“What?”
“Sir, with all due respect, you really need to learn to shut your yap and listen when Miranda’s speaking. She didn’t call for some friendly jaw.”
“Ms. Harper, you don’t begin to underst—”
“You don’t want me hanging up on you again, do you?” Something Holly seemed to delight in doing.
“She’ll do it, Uncle Drake,” Jon was chortling. “So, as Holly would say, ‘Hush up some’.”
“No self-respecting Ozzie would say such a thing,” she protested, then turned to the phone. “Just cut the yabber, Mr. Chairman.”
Drake sputtered, but stopped talking. Miranda had never been able to confront such a wall of words. They always made her feel shaky and small, as if the world was peppering her, like when she forgot the lid on a pot of popping corn—a thousand little hits that didn’t particularly hurt, but made it impossible to think of anything else.
“Do it up, boss.” Holly tried to hand back her phone but Miranda didn’t trust her grip, so she clenched her hands together, which was the only way to keep them still at times like these.
“We have two proofs of his death. His dog tags on a corpse and his name on the crew list for the crash.”
“What kind of crash?”
“An AC-130H gunship. But—”
“Are we still flying the Hs? I thought—”
Holly pressed a finger down on one of the number keys, making it emit a long beep.
Drake stopped talking.
Holly answered him. “It was stolen from Davis-Monthan’s boneyard, except it wasn’t, because according to the official records—that Jeremy hacked—it’s still there. But it isn’t. It’s now spread all over the top of the Colorado Rockies. Now pay attention to the next part.”
At Holly’s nod, Miranda continued. “But we have reason to believe that this crash was fabricated. No, correct that. The crash is real, but we have reason to believe that it was deliberate, and the thirteen bodies aboard were not the individuals identified by the dog tags and crew roster.”
“No way would JJ be a part of something like that. You never met a patriot like him. Somebody’s messing with you. Look, I’ve got to go. The President is waiting. Find JJ. If you can’t find him, track down that Colonel Taz Something. Taz Cortez. Scary as shit half-pint Mexican chick. She’s always at his side. JJ uses her like a tactical nuke. I’ve watched her destroy career officers during a single interview. Woman’s relentless.”
“Get a taste of that yourself, Chairman?” Holly sounded delighted.
“Thank God, no! JJ takes me on himself. We go way back to when we were both still punk majors. Besides, he’s hit mandatory retirement age. His party is tomorrow night—all the joint chiefs and half the Pentagon will be there. Even the President said he might drop by. If he does, I’ll think even better of him because JJ has always been a real thorn in Roy Cole’s side…and every President before him. Find him. Let me know as soon as you do. Maybe this is some elaborate hoax for him to get out of his retirement party, except he wouldn’t be a part of anything that isn’t strictly by the book. I’m gone.” And he disconnected.
The phone gave a small chirp of Call Ended. Now Miranda could finally take it back when Holly handed it to her. She slipped it into the proper vest pocket.
“So, what’s next?” Mike asked and they all looked at her.
As if she was supposed to know.
25
“I mean, it’s a beautiful day here atop the mountains of Colorado,” Mike continued.
Miranda didn’t need further proof that weather was not a factor in the crash. The crash was deliberate. It was the first deliberate military crash since Captain Craig Button had committed suicide-by-pilot with an A-10 Thunderbolt II in 1997. Though since no one had actually died during this crash…
“We have a picnic and have had a fire,” Mike waved a hand to indicate the scorched mountaintop. “We could tell ghost stories—appropriate, as thirteen bodies were found here even if they didn’t die here.”
“We do have a shattered plane to investigate,” but she didn’t sound convincing even to herself.
“But if it was deliberately crashed?” Holly left the question dangling.
“Not much point except as a scientific study.”
Brett pointed his peach hand pie down toward Aspen. “Owners want to know if they can start the cleanup? It may be late June, but summer is very short at this elevation. They want to get crews up here clearing the mountain and fixing the Cirque Poma by winter—which comes early on this mountain.”
“Yay!” Jeff cheered around a mouthful of raisins. “Double black diamonds, here I come!”
Mike smirked just a little. “Do I see a lot of airlift bonus for your birds?”
Brett nodded. “Won’t mind the extra work. Already have a pair of heavy-lift Chinooks on call if I can get the contract.”
“Smart man,” Mike nodded.
Yes, Miranda already knew that about Brett.
Jon’s phone rang and he stepped away to answer it.
His distance made it the first time since he’d crested the ridge that she felt she could think. The man was very distracting, even when he wasn’t doing anything. She pulled out her personal notebook and made an entry for later consideration if that was a bad thing or a good one.
Jeff led Mike away to show off the remains of the Bofors L/60 and M102 howitzer they’d found earlier. Brett tagged along.
Now it was just Holly, Jeremy, and the dry wind riding fast and cool over the mountaintop.
“Think we’ll learn anything more here?” Holly asked softly.
Miranda considered, but finally shook her head. A deliberate crash was a criminal investigation, not a problem for the NTSB.
That felt wrong but sounded right. Would it be better the other way around, if it felt right but sounded wrong?
“This is weird.” Jeremy had perched on a nearby boulder in a way that reminded her of the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland. He wasn’t blue, three inches tall, or smoking a hookah atop a magic mushroom, but the similarity was there. He had his computer out and cables running into the black boxes that Holly and Mike had recovered. She could also see the card reader for the Quick Access Recorder drive that she’d recovered from the cockpit.
“What did you find, Jeremy?”
“Magic.”
She doublechecked, but he definitely wasn’t sitting on a mushroom.
“This plane magically appeared about five minutes before it crashed. There are no recordings on either device prior to their initial contact with Denver Center air traffic control. No handoff from Salt Lake Center, nothing.”
“Did they erase parts of it?” Holly looked over his left shoulder. Miranda moved to look over his right.
“No. There’s no background noise even. The media are factory fresh. Turned on just to capture the crash. I don’t even have the opening of the door. And I should, right there.” He stabbed a finger at a time mark. “At least that’s when they reported the depressurization event. The door must have already been open specifically so that the event wouldn’t be recorded in the data stream.”