His shout was instinctive—and incredibly stupid.
Gutz had pulled out his sidearm. But he was right-handed and sitting in the right-hand seat belonging to the copilot. He had to bring his weapon clear of the control yoke and fully around his body.
Pierre’s shout was enough warning for Tango.
In a single action, Tango looked at Gutz, registered the fury so deep only death could wear it, yanked his sidearm, and shot Gutz in the head.
Blood splatter painted the side window lurid red.
Gutz’s dying shot went wild, shattering the windscreen directly in front of Tango.
In turning to shoot his copilot, Tango had twisted far enough to spot Pierre.
He tried to keep turning, but was trapped by his seat harness from bringing his weapon to bear.
Pierre stumbled backward, tripped, and landed flat on his back. Padded by the parachute, it was only remarkably painful.
Tango switched hands to aim around the side of the pilot’s seat.
His shot passed through where Pierre’s heart had been half a second earlier.
Pierre rolled left and tumbled down the stairs to land facedown on the cargo deck.
Everything hurt, but he was safe—Tango had to fly the plane.
But it would take Tango mere seconds to engage the autopilot, then he’d come hunt Pierre down.
The wide-open door beckoned. Though the ocean was so close that survival would be a fool’s gamble.
He looked at the open door. Remembered the feel of Rosa Cruz in his arms for even a moment.
Dying was going to suck.
But if he jumped, Tango might still get away with stealing the Ghostrider. Better to destroy it than let such a powerful weapon fall into the wrong hands.
A quick scan of the deck and he couldn’t spot his stray sidearm.
The solution wasn’t hard once he refocused inside the plane.
He leapt to his feet, then remembered Tango’s gun and ducked.
Still clear.
It took three hard kicks to break free the final mirror assembly on the laser, the mirror that turned the final beam ninety degrees to send it shooting out through the hull. The broken piece now dangled out of the way and the laser was a wide-open weapon aimed at the inside of the cargo bay itself.
He ducked behind the weapons officer consoles.
Perching in Rosa’s chair, he could feel his fingers echoing hers. She’d drilled the keystrokes into him until they were reflex.
Targeting? Didn’t matter. Lock in whatever was set.
Burn power? Max.
Burn time? Continuous.
Fire?
“Damn straight!”
He punched the button just as a shot rang out.
The supersonic shockwave of the bullet snapped close by his ear.
Near miss.
Around the back of the console, he did a racing dive over the broken laser assembly and out the open door.
He hit the air at three hundred knots.
The monster thirteen-foot-diameter, six-bladed propeller spinning at a thousand RPM passed within an arm’s length.
The plane’s broad tail within two.
He yanked the ripcord and the parachute harness tried to gut him.
One wrenching heave, three seconds of float time, and fifty-seven feet later, he slammed into the chilly California ocean water like it was made of steel.
21
“Why hasn’t Tango reported?”
Taz’s stillness said that she had the same question.
JJ studied the northern skyline.
The planned escape route for the Ghostrider had been straight down the channel. There were so many military flights in this area that one more, even one below the radar, was unremarkable. Sometimes hiding in plain sight was the best practice.
And in thirty-six hours, none of it would matter. That was all the time he had left. It was all he needed.
Then, on the far horizon, he spotted a black dot, moving low and fast just as it should be.
“Radio trouble?” But he knew it was wrong even as he said it.
Taz shook her head. He’d always liked that her instincts checked with his. When it mattered, they rarely disagreed. Moments later he could see her scanning motion stop as she too locked onto the dark blemish low against the horizon.
There was their bird.
The Ghostrider was supposed to be headed south between the island and the mainland.
But it wasn’t “making any trees.”
He remembered his father using that phrase on their small sailboat on Camanche Reservoir in the hills above Stockton. If two boats were approaching each other, the trick was to watch how the other boat moved compared with the background. If it seemed to be moving faster than the trees behind it, then it would pass in front of you. Slower, it would be behind. When it seemed to sit dead still against the background but kept getting closer it meant that your angle of approach and speed worked out for a collision course.
He hadn’t learned the math until he’d joined the Air Force and he’d forgotten the details by now.
But one thing was certain: the Ghostrider was coming quickly in their direction—exactly in their direction.
22
Tango Torres stood at the open passenger door, the frame edge in one hand and his M9 pistol in the other.
“How did it all go to shit so quickly?”
No one answered him, of course. The gunners were gone, even the one who’d snuck up behind them in the cockpit. No chance to identify who.
Rosa too. That wasn’t supposed to happen. She’d been tasked with making sure they dumped everyone else except herself.
She’d been two-timing him with Gutz?
That was the total shits.
He hoped Gutz was miserable in the sack.
Had been…
Shit!
Sharing the same holes, even with his best friend, was just a gross thought.
And now his best friend was dead too. Gutz had tried to shoot him. Over a piece of tail! Even one as fine as Rosa’s shouldn’t have made that happen.
Well, he still had to save the plane or the general would be some kind of pissed. The whole plan hinged on delivering this Ghostrider.
He stepped back from the door and closed it.
Double-check. No one by the big guns.
He crossed between the laser and the M102 howitzer to make sure that Rosa hadn’t magically reappeared at weapons control.
Tango made it two steps before a searing pain sliced into his leg.
He screamed as he collapsed backward.
The whole outside of his left leg was charred flesh—burned!
Right through his fire retardant flightsuit. Some blood dribbled onto the deck, but most of the flesh had been cauterized.
It looked like someone had put his thigh on the fucking broiler and forgotten about it for an hour or two.
Goddamn fucking hell it hurt so shitting much!
Then he saw it.
Part of the laser assembly looked smashed. No. Broken off and dangling aside.
No wonder he’d been cooked, he’d just walked into an invisible laser beam.
A master alarm began beeping up in the cockpit.
That was never good.
For half a second he figured Gutz could handle it…except he was dead and couldn’t even handle his own dick.
He’d deal with the laser later.
First, get to the cockpit and—
God, standing up hurt worse than anything ever in his life!
He was drenched in sweat by the time he made it to the cockpit, hopping one-footed up the ladder, and collapsed in his seat.
Gutz’s blood was everywhere.
Shit!
He should have shot the guy in the balls.
Tango tried to look out the window, but all he could see was star-cracks. Gutz’s shot hadn’t gone through; instead the bullet had lodged exactly where he needed to be looking as if Gutz was giving him the finge
r from the afterlife.
He almost smiled at that, but then went to put his feet on the rudder pedals and screamed instead.
Smashing a finger against the Master Alarm stopped the damned beeping.
Red lights all in a clump. A wide variety of systems, but all in the tail.
He twisted around to look behind him.
The back wall of the cargo bay was glowing red.
He should have dealt with the laser. Without whatever was broken off, it was firing at the back of his plane. The beam wasn’t narrow, maybe because of the missing part, but it was still heating the shit out of everything. A hundred and fifty thousand watts was a hella big lightbulb.
In addition to the back of the plane, which he needed, it would also be toasting the racks of gliding Viper Strike bombs still perched in their drop tubes.
The laser took too much power for there to be a breaker in the cockpit, it had to be shut down at the weapon itself.
Tango was gritting his teeth in preparation for getting up and going back down that goddamn ladder, when the yoke went lax in his hand.
He gave it a wiggle.
He still had side-to-side control, but up and down? Gone. The laser had burned through something critical in the empennage control system. Several somethings for there to be a total loss of control despite all the backups.
The big-bellied plane eased down, skipped on the waves like a red-hot puck on an ice rink.
Ahead was…invisible through the shattered windshield.
To the right, Gutz’s blood was drying across the windows.
To the left…
A cruise ship towered above him—a ten-story wall of white.
The plane skipped on the water again, slamming his leg hard against the side of the chair.
He was past screaming.
There was only one thing left to do.
He pulled out his sidearm and shot Gutz Gutierrez in the balls.
“No fucking Rosa in the afterlife, you bastard. That’s Tango’s poontang.”
He holstered his sidearm and then did his best to keep the wings level.
23
After two decades at his side, Taz remained as still as the general, no matter how loudly her instincts said to run.
The AC-130J Super Hercules Ghostrider grew bigger alarmingly quickly. It must still be at full cruise speed of four hundred miles an hour—a mile every nine seconds.
Moving at over half the speed of sound, the roar of the propellers still hadn’t reached the waterfront. All around her, she could hear the merry laughter of people on holiday. The whining child who wanted another ice cream. The two girls with the massive boob jobs and too tight bikinis being so perfectly casual as they strolled along.
The Ghostrider passed between two parked cruise ships that were moored out beyond the breakwater. The massive ships towered several times its height.
It skipped. Planes were supposed to hit the water and die. Out there. Beyond the breakwater.
It skipped again.
For a moment it wavered and dipped the starboard wing toward the water.
Maybe it would hit the north breakwater…
But no. It lifted a wing just enough to clear that outer barrier.
From behind her sunglasses, she kept an eye on the general.
The man was made of stone. She’d served him for nineteen years. Had been the first to swear allegiance when he asked, because from eighteen she’d known no other life.
The general didn’t dismiss her due to her small size like so many others in the Air Force. Instead he’d listened when she spoke and trusted her at every turn. He was a real show-don’t-tell male. If he’d ever thanked her for her years of unflagging service, she couldn’t recall it. But he kept her by his side. That was enough.
He’d also never asked a single question about her past. Scrubbed clean.
So, if he wanted to die sitting at the end of Green Pleasure Pier, killed by an errant AC-130J Ghostrider gunship, she would sit beside him and die as well.
The plane skimmed over a line of small sailboats before coming down for the last time.
The left wing slammed into a hundred-and-fifty-foot luxury motor yacht. The plane twisted away from it—leaving one engine and forty feet of wing embedded in the yacht as it burst into flames. Only a few people made it off the deck by diving overboard. They surfaced into a burning hell as the fuel from the wing tanks spilled over the water’s surface and ignited.
Then the right wing snapped both masts off a hundred-foot schooner, remaining attached long enough to shear off the cabin down the entire length. The spinning propeller passed along the boat like a giant shredder. No one emerged from that boat.
The Ghostrider slammed head-on into the massive rock pile that formed the southern breakwater of Avalon Harbor. Five degrees more to the right and it would have come straight at them.
The cockpit was rammed back into the fuselage with all the ease of an Army boot stomping on an empty Budweiser can. The stubs of the wings, along with the remaining inboard engines, broke off, swung forward, and wrapped either side of the pier in a flaming embrace.
The explosion hit moments later. The munitions, which were supposed to be safe in even the worst crashes, lit off with a resounding boom that hurt her ears and would have blinded her if it hadn’t been inside the plane’s hull.
The tail launched backward into the deeper water.
The remains of the fuselage launched upward from the rear, flipping end-over-end onto the top of the pier. Several score of tourists who’d been disembarking from the latest ferry from LA were crushed instantly. They were the lucky ones.
Those still climbing off the ferry were inundated in gouts of flame and burned alive.
The force of the shock wave knocked her into the general’s lap.
Once it had passed, he placed his hands on her shoulders and helped her sit back upright. It was the only time he had ever touched her other than pinning on her next rank insignia at each promotion.
The fireball climbed upward.
“Something must have triggered the entire load of glide bombs.”
She could barely hear the general over the ringing in her ears. The entire length of the southern stone breakwater was now on fire. Flames began sheeting out over the water as more fuel spilled from all the ruptured tanks. At the current rate of spread, the wooden Green Pleasure Pier would be aflame within the minute.
General Jorge Jesus Martinez rose to his feet. When she rose as well, he placed her Bluetooth earpiece in her palm, then began walking toward the land.
“Colonel Cortez?”
“Yes sir?” From long practice, Taz strode at time-and-a-half to keep up with his long legs.
“I’m going to need another Ghostrider and I suspect another laser operator.”
“And pilots.” The screams of the injured were finally starting to rise. Or her hearing was coming back.
“I have plenty of pilots. But that laser is very new and very rare. Technical Sergeant Cruz was one of the few qualified to operate it.”
“Plane and a laser operator. I’m on it, sir.”
She gave it a moment’s thought, pulled out her phone, and began placing calls.
This was going to be very tricky, since she was supposedly dead in a Spectre gunship high in the Colorado Rockies.
24
“How am I supposed to know where your general is?” Miranda squinted at Jon.
The sun over Aspen had risen high in the sky, but Jon stood just two steps away and almost due south, aligning his head and the sun closely. Even the wide brim of her HeliSee hat was marginal at best for distinguishing him from the blinding background.
“The question was rhetorical, Miranda.” Jon sighed.
“Then why did you ask it if you didn’t want to know the answer?”
“I very much want to know—” He growled deep in his throat. “Never mind.”
“That’s not something I’m very good at.” But Miranda’s reply was lost und
er the beating of rotors from the arriving AgustaWestland Trekker helo.
As soon as it was shut down, Brett climbed out. He flipped open the side-hanging equipment cage and opened the big cooler he’d tucked inside.
“You know the annual Aspen Food & Wine Classic is going on in town.”
Mike gasped. Jon shrugged his indifference. Miranda glanced at Holly and Jeremy, but they had no more idea than she did.
“You got a burger in that lot?” Holly headed to the cooler.
Brett snorted. “I’ve got Gail Simmons’ favorite. Grace Parisi’s Grilled Gruyère and Sweet Onion sandwiches. Does that count?”
“Not even close, mate.” Holly may have scoffed, but she snatched the one in Brett’s hand. Biting in deeply, she sighed happily, grabbed another, and spoke as she chewed. “Still warm. Now that’s fair trade.”
Miranda had a half of one of those and some of Caroline Glover’s summertime chopped salad with flatbread. And the treats just kept coming.
“And,” Brett announced as he pulled out a brown paper bag, “one of Mom’s bologna sandwiches on whole wheat with yellow mustard, American cheese, and a box of raisins on the side. You’ve been behaving, Jeff?” His son nodded eagerly as he took the bag and dug out his sandwich.
“Yes, he identified a key insight into our investigation,” Mike explained, sparing Miranda the need to interact.
Brett rubbed his son’s head affectionately. It reminded her of her own father and the hours he’d spent challenging her mind with cryptographic puzzles and elaborate thought games. He’d rarely touched her, and never so easily. But that had been her own hypersensitivity to touch.
Hadn’t it?
She was fairly sure it had been her who was broken and not him.
Was she still?
The disconcerting power of Jeff’s embrace. He’d wanted to be held when he was afraid. What had she wanted when she was afraid of something? She couldn’t remember.
Brett spread out red wool blankets, with a thankfully small Helisee/Heliski logo in just one corner.
For a while, the only sound on the hilltop was the soft breeze humming against the rotor blades and the occasional territorial bird.
Ghostrider: an NTSB-military technothriller (Miranda Chase Book 4) Page 10