explosion. The metal around the tanks was crumpled inward by the impacts, not blown outward from inside. The fuel had leaked, caught fire, and that had ignited the forest fire that had burned the mountaintop. Actually, they were above the tree line, so it had been a brush fire, but still destructive.
Jeremy stowed his camera. “I think we should check one of the engines next. See if we can find any sign of thrust reversal on the propellers or over-revving. Maybe a flameout.” His tone went very wry at the end—a sense of humor about something mechanical was a surprise.
“Yeah. Sure,” Jon answered in kind. Then looked at Jeremy in surprise. They knew it was a depressurization event by the pilot’s report. So, was Jeremy teasing him out of a bad mood? Or just making a joke?
Either way it worked and they began a methodical investigation of the wing.
But talk about a flameout. Had he said something wrong while trying to flirt with Miranda over the phone this morning? He should know better, but it was how he’d connected with other women in the past. Except Miranda wasn’t other women. He was attracted to her precisely because she wasn’t like other women.
Most women saw “handsome Air Force major” and thought: stability, status, and meal ticket for life. Miranda seemed to see Jon Swift: crash investigator and pilot. That alone was a rare gift.
He wanted to go up the hill and confront Miranda, but he knew that the first thing she’d ask about would be the wings. And the second would be the engines. But these…
“Hey, Jeremy?” he crossed over to the base of the broken-off wing, while Jeremy use a thermite cutting torch to snip off a piece of the distorted wing strut. Leave it to Jeremy to have the coolest tools always at hand.
“Yeah?” Jeremy pulled out a sample bag for the cut-off piece, tapping the part against the soil to cool the cut first.
“Everything okay with Miranda?” Real subtle, Jon. Though with Jeremy, direct was probably the best approach.
“As far as I know. Did you know that she cleared our entire crash queue? We’re completely caught up. Or we were for one night before this accident came in. That seemed to worry her a bit. But other than that, she seemed okay.” Then he narrowed his eyes and looked at Jon. “Why?”
Why? Probably because he was an idiot who worried too much.
“No reason.” Lame. He glanced up the hill again.
“Miranda won’t like it if we aren’t thorough.”
“Duh!” He did know that. Jon glanced up the mountain again.
Miranda and the kid…Jeff?
What was that about?
He’d tried to point out that taking a kid onto a crash site was—he’d chosen the word “unusual” rather than “totally inappropriate.”
In response she’d simply proceeded as if he’d never said a word. Damn, but once she made up her mind, that was one seriously determined woman.
He and Jeremy were halfway through the engine analysis, with him recording fracture patterns as Jeremy called them out, before he felt something was wrong. He’d learned to trust that instinct.
“Hold it, Jeremy.”
Jeremy froze with his arm extended all the way into the forward air intake of the engine to hold a flashlight while he inspected the primary intake fins.
“What’s wrong here?”
“Other than the crashed plane?”
“Other than the crashed plane.”
Jeremy extracted his arm and they both looked around. After thirty seconds of inspecting everything, their gazes met and they shrugged in unison.
“Okay. Describe everything you see.”
“That’s how Miranda does it.” Jeremy made it sound as if Jon was cheating.
“That’s where I got the idea.”
Jeremy grinned. “Isn’t she amazing?”
“She is.”
Apparently Jon’s agreement was a little too emphatic. Jeremy shifted back to being watchful before he began. He did Miranda’s thing of starting with the weather and terrain, then working his way inward.
The wings.
Leading edge.
Flaps.
Ailerons.
Propellers.
“We’re standing in front of the Number Three engine. It’s an Allison T56 turboshaft with two blades remaining.”
Jon waited for the feeling to return, but it was none of those things.
Jeremy just watched him.
“Ever get the feeling that it’s too…”
“Neat?”
“Yeah,” Jon tried it tentatively, but…yeah. “That’s it. Somehow, this big messy crash spread across the entire top of a national ski area is too neat.”
“You’re right. I think. At least maybe it feels that way. Like the Hawkins C-130A crash back in ’02 made sense.”
Jon nodded. The forty-five-year-old, first-generation C-130A had been converted into an air tanker for fighting wildfires. After the Air Force was done with it, it had spent fourteen more years dumping nine tons of