“Let’s go,” she said.
Colt wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so he turned toward the dark gray experimental plane he had parked on the ramp a week earlier before flying an F-35 from Marine Corps Air Station Miramar out to the Abraham Lincoln.
“Is that your Carbon Cub?”
Colt stopped. “You know what that is?”
She gave him a wry smile. “Sure,” she said. “I’ve got almost a hundred hours in one.”
Colt took off from the shorter 3,400-foot runway, though the Carbon Cub needed only a fraction of that. The plane was designed for Short Takeoffs and Landings, or STOL, and when he wasn’t flying fifth-generation fighters in the Fallon Range Training Complex, he was flying his pride and joy in the Nevada backcountry.
“Experimental Carbon Cub Four Four Three November Alpha, switch So Cal on nineteen six,” the air traffic controller said.
“Nineteen six,” he said, then reached up to dial in the new frequency.
After checking in, Colt steered the bush plane north of La Jolla, shooting the gap between Mount Soledad and the Mormon Temple, then leveled off at fifteen hundred feet. Crossing the shoreline, he banked north and passed underneath the Seawolf Corridor.
“Want to take the controls for a bit?”
“Sure,” Punky said. “I’ve got the aircraft.”
“You’ve got the aircraft.” He relinquished controls to the NCIS agent in his back seat, then went heads-down in the cockpit to enter their planned route to Point Mugu into his navigation system.
His cell phone vibrated in his breast pocket, and he removed it and saw Jug’s number on the screen. After connecting to his headset via Bluetooth, he answered the call. “Hey, Jug, I’m on my way.”
“Colt?” There was a brief pause. “Where are you calling from?”
He looked through his window at the dark blue waters beneath them. “About a half mile off the coast.”
“On a boat?”
He grinned. “In my plane. Flying up to Camarillo right now.”
“When will you get here?”
Colt glanced at his navigation display and saw that they had a favorable tailwind and were cruising comfortably at just over one hundred miles per hour over the ground. “If we don’t get slowed down going through Los Angeles, we should be there in an hour and a half.”
“We?”
Colt turned and looked over his shoulder at Punky, who was effortlessly flying the plane while staring out over the water, lost in her own thoughts. She couldn’t hear his conversation and probably didn’t even know he was on the phone. “I’ve got an NCIS agent with me,” he said. Then quickly added, “Long story.”
“Roger that,” Jug said. “Listen, you might be waiting awhile. I need to go flying to sanitize the range for a missile test tonight, so I’ll be gone for a few hours.”
The news made Colt slump in his seat. The car accident and shootout were still fresh in his mind, and he didn’t want to think it had all been for nothing. “Okay,” he said at last. “Give me a call when you get back.”
“Will do.”
After Jug ended the call, Colt selected the intercom system and spoke to his copilot. “Looks like we have a few hours to kill. Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t… I don’t know.”
Colt turned and saw her staring back at him with a lost look in her eyes. “Can you figure out where Rick was when he called?” he asked.
The lost look disappeared.
Colt showed her how to connect her phone to her headset, and she scrolled through her contacts until she found the number for Rick’s supervisor at the San Diego Field Office. She took a calming breath, then placed the call.
A deep baritone voice answered. “Special Agent Deacon.”
“John, it’s Special Agent King from NCIS—”
“Punky! What can I do for you?”
She squinted at the nickname. Of course he told them. Though she had always liked it, the nickname had new meaning now. Rick had used his final breath to let TANDY know Punky hunted her, and she wanted to look the bitch in the eyes when she realized Punky had found her. “Rick is conducting a solo vehicle surveillance, and I’m moving to join him. But I don’t have the beacon ID code for the tracker on the subject’s car.”
“Ahhh,” John said. “Let me see if I can find the requisition form.”
“Thanks, John.”
They were nearing Long Beach, and she could see the brewery where she and Rick had shared a few beers the night before. She could see his playful smile and his obnoxiously bright Hawaiian shirt, and she struggled to accept that her Uncle Rick was really gone.
“Punky?”
“Go ahead.”
“Okay, the beacon ID code is Romeo Sierra Zero Three Zero Five.”
“Got it,” she said, tapping the code into the application on her phone that allowed her to home in on the tracker Rick had placed on TANDY’s vehicle. She watched the map zoom in on a location another one hundred and fifty miles up the coast.
“Have Rick call me—”
She hung up without replying and switched over to the intercom. “Santa Maria. Do we have the gas for that?”
Colt zoomed out on his map. “Sure. It’ll take another hour to get there…”
“Good, it’s settled.”
Colt looked as if he were about to argue, but in the end, he gave a little shake of his head, took control of the plane, and banked left to put the Santa Monica Mountains on their nose. Punky turned and looked through the left window at Catalina Island rising up out of the water like a green sea monster.
I’m coming for you.
30
Cassidy opened her eyes and peered over the edge of the hammock at the waves crashing against the shore. It had been a long time since she’d felt this much peace, and she understood now why Jenny and Carrie liked to get out of the city and into nature. She hadn’t wanted to come, but she was thankful they talked her into it.
She flopped back down into the hammock, letting it rock gently with the ocean breeze. She had strung her blue-and-gold ENO hammock between two trees, one a eucalyptus and the other she couldn’t recognize. Maybe one of the other girls could.
Where are they, anyway?
She closed her eyes again, reveling in the absolute absence of stress. No cell phone service. No internet. No demanding boss ruining a perfectly good three-day weekend.
Cassidy took a deep breath of the fragrant air, then slid her body up into a reclined position and let her legs dangle over the sides. She looked at her watch and scrunched up her forehead when she saw the time.
They should be back by now.
After hiking almost four miles to Smuggler’s Cove, Cassidy was spent and had wanted to sit in her hammock for a while and take a nap before they made the return trip to Scorpion Ranch to catch the ferry to the mainland. But Jenny and Carrie weren’t done exploring and set off into the hills opposite the grove of olive trees they’d passed on their way in.
“We’ll be back by two,” Jenny had told her.
But it was already two thirty. The boat was scheduled to depart in two hours.
“Shit!”
Cassidy scrambled out of the hammock and slipped her feet back into her LOWA hiking shoes. Without bothering to lace them up, she jogged out from under the canopy of trees and craned her neck in both directions, looking up and down the beach for her friends.
“Jenny!” she yelled. “Carrie!”