Chapter 36
Incirlik Air Base
Turkey
Katie walked down the corridor of the small hospital getting the usual impressions of a military medical facility.
Antiseptic smells, institutional decor, a staff divided between wearing scrubs and utility uniforms. The nurse leading her down the hall was an Air Force first lieutenant.
She was also strikingly attractive. At the front desk, she’d been hesitant to engage the breathless young Navy officer who’d rushed in.
After Katie introduced herself as Conza’s commander, however, which wasn’t technically true, information began flowing more freely.
The nurse said, “I wasn’t here when they brought Lieutenant Conza in last night, but I’m told he was in pain. They gave him a pretty good dose of sedatives.”
“And today?”
“I’d say it’s worn off. He’s been hitting on me all morning.”
Katie smiled. “Yeah, that’s JC. Sounds like he’s feeling better.”
“Definitely. And he is kinda cute.”
“He is that.”
The nurse stopped in front of a room with an open door. “I’ll leave you to it, Lieutenant Commander. If you need backup just ring the front desk.”
Katie laughed and went inside.
The relief she’d felt from her conversation with the nurse dissolved when she got her first look at Conza.
He was propped up on a bed and covered in bandages.
There was no gown on his upper body, and his chest was a black-and-blue map of pain.
His right shoulder had been immobilized and there were contusions on his face and arms.
His eyes blinked open and he seemed to focus, although his head barely moved. “Dang,” he said in a raspy voice. “I was hoping for that hot O-2.”
Katie forced a smile. “Good to see you, too, JC.”
“Aw, nothing personal, boss. It’s just that she’s—”
“Yeah, I saw what she is.” She went to his bedside. “You took some hits, my friend.”
“You should see the other guys.”
Katie began to relax again. JC might look like crap, but there was nothing post-traumatic in his mood. She supposed it made sense. After losing a leg in combat, taking a beating under interrogation and surviving an air crash would be a walk in the park.
“How’d you get here so fast?” he asked.
“The Turks had a logistics flight scheduled to come here from Bodrum this morning. I asked Colonel Demir if I could ride along and he was very accommodating.”
“I heard about the helo crew. Stinks about the pilots, but at least the crew chief made it.”
“Yeah, the nurse told me he’s down the hall. They expect him to make a full recovery.”
“Good to know.” Conza shifted to sit up a bit higher and his face tensed. The pain seemed to subside quickly. “How goes the investigation?”
“We’re making headway. Colonel Carter’s techs have been digging into the data from the black boxes. It’s pretty much as we feared, an electronic attack—the airplane’s navigation system was being fed bad information.”
“How does that happen?” he asked.
“It’s pretty technical, but Carter gave me a quick and dirty rundown.
The navigation data from the downed jet showed a sudden change in both position channels as it was preparing to land.
There’s supposed to be a warning if the positions disagree, but that didn’t happen initially because of the simultaneous shift.
Bottom line, the airplane was twelve miles off course in heavy cloud cover.
The instruments told the pilots they were descending to the runway when they were actually sinking into mountainous terrain. ”
“Sounds like this spoofing system created errors at the worst possible moment.”
“There’s no other explanation—and that was probably the intention. Carter also showed me a transcript of the cockpit voice recorder. At the last moment, the right-seater called out a navigation warning flag. But by then it was too late.”
“Damn.”
“Thanks to you and John Clark’s team, we now have the device that was used in the attack. A group of technicians from Wright-Patterson are flying in to tear it apart and figure out how it works. If they can determine where it came from, we’ll have a clue as to who’s responsible.”
“Have you IDed that missing passenger?”
“I heard from Kyle this morning. He knows who it is and is trying to track the guy down.”
“Ronald Hauptman?” Conza speculated.
“Just like we figured. Kyle was pretty guarded about what he could reveal, but he confirmed that the guy using that alias never boarded.”
“Think he was the target? The reason the jet was taken down?”
“It would make sense, but there’s still no hard evidence to support the theory.” Katie glanced at the open door, then went over and closed it. “I haven’t heard many details about what happened last night. You feeling up to giving me a rundown?”
“Only if you promise that all high points of initiative and valor will get put in my next FITREP.”
Katie grinned.
Conza covered the helicopter crew’s attempted intercept of the convoy, and then the SAM launch that had taken them down.
He told her about waking up in the back of the GAZ as a prisoner, being interrogated, and his eventual rescue.
She waited until he was done before hitting him with questions. The first one was automatic.
“So it was John Clark who pulled you out of this bind?”
“The one and only—although he did have help.”
“Anybody I know?”
“Ding Chavez and a bunch of guys with funny accents.”
Katie gave a knowing nod. She knew Ding well—he and her father had a long association. Clark himself was a veritable family member, going back to when he served as her father’s personal protection officer during his days with the CIA. In various capacities, Clark had been at his side ever since.
She said, “Sounds like Task Force 99 made good for the help you gave them on that dock in Tianjin.”
“That might’ve been mentioned.”
“Aside from recovering this device, Kyle mentioned that Clark questioned one of the group that abducted you.”
“He did.”
“Any actionable intel come from that?”
“Honestly, I can’t say. Mr. Clark had sent me off on an errand while that went down.”
“An errand? In the condition you must have been in?”
“I was selected to turn away a carload of approaching civilians.” He told the story as only JC could. The occupants of an oncoming sedan, a young couple, had taken one look at him, bloodied and carrying an assault rifle, and screeched wide-eyed through a U-turn in a cloud of dust.
Katie could only laugh at the scene he painted.
Conza glanced at the door. “One of Clark’s guys was brought in with me. He had a leg wound, but they patched him up and released him.”
Katie nodded, and as she did the gears in her mind began to turn. “Any idea if Task Force 99 is still around?”
“You mean on base? Most likely. Last I heard, they were getting put up in the Qs. They’re probably all luxuriating in their hot tubs by now.”
Katie laughed again. There wouldn’t be hot tubs, but it was a fact of life, at least in Navy minds, that Air Force visiting officer quarters were Ritz-like in comparison to their Navy equivalents.
“Have they said how long they’re going to keep you here?” she asked.
“I asked, but you know how doctors are.”
“Careful…my mom is one.”
“I don’t see any reason to stick around. I’m banged up, but all they tell me to do is sit still. I can do that on an airplane as well as I can here.”
“JC, you don’t sit still anywhere. But point taken.” She gave him a thoughtful look. “I think I might go over to the Qs and look up Mr. Clark.”
“Sounds like a plan. But one word of advice. If you knock on his door, make sure you’re visible in the peephole. Guys like him get a little twitchy otherwise.”
“John Clark is a lot of things…but twitchy isn’t one of them.”