Ghostrider - M. L. Buchman Page 0,2

it was fortunate that there wasn’t an accident investigation going on at the moment as she’d have nowhere to work. Over the last eight months, her team had slowly shifted most of their work from the NTSB’s Western Pacific Region office into her private hangar at Tacoma Narrows Airport.

Miranda had initially insisted that they use the National Transportation Safety Board’s agency office as it seemed both proper and convenient. But as her team had become more and more specialized, particularly in highly classified military mishaps, the isolation of the hangar at TNA had become a better fit than the main office where all of the west coast investigators assumed that everything was open to their inspection.

“Food it is,” Holly stepped up behind Jeremy and lifted him physically off his stool. He managed to drop his tools with a clatter before she began walking toward the hangar door with him dangling under her arm. Mike stepped up and grabbed his legs as Jeremy broke out laughing.

It was fortunate for them that Jeremy was little bigger than Miranda herself. She was five-four and Jeremy was an equally slender five-seven. Holly still worked out hard. Perhaps not as hard as when she’d been a Special Operations warrior for the Australian SASR, but she did spend time every day at the weight set beside her and Jeremy’s workbench.

Apparently, Jeremy was an easy load.

Miranda picked up her phone and computer, without knocking aside any of Jeremy’s instruments, and followed behind them.

Above Aspen, Colorado

Elevation: 39,000 feet

(0300 Mountain Daylight Time)

“Denver Center, this is Shadow Six-four.”

“Roger, Six-four. Go ahead.”

“Declaring an emergency. Depressurization event. Current altitude three-niner-thousand. Request clearance emergency descent to one-five-thousand.”

Missy Collins had only been on the Denver Air Route Traffic Control Center desk for six weeks, and she’d never handled an emergency before. She pulled up the checklist on a side screen. Suddenly the hot coffee smell that permeated all Traffic Control Centers tasted stale on the air and her stomach roiled in protest.

“Please confirm Shadow Six-four is declaring an emergency? Squawk seventy-seven hundred.” Seven-seven-zero-zero was the official transponder code for an emergency.

“Confirm emergency.”

And right away the pilot changed the codes. It flashed brightly on her flight-tracking screen. The four-digit transponder squawk code immediately identified the plane’s position if not its type or other status.

She checked the status of all other flights in the area.

Nothing intersecting in the next five minutes. The air routes were generally very quiet at three in the morning—too late for the redeyes and too early for their intercontinental arrivals.

“Shadow Six-four. You are cleared to initiate immediate descent at your discretion. Number aboard?” Next question on the checklist.

“Full crew. Thirteen.”

As she watched, the altitude readout dropped to thirty-eight, then thirty-seven. Their rate of descent was dangerously fast, even in an emergency situation. In fact…

Kenneth, the head of her section, had been both kind and relentless in training their team. ARTCC wasn’t a job that allowed for inattention, yet he’d found moments to squeeze in additional training at every opportunity. He’d also showed special interest in her, but she still wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

Now the training paid off. She slapped the supervisor-call switch. Then, pulling up the plane’s filed flight plan, Missy began studying the sector chart.

Kenneth hurried over and patched in his headset beside hers, “What are we looking at, Missy?” As always at work, his tone was completely professional. They’d had dinner together after last night’s shift—the third in as many weeks. He’d been charmingly roundabout with how he’d propositioned her over dessert of brandied chocolate mousse and herbal tea.

She’d turned him down; he was her boss after all. She also had a boyfriend, technically. Vic was very unhappy that she’d left LA, even for the nice promotion offer from Denver Center, and they weren’t on speaking terms at the moment. It was becoming clear that he was more upset about having to pay all of the apartment’s rent than about her actual departure.

“We have a depressurization emergency on military flight Shadow Six-four. Which is listed as…” she inspected the record, “…an AC-130H. Is that the C-130 Hercules?” She didn’t typically interact much with the military planes and was still learning them.

Kenneth whistled softly. “A for attack, C-130 for Hercules airframe, but the H isn’t for Hercules. It’s actually for the Spectre variant. It means that it’s a very nasty gunship with side-firing guns, big ones—like a 105 millimeter howitzer,” he held up a clenched fist to demonstrate the bore of the latter, as if she didn’t know