Ghostrider - M. L. Buchman Page 0,37

turn. He was a real show-don’t-tell male. If he’d ever thanked her for her years of unflagging service, she couldn’t recall it. But he kept her by his side. That was enough.

He’d also never asked a single question about her past. Scrubbed clean.

So, if he wanted to die sitting at the end of Green Pleasure Pier, killed by an errant AC-130J Ghostrider gunship, she would sit beside him and die as well.

The plane skimmed over a line of small sailboats before coming down for the last time.

The left wing slammed into a hundred-and-fifty-foot luxury motor yacht. The plane twisted away from it—leaving one engine and forty feet of wing embedded in the yacht as it burst into flames. Only a few people made it off the deck by diving overboard. They surfaced into a burning hell as the fuel from the wing tanks spilled over the water’s surface and ignited.

Then the right wing snapped both masts off a hundred-foot schooner, remaining attached long enough to shear off the cabin down the entire length. The spinning propeller passed along the boat like a giant shredder. No one emerged from that boat.

The Ghostrider slammed head-on into the massive rock pile that formed the southern breakwater of Avalon Harbor. Five degrees more to the right and it would have come straight at them.

The cockpit was rammed back into the fuselage with all the ease of an Army boot stomping on an empty Budweiser can. The stubs of the wings, along with the remaining inboard engines, broke off, swung forward, and wrapped either side of the pier in a flaming embrace.

The explosion hit moments later. The munitions, which were supposed to be safe in even the worst crashes, lit off with a resounding boom that hurt her ears and would have blinded her if it hadn’t been inside the plane’s hull.

The tail launched backward into the deeper water.

The remains of the fuselage launched upward from the rear, flipping end-over-end onto the top of the pier. Several score of tourists who’d been disembarking from the latest ferry from LA were crushed instantly. They were the lucky ones.

Those still climbing off the ferry were inundated in gouts of flame and burned alive.

The force of the shock wave knocked her into the general’s lap.

Once it had passed, he placed his hands on her shoulders and helped her sit back upright. It was the only time he had ever touched her other than pinning on her next rank insignia at each promotion.

The fireball climbed upward.

“Something must have triggered the entire load of glide bombs.”

She could barely hear the general over the ringing in her ears. The entire length of the southern stone breakwater was now on fire. Flames began sheeting out over the water as more fuel spilled from all the ruptured tanks. At the current rate of spread, the wooden Green Pleasure Pier would be aflame within the minute.

General Jorge Jesus Martinez rose to his feet. When she rose as well, he placed her Bluetooth earpiece in her palm, then began walking toward the land.

“Colonel Cortez?”

“Yes sir?” From long practice, Taz strode at time-and-a-half to keep up with his long legs.

“I’m going to need another Ghostrider and I suspect another laser operator.”

“And pilots.” The screams of the injured were finally starting to rise. Or her hearing was coming back.

“I have plenty of pilots. But that laser is very new and very rare. Technical Sergeant Cruz was one of the few qualified to operate it.”

“Plane and a laser operator. I’m on it, sir.”

She gave it a moment’s thought, pulled out her phone, and began placing calls.

This was going to be very tricky, since she was supposedly dead in a Spectre gunship high in the Colorado Rockies.

24

“How am I supposed to know where your general is?” Miranda squinted at Jon.

The sun over Aspen had risen high in the sky, but Jon stood just two steps away and almost due south, aligning his head and the sun closely. Even the wide brim of her HeliSee hat was marginal at best for distinguishing him from the blinding background.

“The question was rhetorical, Miranda.” Jon sighed.

“Then why did you ask it if you didn’t want to know the answer?”

“I very much want to know—” He growled deep in his throat. “Never mind.”

“That’s not something I’m very good at.” But Miranda’s reply was lost under the beating of rotors from the arriving AgustaWestland Trekker helo.

As soon as it was shut down, Brett climbed out. He flipped open the side-hanging equipment cage and opened the