Chapter 11 - The Ghost in the Flight Logs
The first warning arrived three days after my promotion.
It came in an envelope without a return address, delivered to our apartment in the Presidio while Ethan was making breakfast. Inside was a photograph of my F/A-18 Super Hornet sitting on the flight deck of the USS Theodore Roosevelt.
I recognized the aircraft immediately.
The number painted beneath its canopy was 203.
My aircraft.
But what made my blood turn cold wasn't the photograph.
It was the handwritten message across the bottom.
YOU DIDN'T SAVE EVERYONE, VALKYRIE.
For several seconds, I stood motionless in our kitchen, listening to the coffee machine finish brewing.
Ethan noticed my expression.
"Avery? What's wrong?"
I slid the photograph back into its envelope.
"Someone knows about Operation Night Lantern."
He set down his coffee.
"Is that one of the missions you flew overseas?"
I nodded.
"One of the missions I'm still not authorized to discuss."
Ethan studied my face. During our marriage, he had learned that there were two kinds of silence I carried home from deployment. The first came from exhaustion. The second came from memories that refused to remain overseas.
This was the second kind.
"Is someone threatening you?"
"I don't know."
But I knew one thing.
The photograph should never have existed outside a restricted military archive.
Operation Night Lantern had taken place eighteen months earlier, during my final combat deployment. Our squadron had been tasked with providing air cover for an emergency extraction after a reconnaissance team encountered unexpected hostile resistance.
The mission had officially been recorded as successful.
Three operators had returned alive.
My wingman, Lieutenant Daniel Brooks, had survived.
And I'd received a Distinguished Flying Cross.
What the public record didn't mention was that a fourth operator had vanished during the extraction.
His name was Chief Petty Officer Nathan Cole.
According to the official investigation, Cole had been killed during the initial enemy engagement. His remains had never been recovered.
I'd accepted that conclusion because the evidence supported it.
Or so I'd believed.
My phone rang.
Admiral Arthur Mercer's name appeared on the screen.
"Avery," he said when I answered. "Are you alone?"
"Ethan's here."
"Good. Keep him close. Has anything unusual arrived at your home?"
I stared at the envelope.
"How did you know?"
Mercer was silent for a moment.
"Because someone delivered a package to my office this morning."
"What was inside?"
"A classified mission transcript. And a photograph of Nathan Cole taken six weeks ago."
My stomach tightened.
"That's impossible."
"I thought so too."
"Where?"
"An industrial shipping terminal outside Oakland."
I gripped the kitchen counter.
"You're telling me Cole is alive?"
"I'm telling you someone wants us to believe he is."
Ethan moved closer, reading my expression.
"What does this have to do with Avery?" he asked.
Mercer heard him.
"That," the admiral replied, "is precisely what we need to find out."
He instructed me to report the envelope through appropriate military security channels and avoid discussing classified mission details over an unsecured telephone.
Before ending the call, he added something that unsettled me more than the photograph.
"Avery, the material in my package included a list of people connected to Night Lantern."
"How many?"
"Seven."
"And?"
"Five have died under circumstances that initially appeared unrelated."
The kitchen seemed to tilt.
"Who are the other two?"
Mercer exhaled slowly.
"You and me."
The call ended.
For a moment, neither Ethan nor I spoke.
Then someone knocked on our front door.
Three slow knocks.
Ethan moved toward the hallway, but I caught his arm.
"Don't."
Through the peephole, I saw a delivery driver standing beside a cardboard box.
He looked ordinary.
Too ordinary.
I asked him to leave the package outside.
He complied without argument and disappeared down the stairs.
We waited until building security confirmed he had left before allowing anyone near it.
The box contained a small wooden display case.
Inside rested a naval aviator's gold wings.
Broken cleanly in half.
Beneath them lay a printed photograph of Ethan leaving Mercer's investment office the previous afternoon.
On the back, six words had been written in red ink.
YOUR HUSBAND IS NEXT, COMMANDER PETERSON.
I felt Ethan's hand close around mine.
He had stood beside me when his father tried to destroy my dignity.
He had walked away from a fortune to protect our marriage.
And now someone was using the one person I loved most to reopen a battlefield I'd believed was behind me.
I looked at the broken wings.
For the first time since coming home, I understood that the danger hadn't followed me from the war.
It had been waiting for me in California.
And whoever had sent those photographs knew exactly how to make a decorated fighter pilot afraid.
May you like
Not for herself.
For the man standing beside her.
