Changeling by David Wood, Sean Ellis Page B

Sousa acknowledged his presence with an irritated frown, but continued with his phone call—which mostly consisted of “No, sir. Not yet, sir” delivered with an almost stereotypically thick Aussie accent—as if Professor were not even there.
    Finally, after a promise of “right away, sir,” Sousa hung up and leaned across his desk. “Let’s hear it.”
    Professor offered a cordial smile and proffered his bogus credential pack. “I’m Chapman. FBI counter-terrorism.”
    “Great. Another seppo.”
    It did not sound like a question so Professor let it go. “I’ve got some questions I need answered and then I’ll be out of your ha… errr, your way.”
    Sousa let out a noncommittal grunt. “Fine. Ask your questions. Hope you don’t mind if I keep working.” He reached for a stack of papers and began leafing through them.
    The man’s recalcitrant attitude was the main reason Professor had not simply conducted this interview by phone. Getting anything useful out Sousa was going to be like pulling teeth. He decided to push back a little. “We’re on the same team, Sousa. I’m not here to piss on your hubcaps. As soon as I get what I came for, I’m gone. How long that will take is up to you.”
    Sousa glared at him for a moment then tossed the papers down and folded his arms across his chest. “Go on.”
    Professor took out a notepad and pen. “For starters, why don’t you tell me exactly what happened. I’ve heard what the news media are saying, and just about every crazy conspiracy theory imaginable. Now I want to hear it from you. What really happened to that plane?”
    “What happened is that the plane bloody vanished.”
    Professor’s pen remained poised above the page, but he said nothing.
    Sousa sighed. “The aircraft took off from SYD at 0958. It’s a daily flight, originating here, not a turnaround, so the plane received a thorough maintenance evaluation before departure. Not so much as a loose nut anywhere on that bird. The flight left on time, and everything was fine until it wasn’t.”
    Professor had just started writing, but stopped at the cryptic comment. “What does that mean?”
    Sousa gave him a hard look. “You know anything about how airplanes work?”
    “I understand principles of lift and aerodynamics, if that’s what you mean.”
    “It’s not.” Another sigh. “I’m talking about the air traffic control system. People watch movies and they get this idea that ATC is like some kind of computer game, with a great big screen and little lights that show the exact location of every aircraft in the sky.”
    “It’s not?”
    “At any given moment, there are close to seven thousand commercial flights in the sky worldwide. There are more than a thousand different air carriers, and a lot of them are flying old birds that haven’t been fully upgraded with the latest bells and whistles. Air traffic control has to manage all of them, and the only way to do that is with radar and radio navigation. Both of those rely on line of sight, which isn’t terribly useful a thousand miles out over the Pacific Ocean. There are a lot of gaps in radar coverage. Planes aren’t tracked in real time. Sometimes, we don’t know there’s a problem until a plane fails to show up, or misses a scheduled check-in. What we know about this plane is that they reported in right on schedule for the first three hours or so, and then…nothing.”
    “So the crew did not report any problems.”
    “Not a peep. The odds are that this was a mechanical failure, not a deliberate act, but we won’t know what happened on that aircraft until we find it. So while I understand that you have a job to do, Agent Chapman, you’re just pissing into the wind.”
    Professor didn’t back down. “And why haven’t you found it?”
    “Didn’t you hear what I said? We don’t track these planes in real time so we don’t know where it went down.”
    “But that particular plane was equipped with both a radio transponder