by Dale Mayer
No, that will probably have to come from Coronado, Mason replied.
Troy also suggested it could have been a remote detonator using a phone call onto Kate’s phone.
Makes sense, Mason typed.
Next Colton provided the details of Kate’s ex-boyfriend, along with a brief overview of the stalking and threats. So he is suspect number two. Suspect number one is actually two persons, the pair court-martialed, who would be based on George’s court case.
And that’s already being looked into, Mason wrote. I’ll let you know if there are any updates.
It would be nice if we got a copy of any reports too, Colton typed, but I know that won’t happen. He looked at Troy, who was watching but had moved and was sitting where he couldn’t read the chat window. Any help would be appreciated, he added. We’ll be delayed here for a few days due to the weather, and then I’m supposed to stay and do the training, and they’ll ship her back home again.
We need to make sure that whatever flight leaves is safe, Mason replied.
On that note, Colton signed off, closed the laptop and asked Troy, “Did you bring one?”
“Laptop and cell phone,” he said cheerfully.
“I miss my cell phone,” Kate said suddenly.
“I do too,” Colton said, “but the laptop is a good place to start.”
“For you,” she said, staring at it.
“Do you want to use it?” And he slid it toward her. She moved the pad of paper off to the side and said, “You know what would be easier? If I told my girlfriend that Mason would be calling.”
“Have at it,” Colton said with a smile. While they watched, she opened up a webpage and her email program and logged in. Then she contacted her girlfriend via email.
“Perfect,” he said. “We obviously need to find a way to get some answers, and, at least, this is a start.”
“Yeah, that whole ‘we’ thing is a stretch. The MPs don’t seem that interested in helping around here.”
“But, like they said, they don’t believe it was sabotage.”
“Which is kind of hard to understand,” she said, “because seriously it’s not that big a jump.”
“Maybe,” Colton said, “but look where we’re at now. It’s not like anybody is too worried.”
Kate groaned and nodded, then returned the laptop and picked up her pen again. “This is starting to sound like, because they don’t believe us, it’ll take a second attack to get them to consider anything premeditated is really going on.”
“Exactly,” Colton said, “which is why you need to be safe.”
“I’m worried about George,” she said.
“George is safe, already under close watch at the hospital, with its own security,” he said. “This is about you. We’ve got to keep you safe.”
“But why me over George? I don’t get it.”
Troy supplied the answer. “It was your phone that rang.”
Chapter 7
“I can’t believe that the only connection to the plane blowing up is my phone,” Kate said in a low whisper. “It could just as easily have been George’s phone.”
“But it wasn’t. It was yours.”
“But I’m the copilot,” she said. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“What does being the copilot have to do with it?” Colton asked.
“Obviously nothing,” she snapped, raising both hands in frustration. Just then people started to file in for lunch. She groaned. “Oh, crud, now it’ll get busy and noisy in here.” She turned back to her task, trying to write down what she needed to say but found that Colton was right. She would have to rewrite this a couple times. It was a matter of a brain dump. She knew the tidbits. Just getting them all down on paper and then putting them in logical order which was the challenge.
“I was a last-minute change to the schedule, so it would be interesting to know why the original copilot didn’t show up.” She tapped the paper, trying to dredge from her mind who was supposed to be there and then shook her head. “We’ll have to contact George and ask him.”
“I can do that,” Troy said, as he pulled out his phone and sent off a text.
“You have contact with the hospital?”
“And I have his commander’s number,” Troy said. Almost immediately a response came; then he answered back and forth. She waited until finally she couldn’t stand it and asked, “Don’t you ever share?”
He looked at her in surprise. “Share what?”
“Whatever is going on with your phone right now,” she said. “It’s obviously got something to do with me.”
He gave her a warm smile. “Not really. George is apparently sleeping at the moment, so we won’t hear anything back for a while.”
She nodded, feeling stupid, went back to her pad of paper and wrote down several more points. Finally she ripped off those two sheets and started again. The men left her alone, which she was grateful for. She looked up a couple times to see the room slowly filling up as everybody came to grab food. Colton and Troy had disappeared. She looked around, shocked, only to see them in the food line. She rolled her eyes when Colton caught sight of her and, grinning, gave her a thumbs-up.
She didn’t know if he was planning on picking her up some food and bringing it over so she would keep working or what. Or maybe they would just grab the first round. Her stomach started to growl again, so she’d be happy to have food, but she wanted to get this written statement done first. She quickly finished writing down her notes, crumpled up the extra pages she’d ripped off and tucked them into her pocket, not seeing a trash can nearby. Setting the pad of paper and the pen off to the side, she stood and walked over to join the guys.
“Maybe I’d like to pick out something for myself,” she said, peering around their shoulders.
They made room for her in the middle, handed her a tray and a plate, and very quickly she loaded up on hot steamed veggies and ribs. She carried it to her table and took the dishes off her tray and put it to the side. She hated trays. They always made her think of cafeteria or fast food instead of real home-cooked meals. She walked back over to grab water and another pot of tea. While she was there, she eyed the desserts, not sure if she needed to take what she wanted now or if something would still be left when she came back. Colton walked up beside her with a plate that already had three or four desserts on it.
“Do you want more than this?”
She stared at it, her eyes huge. “Is that just for me?”
He shook his head. “For both of us.”
She added a piece of pecan pie to it, and they traipsed back to the table. Everybody else ignored them and just let the three of them sit alone at their table, which could easily hold more. “Are people unfriendly here?”
Troy shook his head. “No, I think they’re all busy dealing with stuff. Plus we’re the outsiders.”
She nodded. “That’s how I feel too. Like an outsider.”
“Don’t let it get to you,” Colton said.
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. I just want to get home.”
“I can see that,” Troy said. “Any fear about flying again?”
It was a subject she had briefly wondered about and hadn’t really given too much thought to. “No,” she answered slowly. “I don’t think so. I might like to do some more parachuting though, so I’m much less scared about the process.”
“I’m sure you’ve done your training.”
“Sure,” she said with a half smile. “But it was years ago, and I haven’t really maintained it.”
“Training is only so good,” Colton said. “It doesn’t replace the real thing.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she said. “It’s trying to keep the emotions, the shock and the fear under control. That’s what was so hard. When I saw that water rushing up, I knew I would hit and hit hard, but I was so afraid of drowning with the chute.”
“Understood,” Colton said. “It’s one of the reasons I tried to get there as soon as I could.”
; “But then George was sinking.”
“And his chute filled and sank on me too,” he said. “They were too big to try to fill with air and use for floatation. If it wasn’t for the temperature of the water, I might have been able to pull that off.”
Kate shook her head, getting cold all over again. “It was all so shocking,” she murmured, then looked down at her plate of hot veggies and attacked it. “And this is why I’m hungry,” she muttered. Picking up a big piece of steaming broccoli, she started munching. “This is really good,” she said a moment later.
“Smaller bases tend to have better food,” Troy said in a low voice. “They don’t have to cook for so many, so it’s generally hotter and fresher.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve been in all kinds of little bases all over the world, and it seems to me that there’s a certain type of food, no matter what.”
Colton just laughed at her.
“It’s all good,” she said with a smile. “I’m just happy to be here and able to eat.”
“Good point,” he said. “Keep it that way.”
“What I would like to do is get answers though. Not knowing is hard.”
“Not too sure we can do much about that,” he said. “I’m afraid we’ll get kicked out of the investigation.”
“Maybe,” she said, “but what about my ex, Ned? Maybe he had something to do with it.”
“Maybe and then what?” he challenged her. “You go back to California and what?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Try to avoid him, I guess.”
“What if he did go so far as to bring down that plane? Do you think he is capable of that?”
“Can you ever know someone else and their thoughts?” she admitted with a sigh. “Yet, from what I saw, yes, I think so.”
*
After lunch, Colton worked on his loaned-out laptop, digging into Kate’s ex-boyfriend’s life and calling in favors to get some of the military background he needed. Mason contacted him on a chat window and said that her ex-boyfriend had been picked up for questioning.
Claims he knows nothing about it.
Of course not, Colton replied. Did he have opportunity?
We do have him at the airport at the same time she was there, but then he’s a pilot, so that’s where he belongs.
What about the mechanics? Did anybody see him around there? Colton pushed for more.
Not that anybody is talking about.
Any best friends or family in the mechanics line?
Not that we’ve been able to find.
Damn.
Plus, the two men being court-martialed over the drug thing are both still detained.
Friends or relatives? Anybody like that close by?
Both have a brother, but neither of them were in the military, nor were they recorded on base.
Somebody would need military clearance or at least contractor credentials to get on or off the base.
Yes, Mason replied. But we both have seen cases where they could get in and out a little easier than actually having clearance.
Yeah, that’s true. Colton stared off in the distance. What about Halifax? Why did they fuel up there? That seems weird.
Problem with the gas line.
Another attempt at sabotage?
It’s hard to say. Did Kate mention it?
No, but another plane was down for a problem too. Both of them at Halifax. Plus a plane traveling with it landed too.
Interesting. But that’s what planes do.
It does all seem awfully hit or miss. I’m probably just grasping at straws here, Colton said.
Maybe so, but the thing you may not realize is that this was the same plane George and Kate flew regularly. Just not always to this base.
How regularly?
Several days a week, Mason replied.
Is that common?
Because of the type of trips they did, this is the long-range plane that they took most of the time.
So really, anybody who wanted to set up something like that could have had it established a while ago and just needed the right timing to execute the plan, Colton proposed.
In theory, yes, Mason wrote. But don’t forget. Maintenance on these planes is pretty specific and thorough. A bomb or any kind of incendiary device should have been noted.
Potentially, unless somebody there knew about it and was covering for Ned.
But there’s not just one mechanic involved, Mason warned. These planes are gone over by teams.
Colton knew he was reaching, but there had to be an explanation. Any chance the ex-boyfriend was on that plane downed in Halifax?
I can check. Is there a potential Halifax angle for the other suspects?
Yeah.
So that’s possible, and they could have been at Halifax too, right?
Possibly, but that was kind of a one-off. How do you set up something like that?
You don’t always, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible.
Again this sabotage seems like it was preplanned and very coldly thought out, Colton wrote. Hardly an off-the-cuff thing.
But it’s not that impossible. How hard would it be to put something inside or outside of the wing? It doesn’t have to be very big these days.
No, I guess not. Colton thought about that, wondering just what it would take to blow up an aircraft’s engine under a wing. And what was the smallest thing that could set off a fire there. He started a Google search on that, when a shadow fell over his shoulders. He looked up to see the commander staring at his laptop.
“Interesting topic,” he said. He sat down beside them at the table, waving off their movements to salute. Turning to Kate, he asked, “How is the statement coming along?”
She smiled. “I think I’m done, sir.” She handed him two sheets of paper, fully covered in writing. He took a moment to read it, asking her some questions about her statement, then finally nodded, turned to the second page and said, “Sign it and date it, please.”
She did just that.
“Perfect,” he said. “I’ll get it scanned in.”
“Thanks,” she said with a smile. “I guess I could have put it into a Word document or an email for you.”
“This is fine,” he said and looked back at Colton. “Any luck?”
“Not yet,” he said, “and I’m a little frustrated by it.”
“Of course you are. The trouble with sabotage is that it’s pretty damn easy—once you figure it out.”
“I know, but figuring it out is the hard part. Where was the opportunity? How long ago was something like this planned, and how did they manage to pull it off?”
He nodded. “I hear you, son. Keep digging. Just keep my men in the loop.” Then he got up and left.
Colton looked at Kate and then back at Troy, one eyebrow up. “What was that all about?” he asked after the commander had disappeared out the door toward the hallway.
“I don’t think the commander likes anything happening on his base without him knowing about it,” she said. “So I’m thinking he wanted to see what you were up to.”
Colton nodded. “Still, it was a little odd.”
“Small base, very involved commander,” she said. “Large base, more layers between the commander and the people.”
And that was so true. He went back to his research, but his mind was caught up with opportunity now. He switched his research to looking up the smallest amount of C-4 required to blow up a plane’s engine. He was shocked to see how little it was. Particularly if it was placed strategically.
What was even more bothersome was the fact that the instructions on how to blow up a plane were included. Or a car or anything else. As he kept going down the rabbit hole, he also learned it was easy to cover with something like duct tape to make it blend into the color of the engine. And, as long as it was relatively flat and had a small computer chip for remote detonation, it wouldn’t have to be where someone could easily get to it. It wouldn’t take long to attach, and, if so disg
uised and applied underneath, nobody would have seen it.
Which was probably what was done here. It would be impossible to prove at this point, but somebody had taken C-4 or another plastic explosive and had placed it under the wing or at least on the inside where it wasn’t easily seen. It could have been attached with just a simple slap, something that could happen as two guys talked and wandered past. Of course, nobody was close to the planes except the people who needed to be, unless something odd was going on.
Colton frowned, then opened up the chat to Mason again, asking him to make sure there wasn’t any media event or anything that would have brought strangers into the hangar where the planes are.
Already on it, Mason wrote. I’m tracking the video feed from that whole area.
I hadn’t realized what a small amount of C-4 would have done the job, or how easily it could be applied and hidden.
And cover it in duct tape, right? We probably read the same article, Mason said. As these crooks are getting smarter, we have to be that much smarter ourselves.
Yeah, especially with the directions sitting on the internet. We don’t need a suspect with special training now, just an asshole who can read.
Chapter 8
Kate stood and said, “As much as I’ve enjoyed this, that big meal has made me very sleepy. I’ll head back and have another nap. I’ll talk to you two later.”
With that, she headed out. She knew she’d surprised them, and both men were probably figuring out if they should follow her or not. She didn’t care either way; she just wanted to go to bed and rest. Something about a big meal when she was already tired was enough to finish her off. She didn’t want to screw up a potentially good night’s sleep tonight, but she was too tired to keep her eyes open.
She also got lost twice but finally found her way back to her original bedroom and got into her room, noting that the hair Colton had placed was still there. With a sigh of relief she stepped inside and found the privacy absolutely wonderful. Kicking off her boots, she slipped under the covers, fully dressed once again. It wasn’t long before her head hit the pillow, and her eyes closed.