immediately that he’d lost hydraulics. The best he could hope for was a belly flop on the jungle canopy.
He glanced back to survey the damage and saw, through a swirling cloud of debris, the bloodied body of the Lao passenger, thrown against the crates. He also saw sunlight shining through oddly twisted steel, glimpsed blue sky and clouds where the cargo door should have been. What the hell? Had the blast come from inside the plane?
He screamed to Valdez, “Bail out!”
The cargo kicker didn’t respond; he was still staring in horror at Kozlowski.
Maitland gave him a shove. “Get the hell out of here!”
Valdez at last reacted. He stumbled out of the cockpit and into the morass of broken crates and rent metal. At the gaping cargo door he paused. “Maitland?” he yelled over the wind’s shriek.
Their gazes met, and in that split second, they knew. They both knew. It was the last time they’d see each other alive.
“I’ll be out!” Maitland shouted. “Go!”
Valdez backed up a few steps. Then he launched himself out the cargo door.
Maitland didn’t glance back to see if Valdez’s parachute had opened; he had other things to worry about.
The plane was sputtering into a dive.
Even as he reached for his harness release, he knew his luck had run out. He had neither the time nor the altitude to struggle into his parachute. He’d never believed in wearing one anyway. Strapping it on was like admitting you didn’t trust your skill as a pilot, and Maitland knew—everyone knew—that he was the best.
Calmly he refastened his harness and grasped the controls. Through the shattered cockpit window he watched the jungle floor, lush and green and heartwrenchingly beautiful, swoop up to meet him. Somehow he’d always known it would end this way: the wind whistling through his crippled plane, the ground rushing toward him, his hands gripping the controls. This time he wouldn’t be walking away…
It was startling, this sudden recognition of his own mortality. An astonishing thought. I’m going to die.
And astonishment was exactly what he felt as the DeHavilland sliced into the treetops.
Vientiane, Laos
AT 1900 HOURS THE REPORT came in that Air America Flight 5078 had vanished.
In the Operations Room of the U.S. Army Liaison, Colonel Joseph Kistner and his colleagues from Central and Defense Intelligence greeted the news with shocked silence. Had their operation, so carefully conceived, so vital to U.S. interests, met with disaster?
Colonel Kistner immediately demanded confirmation.
The command at Air America provided the details. Flight 5078, due in Nam Tha at 1500 hours, had never arrived. A search of the presumed flight path—carried on until darkness intervened—had revealed no sign of wreckage. But flak had been reported heavy near the border, and .57-millimeter gun emplacements were noted just out of Muong Sam. To make things worse, the terrain was mountainous, the weather unpredictable and the number of alternative nonhostile landing strips limited.
It was a reasonable assumption that Flight 5078 had been shot down.
Grim acceptance settled on the faces of the men gathered around the table. Their brightest hope had just perished aboard a doomed plane. They looked at Kistner and awaited his decision.
“Resume the search at daybreak,” he said.
“That’d be throwing away live men after dead,” said the CIA officer. “Come on, gentlemen. We all know that crew’s gone.”
Cold-blooded bastard, thought Kistner. But as always, he was right. The colonel gathered together his papers and rose to his feet. “It’s not the men we’re searching for,” he said. “It’s the wreckage. I want it located.”
“And then what?”
Kistner snapped his briefcase shut. “We melt it.”
The CIA officer nodded in agreement. No one argued the point. The operation had met with disaster. There was nothing more to be done.
Except destroy the evidence.
Chapter One
Present
Bangkok, Thailand
GENERAL JOE KISTNER did not sweat, a fact that utterly amazed Willy Jane Maitland, since she herself seemed to be sweating through her sensible cotton underwear, through her sleeveless chambray blouse, all the way through her wrinkled twill skirt. Kistner looked like the sort of man who ought to be sweating rivers in this heat. He had a fiercely ruddy complexion, bulldog jowls, a nose marbled with spidery red veins, and a neck so thick, it strained to burst free of his crisp military collar. Every inch the blunt, straight-talking, tough old soldier, she thought. Except for the eyes. They’re uneasy. Evasive.
Those eyes, a pale, chilling blue, were now gazing across the veranda. In the distance the lush Thai hills seemed to steam in the afternoon heat. “You’re on a fool’s errand, Miss Maitland,” he said. “It’s been twenty years. Surely you agree your father is dead.”
“My mother’s never accepted it. She needs a body to bury, General.”
Kistner sighed. “Of course. The wives. It’s always the wives. There were so many widows, one tends to forget—”
“She hasn’t forgotten.”
“I’m not sure what I can tell you. What I ought to tell you.” He turned to her, his pale eyes targeting her face. “And really, Miss Maitland, what purpose does this serve? Except to satisfy your curiosity?”
That irritated her. It made her mission seem trivial, and there were few things Willy resented more than being made to feel insignificant. Especially by a puffed up, flat-topped warmonger. Rank didn’t impress her, certainly not after all the military stuffed shirts she’d met in the past few months. They’d all expressed their sympathy, told her they couldn’t help her and proceeded to brush off her questions. But Willy wasn’t a woman to be stonewalled. She’d chip away at their silence until they’d either answer her or kick her out.
Lately, it seemed, she’d been kicked out of quite a few offices.
“This matter is for the Casualty Resolution Committee,” said Kistner. “They’re the proper channel to go—”
“They say they can’t help me.”
“Neither can I.”
“We both know you can.”
There was a pause. Softly, he asked, “Do we?”
She leaned forward, intent on claiming the advantage. “I’ve done my homework, General. I’ve written letters, talked to dozens of people—everyone who had anything to do with that last mission. And whenever I mention Laos or Air America or Flight 5078, your name keeps popping up.”
He gave her a faint smile. “How nice to be remembered.”
“I heard you were the military attaché in Vientiane. That your office commissioned my father’s last flight. And that you personally ordered that final mission.”
“Where did you hear that rumor?”
“My contacts at Air America. Dad’s old buddies. I’d call them a reliable source.”
Kistner didn’t respond at first. He was studying her as carefully as he would a battle plan. “I may have issued such an order,” he conceded.
“Meaning you don’t remember?”
“Meaning