Elly's Ghost

by John R. Kess

  A clap of thunder made Elly jump, and then the ground shook under her. Jay is out in that, she thought, with more than just weather to watch for. She frowned at the thought he might be in trouble. “Elly, stay calm,” she said, taking a deep breath. “He’ll come back.”

  * * *

  Jay crouched under a large tree as the steady rain shower continued. The mud on his face and his dark green rain gear hid his six-foot frame well.

  It took three hours to find his target’s camp. The markers he’d programmed into his navigation device as they hiked during the day led him right to them. Two canvas tents were set up and well lit. Jay counted four men, two in each tent, their shadows defined on the tent walls.

  Jay knew five people had attempted to take Elly at the airport. He was certain he’d killed one and possibly another. Assuming the pilot of the helicopter wasn’t in either of these tents, the total number of men involved was up to six.

  “This weather sucks,” Jay heard one of the men say in the tent closest to him.

  “Think of the payday,” the other man said. “Tomorrow, we get the girl, kill the guy helping her, and then we’ll get the hell out of here. In no time we’ll all be millionaires. You won’t be complaining about the weather when you’re lounging on a warm beach somewhere.”

  The shadow on the tent wall showed a flask being passed from one man to the other.

  “I’ll drink to that,” the man said before taking another swig.

  Jay knew that in war, any group tracking you with the intent to kill was a threat that had to be evaded or eliminated. With the close call he and Elly had earlier in the day, Jay was done trying to evade them. He knew he’d been lucky to spot them first and they weren’t messing around. He was certain they would kill him and take Elly the first chance they got, and he wasn’t going to let that happen. Jay knew Elly’s life was at stake, and that’s all that mattered to him.

  As with any mission, the hardest part was being patient, but in most situations patience made the difference between life and death for a soldier. Jay had been trained to move and kill in silence, but if things did go wrong, he had always relied upon superior firepower and the ability to call for support. Now he had neither.

  Twenty minutes later, Jay’s patience was rewarded when one of the tent flaps opened.

  A man exited the tent closest to Jay and closed the flap. Checking one last time to make sure only one man was outside, Jay leaned his rifle against a tree and pulled out his knife just as thunder rolled over the camp.

  The man stopped, facing a bush. Jay moved quickly and quietly as he approached from behind. Jay thought about Elly and her dead bodyguard. He told himself this was an enemy who was threatening both his and Elly’s lives, and he had to die.

  Lightning flashed in the distance as the man pushed his rain gear to the side and unzipped his pants. In quick motions, Jay reached around the man’s head, covered his mouth with his left hand, and drove his knife into the man’s throat. The man collapsed onto the ground, and Jay lay on top of him until all life left his enemy’s body.

  Jay picked up the man’s flashlight and went to retrieve his rifle. Then he walked back to the tent, where he could see the outline of the dead man’s tentmate lying on the ground. Based on the position of the man’s flashlight, his head was near the door. Jay pulled the tent flap back and took a step in, shining the light in the man’s eyes.

  “Hey.” The man put his hand up to block the light.

  Jay drove his boot into the man’s neck, snapping it. Jay was ready with his knife, but the man was already dead.

  A 9mm handgun and a box of shells was in one of the backpacks. Thunder slowly rumbled off into the distance. As it faded, Jay heard the door of the other tent zipping shut. He glanced out the open tent door in time to see a man outside turn toward him. He was using a flashlight to guide him toward the tent.

  Jay kept his back to the door. He slid out the clip of the 9mm and made sure it was loaded. He slipped it back in, pulled back the top-loading mechanism, and turned off the safety.

  “Hey, Banks,” a voice said, “can I get a cigarette?”

  Jay turned and fired three rounds at the man holding the light. Two bullets entered the man’s stomach, and the third hit his chest. He spun sideways and dropped face-first in the mud.

  “Dexter!” Jay heard the fourth and final man shout from in his tent. “What the hell is going on?”

  Jay was already back to his original position at the edge of camp. He aimed his rifle.

  “Banks! Davidson!”

  Jay could hear the sound of a shotgun being cocked from inside the tent.

  “Somebody answer me!” The man waited in silence. “You’re a dead man, whoever you are!”

  Jay waited as the man turned off his light. From Jay’s position, the only way out for the man was to exit the door facing him. He didn’t care how long he had to wait. The rain intensified as Jay held his rifle, still aimed at the door.

  “She’s worth millions, man! We’ll split it with you!” the man shouted.

  Jay knew what the man was doing, but there was no way Jay was going to be tricked into saying anything to give up his position. Patience, Jay reminded himself.

  “We’ll make a deal!” The tone in the man’s voice had slowly changed from one of anger to one of desperation.

  “Come on, man!”

  Jay heard the tent zipper and then saw, thanks to the flashes of lightning, the barrel of a shotgun.

  Breathe, hold—

  The man stuck his head out the door.

  —aim, squeeze.

  The round from Jay’s rifle entered just below the man’s left eye.

  Chapter 11

  Captain James Ricardo taxied his U-2 out of its hangar at California’s Beale Air Force Base. The sleek spy plane was a modern marvel, yet it had a long-proven history. The U-2 nicely complemented the base’s slogan: “In God we trust. All others we monitor.”

  Guided by the lights on the edge of the tarmac, Ricardo turned toward runway fifteen, a 12,000 foot stretch of concrete, one of the longest runways on any U.S. military base. He received clearance from the tower and rolled the plane onto the runway, which was no easy task, since the plane was supported by two main inline wheels and two small removable wheels under both wings. He thought of it as trying to taxi an elephant riding a bicycle with tiny training wheels. The U-2 showed its brilliance in the air, not on the ground.

  Ricardo made one final visual check to make sure every gauge was telling him the plane was operating normally. Among the controls were the activation switches for the high-definition and infrared cameras, as well as a new camera he knew very little about. The man who supervised the installation, a major assigned to the Air Force Research Laboratory, had a PhD in astrophysics as well as a security clearance higher than Captain Ricardo’s. The new camera’s switch glowed the same standby amber color as the others.

  Ricardo hit a button on his computer, and the flight path appeared on the screen. The weather was going to be cloudy and rainy from Idaho all through the Dakotas and into Minnesota. The clouds would obscure the view for the high-definition camera, even with its night-vision capabilities. The infrared camera worked well with temperature differences, but the rain would severely hurt any chance of getting something useful. Ricardo figured the new camera must be something special to be used under these conditions.

  The captain slowly pushed the throttle forward, which gave him the familiar feeling of being forced into the back of his seat. Ricardo smiled as the plane increased speed. As soon as he gained altitude, he turned his aircraft to the northeast toward Idaho.

  * * *

  “That’s wonderful news, boss,” Beckholm said into his phone. “I’d like to thank the president for that one.”

  “Don’t thank him; thank his daughter,” Roger Treft said.

  Beckholm smiled. “Go, Celeste!”

  “First flyover is happening right now out of Beale Air Force Base in California. It’ll l
and at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois and then go back to Beale on the same flight path once the sun rises.”

  “That’s great news.”

  “Beckholm, at this point, do you have any hard evidence to believe this isn’t an accident?”

  “No. I have a bunch of pieces to this puzzle that don’t fit.”

  “The reason I ask is that if this door is found and nothing is wrong with it, I think you’ve done all you can. But if there is something wrong and the door tells us something, what is your plan?”

  “First, I’ll get a warrant for the pilot’s personal information. We’ll want bank and credit card records, phone records, the works. We’ll do the same with the bodyguard, in case he was in on it. I’ll want interviews with everyone at Revolution Records and other pilots and staff who worked with Elly’s pilot at Myers Aviation. I want to find out who knew that she was to be on a flight from Baltimore to Seattle. I’ll also want to know who hasn’t shown up for work or who quit in the last six months at either place.”

  “What about Elly’s family?”

  “Everything I’ve found out about the parents says there’s no way they were involved, but I did hear that the night before Elly left she had an argument with her twin brother, Nick. I’m going to drive out to Maryland tomorrow and have a conversation with him.”

  “Let me know how that goes.”

  “I will.”

  * * *

  When Captain Ricardo flipped the toggle switches to activate the cameras mounted on the front of his U-2, he had no idea he had become the first pilot to operate a newly released imagery system code-named Mosquito. The system, developed under strict control and secrecy at the Air Force Research Laboratory, had been an experimental project for the past seven years, involving professors from the University of New Mexico and Georgia Tech Research Institute. Their task was to create a hyperspectral imagery system that could see in the dark like no other camera ever had. The system detected radiated energy signatures from every type of object found on the earth’s surface. The effort put into the project had been immense, but the results exceeded everyone’s expectations.

  Mosquito changed everything. A tank hiding in the desert with brown camouflage could be difficult to pick out using a high-definition camera, but with hyperspectral imaging, the tank would stick out like a giraffe in a herd of zebras. At night, the system could spot a dime on the surface of a dirt field from fifteen miles away and display the raised contour of Roosevelt’s head along with the year the coin was minted. In daylight, all 118 ridges on the circumference of the dime could be counted from twenty-five miles away. Only dense smoke or snow caused the image to be distorted and useless.

  Captain Ricardo flew over central Idaho, transmitting data from the Mosquito system to an orbiting satellite overhead. The data was then beamed to the Air Force’s 70th Intelligence Wing at Fort Meade, Maryland. A large bank of computers processed the data, compared it to Air Intelligence’s database, and created a display. Ten Air Force technicians watched the display appear on three large screens. The bottom screen showed the infrared image, the middle the high-definition camera, and the top the hyperspectral image. The images on all three screens scrolled slowly as the plane flew along the flight path.

  The high-definition camera showed nothing but clouds and darkness. The infrared showed glimpses of heat sources in areas where it wasn’t raining, but most of the images were useless. The screen that had captured the eyes of the ten technicians was the hyperspectral, showing detailed views of the earth below.

  By the time Captain Ricardo passed over Missoula, Montana, 147 potential sites had been identified. When Captain Ricardo’s U-2 landed at Scott Air Force Base, over 1,600 potential sites had been identified. Each site was run through an algorithm based on the dimensions and the density properties of the steel frame and aluminum skin of Big Sky’s twin turboprop door. After two hours of processing, the techs had narrowed the sites to 349. Of these, fifty were identified as primary since they had objects determined to be within inches of the size of the missing door. The coordinates of each of the sites were downloaded onto a spreadsheet. Ten minutes later, the spreadsheet was in Director Holtz’s hands.

  * * *

  “Joanna,” Jay said before he unzipped the door to the tent. He heard Elly gasp.

  Elly was sitting up as Jay shined his light in the tent. He took off his rain gear and came inside.

  “You scared me. Are you okay?” Elly asked.

  Jay didn’t respond. Elly watched as he set down his newly acquired shotgun along the side of the tent.

  “What happened?”

  Jay set the light down and reached into his pocket. “Hold out your hands.”

  Elly did as he asked. He used the key he’d found on one of the men to remove her handcuffs.

  “Jay, there’s blood on the back of your hand.” She grabbed his hand and inspected it. He looked away.

  She let go of his hand as he pulled away.

  Jay put the handcuffs in his bag and the key back in his pocket. He pulled a sweatshirt over his head, clicked off the flashlight, and returned it to his bag.

  “Jay, talk to me. Are you okay?” Elly asked.

  Jay wanted to tell her what he’d just done, but he was concerned what she’d think. Would Elly be terrified of someone willing to kill, even if it was to protect both of them? His stomach tightened with fear that Elly wouldn’t understand. But he knew she’d find out eventually.

  “There won’t be anybody on the ground following us anymore,” Jay said. He wondered if there was any chance of being friends with Elly when this was over. One day he would answer for what happened here, and he hoped Elly would be there backing him up on that day, but now he considered the thought foolish. He was sure that by then she’d want nothing to do with him.

  Elly didn’t say anything as Jay lay down on his ground mat.

  “I’m sorry, Elly,” Jay turned away from her. “Someone like you shouldn’t have to sleep next to a murderer.”

  Elly moved over and touched Jay on the shoulder. “You’re not a murderer.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re a good person. You’re a good man, and a good Marine.”

  Jay rolled onto his back. He could see Elly’s outline as lightning flashed. He decided she should know. He wanted her to know.

  “I have a seven-year-old niece named Kelly,” Jay said. “It was such a joy for my whole family when she was born. When my parents died, Kelly was about the only source of happiness left, especially for my sister, who was close with my mom.”

  Jay ran his hand through his hair. “About three months ago, my unit was sent in to check out a cave identified as a possible Taliban hideout. During the raid, I was forced to take down a teenage boy when he pointed his weapon at me. We were fired upon, and my team returned fire. I was ordered to throw a grenade into the entrance. After the blast, the worst sound I could have imagined came from inside the cave. It was a little girl, crying.

  “We entered the cave and found the body of the man who had opened fire. His wife was lying dead next to him. The little girl was around the corner, blood draining out of her ears. She had been shielded from the blast just enough to survive. You see, it wasn’t a Taliban hideout. It was their home.”

  Jay stared up at the tent ceiling as a chill ran through him. The thought of the little girl caused a lump to form in his throat. “The little girl looked at me, and I about went into shock. The resemblance to Kelly hit me hard—the dark hair, the same eyes, even the sound of her cry. I thought about what if someone had come into my sister’s home and done what I had just done to her family. I’ve never felt so terrible in my life. I hear that little girl crying in my nightmares.

  “I know the men I killed tonight were my enemies,” Jay continued. “Our enemies. But I thought that little girl’s family was my enemy, too. I was wrong. I took away everything from her—her brother, her mother and father, everything. I murdered them.”

&nb
sp; Elly put her arms around him and her head on his chest. “You didn’t mean to do any of that. You’re a good person who means well. I want the world to know how good you are, and how much you’ve helped me.”

  Jay covered his eyes with both hands as Elly held him. She felt like a warm blanket, but the memory of that little girl whose family he’d killed remained. He thought of his niece and imagined introducing his sister’s family to Elly. He tried to focus his thoughts on her. As a Marine, he had always finished his missions, and his mission was to get Elly out of this alive, and that’s exactly what he was going to do. Killing those men tonight was part of that mission. He decided when the mission was over, it would be best for Elly to distance herself from him. What he’d done would only cause her harm.

  “Elly,” Jay said after she’d been holding him for several minutes, “will you do something for me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Don’t tell anybody who I am or what I’ve done. I know when we get out of this you’ll be asked what happened here. Please, don’t tell anyone about me. I don’t want people to know a Marine killed those men. When we get out of here, try to forget about me. Will you do that for me?” Jay asked.

  Elly slowly picked up her head and looked at him. Jay knew Elly was struggling with his words. He knew it wouldn’t be easy for her, especially after what had happened. The reporters would feed on this kind of thing, and they were always hungry.

  “If that’s what you want, okay. I promise I won’t tell anyone,” Elly said.

  “Thank you.”

  Elly squeezed him and pulled the sleeping bag over both of them. She slid up next to him and grabbed his hand, interlocking her fingers with his. Their legs touched, and she rested her head on his shoulder.