Ghostrider: an NTSB-military technothriller (Miranda Chase Book 4) Read online

  Bright.

  Lacquer?

  Yes, he spotted several broken-open rounds of the 105 mm ammunition for the howitzer. M64 propellant. Another damn good reason to get out of here until an EOD team could get it cleaned up.

  Immediately past the main gun, they could see the remains of the laser, even if they couldn’t reach it.

  “Here,” Pierre pointed at the elbow he’d busted on the laser. “I only had a few seconds to stop the hijacking. So I busted this and fired the laser on full. I’m guessing that it cooked the back of the plane. The heat probably destabilized the munitions, and the plane’s impact with the pier was enough to trigger the explosion that lifted and flipped the fuselage.”

  He looked up at the crumbled deck plating above their heads just in front of where the remains of the laser hung. There was a staining he didn’t recognize.

  “Blood,” Holly followed the direction of his gaze. “Dried brown, but definitely blood.”

  He’d exited the plane uninjured, as had everyone else. Unless…

  He pictured the layout of the plane, which was tricky as it was all upside down at the moment. From the front passenger door where Pierre had dived out, if Tango Torres had wanted to cross to the weapons console, he’d most naturally walk…to the right of the laser.

  And pass his legs through the beam! Good! He hoped it had hurt like hell.

  “Not my blood. Or Rosa’s. All I give a damn about.”

  Miranda didn’t react, but Holly looked at him with sudden interest.

  “Rosa?”

  “Laser operator. I helped her get off the plane before I went to help the pilots. Only to witness their hijacking.”

  Holly’s look said that he hadn’t answered her question.

  Well, to hell with her.

  Miranda continued. “There’s no failure of aircraft or pilot in either crash. I am an NTSB investigator, not a military criminal detective. I don’t have the training for this.”

  “At this level, I don’t think anyone does, Miranda.” Holly’s sympathy struck Pierre as not very helpful, however accurate.

  “Therefore, we must go to your realm, Holly. What does your experience in the SASR make you conjecture?” Ha. That would teach Holly—turnabout was fair play.

  But SASR? What the fuck? The pretty blonde had been in the Australia Special Air Service Regiment? “Not an operator.”

  Her cool look told him that’s exactly what she’d been.

  Damn but that was seriously elite.

  “My conjecture is that someone wants an AC-130J Ghostrider very badly.”

  “Only three of them out there so far,” Pierre informed them. Then remembered where they were standing. “Two now.”

  “Yes, Eglin and Andrews,” Miranda spoke up.

  Which, again, was more than he knew.

  But he did know that some general had wanted a Ghostrider. One that Rosa had promised to—no, “sworn allegiance to” she’d said (which was just crazy)—be a gunner for.

  “Wait. What was that general’s name you asked about earlier?”

  “General Jorge Jesus Martinez.”

  “JJ for a nickname?”

  Holly nodded carefully.

  No way could he admit to knowing about that without incriminating Rosa.

  Except he just had.

  39

  Miranda tried calling Mike as soon as they had crawled out of the wrecked airplane and stood once again on the scorched stone pier of Avalon’s harbor.

  Mike didn’t answer.

  Jon answered on the first ring. “Hi, Miranda. I just wanted to apologize for pushing you to bring your team over to the military. That was unfair and I should have known to tell my boss ‘No’ without even asking. Something Auntie Elizabeth has just pointed out most emphatically.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I can’t reach Mike.” Then she remembered, but since the answer was “No” she hadn’t seen any point in dwelling on the offer.

  “I was afraid that you’d be angry about—”

  “Angry that I can’t reach Mike? Why would that be? I need to speak with him. Is he on another call?”

  “No, he’s on another flight. He and Jeremy.”

  Miranda looked at the phone for a moment. Jon’s name was across the top of the display. But he was supposed to be—“I thought you were going to protect Jeremy.”

  “He’s fine. They’re on a training flight of the Ghostrider. Jeremy was like a kid in a candy store he was so excited.”

  Miranda almost handed the phone to Holly, like when Drake was being all caught up in being the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

  No.

  She had to learn to handle some of these things herself or her entire brain would be outsourced to her team and she’d have nothing left of her own. She did set it to speaker though.

  “And you’re not with them?” She had to make sure that she had this right.

  Holly looked at her strangely. She’d missed the beginning of the conversation.

  “Right.”

  “Who are you with?”

  “Aunt…General Gray.”

  “Hand the phone to her.” Then she recalled Mike’s training, “Please?”

  There was a long pause as the phone changed hands.

  “Hello, Miranda.”

  “I presume by the fact that Jon called you ‘Aunt’ that you are now married to Drake?” Holly spoke up before she could. “Congratulations!”

  “He’s being a little premature. We’re engaged as of last night.”

  “Doesn’t matter! It’s about time Drake scooped you up. Go, General Gray! Whoo! Whoo! Whoo!” Holly made an arm cranking like she was running an old printing press which didn’t seem relevant, unless she was imitating printing wedding announcements.

  “Thanks, Holly. I just—”

  “I can’t reach Mike.” Miranda tried to never cut anyone off, but they always seemed to think it was okay to cut her off. Maybe just this once. “I understand that he’s on a training flight on an AC-130J Ghostrider.”

  “Yes. We were at Andrews inspecting the new modifications when a training crew boarded to fly some runs out over VACAPES Test Range. They invited Jeremy to go with them.”

  Miranda closed her eyes for a moment to block out Holly’s expression as her skin went sheet white. She did her best to summon her patience before speaking.

  “We’re at the crash of the Ghostrider in Avalon Harbor. We have reason to believe that General JJ Martinez had a crew attempt to hijack that plane. Two pilots died in the attempt.”

  No one interrupted her.

  “There are two other Ghostriders.”

  “Yes,” Lizzy responded. “We warned Eglin to beef up the security around theirs.”

  “What about the one at Andrews?”

  “At Andrews? It’s the most secure air base in the country. We weren’t more than a few hundred meters from Air Force One.”

  Miranda couldn’t find the words.

  Holly spoke up, though her voice sounded tight and strained. “Secure enough to stop a three-star general from leading a crew to steal a plane?”

  “Oh shit!” Lizzy gasped.

  “He’s not answering his phone. Can you trace it?”

  “Please hold.”

  Pierre was pacing the long stone pier, clearly troubled by something.

  “It’s still at Andrews. So is Jeremy’s,” Lizzy returned to the line.

  “Well, that’s a relief.”

  “No, because the plane isn’t. I’ve got someone rushing to the phones’ location. Hang on.”

  The next five minutes were perhaps the longest in Miranda’s life.

  40

  Lizzy had Miranda on one line, a captain on the ground at Andrews on another, and the NSA contact who’d traced the phone on the third.

  “Both numbers you gave me appear to be in airplane mode,” the NSA contact reported. “We can follow a phone in that mode unless it is actually powered off. It simply means that the user
can’t send or receive.”

  “That’s not encouraging.”

  “Best I’ve got.”

  “I found them,” the captain at Andrews reported. “Actually I found three. Two together and a third that caught my headlights another twenty or so meters along the taxiway. Wouldn’t have spotted it if they hadn’t just mowed.”

  Back to the NSA, “Can you tell me who the third phone belongs to? It’s presently co-located with the other two.”

  But she already knew!

  Why was it only now that she remembered the shadow of a small woman moving to the Ghostrider’s sensor tech station? That had to be—

  There was a sharp rattle of keys. “A Colonel Vicki Cortez. US Air Force issued the phone.”

  It was like a bad movie. The undead were coming back to haunt her.

  If she’d listened more to Taz rather than tossing her out of the office.

  If she’d mentioned that meeting to Drake.

  If she’d paid attention to the crew climbing aboard the Ghostrider.

  If…

  General Elizabeth Gray tried to imagine any worse possible news than half of Miranda’s team being swept up by Colonel Taz Cortez.

  But she couldn’t.

  41

  “Shooting a civilian would not be my first choice.” Taz waited for Mike’s smile to fade.

  But it didn’t. “No, really. What kind of game are you playing? Is this some sort of wargame scenario thing?”

  She slammed the side of the gun across his face.

  He dropped to the deck in a heap, clutching his cheek. His cry of surprise galvanized Jeremy, so she flicked off the safety and placed it against Jeremy’s temple.

  “Don’t.”

  He froze while Mike groaned.

  “Besides, I didn’t hit him that hard.”

  “Shit! It feels as if you did.”

  She nudged his hip with a foot to roll him onto his back. “I find that sometimes it’s easier this way.”

  “Easier?” Mike kept pulling his hands away to check for blood. There was only one small cut that would stop bleeding soon—the rest was just scrapes and scratches. Though his eye would probably turn an impressive black-and-blue.

  “When you’re built like me, very few people take you seriously. As both a woman and an officer, I find that a little irritating.”

  Mike eased up slowly until he was sitting with his back against the hull and his knees up in front of him. “Yeah, I kind of get that now.”

  She shifted her aim back to Mike, but shifted her angle. If she had to shoot him, she didn’t want the round punching through the hull or some other critical system behind him. Mike’s body didn’t look heavy enough to stop even the 9 mm ball rounds in her Beretta M9 sidearm.

  “I’m going to talk, and you’re going to listen.”

  “We’re not going to the VACAPES for a training flight?” Jeremy blinked at her in surprise. He still hadn’t caught on to what was happening.

  “That would be a ‘no,’ buddy,” Mike said softly, then hissed sharply as he placed a palm over his eye.

  Taz sighed. Sergeant Rosa Cruz had signed up for this. Tango and Gutz had understood the risks. As had Major Danny Gonzalez from the Colorado flight, now at the controls of this plane, and his pilot, the missing-presumed-dead Lieutenant Colonel Luis Hernandez. There’d been no ping at all off his phone, and his “escape” motorcycle was still parked in Aspen hours after the crash.

  These civilians knew nothing. Had agreed to nothing.

  The only civilians she ever dealt with were defense contractors seeking the stamp of the general’s approval. JJ Martinez’s approval was the gold standard of Air Force requisitions and everyone up and down the line knew it. Part of her job had been assuring that it stayed golden. If he did authorize it, it had to perform.

  He’d often sent her into meetings, not to find out anything technical, but rather to ferret out if they were telling the truth. Civilians and officers alike had learned, some the hard way, that lying to her didn’t work…at all.

  But, Mike and Jeremy weren’t that kind of civilian.

  “What are you?”

  “Go to hell.”

  She knelt down in front of him.

  “Look at me.”

  He shook his head no, then cursed and hissed again.

  She flicked her safety back on, but it made a loud and satisfying metallic click even over the deep rumble of the engines.

  He looked up at her, his left eye blinking hard.

  “Stop that.”

  His gaze steadied.

  “No blood in the eye. Any double vision?” When he shook his head no, she rolled her eyes. “You’ll be fine. Now answer the question, what are you?”

  “We’re crash investigators for the NTSB,” Mike growled. She understood that attitude better than all of his Mr. Smooth. “We’ve been on your trail since Colorado. I’m assuming that you’re Colonel Vicki Cortez.”

  “Taz. Short for Taser. How did you know?”

  “I’m the one who found your body double. Let’s just say that you aren’t real tall, especially in the military. Where did your body-doubles come from?”

  “Mortuary fire in Tijuana.” The owners had been only too glad to dispose of the bodies—even the undamaged ones. They’d probably pocketed all the money for the cremations and given wood ash to the grieving families. “How long did it take you to figure out?”

  “That the crash was fake? An hour or so.”

  They had planned for it to buy them a minimum of three days, well past the end of the present mission.

  “You wouldn’t look so surprised if you knew our boss,” Mike’s smile was coming back. If she was holding a Taser rather than an M9, she’d be sorely tempted to use it.

  “She’s amazing!” Jeremy joined the conversation. “I’ll bet she’s already figured out what happened in Catalina. She already had the last person off the plane with her.”

  Taz hadn’t stuck around long enough to find out that anyone had made it off.

  “Weapons officer. Said the pilots didn’t make it.”

  Damn it! That should have been checked. Reacquiring Tech Sergeant Rosa Cruz would have been far less risky than trusting to her ability to coerce these two into performing.

  Taz considered, sighed, then sat down in the sensor tech’s seat.

  The deck leveled as they reached their cruising altitude. Under ten thousand feet so that they wouldn’t arouse the suspicions of overeager air traffic controllers. Because this was a military flight, not a commercial one, the engine’s roar was so loud that she was stuck leaning forward to be able to talk to the two of them. All the lighting was nighttime red, except for the lights on the control stations themselves. Those were high-tech green or brilliantly multi-colored displays.

  She hadn’t fired her sidearm outside of minimum practice range time. Had never seen war, except when the general had toured forward operations—a rare event. General Jorge Jesus Martinez was a Pentagon general, not some field man. He’d flown C-130s all the way back in Desert Storm and not much since, other than his personal jet.

  I like the ability to make surprise inspections. He rarely took staff with him, other than herself. Another very unusual action for a three-star usually surrounded by an entire cast.

  He trusted her.

  He depended on her to make everything right in his world.

  And now she had to coerce two civilians…

  She holstered her weapon.

  Taz knew Mike’s type all too well. Everything was a joke. Or, better yet, a game. A chance for one-upmanship. “Being” was more important than “doing.” It was the first time she’d pistol-whipped anyone, and Mike had deserved it less than most. She was definitely losing it.

  Jeremy was something else entirely. She’d learned how to use his type, but never understood them. Like the rare warrior-pilots, he bore a stark commitment to truth over career. Only a rare few, like JJ, carried the warrior with him up to the heights of command with
out being corrupted.

  Just like the Pentagon, all of the defense contractors had the same dichotomy. She’d learned to start with the doer-nerds, garner as much “truth” as she could, and only then meet with the Mikes of the world.

  Taz had never tried to change the mind of the warrior caste before.

  When all else fails, try the truth?

  She ignored Mike, still sitting on the floor and patting his eye gently, and focused all of her attention on Jeremy.

  “We need your help.”

  42

  Pierre tried to remember how he’d ended up in this position, but couldn’t quite put it together.

  One moment he’d been standing just to the west side of the wrecked Ghostrider airplane he’d been flying in this morning. The evening sun fast approaching the high hills to the back of Avalon Harbor hid the worst of the devastation along the waterfront.

  The next moment, his back was pinned against the hull. A very big combat blade from Holly’s leg sheath was up against his throat—point digging painfully into his skin. Not poised to slice across, rather set to be jammed straight into his brain and end him. He could just manage to see the distinctive metal ring at the hilt that would slip over a rifle muzzle to make it a bayonet. A seven-inch M9. Straight to the brain indeed.

  Her other hand wasn’t at his throat or pinning one of his arms.

  Instead it was clenched around his balls so tightly that if he so much as coughed, or even tried to uncross his eyes at the searing pain, she’d crush them.

  “Tell us everything you know about General JJ. Now.” Her voice was dead calm, but there was no question that he was eye-to-eye with death—hers had turned to steel blue far harder than the steel of the knife at his throat. The setting sun directly behind her lit her blonde hair with fire.

  He glanced at Miranda. She stood four paces back, still holding her phone, and just watching the situation. Her head was tipped slightly to the side. No help there.

  “Back off.” Pierre knew it was a mistake even as he said it. He’d moved his jaw too much and could now feel a hot trickle of blood slipping down his neck. “Please?” he whispered.