Chapter 7 - Unscheduled FlightThe private charter terminal was dimly lit as we crossed the apron under the cover of a steady rain. The pilot of the Gulfstream was an old Air Force buddy of mine, a guy named Marcus 'Barnacle' Vance—no relation to the General—who had transitioned to flying corporate elites ten years ago.
“You’re asking for a lot of off-route miles, Sarah,” Marcus said, looking between me and Daniel as we stepped up the airstairs into the lavish cabin. “Filing a flight plan from Kansas City to Honolulu without twenty-four hours notice is going to draw eyes.”
“File it as a ferry flight to San Diego first,” I told him, dropping my gear onto a leather seat. “Once we’re over international waters west of California, alter course southwest toward Oahu. Change transponder codes to a secondary civilian block.”
Marcus squinted at me. “Is this military business?”
“It’s personal business that the military doesn't want talked about,” Daniel said grimly, placing his locked flight bag under the table.
Marcus stared at us for a long moment, then sighed and clicked his tongue. “Ethan was a good man, Sarah. He pulled my ass out of a bad situation over the Baltic in ’08. If this is about him, I didn't see anything, and I didn't hear anything.”
Ten minutes later, the Gulfstream’s jet engines roared, and the small aircraft accelerated down Runway 19 Right, lifting effortlessly into the storm clouds above Kansas City.
As the city lights faded behind us, I pulled out Ethan’s encrypted audio log once more. I put on the noise-canceling headphones and listened to the background noise behind his voice—the faint, repeating rhythmic beep of an active sonar transmission that shouldn't have been present in an air-to-air engagement.
“Daniel,” I said, pointing to the audio spectrum visualization on the screen. “Listen to this pulse frequency.”
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He leaned over and put an earpiece in. “That’s not radar. That’s a low-frequency underwater transducer.”
“Exactly,” I said. “Your father wasn't just tracking an aircraft. He was tracking an aircraft that was communicating with a submarine.”
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