be united with other puzzle pieces before its value became clear. She wanted to kick the computer right off the chair but didn't have the energy. Finally she took a deep breath and raised her eyebrows to him. 'We've been here too long. Let's get moving.'
'Anywhere in particular?'
She skewed her mouth, considering. 'No,' she said and laughed a little. 'Nowhere at all.'
fifty-nine
About ten minutes into their journey to nowhere in particular, Allen said, 'The planes.'
'What planes?' Stephen asked. 'You mean the crop duster?' 'That's what got me thinking, that and the airstrip on that base.' He had been riding with his feet up on the dash like a teenager. He brought them down and turned to Julia. 'Would you agree the people trying to kill us are professionals?'
'Professional hit men? Yeah, seems that way to me.'
'Then they're probably not from Atlanta. Certainly not Chattanooga. Not enough work for them.'
She saw where he was heading. 'They flew in for the job.'
He nodded. 'And I'll bet they didn't take commercial flights. They've got special weapons. Need to move quickly, on their own schedule. They don't want too much scrutiny.'
'So a chartered or private plane?' Julia said. 'That's what I'm thinking.'
'And landing at the airport leaves a record, a lead.' 'Not necessarily. Airports aren't required to log every landing.
Most do since 9/11. Sometimes there's a record only if the plane paid for fuel or overnight parking.'
'There'll be records,' she said. 'Goody's killers didn't make their return flight, and the Warrior stayed awhile. Parking fees are a gimme.'
'Can you access airport records?'
'Hey, I'm a federal agent—I can do anything.' She smiled and reached down to maneuver the makeshift table off the floor. Allen moved to help, but she had it in place between the front and rear chairs before he could decide which part of the board to grab. She transferred the laptop to it.
'Seriously, this thing is loaded with programs that can worm their way into most computer systems. They're designed for on-site searches of computers used for criminal activities. You wouldn't believe the gimmicks perps use to prevent their data from making it to a tech lab. Magnetized doorways that wipe out hard drives as police carry them through; reserve batteries that blitz the data with a power surge, triggered by mercury switches to detect movement or zero-current switches that detect when the computer is unplugged. One child pornographer booby- trapped his computer with homemade C-4. It was rigged to detonate if the computer was lifted off of a pressure- sensitive pad. We spotted it before it hurt anyone, but it would have vaporized the evidence, along with the house and a half dozen cops. Anyway, it's best to seize the data right at the scene. I have programs that slice through the toughest computer security systems like they weren't even there. Where do I start?' Her fingers were poised over the keyboard.
'Try General Aviation, Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport.'
She scooted closer to the computer, eyes flicking from keyboard to screen and back.
'See what they show for landings, parking, fuel sales, maintenance.'
A few minutes passed. Then she swiveled the monitor around for Allen to see.
He leaned in. 'Those are the flight progress strips.'
'Going back two weeks,' Julia said, smug. 'But this is where I hit a brick wall. I have no idea what to look for.'
'Let me see.' He pulled it closer, squinting at the entries.
'How do you know all this?' she asked.
'I've always loved private aviation. I took some private pilot lessons but never finished. Got too busy. Sometimes I still park by the airport to eat my lunch, watch the planes come and go. Here, look at this.' He read it aloud: 'Fourteen-eighteen. Cessna Citation CJ2. N471B.'
'Yeah?'
'How many four-million-dollar private jets fly into Chattanooga?'
'The timing's right. Just before the killings at the bar.'
'You think that's the plane that brought in the two-man hit team?'
'It's the Warrior's. The first two assailants pursued Goody and Vero from Atlanta. The second set of assailants, the ones who came for you at your house, you said one of them had a cop's badge. A local cop. Maybe by then they were getting desperate, hiring whoever was available.'
Allen said, 'The FAA maintains a plane registry right on the Internet. We can find out who owns that Citation without jumping through techno-hoops.' Something on the screen caught his eye. 'Hold on. Oh-five-fifty-one, Cessna Citation . . .'
'This morning? He left?'
'Yesterday morning. Another landed. N-number: N476B.'
'Two Citations? Sixteen hours apart.' Julia was thinking out loud. 'Could the same people own both?'
'Same type of plane with almost sequential tail numbers? Very likely.' Allen read again from the screen: 'Oh- eight-twenty, Cessna Citation.'
'The first one, N471B, took off yesterday morning, two and a half hours after the second arrived.'
'What are we supposed to do now?' Stephen asked from behind the wheel.
She gave herself a moment to think. 'I suppose we find out who registered the Cessnas. Probably a dummy corporation, owned by another dummy corporation. But if we burrow deep enough, maybe cross-reference the names we dig up with other clues we find along the way, we'll uncover something solid.'
Allen didn't look happy.
'Welcome to detective work,' she said. 'Ninety percent of criminal investigations is following paper trails, digging through computer files, reading receipts and depositions and ledgers until your eyes are ready to fall out. Forget
'Hey.'
She began typing, staring at the screen.
'What?'
'The hard drive. Can't you hear it? It's working too hard. Someone's hacked into my computer.'
sixty
'You're in the airport's computer,' Allen said.
'Maybe they're trying to hack you back.'
'That's not they way it works. If they detect the breech, they just cut you off. Someone's going through my files.'
'So cut them off.'
'I'm trying. They've got some kind of protection against that. I've never seen anything like it.'
An observer catching her flexing bands of jaw muscles, the determined flash of gritted teeth, would have guessed that she was battling for her life. And they'd have been right: Survival on the run was like a knife fight. The outcome was rarely determined by the planting of one deadly blow, but by the number and depth of slash after slash after slash—until the one most slashed bled to death. She could not afford the injury of giving away access to her computer, whether the intruder's motive was to find out its contents or destroy its data.
'Disconnect the phone,' Allen said.
'If I can stop him, maybe I can find out who it is.' She keyed in more commands. 'It's not working.' She reached for the phone line. The screen went black, and a line of white text appeared at the top:
>
Allen, unable to see the monitor from the front seat, asked, 'What is it?'
She told him, then typed:
>
>
