The Second Ship (The Rho Agenda #1)(35)
“You were flying the damned thing.”
“But I couldn’t see where it was,” Jennifer moaned. “I was counting on you guys to tell me when to turn it back.”
Heather took a deep breath. It wouldn’t do for her to start crying too. “Maybe they won’t find the plane,” she said. “Even if they do, they probably won’t trace it back to us.”
Mark shook his head, looking deflated. “I wouldn’t bet my ass on that.”
“Anyway,” Heather continued. “We can’t let our folks see us upset.”
Mark bowed his head. “Jen, I’m sorry I yelled at you. It was my fault.”
Jennifer looked up at her brother and gave a weak attempt at a smile. “I’ll be all right. I think I’ll go in and wash up before dinner, though. I’ve had about all the excitement I can handle for today.”
Heather shrugged. “We’ll just have to hope for the best.”
Turning to push her bike back to her garage, Heather felt the weight of the world descend, and the probability equations that danced in her head did nothing to make her feel better.
Chapter 24
The wind swept beneath the seals of doors and sills of windows, sounding a low moan that rose and fell along the eves of the houses.
As Heather rode the school bus in silence, the moan leached into her soul, a portent of what awaited her. But she refused to yield to depression, stubbornly clinging to the tiny seed of hope that everything would yet be okay.
By early afternoon that hope had grown, sprouting small leafy shoots that reached longingly upward, seeking the sun. Then Principal Zumwalt walked into their English class, requesting that Mark, Jennifer, and Heather accompany him back to his office, and she felt the seedling get ripped out by its roots.
To Heather’s ears, their footsteps in the empty hallway sounded like dancers’ tap shoes on a stage. Both Mark and Jennifer looked like fugitives from one of those old vampire movies. The blood had been drained from their faces as thoroughly as if they had just finished an embrace with an undead Transylvanian count.
Heather felt sick. She wanted to curl up in her bed, pull the covers over her head, and never come out again.
Principal Zumwalt led them into the waiting area outside his office and asked them to sit. Then he disappeared inside, closing the door behind him so that the voices drifting out to where they waited were unintelligible. Several times the principal’s voice rose in anger before subsiding.
After several minutes, a man in a dark suit stepped out of the principal’s office and stopped in front of them. Heather had never seen him before, and as his cold, gray eyes lingered on each of them, she decided that she did not care to see him again.
His thin smile added no warmth to his face.
“My name is Special Agent Nixon. I need to ask each of you a few questions, so I will be calling you into the principal’s office one at a time. Your principal has insisted that he remain in the room to witness the questioning, and I have agreed.”
Once again the cold smile warped his lips.
“As I finish with each one of you, please return to your classroom. Do not pause to discuss anything with the others on your way out.”
Agent Nixon pointed at Mark. “Son, you’re first.”
Mark stood and followed the man back through the door. Thirty minutes later, Jennifer replaced Mark. By the time Jennifer emerged, puffy eyes indicating that she had not successfully kept her emotions in check, Heather was a basket case.
As she entered, she spotted Principal Zumwalt standing against the left wall, arms crossed as he glanced up at her. Agent Nixon motioned toward the low chair that had been positioned directly in front of the principal’s desk.
Heather sat down. Not only was the chair low, it was a soft leather that threatened to swallow her, leaving her with the unfortunate illusion that she had sunk so far into the seat that only her nose and eyes stuck out.
As Agent Nixon moved behind the desk and took a seat in Principal Zumwalt’s chair, Heather thought she detected a slight scowl on the latter's face.
The agent leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “Now, Heather, I want you to describe to me in your own words the sequence of events that led to you and your friends crashing a model airplane outfitted with video and listening devices onto a highly restricted and sensitive area of the Los Alamos National Laboratory.”
Heather had once read that in an interview you should try matching the body posture of the person conducting the interview. However, there was just no way to lean forward in the soft leather armchair that had her butt closer to touching the ground than her feet were.
For fifteen minutes she described how they had been excited to do a project where they modified a model airplane to add video and audio transmission capabilities, plus an onboard computer that enabled them to uplink simple flight plans. She made no mention of quantum switches, instead wrapping up with a description of how they had launched the plane, uplinked a flight plan, and then lost control of it as it flew out of the range of their radio control device.
“So you knew it was flying toward the laboratory?”
“Yes, sir. We launched it from the Western Area Park in Los Alamos and it was flying southeast. We must have lost line of sight while we tried to uplink a return plan, so our uplink didn’t make it, or something else went wrong. Once it was out of radio range, there was nothing we could do. We knew it was bound to go down, but had no idea it would make it all the way to the lab.”