Fleet

Sarah went blank, and the doorbell ringing couldn't have come at a better time.

"I'm going to check that." she backed away awkwardly.

While I stood by in the kitchen, Sarah returned from the door with someone in tow. 

"Rishab, this is Erik. Erik, Rishab"

"We've met before" Erik jokingly remarked

"Yeah, this isn't the first time." I replied 

"I'm aware.. I just- well, I should probably let you guys catch up while I make us some breakfast." Sarah answered back. 

"Sounds good" 

The atmosphere in the room grew a bit uneasy as Erik answered and Sarah departed. Though I'm sure Erik had a plan, I wasn't really clear how this was intended to proceed. 

"It's good to see you." he said as he moved to give me a hug.

"I'm sorry about.. what happened at the academy. I really didn't mean to-" 

"Hey, hey, shush… none of that matters now, okay ? Let's get you fixed up."

"Guys, breakfast's ready!" Sarah called out. 

Given that I was raised eating dosa and idli for breakfast, Sarah's waffles and toast with hot chocolate were clearly not to my taste, but her hospitality was beyond reproach, and it was incomprehensible for me to be complaining about the food being unappealing when she had taken the time and trouble to prepare it. Erik and I carried on talking, with Sarah chiming in now and then. 

"Rishab, do the doctors have an explanation for how your stuttering stopped ?"

"Babe, does that really matter now ? I mean it's good that he doesn't have it, right ?" 

Sarah interrupted.

"Oh jeez, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to pry.."

"No, no, it's fine. The doctors are quite amused by it. High profile accidents usually cause stuttering as per their knowledge but this… this is a very rare case."

"Well, I guess that's fine then."

"Maybe yeah."

After a short pause to eat, we resumed our talk. 

"Listen, Rishab. Two days after the AD-707 accident, I started working for Horizon. Because of my background, they wanted me in, and they're currently battling cases with the DIW to demonstrate that the plane wasn't defective. Since only you truly know what actually happened on that plane, several of our lawyers at Horizon are looking for you to be the lead witness as the black box hasn't been discovered from the scene yet. 

Now according to the DIW, there's three suspects: Air Dash, Horizon and Captain Jonas but because he's dead, they're going to come after you to find out what happened so we gotta plan this out in order to make sure they close the investigation because Horizon and Air Dash are important for each other."

"Do they know that I don't have a licence ?" 

"If they did, you'd probably be court martialed and imprisoned by now. They cannot know that and it isn't your fault because Downey wanted this for you." 

"Does everyone know about this ?"

"No, but Downey's aware that I know since we had a discussion two days before." 

"I really didn't mean for all of this to happen"

"Rishab, it isn't your fault. You were asked to be on that plane." Sarah added. 

"But I could've said no, and I didn't" 

"Not everybody can speak for themselves and I understand that. I know Downey didn't coerce you but whether you had a licence or not, the question is why did Jonas disable the transponder before the plane crashed and only you can tell us really what happened."

"I swear to God, he only said he'd be using the bathroom and went away while we started to descend over Fort Worth, only to realise that he wasn't there and in the avionics chamber disabling the transponder." 

"But did you have time to ask him why ?" 

"No, the fuse in one of the compressors blew up by then and he died from the impact, causing the plane to lose fuel rapidly and eventually crash."

"Right.." 

"So, what is the plan ?" Sarah queried

"We need to investigate the fleet." Erik responded

"But how does that help ?"

"There could be a possibility that the compression chamber had some faulty wiring and Captain Jonas wanted to check that before landing."

"But isn't that verified by FASA ?" 

The Federal Aviation Safety Assessment (FASA) program was created by the DIW to certify the safety aspects of the flights at the time of customer delivery. These features include oxygen chambers, a black box, passenger assistance in emergency situations, and more. 

"At this point, we have to look at all the possibilities." 

"You suspect foul play ?"

"Not yet, but it could be. The only person I trust right now is you and we want to help you. I know it's been really tough experiencing this and then your parents dying but if someone came to their doorstep a day after the crash and shot them then I have reasons to believe that there could be something we're missing so I say we start with the fleet." 

"You're taking him along ?" Sarah inquired

"No, let him stay here."

"Oh come on, you have to let me go with you." 

"No, it's better Horizon stays clueless about you. Don't use a phone or an ID attached to you. Keep all traces clean. If the DIW comes looking for you, let me know, okay ?" 

"So, what do I do here ?" 

"Find what you can about Rick Jonas."

"Okay." 

"We're good ?"

"Yeah I think so."

"Alright, I'll go then. Sarah, I'll drop you on the way."

"You sure ? I don't want to.."

"No it's fine, I still have time. Rishab, stay low, okay ?" 

"Okay."

After ten minutes, they had left, leaving me with nothing except Sarah's laptop to conduct parallel investigations on Rick Jonas. Rick was interesting even though his background appeared obvious; I remembered Horizon criticising him for being difficult to deal with because of his army officer experience. 

I found out that he was married to Marie Johannah, the former senator's daughter, and was the father of two children by searching up his Facebook profile. After tabloids exposed her extramarital affairs with well-known businessmen that had little to no substance, Marie, a victim of paparazzi, struggled with the spotlight and ultimately committed herself out of remorse after an intimate video was posted online. It is reported that Rick's marriage suffered as a result of his discovery that he was impotent. At the age of 14, his two children, Jamie and Lyla, were adopted. Following the passing of their mother, no further details on the children could be located. 

Few minutes later, Erik forwarded me a voice message that he and Jack had exchanged. 

"Jack, do we have a minute ?"

"Yeah, what's up ?"

"What do we know about Air Dash ?"

"It's a start-up airline."

"Anything more ?"

"What do you want, Erik ?"

"Sir, if we're going to handle the cases then…"

"That's classified, Erik."

"Sir, if the DIW found out about Rishab flying that plane without a licence, we could be in big trouble." 

"I get it! Alright ? I know it was a mistake."

"I'm not blaming you.. I'm-"

"Don't say anything! You want info on Air Dash ? I'll give you the keys to the fleet ! Go check them out ! Go !" 

Following the voice message, Erik sent the following message:

"I checked the fleet. The nickname given for them is "Eagles". There's only 5 models of the J-17 featured here excluding 707 but the account is for 25, all scheduled for delivery in December this year to Air Dash." 

"Do you suspect any flaws in the design ?" I replied

"No, it seems clean. I guess Jonas is the answer in all of this." 

"Personal vendetta probably ?" I queried

"But… I don't see a reason why he'd do that."

"What do we know about him and Downey ?" I inquired

"Nothing. Downey's frustrated as hell." 

"Alright, leave him be, we'll see later." I concluded the chat. 

Given that it only had 25 aircraft operating within the continent of New Brunworth and featured mostly J-17s, which were among the worst-performing models in the market due to a lack of demand, Air Dash was a relatively new startup in the aviation industry with not much information publicly available since flight 707 was supposed to be their debut flight for the Annual Aviation Expo in November this year. All that is known about Air Dash is that it belongs to the Montgomery Group of Businesses, which is headed by multimillionaire Carl Richard Friedman and has numerous investments in banking, tourism, entertainment, and transportation. We might have to wait until November, which was two months away, but Rick required further research, so I decided it would be best to concentrate on him for the time being. 

Perhaps contacting Rick's children, Jamie and Lyla, and asking about their location might be a good place to start the investigation but I need to know their whereabouts or any contact information that could help me out. I had to use a different account to access the internet because my Instagram was restricted. I got in touch with Sarah and asked her for her login information, after which I started searching for Jamie.

There were at least 25 users with the name "Jamie Jonas" in the search results for Jamie, and one of the display pictures showed Captain Terry with a small child. When I clicked on the person, I saw that their profile was open to the public. After a presumably football game, Captain Terry was seen hugging the boy in one of the photos, which had the caption "Happy Father's Day, Dad." At first, I thought it strange that Jamie Jonas would be featured in a picture of Captain Terry, but then I realised that his full name was Terrence Jonas, and that meant he was Rick's late brother who adopted the children as a result of the accident that killed Terrence at the academy.

I was overwhelmed with guilt again, feeling that I should be compensated for the hardships Jamie and Lyla endured as a result of their father's passing. 

Although families are meant to make you feel at home, it's not often that you come across a family that accepts you even when you've been invited and I couldn't imagine what that must have felt like, being adopted by their uncle with a ruined life. 

What if, in the incident at the academy, I had unintentionally killed Rick's brother in the academy and he was using this as an opportunity to get revenge on me ? I was overcome with guilt-ridden thoughts that caused me to lose control of my senses and get blinded in the process but just then, to my surprise, Jamie's email to Sarah showed up as a notification since she forgot to log out and I couldn't resist breaching the rules of secrecy in order to see what he thought of the correspondence. The mail read:

Hey Sara,

Can you forward all the mail correspondences with uncle Rick, please ?

Best,

Jamie

I was perplexed. I thought Jamie was a patient, but I didn't know Rick was related to Sarah prior to the accident, so I became suspicious and started looking for correspondence between the two of them. One of my worst errors was definitely typing Rick into the search bar because their talks weren't at all what I had anticipated. 

In the majority of the emails, Rick asked Sarah for explicit pictures, and Sarah voluntarily sent them in exchange for videos of Rick pleasuring himself. The emails also included comments like "You make me feel like a man" and "Thanks for being my mommy when I'm horny" in the body of the message, to which Sarah replied, "Please take care and come see me when you need me". Later, Rick sent back the following email in response:

"Going to show my wife that I found myself a dirty bitch."