Ghostrider: an NTSB-military technothriller (Miranda Chase Book 4) Page 8

  “You said there were a bunch of anomalies.” Jon released her from the hug and she missed it. That wasn’t something that had happened to her before. If she’d missed his hugs, did that indicate that she’d missed Jon as well? She supposed that it really did.

  “I said there were several anomalies.”

  Previously, Miranda had learned to tolerate hugs, partly because Holly insisted on delivering them so fiercely at such unexpected moments. But she liked leaning her face into Jon’s chest and not thinking about anything else for a brief time. It was one of the only places, other than sitting alone on her island, where Miranda had ever found that that she could just be…quiet.

  Now it was time to deal with the crash.

  “Acknowledging that it is far too early in the process to discuss conclusions…”

  Jon nodded his agreement without interrupting her flow.

  “In the past you’ve asked me to create a ‘most likely model’ against which to compare findings rather than waiting until all of the findings were complete.”

  Holly and the others, including the boy Jeff, came up beside Jon. With a slight shake of her head, Holly indicated that they hadn’t found the copilot’s emergency breathing system cannister.

  “So, hit us with your conclusions. Then we’ll see if they pan out.”

  “Not conclusions; incomplete hypotheses.” Miranda toyed with the regulator of the EBS cannister that she still held as she sought a way to explain what looked so clear in her head. “I need to clarify beforehand, the best-fit scenario has a distinct problem in that it is inherently illogical.”

  Holly shot her a thumbs-up as if that was a good thing. Jeremy and Jon both nodded for her to continue. Mike knelt by Jeff and whispered to him, “She means that her ideas don’t make any sense, but she thinks she knows what happened anyway.”

  Jeff nodded hard in sudden understanding and waited.

  “The airplane, despite a probable origin at the Davis-Monthan boneyard—”

  “Actually, it’s still officially there,” Jeremy chimed in. “I checked the logs against the aircraft number on the tail and the cockpit. It’s still recorded as being in storage on site.”

  “Which means we need to have a little chat with Colonel Arturo Campos,” Holly snarled out. She’d never liked him. Miranda had…briefly.

  “—despite the plane’s origin at the Davis-Monthan boneyard, it reported a depressurization event last night—”

  “At precisely three a.m. according to Denver Center,” Mike added.

  It had taken her over six months working together for her to accept their interruptions without losing track of her own thoughts, but rather allow her team to add to them on the fly. It was disconcertingly like having part of her brain be external to her head.

  She reached for her notebook to log the curious image for future consideration, then spotted Jon’s smile that seemed like it knew more than it should. She decided that making the note wasn’t important enough to interfere with her consideration of the crash scenario. Besides, she was unlikely to forget the externalization of her thoughts with the constant reminders the team provided.

  “If that depressurization event was caused by the opening of the passenger door at—”

  “—thirty-nine thousand feet—” Mike inserted again. “Oh, then it would be deliberate.”

  “Who would deliberately tank a nice old gunship?” Holly appeared disgusted. “Know more than a few ex-mates I wouldn’t have minded targeting with a Spectre if someone had just given me the use of one. That’s as dumb as doing a dance on a dingo’s tail.”

  Miranda forged ahead. “The cockpit has bodies, but not in their chairs. And there’s no messy blood,” she nodded to Jeff to acknowledge his contribution.

  He tried to stand up even taller than his four-foot-five.

  “So we can theorize that the corpses were dead before the crash. But the perpetrators of the crash assumed too little evidence would remain for that to be ascertainable. This crash was deliberately created to make us all assume that the named passengers aboard are dead so that the Air Force would not pursue their whereabouts while they carried out a very different mission. I would surmise that it is one not authorized by the military establishment.”

  “Whoa!” Jon gasped out. “I didn’t think about the last part of that.”

  So she stopped.

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “Not whoa, just…whoa!”

  Holly delivered one of her trademark punches to Jon’s arm, causing him to stagger aside. “Not whoa like stop, Miranda. Whoa is also an exclamation of surprise.”

  Jon punched Holly back. Her attempts to avoid flattening Jeff sent her careening into Mike, and he barely kept them both from going to the charred ground.

  Then Jon smiled. “What she said. Keep going, Miranda. I think you’ve got it right so far.”

  “You hit a girl?” Holly practically roared as she regained her balance.

  “Nah!” Jon winked at Miranda.

  What was it with people winking at her and giving eye rolls as if she understood some hidden message?

  “Unless Ms. Holly Harper is admitting to actually being a girl…rather than a royal pain in the ass.”

  “Pain in the arm,” Holly grinned at him. “I ain’t kicked your behind yet to be a PIA, jet jockey.”

  “Don’t tempt me…girl. You were saying, Miranda?” Then he turned his back on Holly with what Miranda estimated to be a certain degree of rather foolish lack of caution.

  She waited a moment, but Holly didn’t take advantage of the situation.

  “If the people were already dead, then who was flying the plane?” Jeff looked puzzled.

  “Exactly the correct question,” Miranda acknowledged. “I would conjecture—”

  Holly kicked Jon in the behind, but not too hard. Jon didn’t turn, instead muttering, “Total PIA!” and grinned.

  Miranda did her best to ignore them both.

  “—that the copilot removed his EBS cannister from its holder by his seat and was using it to breathe when he opened the personnel door on the Hercules.”

  “Did he fall out and die?” Jeff’s voice quavered.

  “No. If he planned all the rest of it, he must have had a parachute. He kept his air cannister and simply stepped off the plane and opened his chute. That’s why we looked for the EBS. It should still have been in its holder, just like the pilot’s was. It wasn’t. So, taking it with him or her is the most likely explanation as to why we didn’t find it in our first search.”

  Jeff formed a big O with his mouth but appeared safely calmer.

  She held up the cannister. “The pilot didn’t take his. He used the system built into the plane until he was at a low enough altitude to not need it. Once the plane was doomed, he probably followed the copilot out the open door. Mike, call Denver again.”

  “For possible signs of parachutes on their radar. Got it!” He pulled out his phone.

  “So nobody died in the crash?” Jeff sounded hopeful.

  “We don’t know that, but it looks that way.”

  “But where did they go?” Jon pulled out his phone and handed it to her.

  Miranda read the list of names. It didn’t mean anything to her except… “These are some very high-ranking officers to be all on an old AC-130H Spectre gunship at the same time. The gun crew would have to be majors and colonels rather than airmen and staff sergeants.”

  Holly moved to look over her shoulder, then pointed at a name. “That one. That’s the body we found. Little bit of a thing not much bigger than Jeff. Colonel Vicki ‘Taz’ Cortez. We read her dog tags, not much left identifiable after the crash and fire. Sorry, kid,” she nodded to Jeff as if charred corpses were just a normal part of the job. They rarely were for her team, but sometimes she arrived fast enough to see them before the remains were removed.

  “S’okay.” Jeff returned the nod with a hard swallow.

  Mike finished his call. “They looked at the radar imaging again and t
here were two very small additional radar signatures after the declared emergency. They thought it was just screen noise it was so faint. The first one—appearing at thirty-four thousand feet, which must be our copilot—landed somewhere along the highway north of Aspen. The other might have been debris, as it appeared after the wings ripped off, but it had some lateral flight before it disappeared into the back country. If that was the pilot, his rate of descent was far too fast and I’d guess he didn’t make it. Maybe he had a parachute failure.” He waved to the south.

  “Major Danny Gonzalez and pilot-in-command Lieutenant Colonel Luis Hernandez according to this list.” Jon looked around the empty mountaintop, marked by little more than the barrel of the 105 mm howitzer still sticking up out of the ground. “Ejecting pilots. Fake bodies with real dog tags so that no one would bother to check the remains more carefully. Jesus, what a mess.”

  “Not fake bodies, but ones that were a close enough match to not arouse suspicion over false dog tags. After all, a fake body would be easily identifiable because it would be probably be built of metal and plastics that were…” She tapered off at Mike’s amused smile.

  Too literal. Again.

  Jon took his phone back and stared at the list of names before growling out, “Then where the hell is my missing three-star, General Jorge Jesus Martinez?”

  16

  General Jorge Jesus Martinez, JJ to most people—though few were actually close to him—sat in the most sought-after spot on Santa Catalina Island just off the coast of Los Angeles, California. The bench seat at the very end of the stout wooden Green Pleasure Pier offered the premier view of the harbor.

  It was also the closest place available to monitor what was occurring in the offshore flight test range immediately north of their position, while masquerading as a civilian.

  In late June, the water was rife with pleasure boats of the wealthy and oblivious—the ones who thought nothing of what kept them so safe in their little pleasure ground. The great round casino commanded the harbor from the far point. The harbor town of Avalon, filled with shops and restaurants priced to scalp even the most wary tourist, wrapped along the waterfront just waiting for the next cruise ship to moor outside the breakwater.

  “Why did we fight so hard to protect this shit?” Either his foul mood or Taz made sure that this corner of the pier was all theirs. He suspected it was Taz. Despite being only four-foot-eleven, when she wanted to, she cast a danger signal that seemed to drive people well away without their even realizing it.

  She didn’t answer, instead doing a slow sweep of her mirrored Ray Bans. They weren’t Aviators, like most of the Air Force favored—they were sharply octagonal. He sometimes wondered what she saw through them. It made her look even colder and more calculating than he knew she was—which was saying a lot.

  He’d picked newly minted Airman Vicki “Taser/Taz” Cortez as his adjutant when he saw how she performed during 9/11. Five-foot-nothing of slender Mexican with skin darker than his, had been a pillar of calm fury in the aftermath. She hadn’t let her anger at what bin Laden had done to their country control her as it did so many others, but she’d looked poised—like a silent Doberman Pinscher ready to be unleashed at the least provocation.

  Not once in the nearly twenty years since had now-Colonel Taz Cortez made him second guess his choice. Something about her made everyone else shy away. He liked that in an assistant.

  Bouncing her to OTS had paid off as well. Taz had taken to Officer Training School like an AIM-9 missile to a Russian MiG. No officer listened to an enlisted, but even when they outranked her by three or four grades, they now listened to her.

  Death walking, more than one obstinate officer had called her after surviving a meeting with her. They were rarely obstinate after the meeting. In addition to being highly organized, she was one of the most effective weapons in his arsenal for navigating DoD politics—because if nothing else, the Department of Defense was intensely political.

  “We fought so hard to protect this shit because it used to be our sworn duty,” she finally answered him.

  “Still is our duty.” Yes, he’d sworn to protect these clueless Americans against all comers.

  “ ‘I will support the Constitution’,” she quoted from the officer’s oath.

  “ ‘Against all enemies, foreign and domestic’,” it was an old argument. They had walked away from their sworn duty to the US Air Force, but it was in their commitment to defend the Constitution—just not the way those political wranglers in DC ever thought about it.

  Another crowd swirled to the head of the pier to prepare for one of the sightseeing, diving, whatever-just-give-us-your-money tours embarking down the ramp to the low dock before them.

  He took the final bite of his crab empanada from Maggie’s Blue Rose at the head of the pier. He’d have been fine with a corndog or a burger, but Taz didn’t eat that way. Whenever they were out of the office together, he knew the food would be superb. Even in places she’d never been, she could always zero in on the very best. She’d nailed it this time for certain.

  While they waited, she’d been methodically working her way through a spread of tacos: grilled shrimp, skirt steak, lobster, and carnitas. Even after twenty years working together, he’d never understood how she could eat more than a six-three airman after a thirty-k run.

  His empanada brought back memories, as such things always did, of his mother’s cooking. Even after they’d found a steady place—as permanent farm hands, not just seasonal pickers—east of Stockton on the baking flats of the north San Joaquin Valley, she’d let him crank the molino. Grinding corn into masa for tortillas—another thing lost. Nothing had ever matched her carne asada tamales or… Yet another memory he didn’t have time for.

  “Are they in position?”

  Taz looked just like any other tourist fooling with her phone while she ate. Except her phone included full encryption capability, and had a special app to pick up broadcasts on US Air Force frequencies. Her headphones appeared to be wired, but that was actually the receiving antenna.

  “Yes, they’ve just entered the Point Mugu Sea Range.”

  He’d been watching to the north. The area between Santa Catalina Island and Santa Rosa Island to the north was a no man’s land that belonged to the US Navy. Despite the nearby Los Angeles population, marine and flight charts forbade all civilian entry. The US Coast Guard caught a surprising number of narco-submarines transporting cocaine out of Colombia because they wandered into the forbidden zone and became easy to detect with no other shipping about.

  Edwards Air Force Base and Naval Base Ventura County were only two of the airfields that did testing there. The Navy out of San Diego were common participants as well. Even Maverick had gone down there in Top Gun. Though the movie had failed to explain how he’d gotten in trouble in the dry Sierra Nevadas, but crashed in the Pacific.

  Today they were doing acceptance testing on the Block 30 upgrade to the AC-130J Ghostrider. It was the newest gunship in the fleet. He’d made sure to be on the development team. He’d also made sure that, today, it flew with his pilots aboard.

  Taz handed him a Bluetooth earpiece. He pulled out his own phone so that they would look like some bored father-daughter duo doing side-by-side play on their separate phones.

  “This is Shadow Three-five commencing the first run of Test Suite Alpha-Bravo-Two-Seven-Five.” Major Mark “Tango” Torres reported to the observer team that would be flying in a nearby plane to monitor the Ghostrider’s performance. His voice sounded clearly over the earpiece.

  “Roger.”

  There was no other cross chatter.

  How many missions—hundreds, thousands—had he sat and listened while others risked their lives? Too many.

  After today he was done with that as well.

  He’d selected his entire team for one very specific mission. It wasn’t a mission of mere duty. It was one that included a deep personal stake for every individual.

  For now, all he co
uld do was listen to his men do their jobs.

  17

  Tango Torres kept an eye out as his copilot, “Gutz” Gutierrez, set up on the first run.

  The Block 30 upgrade to the Ghostrider had included some nice tactical and weapons control enhancements. It also included an advanced active denial system that could suppress all of a hostile’s communications for a range of over five kilometers—including both cell phone and radio.

  But the centerpiece of Block 30 was the HEL-A.

  The High-Energy Laser-Airborne could deliver a hundred-and-fifty-kilowatt beam against a tracked target. Ground testing had shown it effective against anti-aircraft missiles and other aircraft. It was also powerful enough to destroy cars and disable boats and other ground targets.

  Tango wanted to see it burn.

  The twin-prop C-12 observer plane that hung just off their rear quarter was crowding close to see as well.

  Perfect.

  The first two passes occurred without incident. They fried the electronics of a small drone, which proceeded to splash down into the ocean near a recovery boat. Then they cooked a target on a small floating dinghy.

  Rosa Cruz was on laser control and clearly enjoyed her new toy.

  Tango’s camera feed in the cockpit showed that the six-foot dinghy didn’t just get a hole, its plastic hull melted and shriveled like an ant under a magnifying glass aimed at the sun. Or maybe the jump from the hundred kilowatt to the one-fifty was just that big a change.

  Nah, it had to be Rosa.

  He liked that about her. She was always a bright fire in any darkness. Her laugh could light up a room, and her body was a gift from Sweet Mother Mary.

  They often raced their Kawasakis out into the deserts that surrounded so many US military bases, then fucked each other until even the rabbits were envious. He had to readjust his flightsuit at his body’s reaction to even thinking about her bent forward over his Ninja 1000 sport bike. She’d peek at him over her shoulder through that lush fall of brown-black hair, and wiggle that fine ass like a marshaller waving two bright batons and guiding him straight to the gate.