The Ghost Pattern by Leslie Wolfe

objections?”
    No one said anything. Lou lifted his gaze briefly from his computer screen to signal his quiet approval, while Blake mouthed a silent thank you.
    “Then what else do we have?” Alex continued. “If a commercial jet doesn’t make it to the final destination, doesn’t emergency land, and doesn’t crash or explode in mid-flight, there’s only one scenario left.” She wrote a word in all caps on the whiteboard. “HIJACK.”
    The room fell completely silent, as if everyone there held their breaths. Lou had stopped typing, and everyone watched her intently.
    “Two hijack scenarios I can think of right now,” she added, as she wrote, “for money, and for political reasons.”
    “To your point, Alex, could this plane have made an emergency landing somewhere, due to some technical issue?” Steve asked.
    Blake shook his head in a silent no.
    “Highly unlikely,” Alex replied. “It’s been five days; the crew would have made contact by now. And someone would have communicated the emergency to ground control before landing, wherever that ground would have been.”
    “But there’s been no ransom call, right? Do we know for sure?” Steve pressed on. “Officials aren’t exactly open about these things, you know.”
    “None that we know about,” Alex replied. “And Lou’s been looking.”
    “I’ve been checking the airlines, and talked to some friends in the FBI. There’s nothing that we know of, not a whisper of anything.”
    “But there could be some hostage negotiation going on that we don’t know about.”
    “If it’s about money, wouldn’t Blake know by now?” Tom asked. “Adeline would have been a prime target in that case, right? I’m sorry, Blake, I didn’t mean—”
    “It’s OK, Tom, don’t apologize,” Blake cut him off. “You’re right. And they would have called me, I guess.”
    “Then it’s political?” Steve asked. “If it’s political, what would they be looking for?”
    “We can’t even formulate that until we know who they are,” Alex said, as she wrote UNSUB on the board, using the abbreviation for unknown subjects common for many law enforcement agencies. “Depending on who the UNSUB are, they could ask for the release of incarcerated terrorists, or the withdrawal of American troops from who knows where. They could be looking for military or diplomatic action against their enemy, and so on. It could be anything. In that case, the officials would keep this matter highly confidential. After all, America doesn’t negotiate with terrorists, remember? The public would be frantic at the thought of sacrificing 441 people to maintain such a statement.”
    “Yeah, we’d have no way of knowing,” Tom said. “What do you want to do next?”
    “I’m going to ignore what I don’t know, like what they’re looking to gain from the hijacking, and focus on finding them.” She wrote on the whiteboard. “No matter who the UNSUB are, this is a crime, and crimes follow the rule of means-motive-opportunity . We know nothing about motive, so we’ll ignore that for now. Let’s focus on means, the opportunity—how they grabbed it—and then we’ll figure out on why XA233 was the UNSUB’s best opportunity. Why XA233 and not any other plane? What made it special?”
    She paced what little room she had in front of the whiteboard, then added, “I’ll need an aviation consultant of sorts, to teach me how someone would be able to hijack a Boeing 747-400 and leave no trace. I want to start focusing on the means, while Lou is deep-diving into everyone’s background to understand the opportunity.”
    “Consider it done,” Tom replied. “I’ll find someone ASAP.”
    “Thanks,” she said, then she turned toward the map, looking at it intently. She was too close, and the map print was huge, taking almost the entire wall. She took a few steps back, not taking her eyes off the map, and suddenly, her blood froze. “Oh, my God…” she whispered.
    “What?” Blake