Chapter 8 - The Man Who Restored My Airplane
I reached the controls as the right engine coughed.
My hands moved before conscious thought.
Mixture.
Propeller.
Throttle.
Fuel selector.
Crossfeed check.
The engine recovered.
Barely.
Daniel moved beneath my right wing.
“You stable?”
“For now.”
Maya asked, “Mechanical?”
“No.”
The Cessna 310 had been restored eighteen months earlier by a specialty aviation shop in Maryland.
I suddenly remembered the owner.
Evan Cole.
Former Air Force avionics technician.
Friendly.
Meticulous.
He had insisted on upgrading several systems at cost.
Including the digital engine monitor now flashing strange values.
“Ortiz, can JANUS access civilian avionics?”
“Not ordinarily.”
“Nathan?”
“If hardware was installed during restoration, yes.”
My jaw tightened.
A restored airplane.
A hidden military transceiver.
A mysterious beacon.
Maybe none of this had begun three days ago.
Maybe the trap had been built around me for years.
“Search Evan Cole.”
Ortiz did.
Silence followed.
Then:
“Sarah, there is no Evan Cole.”
I almost laughed.
Of course there wasn't.
“The repair station?”
“Legitimate company. Purchased nineteen months ago by an investment subsidiary.”
“Owned by?”
“A shell corporation connected to Aegis Meridian.”
Daniel muttered something unprintable.
I felt foolish.
Not because I should have discovered it.
Because part of me had believed Sarah Mitchell's life was mine.
My apartment.
My job.
My airplane.
Maybe every important piece had been curated.
A beautiful cage was still a cage.
“Rusk,” I called.
No answer.
“Malcolm.”
Still nothing.
He had gone quiet because the physical storage module mattered more than bluffing.
I placed it inside the document case.
Nathan spoke.
“Sarah, there may be a manual override behind the avionics panel.”
“How would you know?”
“I've seen the integration diagrams.”
Another painful question formed.
“How long have you known they had my airplane?”
“Four months.”
Anger hit me.
“You knew?”
“I couldn't warn you without exposing myself.”
“So you watched them prepare me for this?”
“I was trying to find a way to stop it.”
“You sent me the photograph three days ago.”
“Yes.”
“You had four months.”
“I know.”
His voice cracked slightly.
That stopped me.
Nathan Hale had never apologized easily.
“I thought if I moved too early,” he said, “Rusk would disappear again. We would lose everything.”
“And you decided I was acceptable risk.”
Silence.
There it was.
The betrayal wasn't identical to Rusk's.
But it rhymed.
Nathan had used me too.
Maybe for noble reasons.
Maybe not.
“Sarah—”
“Later.”
The right engine coughed again.
I switched the secondary avionics bus off.
Several displays died.
Old analog gauges remained.
The engine stabilized.
I almost smiled.
The Cessna had been built in the 1970s.
Its newest systems could be manipulated.
Its oldest couldn't.
“Daniel.”
“Here.”
“They can interfere with digital avionics. I'm going old school.”
“What do you need?”
“Heading and distance to the nearest safe airfield outside this operation.”
Ortiz answered.
“Naval Air Station Oceana is closest, but—”
“No military base.”
Shaw understood.
“Norfolk International?”
“Too populated.”
I shook my head.
“Find something smaller.”
Nathan said, “Wallops.”
Ortiz checked.
“Wallops Flight Facility is north, but restricted support infrastructure could secure the aircraft.”
Shaw made the decision.
“Wallops.”
Daniel gave me the heading.
I pulled a folded paper sectional chart from behind my seat.
Maya laughed softly over the radio.
“You actually carry paper?”
“Today it's the most secure navigation system in the airplane.”
Even Shaw laughed at that.
For ten minutes, things became almost ordinary.
Heading.
Altitude.
Fuel.
Weather.
Two fighters escorting a little twin-engine Cessna over the Atlantic.
Then Ortiz spoke.
“I accessed the storage module's index remotely through Sarah's transceiver.”
“You can read it?”
“Only filenames.”
“What are they?”
She hesitated.
“Halberd personnel.”
My stomach tightened.
She read them.
Nathan Hale.
Sarah Mercer.
Thomas Vance.
Malcolm Rusk.
Four others.
Our dead teammates.
Then one additional name.
A person who had never been at Halberd.
Eleanor Mercer.
My mother.
I stopped breathing.
My mother had died when I was nineteen.
Car accident.
Ohio.
At least, that was what I had always believed.
“Ortiz,” I whispered.
“Yes?”
“Read that name again.”
“Eleanor Mercer.”
Daniel asked quietly, “Who is she?”
I stared at the Atlantic.
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“My mother.”
And for the first time that morning, the military conspiracy surrounding me suddenly became personal in a way I had never imagined.
