Читать книгу Flight of the Forgotten - Mark A. Vance - Страница 20

By now, five months had passed. I was discouraged and irritated even though I knew the entire process was designed to wear me down and make me lose interest. It was working. I was on the verge of total surrender. I had reached a low point emotionally. I owed Buster and his crew my best effort, but I was beginning to feel as helpless as they must have felt inside that burning airplane.

It was like that between Buster and me. We shared thoughts and feelings, and he had a way of showing up when I needed him most.

“It looks like that seed we planted in you is really growing.” he announced one evening as I sat at my desk working on the project.

“I … I’m glad you’re here. I need your help, Buster. They won’t tell me anything.” I declared, eyeing him as I rubbed my eyes.

“No, they won’t but you’ve got to keep going anyway. Someday you’ll understand why.” he replied.

“Why won’t they just give me the accident report?”

“Because they can’t. It’s against their rules. Our airplane didn’t just explode, Mark. They blew it up!” he said emphatically.

“You were murdered? My God!”

“Yes, and we need you to keep going. The families need to know the truth and you’ve got to find it for them. They need you to prove it. Prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.” he insisted, as I nodded in wide-eyed astonishment.

Several days later, undeterred by the ongoing lack of progress, I immediately began searching for a solution to the stalemate over the crash report. Again, I turned to my good friend John Sandersen for help.

“It was murder!” I blurted out.

“Murder? How do you know that?” he asked skeptically.

“Believe me, I know. That airplane didn’t just explode. It was supposed to explode.” I declared.

“Are you saying it was sabotaged?”

“Yes. I don’t know all the details yet, but we need to focus on the fact that it was sabotaged. Who did it or why I don’t know yet. But I intend to find out.” I said.

“Could it have been something it was carrying?” he asked, trying to deal with the sudden revelation of sabotage.

“Maybe. That Royal Air Force sergeant you found living in the crash area said nothing has grown in the loch where they crashed for over forty years. He was running his own investigation into the crash until he was ordered to stop by his superiors.”

“Nothing?”

“Not even a lily pad.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” John muttered.

“Yeah.”

“Okay, here’s what we do. I’ll get Big Joe and the “good old boy” network going again and see what he can find out behind the scenes. He has a lot of contacts in the Royal Air Force that’ll definitely be interested. If that thing crashed in Scotland carrying a nuke or a binary of some sort, the natives are really going to start getting restless. I’ll see what I can dig up through U.S. Naval Intelligence over here.”

“Thanks. That would be great.”

“Yeah, we might even be dealing with a German spy thing or something like it. Do you realize that?” he asked.

“German spy?” I repeated.

“Well, it has to be something pretty off-the-wall if there was a bomb involved.” he said.

“I don’t care what it is or who did it. I want the facts and my family needs to hear the truth.”