeka said. “It's our exclusive.”

“Why come to us with this?” Dean Altman, chief of all domestic bureaus, asked. “Why not simply post it online?”

“If you get us to do it, it gives you credibility,” Chuck said. “It gives the claim and the threat currency, and the advantage of our global reach. Our story would get redistributed online with authority, so it'd be a win-win.”

“I say we run it,” Reeka said. “It's our duty to report this.”

“It's a little more complicated than that,” said Howard Kehoe, who headed all foreign bureaus. “Right now, we can't verify the validity of this thing. We run this with the threat and we'll cause havoc to air travel around the world.”

“But our job is to inform the public,” Marisa said. “There's a public safety issue here.”

“That's just it,” Kehoe said. “If we run this claim and this threat, will it make air travel any safer? If we don't run it, are we truly risking lives? We have the fact the captain said something went wrong on the flight, and now this person is claiming that somehow they took over the plane. How? Does the technology to do this sort of thing even exist? They're a bit short on details.”

“I'm wondering why video from passengers in the cabin hasn't surfaced yet,” Bruce Dabney, the business editor, said. “These days it's almost guaranteed somebody has shot something.”

“That's right, and my point,” Kehoe said, “is that we don't yet have any official, investigative confirmation from the NTSB, or the FAA, or anyone, on what happened. I think we need to be careful here.”

“Could it be a terrorist threat?” Marisa asked.

“There's no indication in the note, no claim to affiliation, no demand or condemnation,” Kehoe said.

“What about the name Zarathustra?” Reeka asked.

“That's the name of a Persian prophet from around seven or eight hundred BC,” Chuck said. “As I recall, he taught about humanity following one God and the priority of living a moral life.”

“You're dating yourself by a few centuries, Chuck.” Marisa smiled.

“I took a few philosophy courses in school.”

“So what would you like me to do?” Kate asked, glimpsing something through the boardroom's floor-to-ceiling glass walls. Sloane was talking with Mark Reston, who was nodding to the meeting. Sloane looked uneasy.

“We're walking an ethical tightrope here,” Graham Lincoln, Newslead's editor-in-chief, said. “If we run a story now and it turns out that the note is a practical joke, we open the floodgates to all sorts of crackpots and our credibility takes a hit. I think under the circumstances we're not going to publish it.”

“Ever?” Kate asked.

“For now,” Lincoln said. “Of course, we have a moral responsibility to protect public safety, so we'll alert the authorities, the FBI in this case. We'll ask them if we're the only news organization to receive this note, ask them not to share our note, and to keep us informed on their investigation of it. Above all, we'll investigate journalistically. That is our responsibility and our duty. That's what we'll do.”

Lincoln let a moment pass for his direction to sink in around the table.

“I think we're done here. Chuck, Kate, contact the people at Federal Plaza straightaway, get the ball rolling. And remember, folks, everything said in this room remains confidential.”

As the meeting broke and editors moved from the boardroom, Kate looked again at Sloane.

He was still talking with Reston and watching her.

Intensely.

Fifteen

Manhattan, New York

“W
hat's your information on EastCloud Flight Forty-nine Ninety?”

Special Agent Anne Bartell was unsmiling, as was her partner, Agent Phil Enroy, who'd clicked his pen and poised it over his pad. After Kate was cleared at security, they'd taken her to an interview room on the twenty-eighth floor of the FBI's New York Field Office in Lower Manhattan.

It was late afternoon and people were leaving for the day.

Kate didn't know Bartell and Enroy. She'd worked with agents at this office before; Nick Varner was one, but her call got bounced and had been assigned to agents who were new to her, so she was starting cold.

“You're aware of what happened to the flight?” Kate asked.

“We've followed the press reports, including yours,” Enroy said.

“Is the FBI investigating in any way?”

“No cause has emerged for us to be involved. The NTSB leads the investigation. What's the nature of your information?” Enroy said.

Kate started by relating background on Newslead's public email for reader responses to stories, then reached into her bag and handed them printouts of the email. Upon reading it the agents made notes, and summoned Special Agent Ron Sanchez, a cyber analyst, who was also a senior member of the Joint Terrorism Task Force.

“Have you received any other communication from the sender?” Sanchez asked.

“Nothing.”

“Would you be able to forward me the email to this address?” Sanchez took out a business card and jotted down an email address.

“I'll check with my editors.”

“While you're at it, would Newslead allow our Computer Analysis and Response Team access to your system, if we need it?”

“I can't answer that. They may prefer you seek a warrant. Agent Sanchez, what do you think? Is the email legitimate?”

“Impossible to say at this stage. We'll have to assess it.”

“Assess it for...?”

“Credibility and believability. We'll examine the identity given, this ‘Zarathustra, Lord of the Heavens.' We don't know if this is simply a disturbed individual, a false alarm, or someone with the skills and resources to carry out the threat, or someone affiliated with a terrorist network. We'll assess it and run it through several databases to determine its validity. Those are the first steps.”

“Then what?”

“There's a lot more after that. If we think it has substance, we'll pull in every resource we have. We'll alert the NTSB, work with them, call in other agencies if we have to. We'll track down the sender and secure the safety of travelers and bring forth the appropriate charges. As you know, just making the threat is a criminal act.”

“Is the FBI aware of this person sending similar threats to other news organizations?”

“Not to our knowledge,” Sanchez said. “You're the first to bring this to our attention at this office.”

“Would you assure Newslead that you will not make this public, or share it with other news agencies?”

“We'll keep it confidential, unless circumstances change.”

“But you'll keep us informed along the way?”

“We're getting into hypothetical areas. If an investigation is warranted, we'd need to protect its integrity.”

“But would you respect the fact that it's Newslead's tip and we'd want to report on it exclusively if this goes anywhere?”

“You want an exclusivity deal.”

“That's right.”

“We'll leave that for the people here at a higher pay grade to sort out,” Bartell said.

“What we'll do,” Sanchez said, “is advise our supervisors that you came to us and you're cooperating. At this stage we'd ask that you not report on any aspect of this note.”

“Newslead can't surrender editorial control to the FBI. But given that there's a public safety issue here, Newslead wants to take the proper approach.”

“All right, then. Thank you for bringing this to our attention.” Sanchez stood to leave.

“Wait, one last thing. What're the chances that this note is real?”

“It's anyone's guess at this point,” Sanchez said. “The FBI receives upwards of a thousand tips a day. Everything from reports of a package left on the street, to an unstable person on a plane planning to do harm, to people overhearing someone plotting to assassinate the president. We review them all. This one will be no different. It could be someone trying to lay claim to the event. Or it could be an authentic communication from the person responsible for the problems with the flight, boasting that they have the means to carry out their threat. Until then, the truth about your sender remains a mystery.”

“With time ticking down on us,” Kate said.

* * *

Kate stepped off the elevator and was walking through the lobby when she heard someone say, “Kate? Kate Page?”

She turned to see FBI Special Agent Nick Varner pulling away from a group of people heading to the elevator doors.

“I'll catch up with you guys,” Varner called to the group as he approached her. “It's been a long time. You're looking good. How've you been? Sorry, I've only got a moment, but what brings you here?”

Kate and Nick had worked together on a major kidnapping story nearly a year ago, and she trusted him completely. Varner looked good in his suit. He'd just hit forty and still had his Brad Pitt thing going strong, she thought. His eyes were sharp and he listened intensely as she related everything about the Zarathustra threat to him, telling him what she'd told the other agents.

“I know Ron Sanchez. I work with him.” Varner reached into his pocket for a card and pen, making notes before passing it to her. “I'm strictly task force now. Here's my new number and private contact information. Keep me in the loop. Maybe I can help.”

Elevator doors chimed and he turned.

“Gotta go,” he said as he headed for the elevator. “Good seeing you. Keep in touch, Kate.”

Sixteen

Manhattan, New York

L
ogan Dunn studied the website for the
Buffalo News
on his phone while waiting at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Midtown Manhattan.

He concentrated on a wire story the
News
had carried under the headline:

Pilot of Troubled EastCloud Buffalo-to-NYC Flight: Malfunction Puts Passengers at Risk.

He'd read it several times, coming back to the statements by Raymond Matson, the captain:

I don't know what happened but I know something went wrong. This was a clear flight control computer malfunction.

Damn right something went wrong.

Logan reached up to relieve an itch on his temple, touching the bandages covering the cuts he'd received on the flight. Then he went to the video he'd recorded.

It started with Kayla at her window seat, anxious but winning over her fear of flying, when the jetliner suddenly rolled hard, the right wing tipping toward the ground, passengers screaming for their lives as bodies and items were tossed like they were in a blender. The horror was repeated as the plane suddenly lurched to the left, throwing people to the opposite side as the jet leveled, then took a sudden death dive before the crew regained control.

Somehow, throughout the chaos and panic, Logan had managed to hang on to his phone and keep recording.

In the aftermath, when paramedics had taken him, Kayla and the other passengers to the hospital for observation, he'd alerted Kayla's parents, and his, that they'd been shaken but not seriously hurt.

Like the other passengers, Logan and Kayla had cooperated with the NTSB and EastCloud Airlines, providing statements. The NTSB and EastCloud wanted him to share his video and not make it public, stating that it would help with the investigation.

But Logan had refused to share it.

He wanted to help but he was hesitant. Word had circulated among the passengers that while many had still pictures and video taken
after
the incident, Logan was the only person whose footage had captured the entire event as it had happened. He'd called one of his law professors and told him about the flight with Kayla, his video and the circumstances.

The video is essentially your property,
the professor had said.
I understand you'd want to help investigators because of the safety issues, but you might want to consider making your recording public first before sharing it with the NTSB and the airline. It would strengthen a civil case should you proceed with an action, and I would think you and Kayla have a very strong case.

But that was the problem.

Kayla didn't want Logan to release the video.

Her reasoning ranged from
It's too frightening,
to
My screaming is embarrassing,
to
It could have an impact on my hope of ever getting a job with Maly Kriz-Janda.
Her opposition was irrational, but Logan understood. She'd been traumatized by the incident.

He looked down at Kayla now, her head resting on his chest as they waited at the bus terminal. Her chin was bandaged. Bruises dotted her neck and arm. He thought of how much the job at the fashion designer had meant to her, how hard she'd worked in school to pursue her dream. He thought of all she'd done to alleviate her fear of flying—the books, the recordings—and his heart ached for her.

While in the hospital, she'd called Maly Kriz-Janda, told them about the flight and canceled her interview.

I'm okay with it. Really,
she'd told him.

But she wasn't okay. She'd cried in the aftermath. Then the designer called her back and very kindly offered to interview Kayla over the phone, if she was willing.

Kayla had gone ahead with a short, shaky interview in which she'd made it clear that she'd never again get on a plane. The designer had been upbeat, thanked her, called her brave and said they'd get back to her. But Kayla had given up on the job and wanted to get home to Buffalo.

And now here they were, awaiting a nine-hour bus trip across the state.

Logan's back and shoulders were sore from the items that had crashed into him, and he had to reposition himself on the bench, disturbing Kayla.

“I wasn't sleeping,” she said. “I saw you looking at the video again.”

“I know this is hard, and you've been through a lot, but we should release it. We can't be selfish about this, Kay. People have to know what happened on that plane.”

“I know,” she said.

“You know?”

She nodded.

“So you're okay to make it public?”

Tears came to her eyes as she nodded.

“I wouldn't want anyone else to go through this, and I know we're so lucky to be alive.”

Tenderly, he pressed her head to his face and kissed her.

“It's okay. Everything's going to be okay.”

They sat there for a moment. Then Logan scrolled through the newswire story. It was written by Kate Page. He searched for her email on the bottom then sent her a message.

After checking the time, he looked up Newslead's telephone number and called it.