Ghostrider: an NTSB-military technothriller (Miranda Chase Book 4)

by M. L. Buchman

  59

  “Coming up on the first target. We’re just southeast of Mexicali. The compound of Hector Vasquez,” the pilot announced over the Ghostrider’s intercom.

  It was a mission near and dear to Taz’s heart.

  Vasquez was the one who’d taken their money and chosen the coyote man to take them safely over the border. How many women, who hadn’t had the premium for the legitimate papers, had simply been sold into the sex trade after he’d enjoyed a bit of rape?

  Jeremy had showed her how and she had the night-vision image up on the targeting monitor.

  “The armory is here and the garage is here,” she showed Jeremy his targets. She set a cursor on the screen between their stations that showed an infrared view of Vasquez’s compound. Then she shifted to the second location.

  “Got them. You ready?” Jeremy had drilled her diligently on aiming and firing the M102 howitzer from the moment they were aboard. Mike had even helped when Jeremy became too technical and she’d needed a translation.

  “As ready as you can make me.” She slewed the targeting for the howitzer to Vasquez’s private compound and hoped the circular balcony marked the master bedroom.

  She glanced at JJ, “I’d still like the order to proceed, sir.”

  “Granted, Colonel Cortez. Weapons free. Fire at will.”

  To Jeremy’s credit, he didn’t hesitate. He lit the armory. The beam would be invisible from the ground, but their instruments displayed a brilliant green-white blaze on the roof of the armory.

  She fired the howitzer at the same moment. The big round traveled at twice the speed of sound—four seconds from their current altitude.

  Their gun crew required ten seconds to reload the howitzer, so all she could do was wait and watch.

  The corner of the hacienda disappeared in a ball of white. She moved her cursor to highlight the next corner of the hacienda. Her indicator turned green but she didn’t fire.

  The computer will compensate for most scenarios, Jeremy had told her. Windage, air speed, and so on. But if you can wait until the target remains steady in your crosshairs for at least two or three seconds, then the chances of the projectile flying true increase drastically.

  Just as she hit the Fire button, Jeremy’s laser must have finally burned through the armory roof.

  The entire compound disappeared beneath the blinding glare on their screens.

  “What just happened?” It looked as if everything had blown up.

  “Screen overload. It will compensate in a few moments, but right now the CCD and the computer are simply overwhelmed with photon impact which is—”

  “Did it blow up the whole compound?” JJ was leaning in over her shoulder.

  “No, see.” Jeremy pointed. “The bloom is going away. So…now we can see what happened when the armory exploded. Though the brightness of the fire is continuing to mask the extent of the actual damage.”

  A second flash of brightness, even bigger than the first, smeared across the screen so suddenly that she slammed back into her seat and JJ stumbled back.

  “What did you do, Jeremy?”

  “A laser isn’t like a shell. There’s no aim, fire, wait. Though there are problems of atmospheric blooming and energy usage from sustained firing, but we’re well within the performance envelopes of this weapon in the current environmental conditions. So, I can simply re-aim the beam. I didn’t want to expend energy burning through the garage roof, but I then spotted the fuel dump. Fifty-five-gallon drums aren’t designed to withstand hundred-and-fifty-kilowatt lasers. Ka-Pow! Bang! Boom!” He waved his hands in the air as he made exploding sounds.

  Mike spoke up. “Just like a little kid, Jeremy. Jeffrey would approve.” They didn’t laugh, but they clearly enjoyed the shared memory.

  Taz turned away, unable to watch. It hurt. She didn’t know why, but it did.

  People were racing across the compound in every direction.

  A lone vehicle roared out of the compound. By its look it was a very fast sports car, not some mere SUV.

  “Hit it, Jeremy!”

  He shook his head. “No. I don’t shoot people. That’s the deal.”

  “How do I do it? That’s got to be Hector Vasquez. He loves his supercars. He’s got to go down.” She tried to aim the howitzer but it only had a very small range that must be aligned off the right wing. And Jeremy had told her that moving targets required techniques he didn’t have time to teach her.

  Jeremy watched her closely as the vehicle bounced violently over the rough road but kept gaining speed.

  “He’s got to, Jeremy. There aren’t many worse people in the world.”

  For a long second he looked in her eyes, then reached out and took her hand. Rather than squeezing it with some unwanted but expected sympathy, he moved it to the laser’s joystick. “Get a feel for tracking the vehicle. It’s moving fast, so you’ll need to keep it steady in the crosshairs for longer than you’d think.”

  At first she was veering side-to-side. Finally she had a feel for how to keep it steady in the crosshairs, reasonably.

  Jeremy tapped in a quick series of settings, called in a correction to the cockpit, then pointed at a red Fire button.

  He sat back to watch her carefully. His face totally unreadable. She glanced at Mike, who noticed the change as well.

  She wanted Jeremy to think well of her.

  But she wanted Vasquez dead. So much of the pain in her life—and Mama’s—had been his doing.

  Why had a man who headed a cartel, a violent competitor of the one her father worked for, helped them out at all?

  And then she knew what other price Mama had paid to Hector Vasquez for their safe passage.

  Taz punched and held the Fire button.

  His vehicle glowed brightly in the infrared as the supercar heated. It swerved left and right but she kept the beam steady. Finally, perhaps in desperation to escape or perhaps while dying of heat stroke, it swerved too far and rolled.

  When it came to rest upside down, she held her aim on the car.

  A second later there was the massive bloom of an explosion as the gas tank ruptured.

  Jeremy had to tug a little to get her finger off the Fire button.

  Together they watched Vasquez burn.

  JJ rested his hand on her shoulder and squeezed it in sympathy. He knew what this kill meant to her. Perhaps had even made it first on his list to ensure that it was done before whatever shitstorm was coming their way landed.

  “Ready for the next target,” JJ said over the headset.

  The plane turned away.

  Taz watched the fire for as long as it was in sight, and for a while after.

  60

  “I have a hard track on them that I’m feeding to your pilots,” Thorsen informed her. “Three targets down. Two in Mexicali. One halfway to Nogales. They’ve turned mostly toward you again, probably heading for number four.”

  “How close?” Lizzy knew that they should have anticipated this better. Or sent the Raptors that could have been there, cleaned house, and gone all the way back to Lackland by now. A Super Hercules at four hundred miles an hour just didn’t compare with an F-22 ticking along at fifteen hundred.

  She was banking everything on their own ability to stop JJ’s Ghostrider without either killing them or being killed.

  “Under a hundred miles. And, General?”

  “Yes, Thorsen?”

  “I’ve got your mole. Colonel Cortez used the oldest trick in the book.”

  “Sex?”

  “Sex? The Taser? No way. Can’t even imagine that. She used the second oldest trick then. Money. O’Neil, one of former Director Patrick’s favorite colonels.”

  “Have him arrested on my authorization. Strip everything. His files, his bank accounts, his goddamn Rolodex.”

  “They use phone contacts now.”

  “I don’t care. Down to the dirt. And make sure that it’s all documented and well-publicized. Do it by the book; I want a full court-martial,
Captain Thorsen.”

  “Already done,” he sounded very pleased. “All on your authorization, General.”

  Lizzy considered if she should be pissed or pleased at his taking liberty with her authority. She had to think about three seconds. “Thank you, Major Thorsen. And I expect your promotion recommendation letter drafted and on my desk by the time I get back. And Thorsen?”

  “Thank you, ma’am. Yes ma’am?”

  “If I don’t make it back from this, you have my authorization to sign it on my behalf.”

  His voice was dead serious when he finally replied. “Not a chance I’ll need to do that, ma’am. It will be there—unsigned.”

  61

  Rosa stood behind Pierre’s seat. For the last two hours in transit she’d drilled him in every advanced technique she knew.

  Every challenge, every scenario, even ones that she’d barely survived, he found a way through. It wasn’t always pretty, but his solutions worked and his accuracy was exceptional. Speed was the only place she could still outperform him.

  They were discussing implications of the far corners of temperature-humidity-air density diagrams—high altitude arctic-cold achingly dry, and low-jungle monsoon—when General Gray came back to their station.

  “Is he ready?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “I wanted to thank you both. I know that facing a renegade American unit is not within your typical mandate.”

  “It’s our country and our honor, ma’am,” Pierre answered with a straight face.

  Rosa tried to echo him. But she couldn’t. She remembered when the truth of her treason came out. The fear churning so hard in her gut that she was afraid she’d miscarry her six-week-old child right here on the cargo deck.

  Pierre had told her secret to the NTSB agents, who had then vouched for her surety. It was wrong. It was all so wrong. What she’d done… What she was still hiding. And she knew she’d involved a good man in her own subterfuge.

  “I…” She wet her lips, hung on to the back of Pierre’s chair with her one good hand, and tried again. “I need to—”

  “No, Rosa,” Pierre was on his feet and in her face. “No, you don’t need to do this.”

  “Yes, Pierre, I do.” She brushed a hand over his cheek and then pushed him back into his chair.

  The general was smiling. “It will have to be something pretty spectacular to surprise me today.”

  Pierre hung his head. Rosa wanted to rest her hand on his shoulder for strength. But he was the innocent party in all this.

  “I’m supposed to be the HEL-A laser operator for General Martinez. Not Miranda’s team member.”

  The general just nodded. “Anything else?”

  Rosa didn’t know what to say to that. She’d agreed to break her oath of service and commit treason. Only a kiss and Pierre leveraging her out a plane’s door had kept her from her sworn task.

  “We found your name on the ‘Death List’ of the initial crash. Since then you’ve fully cooperated—but that’s not why I’m trusting you. Nor is it the man almost weeping with relief under your hand.”

  He hadn’t been worried about her being sent down for this; he’d been terrified.

  “You care about me that much?”

  He nodded without looking up.

  “And my child?”

  This time he turned to look at her. “You think I’d hold a useless shit of a father against a kid?”

  No. No, she didn’t. She looked back at General Gray. “Then why?”

  “Okay, the baby counts as a surprise,” the general shrugged it off. “As to why? Miranda Chase recommended you—I heard both of you gasp in surprise in the background. It didn’t take much to figure out why. You both assumed you were going down. Damn well should. But you have no idea how hard it is to impress Miranda. She doesn’t know it, but she’s the best judge of character ever born.”

  “She is…interesting,” Rosa managed.

  “That she is,” the general almost laughed. Then she sobered. “I do have a suggestion as an Air Force officer that would make me more comfortable with the dropping of this matter.”

  Rosa braced herself.

  “It’s clear that you’re an exceptional trainer. You may wish to consider a transfer request from combat duty to a training corps. Your child might appreciate that as well.”

  Before Rosa could even begin to think of how to thank her, the general looked at her watch.

  “We’re five minutes to intercept. Please try not to kill…” The general had a puzzled look for a moment, then smiled radiantly.

  “Please try not to kill my maid of honor’s teammates.”

  62

  “Crossing aircraft. Heading two-three-five at Flight Level Two-eight-zero.”

  At the pilot’s announcement, Taz looked up at the ceiling of the C-130, then felt foolish. First, there were no windows there. Second, they would already be gone by as the flight was heading southwest to their own east. Third, two-eight-zero was twenty-eight thousand feet. Their own plane was almost four miles lower at eight thousand feet.

  It was the third crossing flight of the night. Not important.

  Except that Jeremy was also looking at their plane’s ceiling with a puzzled look on his face.

  “What?” She didn’t know why she was whispering.

  Jeremy shook his head.

  “What?”

  He glanced up again. Then over at Mike.

  Mike sat in the corner where the hull met the aft bulkhead of the weapons control space. On the other side of the, only marginally, sound-insulating wall stood the rack of thirty-three pound, three-foot-long shells for the howitzer. At each target, the pounding thumps from the big gun had seemed to slam into him. He became somehow smaller with each round fired.

  She then studied Jeremy. He too looked tired and his nerves stretched thin. She’d stopped taking over the laser controls. If someone got away from her howitzer now, they got to live. But she made damn sure their operation was blasted to hell.

  “What is it, Jeremy?” His eyes had once again traveled upward. “Something about that plane.”

  He turned to look at her. His gaze was rock steady, but his eyes were so sad. They weren’t the eyes of the young man who’d made love to her in a desert cloister. They were of a grown man haunted. She had done this to him—twisted him into helping her kill people.

  These were bad men and this was a war that General Martinez had fought for years with no one listening to him.

  Then she glanced aloft herself.

  Something about that flight.

  “What’s southwest of here?” His whisper barely reached her ears and they certainly didn’t reach JJ in the observer’s chair that Mike had abandoned to him an hour ago.

  “From here there’s…” Sonora and Baja. But was there even a single airport big enough for a high-flying plane? Beyond that was…nothing. Hawaii was north of west from here. Australia and New Zealand were a world away. And weren’t passenger jets usually up in the high thirty-thousands, not twenty-eight? It was—

  “They’re here?”

  Jeremy nodded.

  “Can we—” She glanced to the laser console, then hated herself for it.

  “I. Will. Not. Shoot at Americans.”

  Taz stared hard at the console. She tried to remember the good and the evil she’d done.

  Putting down rapist dogs didn’t even count. Tonight she’d killed many more, and felt no regrets.

  But she’d also wrecked the careers of men who’d blocked the general’s agenda, with the absolute confidence that the general knew what was right. That JJ led the Clear and True Way, whatever that was.

  While such a path was welcome to use up people like her and the general, it should never use up people like Jeremy or Mike, or what was its purpose? Not even the Rosa Cruzes of the world should have been caught under its grinding wheel.

  “What can we do?”

  Jeremy didn’t shrug. Didn’t evade. “He’ll never surrender. No
r any of the other officers. You’ve all gone too far to turn back. I can only think of one thing to do.”

  “What’s that?”

  Jeremy brushed a hand over her cheek before smiling sadly.

  “Nothing.”

  63

  JJ knew what was happening as soon as the pilot announced the errant flight over the intercom.

  They’d be circling down to come in on his starboard side, away from the weapons. And from on high, because his weapons couldn’t be brought to bear on them—the laser and howitzer were built to fire down, possibly horizontal, but not up.

  He recalled Jeremy’s earlier explanation to Taz of the possibilities of engaging in inverted flight. But he didn’t need to overhear Jeremy and Taz’s conversation to know the conclusion of it.

  There was only one option left.

  Pushing to his feet, he stepped up beside Taz.

  She looked up at him warily.

  All these years, she’d trusted him. Done his bidding without question, without hesitation. Had she been less loyal, would they have ended up in this same place? He expected that he would have, at least—though perhaps with even less success to show for it. Three major cartel headquarters had gone down hard tonight.

  Now, the clear caution in her eyes, the wary loss of that trust. It cut almost as deeply as the loss of his Consuela.

  After all these years of her living up to his standards, he realized that it was time he lived up to hers.

  “Time to next target?”

  She looked at the console and then back to him. “Six minutes.” She said it too softly to hear, but he could read it on her lips.

  And he could see in the expressionlessness of her face that she understood his intent.

  The other aircraft was going to do whatever it did.

  Unhindered.

  Unattacked.

  Their own operation would end as it had begun, only attacking the scum along the Mexican border who thrived on America’s weakness.

  He nodded and turned away.

  Starting at the rear of the aircraft, he made a point of stopping and checking in with each man. Three he’d flown with. Two others he’d personally recommended to the Academy back in the day. And two more had worked with him on advanced designs of this very aircraft.