Elly's Ghost (12 page)

Jay heard the
tent zipper and then saw, thanks to the flashes of lightning, the barrel of a
shotgun.

Breathe,
hold—

The man stuck
his head out the door.

—aim,
squeeze.

The round from
Jay’s rifle entered just below the man’s left eye.

Captain James
Ricardo taxied his U-2 out of its hangar at California’s Beale Air Force Base.
The sleek spy plane was a modern marvel, yet it had a long-proven history. The
U-2 nicely complemented the base’s slogan: “In God we trust. All others we monitor.”

Guided by the
lights on the edge of the tarmac, Ricardo turned toward runway fifteen, a 12,000
foot stretch of concrete, one of the longest runways on any U.S. military base. He received clearance from the tower and rolled the plane onto the runway, which
was no easy task, since the plane was supported by two main inline wheels and
two small removable wheels under both wings. He thought of it as trying to taxi
an elephant riding a bicycle with tiny training wheels. The U-2 showed its
brilliance in the air, not on the ground.

Ricardo made one
final visual check to make sure every gauge was telling him the plane was
operating normally. Among the controls were the activation switches for the
high-definition and infrared cameras, as well as a new camera he knew very
little about. The man who supervised the installation, a major assigned to the
Air Force Research Laboratory, had a PhD in astrophysics as well as a security
clearance higher than Captain Ricardo’s. The new camera’s switch glowed the
same standby amber color as the others.

Ricardo hit a
button on his computer, and the flight path appeared on the screen. The weather
was going to be cloudy and rainy from Idaho all through the Dakotas and into Minnesota. The clouds would obscure the view for the high-definition camera, even with its
night-vision capabilities. The infrared camera worked well with temperature differences,
but the rain would severely hurt any chance of getting something useful. Ricardo
figured the new camera must be something special to be used under these
conditions.

The captain
slowly pushed the throttle forward, which gave him the familiar feeling of
being forced into the back of his seat. Ricardo smiled as the plane increased
speed. As soon as he gained altitude, he turned his aircraft to the northeast toward
Idaho.

* * *

“That’s wonderful
news, boss,” Beckholm said into his phone. “I’d like to thank the president for
that one.”

“Don’t thank
him; thank his daughter,” Roger Treft said.

Beckholm smiled.
“Go, Celeste!”

“First flyover
is happening right now out of Beale Air Force Base in California. It’ll land at
Scott Air Force Base in Illinois and then go back to Beale on the same flight
path once the sun rises.”

“That’s great
news.”

“Beckholm, at
this point, do you have any hard evidence to believe this isn’t an accident?”

“No. I have a
bunch of pieces to this puzzle that don’t fit.”

“The reason I
ask is that if this door is found and nothing is wrong with it, I think you’ve
done all you can. But if there is something wrong and the door tells us
something, what is your plan?”

“First, I’ll get
a warrant for the pilot’s personal information. We’ll want bank and credit card
records, phone records, the works. We’ll do the same with the bodyguard, in
case he was in on it. I’ll want interviews with everyone at Revolution Records and
other pilots and staff who worked with Elly’s pilot at Myers Aviation. I want
to find out who knew that she was to be on a flight from Baltimore to Seattle. I’ll also want to know who hasn’t shown up for work or who quit in the last six
months at either place.”

“What about
Elly’s family?”

“Everything I’ve
found out about the parents says there’s no way they were involved, but I did hear
that the night before Elly left she had an argument with her twin brother, Nick.
I’m going to drive out to Maryland tomorrow and have a conversation with him.”

“Let me know how
that goes.”

“I will.”

* * *

When Captain
Ricardo flipped the toggle switches to activate the cameras mounted on the
front of his U-2, he had no idea he had become the first pilot to operate a
newly released imagery system code-named Mosquito. The system, developed under
strict control and secrecy at the Air Force Research Laboratory, had been an
experimental project for the past seven years, involving professors from the University of New Mexico and Georgia Tech Research Institute. Their task was to create a
hyperspectral imagery system that could see in the dark like no other camera
ever had. The system detected radiated energy signatures from every type of
object found on the earth’s surface. The effort put into the project had been
immense, but the results exceeded everyone’s expectations.

Mosquito changed
everything. A tank hiding in the desert with brown camouflage could be
difficult to pick out using a high-definition camera, but with hyperspectral
imaging, the tank would stick out like a giraffe in a herd of zebras. At night,
the system could spot a dime on the surface of a dirt field from fifteen miles
away and display the raised contour of Roosevelt’s head along with the year the
coin was minted. In daylight, all 118 ridges on the circumference of the dime could
be counted from twenty-five miles away. Only dense smoke or snow caused the
image to be distorted and useless.

Captain Ricardo
flew over central Idaho, transmitting data from the Mosquito system to an
orbiting satellite overhead. The data was then beamed to the Air Force’s 70th
Intelligence Wing at Fort Meade, Maryland. A large bank of computers processed
the data, compared it to Air Intelligence’s database, and created a display.
Ten Air Force technicians watched the display appear on three large screens.
The bottom screen showed the infrared image, the middle the high-definition
camera, and the top the hyperspectral image. The images on all three screens
scrolled slowly as the plane flew along the flight path.

The
high-definition camera showed nothing but clouds and darkness. The infrared
showed glimpses of heat sources in areas where it wasn’t raining, but most of
the images were useless. The screen that had captured the eyes of the ten
technicians was the hyperspectral, showing detailed views of the earth below.

By the time
Captain Ricardo passed over Missoula, Montana, 147 potential sites had been
identified. When Captain Ricardo’s U-2 landed at Scott Air Force Base, over
1,600 potential sites had been identified. Each site was run through an
algorithm based on the dimensions and the density properties of the steel frame
and aluminum skin of Big Sky’s twin turboprop door. After two hours of processing,
the techs had narrowed the sites to 349. Of these, fifty were identified as
primary since they had objects determined to be within inches of the size of
the missing door. The coordinates of each of the sites were downloaded onto a
spreadsheet. Ten minutes later, the spreadsheet was in Director Holtz’s hands.

* * *

“Joanna,” Jay
said before he unzipped the door to the tent. He heard Elly gasp.

Elly was sitting
up as Jay shined his light in the tent. He took off his rain gear and came inside.

“You scared me. Are
you okay?” Elly asked.

Jay didn’t
respond. Elly watched as he set down his newly acquired shotgun along the side
of the tent.

“What happened?”

Jay set the
light down and reached into his pocket. “Hold out your hands.”

Elly did as he
asked. He used the key he’d found on one of the men to remove her handcuffs.

“Jay, there’s
blood on the back of your hand.” She grabbed his hand and inspected it. He
looked away.

She let go of
his hand as he pulled away.

Jay put the
handcuffs in his bag and the key back in his pocket. He pulled a sweatshirt
over his head, clicked off the flashlight, and returned it to his bag.

“Jay, talk to
me. Are you okay?” Elly asked.

Jay wanted to
tell her what he’d just done, but he was concerned what she’d think. Would Elly
be terrified of someone willing to kill, even if it was to protect both of
them? His stomach tightened with fear that Elly wouldn’t understand. But he knew
she’d find out eventually.

“There won’t be
anybody on the ground following us anymore,” Jay said. He wondered if there was
any chance of being friends with Elly when this was over. One day he would
answer for what happened here, and he hoped Elly would be there backing him up on
that day, but now he considered the thought foolish. He was sure that by then she’d
want nothing to do with him.

Elly didn’t say
anything as Jay lay down on his ground mat.

“I’m sorry,
Elly,” Jay turned away from her. “Someone like you shouldn’t have to sleep next
to a murderer.”

Elly moved over
and touched Jay on the shoulder. “You’re not a murderer.”

“Yes, I am.”

“No, you’re not.
You’re a good person. You’re a good man, and a good Marine.”

Jay rolled onto
his back. He could see Elly’s outline as lightning flashed. He decided she
should know. He wanted her to know.

“I have a seven-year-old
niece named Kelly,” Jay said. “It was such a joy for my whole family when she was
born. When my parents died, Kelly was about the only source of happiness left,
especially for my sister, who was close with my mom.”

Jay ran his hand
through his hair. “About three months ago, my unit was sent in to check out a cave
identified as a possible Taliban hideout. During the raid, I was forced to take
down a teenage boy when he pointed his weapon at me. We were fired upon, and my
team returned fire. I was ordered to throw a grenade into the entrance. After
the blast, the worst sound I could have imagined came from inside the cave. It
was a little girl, crying.

“We entered the
cave and found the body of the man who had opened fire. His wife was lying dead
next to him. The little girl was around the corner, blood draining out of her
ears. She had been shielded from the blast just enough to survive. You see, it
wasn’t a Taliban hideout. It was their home.”

Jay stared up at
the tent ceiling as a chill ran through him. The thought of the little girl
caused a lump to form in his throat. “The little girl looked at me, and I about
went into shock. The resemblance to Kelly hit me hard—the dark hair, the same
eyes, even the sound of her cry. I thought about what if someone had come into
my sister’s home and done what I had just done to her family. I’ve never felt
so terrible in my life. I hear that little girl crying in my nightmares.

“I know the men
I killed tonight were my enemies,” Jay continued. “Our enemies. But I thought
that little girl’s family was my enemy, too. I was wrong. I took away
everything from her—her brother, her mother and father, everything. I murdered
them.”

Elly put her
arms around him and her head on his chest. “You didn’t mean to do any of that.
You’re a good person who means well. I want the world to know how good you are,
and how much you’ve helped me.”

Jay covered his
eyes with both hands as Elly held him. She felt like a warm blanket, but the
memory of that little girl whose family he’d killed remained. He thought of his
niece and imagined introducing his sister’s family to Elly. He tried to focus
his thoughts on her. As a Marine, he had always finished his missions, and his
mission was to get Elly out of this alive, and that’s exactly what he was going
to do. Killing those men tonight was part of that mission. He decided when the
mission was over, it would be best for Elly to distance herself from him. What
he’d done would only cause her harm.

“Elly,” Jay said
after she’d been holding him for several minutes, “will you do something for
me?”

“Of course.”

“Don’t tell
anybody who I am or what I’ve done. I know when we get out of this you’ll be
asked what happened here. Please, don’t tell anyone about me. I don’t want
people to know a Marine killed those men. When we get out of here, try to
forget about me. Will you do that for me?” Jay asked.

Elly slowly
picked up her head and looked at him. Jay knew Elly was struggling with his
words. He knew it wouldn’t be easy for her, especially after what had happened.
The reporters would feed on this kind of thing, and they were always hungry.

“If that’s what
you want, okay. I promise I won’t tell anyone,” Elly said.

“Thank you.”

Elly squeezed
him and pulled the sleeping bag over both of them. She slid up next to him and grabbed
his hand, interlocking her fingers with his. Their legs touched, and she rested
her head on his shoulder.

Jay was relieved
Elly hadn’t been shocked and angry when he told her about killing those men. He
had to admit she was what he knew her fans thought of her: Elly was special.
Having her hold him eased his mind, like a hot shower on a cold night.

“I won’t tell
anyone,” Elly said, “but there’s no way I’ll ever forget you.”

WEDNESDAY

The diagnostics
computer told Nick that cylinder number five had a bad fuel injector. This was
no surprise to him as the Ford Bronco had 165,000 miles on the odometer and was
still running on the original injectors. He removed the injector and took it
with him back to the parts area to find a new one.

“No wonder your
fuel mileage tanked,” Nick mumbled as he searched the computer for a part
number. The computer showed they had the correct injector in stock and where to
find it. Nick turned down the aisle and was a few feet from it when he stopped
to look at the old injector in his hand. He remembered the CNN broadcast
showing his sister’s plane still in flight over Seattle, heading out over the
ocean, and it hit him that the plane took off from Baltimore.