“Flames now,” Rosa pointed.
“Oh shit!” Pierre could only watch in horror. “They’ve got a real fire over there. A bad one.”
67
“Go. Now!” Taz shoved the two parachutes she’d stashed into Jeremy’s and Mike’s arms. JJ had ordered that there be none aboard—burning the ships behind them, like her almost namesake Cortés had five hundred years ago to motivate the men. She’d kept two back, well hidden.
Mike dragged on his chute with the signs of previous, if not deep, experience. Jeremy fumbled at the straps until he was actually holding it upside down. Something as simple as donning a chute had no place in his genius world. Other than a brief moment on a mountainous Baja rock shelf, their worlds had no overlap. One glimpse of another way life could be.
“Where’s yours?” Jeremy asked as she and Mike worked together to get Jeremy strapped in.
“I don’t have one.” She fisted the emergency release on the forward passenger door, then yanked the handle. It rolled upward on its tracks. The wind-and-propeller roar filled the cabin. It only served to fan the flames that were fast consuming the rear of the plane. None of the gun crew had survived the initial blast.
Even as she glanced down, the brightly lit US border passed below them. Safely north of the border. At least she wouldn’t die in Mexico.
Jeremy grabbed both her arms as she double-checked his gear. “Come with me. We’re both light. The parachute must be strong enough.”
It was. A military chute could take a strapping Special Forces operator and a full kit weighing more than her hundred and five pounds with perfect safety.
“No.”
“But—”
“A life in Leavenworth or some Mexican jail? Not for me.”
“I know the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Miranda knows the President. We can get you a pardon.”
Mike nodded to confirm the unlikely truth of that.
For a moment, just a moment, she blinked.
In that split instant she saw a different world. One that might have been. Back before she’d buried a knife in the coyote man’s chest. Before she’d become who she was.
“Out and down to stay below the prop,” she shouted at Mike. Seeing her decision, he offered a sad smile, then was gone.
She kissed Jeremy for that glimpse. Fast, as time was running, but hard so that he’d remember her.
“Pull this after you’re clear,” she shouted and put his hand on the ripcord handle.
“But—”
“I can’t leave the general.”
Jeremy reached into his pocket and pulled out something to hand to her.
She took it and then she shoved hard against the middle of his chest.
Jeremy tumbled out the door, down and backward into the slipstream—gone into the night.
She slapped the Door Close control before she could be tempted to dive after him.
The crippled AC-130J Ghostrider was twisting down through the sky. It wouldn’t be long now.
In her hand she clutched an MRE bag. Inside were the three unused heaters from his prodigious consumption of pizza slices. There was also a lighter he’d scrounged from somewhere.
Three together. Add water. Flick a spark. And the hydrogen gas generated by three flameless heaters together would make an impressive one-shot flamethrower. Enough to permanently blind her, the general, or maybe both.
Jeremy had built a weapon out of nothing…but had chosen not to use it on her.
Taz clutched the bag to her chest and felt both ridiculous and—
She spotted General Martinez watching her intently.
“Was there anything you needed, sir?” Her throat was tight, but she managed to get out the words.
“No, Vicki. No. Not a thing. I just wanted to thank you for your service.” And he saluted her crisply as the plane died beneath their feet.
She hadn’t even known that he knew her first name.
68
Miranda barely recognized Mike and Jeremy as they disembarked from the C-21 Learjet that had returned them to Tacoma Narrows Airport.
Jon had waited until they’d been rescued and checked out medically. Then he’d brought them home himself.
She and Holly had been returned from JBLM only minutes before the others landed. Together they’d waited outside their hangar in the cool, rising-dawn light. Soon the sun would clear the towering Cascades, but for now the sky was shot with reds and golds. Even the icy beacon of the glaciers atop Mount Rainier weren’t lit yet.
The air was still, the dead calm of sunrise so typical of the Pacific Northwest. Often dawn and dusk were the only truly calm times of day here.
Hearing what to expect was one thing, but seeing it was much worse.
Jeremy had a cast on his arm from a bad parachute landing. One side of Mike’s face was all black and blue. The other side had been badly scraped as his parachute had dragged him over the rough ground.
The moment they deplaned, Holly threw herself at them and locked them both in a hard hug. Protests and complaints of pain made no difference.
Miranda made sure that her own welcomes were gentler.
“I’m so very pleased to see you.”
Mike touched her cheek, then rubbed his fingers together. “I feel the same, Miranda.”
She brushed at her own cheeks, surprised to discover that they were wet.
They all laughed, briefly, but it died fast and felt awkward.
Jon flagged her from the cockpit of the little Learjet.
“Oh, I didn’t realize he was staying.” She hurried to unlock the hangar door.
“Duh!” Holly’s voice sounded behind her.
When it slid open, the pine scent of the Northwest was replaced by the sharper smells of fresh paint and new leather. She squinted into the dim depths of the hangar. Wonderful!
Then she stepped aside and let the others enter first.
They were halfway across before anyone noticed the new wall, sectioning off the back of the hangar. Holly was first, as usual, “By crikey.”
Jeremy and Mike both blinked in surprise, but couldn’t seem to find any words at all. The door stood open. A small envelope hung beside an outer keypad, which would be the default combination for the new room’s security system.
Jeremy and Mike crossed the threshold side by side and stumbled to a halt. Miranda tried going up on tiptoes to see over their shoulders, then tried looking between them to no avail.
Holly finally pushed the two boys far enough apart that she could step between them. Miranda followed through the brief gap.
“Well, I’ll be stuffed, mate!” Holly amended her assessment.
The renovation crews had been working hard for the two days they’d been gone.
The back of the hangar now had two large windows facing the runway, and a third facing south over Puget Sound. The one-way glass barely dimmed the view. The golden dawn filled the visible sky and glinted off the ice-capped towers of the Olympic Mountains. Now, not only could she hear the distinctive sound of a Cessna 172’s Lycoming four-cylinder engine and two-blade propeller lifting off the runway, she could see its happily blinking navigation lights. The two passengers were just visible in the front seats, silhouetted against the lightening sky.
The new-built room had been finished in soft pastels. She liked the distinction from her wood-finished home up on Spieden Island. She’d opted for a laminate floor with Douglas fir patterning to stand up to whatever abuses the future would bring, but she’d also selected several modern throw rugs.