That was information he’d like to possess. That crash was causing an inordinate amount of trouble, including their present situation of desperately needing Jeremy’s aid. However, JJ was not about to open up communications to anyone at this time. There wasn’t a single military person on this flight or at his operating base who wouldn’t be court-martialed the moment they were caught.
“She was talking to the weapons officer and she doesn’t do interviews until she already knows what’s happened. That’s the last step in her investigation process,” Mike agreed.
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Taz cut in while JJ was thinking how much he’d like to throttle Rosa Cruz for betraying them. “If she told your boss about this, why didn’t she stop our flight?”
“He,” Mike spoke up. “Miranda was with a male weapons officer.”
“Oh.” Taz glanced up but she shook her head. Not one of theirs.
“And she’s probably trying to stop you right now. So, who are you about to have an illegal war with?” Jeremy asked as he dipped another breadstick into the cheese spread. He patted the control console like a favorite pet. “I mean, this baby specializes in area denial. You want to take out a tightly clustered group of weapons or people with extreme prejudice. You’re also banking that they don’t have the fighter jets to take you on, because as dangerous as the Ghostrider is, it’s big, slow, and does its best work below ten thousand feet. Or do you have a couple of escort jets of your own?”
Mike was watching his companion intently. So, this was all the young investigator’s conjecture.
JJ considered. Taz’s nod concurred with his own thoughts that frankness seemed appropriate.
“We’re going after people who have wronged every single person on this plane.” And JJ could feel the fury deep in his gut as he did every time. That had been his leverage for recruiting each member of this team for his final mission.
Jeremy nodded, then leaned forward enough to pull on a hat that had been between his shoulders and the seat back. It was brilliantly garish, even in the dim combat lighting.
“Put it on, Mike. The Three Amigos! Well, the Two Amigos.” Jeremy began popping cookies into his mouth.
“Why?” But Mike did as he was told.
“Because we’re going to Mexico.”
“And our chances of ever coming back?” Mike asked the astute question.
Jeremy looked at him blankly for a long moment, then choked on his cookies, and ended up coughing crumbs in every direction as Mike pounded on his back.
47
“Mexico?”
Rosa nodded, “But that’s all I know. I think only Tang—” She made a strangling sound.
Miranda decided it was a good thing they were still in the hospital, seated at one of the VA hospital Patriot Café’s tables. If Rosa needed a doctor—
But she cleared her throat, though she was far paler than a moment before, then continued, “I think only one of the pilots on the Ghostrider that crashed in Avalon knew where we were supposed to go.”
“But you had agreed to leave the Air Force to do this. Whatever this was!” Despite sitting in a quiet back corner booth with an untouched milkshake in front of her, Holly seemed poised for battle. There was no hint at all of her Strine accent.
“I grew up in a super-close family. But my aunt and uncle died while trying to cross the border. They were seasonal pickers and went home each winter. One year the cartels kidnapped their daughter to force them to be drug mules. None of them survived.”
Miranda finally saw the pattern and wondered why it had taken her so long. “Rosa Cruz, Mark Torres, Ron Gutierrez, Taz Cortez, JJ Martinez, Luis Hernandez, Danny—”
“Luis?” Rosa leaned forward and Pierre flinched.
She turned to him. “No, he was just a friend. His mother got sold into the sex-trafficking trade when she crossed the border. He was a good man.”
“Well, now he’s a dead man.” Miranda continued.
Rosa spun back to face her.
“It appears his parachute failed after setting up the crash in Colorado.” She pulled out her phone and called Jon.
He answered immediately.
“Are you still with Lizzy?”
“Yes. Miranda. I’m so sorry—”
“You said that already. There’s no point in repeating it. Everyone JJ recruited appears to be Mexican. Or perhaps from Latin America. It would seem that every single person he recruited had a reason to hate some particular group or groups in Mexico. Traffickers and the like. Find out who.”
“Wait. General Martinez is using a stolen Ghostrider to declare war on Mexico?”
“Our government managed to alienate the Mexican government enough that they’ve turned down our subsequent offer to send military assistance against the cartels. Drake said that JJ was an extreme patriot. It is therefore simple logic that JJ decided he’d had enough of politics and was going to defend his country.”
“Against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Pierre said it softly.
Rosa nodded. “His exact words.”
Jon must have overheard. “The USAF officer’s oath. Shit! I’m on it.”
“The problem we have is how to stop him.”
“Find him and shoot him down!” Pierre snarled.
Holly almost attacked him across the table. Probably would have if Miranda wasn’t in the way.
Miranda placed a hand on Holly’s arm and could feel it shaking. “That won’t work, Pierre. Mike and Jeremy are on board.”
“Then how the hell do we stop them? They’re going to murder people and start a war.”
There was a long tense silence.
“What we need,” Rosa finally broke the silence, “is the third Ghostrider from Eglin. The laser doesn’t have to be used on full power. It can also dazzle their plane’s optics. If we’re quick, we could damage any ability to deliver on a target without damaging the aircraft.”
At that, Holly smiled.
If Miranda were to label her look with an emoji, it would have a devil’s horns and tail.
“Now that’s aces!”
48
“I’ve watched my people,” JJ thumped his chest hard enough to hurt and it felt good. “I’ve watched them be decimated for too long by the drugs and the traffickers who see hardship and pain as opportunity. I’ve stood by as my own country has marginalized and attacked those in greatest need while allowing the users to thrive beyond reason. Mexico fights, but it is powerless.” JJ had spent his whole career combating that desperate dichotomy.
“But won’t they defend themselves?” Mike asked from where he sat on the deck.
“The government has three fighter jets, total.”
“Northrop F-5s,” Jeremy nodded. “They purchased them in 1982. But it’s a 1950s design. Mexico is almost two-thirds the size of the contiguous US and they rely on about a hundred helicopters—most light utility—for air coverage. The idea was that they would depend on their closest neighbor, us, if there was ever a serious military conflict. But we’re no help when that conflict is internal.”
“Precisely.” JJ now knew how to deal with Jeremy. Exactly the same way he dealt with Drake—integrity to integrity. “The DEA had the intel and the NRO turned that into targeting, but no one was willing to leverage that information. Taz has convinced them to share it with me. I have the primary operations center of every leading cartel lord and trafficker across the whole north of Mexico. Tomorrow night I’m going to lead a single strike down the entire length of the border.”
“And you need a laser operator.” For once, Jeremy was completely serious.
“Yes. Can you do it, son?”
“I…can,” he said carefully.
“Will you?”
JJ saw that both Mike and Taz were holding their breaths—Mike in worry and Taz in hope. Jeremy didn’t look like the strong-willed type. But he suspected that inner core of right or wrong, once chosen, would be unflappable under any threat.
Jeremy stared down
at the remains of his cherry-blueberry cobbler for a long time. “I just don’t know. I have to think about what Miranda would say.”
“I’ll take the honest answer…for now.” JJ held out his hand.
When Jeremy shook it, his hand didn’t feel so soft anymore.
49
“You need what?” Lizzy stared at the phone. Thank God it was on a secure line.
“I said that I need the third Ghostrider. I need it fully armed and fueled and forward-stationed near the Mexican border for an illegal black-ops mission. I need a crew that is absolutely trustworthy.”
“No! Whatever you’re thinking, Miranda, just…no!”
“Hold please,” and she was gone.
“What the hell?” Lizzy looked across her desk at Jon.
“I have no idea,” he looked just as surprised as she felt. “But what Miranda said earlier is checking out. I have about half of the reports back. So far, every single person on our ‘Death List’ from the first crash had some awful experience with Mexican cartels. Sisters dying of overdoses. Fathers murdered by hitmen in cartel wars. Sex trafficking of cousins. These are a lot of very angry people who are also very skilled US Air Force officers. Only that technical sergeant, Rosa Cruz, is an enlisted. She’s also noted as the Number One laser operator on the Ghostrider in the entire Air Force.”
“I don’t—”
The call beeped back to life.
“Lizzy, I have Roy on the line here.”
It took her a moment to think about that, then both she and Jon bolted to their feet.
Miranda was the only person Lizzy knew, other than the First Lady, who called the President of the United States by his first name. She was also one of the few people he was likely to take a direct call from without any question.
“Mr. President,” Holly spoke up with a thick Strine accent. “One of your three-stars, General JJ Martinez, has decided to throw himself an extra-special retirement party. You know, shrimp on the barbie, a couple of shandies—”
“Shandies?” the President asked.
Lizzy knew that Holly enjoyed bucking authority, but this was the President. Well, not her President, being Australian, but still the President. But that didn’t seem to stop her.
“Beer with lemonade. Really fine if it’s a top drop brew and fresh-squeezed lemonade. He’s also invited a shady lot of top-rank Latino officers and is holding it aboard a stolen AC-130J Ghostrider gunship to make it a real-and-proper piss-up.”
“What was that last?”
“A ‘piss-up’ is a party, a good one, that—”
“No, the Ghostrider?” His tone was dark and dangerous.
But Jon was smiling at her. Lizzy knew that it might be “just the way Holly was” but…damn!
Miranda answered. “We have evidence that indicates America’s War on Drugs is about to be significantly escalated. The most likely time frame would be tomorrow night, because JJ is fast running out of darkness. Had he been able to retain the first Ghostrider gunship he attempted to hijack—”
“The what? Drake! What the hell is going on out there?”
Lizzy hadn’t known that Drake was with the President.
“I don’t know, sir. I’ve been here with you working on the Iran-Saudi mess.”
Should she have called Drake earlier? But everything had seemed so normal that…
Except it hadn’t been.
It was only Miranda’s eternal calm—emotionless reactions?—that had made it seem normal. The AC-130H Spectre crash in Aspen had somehow naturally segued into the investigation of the AC-130J Ghostrider crash on Catalina Island. And that in turn leading to the inspection and subsequent hijacking of the second Ghostrider at Andrews Air Force Base which…
Lizzy decided that she’d be lucky if she wasn’t in lock-up for her fiftieth birthday rather than getting married.
She loved being the head of the NRO, the being-a-general part generally sucked. But that wasn’t going to stop her now.
“Sir, I have been working closely with the team for every step of this on-going…”
“Investigation?” Jon whispered when she hesitated. “Calamity? Crisis?”
“…issue. In the last five minutes, it has grossly increased in complexity and we—” she’d have to talk to Miranda about forcing her hand without asking first, not that it would do any good, “—felt that it was time to bring you both into the loop.”
Holly quickly brought Drake and the President up-to-date.
“As I alluded to earlier,” Miranda continued, “if weapons specialists Master Sergeant Pierre Jones and Tech Sergeant Rosa Cruz here hadn’t stopped the hijacking of that first Ghostrider, JJ’s war might have already begun.”
There were two gasps of surprise in the background, but Miranda didn’t slow down long enough for Lizzy to make any sense of them.
“But as JJ’s best opportunity is under cover of darkness, I would estimate that he will…”
“Cozy up in his lair,” Holly offered.
“…wait out the day?” Miranda countered. “We expect the attack on Mexican cartels and others will begin tomorrow night shortly after sunset. I need to get the third AC-130J Ghostrider, presently at Eglin, ready to counter those actions.”
“Just send in some goddamn Raptors and take him out. I’ll find a way to apologize to the Mexican President for spreading debris all over his landscape.”
“No, Roy. That won’t do at all.”
Lizzy could only stare at the phone.
Jon, however, was positively grinning with delight. Clearly, Miranda could do no wrong in his eyes.
Lizzy gazed at the poster that Thorsen had gotten hung in record time, as if he’d already had it waiting. She’d flown that F-16 Viper into the early days of the Iraq War. She turned to the speaker phone.
“I must concur, Mr. President. Major Jon Swift assures me that Cruz and Jones—” and Miranda had better be right about them “—can effectively disable the other stolen Ghostrider without taking it down. And, more importantly, not killing the innocents from Miranda’s team who were kidnapped by General Martinez.”
Jon looked at her in surprise because he’d said no such thing.
“In for a penny, in for a pound, nephew,” she whispered to him.
He grimaced, but accepted his role with a shrug.
There was a long silence. Lizzy missed Mike and Jeremy. One of them would have something funny to say right now to break the tension—no matter how inappropriate.
“Do it!” the President snapped out. “But have our two best F-22 Raptor pilots shadowing their every move from just across the border. I want them loaded for bear and with permission to fire the instant your ploy fails. You better be goddamn right about this, General Gray.”
“Sir, yes sir!”
“Well done, Drake,” Roy Cole continued off to the side, then cut the connection.
Drake? Drake! Lizzy stared at her phone in disbelief. What the hell had he done so well?
For better or worse, this had been her and Miranda’s operation.
And Drake was going to get the credit for it from the President?
She was going to ram her ring right down his goddamn throat!
50
Taz watched Mike and Jeremy sitting away from the others over the afternoon meal. Nothing exciting, MREs served under the open-sided camo canopy draped over the stolen Ghostrider.
The team waited in a lost valley baking under the scorching sun of central Baja. In small groups, they sat on the dusty ground or perched on ammo cans, all hoping for even the slightest cooling breeze. They’d slept through the morning, but the evening cool still lay hours away.
When she’d first traveled here, she’d been driving. Fifty kilometers away, the nearest town, El Rosario, was a nothing place. Seventeen hundred people perched close by the Pacific, halfway down Mexico’s Baja Peninsula.
El Rosario was known for only two things.
It was traditionally the first rest stop in the six-day off-road
rally race called the Baja 1000.
And it was the home of Mama Espinoza’s restaurant. Mama E. herself had died recently at the age of 109, but the kids had kept it going.
It was classic Mexico, except for the food being even better than usual. Since the 1930s, Mama E. had served meals in her home’s dining room. It had taken off in the ’60s, when it became the first checkpoint of the Baja 1000. And Mama E. had never looked back.
The house was now entirely restaurant. Painted brilliant red outside, with a half dozen long tables covered in plastic red-and-white checked tablecloths inside, it looked homey. Every wall was covered with photos of fifty years of racing. Mementos were everywhere, making it part museum as well. Racers had brought their motorcycles there to be blessed by Mama E. herself before the big races.
Taz could have moved in, if duty hadn’t called. However, she remembered the burrito trio: crab, garlic shrimp, and local lobster. She could definitely go through another set of those right now.
As she’d done all of her life, she shrugged off what couldn’t be and felt no regret. Her mother had taught her that. Take care of the now. Mama’s answer to everything. Taz had made herself an expert in dealing with the now.
Bin Laden took out the Twin Towers and a whole side of the Pentagon? Didn’t matter. That was now the past.
What action could she take in the moment? Do that. While everyone else was moaning or being enraged, she’d been calculating. She’d seen a fellow spirit in then-Colonel Jorge Jesus Martinez and made sure that she came to his notice. A choice she’d never regretted.
And she still didn’t. Even now, fifty kilometers from Mama Espinoza’s restaurant, she was still just as ready.
In a few hours they’d all be aloft on the final mission.
The only hesitation she felt were their unwilling passengers.
Mike and Jeremy were…easy together.
Civilians in a moment of quiet, enjoying each other’s company despite the strangeness all around them. They laughed at something, as if it was the most normal thing to do. Every time Mike laughed, he covered his impressive black eye and made “Ooo! Ooo! Ooo!” sounds that always made Jeremy laugh harder. Perhaps he did it because Jeremy laughed each time.
Ghostrider: an NTSB-military technothriller (Miranda Chase Book 4) Page 18
