Ghostrider - M. L. Buchman Page 0,53

the Coast Guard to go after those first.

It was so awkward splitting the team across the country. She only owned the one black box reader, and it was in Jeremy’s pack in Washington, DC. But still, the Cockpit Voice and Data Recorder’s recovery was the next essential step. Rather than her usual preference of working on her own, she was actually adapting to their extended abilities.

This she did take time to note down. Pierre Jones didn’t appear to mind waiting; he just stared glumly at the inverted fuselage.

Now Miranda allowed herself to look at the crash site itself.

Other than scorch marks, the stone pier itself actually looked little the worse for wear from the Hercules collision. There had been two buildings on the top that were now little more than scorched foundations, but the stone remained.

The nose of the Hercules, however, had been flattened and driven back into the fuselage. The plane’s hundred-foot length—roughly eighty without the tail section—was now closer to fifty feet long. The entire front end all the way back to the wings had been pancaked.

There was unlikely to be anything recoverable from the cockpit, even the QAR. Unlike a black box—designed to withstand a minimum of thirty-four hundred g’s and a thousand degrees centigrade of fire—a quick access recorder was meant as a simple backup device.

“Poor bastards,” Pierre was shaking his head.

“Who?”

“The pilots. They’re in there somewhere. Be a miracle if they ever even find enough to bury.”

That also meant that the HEL-A laser she wanted to inspect would be unrecoverable as well, it was normally mounted close behind the cockpit opposite the weapon control stations.

This was the moment, shortly after the death of both her parents, when people had tried to say comforting things to her. She’d never enjoyed it much, but Mike had been teaching her that such things were reasonable offerings to a grieving person.

“I’m sure…it was quick.”

“I sure as hell hope not. They were both absolute bastards.”

35

Which Pierre knew was an unfair assessment.

Tango and Gutz weren’t bastards. They were jet jockeys. Classic, macho, half-a-century-after-their-time, pig-headed jet jockeys. No way either of them would have stepped up when they found out Rosa was carrying their kid.

“Cheap. Two-bit. Arrogant…” He could feel his teeth grinding.

“Why were they bastards?” The NTSB investigator asked without quite looking at him.

He certainly wasn’t going to try explaining how they’d both leave Rosa in the lurch. But the rest of it?

Screw it, his ass was toast now anyway.

“They were hijacking the goddamn plane.”

“It appears that they weren’t successful,” the woman said it absolutely deadpan.

Pierre could only look at her in surprise. In his experience, most smaller women did something to compensate for their size: feisty, funny, hiding behind meekness. This Miranda woman didn’t sound like any of those.

“No, lady. No, they weren’t.”

“I wonder why not? If they had successfully convinced the crew to depart the aircraft and the plane was actually fully functional, it should have been an easy task.” She stepped forward until she was almost pithed by the jagged metal that now framed the open rear of the inverted cargo bay and peered in.

He moved close enough to track her attention. She was intensely methodical, not just peering into the wreck. Instead, every foot of the rear break came under her scrutiny—top-left to bottom-right. Then she seemed to repeat the process one meter into the hull at exactly the same pace. Then another.

“Um,” Pierre couldn’t decide what was safe to say and what wasn’t. What could he tell this investigator without implicating Rosa? Or should he turn her in? Rosa hadn’t actually done anything—other than agreeing to go along with everything and then not reporting the general’s plan.

Shit!

Could she get away with “under the orders of a superior officer” as an excuse? No, she said she’d volunteered.

Double shit!

And he’d never asked her why.

He turned to look toward the mainland. The moment she’d told him that she was part of the plot to take the plane, his brain had shut down—or tried to.

Then it had gotten worse.

Three-star generals leading hijackings?

Pierre was pure USAF. His lineage traced all the way back to pre-World War II Army Air Corps. And now one of the service’s top generals had decided to form his own Air Force.

What was up with that?

Unable to stand it anymore, he’d stormed out of Rosa’s room and somehow ended up sitting on top of the VA hospital’s roof by the helipad.

“There is a very curious pattern of damage here that I haven’t seen before.”

“Well,” Holly returned to