“We’re all ten minutes from the Tacoma Narrows Airport in Washington State.”
“I’ll have a C-21A Learjet there in fifteen.”
“I haven’t even woken the oth—”
Holly threw open the bathroom door. She was dressed in her full gear. “What are you still doing in your nightgown? There’s a crash, isn’t there?”
Miranda could only nod.
“I already rousted the boys. Mike is doing his fancy-coffee-machine thing.” Sure enough, there was the soft sound of grinding echoing from the distant kitchen.
She noticed coffee was the one habit of Mike’s, perhaps the only habit, that Holly didn’t roll her eyes about. Mike always made sure that Holly received a monstrous thermal mug full each morning.
“And he’s making his espresso and your hot cocoa,” and there was the missing eye roll. “So, let’s get going, Miranda. Not like you to be so slow off the mark.”
She always left Miranda a little breathless when she was in this mode. Actually, from what she’d seen, she left everyone a little breathless most of the time.
“I’m still on the phone to—”
Holly pulled the phone from her fingers. “I’ll flirt with whatever yobbo is on the mobile. You, go! Get dressed.” She put the phone to her ear. “Is this Drake, ye old bastard, or Jon sniffin’ round our Miranda?... Jon! How ya garn? Guess what? Miranda’s about to get as naked as a James Bond girl in the next room, and you aren’t here to see it, you poor sod. She’s hot, you know.”
Miranda opened her mouth to protest but, as Holly burst out laughing over some reply, she decided that escape was her best option.
2
Miranda had never been to Aspen. It was a small, municipal airport known to her primarily for its general aviation crashes. She had specialized in commercial aviation early in her career, but the military investigations had become her team’s most common callout.
“Colorado has the third highest number of small planes per capita of any state in the US after Alaska and Montana. Though their pilot fatality rate is lower than seventeen other states, it’s still a lot of crashes.” Miranda was glad that the statistic did not carry into commercial air crashes in the state; the countryside beyond the plane’s window looked to be very rugged.
“You know…” Mike leaned back in his leather airplane seat. The little eight-passenger C-21A VIP transport Learjet was a very comfortable way to travel, even if it did belong to the Air Force.
Aside from the pair of military pilots, there were just the four of them aboard. They sat in pairs of facing seats on either side of a narrow aisle.
“There’s a saying about Aspen. ‘The millionaires ruined it for the hippies, and the billionaires ruined it for the millionaires.’ So, don’t forget about all the out-of-state jetsetters flitting in and out of here in the worst of conditions for your crash tally.”
“It’s late June,” Miranda looked out the window as they began their descent into Aspen. “Presently sunny. On the high lakes I can see only a little ice, so I would project that it is warm with a decreased chance of low-altitude icing on the plane’s surfaces. As there are no clear reflections off the water, there must be wind-rippling. However, the lack of buffeting aboard our flight would indicate that this wind is not of sufficient velocity to turbulate the air significantly despite the close proximity of numerous high mountain peaks.”
Jeremy had a Bluetooth earpiece and was listening to something intently. “Aspen ATIS currently reports barometer steady at thirty even, winds at fifteen out of the west, humidity forty-seven percent, and temperature is sixty-eight.” She hadn’t realized that he carried a broadband receiver that covered the FAA frequencies. The Automated Terminal Information Service frequency would have all of the weather and pertinent airport information regularly updated on a broadcast loop.
“This does not appear to be the ‘worst of conditions’,” Miranda concluded. “We’ll need to verify, of course, but it seems unlikely that last night’s conditions were significantly different.”
Mike just shrugged. “Not quite what I was saying, but one point to you, Miranda.”
“I didn’t realize we were keeping score. Are we keeping score?” If so, was she doing well? She’d never understood competitive sports and if they were now—
“No, Miranda,” Mike leaned forward. “Not a competition. We’re not keeping score.” He waited until she nodded that she understood, even though she didn’t totally, before he settled back.
“So, you’ve been to Aspen, Mikey?” Holly’s tone was derisive. “Chasing some hot snow bunny?”
“If by that you mean Stephanie Garr, the country singer, yes.” Mike sipped at his sparkling water again.
Miranda didn’t know her, but then she rarely listened to music composed after Mozart.
Jeremy began humming some tune that sounded just like every other tune on country radio.
“As you know, it’s not just her singing that’s so lovely.” Mike appeared to be very pleased at another chance to tease Holly. “What you may not know is she also has the exceptional legs of a top skier. She was born and raised here, even if all of her ‘country credentials’ are thought to be Tennessee. Anyway, we skied all of these areas, though she was especially fond of the expert trails atop Snowmass.”
“Is that Snowmass?” Miranda pointed at a feature she’d noticed on their approach. It lay ahead and below but it was hard to miss as there were still some areas of it on fire—bright flames with billows of black smoke above. Several helicopters were flying between the mountaintop and a clear lake in a valley just five miles to the south, fetching loads of water to dump on the last of the flames. It must have been a massive torch in the night when it was first burning.
Below the fire’s location, the top of the mountain had a black ring where fire had begun five hundred feet or so below the top, then spread upward.
Mike turned and glanced out the window.
Then he jolted as if Holly had punched him, and pressed his face to the window.
“That’s Snowmass Ski Area all right. The entire summit is gone. I can’t see what’s—”
Jeremy handed him a pair of binoculars.
Mike grabbed them and stared out the window. Their angle of view slowly shifted as the plane continued toward its landing.
As they continued toward the airport, Miranda could see a long weave of wide trails traced through the pines that she presumed were for skiing in the winter season. They weren’t close enough to see the details, but there were several long straight lines that crossed all the twisting trails that might be the paths of the ski lifts.
“The Cirque Poma lift is gone,” Mike groaned. “Oh man, are the owners ever going to be pissed. They spent at least a hundred thousand extra to not impact the summertime environment when they installed that lift. Winter work, helicopters for all of the steel and concrete. There’s also a whole May to June wildlife breeding area at altitude up there they were trying to protect. I guess that was just wiped out.”
Miranda didn’t like to see crashes before she was ready to, but it seemed to be okay this time. Perhaps it was the angle but she didn’t think so.