Painter studied the fog-shrouded mountains in the distance.
Had something like that happened here? Had it been an act of terrorism?
To answer that very question—along with surveying the site firsthand—General Metcalf had ordered Painter to fly out to this remote Marine base. The Mountain Warfare Training Center had become the official staging ground for overseeing this disaster. He was to coordinate with the colonel who ran the center, where assets were already being gathered.
Painter could have left Lisa behind, but her knowledge and keen insight had already proved invaluable. Plus she had insisted on coming, her eyes aglow with the challenge. He reached his hand over to hers, their fingers entwining as if they were bound together forever. How could he refuse his future bride anything?
Such indulgence was part of the reason they had a third companion for this flight. Josh Cummings—Lisa’s younger brother—sat up in the cockpit, carrying on an animated conversation with the flight crew. Josh was presently pointing to the airstrip below. It was the main airfield for the Marine base, a site the young man had visited often in the past, and the other reason he was along on this ride.
Like his sister, Josh was lean and blond-haired. He could easily be mistaken for a typical California surfer, but Josh’s passion was less about sea and sun than it was about heights and sheer cliffs of rock. He was a renowned mountaineer, summiting a majority of the world’s tallest peaks in his twenty-five years, garnering accolades for his skill and building a small business from several of his patents on equipment design.
As a result, he had developed a working relationship with this base as a civilian consultant. He even wore the red knit cap of a Mountain Warfare Instructor, known simply as Red Hats. Few civilians ever earned the right to wear that cap, to teach soldiers the ins and outs of working a mountain. It was a testament to Josh’s skill.
But other than that cap, few would mistake Josh for a U.S. Marine. He wore his hair to his shoulders and had a casual disregard for authority. Even his garb was anything but military. Under a sheepskin jacket—something Josh had won from a Sherpa after a night of poker inside a tent on a slope of K2 during a snowstorm—he wore a gray expedition-weight thermal shirt with his company’s logo. It was a silhouette of a set of mountains with the centermost one the tallest. It looked distinctly like a fist giving you the finger.
Definitely not military approved.
For most of the year, Josh lived out of his backpack, but he had been in town for the wedding and had insisted on accompanying his sister to the base. Painter had agreed without reservations. Josh knew most of the personnel up here and could vouch for Painter, hopefully helping to smooth any ruffled feathers from Sigma’s trespassing into their territory. Plus from Josh’s training exercises in the past, he had intimate knowledge of the local terrain, which could prove useful.
Josh demonstrated that now, calling out loudly to be heard over the engines. “Land at the north end of the airfield. You’ll cough up less sand. That’s where the Marines do most of their V/STOL training.”
Lisa glanced at Painter with a quizzical arch of an eyebrow.
“Vertical takeoff and landing,” he translated. If the armed forces loved anything more than their guns, it was their acronyms.
Still, Painter couldn’t dismiss a bit of excitement as their aircraft readied itself to land. They were flying aboard an MV-22 Osprey, courtesy of the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, , outside of Los Angeles. The unusual vehicle was known as a tiltrotor, named for its ability to transform from a traditional prop-engine plane into a helicopter-like craft by rotating the engine nacelles at the ends of each wingtip.
Twisting in his seat, Painter watched the propellers slowly swing from vertical to horizontal. The plane’s forward speed rapidly slowed until it was expertly hovering over the airfield; then the massive craft lowered toward the ground. Moments later, their wheels touched down.
Lisa let out a breath she must have been holding with a loud sigh. “That was amazing.”
Painter noted another two Ospreys parked farther away, with crews working around them, suggesting they’d just arrived, a part of the mobilization happening here. A bevy of other Marine helicopters dotted the field.
“Looks like everyone took up your invitation,” Lisa said.
Before leaving the coast, Painter had laid down a rough sketch of the order of operations for this mission: search and rescue, evacuation, site quarantine, investigation, and finally cleanup. The first three duties were already under way, allowing Painter’s team to proceed directly with their investigation.
He knew where he wanted to start. The first responders—a U.S. Marine search-and-rescue team—had saved the life of a witness, a local park ranger who had happened to be on-site when the base exploded. Painter had heard about the firefight atop a neighboring hill, which raised a substantial mystery: Who were those hostiles and what did they have to do with what had transpired at the base?
Only one person potentially had those answers.
And from what Painter had heard en route—she wasn’t talking.
10:19 P.M.
Jenna didn’t bother to check the doorknob. She knew she was locked inside. She paced the length of the space. Judging from the chalkboard in front and the rows of seats, she figured it was a small classroom. Out the third-story window, she spotted a dark ski lift in the distance, along with a row of stables. Directly below her, an ambulance slowly sidled away from the entrance to the building.
The departing EMS team had already seen to her injuries: wrapping her arm, suturing the small laceration across her collarbone, then finally injecting her with antibiotics. They offered to shoot her up with pain relievers, but she opted to simply pop some ibuprofen.
Have to keep my head clear.
But her growing anger wasn’t helping.
Nikko, sprawled on the floor, watched her, his gaze tracking her as she stalked from one side of the classroom to the other. A bowl of water and an empty food dish rested beside him. A tray holding a cellophane-wrapped ham sandwich and a carton of milk sat on one of the desks. She ignored it, still far from having an appetite.
She checked her watch.
How long are they going to keep me here?
The Marine who had rescued her—Gunnery Sergeant Samuel Drake—had told her she would be debriefed by someone from Washington. Yet it had been over an hour since she had arrived here.
So where the hell is this guy?
The base commander had stopped to check in on her, asking her some questions, but she had stonewalled him. She would tell her story once, but only after getting some answers first.