The wreckage scattered across 400 meters of frozen rock at 14,200 feet. 67 people gone. Rescue teams found seats, luggage, fuselage sections. What they didn't find were the black boxes, devices built to survive 3,400 Gs of impact and temperatures up to 2,000°F. The mounting brackets were intact, bolted to spec. The recorders had been removed.

Flight 4227 had been rerouted mid-flight by a transmission that didn't come from air traffic control. The frequency was cloned, broadcast from somewhere in the Andes. Maintenance logs showed the recorders flagged for replacement two months earlier, then a work order appeared for bench testing signed by a technician who'd been working a different aircraft that day. The airline's head of maintenance disappeared three days after the crash. When investigators found him six months later, he had a folded cargo manifest in his hotel room for a shipment to coordinates with no airport.

The shepherd who guided search teams to the wreckage said he'd seen vehicle lights on the mountain two nights before anyone admitted the plane was missing. Tire tracks led to the site and back down, deeper on the return. Soil samples from the debris field tested positive for cesium-137, a fission product that doesn't occur naturally. A bunker cut into the ridge above the crash had been forced open, its shielded cradles partly empty. The plane hadn't just crashed. It had been used as cover to move radioactive material someone had buried decades earlier and someone else had come back to collect. The recorders were removed because they would have captured the beacon, the reroute, the truth. They're still missing.