Page 46 of Clive Cussler Ghost Soldier
Juan took his customary seat at the head of the table.
“I trust you all read my report,” Cabrillo said. He had dictated a brief summary of the events in Afghanistan in between bites of his Reuben sandwich while still in the clinic. It provided details on the vast numbers of weapons in Taliban hands and Juan’s concern regarding the mysterious Vendor.
“Those fanatics have more distribution centers than Amazon Prime,” Max said. “But it’s this Vendor character we need to chase down. Too bad about the plane.”
“Any idea who shot it down?” Juan asked.
“No missile track was recorded,” Murph said.
Juan frowned with confusion. “Are you suggesting a catastrophic failure? Or did it self-destruct?”
“My guess is the latter,” Eric said. “Murph and I think that you must have initiated a self-destruct sequence when you overrode the automated system and manually dropped the ramp and launched his pallets.”
“Kinda makes sense,” Max said. “Automated aircraft and forklifts and whatnot means this Vendor either has a severe aversion to union labor or he’s trying to maximize his anonymity. Blowing that plane out of the sky was a costly but effective way to cover his tracks.”
“Hard to believe a pilotless cargo plane was also operating as a commercial airliner,” Linda said. “How did he pull that off?”
“Maybe that was all a ruse. Could be a transport network for smuggling terrorists, illegals—people who don’t care about planes and pilots, just destinations.” Juan turned to Linda.
“Did you locate the crash site?”
“The debris field was distributed over two miles.” Linda checked her watch. “As of six minutes ago, theOregonwas stationed smack-dab in the center of it.”
“You know what I’m looking for,” Juan said.
Linda nodded. “The flight data recorder.”
“Bingo. That’ll tell us where it was headed, and if we’re lucky, everywhere it’s been in the past thirty days.”
“Unfortunately, where we’re anchored is exactly 9,207 feet above the seafloor. You’re looking for the head of a needle at the bottom of a nearly infinite haystack.”
Cabrillo noted the wry smile curling her mouth.
“And?”
“Tell him, Murph,” she said.
Murph pressed a remote control. One of the big monitors popped on, displaying a sonar field. A red dot flashed in the four o’clock position.
“We either got lucky or he got lazy, but either way our friend with the automation fetish forgot to disable the plane’s underwater locator beacon. As soon as the tail section hit the water, the underwater locator beam began firing a signal at thirty-seven point five kilohertz.”
“That’s a pretty typical locator frequency,” Eric said, turning to Callie. Annapolis had drilled into him the need for analytical specificity, but he was also trying to impress the stunning engineer. “And the locator beam tells us exactly where the flight data recorder is.”
Murph leaned in close to Eric and whispered loudly, “Well said…Captain Obvious.”
Eric ignored him, and turned toward the Chairman.
“Our hydrophones picked up the locator pings and, as you can see, the tail section—”
Murph hit another button on his remote, overlaying a digitized image of an intact tail section resting precariously on a ledge.
“—where the flight data recorder is located, is perched on this ledge just 7,214 feet down.”
“Just?” Max asked.
“Just,” Callie said with a smile.
Juan swiveled his chair in her direction.
