Southern California Air Traffic Control Center
San Diego, California
Amos Wilson rubbed his eyes and reached for his coffee mug. The night was quiet—too damn quiet, he thought blearily; the flurry of inactivity made it hard to stay awake, let alone alert. The radar screen showed only two aircraft: a Navy F-18 inbound for Miramar, and a civilian plane twenty miles southeast, just off Brown Field and climbing fast, turning northeast. Vegas, he guessed. Some fat cat—banker? no; real estate developer—dashing up for a weekend of blackjack and hookers. It was a game Wilson played when he worked the graveyard shift alone: making up stories about who was transiting his sector; where they were headed, and why.
His mug was empty. “Dad-gum-it,” he muttered. Spinning in his chair, he snagged the handle of the coffeepot and poured himself a refill, then took a swig. Grimacing, he spat it back into the mug. The coffee had been cooking for upwards of three hours, thickening to a bitter sludge, now more suitable for fossilizing fence posts—rendering them rot resistant and bugproof—than for reinvigorating humans. Wilson took another glance at the screen, assured himself that the two aircraft posed no possible risk to each other, and hurried to the sink. It took him just thirty seconds to dump the sludge, rinse and refill the pot, pour the water into the machine, and jam a fresh filter pack into the brew basket.
When he returned to his seat, the F-18 was already on the ground at Miramar; the civilian aircraft had leveled off at twenty-seven hundred feet; oddly, though, it had changed course by ninety degrees, a right bank so steep the turn was almost square cornered. “What the hell?” said Wilson. The plane was heading southeast now, streaking toward the border like a scalded cat; in less than a minute—hell, not even, he realized—it would enter Mexican airspace, due south of Otay Mountain. Then, as Wilson stared, mesmerized and paralyzed, the icon on the radar screen began to blink, and three words appeared beside it, flashing in sync with a harsh electronic rasp: LOW ALTITUDE ALERT.
Otay Mountain Wilderness
Southeast of San Diego
A shape as tan as the rocks, as fluid as quicksilver, flowed down the stony slope, the very embodiment of stealth and predatory focus. Below, something moved, and the creature—an adult male mountain lion, 150 pounds of cunning, sinew, and hunger—froze, its belly pressed to the rock. After a long pause, punctuated only by the sound of labored, painful breathing twenty feet away, the big cat flowed forward again, its tail twitching as it closed on its prey.