“You mean the one you almost crashed into?” Jug asked.
Colt nodded, unable to say more as the scene replayed again in his mind. He had successfully kept the worst of the memories at bay during the day, but with the sun now below the horizon, they had returned to haunt him. He could see the green-hued cruiser cutting through the water while dozens of orbs swarmed it, and he could feel the impotence when his jet rolled inverted and pulled down in an uncontrolled dive.
Punky’s voice severed his nightmare. “Go back to the search and rescue for a minute,” she said. “Where were these missing hikers?”
“Santa Cruz Island,” Jug replied.
“That’s one of the Channel Islands, right?” she asked.
When he nodded, she pulled her phone out of her pocket and placed a call. The two pilots could only hear her half of the conversation, but they watched transfixed as the NCIS agent took charge of the investigation and satisfied whatever had tickled her curiosity.
“Yeah, it’s me… hey, this is a long shot, but can you pull some passenger manifests for me?” Punky turned her back on them as Colt and Jug traded confused looks. “Santa Cruz Island… oh, really?”
Jug leaned over and whispered conspiratorially to Colt, “What do you suppose is going through her mind?”
Colt shook his head. “I’m afraid to find out.”
“Yes, I guess the Island Packers… what about flights?” Punky ripped a sheet of paper from the bulletin board mounted in the hall, then dug into her pocket for a pen. “Go ahead with that info… say that again? RLC?” She stopped writing and shot Colt a look. “Did you say Santa Maria?”
Colt grimaced when he saw the look on her face.
Punky ended the call. “She’s on Santa Cruz Island.”
“Who’s on Santa Cruz Island?” Colt asked.
“TANDY,” she said, with an edge to her voice. Her eyes glossed over, focused on a distant scene.
“That’s a pretty big stretch.”
Punky turned and looked through the open hangar doors at the Carbon Cub sitting idle on the ramp next to the larger Joint Strike Fighters. He could see her wheels turning but didn’t know what was going through her mind. Fortunately, he didn’t have to wait long.
“Not long after the police were called to the scene of an accident in the Santa Maria valley, a helicopter owned by RLC took off from Santa Maria airport and flew to Santa Cruz Island,” she said, filling them in on what she had learned from her phone conversation.
“Who’s RLC?” Colt asked.
She waved it away. “Totally legit. It’s a Louisiana-based company that flies roughnecks to and from oil rigs off the coast. But this trip to Santa Cruz Island wasn’t part of their normal routine.”
“And you think TANDY was on that flight? That’s pretty thin.”
“What about the missing hikers?”
Jug added his two cents. “Hikers go missing all the time.”
“On an island visited by a helicopter that departed an airport less than twenty miles from where my partner was shot dead?”
Neither pilot responded. Colt knew the evidence was circumstantial at best, but she was like a dog with a bone, and he knew she wasn’t about to give up on this. At last, he spoke up. “So, what do you want to do?”
Punky didn’t answer right away and instead turned to look at Jug. “If you were going to transmit a signal line-of-sight and get the greatest range, where would you do it?”
“At the top of a mountain,” he replied.
“Any mountains on Santa Cruz Island?”
He shook his head. “There’s some definite elevation on the island, but maybe only a couple thousand feet.”
“Is there any way we can search for it? Some sort of electronic surveillance equipment?”
Again, Jug shook his head. “The F-35C has the AN/ASQ-239 electronic warfare suite. Once the engineers in China Lake have identified the waveform, we can use it to search for and jam the signal—”
“What’s the other jet for?” Colt interrupted him, looking out at the jets on the ramp while feeling the familiar stirring in his gut of the sky calling his name. He had been ostracized from the Abraham Lincoln air wing, but his reputation was still mostly intact across the rest of the fleet. It might be enough.
Jug looked at the jets, then to Colt. “Uh-uh,” he said. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“If you’re hell-bent on going forward with this test, let me at least take the other bird and search for the signal. If we can pinpoint their location…”
“No way, Colt. Even if the other jet wasn’t on tap to be a spare, are you forgetting that you’ll be searching for an individual who is allegedly in possession of a weapon designed to defeat the JSF’s defenses? In a JSF?” Colt opened his mouth to argue, but Jug cut him off. “Besides, you need to stay behind and wait to hear back from our engineers.”
“What about your plane?” Punky asked Colt.
He wasn’t sure whether he should laugh at that or not. The Carbon Cub was an amazing plane, but it wasn’t designed to search for hostile forces and lacked the JSF’s EW suite. Even if he did take her flying, there wasn’t much he could do other than fly really low and scare TANDY. Finally, he answered her. “Nope.”
“I’m serious,” Punky said, unrelenting. “We can fly over to the island, find her, and then I can… arrest her.”
There was a long enough pause that Colt knew she wasn’t thinking about arresting her. But before he could answer, Jug jumped aboard Team Punky. “I can get you a pair of night vision goggles, but unless you know where to look, they won’t help you much.”
“You said there was a helicopter from the Mobile Bay?”
Almost as if Jug had forgotten Colt already ruled out the use of his airplane, he continued helping Punky formulate her strategy for flying the twenty-five miles across the Pacific Ocean to Santa Cruz Island to hunt down the Chinese intelligence operative who had murdered her partner. “When you get airborne, you can call Raptor Two Four on Cobalt.”
“What’s Cobalt?” Punky asked.
Jug read off the frequency, then realized it was in the ultrahigh frequency band. “Just come up Guard when you get to the island, and I’ll have them reach you there.”
Punky nodded, and Colt held up his hands. “Are you guys forgetting that it’s my plane you’re talking about taking?”
“Well, if you’re staying here, what else is she going to fly?” Jug asked.
“No way.” Colt shook his head, unable to believe what he was hearing. He had let other instructors on the staff fly his plane, but he was in the cockpit with them. The idea of letting a woman he had just met fly his pride and joy was ludicrous — especially given the head wound she had received during the assassination attempt earlier that morning.
“Colt.”
He looked into her pale blue eyes and felt his resolving waning. Part of him knew he should trust her instincts the same way he trusted his own in a dogfight. But another part of him couldn’t bear the thought of sitting on the sidelines while she went on the offensive. “No,” he said, but with less conviction.
“Colt,” she said again. “You know it’s worth looking into.”
He did, but that didn’t make it easier for him to accept. “Fine,” he said at last. “You can fly to the island, satisfy your curiosity, then come back.”
Jug cleared his throat. “Let’s get you those night vision goggles.”
38
A little over an hour later, Jug watched Punky taxi away from the hangar in Colt’s Carbon Cub. She handled the airplane like a pro, but he still understood why Colt was nervous just handing the keys over to her. He would have felt the same way if she had suggested taking his Mooney.