by Dale Mayer
The trouble was, she couldn’t sleep. It was the same old, same old—realizing the engine was gone, the flames tearing off the back of the plane as it tilted and plummeted downward. In a death spin, they could do so little about it. It was hard to get up off that seat and get to the back, only to be caught by Colton and clipped into a harness and sent out the door.
She recognized that George had been treated the exact same way, and, for that, she realized they definitely owed Colton’s SEAL training for their lives. But it was more than that; it was just Colton’s cold sense of purpose. He didn’t ask questions; he didn’t worry about anything. He simply grabbed them, buckled them into their chutes and made sure they got out of the future wreckage heading toward the ocean.
It was her first major plane crash, and, even now, it hadn’t really settled in. It was just too devastating. Too emotionally soul-destroying to walk away from. It didn’t change the fact that she was a pilot and a damn good one, but she had to wonder if this would impact how she flew. She wanted to get back up in the air and get back down again safely several more times immediately, so she didn’t have to deal with stage fright or whatever it’s called when you didn’t want to go back up in the air.
Flying was her whole life. She’d been wondering about settling down a little bit in the future and taking fewer shifts, but she had never wanted to give up the skies completely. It was a huge part of who she was. Yet sitting where she was now, it didn’t seem to make any difference. She was curled up in bed, lost and caught in nightmares just so impossible to figure out.
What about all the equipment and cargo they were carrying? What were the chances that anything from the cargo bay could have been involved? Anything was possible. A timer could have been set inside the cargo that would have set off the engine as well. The bottom line was that either she or George had been targeted. It was also possible that it was all one and the same. Maybe the saboteur wanted both of them done for.
As shocking as that sounded, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. All they had to do was find a connection between Ned and the guys doing the drug running. Ned had been volatile. He could be very up and then very down too. She now wondered if he took drugs. It would explain the mood swings. As she lay here, she tried to figure out some commonsense rationality about any of it, but it eluded her. Finally she got frustrated and sat back up in bed and groaned.
No point in resting here, if I’m not resting. But, if I can’t rest, no point in letting my mind bend upside down and backward. But she had none of her gear, not even a laptop. She should have asked Colton if she could have taken his with her for a bit. Maybe it would have helped—if for no other reason than giving her something to do. Just as she got up and put her boots back on, a light knock came at the door. “Come in?”
Petty Officer Parsons stepped in, smiled at her and said, “I wondered if you were napping.”
“No,” she said. “I tried, but I’ve got too many thoughts going around in my head.”
He nodded, then said, “The commander would like to have you check in at sick bay, please.”
She stilled and then nodded. “I guess that makes sense, but I can’t say that I want to.” She finished lacing up her boots, then stood, walking toward him and asked, “Any chance you can show me the way?”
“I’d be happy to,” he said. “The commander is just looking after your health.”
“Maybe so,” she said, “but it still feels very much like more poking and prodding that I don’t want done.”
“You have a fair bit of bruising, according to your file, but no broken bones. That in itself is amazing.”
She nodded grimly. “You can thank Colton for that.”
“No, not just him, I don’t think so,” he said. “Maybe because you got out of the plane so fast, and he kept you alive in the water, but, all in all, the three of you did a great job.”
“Maybe.”
Suddenly they were in front of the medical center. With a smile she stepped inside, and he faded away. As she walked forward, a woman looked up and smiled, then asked, “Can I help you?”
“The commander sent me to report here for a checkup,” she said.
“And you are?”
“I’m the one who just arrived from the crashed plane,” she said. “It’s Kate. Kate Winnows.”
“Good to have you,” the woman said. “Take a seat. The doctor will look after you in a moment.”
That was the best she could do. She sat down but, of course, no magazines were here, like those found in most civilian waiting rooms. Nothing but windows surrounded her. She stared, realizing just what a unique country this was. When she started to get bored and looked for something to occupy herself, a big burly male stepped in and called her name. She hopped to her feet, then smiled and said, “That’s me.”
He looked at her, then said, “Well, the fact that you’re walking, talking and appear to be quite sane already qualifies you as a miracle. Come in and tell me your secret.”
She laughed at his humor, liking him already, and followed him into a small room. He did a very thorough checkup, asked her about all kinds of things she hadn’t even considered but were obviously pointed toward the possibility of internal injuries.
When he declared her fit and sound, she smiled and said, “That’s what I said, but the commander wanted me to come anyway.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s always better to get you checked over, just in case.”
He tapped his tablet. “What I do want is for you to see a colleague of mine.”
“Why?” she wailed, the smile falling off her face. “I don’t see any point.”
“Of course you don’t. That’s because you’re not interested in dealing with it right now. But the fact of the matter is, I think you should talk to somebody about it. The point is to make sure that you don’t end up with recurring nightmares and that the stress doesn’t leave you with PTSD long-term.”
Enough common sense was behind his request that she could see his point. “How about I see somebody when I get back home again?”
“How about you see somebody now?” he said firmly. “And I mean like now, now.”
With that, he handed her a note and said, “Talk to my receptionist out front. With any luck you can go straight from here to your next stop.”
Kate nodded glumly and said, “You know that’s almost worse than getting blood taken. And I hate needles.”
He gave a big laugh. “For anybody who survived what you did, talking about it should be a piece of cake.”
“It wouldn’t be bad,” she said, “if they wanted to know something straightforward. But it’s always those tricky questions where they’re trying to read between the lines. That’s the hard part.”
“So then, say you just want to talk straight and don’t want your brain analyzed while you’re at it.”
She looked at him in surprise.
He shrugged. “Why not? That’s what I do. I have to go for mental health visits too, whether I like it or not. And like you, I don’t like the double-talk stuff. I want, This is where I’m at. This is what I’m doing. This is how I’m doing,” he said. “You might try that.”
The trouble with that strategy was, when it came to put it in practice, it was easier said than done.
She was surprised when she arrived at the shrink’s office. Still a military office and plainer than she would have expected for a psychiatrist’s office, but the beaming smile on the woman’s face was the biggest surprise.
“I suppose he told you to ask for the no-frills plan,” she said warmly.
Kate laughed out loud. “Only after telling him that I hated how you guys always look for answers inside the answers.”
The doctor laughed. “I love it,” she said. “But seriously, my only interest is ensuring that you are coping okay with the terrible experience you had.”
“I’m okay,” Kate said boldly. “As much as I want and need to sleep, the nightmares keep me up. I still see
myself crashing but drowning instead of being rescued. I presume with time that will ease up.”
“Yes,” the doctor said. “You weren’t hurt physically?”
“No. It was just a bad accident. I avoided the plane crash via parachute, followed by very nearly drowning, and then the hypothermia set in,” Kate said with a laugh. “And thankfully I survived it all.”
“Thankfully, indeed,” the doctor said. “And I heard from others that you’ve credited the man flying with you for the survival of you and the other pilot?”
“Yes, Colton,” Kate said with a gentle smile. “No doubt about it. No way George or I would have made it without Colton.”
“The two of you have a history?”
“A one-night stand four years ago,” she said, clear-cut and concise. “I would love to explore the idea of a relationship, but I don’t know that he’s up for it.”
“If he is,” she said, “I can tell you an intense experience like this can make for a great bond. Nobody else will understand what you’ve gone through but him.”
“But is that a fair basis for a relationship?”
“Is a one-night stand?” the woman countered, then followed with a big smile. “It’s a great basis. It’s like a sympathetic understanding with a lot of realism attached to it. Makes for reality and a relationship that is grounded instead of one built on fantasy. Fantasy is great, until you pull back the curtains and see what’s really inside. In this case you already know the core of the man. You can create a beautiful world from that without any fantasy required.”
*
Colton sat at an empty table in one of the office buildings, doing his best to figure out exactly what the hell was going on. What he had were all kinds of details and various opportunities to sort out, but absolutely no information that would do them any good. And that was really irritating. He needed answers, but, so far, everything was coming up blank. Troy joined him a few moments later. Colton raised his eyebrows.
“I thought you’d be with Kate.”
“She’s napping,” he explained. “I figured I could do better here, trying to get some answers in the meantime.”
“There are definitely answers that need to be found, but I sure as hell haven’t had any luck finding them.”
“We have to track whoever was on the plane or in the area and compare them against our three suspects,” Colton said. “At the moment, all three look good for this, but we haven’t gotten anybody verified in position at the scene, so really there’s no case.”
“All have motive,” Troy said, “but motive isn’t enough.”
“I know,” he said with a groan. “Wish it was.”
“No you don’t, not really,” Troy said. “The world would go crazy, pinning all kinds of crimes on the wrong people. Look at what a mess the world is in already. Can you imagine how much worse it would get without due process?”
“I know,” Colton said grimly. “Okay, so I’ve got a passenger list from the other flight that had a mechanical problem and ended up at Halifax. Let’s check all the passengers against our three known suspects.”
“Give me half,” Troy said, and, between the two of them, they broke it up and started covering all the names on the list.
By the time Colton got through his section of the list, he was frustrated to the point of swearing. “Damn it. Not only is nothing here, nobody even looks remotely connected.”
“Nobody with any history of assaults or a criminal record flagged for anything at all?” Troy asked, looking up from his part of the list.
“Nothing,” Colton said. “It’s so freaking irritating.”
“It is,” Troy said. “There has to be some connection to somebody though. That plane didn’t blow up on its own.”
“I guess that’s one of the things we have to consider—the possibility of mechanical failure.”
“It’s possible, but, Colton, given the motives we’ve got here, it sure doesn’t look all that probable.”
“Right. In most investigations, you spend considerable time trying to find a plausible motive, but here we’ve got motive up the—”
“Exactly.”
But with Troy’s half of the passenger list now completed too, Colton couldn’t do much more until he got a couple things from Mason. First, he was still waiting on Kate’s contact list from her old phone. So he reminded Mason, who was waiting on the girlfriend’s email containing snapshots of said contacts. He’d send that on upon receipt.
Now Colton had a second request, a new one, asking for the list of mechanics working on the base around the planes in the twenty-four hours before their flight took off, as well as verifying what kind of a visual check would have been possible in order to determine how long that bomb could have been sitting there, waiting to be triggered.
When he explained that, Mason had said he’d get back with it in a few minutes. Colton hoped he wasn’t putting Mason on the spot over all this purported sabotage—which could have occurred at two other bases—but obviously something was going on. Having been caught by surprise once, Colton sure as hell didn’t want to get caught a second time.
Minutes later, Mason came back on the chat window.
Ex-boyfriend is in the clear over Halifax. Confirmed he was in Colorado. Colton, did you ever consider you were the target?
Sitting up a little straighter, he looked at Troy. “Mason just asked if I might have been the target.”
Troy’s eyebrows rose. “Ooh, I hadn’t considered that.”
“But it is a possibility, I suppose. But how though? It’s not like anybody knew I was on that plane.”
“I did,” Troy said. “And, if I did, you know a bunch of other people on base, both bases, did as well.”
Colton frowned. “I wouldn’t have thought I had that many enemies.”
“You don’t need many. All you need is one, one with the right skill set to do this.”
“The trouble is, because we don’t have the plane to investigate, we don’t have a signature on the bomb or anything else for that matter,” Colton said.
“In a way, it was a perfect crime,” Troy said. “Except for one part.”
“What’s that?” Colton asked.
“You survived,” Troy said. “If this was a murder-for-hire, the guy failed to complete the job, and he’ll be coming around, looking for another opportunity.”
“Oh, good. Just when this wasn’t complicated enough.”
“I’m thinking you better spend a few minutes and figure out who might have wanted to kill you.”
Colton looked at him. “You know full well, because of the work I do, anything is possible, but I just don’t think it’s a likely answer.”
“Maybe not but it’s something we do need to mark off as having been looked at.”
“Fine, I just don’t like it,” Colton said with a scowl.
“Like it or not,” Troy said with a chuckle, “it’s something that has to be considered and then either discarded or brought up for a further look.”
Grumbling about that, Colton faced his borrowed laptop and sat here with a serious look, figuring out just who in his life might have wanted to kill him. And who he had told about his plans. “I told a couple of the guys,” he said. “When I was sitting there, waiting for the flight out of Coronado, I was talking to somebody.”
“You told him what you were doing?”
“To a certain extent but not with any detail.”
“Did you know him?” Troy asked.
“I know of him, but I don’t know him, know him,” he said. “As in, he’s not a friend, and I’ve never done a mission with him. At least I don’t think so.” He tried to recall the man’s features, and then he shrugged. “I can’t remember very much about him. It was just a casual conversation about how I was heading up to Greenland and that this was the flight I was put on.”
“And where did you talk to him?” Troy asked.
“At the plane,” he said. Looking at Troy, he repeated, “At the plane. That’s
the thing.”
“Were they loading up supplies? Anybody who was involved in the loading there would have had access to the plane. If a bomb was attached to the outside, they could have just walked past casually and done all kinds of things.”
“He was there alone,” Colton said, quietly pissed at himself now for not having noticed.
Troy said, “Listen. The thing is, because he was right there where you expected to see somebody, it didn’t seem like it was out of the ordinary.”
“Not to mention it was on the base, where you assume everybody is okay.” But, of course, Colton already knew from previous experience you couldn’t assume anything. Shit happened no matter where, and sometimes it was worse on the base because everybody assumed it was all clear.
“He had to have been there with the group doing the loading,” Troy said. “At least he was somebody nobody had a problem with.”
“True, and, since everybody else was calm about it, so was I. … Then again maybe it looked like he was there with me.”
“That’s possible too.”
Colton sat there a little longer and then sent a message to Mason, explaining that he had spoken to somebody at the Coronado airport himself. And he now needed a list of all the ground crew who might have loaded the gear onto the plane. “I suppose there also could have been triggers inside the plane. Like in the cargo as well,” he mentioned to Troy as he worked.
“Instead of a phone call?” asked Troy.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s possible. Anything’s possible at this point.”
“As usual there are too many possibilities. We’ll narrow them down, and then, when we figure it out,” Troy said, “whatever doesn’t make sense and is still left standing, no matter how impossible, that will be the one lead we have to pursue.”
Colton looked at him and smiled. “I’ve been spending more of my time doing training lately than investigations, you know?”
