Wingman

by Emmy Curtis

  She went to sleep saying prayers for Eleanor. Hoping the morning would bring good news.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The morning brought more than good news about Eleanor. It also brought good news in the form of the special investigator that Conrad had mentioned the night before.

  The U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations handled everything except petty crime. They were the NCIS of the air force. Major Harris Bowman visited her in her room and briefed her on his investigation.

  Nothing good was going on there at Nellis, and the thought that anyone figured she’d had something to do with it burned her.

  But Bowman was a good guy. She could tell that from the start. He told her they’d been looking at a certain contractor who had been caught on the base’s closed-circuit cameras several times at all hours of the day and night.

  “If there are cameras, can’t they see who entered the hangars?” she asked, confused.

  Major Bowman sighed. “The cameras only cover the two banks on base, the gas station, and the McDonald’s.”

  “So, the important things, then,” she said in exasperation. “Touch an aircraft if you like, but God help you if you touch a hamburger?”

  “Something like that,” he admitted.

  He asked her to corroborate what Conrad had already told him, and she confessed that it was nothing except conjecture. She couldn’t prove anything.

  He left and said he’d be back shortly.

  Missy felt good after their talk. It was comforting that someone here other than Conrad believed someone else may have been responsible for tampering with Eleanor’s aircraft.

  Nevertheless, when he returned an hour later, he was escorted by Lieutenant Colonel Janke. Fear spiked in her belly as he entered her room at the barracks. Just having him in proximity to her personal belongings made her twitch.

  “Colonel Janke is here as an observer,” Major Bowman said. “It’s a courtesy my office has extended to him.”

  “We’ve met,” Missy said shortly.

  Janke said nothing, but it worried her how at ease he seemed. Nothing like the panic he’d shown the day before.

  “Can you tell me what you saw in the hangar?” Bowman asked.

  “When I was with Eleanor?” she asked.

  Bowman nodded, but Janke suddenly looked startled and kept looking between them as if in shock.

  “We went to our hangar that evening and found it locked. At first we thought the general had provided the lock so that the crews didn’t have to watch the aircraft at night, but an airman took the lock away when he opened it for us. As the hangar door was opening, three men came out on a golf cart. As I told General Daniels, I could identify at least one of them again.”

  Bowman was making notes and didn’t say anything immediately.

  Janke butted in. “What did he look like? Did he have glasses? Black hair? Was he short?”

  Missy glared at him. He was none of those things, and she wondered if he was deliberately trying to mess with her memory of the man. “I could pick him out of a lineup. I mean, if he has base access, there will be a photo in our system for his pass.”

  Janke looked worried. “What? You can just point at a random photo to get yourself off the hook? Right. That’s not going to fly. Right, Major?” He looked at Bowman for support.

  “Actually, that works for me,” Bowman said. “Pack your things and go back to your room, Major. I got permission from Colonel Cameron last night to release you from house arrest, although you—along with everyone else—will be confined to base. Please come to my office at fifteen hundred hours to go through our pass photos.”

  “Thank you, Major Bowman. I’d be happy to. The guy in the hangar definitely wasn’t military, by the way. His hair was too long.”

  He pursed his lips and nodded thoughtfully. “A contractor, then?”

  “I think so. Maybe TGO.” She fought the desire to look at Janke to see how he was faring under Colonel Cameron’s order, until she couldn’t resist the urge any longer. She glanced over at him to find him clamping his lips together, but not angrily. It was almost as if he were trying not to smile. The man had some weapon-grade crazy going on.

  She really didn’t care anymore; Janke was Bowman’s problem now. She just wanted to get the hell out of Dodge, pack her shit, and head off to her new assignment.

  Conrad, of course, was a different matter.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Chris Grove was setting his endgame into play. When you knew how the military worked, it was all too easy.

  His number one problem was not being able to get rid of Major Malden while she’d been in protective custody. That had been Mr. Danvers’s mistake. He shouldn’t have pressured General Daniels to find a scapegoat. If she’d been left alone, she would have been fair game for him.

  And he’d spent a pleasant hour or so figuring out how to do it. Up close and personal had been his choice. Very close, and very personal. A tingle of excitement shot through him as he remembered his various kill plans. Having it look like a sex crime, a random shooting in Vegas, an ugly accident. He’d gone over all the possibilities many times.

  But Danvers had given him other orders. As much as he appreciated what Mr. Danvers had done for him, he knew this was a mistake. He knew he was the only one who could kill her without any blowback. But no. Danvers had given the job to someone else to “cement their loyalty,” whatever that meant.

  But as soon as she was out of house arrest and free to go wherever she wanted on base, she’d be easy to kill. But maybe not for a rookie. Grove had already decided to cover the shooter, just in case he fucked it up. Everyone thinks they can kill someone. Few actually have the balls for it. Especially in cold blood. So he was going to play backup to make sure nothing went wrong.

  Because something always went wrong.

  Missy managed to keep busy and on the move all that morning and most of the afternoon. She didn’t want to give Conrad any chance to catch up to her, mainly because she didn’t want to discuss their future. If being suspected of sabotage had taught her one thing, it was not to plan too far ahead.

  Back at her lodging, having packed the last of her ransacked belongings into her backpack, she separated Eleanor’s into two bags. One had all her uniforms, and the smaller satchel had underwear, comfortable T-shirts and pants, her phone, computer, and washbag.

  As she packed the last of Eleanor’s belongings into her bags, she paused. She felt as if she were packing up a deceased airman’s belongings, like she’d had to do once for a fallen sister in Qatar. She felt cold inside, as if her going through the motions of packing away Eleanor’s stuff would somehow make it okay if she died.

  She shivered, unable to separate the anxiety she felt for Eleanor’s prognosis, and her own legal prognosis.

  She left the backpacks with the captain in the next door room—she really didn’t want to have to think about anyone going through her stuff again—and took the satchel with her to Major Bowman’s office.

  She was looking forward to identifying the guy and letting Bowman pick him up. Not that they had anything concrete on him. She hesitated outside his building. They really didn’t have anything on him at all. A chance meeting at the base lodging after she’d seen him in their hangar—for which she was sure he’d have an excuse—and that was it.

  What if Bowman let the TGO guy go? What if he went looking for Missy again? Her stomach churned.

  Bowman was waiting for her. She handed over Eleanor’s satchel and asked if he could arrange to have it sent to the hospital. He left it with the MPs who were rotating to the hospital to guard her door.

  Bowman had an interview room ready, which sent trickles of anxiety through her again. She wondered if this was some kind of bait and switch, to avoid having to really arrest her. Release her from house arrest, ask her to “help them with their inquiries,” and then show “proof” that she’d done something wrong and arrest her.

  She hesitated at the doorway, her stomach
turning in knots. Suddenly she felt that if she took a step into the room, that would be it.

  “It’s okay. I’ll leave the door open,” Bowman said, rolling his eyes. “I’m not going to arrest you.”

  “Isn’t that what someone would say if they were trying to trick someone?” she countered.

  “I suppose so, but look.” He raised his hands, both of which held paper cups of coffee. A small tablet was under one elbow. “I wouldn’t usher you into one of our beating rooms armed with just a coffee, now, would I?”

  “You have beating rooms? What the…?” She stepped back from the door, suddenly disorientated.

  He rolled his eyes at her again and brushed past her. He put the coffees on the table and sat at one of the chairs. “Come on. Sit down for God’s sake. This coffee is bearable hot, but downright nasty when it’s cold. You can trust me on that.” He then ignored her for a few seconds while he opened up an application on the tablet.

  Missy cursed herself for being so ridiculously skittish and joined him at the table. He turned the tablet toward her. “Here are all the passes issued to contractors in the past month. We have about fifteen different companies working here for Red Flag: TGO, of course, but also catering folk, janitorial services, waste disposal, et cetera et cetera,” he said. “There were five hundred and seventy-three temporary base passes issued that were still live in the system at the start of the exercise.

  She nodded. “I actually had no idea it was so complicated running Red Flag,” she said, looking at the first page of six photos.

  “The base basically triples its occupancy, so we have to bring in help.” He sat back in his chair and watched her go through the photos.

  She swiped left to keep them coming, in what, in some alternate reality, would have been the worst dating site ever, until she saw the picture of the man with long hair and implant teeth. “Him. He’s the one Eleanor and I saw coming out of our hangar, and he’s the one who tried to talk to me outside lodging when I was about to come to the hangar for the night.” She expanded the picture of his pass with her fingers. “Chris Grove. TGO.”

  Bowman slid the tablet away from Missy, spun it around, and looked at the photo. “Yup. That was the guy we were tracking on the base cameras.”

  “I’d hardly call that conclusive evidence,” a voice came from the door.

  Janke. She swore she heard Bowman groan under his breath.

  Both Bowman and Missy stood up out of respect for the man who outranked them both.

  “No, sir. It’s not conclusive at all,” Bowman said evenly.

  Janke ignored him. “Congratulations on your release, Major Malden. I couldn’t be happier for you. It must be such a relief to be able to put all this behind you.”

  Startled, Missy turned to look at him. “Yes, sir,” was all she could bring herself to say. What a weird man he was. Maybe his job was being devil’s advocate? But that didn’t explain his interrogation of her when she’d first been brought from General Daniels’s office.

  “What are your plans now? Are you staying here or heading home?” he asked casually, as if they were chitchatting at a wedding.

  Wow, dude did not know how to speak to people naturally. “I don’t know, sir,” she said, fairly truthfully.

  He nodded and walked away from the doorway.

  “I wish I’d closed the door now,” Bowman said.

  “Who is he?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Some legal guy. The general sent him to my office to ‘observe’ how we handled the investigation into the crashes. I told him I wouldn’t be investigating them, because that sort of investigation belongs to the NTSB. But he insisted I start investigating in order to find the culprit, even before they’d found the aircraft.” He shrugged. “At least now I can get on with my normal job.”

  “So do you think this guy is involved?” she asked hopefully, looking at the screen

  “Involved in something. I certainly have enough to bring him in for questioning. The RAF pilot—Flight Lieutenant Dexter Stone—is being debriefed by the British authorities at the moment, so we don’t have access to him. But as soon as we do, and if he can ID Chris Grove, too, we should have enough to hold him.”

  “That’s a relief. So am I free to go home? I’m guessing the rest of Red Flag will be canceled?” she asked.

  “I guess. As soon as the lockdown’s been lifted.” He shrugged and stood up. “Thank you for your help, and I apologize for any inconvenience.” He held out his hand and she shook it.

  She left the MP’s office feeling like a load had been taken off her shoulders. She felt fidgety, though, maybe because she hadn’t worked out for a few days.

  Finally she felt free to remedy that.

  Free.

  When Conrad heard that Cameron had given the okay to release Missy, he went to find out what had happened to change his mind. Hopefully that meant they’d figured out what had happened to cause the crash and had exonerated Missy. Then he’d go find her and brief her on what he’d found out. Maybe he could be the hero today and be the one to tell her that she was totally home free from suspicion and jail time.

  Rumors had been spreading so wildly since the British pilot had returned with Eleanor that the cause of their crash could have been anything from a suicide pact to the Russians infiltrating Red Flag. Conrad believed none of it but was beginning to realize how powerful some information was, when there was no official information released. The grapevine was choking off all rational thought to the base.

  One airman in the air traffic control room had even been accused of being one of the Russian spies and had been taken into custody. First as a precaution, and then when his innocence was established, for his own protection. The base was going crazy. Cameron needed to talk to the airman confined to base to avoid anything awful happening.

  He really needed to stop those rumors and put out some official word.

  The fact that all this was happening on base, and Cameron had not made an announcement or given a briefing, gave Conrad pause. There must be more to this than met the eye. Even though what met the eye was already pretty fucking crazy.

  He made his way over to the main administration block that overlooked the runway—the nicest offices for the highest brass.

  He had been there only the day previously, but already everything seemed different. In some offices, people were standing around talking; in others, phones were ringing off the hook. If Conrad didn’t know any better, he would have assumed the apocalypse was coming. Perhaps he didn’t know any better.

  He reached Cameron’s office and knocked on the doorjamb of the open door. The boss’s executive, Captain Olivia Moss, looked up and heaved a sigh of relief. “Colonel Conrad, I’m so happy to see you.”

  “You are? That’s always good to hear, but why?”

  “I’m just…I don’t know…” She took a deep breath “I feel as if I’m hanging on to order with a very, very thin thread. Everyone wants to know something. And I can’t find anyone who knows anything.”

  “I’m looking for Colonel Cameron. Have you seen him?” Conrad leaned against the wall opposite her desk.

  “I haven’t. No one has since yesterday. And he’s not picking up his home phone, his DSL line, and his cell phone goes straight to voice mail.” The DSL line was a secure telephone and data line that some high-ranking airmen had in their homes. It made it doubly strange that he was not picking up a call.

  “Maybe he’s in one of the sit-rep rooms? Maybe he’s being briefed? Or maybe he’s getting a brief from the Pentagon. That would explain his absence and his lack of communication.” Conrad didn’t know why he was trying to make her feel better; really, he wanted her to panic as much as everyone else. Maybe panic was what was needed among the officers in the building to get something done about the situation on base. “I need to speak to him too.”

  Captain Moss held up her notebook. “As of now, you are number”—she ran her finger to the bottom of the list—“twenty-eight. And that’s
just in the last two hours.”

  “What about General Daniels? He’s the only person on base who ranks higher than Colonel Cameron, right?” Conrad asked.

  “Right, but he was pulled back to the Pentagon last night, after they found his daughter.”

  What? That was strange. “I can’t believe he left before Eleanor and the British pilot were debriefed. Didn’t he want to know what had happened?” Half of him expected her to look shocked, but instead she bit her lip and nodded to the open door.

  He raised his eyebrows and closed the door, wondering what she would say.

  “I don’t know. I was here when they told him they’d been found. I expected him to demand to know what had happened. But he didn’t. He literally packed his briefcase and told his exec to book them on the next flight to DC. I don’t think he even went to the hospital to see his daughter.”

  Jesus. He was either a terrible father, and a terrible general, or there was an unspeakable alternative where he already knew what had happened to his daughter in the desert.

  When Conrad figured out Captain Moss didn’t know anything else, he officially made himself number twenty-eight on Cameron’s list and left. As he was walking down the corridor, a thought occurred to him, and he turned around and returned to Cameron’s office.

  He put his head through the door. “Hey, if the colonel has been out of contact since last night, how did he give the order to release Missy Malden from house arrest?”

  “I…didn’t even know he had done that. The last time he was here, I overheard a conversation saying that he was going to keep her under house arrest for her own protection. It seems strange that he would change his mind.”

  Conrad’s brain started whirring. “Remind me of the special investigator’s name and contact details?”

  “Yes, his name is Major Harris Bowman, and I have his number right here. Would you like me to get him on the line?”