Passenger 19

FOUR

The general didn’t waste time.

The first wave of images arrived at El Centro forty-five minutes later, infrared data blanketing the entire search box. It would take time to sort, so two junior officers from the colonel’s staff were put under Davis’ command. In a mix of English and broken Spanish he told them what to look for, and soon all three were scanning the images on a bank of computers that Marquez had ordered installed in the operations center. To Davis’ eye, El Centro was running smoothly. There was no wasted motion, and nearly all the equipment seemed operational. So far, the investigator-in-charge appeared eminently capable, and at the very least was a top-flight organizer.

Finally having something to work with, Davis hammered the keyboard, working with the manic intensity of a condemned man searching for a lost pardon. After an hour he was blinking to keep his eyes focused. At the two-hour point, with night having taken a grip outside, he drafted two more technicians, a pair of enlisted men spotted idling near the entrance. It was nearly midnight when Marquez gave a shout from the adjoining room.

“I have something!” He emerged with two printed images in hand. “This came in from Washington moments ago!”

Marquez dropped the pictures on a table, twin radar images of the same plot of forest. One was dated last week, the other thirty minutes ago. The older image showed virgin forest, the more recent a two-thousand-foot-long scar of broken timber and disturbed earth. It was exactly what they’d been looking for. Exactly what Davis feared they would find.

The new development brought excitement all around. Davis straightened beside the table, subtly holding onto the edge. “Okay,” he managed, “that’s probably what we’re after.”

Marquez said, “We didn’t see it sooner because this area is fifty miles south of our search box. The airplane must have drifted far off course.” One of his lieutenants hurried forward and dropped a new photo on the table. He said in halting English, “Another is here, Colonel. Infrared, the same place.”

Marquez cross-checked the reference grids. “The coordinates match.” He pointed to a cluster of white blobs, obvious hot spots, and checked the time-stamp. “There was a very recent fire. Sections remain warm even now.”

Davis stared blankly but said nothing.

“There can be no question,” Marquez said. He turned to a lieutenant and issued the obvious order. “Give these coordinates to the helicopter crew on alert. Tell them to be ready in ten minutes.”

Davis wasn’t looking at the photos anymore. There was no need — the colonel was right. There can be no question. An aircraft had crashed in this isolated stand of Colombian rain forest, almost certainly TAC-Air Flight 223, wreckage that had been simmering for over twenty-four hours. During his flight across the Caribbean, Davis had tried to prepare for this moment. He’d wondered if he could keep his feelings in check. Then, after arriving in Colombia he’d become preoccupied, so focused on finding the airplane that he’d overlooked the end game. Ignored what would happen when their search succeeded. Now they had located the crash site, and the truth came down like a wrecking ball. What were the chances Jen had survived? He knew better than anyone.

One in a million.

All the same, he had to be sure. Had to see it with his own eyes. Davis pushed away from the table, checked that his Maglite was in his pocket, and was the first one out the door.

The helicopter swept fast and true through an obsidian sky. The craft was a Bell UH-1 Huey, and it rattled and shook as it sliced the Colombian night. The pilots struck out on a southwesterly heading, and for the first few minutes civilization ruled. Beneath them a sea of lights was blurred by the mix of speed and low altitude, until gradually the amber jewels of Bogotá fell away and the world beneath went to a void.

There was room for four in the chopper’s cramped passenger cabin; Davis, Marquez, and two enlisted men riding shoulder to shoulder. Having ridden on many such birds through the years, he was accustomed to the noise and vibration. Less familiar was the way his hands clenched his thighs, and the way his back pressed rigidly against the metal wall. He shifted his hands underneath his legs, gripped the webbing on his seat and squeezed for all he was worth. Bile rose in his throat, and Davis choked it down as best he could. He remembered this sensation all too well — impending doom, just like four years ago when he’d driven to the morgue to identify his wife’s body. Until this moment, the longest twenty minutes of his life.

Now he was there again, at that barren cliff, the last tendrils of hope snapping one by one. Long shots and slim likelihoods, all gone, sunk by a few irrefutable satellite images taken from a hundred miles above the earth. Images as cold and lifeless as the vacuum of space itself. The airplane carrying his daughter had crashed in a jungle. His and Diane’s only child, the love of their life. Nineteen years old.

Nineteen!

The bile again. He gripped the seat harder, so hard that something gave in the tubular frame. Davis was seated next to the open door, strapped into a seat near an unloaded machine gun. The equatorial air rushed past a few feet away, a hurricane whose swirling wake buffeted his face and whipped his hair, asynchronously cool and bleak. But not nearly as bleak as his defeatist thoughts. Disjointed recollections of going through photo albums after Diane’s death. Of giving her clothes to Goodwill and closing her account with the phone company. He would do it all again. Only this time he would do it alone.

His self-immolation paused when Marquez began shouting, a rapid-fire exchange with the pilots in Spanish. The colonel turned to Davis, his expression more somber than ever.

“We’ve received a message from the defense ministry command center. An army ground unit was working nearby, and they’ve already arrived at the scene. The crash has been confirmed. I ordered them to approach the aircraft and check for survivors. They will also set up a perimeter. I’ve given strict orders not to touch anything. We should hear back in a moment.”

Amazingly, Davis shrugged it off — he could be no nearer the edge than he already was. He stared vacantly into the night, until minutes later when Marquez had a second exchange with the copilot. Then, with all the decency he could muster, the colonel gave one shake of his head.

No survivors.

Davis nodded back numbly, the first nine-inch nails of acceptance having already taken hold. Ten minutes later the crash site was in view, the headlights of two big army trucks trained on the area. It was a surreal scene. In a jungle violated by knives of white light, Davis saw the main section of fuselage, and around it far-strewn bits of wreckage. More than a day after impact, wisps of smoke still curled through the foliage, dissolving into darkness. He could make out a half dozen soldiers staking out the perimeter.

With irony that seemed almost divine, Davis saw a perfect clearing nearby in the light of the full moon, a grassy half acre that was made to order as a place to land a rescue helicopter. Only rescue was no longer the operative word. It was now a recovery operation. The Huey sank lower and dropped toward the clearing, the crash site gaining detail as the chopper’s landing lights danced over debris. Davis unbuckled his seat belt, his hands finding new life.

If Jen is in there she needs me, he thought. She needs me now.

Davis rotated his body, putting one leg outside the open door and stepping onto the Huey’s landing skid. His heart was racing as the rotor downwash snapped at his clothing and whipped his hair.

Marquez shouted something across the cramped passenger cabin, but Davis couldn’t make it out. Or maybe he didn’t want to.

The Huey’s controlled descent paused ten feet in the air, and Davis’ legs seemed to act on their own. He stepped out and rode the skid, the Huey rocking as two hundred and forty pounds transferred to the port side.

Marquez was screaming now, his voice clear above the roar of the engine. “No! Don’t—”

Davis dropped into the night.

He hit the ground hard, rolled onto his hip, and quickly jumped to his feet. He broke into a sprint, the wreckage beckoning in its sickly yellow hue. He saw a shattered fuselage that was breached at its midpoint, the two halves clinging to one another at a noticeably odd angle. Davis was halfway to the wreckage when a soldier stepped into his path. The young man held out a flat palm, the way a traffic cop would to bring a car to a stop.

Davis brushed past him without a glance.

A second soldier, this one with a rifle on his shoulder, put out two hands. Davis put him on his ass with a stiff arm. He was running full steam, stumbling over vines and tree roots. After thousands of miles he was almost there.

He had to know!

More shouting behind him. Spanish? English? He didn’t care. The entire Colombian Army couldn’t stop him now.

One last soldier remained, a big man with a machine pistol hanging loose across his chest. He’d been inspecting the interior at the breach in the fuselage, and was heading back to join his squad. His eyes opened wide as he regarded the onrushing American who’d fallen out of the sky.

Probably on instinct, his hands went to his weapon, and he stood squarely in Davis’ path. He was a considerable obstacle, a two-hundred-pound man dressed in fifty pounds of fighting gear. There was no way to go around him, so Davis didn’t try. In the broken shafts of light, the soldier suddenly seemed to take flight, his wide frame sailing into the brush like a discarded rag doll.

Five steps later, Davis was there.

He thrust his head into the jagged breach at midcabin and stared in horror at the terrible scene inside. It was a sight he’d seen many times before, but never with tonight’s perspective.

Davis was staring at the face of death itself.

A primal howl rose in his throat but was never delivered, because in the next instant everything went black.