At the name above the door, Hayes Arrowworks, still there, still his. He thought about how close it had come. He thought about Maya asking, "Are we going to lose the hanger?" in that steady, too old voice. He thought about his wife gone 5 years now, and whether she would have recognized him in that conference room, standing in front of a woman twice his net worth with a hanger key in his hand, and not one ounce of surrender in his posture. I thought she would have.
He thought she would have been quietly furious on his behalf, and then quietly proud in the order she always handled those two things. His phone rang again. Unknown number. He almost didn't answer. He answered, "Is this Hayes Arow works?" A man's voice.
"Older, careful." "This is Malcolm Hayes. Mr. Hayes, my name is Frank Delgado. I'm a senior investigator with the FAA Civil Aviation Security Division. I've been made aware of some documentation related to a Sterling Crown aircraft in the Dallas area.
I was told you might be the person to speak with." Malcolm's hand tightened slightly on the phone. He hadn't reported anything yet. Rachel hadn't finished the documentation package. Victoria had left less than 2 hours ago. "Who told you to call me?" he asked.
A pause on the line. "Captain Daniel Mercer," Frank Delgado said. He said, "If there's a man in Dallas who found something real, it's you." And he said, "Whatever you found, you documented it properly." Another pause. Did you? Malcolm looked at the binder at 312 pages of dates, serial numbers, procurement records, and rejection documentation at the truth organized and indexed and impossible to misread.
Yes, he said. I documented it properly. Can we meet when? As soon as possible, Frank said. Mr.
Hayes, I need you to understand something. What you may have found in that aircraft isn't isolated. We've had reports from two other states in the past 8 months about Apex Vector components appearing in private aviation supply chains. We've been trying to trace the distribution network. He paused.
If your documentation is what Captain Mercer believes it is, you may have just given us the thread we've been looking for. Malcolm sat back in his chair. He thought about the 11 components, about the 2019 rejection records, about the procurement invoices spanning four years and multiple aircraft. He thought about an aircraft at 40,000 ft with a component inside it that should have been destroyed 7 years ago. Mr.
Delgado, he said, I'll be at my shop all afternoon. Come whenever you're ready. He hung up. Then he stood up, walked to the back of the shop, and put his head in the doorway where Rachel was working. Build the package, he said.
Everything as fast as you can. Rachel looked up. Why? What happened? The FAA is coming, he said.