"Aww… fuck!"
His finger pushed nervously on the intercom.
"Yes, sir?" a soft-spoken female voice answered within seconds.
"Get me Lynch and Nichols in here, on the double!"
"Yes, sir."
General Randal Hamilton II was not a patient man. Patient men rarely climb so high in the Air Force ranks, or in any ranks for that matter. Proud son of a highly decorated, three-star, Air Force general who had brought visionary innovation to air combat during the Vietnam War, Hamilton was incessantly competing with his father, long after his death. The day Hamilton had been awarded his fourth star and promoted to the office of the United Stated Air Force chief of staff was marked as a special day in his heart, one that he would commemorate with annual visits to the Arlington Cemetery. He had paid only two such commemorative visits to his father's place of eternal rest; his appointment to this office was relatively recent.
The intercom buzzed.
"They are here, sir."
"Good, send them in."
General Howard Lynch, vice chief of staff, was the first officer to walk through the open door. Following closely was Brigadier General Seth Nichols, in charge of regional affairs. They both saluted promptly.
"Sit down," Hamilton said. "It's great to have these TVs installed in our offices. Maybe by watching TV, we can find out what's going on in the goddamn Air Force!"
General Hamilton was not in a good mood. Regardless of the given situation's severity, Hamilton had gained the respect of his team by always keeping a cool head under pressure. In fact, the bigger the pressure, the cooler, more analytical and supportive the general would get.
"So I heard on the news today that the media correlates the April incident in Kandahar with the Florida incident last week," he continued. "Are we working this angle?"
"Sir, if I may," Nichols responded, "regional affairs was only looking into the Kandahar incident."
"Where are we with that one? Do we have any findings?"
"Not full findings, sir, we have partials."
Hamilton encouraged Nichols to continue.
"The drone was ours, sir. That's for sure. The Hellfire's signature was also ours. We're looking into the ground station operators and interviewing every single one of them who had anything to do with that drone. Unfortunately, one of the pilots is dead, so that leaves some questions unanswered."
"Dead? How?"
"His Humvee was hit by an IED on the way back from leave — little over a month ago, sir."
"Damn it. We need to keep a tight lid on this until we are ready to close the investigation. With the Florida incident, the media is going to get aggressive, questioning everyone — pilots, their families and friends — everyone they can reach."
"Yes, sir," both Nichols and Lynch responded simultaneously.
"Lynch?"
"Yes, sir."
"I want your team to work with Nichols on this correlation angle. Set up a task force. Bring analysts in, lab techs, everything you need. Is it possible that the same defect or error triggered both incidents? Compare behaviors, analyze the flight paths, all the data transferred to and from the drones in question, and let's figure out what went wrong."
"Yes, sir."
"One more thing. There will be a congressional hearing on this."
"Was it announced?" Lynch asked, turning pale.
"No, not a word yet. However, I don't think we can get away with blowing up a busload of people on American soil without having to attend a congressional hearing. Be prepared, assign the best resources you have to close these investigations as soon as you can, keep a lid on this, and give me rock-solid facts and plans for action. You know," Hamilton said after a brief pause, "Air Force chiefs of staff can be fired too."
"Yes, sir," both men acknowledged, after a brief hesitation.
"Good luck and keep me posted. Dismissed!"
…53
"What do you have?" A man in his thirties, wearing civilian clothes, asked the uniformed cop who was dragging Alex by her left arm through the main doors at the police station.
"Possession. Doesn't seem to be enough of it for intent to sell, but I'll get it weighed and let you know. Looks like meth, not sure yet."
"OK, I'll take it from here." Alex's arm changed hands from the uniformed cop to the plain-clothes cop.
"I am Detective Jordan Holt, narcotics division. What's your name?"
"Alex Hoffmann," she replied, still sobbing.
"Were you read your rights?"
"Yes."
"Wait in here," Holt said, pushing her into what seemed to be an interrogation room. She sat down on one of the two beat-up chairs, facing each other at a worn-out table. Holt uncuffed her and left.
She rubbed her wrists to re-establish blood flow. The initial shock was starting to clear, while she began to comprehend what was going on with her. She had been arrested. She had been found in possession of a controlled substance. This was her new reality. It was time to deal with it.
Holt stepped back through the door, followed by an older man, dressed in a relatively worn-out suit.
"This is my partner, Lieutenant Adrian Reyes," he said, and offered the spare chair to the older man.
"All right," Reyes said in a kinder voice, "what happened?"
All of Alex's knowledge of how police procedure worked was telling her to shut up and ask for a lawyer. Not a word was to be said. Everything she could say, would, indeed, be used against her in a court of law, just as Miranda warned. Nevertheless, all that theory wasn't worth much under pressure, when all she wanted was for someone to believe her.
"I don't know," she started saying. "I honestly don't," she insisted, when she saw the two detectives exchange disappointed, rolling-eye glances. She was going to be the "I don't know" cliché… how boring. "I was leaving work, and I got pulled over. I actually was stopped before I started," she threw out in a frenzy, not making much sense.
"Slow down," Reyes said. "Who gave you the meth?"
"That's the thing, I don't know. Really, I don't. I don't know where it came from, I hadn't seen it until the police officer took it out of my car, and I have never touched drugs in my life."
"Have you touched this particular packet?"
"No, not at all," she continued to plead.
"So, you're absolutely sure you haven't touched this bag of drugs?" She nodded energetically. "All right," he continued, "are you using any drugs?"
"No, never," she said.
"Not even smoke a joint now and then? To take the edge off?"
"No, never."
"How about prescription drugs, such as Valium, or Xanax, or Oxycodone?"
"No, I'm not taking anything. You can test me, and you'll see I'm not lying."
"We will," Reyes said, leaving the room.
Minutes later, a technician was fingerprinting her, using dated technology involving an inked roller, to stain the tips of her fingers, and a fingerprint 10-print card. He manipulated her fingers gently, yet impersonally. One of the most traumatic events in her life meant absolutely nothing to this man.
When he was done, she was escorted to a small lab at the back of the station for the drug test. This area was up-to-date in technology, as the young lab technician immediately explained.
"The urine drug test is almost instantaneous and gives us information about trace amounts of many recreational substances in your system. Sign here, please," he said, offering her a release form where she signed in confirmation that she was aware of how the drug test process was being handled. "As the urine is collected in this small plastic jar, these side strips, covered with chemical reactives, will turn color if your urine contains the residue of the specific drugs they indicate. For example, if this particular stripe colors green, you're positive for heroin. These five strips at the end are measuring the physical characteristics of the urine, indicating if you attempt to tamper with the test, by taking a diuretic, to dilute the drug concentration in your urine. Ready?"