Brett Battles - No Return

It was the pact that finally did it.

“How can you be sure?” Mandy said, her tears finally subsiding.

“We’re sure.”

“Say it again.”

“We’ll never tell a soul,” Lars said.

“We’ll never tell a soul,” Wes repeated. “I promise, no one will ever find out.”

She stared at the two boys for several seconds as if she was waiting for one of them to take it back.

When they didn’t, she nodded. “Okay. I promise, too.”

Wes’s phone rang, bringing him back to the here and now. He pushed himself up off the ground next to Mandy’s grave and pulled his cell out. It was Anna.

“We can call off the dogs,” she said.

“You found him?”

“Not exactly. But Dori saw him this morning. Said he was heading up to Mount Whitney for the day with some friends he’d met.”

“Thank God,” Wes said, relief washing over him. “Where are you?”

“We’re back at the hotel.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

As he drove away from the cemetery, he passed a sedan pulled to the side of the road. Thinking someone might have broken down, he slowed, but it appeared to be empty, and he didn’t see anyone around. He also didn’t remember it being there before, but of course his focus had been on other things. Tony. Mandy.

The past.

Half a minute later, he’d forgotten all about it.

Lars spent the rest of Sunday afternoon in his office on the base. No one else was in, so he was completely undisturbed.

He was a party to the events that had taken the life of an F-18 pilot. He’d written the protocols per the commander’s instructions. These were the procedures the pilot was to follow as he used the system that had been specially installed on the aircraft. They’d been organized in a way that, if followed, everything would go fine. But two sequences had been left out, ones that would have made sense given the nature of the test flight. Lars had known it was a problem at the time, but with the commander’s assurances, he’d convinced himself that everything would be fine.

But everything had not been fine. Most pilots would have stuck to the protocols and followed orders. But not this pilot. For some reason, Adair had decided on his own to test the missing sequences. And, predictably, the plane had gone down, and a naval officer was dead.

Those damn protocols. If only he had listened to his instincts and refused to issue them. If he had, he wouldn’t be caught in a cover-up, ordered to do whatever it took to keep a friend quiet, just to keep his naval career from imploding and avoid spending the rest of his life in prison.

He could hear the distant echo of a voice in his head. Wes’s.

No, not quite Wes’s. It was a combo of Wes and Wes’s dad.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do-

He shut it off. He didn’t want to hear it.

Pulling his computer keyboard forward, he hit the space bar and woke up the screen. He brought up the website for the High Desert Tribune and searched for all articles pertaining to the crash. There were two more, both follow-ups to the original article. Nothing he didn’t already know. A wider Web search revealed that several national outlets had picked up on the initial crash story, but there had been nothing new since. If Wes had plans on leaking what he had to the media, he hadn’t done so yet.

Lars took a moment to think about what to do next, then logged on to the China Lake operations system, and used his clearance to access personnel records. In the search section, he typed in “Adair, Lawrence” then hit Find.

The name came up, but when Lars tried clicking on the link that should have taken him to the pilot’s personnel file, nothing happened.

He reloaded the page in case there’d been an error, but the result was the same.

He was just about to switch over to the Pentagon site when his desk phone rang.

“Lieutenant Commander Andersen,” he said.

“Sir, this is Lieutenant Tyler,” a woman on the other end said. “We’ve just received a notification that someone has tried to access restricted information from your computer.”

“Who is we , Lieutenant?” he asked.

“Cyber Command, sir,” she said. “Are you attempting to access information concerning a Lieutenant Adair?”

Cyber Command? “Yes, I am. What’s the problem?”

“May I ask, sir, why?”

“I’m working with Commander Forman,” Lars told her. “The investigation into last week’s crash.”

He heard computer keys clacking, followed by a short pause.

“Sir, I’m sorry, but you’re not on the list of those with approved access.”

“Lieutenant, I’m on special assignment for Commander Forman. I’m sure he has access. Call him. He’ll confirm I should be allowed to view the file.”

“Please hold the line.”

Click .

Lars rubbed his fingers across his chin. Okay, yes, restricting Lieutenant Adair’s file made sense. It was standard during an investigation. But what was with the heavy-handed response?

The line clicked again.

“Thank you for your time, Lieutenant Commander.”

Before Lars could respond, the woman hung up.

He set the handset back in its cradle. What the hell was that all about? Did he have access or not?

Before he’d even removed his hand, the phone rang again. He jerked in surprise, then picked it up.

“Lieutenant Commander Andersen.”

“Lars, I just got a call from Cyber Command.” It was Commander Forman. “I understand you’ve been trying to look at Lieutenant Adair’s personnel file.”

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that it was restricted.”

“Why do you need to look at it?”

Lars’s mind kicked into overdrive. “I was looking for the reference to Adair’s distinguishing marks.”

The commander remained silent for several seconds. “Why would you need to do that?”

“Thought if I could print that out and show it to Wes, it would confirm what he’d seen this morning with Dr. Handler and Lieutenant Truax. Lieutenant Adair had a scar on his-”

“I’d rather not show classified documents to civilians, if you don’t mind,” the commander said, cutting him off. “Find some other way of convincing him.”

“Okay, sir,” Lars said. “If that’s what you’d like.”

“That’s what I’d like. I’ll inform Cyber Command that it was a misunderstanding.”

“I appreciate that, sir.”

Lars hung up and stared at the phone for a moment. There was definitely something weird going on.

He looked down at the piece of paper on the desk.

Lieutenant Lawrence Adair .

He ripped it from the pad and stuck it in his pocket. He knew he couldn’t find what he was looking for in his office, so he headed out to his car.

His first stop was the temporary offices that had been set up as investigation central for the crash. He feared that Forman might have dropped in, but the commander wasn’t there. Only a skeleton crew of two lieutenants and a few enlisted men were present.

“Lieutenant Commander,” one of the lieutenants said. “Is there something I can do for you?”

“I’d like to see the most up-to-date reports, please.”

“Of course. One moment, sir.”

The lieutenant retrieved a file from a locked cabinet and gave it to Lars.

“Thank you.” Lars took it into an empty office and shut the door.

The file should have contained any ancillary reports, whether preliminary or final, plus a draft of the overall status. But several of the items he knew should be there weren’t. Including a copy of Adair’s personnel record.

He tapped his index finger against the table absently as he worked through what he should do next. After a few moments he started a final pass of the report, then stopped when he noticed the signature at the bottom of the report on the DNA results. It was an approval signature. His signature.