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 there 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.