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  Terence had told her to say the last line sarcastically, but she’d never figured out how to do that.

  This time she didn’t even say it. She would leave the major to draw his own conclusions about his degree of qualification versus hers.

  General Elmont, he’d stepped from behind the major and she could see his name tag now, chuckled softly, “You tell him.”

  “My name is Miranda Chase. I’m the Investigator-in-Charge for the NTSB.” Another rote phrase that Terence had trained her to use at the start of an investigation.

  “Son,” the general clapped a hand onto the major’s shoulder. But they didn’t look anything alike, and they didn’t even share a last name. “Thought the Air Force would have trained you better. First, this was a Dignified Transfer flight and you’re not being very dignified.”

  Miranda wondered what disaster had needed a plane as huge as a C-5 Galaxy to transfer that many military coffins. She hadn’t heard of any disasters in those escalating wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

  “Second,” the general continued, “never, ever be rude to someone—especially not when she’s smarter than you.”

  Or perhaps they were bringing back a few coffins but were mostly empty; returning to gather more troops and equipment here at JBLM to take overseas. That seemed more likely.

  No!

  No hypotheses.

  She would make her observations, then gather other facts. Then, typically without the clutter of hypotheses, she’d arrive at her conclusion.

  The major snarled out, “This way!” as he stalked off toward the wreck where the fire was now mostly under control. Actually, the two wings that had broken free were still towers of flame and smoke, but the fuselage was coming under control.

  The general stopped her with a light hand on her arm.

  Miranda looked down at his hand.

  He was touching her.

  Right there.

  Touching her.

  No one touched her.

  Not lightly.

  If felt…like she needed a shower—a hard, driving one with the spray turned up as hard as it would go.

  The touch was there, but it wasn’t.

  Too light.

  But she could feel it.

  She knew that the problem was hers, not the touch’s. But she couldn’t block it. She didn’t know what to do.

  All she could think about was the touch.

  Even on a warm summer night, she’d layer on extra blankets for the weight because she needed contact to be firm.

  She’d—

  General Elmont’s hand slid away. “…so you might want to forgive his manners.”

  “Whose manners?”

  The general leaned closer to inspect her and she kept her eyes on his two stars—silver, shiny. “Major Charleston.”

  “What manners was Major Charleston exhibiting that I’m supposed to forgive him for?” She struggled to reconnect the pieces.

  The general blinked hard several times, as if he too had lost the thread of the conversation.

  “Why don’t you go follow the major? We’ll talk later. Take care of my men. That, Ms. Chase, is an order.” He turned and walked away. He was limping badly and there appeared to be blood caked on the back of his pantleg. Fresh blood now darkening even more of his pantleg.

  But he must know that.

  Miranda turned to follow the major.

  4

  Miranda moved to where Major Charleston stood close by the lead fire engines. The pair of massive Oshkosh 3000 Striker firefighting engines were easing toward the fuselage. A bumper-mounted nozzle was blasting a cloud of water and foam at the aircraft.

  “Look, Lady,” the major shouted over the roar of the vehicles’ six hundred and fifty horsepower engines but kept his attention on the fire. “I’m head of the site investigation team for the military. You do not have the clearance to be here. Because the general ordered it, I’ll put up with the risk of having you on site, but you stay right at my side or I’ll—”

  “I’m cleared to Top Secret.”

  The major spun to look at her. “Say that again.”

  She’d never understood the purpose of repeating herself.

  When she didn’t answer, he spoke again, proving that he had heard her the first time. “I have only Secret-level clearance. Since when do they give NTSB people Top Sec—”

  “I’ve had it since I was eleven. My father said it was more convenient and the government agreed. I’m not quite sure why. I never thought to ask and now he’s dead. I’m just entering my second five-year reassessment. Why is the general bleeding?”

  “He was a passenger. He’s the sole survivor of the C-5 Galaxy’s crash, alone at the very rear of— Wait! Why is he what?”

  Again the request to repeat herself. Instead she turned and the major turned with her.

  General Elmont hadn’t moved far from where they’d left him. The general was kneeling on the ground and fell over sideways even as they watched.

  “Shit! You! Stay here!” He aimed a finger at the ground and then rushed toward the general.

  Miranda shuffled over the one step to stand exactly where Major Charleston had pointed, then turned back to inspect the firefight.

  Because of the tunnel vision created by the two massive fire engines to either side, all she could see was the fuselage. Now the debris field was no longer her focus, but rather the remains of the C-5 Galaxy in front of her.

  The fuselage rested at an unusual angle. It wasn’t rolled side-to-side, but its rear section was pressed hard against the pavement and the nose rose over two stories higher than it should. The front had ridden up over a structure that must have once been the control tower.

  The massive wheel carriages dangled helplessly in midair.

  The nose gear appeared to be planted in the remains of the control tower.

  The heavy roar of the two Strikers actually created a comforting pressure. Though she did pull earplugs from their vest pocket and firing range earmuffs from her site pack.

  The massive hull rose in a three-story tube. Even with the tail and wings broken off, two hundred feet of the plane remained mostly intact.

  Miranda had never seen an aircraft incident while it was still in progress.

  The flames around the outside of the hull had been suppressed, but fire still shot out the open end of the fuselage where the tail had been ripped off.

  Easing forward, the two Strikers extended their long, folded, rooftop booms. At the end of either boom was a slender, carbide-tipped nozzle almost as long as she was tall. Even as she watched, they extended the nozzles and punched them through the hull, high on the curve and fifty feet apart.

  Inside, she knew more evidence was being destroyed as they pumped six hundred gallons per minute of water-foam mix. Or perhaps it was a water–Purple-K suppressant mix.

  The flames pouring out the few openings in the hull diminished rapidly. She’d moved forward with the Strikers to see as much as she could before they washed it away. The radiant heat still poured off the sides of the plane.

  On one of the exterior compartments of the Striker to her right, she spotted the label PPE. Inside were reflective-foil Personal Protection Equipment suits. She pulled one on, including the foil cowl that covered her head and draped over her shoulders. Miranda selected a breathing bottle.

  That was much more comfortable.

  The Strikers had stopped the flow from their front-bumper sprayers and were focused on fighting the interior fire with their injector nozzles.

  She crossed in front of one truck and began circling the wreck.

  Miranda had learned to be polite to drivers when they stopped for her when crossing the street. She never knew if them stopping because of a red light entailed her to acknowledge those drivers as well. As they hadn’t run her over by running said red light, she had determined that it was a low-effort trade-off to wave at them anyway.

  Having learned her lesson, she waved to the Striker’s driver and engineer as
they stared down at her past the three high-speed windshield wipers to combat all of the back spray.

  They waved back.

  Perhaps a little more excitedly than she’d expected, but she was always a poor judge of such things.

  5

  Inside the C-5, the flames were retreating.

  The two piercing nozzles were still running, spreading great quantities of foam over everything until the few remaining flareups looked like bonfires in a snowy Purple-K suppressant-lined cavern rather than a raging conflagration.

  Mounds in the foam were curiously uniform. She stopped to inspect one.

  A foil-clothed fireman rushed up to her.

  “Are you okay?” Their shouts were muffled by their PPE gear.

  She shouted that she was. Why wouldn’t she be? But she couldn’t seem to hear her own voice inside the mask, so she nodded enough to move the foil cowl and the breather mask as well.

  “Jesus. Don’t scare us like that.” He shoved a helmet on top of the foil. It slid down over her ears.

  “This isn’t a safe zone.”

  She knew that. Why did he think she’d borrowed the protective gear?

  Two teams of firefighters had arrived on either side of them. They wielded hoses that suppressed the last of the flames around her and punched ungainly, lurid holes in the field of purple foam that had finally stopped raining down from above.

  Once they moved away from her, Miranda inspected the holes.

  Through one was a patch of red. Through another dark blue, with part of a star scorched dark brown.

  Flags.

  Flags on coffins. That’s what the rectangles were. The general had said it was a Dignified Transfer flight and she was pleased to confirm that piece of eyewitness account with verifiable hard evidence.

  More holes appeared through the melting foam.

  Scorched flags on many coffins.

  The coffin ends toward the rear of the plane were mostly unburnt. The fronts were scorched to a near uniform brown.

  A few were burnt through, exposing the steel, transfer coffins that were chained down to the decking. The chains crisscrossed in an X-pattern on either side had anchored each coffin exactly in place despite the hard crash. Three columns across the width of the deck. And the number of rows hidden by the ongoing firefight.

  Miranda proceeded forward, inspecting the variations on each coffin.

  Occasionally the firefighters would shout something incomprehensible through their masks. Then a group would cluster around her to continue chasing the fire forward.

  Sometimes they blocked her way forward, but they soon moved forward again. That freed her to continue her inspection of one coffin after another.

  The scorching of the more forward coffins’ flags was asymmetrical. She wanted to take pictures, but her camera was beneath her foil suit.

  As was her flashlight. C-5 Galaxy aircraft had very few windows. There was the light from the gaping hole where the tail had been torn off. And ahead the way was lit only by the rapidly disappearing firelight.

  Here, in the middle of the aircraft’s long cargo bay—longer than the Wright Brothers first powered flight—it was now quite dark.

  Inside the suit it was terribly hot and sweaty—mostly from her own trapped body heat, she knew—but the firefighters were all still wearing theirs. Perhaps it was better if she remained in hers.

  She also couldn’t get out her notebook to record the precise tie-down points for each set of chains. It took her a moment to work out an mnemonic so that she could recall the layout later.

  Miranda had proceeded halfway up the long cargo deck and the destruction grew worse with each step.

  Here, the coffins rarely had more than tatters left of their flags. Some of the cases were knocked askew by massive bending of the floor plates. The decking of a C-5 Galaxy was an integral structural element, not an additional surface as in several other military transports. Flexion of the plates meant flexion of the hull. Some of the stresses were near critical failure.

  The ceiling above had burned through.

  The rear half of a C-5’s ceiling contained a passenger seating area.

  Typical configuration: seventy-three rear-facing airline seats. The interior ladder was still folded up against the ceiling.

  Major Charleston had said that the general was the only survivor.

  She would have to inspect the upstairs, but she knew that if there had been any passengers, they would have been cooked by the fire directly beneath them.

  No survivors.

  They could wait. As dead as the men in the coffins.

  Miranda looked rearward to estimate how high she’d climbed so far. At least ten or fifteen feet above the rear loading—

  6

  “No!” Her shout echoed inside her foil hat and breathing mask.

  She scrabbled at the edges and tore them off.

  The air was hot and stank of burnt fuel, but it was breathable.

  Once she was clear of the PPE’s headgear, she did retain the helmet as the overhead structure no longer looked reliable.

  The helmet slid down so far without the foil padding that she had to wear it practically on the back of her head in order to see.

  She raced downslope toward the rear of the cargo deck.

  “No!”

  Miranda’s feet glissaded on the thick foam.

  “Stop!”

  The six men silhouetted at the rearmost row of coffins ignored her…until she slid helplessly into them. Her transfer of momentum was sufficient that while she came to a stop and remained standing, three of the men went down.

  As they fell, a brand-new American flag fluttered out of their hands and draped over the last puddles of Purple-K fire-suppressant foam remaining at the tail ramp.

  Several of the men cursed, but one of the ones remaining upright grabbed her arm.

  Solidly. As if to steady rather than restrain.

  “Thank you, I’m fine now.” He let go.

  The team had removed two scorched flags and had already replaced one of them. Though now the three men were soaked, wet with the water still flowing down the decking and patches of foam on their fatigues. They looked unhappy as they regained their feet.

  “What are you doing?”

  They all looked at each other. “We are reflagging these coffins and then transferring them properly,” the sergeant who’d steadied her assured her in what she supposed was meant to be a soothing voice. Peters by his pocket stitching. Master sergeant by his sleeve device.

  “No, you aren’t.”

  “Yes, ma’am. We are.” Less soothing. “Do you know what’s inside these? These are fallen men. Their families are waiting and we—”

  “The burn pattern on these flags is evidence in the crash and they are not to be removed.”

  “By whose orders?” Sergeant Peters was sounding stern.

  “By mine.”

  “And who are you?”

  She’d only ever practiced her rote phrase for the beginning of an investigation. Of course, this was only the second investigation she’d ever done, so perhaps it would be okay to repeat her introductory narrative.

  “My name is Miranda Chase. I’m the Investigator-in-Charge for the NTSB.”

  The sergeant looked at her wide-eyed for a moment, then shook his head before signaling for his men to continue.

  They were ignoring her.

  No!

  She couldn’t have that happen.

  Again.

  Like everything else in her life.

  But she was the Investigator-in-Charge.

  Even the general had agreed with her.

  The general had—

  “I’ve been ordered by General Elmont to take care of his men.”

  That stopped the flag detail as they were unchaining the first coffin from the deck. The flag was beautifully wrapped. It was big enough that it was far wider and longer than the coffin. The long sides had been folded underneath, then cleverly tucked into the overhan
g at the head and foot in such a way as to make a neat cap over the whole. She almost stepped forward to pluck one of the corners apart to see how it was done.

  But everyone was looking at her.

  Why?

  Oh. “Yes. And per General Elmont’s order, I was doing just that. Now stop what you’re doing. I need to have the foam cleared away from the more forward coffins so that I can photograph them properly. And you might want to send a man up the ladder to see how many more are dead in the passenger compartment.”

  In unison, all six men turned to look at the ladder folded up against the ceiling, which was thirteen feet and six inches above the deck. It would have been sufficient if one or two had looked. Miranda certainly didn’t waste any effort repeating her earlier action.

  The sergeant waved two men to go see. Then he had someone run for some brooms and a hose. In moments, she was once again moving upslope, forward through the aircraft.

  After she shed the rest of the PPE foil suit, she had a team of four men brushing clear each coffin and then getting out of the shot as she took photographs and made notes.

  By the time they reached the middle of the aircraft—where she’d turned around earlier—the fires were out and the foil-covered firefighters were leaving.

  One stopped close beside her and dragged off his breathing apparatus.

  “Are you the crazy bitch who just walked into an active fire?” His fury was evident, even to her.

  “My name is Miranda Chase. I’m the Investigator-in-Charge for the NTSB. I’ve been ordered by General Elmont to take care of his men.” She tried combining the two explanations into a proclamation.

  “Fucking lunatic, more like.”

  Unsure what else to do, she picked up the foil cowl and breathing apparatus that she’d dropped on the deck and handed them to him.

  He looked at them as if he didn’t know what they were.

  “I would like to keep the helmet for now. You are correct about the plane’s structural integrity being questionable.”