How had she lost—
“What’s up, Miranda?”
“Fuel. It’s all about the fuel. I’ve got to tell Lizzy. We’ve got to turn the plane around.”
Holly smiled and pointed at the plane’s secure phone.
54
Lizzy figured she was being an idiot. She wasn’t following her own advice, but she had to see it through. Boarding the Ghostrider at Lackland AFB had felt right, even though she had no purpose aboard.
Pierre sat at the laser console with Rosa, still wearing her sling, hovering in the sole weapons observer seat close behind him. The normal operator had been off-base on authorized leave when they’d called for the plane. Unable to reach him, Miranda had put Rosa and Pierre forward as the best team for the job. They were needed.
However, as the Ghostrider took off from Lackland at sunset, she and Jon were both aboard in the cockpit’s observer seats. And they weren’t needed. At least not in the air.
“Not a weapons specialist? Not a pilot? At least I’m a pilot,” Jon teased her.
“Flying a giant cargo van like a C-5 Galaxy doesn’t count. And don’t forget that I flew F-16 Vipers for almost as long as you’ve even been in the Air Force.”
“Don’t know if that even counts, Auntie General Gray. A squidgy little fighter jet? Who cares about those? I mean, good God, they only have like one engine? How do they even get aloft? You need at least four. From the C-130 all the way to the C-5, any decent plane has four. Besides, without us cargo guys, you jet jocks wouldn’t have any place to go to.”
She appreciated what he was trying to do, lighten the mood for even a moment. But it wasn’t working. At this point she just wanted something, anything, to show up so that she could “switch to guns” and shoot it out of the sky.
Her phone rang—she’d patched it into the Ghostrider’s system.
Miranda.
She almost didn’t answer it.
“It’s only been about twenty minutes since we took off, Miranda. We aren’t even out of Lackland airspace yet.”
Miranda didn’t even acknowledge that and plunged right in. “The Ghostrider is an area-denial specialist weapon—for extremely small areas. If you were going to hit the cartels and traffickers, and really hit them hard, where would you strike? Mexicali, Nogales, and Ciudad Juárez right along the border from Tijuana to the western tip of Texas. The exact targets would come from the Drug Enforcement Administration or maybe inside your own NRO. Drug lords’ homes, arsenals, and processing and shipping plants.”
“Makes sense. I’d need to—”
“They can’t afford to waste fuel,” Miranda was still on a roll. “They would plan to either start at Texas and sweep west or start in the west and sweep east.”
“We already know tha—”
“Yes,” Miranda insisted. “But from Andrews Air Force Base to Mexico—”
“Holy shit! They would have burned all of their fuel in transit!” Lizzy couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen that. Jon was right, it had been too long since she’d flown. The combat range of her F-16 had been only three hundred miles—a tenth of its ferry radius. Fuel was a constant calculation and a major tradeoff between reach and the ability to climb, turn, and fight. It was at the forefront of every pilot’s brain.
“Precisely. Though I’ve never understood that phrase. Is there such a thing as blessed excrement? Never mind. I can almost guarantee that they refueled last night. Probably over Texas.”
“By a Marine KC-130 out of Fort Worth, just like ours.”
Was this what it felt like inside Miranda’s head? This smooth flow so fast but so right?
Then Lizzy remembered the feeling from another time. It was like flying with the very best pilots—that instant when it was a privilege and honor to be flying together.
“We’ll get right on it. We’ll know something of their heading once we confirm where they were refueled.”
Jon already had the pilots calling down to the KC-130 tanker. Yes, that would be the fastest way to get an answer.
He gave her a thumbs up. Faster than she’d expected.
“Same pilots,” Jon spoke as he listened over his intercom headset. “Over Roswell, New Mexico… About two a.m., which is right for the flight time from Andrews… Short-notice Air Force flight… Full fuel load.”
She relayed the information to Miranda.
“They’re starting from the west,” Miranda declared it as fact. “I’m guessing that they’re somewhere in Sonora or Baja. Probably Baja as it is relatively unpopulated and therefore easy to hide in. Also, they could cover the whole range from Tijuana to Ciudad Juárez in a single pass out and back. It’s under a thousand miles round trip. They can cover that twice on the fuel they’d already have aboard. They probably planned on ducking back across the border and calling up the Marines again if they needed a refuel for additional sorties.”
Lizzy called out to Jon. “I don’t care who you have to bribe, lie to, or shoot. Get us permission to circle over the Sea of Cortez.”
“You mean the Gulf of California?” He smiled at her and he finally made her smile back.
“Shut up, you young pup. I was brought up properly.” Her fifth-grade schoolteacher had been very traditional about his use of geography names and she’d always done the same. She also knew of its earliest Western name, the Vermillion Sea, though he’d be disappointed that she didn’t recall the original native name. “Just make sure that we’re way high, so that we look like an airliner.”
A thousand miles from San Antonio to Baja. It was already sunset here. It would be sunset there in just over an hour, but it was two hours of flying time away.
Shit! They were going to be late.
Next she called Captain Thorsen back in DC.
“Get me imaging of Baja and west Sonora in Mexico. I don’t care what satellite time you need to grab or whose program you have to bump, just do it. They’ll be aloft at local sunset. I want to know if so much as a bug takes off without a flight plan.”
He snorted a laugh, “I think you overestimate our satellites. How about bigger than a robin?”
“Fine. A robin.”
Jon looked at her strangely.
“Then, very quietly, find out who Colonel Vicki Taz Cortez got to. Could be DEA, but it could be us. It would have been after her meeting with me about two weeks ago.”
“I’ve got it on the calendar, ma’am.” And he was gone.
If there was a leak in her NRO, she was going to plug it but good—with a round from the Ghostrider’s M102 howitzer if necessary.
55
“We have to get moving. It will be sunset here soon.”
“Okay.” Jeremy stood and offered her a hand to her feet.
She felt surprisingly self-conscious as she dressed. Another thing that had never been an issue for her.
When she was done, Jeremy pulled her back against his chest and simply hugged her, resting his cheek on her hair. Definitely not something she was used to.
“I’ve decided what I’m willing to do.”
She pushed back enough to look up at him. She and JJ had conferred while Mike and Jeremy slept. He’d accepted her recommendation to allow Jeremy to decide for himself, at least at first.
“I don’t shoot people.”
She’d known that. Inside she’d known that. But she also knew that JJ wouldn’t sanction that.
“However, I have no compunction about shooting arsenals or vehicles.”
Taz sighed. It was reasonable. It was right for Jeremy.
But that wasn’t enough either.
“I know that expression. It’s how Miranda looks when a solution isn’t right yet.”
Taz nodded reluctantly.
“Okay,” Jeremy looked at the sky, but kept holding her close. “The laser is tricky. But I can teach you to run the howitzer. How to target, aim, and fire. I can’t make you a brilliant gunner in one day. I never fired one myself anyway, but I can help you with how to read the sensor data and the bas
ics of how to read the control systems.”
“How do you know all that?”
“It’s controlled by a computer. I’m good with those. If I tried to fire an actual gun, I’d probably shoot myself.”
She nodded. That she could sell to the general.
Jeremy looked down at her. “You can really kill people?”
“Yes.”
“Wow. Um…okay. You didn’t even hesitate. I’ve got nothing in my life that tells me how you can say that. Um…nope. Not a thing. That’s either really strong or really scary. Maybe scary and strong both. That sounds right. I just—”
Taz wondered what his life had been that he could ask such a question. She pictured the gun battles that used to rake through her Iztapalapa neighborhood of Mexico City. The starvation, the garbage, not even safe water. Finding her father just moments after his execution. The coyote man and the other rapists of the San Diego gangs. Her mother never said how many times she was attacked. Taz only knew of three and she’d dealt with them all for Mama, permanently.
Jeremy pulled her in tight one last time.
She really, really didn’t understand people like him.
56
JJ didn’t know whether to be amused…or worried.
Taz had informed him of the deal that Jeremy was willing to make. She had also made it clear, without so many words, that JJ would accept it at face value.
Taz was now on someone else’s side. Perhaps not Jeremy’s, but perhaps her own. And as she was the most dangerous weapon he’d ever wielded, far more dangerous than an AC-130 gunship, he suspected caution was the best course of action.
Colonel Vicki Taser Cortez, the ultimate in self-guided weaponry.
They waited for full dark before they pulled aloft, turning northeast.
He wondered if he’d be back to see the dawn.
57
Lizzy had given up looking; whenever her phone rang, she just answered.
Miranda had just unloaded another line of reasoned thinking on her, laying out likely targets, angles of attack.
I only had a chance to study the laser on the Ghostrider at Lackland for a few minutes. I wish I’d had more time. But it will work for both defensive and attack scenarios. The pilots may not have thought this through, but with the AC-130J Ghostrider’s maneuverability they…
She’d hated to do it, but she’d unloaded that call onto the copilot. The fact that, from her seat close behind the pilots, she could see him scribbling frantic notes was either interesting or very unnerving.
If Miranda was still tied up with the pilots, then maybe Thorsen had some satellite data for—
“Hey, honey. You free for a late dinner?”
“Drake. Hi. Not really.”
“Busy day?”
“You mean other than gunships falling out of the sky?”
“Right, sorry. I spaced it.” Drake did sound exhausted. “Busy day here. Think we got the cork back in the bottle. We’ll have to wait to see what happens in Yemen and Iraq over the next forty-eight hours to be sure.”
“Good. I’m glad you got that fixed. Even just temporarily.”
“Sure you’re not up for something? I could grab some Italian or a pizza and come by your office?”
“Pizza is Italian. Besides—”
“Yes,” Jon did a fist pump as he got off his phone. “We’re cleared into Mexico.”
“You’re what?” Drake roared over the phone.
“Uh, we’re cleared into Mexican airspace.”
“As a cargo transport with emergency supplies,” Jon called out cheerfully over the engines’ steady roar.
“As a what?”
“Drake. Just calm down. You know the Ghostrider from Eglin that the President authorized to go after JJ?”
“Ye-es.” It was a low, drawn-out sound.
“Well, the observer seat is quite comfortable.”
“Lizzy, are you out of your goddamn mind?” Again the bull’s roar.
“Drake—”
“You turn that goddamn plane around and—”
“General Drake Nason! Shut up or I’ll stuff this ring right down your throat.”
Jon stared at her wide-eyed as if she was the one who’d lost her mind.
Drake was suddenly much meeker. “You wouldn’t do that, would you? Give it back I mean. You wouldn’t really—”
“You’re goddamn tempting me! This is my operation, apparently because you were too busy with the goddamn Saudis and had to fucking blow off Miranda this morning when she called for help in finding JJ. Did you know that because his clearance was still active and had no alerts attached to it, he just strolled through the front gate at Andrews Air Force Base to steal that second Ghostrider?”
He was wise enough to answer her with silence.
“Well, she’s cracked it wide open and I’m dealing with it. And if the President keeps giving you all the goddamn credit for our goddamn work, then you can both go to hell and neither of you is ever getting my vote again. And I’ll tell Miranda to do the same.”
“My, but you are a jet jockey. All this time and I didn’t know you had a mouth like that on you, Lizzy. Besides, I’m not elected; I’m appointed, then consented to by the Senate.”
“Go to fucking hell and die, Drake.”
“Yeah, about that. Don’t be dying out there. I want you back.”
“Fat chance!” But she regretted the words as soon as she said them.
There was a long silence.
Long enough for her review her other words. She agreed with most of them. But she could feel the ring on her finger. So unfamiliar, so new, and so perfect that she never wanted to take it off again.
“That thing you said,” Drake spoke softly.
“Which one?”
“The one about me taking credit for your work? You know I’d never do that, right?”
“I goddamn heard you! Right at the end of our last conversation. Roy saying, ‘Well done, Drake.’ ” Lizzy did her best to lower her voice like President Cole’s.
Drake burst out laughing.
She’d have hung up on him if she could have unclenched her hand enough to do so.
“He was congratulating me on falling for a woman with enough balls to go out and get things done, and damn the consequences because it was the right thing to do.”
“…Oh.”
“That’s all you have to say? ‘Oh.’?” Drake’s chuckle was low and sexy.
“Um…yes.” Not what she’d expected.
“Are you going to keep the ring?” Now he was teasing her.
“Yes,” was all she could manage. She clenched her left fist tightly and held it up against her heart.
“Okay. You know that the point of being a general is that you no longer need to go out in the field yourself.”
“Tell that to Patton.”
“That’s a little different. You’re the Director of the NRO, not the commander of the Third Army.”
“Or General JJ Martinez.”
Again that silence stretched before Drake spoke again, “Yeah, about that. Be damned careful. He’s an exceptionally tough man to kill. Many people have tried, both metaphorically and a few literally. He’s the kind of guy who makes Patton look like a pussycat.”
“I’m not out to kill him.”
“General Gray, please take this as advice from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: you’d better start preparing yourself for that eventuality. You’ve made yourself the commanding officer on the scene, and it’s an order you may have to give.”
She couldn’t breathe past the sudden tightness in her chest.
Drake waited several long beats before speaking again. “You need anything?”
“A miracle.”
“I’ll get to work on that. I love you, Lizzy. Come back safe.”
“I love you too, Drake.”
Lizzy hung up the phone and just held on to it as she tried to make sense of everything that was going on.
“You okay, General
Gray?” Jon leaned close enough to rest a hand on her arm.
“I have no idea.”
“Did Uncle Drake, the guy who can’t even hug my mother, his sister, when he visits, actually say, ‘I love you’?”
She glanced over at him. “He did.”
“In as many words?”
Lizzy could only nod.
“I’ll be damned.” Jon leaned back and whistled in surprise. “I think you just got your miracle, General Gray.”
58
“They’re aloft.” At Lizzy’s request, Holly was handling the phone calls after Miranda’s long talk with the copilot.
He and Miranda had talked about tactics, specifically the implications of design capabilities versus real-world limitations.
The pilots had been deeply trained in air-to-ground combat and air-to-air scenarios, but never against another AC-130J Ghostrider. It simply hadn’t been a consideration.
She and the copilot had taken most of the Ghostrider’s flight between El Paso, Texas, and Nogales, Sonora, to work out the essential considerations. They’d signed off as her flight began its descent into Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Tacoma, Washington.
He had asked if they could meet later to work through more of the permutations.
She’d agreed.
Neither of them had mentioned that there might not be a later.
Miranda knew it was out of her hands. She’d done everything she could think of.
“Don’t think about it,” Holly anticipated her thoughts.
She stared at Holly. “How?”
She shrugged. “Don’t ask me; I don’t know Christmas from Bourke Street. Just…don’t.”
“I have Mike and Jeremy on one plane and Jon with Lizzy on the other. Their present closing speed is seven hundred knots—eight hundred miles an hour. There is no scenario that I can simulate where this ends well.”
Holly looked grim, then listened to the phone for a moment.
“First contact will be in about thirty minutes, just after we land.”
Ghostrider: an NTSB-military technothriller (Miranda Chase Book 4) Page 20