Chapter 8 - THE MEN WAITING ON THE RUNWAY
Pauline laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Because sometimes the human mind reached a point where disbelief became easier to express as laughter.
“Daniel’s son?”
The officer nodded.
“He says his name is Lucas Mercer.”
“How old?”
“Forty-one.”
Pauline calculated automatically.
Born 1985.
Two years after Daniel supposedly died.
Vance looked disturbed.
“That proves nothing.”
“No,” Pauline said. “But I’d like to hear him lie in person.”
They moved through Falcon Ridge under heavy security.
Outside, passengers from Flight 702 were being interviewed.
Reporters had already gathered beyond the gates.
Helicopters circled at legal distance.
News trucks lined access roads.
The story had become national.
Mark walked beside Pauline.
“You don’t have to meet this man.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
“Because if he’s Daniel’s son, he knows something.”
“And if he isn’t?”
“Then I want to know why he chose that lie.”
Lucas Mercer sat cuffed to a steel table in an interview room.
Without the navy pullover, he looked smaller.
Less threatening.
His wrists were bruised from being restrained onboard.
He studied Pauline when she entered.
Not her face.
Her eyes.
Then he smiled.
“You look like him.”
Pauline remained standing.
“Who?”
“My father said you’d ask that.”
“Where is Daniel?”
Lucas looked toward Vance.
“I speak to her alone.”
Vance scoffed.
“Not happening.”
Lucas shrugged.
“Then enjoy forty more years of questions.”
Pauline sat.
“Thomas stays.”
Lucas raised an eyebrow.
“That surprises me.”
“It surprises him too.”
Mark remained behind her.
Lucas noticed.
“The co-pilot.”
“First Officer,” Mark corrected.
Lucas smiled faintly.
“The one who told her to sit down.”
Mark sighed.
“That clip is everywhere already, isn’t it?”
“Millions of views.”
Pauline almost smiled.
Even in a military interrogation room, Mark managed to look personally offended by social media.
Lucas leaned forward.
“I wasn’t trying to crash the aircraft.”
“Your device interfered with our systems.”
“It was supposed to stop a remote command from reaching them.”
Vance said, “That makes no technical sense.”
“It would if you knew what was installed during maintenance in Denver.”
Pauline’s attention sharpened.
“What was installed?”
“A control relay hidden inside the aircraft data interface. Someone could trigger false sensor inputs remotely.”
Mark stared.
“That would require extraordinary access.”
“Yes.”
“Airline maintenance credentials.”
“Government contractor credentials,” Lucas corrected.
Vance’s face tightened.
“Who?”
Lucas looked at Pauline.
“My father.”
The room went still.
Pauline’s voice dropped.
“Daniel tried to crash Flight 702?”
“No.”
“Then explain.”
“My father spent years trying to identify the people who set up Operation Night Widow. Two months ago he found them.”
“Them?”
“A network.”
Vance shook his head.
“Conspiracy nonsense.”
Lucas laughed.
“You’re the reason he had to become a conspiracy.”
Vance stepped forward.
Pauline raised a hand.
“Let him speak.”
Lucas continued.
“After his aircraft went down, my father survived in the water for six hours. A foreign vessel picked him up.”
“Which country?” Mark asked.
“I don’t know everything.”
“You know enough.”
Lucas nodded.
“He was held for nearly eleven months. Interrogated. Eventually exchanged quietly through intelligence channels.”
Pauline stared at Vance.
“You told me nobody recovered him.”
Vance looked genuinely shocked.
“I never knew this.”
Lucas studied him.
“That may actually be true.”
Pauline turned back.
“Why didn’t Daniel come home?”
“Because someone tried to kill him during the transfer.”
Pauline felt cold.
Lucas continued.
“He escaped. Disappeared. By then he believed people inside the government had deliberately sent the Widow pilots into that weapons corridor.”
“Why?”
“Testing.”
Pauline frowned.
“Testing what?”
“An electronic system designed to manipulate military aircraft navigation and threat-warning equipment.”
Mark leaned forward.
“Remote deception?”
Lucas nodded.
“A primitive version. Night Widow wasn’t the mission.”
Pauline understood before he finished.
“We were the experiment.”
“Yes.”
Her stomach turned.
Vance sat down.
“No.”
Lucas looked at him.
“You authenticated the route.”
“I said the signature was forged.”
“It was.”
Vance stared.
Lucas continued.
“You were selected because whoever planned it knew your authorization codes.”
Pauline rubbed her forehead.
Forty-three years.
All those funerals.
All those classified explanations.
They had not flown into an accident.
They had been used.
“Who planned it?” she asked.
Lucas shook his head.
“My father never proved the top name.”
“But he found something recently.”
“Yes.”
“What?”
Lucas looked at the mirrored observation window.
“He found out the technology never disappeared.”
Mark frowned.
“The technology used against Flight 702.”
“Yes.”
“Why attack Pauline now?”
“They weren’t attacking her.”
Everyone stared.
Lucas continued.
“They were attacking my father.”
Pauline’s voice became hard.
“Daniel wasn’t on the aircraft.”
“No. But the document he mailed you contained a tracking marker.”
Pauline reached toward her jacket.
Lucas shook his head.
“Not physical. Digital. The moment airline systems scanned your identity at check-in, someone monitoring you knew you were moving.”
Vance said, “Why mail her anything?”
“Because my father wanted her to expose the truth if he disappeared.”
Pauline stood.
“Where is he?”
Lucas stared at her for several seconds.
“He was supposed to meet you in Washington tomorrow.”
Pauline remembered her ticket.
Denver to Washington.
Exactly.
“He knew my flight?”
“He chose it.”
Anger rose.
“He put me on that airplane knowing it might be targeted?”
“No. He believed you were being watched, not that they would risk hundreds of civilians.”
“Yet here we are.”
Lucas looked ashamed.
“Yes.”
Pauline stepped away.
For the first time that day, anger overwhelmed fear.
Daniel had been alive.
He had known where she lived.
Known her family.
Known her schedule.
And instead of knocking on her front door like a human being, he had sent classified documents and riddles.
Exactly the kind of thing the young Daniel would have considered clever.
She wanted to slap him.
Then hug him.
Then slap him again.
“Where did he go after the runway?”
Lucas looked at her.
“He wasn’t on the runway.”
Pauline froze.
“I saw him.”
“You saw someone made to look like him.”
“No.”
“My father is six foot two. The man on that runway was five ten.”
Pauline replayed the image.
Distance.
Windshield.
Stress.
Gray hair.
Voice over radio.
Could Lucas be right?
“You’re lying.”
Lucas slowly reached into his shirt collar.
An agent moved forward.
Lucas stopped.
“There’s a chain.”
The agent removed it.
Attached was a tiny metal cylinder.
Inside was a rolled strip of paper.
Pauline opened it.
Handwriting.
She knew it instantly.
Daniel.
Professor,
If Lucas failed to stop them, I’m sorry.
If you’re reading this, Night Widow never ended.
Do not trust the man who meets you in Washington.
Trust Sam’s blood.
And Pauline—
I never blamed you.
D.M.
Pauline’s eyes blurred.
She read the final sentence again.
I never blamed you.
Forty-three years of guilt cracked open.
Not gone.
But changed.
Mark quietly looked away to give her privacy.
Vance whispered:
“Sam’s blood.”
Pauline thought of Ethan Hayes.
Samuel’s grandson.
The F-35 pilot.
Trust Sam’s blood.
She turned toward the officer.
“Where is Captain Ethan Hayes?”
The officer answered:
“His fighter just landed.”
Pauline folded the message.
“Take me to him.”
Before anyone moved, every light in the building went out.
Emergency red lamps came on.
An alarm began sounding.
Over the public-address system, a voice announced:
“Security breach. Hangar sector four.”
Vance looked toward the door.
The officer’s radio exploded with chatter.
Then one phrase came through clearly.
“F-35 unauthorized engine start.”
May you like
Pauline stared at Vance.
Someone was trying to steal Ethan Hayes’s aircraft.
