Hernandez trembled in horror at what Daniel would do to his family and how Daniel held his reputation, his honor, in his hand, a worse thought to Hernandez than dying. Either way, he was a walking dead man, and he figured Daniel would kidnap his family no matter what to ensure his obedience.
“I will bring you the American, señor.”
“Good boy, Edgar! Good dog! Now get to work!” Daniel snapped out the words and hung up.
The deal Edgar Hernandez had made with the devil so many years ago had come due.
CHAPTER 58
After she recovered from the Río Salta strike and debriefed, Olive grabbed some food in the wardroom. She then met Shane in CVIC for what they both knew would be a long night. Olive was already mentally and physically spent from her four-hour brief and man-up, her four hours airborne, and the long post-flight debrief. With Skipper Wilson lost and XO’s tasking to find him, she would run on adrenaline past midnight. Her CO was out there, and Olive, as the lead investigator, had to find out where.
Shane had the satellite imagery that marked the geographic position where the emergency beacon of the ejection seat was activated. Olive called Ready 6 and summoned Kid to meet her in CVIC. Within minutes, Kid arrived and walked up to Olive.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Kid, I’m trying to reconstruct where Skipper Wilson got out. I’ve plotted the lat/long from your mark after he ejected. Where were you in relation to him when he got out?”
Kid noted the position on the chart. “I was about at his two o’clock. I overtook him as we hauled ass out of there. About a mile. I tried to stay with him, but he was too slow. And he was rolling, like a barrel roll. It was weird. He was in a steep dive when he punched, and somewhere just above 10K.”
“You were on goggles?”
“Yes, ma’am, the whole time.”
“How could you tell the aircraft aspect?” Olive asked. “With lights out at night? No moon?”
“I was close enough, about a mile. And there was this cell behind him, to the north, that kind of backlit him with almost continuous cloud-to-cloud lightning. He was right next to it.”
“There was a cell next to him?”
“Yeah, it was almost like he was going into it.”
Olive checked the imagery time: The seat was activated 1932:34 local. The mark also showed Wilson got out over a small inlet leading into the channel. Another mile or two and he would have been feet wet with a better chance of rescue.
“What direction were you going when you saw him get out?”
Kid stroked his chin. “Northeast. We were all egressing northeast. Skipper was, too.”
“Did you see a chute?”
“It’s hard to say with the cloud background.” Kid shook his head. “I can’t say for sure.”
On a nearby console Shane had the weather radar video and stopped it at 1932:34. “Ma’am, here’s the radar showing the storms in the area. There’s the one they had to avoid over the target.”
Olive studied the image on the screen, noting the inlet and a large clump of radar return to the northwest of it. The clump had to be the cell Kid had seen. She brought the paper imagery over and placed it next to the screen.
“Can you fast forward please?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Shane said. The radar return moved toward the northeast.
“Fast forward,” Olive asked again.
The return moved across the channel into Trinidad. “Stop! What time is it?” The display time indicated 1958:20. Olive had a hunch.
“Shane, get with the guys in Metro. Find out what the winds at altitude were when the skipper got out — from 5K, 10K and 15K. See if you guys can overlay the weather radar display on top of the satellite imagery and synch up the times.”
Even though he was a nugget, Kid followed Olive’s line of thinking. “Ma’am, do you believe he went into that cell?”
“Yes. At least we have an area to search.”
Hernandez stuck his head outside the open door of the helicopter as it approached the crash site and entered a hover. A crewman pointed to a piece of wreckage. It appeared to be a wing flap, painted light gray. He could see the Columbus Channel just beyond a small peninsula. Nothing out here. Not even natives in dugout canoes. Nothing but briars and muck, snakes and gnarled bushes. Hernandez detested this part of the Bolivarian Republic. It wasn’t fair. Trinidad was visible in the distance across these beautiful Atlantic waters, but the Venezuelan shoreline was unlivable from Paria to Guyana. At least the oil underground made up for it. The beaches of Caracas would have to suffice for Venezuelans. Aruba. The Bolivarian Republic should have kicked out the damn Dutch and taken Aruba. We would have done it right, he thought, unlike the Argentineans against the Brits 30 years ago. That was the war he wanted, not Daniel’s foolish war against the fucking Americans!
The aircraft landed, and Hernandez stepped out with three of his officers. The Hornet was scattered about in pieces, few of them larger than one meter. The heaviest, the engines, were buried deep and circled by large crater rims made up of the spongy soil. He must have been near supersonic when he went in, Hernandez thought as he tromped in the brush, kicking at control actuators and pieces of aluminum. With the familiar smell of fuel oil in his nostrils, Hernandez took a moment to study one piece of gray aircraft skin stenciled with the words NO STEP.
The fuselage was buried deep… no way to know yet if the pilot got out or not. The pilot was one of their squadron commanding officers, James Wilson, highly decorated. A TOPGUN. Hernandez wished he had gone to TOPGUN.
Finding the ejection seat would confirm whether or not the pilot had gotten out. He prayed the seat would be empty, meaning the pilot could be alive. Conveying that news to Daniel would buy him time. Buy his family time. Chances were the seat, if the pilot did eject, was many kilometers from here. Still, they had to look.
Across the channel was Trinidad. Freedom. The Bolivarian Republic should have taken that, too: The English-speaking mongrels were no match for the AMV. Hernandez and his pilots could run up and down the island with impunity — like the damn Americans were now doing over his homeland.
Nearby, nervous perimeter soldiers scanned the sky for more Yankee angels of death. A call came in, and Hernandez got back in the helicopter. They flew only three minutes northwest before the pilot again lifted the nose high to land in a small clearing. The ground was stable as they strode to the tree line. Once there, a soldier pointed to a mangled piece of metal, one Hernandez recognized as an ejection seat.
It was empty.
CHAPTER 59
As Davies stepped away from his chair in flag plot, he caught himself watching the recovery on the PLAT, a mindless time waster from his younger days. He needed to decompress, to stretch, but he could not allow himself to be seen doing so by the watch standers. Río Salta mined. San Ramón out of action. The Bolivarian Navy staying in port. Aruba defended, and the Marines facing down Castro’s brigades along the fence line at GITMO. The Russians staying away. The Air Force was doing good work in and around Caracas, and TR was passing the Bahamas, en route with more carrier airpower.