Shadow Catcher by James R. Hannibal
“Who?” asked Amanda.
“The pilot of the Blackbird that took these photos. He can tell us what’s missing from that picture.”
Disbelief covered Tarpin’s face. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said.
“Your agency lost control of the Blackbird program in the late sixties,” replied McBride. “By the eighties, those assets belonged to the US Air Force, and the US Air Force keeps better records than any military service on the planet—even when it makes no sense to do so.” He used the mouse to highlight a name on the screen. “Thus, I give you Edward Masters.”
“That’s great,” said Tarpin, his tone flat. “How long ago did he pass away?”
McBride clicked open another window and highlighted more text. “He’s alive and living the good life on Lake Anna.” He pulled the address up on a map for them to see.
“That’s only two hours south of here,” said Amanda.
McBride checked his watch and then looked up at her. “Do you think he’s awake?”
CHAPTER 38
The Wraith still had a long drive ahead before reaching Fujian. Nick left Drake at the controls and retired to the crew bunk for some rest. He placed a hand on his vest pocket and felt the pill bottle that Heldner had given him, but he wasn’t ready to sleep. Too much had happened in the last few days.
As he sat down in his bunk, Nick struggled to fit the puzzle together. Chinese operatives attempt to steal stealth technology in Kuwait. The man who turns up to identify their bodies just happens to have been in Kuwait when the Triple Seven’s first mission went horribly wrong. Then a missing CIA operative turns up in Fujian, an operative that may well have been sold out by a mole in the Distant Sage operation. And as soon as Nick’s team develops a rescue plan, the same man from Kuwait shows up at his house and threatens his family.
Nick shut his eyes tight. The puzzle pieces seemed to move in circles. He wasn’t even sure they all came from the same box. How could events split by twenty-five years be related? Maybe they weren’t. Maybe he was just grasping for deeper meaning after the shock of seeing Katy and Luke threatened.
Maybe not.
He removed an old leather-bound book from the cargo pocket on his pant leg.
“What’s that?”
Nick looked up to see Quinn peeking down from the crew bunk above him. “I thought you were resting,” he said.
“Yeah, right,” replied Quinn. “Like I could sleep on the way to my first real mission.”
“You’re not even supposed to be here. It’s not a good idea to remind me how green you are,” said Nick. He sat back in the bunk and brought the book up to read.
Quinn refused to take the hint. “You stole that from the CIA’s archive crate,” he said. “That’s another agency’s classified material.”
“This material was entrusted to my team, and I deemed it essential to the accomplishment of my mission,” countered Nick without lowering the book. “Your job here is to shut up and stay out of the way.”
Quinn disappeared back into his bunk. “Whatever.”
Nick ignored the young airman and turned his attention to Novak’s book. Faded handwritten notes filled almost every page, along with several sketches. He read a few of the labels beneath the pictures: RB-57 Canberra with Company Recon Mod, Photo Analysis Room—Pruszcz Gdanski, Red Baron Recce Pod. Novak was a skilled artist and apparently a technology buff. With all of the detail in the sketches, Nick began to wonder if Novak had an ulterior motive for keeping this journal. He flipped to the last few entries, all made at the CIA’s forward operating location on Taiwan, and began to read.
September 26, 1987, FOL Sincheng, Taiwan
Jozef is finally warming up to me again. He’s been so distant since Anja and I married that I felt like I’d lost a brother. The environment here is a great catalyst for reconciliation. Like in Poland, we are the only two American pilots. But there, our Slavic heritage gave us a bond with the others, at least a superficial one. Here we have nothing. The Taiwan nationals keep us at arm’s length and treat us with suspicion, even the pilots. The ready room chatter is Chinese, filled with the laughter of inside jokes, and often it seems as if we are the butt of them. Jozef is learning Mandarin. He’s doing quite well from what I can see. Maybe that will help.
October 24, 1987, FOL Sincheng, Taiwan
It’s happening again. We lost three Taiwan nationals this month. One got hit by a missile just after crossing the mainland coastline. He limped back to the base, only to cartwheel down the runway in an unholy fireball. Two more disappeared last week. We sent them on a shore mission to check out a possible buildup on Nanhaixiang. They took a runabout out of Sincheng harbor eight days ago. We haven’t heard from them since. Wright couldn’t care less. As always, he seems constantly preoccupied with something else.
November 23, 1987, FOL Sincheng, Taiwan
Another national has disappeared, a photo analyst. She took a weekend leave to Taipei and never came back. She’s been gone eleven days. Wright, our benevolent spook in charge, claims that she just got burned out and quit. He certainly isn’t devoting enough resources to hunting her down.
It’s not just the losses. Our reconnaissance runs are becoming less fruitful. Jozef says that it’s because the Chinese have stepped up their camouflage, ever since they shot one of our F-16s. But these are huge military sites; they can’t stay camouflaged all the time. I think someone is warning them. Maybe we can’t trust the nationals no matter where we go. Maybe one of the Taiwan natives has turned, the same way that we think one of the Polish did. I know that I check my six more often when my wingman is a Taiwan national. Thank God for Jozef and Anja. They are the only people here that I can talk to, the only people I can trust.
December 12, 1987, FOL Sincheng, Taiwan
It seems that something goes wrong on every mission: broken reconnaissance pods, Chinese camouflage, bad navigation systems, engine malfunctions. Two days ago, we almost lost Jozef. His engine quit and he had to dead-stick his Viper back to the runway. We still haven’t been able to determine what caused it. We haven’t lost any personnel since the analyst, but I am still utterly convinced that there is a mole. I get the sense that the nationals agree that something is very wrong. They won’t talk to me about it. They don’t trust the Americans. Why should they? Maybe one of us is selling them out.
December 25, 1987, FOL Sincheng, Taiwan
Merry Christmas. I’ve come up with a plan to weed out the mole. I brought in Wright and the director of photo analysis to get approval, but none of the nationals will know about it. After my New Year’s Day mission, I’ll have a good idea where to find the mole.
Nick flipped the page. Blank. There were no more entries. He placed the journal on the bunk next to him and lay down. So Novak had started his own operation to smoke out the mole. Maybe he was getting too close, about to turn up the right stone. Then he disappeared, and the mole was never found. Nick closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. None of that connected Novak to the mole in the Triple Seven Chase, if there even was one. Nick blinked. Unless Novak’s mole and the Triple Seven’s mole were one and the same. He swallowed Heldner’s pill and closed his eyes. He was chasing shadows.
Even after taking the pill, he could not quiet his mind. For several minutes, random phrases and fragmented visions paraded through his mind. Then, finally, the drug overpowered his thoughts, and he slept.
CHAPTER 39
Where was she?
McBride checked his watch. Almost 6:00 A.M. The sun was just peeking over the airfield’s eastern runway, causing the tarmac to ripple like a glassy lake.
The archive crate had produced no other leads beyond the doctored photograph. Exhausted by the predawn launch, the group had split for some much-needed rest. Tarpin would have to stay in DC and check in at Langley, but Amanda had agreed to drive out to Lake Anna with McBride to find the Blackbird pilot. They were supposed to meet in the
“Just like a woman,” he muttered, “never ready on ti—”
A spellbinding sight interrupted McBride’s disparaging words. Amanda strode around the corner of the hangar like a model on a catwalk, her athletic form flattered by the morning play of light and shadow. McBride suddenly felt ill prepared, even dirty. He had merely showered and re-dressed in the same red polo and khakis. She wore a fresh skirt and blouse, with a matching blazer casually slung over her shoulder. He found it difficult to recall, but he could swear she’d even managed a change of shoes.
“Sorry I’m late,” said Amanda brightly.
“How did you . . . Did I miss something?” stuttered McBride, looking from his wrinkled khakis to Amanda’s pressed suit.
She looked at him quizzically and then suddenly caught his meaning. “Oh, you mean this?” she asked cavalierly, waving a hand from her shoulders to her hips with a flourish. “I keep a spare outfit in the car. Fortune favors the prepared, you know.”
McBride opened the passenger’s-side door of his car. “I take back everything I said in defense of Drake last night,” he said, taking Amanda’s hand to help her in. “He shouldn’t have left you behind for this mission. He’s a bum.”
A little over two hours later, McBride parked the car in the gravel driveway of a chocolate brown two-story lake home. As he opened the car door for Amanda, a gray-haired man waved from the screened-in porch.
“Hello there,” said the man in a rich bass voice. “You two must be McBride and Navistrova.” He opened the screen door and beckoned them onto the porch. “Thanks for calling before you came over. Margaret hates surprise visitors.”
“Colonel Edward Masters, I presume?” asked McBride, flashing his Department of Defense ID.
“Retired colonel,” corrected Masters. He waved off the ID and shook McBride’s outstretched hand with an iron grip. “And you can call me Ned.”
“Yes, sir,” replied McBride. He never knew how to respond to informalities from officers, retired or not.
“On the phone you said this was a matter of national security,” said Masters, smoothing the front of his flannel shirt. He motioned for them to sit at a glass table and then took his own seat. McBride expected the older man to lower himself slowly into the chair. Instead, he moved with the ease and strength of a man twenty years younger.
“Yes, sir,” McBride began. “We wanted to ask you about some photos you took back in your Blackbird days.”
Masters narrowed his eyes. “You can’t be serious. I got all those photographs declassified through the proper channels. Did you folks really drive all the way down here to complain about the reunion website?”
McBride pulled the photos and old file from the CIA out of his briefcase. “No, sir, we’re not here about photos you took of the plane. We’re here to ask you about some photos you took from the plane.”
A tall woman with neatly bobbed hair and denim capris interrupted the conversation. She gracefully weaved around the porch furniture and placed a tray of juices and pastries on the glass table. McBride instinctively retrieved the file to hide the classified photos.
Masters smiled. “Oh, don’t worry about her. The Blackbird wives got scrutinized by the security folks as much as their husbands.” He looked up at her and smiled, giving her hand a tender squeeze. “And it’s a good thing they did. Too many secrets can play havoc on a marriage.”
McBride abashedly replaced the file on the table. He stood up and offered his hand to the old pilot’s wife. “Sergeant Will McBride,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, ma’am. You didn’t have to go to any trouble.”
The woman gently shook McBride’s hand and then waved hers dismissively. “Oh, it’s no trouble at all,” she said. “It’s not every day we get to entertain visitors.” She patted Masters on the head. “Mostly it’s just me and Ole Blue here.”
Masters rolled his eyes. “Thank you, dear.”
A telephone rang inside the house. “Oops, that’s my cue,” said Margaret. “Y’all holler if you need anything else.” She retreated back into the house as gracefully as she had come out.
“We understand you worked in concert with Operation Distant Sage,” prompted McBride, getting back to business.
“Haven’t heard that name in a while,” said Masters, leaning forward and resting his arms on the tabletop, “particularly not outside of a secure room.” He nodded. “Yes, our squadron cooperated with the spooks to share intel.”
“I’ve been wondering,” said Amanda. “Why the overlap? If the CIA was running low-level photo flights over China, why send out the Blackbirds as well?”
Masters gave her a sly grin. “It’s better if I show you. We’ll do a little demonstration with your partner here.” He leaned back and picked up a postcard from an end table behind him. “Just got a stack of these from the Smithsonian,” he said, placing the card on the table with its photo side down. Then he pulled a document from the CIA file and rolled it into a tight cylinder. “Close one eye and look through this.” He held the cylinder just above the table in front of McBride.
McBride smiled awkwardly and complied, bending forward to look through the paper.
“No peeking,” said Masters, waving a hand in front of McBride’s closed eye. Then he turned over the postcard and carefully slid it under the homemade scope. “What do you see?” he asked.
“I see an American flag blowing in the wind, with gray sky in the background.”
“Mm-hmm,” said Masters. “Now put away the paper and open your eyes.”
McBride sat back and looked at the card. It was a color photo of a lunar landing. An astronaut stood between the American flag and a Moon rover.
“That flag isn’t blowing in the wind,” said Masters, his sly grin returning. “It’s standing straight out because NASA put a telescoping rod behind it to give it a rippling look. And that gray background isn’t a cloud. It’s a lunar mountain.
“We call that the microscope effect. You need a close-up view to see important details, but if that’s the only view you have, you miss the bigger picture. The Blackbirds provided that big picture, and then the CIA Vipers went in with the microscope.”
McBride nodded. “Speaking of pictures, we need you to tell us what you can remember about some photos you took back in ’88.”
“I don’t know if I can help you much there. You might want to talk to my backseater; he ran the cameras and the radar. Shoot, we didn’t even see most of the pictures we took.”
“I think you might remember these.” McBride handed the photos to Masters. “It was New Year’s Day.”
Masters pulled a pair of reading glasses out of his pocket and seated them on his nose before scrutinizing the pictures. After almost a minute, he sat back and let out a low whistle. “I do remember this day,” he said, looking hard at McBride. “This was the last flight operation for Distant Sage, the day that one of the Vipers got shot down.”
“That’s right,” said McBride. “We’re conducting an investigation to find out what really happened. We’re not sure that we have all of the details right.”
Masters bent over the photos and studied them again. When he looked up, his face had changed, the levity of an aging gentleman replaced by the gravity of a military commander. “I was the supervising officer who packaged the photos and sent them over to Distant Sage after the incident,” he said, “and I can already tell you one detail that you’ve got wrong.”
“What’s that?” asked Amanda.
Masters removed his reading glasses and set them on the table. He shifted his gaze from McBride to Amanda with a deadly serious expression. “These aren’t the original photos. The pictures that I sent over showed two F-16s.”
CHAPTER 40
Nick woke up to find Drake shaking his shoulder.
“You’re doing the zombie thing again. Quit it. You?
Nick blinked hard, trying to regain his orientation. He felt the aircraft bank roughly to one side and then level out again. “Whoa. Who’s flying the plane?”
“I’m giving Quinn a flying lesson,” Drake replied. “Come on up front. Lighthouse wants you on the radio.”
Nick cranked his stiff neck to one side, making an audible pop. “I don’t want you to teach the new kid to fly the plane,” he said. “For the same reason a father doesn’t let his son teach a stray dog new tricks.”
“Because we’re not going to keep him?”
“Exactly. Don’t get too attached.”
Nick followed Drake to the front of the aircraft and sat down at the copilot station. Next to him, Quinn held the side-stick control with a white-knuckle grip, staring at the horizon on the main screen with wide eyes. Nick snorted at the pararescueman’s nervous flying and then keyed the radio microphone. “Lighthouse, go ahead for Wraith.”
“This is Will McBride,” the voice in the radio replied. “I’ve got some new information for you.” He explained the doctored photographs and the missing F-16.
“Did you find out who was flying the other aircraft?”
“There’s no record,” replied McBride. “It could have been any one of the Taiwan nationals or the other American pilot.”
“The second aircraft confirms there was a mole. Novak suspected as much. He was getting close to smoking out the traitor.”
“I guess that means you’re the thief who stole the journal from the crate.”
At McBride’s mention of the journal, Nick glanced over at Quinn, but the kid was too focused on flying the aircraft to listen to the radio conversation. He lowered his voice. “Why is everyone hounding me about that. My mission, my resource.”