Andi had become a little immune to the question. A security guard had come by like clockwork, every fifteen minutes, to ask the question with some varying form of politeness and impatience.
Showing her ID and stating that she was waiting for a flight had always proved sufficient.
Too bad it was a total lie. Her itinerary had dead-ended here. After an hour, she still had no idea what to do next, and was well past caring. Standing out in the Nevada sunshine and watching the planes flitting in and out of the Las Vegas airport rated about as constructive as anything else she’d done since being thrown out of the Army.
She eyed the tall, sandy-haired man. His inquiry had landed on the polite side of the spectrum, but it was certainly the kind that fully expected to be answered. A military directness and tone she recognized just fine, even if she wasn’t military anymore.
“Depends.” Andi decided she was finally sick of answering that question.
“On what?” He had major’s oak leaves on his uniform, but didn’t push back about her sass. Oh right, she was a civilian now.
His words were muted by a United Airlines 787 ripping north along McCarran Field. They had a full load, judging by the length of runway they chewed up before lumbering aloft. Civilian jets looked so lazy compared with their military counterparts.
Easy excuse to pretend she hadn’t heard him. Why should she waste time answering a military that didn’t want her?
Not that she had anything better to do.
She rested her forehead on where her arms were crossed on the railing.
But she could still see his neat pant cuffs and shiny shoes. Except his shoes weren’t shiny. He wore battered boots that no paper pusher would ever be caught dead in.
“Can’t you go find someone else to bother? How about one of them?” Without bothering to look up, she waved toward the fifty or so people deplaning and heading out through the small AECOM terminal—which she’d never heard of.
Whoever AECOM was, they had serious perimeter security that had required US Government top secret clearance to pass through. No one had warned her about that ahead of time; her itinerary had just said to come here from the main passenger terminal on the other side of the airport—and had ended with that.
At the gate, for lack of any other ideas, she’d tried handing over her new ID.
Her Army CAC—Common Access Card, the pass to military places she was no longer allowed to go and to helicopters she was no longer allowed to fly—had been replaced with a “retired” CAC, which controlled which Vet services she could access.
A quick test showed that it no longer had any clearance associated with it that AECOM cared about. Getting into the VA or a PX wasn’t exactly top secret clearance material.
For lack of any better ideas, she tried her new CAC card. The one with the NTSB as the authorizing agency. They’d handed it to her along with today’s itinerary and tickets, and she hadn’t given it any further thought other than thinking it odd to have been given a Department of Defense CAC rather than an NTSB ID like she’d been given the first day.
Andi inspected it with some surprise when they gave it back to her and waved her inside. Other than the authorizing agency, it looked like any other CAC: her face, former rank and name, a bar code, and a chip. But the well-armed guards seemed to think that, despite her now being a lowly student investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, she somehow still passed muster.
Damn but did she have them fooled.
And top secret muster at that. She’d thought that went away when she’d been tossed out of the military Special Operations.
Guess not.
No ticket counter. The terminal manager had looked at her askance and rescanned her ID carefully when she’d asked if any other directions had been left for her.
The place was sterile and more than a little shabby. No Starbucks or McDonald’s either. She’d hit the vending machines for a Snickers-and-Coke dinner before coming out to lean on the walkway rail and watch the airshow for the last hour. No jetways here. Not a lot of baggage handling either. Mostly just planes and the old-style rolling stair sets.
Her ass was now parked in a strange land with no filed flight plan.
Major Sandy Hair was still hanging tough for his answer of who she was.
“What day is today?”
“Thursday,” he answered her non sequitur with the sense of humor of a major rock.
“Then I have no idea who I am. I’ve never known who I was on Thursdays.” Instead of facing him, she studied the pair of 737-600s that had landed in quick succession on the tarmac in front of the AECOM terminal rather than over at the main terminal.
People were streaming ashore and disappearing through the gates. Six in the evening, they could have been people streaming off the San Francisco streetcars back home in Chinatown.
The planes were white with a red stripe down the line of windows. Except for a tail number, there were no markings as to what airline they were. Up above, a long, lean Delta Airlines 757 came winging down from the south—the big blue “Delta” painted just behind the cockpit stood out just fine. But it was an easy bet that it wasn’t headed for the AECOM terminal.
Half of this world was familiar. Planes shimmering in the desert heat of a late August afternoon. The smell of jet fuel and hot tarmac. Yet it was so…civilian. No sharp cordite of spent ammo. None of the tang of blood’s iron that hammered in at the top of sinuses after a night gone bad. None of the ragged exhaustion of a four-hour mission suddenly taking fourteen.
She no longer belonged anywhere.
“Captain Andrea Wu?” Major Sandy Hair was still hangin’ tough.
“Well, you got one out of three. Just a friendly tip? If that’s your normal success average, don’t ever gamble. It’s Andi with an i. The captain part is ancient history. Last name is Wu. Because it’s the ninth most common Chinese surname, it still doesn’t get you a whole lot of points for getting it right. Who wants to know?”
“Major Jon Swift of the AIB.”
“Seriously?”
He huffed out an impatient breath and handed over his ID.
The Air Force’s Accident Investigation Board?
She looked back over at the growing crowd as a third red-marked 737 arrived and dumped its load of people.
Did she stand out that much?
The arrivals looked just like any other folks passing through an airport. Black, white, Latina, some other Asians besides herself. Though the crowd was heavily male. No kids either. Duh! She hadn’t noticed either of those factors because they were so familiar—at least to her former military self.
This was a military crowd behind a top secret barrier flying on an unmarked airline.
So much for her vaunted soldier’s skill at observation. Yep! She’d lost that along with everything else.
Worst of all? Every last one of them looked as if they were going somewhere, had a purpose.
So not her.
Who the hell cared?
Again, not her.
None of it mattered anymore.
She was civilian.
“Look, Major. Ten hours ago, I was sitting short and mostly bored in class at the NTSB Training Facility in Virginia: AS302 ‘Survival Factors in Aviation Accidents’ in case you care. Then the director of the place, who I’ve never met before, pulled my ass out of class, told me I had a launch—because that shit happens to beginning students all the time—and hands a useless piece of shit itinerary that dumped me here, on the wrong side of a high-security barrier, with no clue what’s next.”
“NTSB Director Terence Graham gave me a call, asked me to escort you the rest of the way. Sorry I was delayed.”
“Seriously?” Andi fought back on the reflexive need to add a “sir” when addressing a major. It wasn’t typical for serving Air Force majors to escort discharged Army captains to places.
This being-a-civilian shit wasn’t coming easy. After more than a decade in, she was completely adrift. Findi
ng an apartment, shopping for groceries, utility bills—all kinds of craziness.
“Seriously.” He shrugged. “Not a burden. We’re headed to the same place and can share the flight. Come along.” And he led the way through a gate and toward the planes, the opposite direction to everyone else still coming off the planes.
Decision time. She checked her watch. Taking a line from The Hunt for Red October, the sweep second hand was in the top half of the minute, between forty-five and fifteen seconds. So, that was a yes answer instead of a fuck-off answer if it had been the bottom half of the minute. It was the only reliable way she’d found to make decisions since her final catastrophic flight.
So, yes, Andi followed him through the gate. “Which flight are we on?”
He pointed off to the side. She hadn’t even noticed the C-12 Huron parked there. No, this was civilian land, so it was a Beechcraft B200 King Air. Or was it? It still had the distinctive red stripe and no name.
“What airline is this?”
“It’s called Janet Airlines.”
“It’s called? What the hell kind of airline is it?” Being out of the military also let her curse in the presence of a superior officer. She could get to like that. At least that one tiny piece of her new existence. The total gut-wrencher? That he still got to be on the inside and she didn’t.
“It’s an airline that exists to avoid questions like that.” They were the only ones heading toward the ten-seat twin-prop plane.
Within seconds of them settling into their seats, the pilot had the door closed and they were on the move. At least the plane smelled military. No little meal service. Not even the leftover salt of too many bags of peanuts. Other than the comfortable bucket seats and a rack of water bottles, she took one, it was just as utilitarian as the C-130 Hercules transport that had dumped her ass back in Fort Campbell, Kentucky, for the final time barely four weeks ago.
“So, there’s been a crash?” NTSB trainee and AIB major being all cozy on a top secret Janet Airlines plane made that an easy guess.
“You have a launch.”
“And?”
“A friendly word of caution: she doesn’t like it when people conjecture.”
Hell of a slap-down for a simple question.
She who?
And that’s when Andi remembered the sealed note that Director Graham had handed off along with her tickets and itinerary. It had been folded up in her back pocket since she’d left DC.
Give this to her.
The same her? Probably some rigid, lord-her-power-over-everyone bitch.
Andi had certainly seen enough of those in her time. The women who decided that the only way to prove they belonged in the heavily male military was to be even nastier than the worst of their male counterparts. Others went out of their way to be nicer, but a lot of them were steamrollered by people of either gender glad to walk right over such an easy target. She’d gotten a little frosty herself over the years. She was civilian now; definitely didn’t need to put up with that garbage anymore. Whether or not she should let it go herself was way too tricky a question at this point.
With a loud buzz of twin turboprops, they rolled onto the runway and were headed aloft. As they turned for the northwest, Andi looked back at the field. They’d just jumped to the head of a line of six passenger jets at the runway’s threshold.
Janet Airlines flew with a serious priority.
Who the hell are you people? was another question she knew would earn her no answer.
Northwest?
The only thing northwest of Vegas for a long way was the Nevada Test and Training Range. She’d flown training exercises in the NTTR, the center of America’s most secret operations training.
Seven minutes later they flew past Creech Air Force Base and kept going. The only thing past that…
“Are we actually going to the lake?” At NTTR’s heart lay the one airfield where nobody went—Area 51, Groom Lake. Except maybe Janet Airlines?
He just nodded and went back to studying his tablet. By the way he had it carefully tilted out of her line of sight, it was either top secret or it was her file.
Her hard-won paranoia voted for it being her service record.
Top half of the minute…shit!
6
While Miranda ticked her way through the on-screen shutdown checklist, Mike moved into the back of the plane.
Jeremy and Holly were fast asleep in the back pair of the four facing seats, so far out that even the landing hadn’t fazed them.
Of course, the brunt of the Alaska investigation had landed on them and Miranda—though she, as usual, showed no hint of the long hours.
Holly looked atypically peaceful as she slept. Her straight fall of blonde hair comfortably tousled.
He leaned down and kissed her awake.
Pain sliced into his neck as she clamped his windpipe in a vise-strong grip.
He managed to squeak in alarm at being unable to breathe.
“Shit!” Holly let go and shoved him away to collapse into the opposite seat. “What the hell were you doing, Mike?”
“Kissing you awake.” His voice sounded like a chipmunk who’d spent his entire life as a chain-smoking boozer.
“I’m not some goddamn Sleeping Beauty and you sure as hell aren’t Prince Charming,” she glanced out the window to see where they were.
“I thought—” but that was all his damaged voice box would allow at the moment.
She turned back to him. “We’re having sex, Mike. Doing the naughty. Having ourselves a nice old bangaroo. We’re not ‘lovers.’ Just get that shit out of your head.”
No wonder they fit together so well. It’s a line he’d dropped a couple times—with a little more couth—when a ski-friend-with-frequent-benefits suddenly slipped the M-word into a conversation.
She punched a fist across the narrow aisle into Jeremy’s shoulder where he still slept.
“Huh, what?” The force of her punch was enough to bonk his head against the plane’s hull.
“We’re here, Jeremy. Grab your gear.”
“Oh, okay.” He’d fallen asleep with his computer on the fold-out table and his tablet in his lap. He tucked them into the big pack he’d strapped down in the opposite seat.
“Move ass, Mike.” The little plane’s ceiling was only four-foot-nine high, so Holly hunched as she headed toward the door.
“You okay, Mike? You’re looking a little pale,” Jeremy squinted at him.
“Just stupid.”
He’d forgotten two things.
One, Holly Harper was about as romantic as an Australian white shark, and, two, she’d been a sergeant in their SASR special operations regiment.
The woman was lethal when surprised. Or just in a bad mood. Or a good one. She was also gorgeous, amazing in bed, and had that sexy-smooth accent that was going to lead him to his doom. Yeah, his libido was in heaven; so what piece of idiocy thought for even a second that it went any deeper than that?
He risked a gentle swallow, which he instantly regretted, and deplaned after Jeremy with Miranda close behind him.
7
“Where did you get that?” Major Jon Swift couldn’t look away from the sleek little bizjet that had landed hot on their tail. It had pulled up close while he and Captain Wu were still eating the dust of the departing Janet Airlines C-12 Huron.
“Nicked it, mate.” Holly was first off the plane. “It was just sitting there at the airport, lonely as could be, so we decided to take her home. We’re thinking of naming her Betsy.”
“We are?” Jeremy trotted up beside her toting his monstrous field pack. “I never heard that. I think a better name would be like The Millennium Falcon or a Viper Mk II. You know, like in Battlestar Galactica. Oh wait, those are all gunships. But Betsy? Really? Oh, wait. I Will Fear No Evil? I guess that’s kind of cool, though I don’t get why anyone would name an airplane after an automated stenodesk from Heinlein’s—” When Holly raised a single rigid finger as if to poke him sharply, Jere
my wisely shut up and scooted well clear of her reach.
Mike came next. Jon wished just once in his life he’d looked as smooth and together as Mike always did. His hair just a little too long, his clothes fine, but casual. Like he’d just walked out of some hip and modern store’s display window.
He made a point of shaking Jon’s hand and then introducing himself to Andi. Mr. Nice Guy on full display.
Instead, Jon had greeted her with an utterly unsmooth, “Who are you?” He’d sounded like an impolite jerk even to himself but hadn’t figured out how to fix it.
Through the window, he could see Miranda clambering out of the pilot’s seat.
The moment she was clear, a crew in ABUs—Airman Battle Uniforms—appeared out of one of the big hangars close beside the runway. With zero ceremony, they dropped the packs from the cargo holds onto the salt flats, then towed the jet into the shadowed depths. The big doors rattled closed again as if neither they nor the jet had ever been there.
Andi was having a first-timer’s reaction to Groom Lake, gawking in every direction. Not that there was a damn thing to see midday. Groom Lake didn’t even smell like an airport. Salt flat instead of baking asphalt. No odor of spilled Jet A. Not a single aircraft in sight—most of the aircraft here were only flown under the cover of darkness.
At a sudden high-whine of an air-ratchet tool sounding from inside the next hangar down, Andi jumped as if she was aiming for orbit.
That was a little strange. Usually Army captains, even retired ones, were steadier than that.
“Who the hell are you, mate?” Holly went toe to toe with her before she’d fully returned from orbit.
Andi pulled out Terence’s letter, hesitated, then handed it to Miranda like an act of defiance. She could have spit in Holly’s face with less ire.
Miranda opened the letter, read it over quickly, then handed it back.
Finally, she looked at Jon.
“Where’s the crash?” was all she said.
Jon couldn’t believe that—
Holly snatched the letter from Andi’s fingers. When she went to grab it back, Holly placed a hand on top of Andi’s head and pushed her out to arm’s length as she opened it.
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