No one interrupted her.
“There are two other Ghostriders.”
“Yes,” Lizzy responded. “We warned Eglin to beef up the security around theirs.”
“What about the one at Andrews?”
“At Andrews? It’s the most secure air base in the country. We weren’t more than a few hundred meters from Air Force One.”
Miranda couldn’t find the words.
Holly spoke up, though her voice sounded tight and strained. “Secure enough to stop a three-star general from leading a crew to steal a plane?”
“Oh shit!” Lizzy gasped.
“He’s not answering his phone. Can you trace it?”
“Please hold.”
Pierre was pacing the long stone pier, clearly troubled by something.
“It’s still at Andrews. So is Jeremy’s,” Lizzy returned to the line.
“Well, that’s a relief.”
“No, because the plane isn’t. I’ve got someone rushing to the phones’ location. Hang on.”
The next five minutes were perhaps the longest in Miranda’s life.
40
Lizzy had Miranda on one line, a captain on the ground at Andrews on another, and the NSA contact who’d traced the phone on the third.
“Both numbers you gave me appear to be in airplane mode,” the NSA contact reported. “We can follow a phone in that mode unless it is actually powered off. It simply means that the user can’t send or receive.”
“That’s not encouraging.”
“Best I’ve got.”
“I found them,” the captain at Andrews reported. “Actually I found three. Two together and a third that caught my headlights another twenty or so meters along the taxiway. Wouldn’t have spotted it if they hadn’t just mowed.”
Back to the NSA, “Can you tell me who the third phone belongs to? It’s presently co-located with the other two.”
But she already knew!
Why was it only now that she remembered the shadow of a small woman moving to the Ghostrider’s sensor tech station? That had to be—
There was a sharp rattle of keys. “A Colonel Vicki Cortez. US Air Force issued the phone.”
It was like a bad movie. The undead were coming back to haunt her.
If she’d listened more to Taz rather than tossing her out of the office.
If she’d mentioned that meeting to Drake.
If she’d paid attention to the crew climbing aboard the Ghostrider.
If…
General Elizabeth Gray tried to imagine any worse possible news than half of Miranda’s team being swept up by Colonel Taz Cortez.
But she couldn’t.
41
“Shooting a civilian would not be my first choice.” Taz waited for Mike’s smile to fade.
But it didn’t. “No, really. What kind of game are you playing? Is this some sort of wargame scenario thing?”
She slammed the side of the gun across his face.
He dropped to the deck in a heap, clutching his cheek. His cry of surprise galvanized Jeremy, so she flicked off the safety and placed it against Jeremy’s temple.
“Don’t.”
He froze while Mike groaned.
“Besides, I didn’t hit him that hard.”
“Shit! It feels as if you did.”
She nudged his hip with a foot to roll him onto his back. “I find that sometimes it’s easier this way.”
“Easier?” Mike kept pulling his hands away to check for blood. There was only one small cut that would stop bleeding soon—the rest was just scrapes and scratches. Though his eye would probably turn an impressive black-and-blue.
“When you’re built like me, very few people take you seriously. As both a woman and an officer, I find that a little irritating.”
Mike eased up slowly until he was sitting with his back against the hull and his knees up in front of him. “Yeah, I kind of get that now.”
She shifted her aim back to Mike, but shifted her angle. If she had to shoot him, she didn’t want the round punching through the hull or some other critical system behind him. Mike’s body didn’t look heavy enough to stop even the 9 mm ball rounds in her Beretta M9 sidearm.
“I’m going to talk, and you’re going to listen.”
“We’re not going to the VACAPES for a training flight?” Jeremy blinked at her in surprise. He still hadn’t caught on to what was happening.
“That would be a ‘no,’ buddy,” Mike said softly, then hissed sharply as he placed a palm over his eye.
Taz sighed. Sergeant Rosa Cruz had signed up for this. Tango and Gutz had understood the risks. As had Major Danny Gonzalez from the Colorado flight, now at the controls of this plane, and his pilot, the missing-presumed-dead Lieutenant Colonel Luis Hernandez. There’d been no ping at all off his phone, and his “escape” motorcycle was still parked in Aspen hours after the crash.
These civilians knew nothing. Had agreed to nothing.
The only civilians she ever dealt with were defense contractors seeking the stamp of the general’s approval. JJ Martinez’s approval was the gold standard of Air Force requisitions and everyone up and down the line knew it. Part of her job had been assuring that it stayed golden. If he did authorize it, it had to perform.
He’d often sent her into meetings, not to find out anything technical, but rather to ferret out if they were telling the truth. Civilians and officers alike had learned, some the hard way, that lying to her didn’t work…at all.
But, Mike and Jeremy weren’t that kind of civilian.
“What are you?”
“Go to hell.”
She knelt down in front of him.
“Look at me.”
He shook his head no, then cursed and hissed again.
She flicked her safety back on, but it made a loud and satisfying metallic click even over the deep rumble of the engines.
He looked up at her, his left eye blinking hard.
“Stop that.”
His gaze steadied.
“No blood in the eye. Any double vision?” When he shook his head no, she rolled her eyes. “You’ll be fine. Now answer the question, what are you?”
“We’re crash investigators for the NTSB,” Mike growled. She understood that attitude better than all of his Mr. Smooth. “We’ve been on your trail since Colorado. I’m assuming that you’re Colonel Vicki Cortez.”
“Taz. Short for Taser. How did you know?”
“I’m the one who found your body double. Let’s just say that you aren’t real tall, especially in the military. Where did your body-doubles come from?”
“Mortuary fire in Tijuana.” The owners had been only too glad to dispose of the bodies—even the undamaged ones. They’d probably pocketed all the money for the cremations and given wood ash to the grieving families. “How long did it take you to figure out?”
“That the crash was fake? An hour or so.”
They had planned for it to buy them a minimum of three days, well past the end of the present mission.
“You wouldn’t look so surprised if you knew our boss,” Mike’s smile was coming back. If she was holding a Taser rather than an M9, she’d be sorely tempted to use it.