Douglas Preston: The Obsidian Chamber

The chase was over.

Except that it wasn’t.

At the last possible moment, following his gut, Proctor took the exit for the bridge, shearing across three lanes of traffic, barely able to keep the Rolls under control as it negotiated the sharp, walled ramp. He chose the lower level of the bridge because of its reduced truck traffic and, hence, greater maneuverability and speed. Crackled reports over the police radio were calling in their useless, negative findings. On the seat beside him, the 911 operator’s voice began to flutter above the threshold of hearing again. Proctor knew that, once the cops turned their attention away from the failed chase, the next person of interest would be himself. He did not have the time for unwanted questions or — worse — potential detainment. Reaching over, he picked up the cell phone, lowered his window, and tossed it out. He had other prepaid burner phones stowed in the bug-out bag.

Reaching the far side of the bridge and New Jersey, he slowed to seventy as he passed the eastbound toll plaza; he did not want to get pulled over for speeding at such a critical moment. He negotiated the tangle of diverging freeways and headed for the I-80 Express westbound. Fifteen minutes later, he took Exit 65 from the interstate, making for Teterboro Airport.

Proctor had surmised there were only two viable escape options open to Diogenes: to go to ground in some nearby safe house prearranged for the purpose, or to take Constance somewhere distant via private transportation. If Diogenes had gone to ground, it was too late to do anything about it. If he planned on taking her someplace far away, he could not risk staying in the Navigator. It would be impossible to drag a kidnap victim onto a commercial flight or some other form of public transportation — and his license plate was known. What remained as a destination was Teterboro: the closest airport capable of handling long-distance private aircraft.

He turned onto Industrial Avenue and pulled the Rolls over to the curb beside the airport’s closest entrance. He scanned the line of nearby structures: the tower, a fire station, various FBO buildings. There was no sign of the Navigator, but that meant nothing: it could be already abandoned behind, or within, any of half a dozen hangars. Opening the driver’s door, he stepped out and quickly scanned the runways for taxiing planes — there were none — then peered up at the sky. A jet was climbing away, its gear retracting as he watched. But the airspace over the tristate area was full of planes: there was no way to be certain Diogenes was on that particular one.

Not yet, at any rate.

Getting back into the Rolls, he retrieved the vehicle’s laptop, accessed the Internet, and pulled up the diagram for Teterboro. Next, he checked the AirNav website for summary information on the airport: latitude and longitude, operational statistics, runway dimensions. Teterboro’s two runways were both about seven thousand feet in length, capable of handling nearly any size plane. He noted that the airport serviced around 450 aircraft a day, of which 60 percent were general aviation. Now he scrolled down the web page until he reached the fixed-base operator information: data on ground handling, avionics service, aircraft charters. He committed all this information to memory.

Putting the Rolls into gear, he entered the airport proper and drove along the line of buildings until he reached one at the very head of runway 1. The building was a cavernous hangar with a large sign that read NORTH JERSEY FLIGHT TRAINING. Grabbing his bug-out bag, he jumped out of the car and ran toward the building. He glanced inside it briefly and continued past to the end of the runway itself. The flight school had half a dozen crappy Cessna 152s parked directly on the tarmac. In the closest one, he noticed, two people were sitting: evidently a pilot and a student, going over the flight plan for an upcoming lesson.

Fixing a worried look on his face, Proctor ran to the plane, waving at them to open their windows. The occupants looked out at him. From the expressions on their faces it was immediately evident who was the pilot and who was the student.

“Can you help me?” Proctor asked, pitching his voice high and querulous. “Did you just see a man and a woman get on a plane here?”

The men in the Cessna looked at each other.

“The woman would have been young, early twenties, dark hair. The man would have been tall, trim beard, scar on one cheek.”

“Mister, you shouldn’t be here without clearance,” said the pilot.

Proctor directed his attention to the student: an older fellow who was clearly excited just to be sitting in the plane. “That was my boss,” Proctor said breathlessly, waving the bag. “He forgot this. I can’t reach him on his cell. It’s vitally important, he needs information from the documents in here.”

“Yes, I saw them,” the student said. “They got on a plane maybe five minutes ago. It was waiting for them, right there, on the runway. The woman looked sick. She seemed to be staggering all over the place.”

“What kind of a plane?” Proctor asked.

The pilot frowned. “Sir, we can’t be giving—”

But the student, clearly an enthusiast, spoke over him. “It was a twin-engine jet. A Lear. Don’t know the model.”

“Yes,” Proctor said. “A Lear. That’s him, all right. Thank you so much, I’ll try to find some way to contact him.” The pilot opened his mouth to speak again, but before he could Proctor turned and jogged back past the flight school hangar.

In the Rolls once again, he pulled up the FlightAware website and, on the site’s landing page, instructed it to track KTEB: the International Civil Aviation Organization code for Teterboro. This brought up a map of the tristate area, with Teterboro at its center, overlaid with the ghostly white shapes of tiny aircraft headed in various directions. Below the map were two panels: “Arrivals” and “Departures.”

Proctor quickly scanned the “Departures” panel. It consisted of several lines of data, listed in reverse chronological order. Each line represented an aircraft that had left Teterboro during the past several hours, and it identified the plane’s tail number, aircraft type, destination, time of departure, and estimated time of arrival.

The time was now 12:45 PM. From the information on the screen, Proctor could see that the most recent planes to depart Teterboro had left at 12:41, 12:32, and 12:29 PM. So only one plane had left the airport in the last five minutes.

He checked the aircraft type of the plane that had departed at twelve forty-one. Sure enough, it was listed as LJ45—a Learjet 45. It was headed for KOMA. A quick search identified this as the ICAO code for Eppley Airfield in Omaha, Nebraska.

The website listed the “Ident” or tail number as LN303P. Proctor clicked on this and a new window opened: a map showing the projected path of the flight from New Jersey to Nebraska. The little symbol representing the plane had a thin, short tail behind it leading from Teterboro: a dotted line, which zigged slightly in two places, headed westward ahead of the plane icon, showing the projected course. A row of data at one side of the screen told him the plane had a projected cruising speed of 420 knots, and that it was presently climbing at six thousand feet, heading for nineteen thousand.

With a click, Proctor closed the flight map window. He now knew two critical things: Diogenes and Constance had gotten on that Learjet, and Diogenes had filed a flight plan with the FAA for Nebraska. All IFR flights were required to file such plans; trying to fly without one would generate immediate and unwelcome scrutiny.

Scanning the “Arrivals” panel, he saw that the Learjet with tail number LN303P had landed at Teterboro only half an hour earlier. So it was not a local charter — Diogenes had used a “repositioned” charter from another airport in order to help cover his tracks.