“Something tells me your boss might want to reopen the investigation,” Rudi said.
“Agreed.”
Kurt glanced at the dark screen and then back at Emma. “Well, whoever he was, he failed. The real question is, why? Everything appeared to be firmly in hand.”
“Maybe a stray signal got through from Vandenberg?” Joe suggested.
“We don’t think so,” Hiram replied. “They were using the second bomber as a mobile transmitter, blasting a high-powered signal at the Nighthawk from close range. A setup like that would effectively drown out anything the NSA tried to send through.”
Emma agreed. “Assuming the time on their clock was accurate, we’d already lost total contact with the vehicle when they caught it. It wasn’t our doing. It must have been the autonomous programming. Not that it matters at
this point.” She looked Kurt’s way. “For whatever it’s worth, you were right about one thing: the NSA and Vandenberg have been compromised. If the Russians have the alpha codes, they have everything.”
“Not everything,” Kurt reminded her, before turning back to Hiram. “Any idea where the Nighthawk went after this?”
“We’re working on that now,” he replied. “But it’s difficult to say for sure. The intercept changes all the calculations. The Russians gave it a nine minute piggyback ride at Mach 5, keeping it at full speed and above ninety thousand feet when it was supposed to be slowing and descending. That helpful little boost added seven hundred miles to the maximum glide path. Complicating matters are several video frames where the Nighthawk appears to be turning and shedding tiles, suggesting it was damaged as it broke free. All of that could affect the course, speed and glide path.”
“I’m sure you have something,” Kurt prodded.
Hiram nodded. “Max, show us the new course probability cone.”
An image appeared on the screen. This time, the Ecuadorian coast was much larger and closer. A widening yellow cone curved toward it, crossing southern Ecuador and continuing inland over the mountains and jungles of Peru.
“It could be anywhere in that area,” Hiram said. “Or any other area if the flight controls were damaged.”
“So we are back to square one,” Emma said.
“Not quite,” Priya said. She wheeled over to a keyboard and tapped away on it for a few seconds. “We have this. It’s a video that was released on Peruvian television.”
The recording played for all to see. Shot by an amateur, it went in and out of focus but captured a glowing object crossing the night sky like a fireball. There was some shouting in the background and then the object disappeared beyond the top of a nearby hill.
The camera panned around, briefly capturing the edge of a solar panel and a pile of jumbled stones that looked like the ruins of a Neolithic building. A voice spoke off-camera. “A sign from the gods,” it said in accented English. “The end must be near.”
A few grins broke out among the NUMA staff, but Emma’s lips remained tightly pursed. “Who filmed this video?” she asked. “And where?”
“According to the television network, it was taken by a Peruvian archaeologist named Urco. He’s currently working in the Andes on a dig connected to the Chachapoya, the Cloud People of Peru.”
“Is there any way to authenticate it?” Kurt asked.
“No,” Priya said. “It was shown a few hours ago. But it was allegedly filmed just before dawn on the morning of the Nighthawk’s disappearance. We’ve double-checked. The time frame is right and the location is within the Nighthawk’s newly extended glide path.”
Rudi spoke next. “Any chance the video is a hoax?”
“A hoax of what?” Emma said. “No one in the outside world knows the plane is missing.”
Priya added to that thought. “If you notice, the man in the video doesn’t claim he’s seen a spacecraft. The text accompanying the video calls it a meteor sighting.”
“Can you calculate altitude and speed from the video?” Kurt asked.
“Not without more information,” Hiram said. “Even if we could get a rough estimate, it wouldn’t do any good without a precise direction.”
Joe chimed in. “If we knew where he was standing and the exact location of that cliff dwelling behind him, we could get an accurate directional fix.”
Kurt nodded, glanced around the room and then asked the question on everyone’s mind: “Do we have any other leads?”
Both rooms held silent.
“Then it’s agreed,” Kurt said. “Let the Russians and Chinese search the Pacific. We’ll go inland and see if this archaeologist can point us in the right direction.”