Chapter 6 - The Ghost on the Ramp
Rain poured over the wreckage of the Asterion 900 on the cliffside at Point Reyes. Inside the dark cockpit, rain clicked steadily against the cracked windshield as Travis unlatched the emergency overhead hatch and climbed out onto the fuselage. He reached back inside, taking Audrey by the hands and hauling her up onto the wet aluminum skin.
They slid down the trailing edge of the right wing, their boots hitting the weed-choked concrete with a heavy splash.
Audrey leaned against the fuselage, clutching her bruised arm, her silk blouse soaked through with cold rain. She looked back toward the cockpit, where smoke still wisped from the auxiliary bay.
"They think we're at the bottom of the ocean," she said, her voice shaking as adrenaline began to drain from her system. "Bryce is probably already standing in front of the press declaring my death an 'unfortunate prototype tragedy.'"
"Let him talk," Travis said, pulling his water-resistant tool roll from his coverall pocket. "The louder he lies now, the harder he falls when we walk into that boardroom."
He led Audrey toward an abandoned maintenance hangar near the perimeter fence. Inside the rusting structure sat an old, beat-up 1998 Ford F-150 belonging to the site’s caretaker—a retired Navy mechanic named Hank who had worked alongside Travis during his Navy test-pilot days.
Hank stepped out of his small office with a flashlight, his jaw dropping as he recognized Travis and the soot-stained chief executive of Langford Aeronautics.
"Travis?" Hank grunted, shining the beam on the Satellite drive in Travis's hand. "I heard the Mayday on the emergency frequency. The news is saying an Asterion 900 went down six miles offshore."
"News travels fast when someone pays to leak it," Travis replied smoothly. "Hank, I need your truck."
Hank tossed the keys without asking a single question. "Take the back road through the coastal hills. The state police have already blocked the main highway leading to the crash search area."
Audrey climbed into the passenger seat of the old pickup, clutching the encrypted drive Travis handed her. "How does this drive prove Bryce was behind the remote shutdown?"
"That drive contains the digital signature of the transmitter module," Travis explained, throwing the truck into gear and roaring out of the hangar into the storm. "Every time an encrypted command is sent to an avionics package, it logs the MAC address and satellite uplink key of the originating terminal."
Audrey looked at him in the dim dashboard light. "And that terminal belongs to Bryce?"
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"No," Travis said, his eyes fixed on the winding, rain-slicked mountain road. "It belongs to Russell Keane’s private workstation inside the executive hangar at Redwood Airfield. Bryce didn't write the code—he paid Russell to execute it."
Audrey’s face hardened, her blue eyes flashing with a cold, corporate fury that matched Travis's resolve. "Then we aren't just going back to show them I'm alive. We're going back to take my company back."
