General Jorge Jesus Martinez rose to his feet. When she rose as well, he placed her Bluetooth earpiece in her palm, then began walking toward the land.
“Colonel Cortez?”
“Yes sir?” From long practice, Taz strode at time-and-a-half to keep up with his long legs.
“I’m going to need another Ghostrider and I suspect another laser operator.”
“And pilots.” The screams of the injured were finally starting to rise. Or her hearing was coming back.
“I have plenty of pilots. But that laser is very new and very rare. Technical Sergeant Cruz was one of the few qualified to operate it.”
“Plane and a laser operator. I’m on it, sir.”
She gave it a moment’s thought, pulled out her phone, and began placing calls.
This was going to be very tricky, since she was supposedly dead in a Spectre gunship high in the Colorado Rockies.
24
“How am I supposed to know where your general is?” Miranda squinted at Jon.
The sun over Aspen had risen high in the sky, but Jon stood just two steps away and almost due south, aligning his head and the sun closely. Even the wide brim of her HeliSee hat was marginal at best for distinguishing him from the blinding background.
“The question was rhetorical, Miranda.” Jon sighed.
“Then why did you ask it if you didn’t want to know the answer?”
“I very much want to know—” He growled deep in his throat. “Never mind.”
“That’s not something I’m very good at.” But Miranda’s reply was lost under the beating of rotors from the arriving AgustaWestland Trekker helo.
As soon as it was shut down, Brett climbed out. He flipped open the side-hanging equipment cage and opened the big cooler he’d tucked inside.
“You know the annual Aspen Food & Wine Classic is going on in town.”
Mike gasped. Jon shrugged his indifference. Miranda glanced at Holly and Jeremy, but they had no more idea than she did.
“You got a burger in that lot?” Holly headed to the cooler.
Brett snorted. “I’ve got Gail Simmons’ favorite. Grace Parisi’s Grilled Gruyère and Sweet Onion sandwiches. Does that count?”
“Not even close, mate.” Holly may have scoffed, but she snatched the one in Brett’s hand. Biting in deeply, she sighed happily, grabbed another, and spoke as she chewed. “Still warm. Now that’s fair trade.”
Miranda had a half of one of those and some of Caroline Glover’s summertime chopped salad with flatbread. And the treats just kept coming.
“And,” Brett announced as he pulled out a brown paper bag, “one of Mom’s bologna sandwiches on whole wheat with yellow mustard, American cheese, and a box of raisins on the side. You’ve been behaving, Jeff?” His son nodded eagerly as he took the bag and dug out his sandwich.
“Yes, he identified a key insight into our investigation,” Mike explained, sparing Miranda the need to interact.
Brett rubbed his son’s head affectionately. It reminded her of her own father and the hours he’d spent challenging her mind with cryptographic puzzles and elaborate thought games. He’d rarely touched her, and never so easily. But that had been her own hypersensitivity to touch.
Hadn’t it?
She was fairly sure it had been her who was broken and not him.
Was she still?
The disconcerting power of Jeff’s embrace. He’d wanted to be held when he was afraid. What had she wanted when she was afraid of something? She couldn’t remember.
Brett spread out red wool blankets, with a thankfully small Helisee/Heliski logo in just one corner.
For a while, the only sound on the hilltop was the soft breeze humming against the rotor blades and the occasional territorial bird.
Jon’s shoulder brushed pleasantly against hers.
He seemed to be doing it on purpose. When he saw that she’d caught on, he simply leaned in to her. It made eating the sandwich much more awkward, but it was very comfortable.
Mike and Jeremy shared another while Holly sprawled on a third. Brett and Jeff were sitting on the helo’s cargo deck and both swinging their feet.
The food was good. The sun warm through the cool breeze. Jon’s touch made it easy to just drift and not think about much at all.
“The real prize,” Brett cut off her non-thoughts. “I managed to score some of Lisa Donovan’s peach hand pies.” He had Jeff hand them around.
Each was indeed the size of Brett’s hand—at least twice the size of hers—thick with a flaky crust. Mike was making ecstatic noises and Holly’s eyes were closed in bliss. She tried the corner of one and rather liked it. The peach seemed to swim into her taste buds and embrace them before continuing on their way.
On their way…
Jon’s question, rhetorical or not, regarding the general’s whereabouts still remained. But she had so little to go on. Generals, especially high-ranking ones, were not a common occurrence in her world.
Except…
She pulled out her phone and dialed Drake.
“Hi, Miranda. I only have a minute. The Saudis are being stupid again and are really pissing off the Iranians. Allies or not, I wish that I could just flatten their asses once and for all. What are you up to?” She’d rarely heard the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff being so brusque. But she preferred this to his peculiar jokes any day.
“We are eating gourmet hand peach pies and attempting to trace the location of General Jorge Jesus Martinez. Can you offer us any assistance?”
“With the pies?”
“No, with the general.”
“Too bad, I could use a treat right about now. JJ? What do you need him for?”
“There is some doubt regarding his present corporeal state.”
“What?”
“We have a report and hard evidence that he’s dead, yet reason to believe that—”
“JJ’s dead?” Drake gasped. “How can he be dead? He and I were just fighting over a beer and nachos a week or so ago.”
“Why were you fighting over a beer and nachos? Couldn’t the restaurant serve you two orders?”
“What? No. Yes. Sure they could have. I meant that he and I were arguing, while having a beer and nachos.”
“Not two beers and nachos?” That made more sense when she tried to picture it.
“Miranda!”
She’d learned that when people hit the last syllable of her name extra hard that they were frustrated. She had the notes of repeated observations in her notebook to support that conclusion.
“Well?”
“There was a plane crash and—”
“That can’t be right.”
“Drake, I—”
“You’ve got to be wrong on this one. JJ can’t be—”
Miranda had finally learned how to deal with these kinds of situations. She placed her phone on speaker and handed it to Holly, who sat up to take it.
“—dead. I know that he’s a pain in the ass sometimes. Seriously old school, even more than me. But he’s a top man who—”
“Mr. Chairman,” Holly just cut him off as if he wasn’t the country’s highest ranking general and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.