He folded the paper copy of the flight plan he’d phoned in an hour before—“visual flight direct to Las Vegas”—then took one last look at the sectional chart, the detailed aviation map for Southern California. The map’s green and tan landforms were splashed with yellow splotches, which denoted cities; in addition, the area above and around the yellow splotch of San Diego was overlaid with a crazed cross-hatching of blue lines—a tangle of arcs and angles, rhomboids and trapezoids and skewed chevrons, like the webwork of some deranged spider, one of those given LSD during a Cold War CIA experiment. The lines represented a 3-D maze in the sky—borders and boundaries and NO TRESPASSING zones in the air above San Diego. Surrounded by U.S. Navy and Marine Corps airfields nearby—Miramar, North Island, Imperial Beach—the city’s airspace was the most complex in the nation, exponentially more intricate than L.A.’s or New York’s. Blessedly, though, Brown Field—a sleepy municipal airport whose traffic was mostly single-engine private planes, plus a few bizjets and charter aircraft—lay just beyond the navigational nightmare; just outside the edges of the tangled web. Consequently a pilot could get in and out of Brown Field with little hassle and no red tape: no queue, no clearances, and no control-tower bureaucrats, at least not at night or on weekends.
It was time. With his right thumb he pressed a red button on the jet’s U-shaped control yoke. “Brown traffic,” he radioed to the empty night sky, “Citation Alpha Romeo One is rolling on runway eight. Departing the pattern to the northeast.” Grasping the twin throttle levers with his left hand, he pushed them all the way forward. The engines spooled up again and the plane’s racehorse tremble resumed, intensifying as the turbines reached full power, the brakes barely able to keep the craft in check. Then, easing the pressure on the brake pedals, he unleashed the shuddering beast. Forward it sprang, with gathering speed and single-minded purpose and a double-throated roar of joy.
Southern California Air Traffic Control Center
San Diego, California
Amos Wilson rubbed his eyes and reached for his coffee mug. The night was quiet—too damn quiet, he thought blearily; the flurry of inactivity made it hard to stay awake, let alone alert. The radar screen showed only two aircraft: a Navy F-18 inbound for Miramar, and a civilian plane twenty miles southeast, just off Brown Field and climbing fast, turning northeast. Vegas, he guessed. Some fat cat—banker? no; real estate developer—dashing up for a weekend of blackjack and hookers. It was a game Wilson played when he worked the graveyard shift alone: making up stories about who was transiting his sector; where they were headed, and why.
His mug was empty. “Dad-gum-it,” he muttered. Spinning in his chair, he snagged the handle of the coffeepot and poured himself a refill, then took a swig. Grimacing, he spat it back into the mug. The coffee had been cooking for upwards of three hours, thickening to a bitter sludge, now more suitable for fossilizing fence posts—rendering them rot resistant and bugproof—than for reinvigorating humans. Wilson took another glance at the screen, assured himself that the two aircraft posed no possible risk to each other, and hurried to the sink. It took him just thirty seconds to dump the sludge, rinse and refill the pot, pour the water into the machine, and jam a fresh filter pack into the brew basket.
When he returned to his seat, the F-18 was already on the ground at Miramar; the civilian aircraft had leveled off at twenty-seven hundred feet; oddly, though, it had changed course by ninety degrees, a right bank so steep the turn was almost square cornered. “What the hell?” said Wilson. The plane was heading southeast now, streaking toward the border like a scalded cat; in less than a minute—hell, not even, he realized—it would enter Mexican airspace, due south of Otay Mountain. Then, as Wilson stared, mesmerized and paralyzed, the icon on the radar screen began to blink, and three words appeared beside it, flashing in sync with a harsh electronic rasp: LOW ALTITUDE ALERT.
Otay Mountain Wilderness
Southeast of San Diego
A shape as tan as the rocks, as fluid as quicksilver, flowed down the stony slope, the very embodiment of stealth and predatory focus. Below, something moved, and the creature—an adult male mountain lion, 150 pounds of cunning, sinew, and hunger—froze, its belly pressed to the rock. After a long pause, punctuated only by the sound of labored, painful breathing twenty feet away, the big cat flowed forward again, its tail twitching as it closed on its prey.
Its prey was Jesús Antonio Gonzales, a new, illegal, injured, and unsuspecting immigrant. Fleeing what he’d feared to be a Border Patrol truck jolting along the ridge in the darkness, Jesús had darted off the road and scrambled down the slope. Suddenly he’d taken a step into nothingness—one moment the mountain was solidly beneath his feet, the next moment it was gone. Tumbling off a ledge, he’d landed on his left side, hard, atop a boulder. He’d tried to regain his feet but quickly sank back against the rock, the pain in his ribs causing him to gasp and groan. He now lay twenty feet below the rim of the outcrop, and even if he hadn’t been injured, he felt sure he wouldn’t be able to climb back up the way he’d come down. He dared not risk another fall in the steep terrain—he’d barely missed cracking his head on the boulder, and if he fell again, he might not be as lucky—so he resolved to stay where he was, to wait until dawn before limping out of the mountains and into the outskirts of San Diego. There would be other, different risks in daylight—for one, he’d heard that La Migra, the immigration police, had cameras and motion detectors and dogs everywhere—but Jesús would just have to take his chances. He closed his eyes and shifted against the rock. The movement caused the ends of his splintered ribs to grate against one another, like shards of glass grinding inside him, and he grunted in pain.
Jesús could have paid a coyote, an immigrant smuggler, to bring him across—he probably should have, he realized now—but the coyote had demanded an outrageous sum: five thousand U.S. dollars, which Jesús didn’t possess, and for what? A bone-jarring ride across the desert inside the hot cylinder of an empty water truck, followed by a two-day hike to the nearest city. Cheaper and safer to find his own way, he had decided; after all, coyotes weren’t infallible, either; some, he’d heard, had been known to leave people dying in the desert—abandoned hundreds of miles from the nearest town, or even locked inside a cargo container. Besides, he consoled himself, maybe everything would still work out just fine, despite his fall and his broken ribs: maybe, by daylight, the stabbing pain in his side would ease, and Jesús would find a good path down, and San Diego would spread itself before him like a glittering kingdom—a kingdom so rich that even his namesake, Jesús Cristo, would have yielded to temptation and bowed for the sake of such glory and wealth. Sí, Jesús Antonio Gonzales told himself, San Diego será mío. He practiced it in English: Yes. San Diego will be mine.
Somewhere in the darkness, he heard the throaty hum of an aircraft engine—or was it two?—and he prayed it was not Border Patrol helicopters scouring the hills. As he listened, trying to place the source of the sound, a pebble clattered down the rocky face above him. Bouncing off a nearby boulder, the stone tapped Jesús Antonio on the arm, as if to get his attention. Puzzled, he looked up, and in the darkness above him, he saw the gleam of jewels: a pair of green-gold eyes. They glittered, brighter and brighter in the light—the light that had inexplicably appeared in midair and was now rushing toward him, its glare accompanied by a deafening roar. A cone of incandescence encircled Jesús Antonio—Jesús and the mountain lion, too, spotlighting them as neatly as if man and beast were actors on a rocky stage. And as the single-minded beast made its instinctual leap, closing the gap between its fangs and Jesús Antonio’s neck, the cone of light narrowed, narrowed, narrowed, so that at the precise instant Jesús Antonio reached up to cross himself, his trembling finger touched the very tip of the hurtling jet.
It was the briefest of touches—less than a millisecond—yet in that fleeting touch, Jesús’s fingertip wrought a miracle: Night became day; darkness was transformed into light, a burst of red and orange and yellow, with pyro
technic sparks and spokes of purple and green and magenta shooting off in all directions; Jesús himself was transubstantiated—the injured immigrant, the indigenous mountain lion, the hurtling airplane, and the high-octane fuel, all of them—transformed from mundane matter into dazzling energy, a radiant bloom upon the blackness that engulfed the wider world beyond.
I WAS HUMMING, HALFWAY THROUGH MY MORNING shower, when Kathleen flung open the bathroom door. “Bill, come quick!” she shouted, then turned and ran, adding, “Hurry. Hurry!” She sounded not just urgent but upset.
I flipped off the water and grabbed my towel, calling after her, “What’s wrong? Kathleen? Kathleen! Are you hurt?”
“No, I’m fine,” she yelled from the other end of the house. “There’s something on the news you need to see.”
I mopped the suds from my head and chest and wrapped the towel around my waist. Still dripping, I hurried to the kitchen, where I knew Kathleen would be watching The Today Show, as she did every weekday morning over coffee and granola. On the countertop TV screen, a tanned, silver-haired guy—a tennis pro or investment banker, judging by the well-kept, self-satisfied look of him—was slow dancing with a gorgeous younger woman. “Viagra,” intoned a deep voice, smooth and confident. “Make it happen.”
“So . . . honey,” I began, turning toward her, “is there something you’re trying to tell me?” I turned toward her, expecting to see amusement in her eyes—she was a good prankster, when she wanted to be—but her coffee cup was trembling in her hand, and her expression looked distraught.
“What? No, not that. This.” She tapped the television, where The Today Show’s news anchor, an attractive woman whose name I could never remember, had just appeared on-screen for her 7 A.M. rundown of the headlines. Superimposed across the lower part of the screen were the words “BREAKING NEWS—FIERY CALIFORNIA JET CRASH.”
The newscaster’s sculpted face was solemn, her impeccably manicured eyebrows furrowed with concern. “Authorities are investigating a fiery plane crash that occurred outside San Diego in the early morning hours today,” she began. “The crash is believed to have claimed the life of pilot and humanitarian Richard Janus, founder and president of the nonprofit organization Airlift Relief International.” The image cut to aerial footage of a steep, rocky hillside at night, lit by a fire blazing high into the sky. “According to the FAA,” the anchor’s voice-over continued, “Janus was on a solo night flight from San Diego to Las Vegas in his agency’s twin-engine jet. Minutes after takeoff, the aircraft slammed into a dark mountainside and exploded.” The camera cut to another aerial, this one showing emergency vehicles and firefighters gathered on a ridge above the blaze. “Darkness and rough terrain are hindering search-and-rescue efforts,” continued the woman. She reappeared on camera, her face brimming with compassion. “And with high winds, wooded terrain, and hundreds of gallons of jet fuel feeding the fire, authorities say the blaze could continue to burn for hours.”
The newscast moved on—another psychotic meltdown by some pop-culture princess—and I turned down the sound. “That’s awful,” I said. “Poor Richard.”
“Poor Richard,” Kathleen agreed. “And poor Carmelita. She must be devastated.” I nodded. We didn’t actually know Richard Janus or his wife, Carmelita, but we felt almost as if we did. Kathleen and I deeply admired Richard’s work, and we were regular contributors to his nonprofit, Airlift Relief, which delivered food and medical aid to areas ravaged by natural disasters or human violence. “Funny how the mind works,” Kathleen mused. “I’ve always half expected him to die in a crash someday, but I figured it’d be in some jungle somewhere. To crash on his way to Las Vegas? Seems extra sad, somehow.”
She was right; it did seem cruelly ironic. “Well, one silver lining,” I said, “if you can call it that. He must’ve died instantly. Probably didn’t even see it coming.” I had worked a few plane crashes, including an air force crash in the Great Smoky Mountains, and I was familiar with the swiftness and force with which airplanes—and the people inside them—could disintegrate.
Kathleen laid a hand on my arm. “Let’s send a donation.”
“We sent a big check six months ago,” I reminded her. “At the end of the year.”
“I know, I know. But this is a huge blow to Airlift Relief. He was the heart and soul of that organization. They’ll be struggling without him—and they’ll lose donors, you know they will. Please?” There were many things I loved about Kathleen, but her instinctive compassion and reflexive generosity—qualities I myself had benefited from, time and again—ranked high on the list.
I smiled and kissed her forehead. “You’re a good-hearted woman, Kathleen Brockton.”
She responded by wrapping her arms around me and giving me a full-body hug. “You’re an observant man, Bill Brockton.” After a moment, she reached down and untied her bathrobe, opening the front to press against me, skin to skin.
“Oh my,” I said. “A lucky man, too.” After three decades of marriage, Kathleen and I had settled into a companionable relationship, one in which fiery passion had given way to steady warmth. Still, she retained the capacity to surprise me and even, when something enkindled her desire, to take my breath away. “Not that I’m complaining,” I managed to say, “but didn’t you tell me last night you were on the sick list?”
“I feel much better this morning,” she murmured. “And I was thinking how bereft I’d be if I lost you suddenly. So carpe diem, I guess.”
“Carpe me-um,” I murmured back.
She gave me a squeeze, one hard enough to make me yelp. “One more bad pun,” she breathed in my ear, “and I might just change my mind.”
“My lips are sealed,” I breathed back. I began kissing and nibbling the side of her neck, seeking what I liked to think of as the magic spot. When she groaned, I thought for sure I’d found it, but gradually I realized that the telephone was ringing, and I echoed her groan.
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t answer it.” But it was too late; she was already pulling away and picking up the handset. “Damn,” I muttered. “So close and yet so far.”
“Hello?” Kathleen sounded breathless, as if she’d run to catch the phone; her eyes were shining, the pupils still dilated wide. “Yes, it is. . . . May I tell him who’s calling?” Her gaze grew focused and serious—her brows knitting together the way the newscaster’s had—and she held the receiver toward me, mouthing something I couldn’t quite make out.
Moments later, I felt my own forehead furrowing, as images from the television news—images of flames and smoke and emergency vehicles—flashed through my mind. “Of course,” I said after a moment. “I’ll see you there.”
AN HOUR AFTER THE PHONE CALL, I WAS STANDING on the tarmac, my “go” bag slung over one shoulder, as a white Gulfstream V—its only markings an aircraft registration number stenciled on the two engines—touched down at McGhee Tyson Airport and taxied toward Cherokee Aviation, the small terminal for private planes and charter aircraft.
The jet stopped, but its engines continued spooling as the cabin door flipped down and Special Agent Clint McCready appeared in the opening, beckoning me up the stairs that were notched into the door’s inner surface. McCready gave me a hand up—a gesture that merged into a quick handshake—then he pulled the door closed and latched it. “Thanks again,” he said. “We figure this I.D. will be quite a challenge. Glad you can help us out on such short notice.”
“Anytime,” I said. “I sure didn’t expect to see you again so soon. Where’d you just come from, anyhow? We were out at the Body Farm till four yesterday. Did you even have time to get back to Quantico last night?”
He gave a rueful smile. “I had just enough time to take a shower and unpack.” He turned and pointed to two closely cropped young men in the second row of seats. I recognized them both from the prior day’s training at the Body Farm. “Doc, you remember Kimbo—Kirby Kimball—and Tim Boatman from yesterday?”
“Of course,” I said. Kimball stretched out
a bronzed paw and gave me a crushing handshake. Mercifully, Boatman, thin and sallow, had a grip that was as limp as Kimball’s was fierce.
McCready added, “You saw how good they are with the Total Station. Best in the Bureau, actually.”
I nodded, projecting more knowledge than I felt. I understood what a Total Station was—a high-tech mapping system, one that could record and document, in three dimensions, the exact position of bodies, bones, bullets, and other pieces of evidence at a large, complex crime scene—but I’d never witnessed one in action until the prior day’s training exercise. “A crash site,” I said to Kimball and Boatman. “I’m guessing you guys’ll have your work cut out for you.” They grinned, and I understood the sentiment behind their happy expressions. It wasn’t that they were pleased someone had died; it was, rather, that they loved the challenge of helping solve the puzzle that awaited them at the scene. The truth was, I felt exactly the same way, and I also felt honored by the FBI’s confidence in my identification skills.
The engines spooled up and the plane began rolling, so McCready motioned me to my seat. In less than a minute we turned from the taxiway to the runway, and without even stopping, the Gulfstream hurtled forward, the acceleration pressing me deep into the glove-soft leather, as if I were on some luxurious theme-park ride. “This thing has some good giddyup,” I remarked as the plane leapt off the runway, still accelerating.
“Sure beats a Crown Vic,” McCready replied. “Took me eight hours to get home last night. Took me forty-five minutes to get back here this morning. This thing climbs four thousand feet a minute. Has a five-thousand-mile range. Top speed of nearly six hundred miles an hour.”
“No offense,” I said, “but since when does the FBI have such a need for speed?”
“Since 9/11. Gives us quick-response capability to terrorist threats anywhere in the world.”