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

  And…

  “Come along, Jeff. I want you to help me find something. If it’s here, it should be between the cockpit and the center of the explosion.”

  Jeff ran to her side as she explained what she was looking for.

  13

  Jon stared at the message on his phone. It was a long one and he had to scroll several times to read it all. When he got to the end, he couldn’t believe it and scrolled back to the top. But he’d read the header correctly. This hadn’t been some ordinary flight.

  “Jeremy, we’ve got to go.” He began packing his gear.

  Jeremy stuck his head out from under the port wing where he’d been inspecting the exhaust port of the Number Three engine. “I’m not done yet.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We’ve got bigger problems. I need to get up the mountain.” Then he began stuffing Jeremy’s tools into his pack.

  “Hey!” Jeremy scrambled free. “You’ve got to organize it or it doesn’t all fit.”

  “Fine, then you do it. You have thirty seconds.” Jon threw up his hands, then shouldered his own pack.

  “Where’s the fire?” Somehow, though his pack had been half emptied and laid out across the top of the wing, Jeremy had everything stowed and had slung it into place while Jon was still adjusting his straps.

  “In Washington, DC,” Jon said grimly, then turned to climb up the steep slope. It was steep enough that in many places it was only a matter of reaching out to touch the rising ground. “People really ski down this?”

  “I’m a computer and airplane nerd from Seattle. What makes you think I’d know?”

  “I’m a SEAL’s kid from San Diego who decided to be a black sheep and join the Air Force. You’ve got to know more than me.”

  “Not about skiing. I can’t even waterski. Besides, isn’t the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs? That’s where the Olympic ski team trains, right?”

  Jon could waterski, but had never liked the cold so kept his mouth shut.

  He knew they were about six or seven hundred feet from the top. That shouldn’t take long. He might not have skied at the Academy, but he’d certainly run more than enough in the foothills of the Rockies.

  He made the first hundred feet before he had to stop, his pulse thundering in his ears.

  “What the hell?” he managed to gasp out.

  “Altitude,” Jeremy gasped as well. He was glad to see that Jeremy was in no better shape.

  “Then how do they climb something like Everest?”

  “Again, what makes you think I’d know? Supplemental oxygen above the eight-thousand-meter Death Zone. Most teams do a four- to six-week acclimatization for altitude at Base Camp.”

  Typical. Jeremy seemed to know a lot about everything, even if he couldn’t ski. Jon made it another fifty feet up. Reminding himself it was just five stories didn’t help.

  Jeremy dropped to sit beside him. Jon didn’t even remember sitting down.

  “Why are you…” Jon had to drag in another deep breath, “…giving me such a…hard time?”

  “Am I?”

  Jon decided that an eye roll would use less oxygen than speech.

  Jeremy seemed to be studying the peaks lying to the north for a while. “I didn’t know I was.” It didn’t sound as if he was lying.

  “Well, you’ve been grinding on something since the moment I got here. The hammer. Banging the engine. Insisting that every camera angle I used wasn’t optimal. Stuff,” he finished lamely.

  “Huh!” Jeremy’s grunt was thoughtful. Or was it another brush-off like Miranda had given him?

  They rose to their feet and made it up another seventy-five or so. They should be halfway up the slope and it looked good. He pushed an extra twenty-five and came over a rise. After a short meadow that looked almost level, though he’d bet it wasn’t, the mountain rose up high above them.

  “It got taller,” Jeremy gasped out. He pulled out an altimeter, studied it, then turned it to Jon. According to it, they were still over four hundred feet below the main crash.

  Jon turned to look back down at the wings. They were smaller, he was sure of it. Just not much. Upslope, the top still looked very, very far away.

  They had to work together to get around an outcropping and not be tipped over backward by their heavy packs. When they were sitting atop it, with their legs dangling out into space, Jeremy pulled out his water bottle, offering it to Jon first.

  He drank deeply before returning it and felt better for doing so.

  “You’re upsetting Miranda.” Jeremy said as if it was simple fact, again studying the horizon.

  “I’ll be damned if I know how.”

  “You like her?”

  “Yes.”

  “A lot?”

  “Uh-huh.” Jon slowed down on his answer.

  “And you’re sleeping with her.”

  “Not sure that’s your business, but yes. When our schedules allow.”

  Jeremy hadn’t looked away from the distant peaks. And again he stopped talking. But if Jon was judging correctly, he wasn’t angry. His profile looked puzzled.

  “Do you wish it was you sleeping with her?”

  “What?” That finally had Jeremy facing him. “No! Why?”

  Jon finally figured out what was going on. He should have seen it right away. Jeremy worshipped Miranda. Anyone touching her would be just plain wrong in his world. Like watching your parents kiss. Not that his parents ever had.

  But he couldn’t just let Jeremy off the hook, even if he hadn’t realized that he’d been chapping Jon’s ass for the last few hours. He pushed to his feet, ready to tackle the next section.

  “She’s pretty hot, you know. Wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to.”

  “No-o! I— Not with—”

  “How about Holly? You like blondes?”

  “Holly?” His voice squeaked and Jon didn’t think it was due to the altitude. “She’s…scary.”

  Jon had to agree with him there.

  “So who are you seeing?” The conversation stretched out in stages. They were no longer stopping after each section, but rather step-step-rest, step-step-rest.

  “No one.”

  “C’mon, Jeremy. You’re a good-looking kid.” Step-step-rest. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-four.” Over a decade younger than him or Miranda.

  “You’re not a virgin, are you?”

  “No!” His voice had the defensiveness of someone who’d not had much experience. But then was softer as he continued. “Nancy. Chess club. Graduation night. I was sixteen. I finished MIT at nineteen. Dual masters from Princeton. At twenty-two. I mostly studied.” Even those short sentences were more than Jon could have managed while moving.

  Then Jon stopped short and looked at him. He’d known Jeremy was smart, but it hadn’t sunk in that, much like Miranda, he was a genius at what he did. Jon’s main success in high school had been swim team—his SEAL father’s realm as if he could ever compete. For his first eighteen years, he’d never been good enough. Without Uncle Drake, then a colonel in the 75th Army Rangers, calling in a couple favors for him, he’d probably never have made it into the Air Force Academy at all. Once there and away from his father, he’d thrived. But it had been a close thing.

  Had Jeremy had a chance to thrive yet? Professionally and intellectually, yes. But the rest of him?

  “We need to get you a girl, Jeremy. One as nice as you are.”

  Jeremy blushed in response—his coloring lit far more brightly than could be accounted for by the high-altitude workout. Jon’s kid sister was still in her twenties—and hunting for Husband Number Two with all the sensitivity of a battering ram. She would run right over Jeremy and never notice that she’d flattened him. He’d have to give it some more thought. Maybe ask if Holly knew anyone.

  He turned back up the slope, too short of breath to speak anymore. They’d moved past step-step-rest. Now they were just in the slow grind of continuous motion that would eventually get them to the top.
/>   But he didn’t dare look up to find out how much longer it would be.

  14

  Jon felt like Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay atop Mount Everest—without the supplemental oxygen.

  Jeremy had ground out the details in broken sentences and scattered phrases. “Fifty feet to the highest peak in the world, they stopped crawling and stood. Past speech, Tenzing waved for Hillary to be the first ever to stand atop the mountain. He figured it was the white climber’s privilege. In reply, Hillary wrapped an arm around Tenzing’s shoulders, then, staggering forward, they took the top together.”

  His and Jeremy’s arrival at the top of the Snowmass ski area was far less auspicious, but perhaps equally welcome. Jon had thought he was in pretty good shape. Apparently not.

  “Sixty-four percent,” Jeremy grunted from where he knelt on all fours with his head hanging down.

  “Huh?” Was all Jon could manage. If not for the char, Jon would have spread-eagled on the ground. Finally reaching the true top past three false peaks had taken his knees right out from under him.

  “We only have sixty-four percent of the air up here compared to sea level.”

  “How much did they have on Everest?”

  “Thirty-three.”

  “Shit.” It was all he could say. So much for comparing himself to Hillary. He and Jeremy had barely walked up to an altitude that locals skied at all winter. Of course, skiers didn’t live at Pope Field at two hundred feet year-round and carry full site-investigation packs weighing at least thirty pounds.

  Then he glanced at Jeremy’s big pack and felt even worse about the current state of his conditioning.

  He looked up to see the rest of the team and the helo pilot’s kid walking the hilltop in a well-spaced line.

  Grid pattern search of the debris field. But…

  “Hey, Jeremy?”

  “Wha…” he trailed off as he spotted the others. “They’re not mapping the area; they’re looking for something specific already. Isn’t Miranda amazing?”

  Jon checked his watch, but couldn’t remember what time they’d gotten on the mountain. Enough time for the sun to be much higher in the sky and make him thankful for the eyesore hat the helo pilot had given him. It couldn’t be more than a few hours and already Miranda was hot on the trail.

  Not that it mattered now.

  Or maybe it mattered all the more.

  The line was coming their way. Jon felt recovered enough to rock back on his heels, but he wasn’t so sure about his knees yet.

  “Hey, Miranda,” he greeted her as she swung close.

  “Hey.” But she didn’t look up from her search. If he didn’t already know that Miranda never missed a thing, he’d have guessed that she hadn’t even registered his presence.

  Shedding his pack, he pushed to his feet and fell in beside her. “What are we looking for?”

  She held up a pilot’s emergency breathing system air bottle with regulator. The fat bottle was about the length and size of his upper arm. Separate from the airplane’s main system, it could supply approximately fifteen minutes of safe breathing independent of the onboard air system. On a fighter jet, it would be part of the ejection seat system, allowing the pilot to breathe during the descent from a high-altitude bail out.

  “Why?”

  Miranda stopped what she was doing and looked at him for the first time since his arrival in Aspen. Well, she looked at his left ear, but that was normal for her.

  She waved for the others to continue the search.

  “There are several anomalies with this crash.”

  “Including that it killed a three-star general?” That’s what had been in the text message that had sent him climbing up the hill.

  “No,” Miranda shook her head, then her focus seemed to encompass his right ear.

  “No? Three-star generals are practically as rare as flying penguins. When we lose one, it’s a big deal.”

  “There are no species of penguins that can fly—assuming we’re discussing flight in the medium of air and not the medium of water, where they are far closer to flying than swimming. That actually makes three-star generals infinitely more common than flying penguins. One hundred and forty-seven divided by zero is an infinite ratio.”

  “How in the world do you know how many three-star generals there are?” As soon as he asked the question, he knew it was a mistake. He was sidetracking Miranda, which meant he’d have to let her complete the sidetrack logic before he could get back to the point that, rare as penguins or not, a three-star had died on this mountaintop.

  “September 30th, 2018, Department of Defense Personnel workforce reports. The number is also limited by law.” Then she simply stopped and waited, catching Jon off guard.

  “So what are the anomalies?”

  “They’re numerous. Based on armament and the cockpit avionics, the plane is an older AC-130H Spectre that was not upgraded.”

  “I didn’t know that any of those were still in service.”

  “Not since 2001. This plane almost certainly came from the Davis-Monthan boneyard.”

  “That’s weird as hell. It was en route from… Huh! I’m not even sure where. I’m operating from the Denver ARTCC supervisor who called us about the loss of a military aircraft.”

  Miranda pointed toward the far side of the peak. “The forward personnel door was found partially intact, and fully open. In the cockpit, the bodies were behind the pilot and copilot positions. There was no blood, their seatbelts were unbuckled, and—” she held up the EBS air cylinder “—we’re unable to locate the copilot’s breathing system, but the pilot’s was intact and in the seat-side sleeve exactly as it should be.”

  “What are you thinking?” Jon’s head whirled with the stream of information she’d just delivered.

  She started to answer, but he held up his hand to stop her.

  “Wait. Okay. I’ve got that. It means that…the bodies weren’t actually the crew. They were placed on a plane that was…deliberately crashed.”

  Miranda was nodding, so he kept going down the logical chain.

  “The pilot put on his breathing mask. The copilot took his breathing bottle, opened the door, and depressurized the airplane. He then jumped out in a parachute.”

  “At thirty-nine thousand feet, which would probably point to a highly skilled individual.”

  Jon nodded his agreement, then looked up at the bright blue sky. “Three a.m. at thirty-nine thousand, it’s not a jump I’d like to make. Then the pilot declares an emergency, dives the plane—perhaps even setting the autopilot to continue the dive.”

  “I didn’t think to check—” Miranda turned to go back to the cockpit.

  “No,” Jon caught her arm to stop her. “Because the autopilot is designed to recover from dangerous situations automatically. So they wouldn’t engage it. He rode the plane down until it was unrecoverable. By that time there would be enough air to breathe. He rushed to the door and bailed out himself. Leaving the plane to die.”

  Miranda didn’t even hesitate. “That is the precise scenario I had also formulated as the most likely sequence of events.”

  Jon felt a bit as if he was a little boy who’d just been patted on the head. Also, in matching Miranda, he felt like he was one step closer to understanding her. Maybe…

  “Was that what was going on?”

  “What?” Miranda blinked in confusion

  Is this what Miranda felt like all the time—like she was being constantly hosed down by the sheer flow of information? No filter? He’d asked around and been told to read Temple Grandin’s book, Thinking in Pictures: and Other Reports from My Life with Autism. If they were going to be lovers… Boy and girlfriend? Accident investigators with benefits? If they were going to be any of those things, then he figured it was worth trying to understand her a bit better.

  “Have you been avoiding me all morning or have you just been focusing on the helicopter, then the boy, then the crash?”

  “I haven’t be
en avoiding you. We’ve been working on the same project all morning.”

  “Then why did you assign me to study the wings with Jeremy?”

  Miranda turned to face the team still walking the grid search over the hilltop and he was half afraid she’d rejoin their efforts without answering. Jeremy had taken over her position in the line.

  “Because you’re good with Jeremy,” she responded without turning. “Holly doesn’t give Jeremy time to slow down and think, and Mike tries but he isn’t very technical and having to explain things to him slows Jeremy down too much.”

  “Oh, okay.” And also, now that he’d kicked his ego to the curb, it made good sense. More than he expected Miranda to make about people. “It was just that we haven’t seen each other for three months, and you didn’t seem to be very happy to see me.”

  She turned back and for just an instant studied his eyes. He now knew how atypical that was. “Was I supposed to stop the investigation and make a gesture to indicate that I’m glad to see you again?”

  “Well…yeah.”

  Then she pulled out her notebook and wrote a neat note that he could just make out.

  Show people (e.g. Jon) that I’m glad to see them after time apart.

  He could also see the note above that: Discuss (Jon): attractiveness versus varying states of undress. He was absolutely looking forward to that one.

  “Is it too late to make an appropriate gesture? Like…” she flipped to an earlier page, “…a laugh too long after the joke?”

  “Never too late to show you care about someone.”

  Miranda simply stepped into his arms and placed her face against the center of his chest. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close even though she didn’t hug him back. Jon made sure the embrace was firm for her sake…and his. He liked the feel of her in his arms. There was something very right about it.

  He breathed in the scent of her. Northwest wilderness, and—he tried not to sneeze in her hair—the carbon of the mountaintop fire.

  The crash.

  Crap!

  15