all theirs. He suspected it was Taz. Despite being only four-foot-eleven, when she wanted to, she cast a danger signal that seemed to drive people well away without their even realizing it.
She didn’t answer, instead doing a slow sweep of her mirrored Ray Bans. They weren’t Aviators, like most of the Air Force favored—they were sharply octagonal. He sometimes wondered what she saw through them. It made her look even colder and more calculating than he knew she was—which was saying a lot.
He’d picked newly minted Airman Vicki “Taser/Taz” Cortez as his adjutant when he saw how she performed during 9/11. Five-foot-nothing of slender Mexican with skin darker than his, had been a pillar of calm fury in the aftermath. She hadn’t let her anger at what bin Laden had done to their country control her as it did so many others, but she’d looked poised—like a silent Doberman Pinscher ready to be unleashed at the least provocation.
Not once in the nearly twenty years since had now-Colonel Taz Cortez made him second guess his choice. Something about her made everyone else shy away. He liked that in an assistant.
Bouncing her to OTS had paid off as well. Taz had taken to Officer Training School like an AIM-9 missile to a Russian MiG. No officer listened to an enlisted, but even when they outranked her by three or four grades, they now listened to her.
Death walking, more than one obstinate officer had called her after surviving a meeting with her. They were rarely obstinate after the meeting. In addition to being highly organized, she was one of the most effective weapons in his arsenal for navigating DoD politics—because if nothing else, the Department of Defense was intensely political.
“We fought so hard to protect this shit because it used to be our sworn duty,” she finally answered him.
“Still is our duty.” Yes, he’d sworn to protect these clueless Americans against all comers.
“ ‘I will support the Constitution’,” she quoted from the officer’s oath.
“ ‘Against all enemies, foreign and domestic’,” it was an old argument. They had walked away from their sworn duty to the US Air Force, but it was in their commitment to defend the Constitution—just not the way those political wranglers in DC ever thought about it.
Another crowd swirled to the head of the pier to prepare for one of the sightseeing, diving, whatever-just-give-us-your-money tours embarking down the ramp to the low dock before them.
He took the final bite of his crab empanada from Maggie’s Blue Rose at the head of the pier. He’d have been fine with a corndog or a burger, but Taz didn’t eat that way. Whenever they were out of the office together, he knew the food would be superb. Even in places she’d never been, she could always zero in on the very best. She’d nailed it this time for certain.
While they waited, she’d been methodically working her way through a spread of tacos: grilled shrimp, skirt steak, lobster, and carnitas. Even after twenty years working together, he’d never understood how she could eat more than a six-three airman after a thirty-k run.
His empanada brought back memories, as such things always did, of his mother’s cooking. Even after they’d found a steady place—as permanent farm hands, not just seasonal pickers—east of Stockton on the baking flats of the north San Joaquin Valley, she’d let him crank the molino. Grinding corn into masa for tortillas—another thing lost. Nothing had ever matched her carne asada tamales or… Yet another memory he didn’t have time for.
“Are they in position?”
Taz looked just like any other tourist fooling with her phone while she ate. Except her phone included full encryption capability, and had a special app to pick up broadcasts on US Air Force frequencies. Her headphones appeared to be wired, but that was actually the receiving antenna.
“Yes, they’ve just entered the Point Mugu Sea Range.”
He’d been watching to the north. The area between Santa Catalina Island and Santa Rosa Island to the north was a no man’s land that belonged to the US Navy. Despite the nearby Los Angeles population, marine and flight charts forbade all civilian entry. The US Coast Guard caught a surprising number of narco-submarines transporting cocaine out of Colombia because they wandered into the forbidden zone and became easy to detect with no other shipping about.
Edwards Air Force Base and Naval Base Ventura County were only two of the airfields that did testing there. The Navy out of San Diego were common participants as well.