No Return (7 page)

“That’s so cool.”

“Yeah, well …” Wes took a bite of his taco. “And you? I distinctly remember both of us saying we couldn’t imagine joining the service.”

“We did, didn’t we?” Lars said with a laugh. “But there’s this little thing called tuition. My parents couldn’t spring for it, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to work my way through school.”

“So you joined the Navy because you were lazy?”

“Ha. Ha. You would think that, wouldn’t you? No, not lazy. Not that can be proven, anyway. The summer after you … left, my brother got me out onto Armitage Field. I got to actually sit in some of the aircraft. That was enough to hook me. Of course, then I thought I’d be flying.”

“So if you’re not flying, what do they have you doing?”

“Operations. Mission planning, that kind of thing. For some reason the Navy got the idea that I’m smart.”

“That makes me have
so
much more confidence in them,” Wes joked.

When Wes was washing down his last bite with some water, Lars said, “So, yesterday. That must have been pretty intense.”

Wes swallowed, then nodded. “I swear, Lars, I thought he was going to hit us. But then the plane veered off at the last moment. That guy saved our lives.”

Lars stared at his food for a second, then blinked and looked at Wes. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I said he saved our lives.”

“You think he saw you?”

“I don’t see any other explanation.”

“That wasn’t in the paper.”

“I never talked to anyone from the paper. Only one of your guys, Commander Forman. You know him?”

Lars nodded. “He’s in charge of VX-53. They’re the Flying Hammers. Air test and evaluation squadron. There are three different ones that fly out of the base.”

“The pilot who was killed yesterday, was he part of the Flying Hammers?”

Lars nodded, his eyes drifting off for a moment. “Lieutenant Adair, a new transfer.”

“You knew him?” Wes asked.

“Hadn’t met him yet.”

Wes leaned back. “Today must not be a very good day at the office.”

“Truthfully, that’s why I wanted to have lunch with you. I knew it wasn’t going to be pleasant, and having a prearranged getaway seemed like a good idea. I did really want to see you, too.”

“Nice save,” Wes said, but could only imagine what was going through the minds of Adair’s colleagues. “I’ll bet the article in the paper today didn’t help.”

Lars cocked his head. “I’m sorry?”

“The picture?”

Lars scrunched his eyes together.

“They ran the wrong picture,” Wes said as if it should have been obvious.

“Which picture?”

“The picture in the paper?”

When Lars still didn’t look like he understood, Wes did a quick glance around and spotted a newspaper rack on the sidewalk right outside the restaurant. “Be right back.”

A few moments later he returned with a copy of the paper and laid it on the table. He pointed at the photo. “That one. Whoever this guy is, he probably doesn’t think it’s funny they’re saying he’s dead.”

Lars looked at Wes, his brow even more furrowed than before. “Okay. You’ve completely lost me. What are you talking about?”

Wes wondered if he was suddenly speaking a foreign language. “That’s not Lieutenant Adair.”

“Of course it is,” Lars said. “It’s the same picture that’s in the initial incident report.”

Wes stared at his friend for half a second. “No. You must be mistaken.”

“No mistake. I read the report this morning. That’s the picture in the file. What’s the problem?”

Wes felt the skin on his arms tighten. “You’re saying this was the man who was supposed to be flying the plane yesterday?”

“What do you mean ‘supposed to be’?”

Wes leaned toward Lars. “What I mean is this wasn’t the man I found sitting in the cockpit.”

“THAT’S NOT FUNNY.”

“I’m
not
being funny, Lars. I’m serious. This isn’t the same guy.”

Lars looked down at the paper. After a moment he said, “You’re the one who must have made the mistake. It’s easy to misidentify someone, especially from a distance.”

“What do you know about the crash besides what was in the newspaper?” Wes asked.

Lars hesitated. “Just what was in the preliminary report. But there wasn’t much.”

“Did it say anything about me?”

“You?”

“My involvement.”

“Just that you were first on scene. But there was a fire and you couldn’t do anything.”

So it wasn’t just the newspaper that had let Lars know Wes was in town, but Wes let that pass for now.

“That’s it?”

“Yeah. Pretty much.”

Wes frowned. “Lars, I didn’t see him from a distance. I got right up next to him. He talked to me.”

“He talked to you? He was
alive
?”

Wes nodded. “When I got there, he was slumped down, unconscious. But I was able to bring him around.”

Lars looked down at the table, then back at Wes. “Then what?”

“Then I tried to get him out, but he was stuck. I left to grab a knife, only before I could get back, the cockpit caught on fire. None of this was in the report you saw?”

Lars shook his head slightly. “No.”

“Well, it should have been, because this guy here,” Wes said, raising the article a few inches off the table, “isn’t the guy I saw.”

Neither of them said anything for several seconds.

Finally Lars leaned back. “I’m impressed and, well, shocked, really, that you were able to do as much as you did. But bear with me for a second. Is it possible you might not be remembering correctly? After all, stressful situations can mess with your head and make you think you saw something other than what you actually did.”

“That had nothing to do with it,” Wes insisted. Still, there was some truth in Lars’s words. He closed his eyes for a moment, recalling the face of the man in the cockpit. But the one he saw still wasn’t Adair’s. “There must be someone unaccounted for. Some other pilot who’s missing. That’ll be the guy I saw.”

“We don’t have anyone unaccounted for.”

Wes’s phone beeped in his pocket. It was his alarm. He frowned. “I gotta get back.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Lars said.

“Can you do me a favor and check it out?”

“Check what out?”

“This picture. The pilot. Just make sure there wasn’t a mistake. I saw the guy, Lars. It’ll help put my mind at ease.”

Lars rose from his seat and shrugged. “I don’t know what you expect me to find, but okay. I’ll check.”

They walked around to the parking lot off the alley that ran behind the restaurant. Lars stopped next to a generic-looking sedan that Wes immediately pegged as base issue.

“Seriously? If terrorists ever knew the Navy made you drive around in that, they’d realize they’d already won.”

Lars grimaced. “Yeah, well, we can’t all be driving BMWs.”

“You overestimate me. Back home I drive a Prius.”

“Tree hugger, huh?”

“Only in my off hours.”

Lars seemed to relax a little. Holding out his hand, he said, “It’s good to see you again.”

Wes shook it. “You’ll let me know what you find out?”

“Of course. But can I be honest with you?”

“Sure.”

Lars hesitated before he spoke. “I think chances are I’m not going to find anything wrong. So you might want to start assuming your mind’s playing tricks on you.”

“You’re probably right.” Wes smiled. “I’m glad we got together.”

“Me, too.” Lars opened the door of his sedan, then paused in the opening. “Welcome home.”

LARS ANDERSEN HAD JUST DRIVEN THROUGH
the gate of the China Lake naval base when his cellphone rang. He grabbed his Bluetooth headset off the cigarette lighter and put it in his ear.

“Lieutenant Commander Andersen.”

“Lars, it’s Janice. Commander Knudsen just got here for our meeting. You’re almost back, right?”

Lars checked his watch. The meeting with Knudsen was supposed to start in fifteen minutes. “Any way we can push it back an hour?”

“He’s already in the conference room. Why? You can’t make it?”

If Lars kept going on the road he was on, he’d be at his office in two minutes. Instead he turned left.

“You’ll have to take it without me.”

“He’s not going to be happy,” Janice said.

“Make something up. You can fill me in later.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“No choice,” he said, then disconnected the call. Immediately he punched in a new number.

“Commander Forman’s office, Seaman Litoff speaking.”

“This is Lieutenant Commander Andersen. I need to see the commander now.”

“Sir, the commander isn’t here at the moment.”

“Where is he?”

“I’m afraid I’m not authorized to give you that information.”

“Well, Seaman, I suggest you call your boss and tell him I’m on the way to his office and he’s going to want to see me right away. Understood?”

“Yes, sir. Understood. Can you tell me what this is regarding?”

“No.”

Lars disconnected the call.

AS IT TURNED OUT, WES COULD HAVE STAYED
longer at lunch.

“Our afternoon schedule just got canceled,” Dione told the crew once everyone had regrouped at the motel.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Monroe said.

“It’s the crash,” Dione explained.

Wes frowned, confused. “I thought we weren’t going back out to the Pinnacles until Monday or Tuesday.”

“I’m not talking about the Pinnacles. We had those Native American sites on the base this afternoon. But I just got a call from our Navy contact, who said because of the crash all unnecessary visitor passes have been revoked. That includes us.”

“Well, that sucks,” Alison said.

“Pool time,” Danny said, smiling. Everyone turned and stared at him. “What? You guys brought suits, right?”

If they were going to have the afternoon off, Wes realized now might be the time to take care of that unfinished business, the errand his mother had asked him to do. He’d been dreading it, and had secretly hoped he’d be unable to make time to visit the storage facility. But he also knew it was something he
had
to do. Now was as good a time as—

“Just because the schedule got screwed up doesn’t mean we can’t get anything done,” Dione said, looking directly at Danny. “We’ll get some B-roll.”

While Wes felt a sense of reprieve, Danny suddenly looked like a kid who’d been told the trip to Disneyland he was about to take was really heading for the city dump.

“All afternoon?” he asked.

“As long as it takes.”

B-roll shots were usually taken on the go as a crew was shooting other things. The name was a holdover from the days when everything was shot on rolls of film. The A-roll, though few, if any, called it that, was the scripted shots, while B-roll was random shots taken as they came up.

“Danny, you and I will take the Highlander, and Wes, you can take the Escape,” she said. “I’m looking for beautiful desert images. Anything you think will be interesting.”

“Why do I need the chaperone?” Danny asked.

“Do you really have to ask?”

“What am I supposed to do? Just sit here?” Monroe asked.

“You’ve got the afternoon off,” Dione said, looking at Monroe, but meaning Alison and Anna, too. “You’re all free to do whatever you want. Tony, you can—”