Wingman (Elite Ops) by Emmy Curtis (11)

Casey Jacobs sat on an uncomfortable plastic chair outside the command center, constantly swiping the TGO screen saver on her phone to check it was still on. She dialed her office number. Yup. Her phone was working. So why wasn’t anyone calling her back?

She was TechGen-One’s vice president of military marketing, which meant something bad was going on if no one was returning her calls.

Briefly she slumped, holding her head in her hands, trying not to give in to the paralyzing feeling that her company was responsible for the missing pilots in the Nevada desert.

When she’d left the military, she’d been an MC-130J pilot at the top of her game. But with the niggling suspicion that her career had already reached its apex, she’d been receptive when a recruiter contacted her about working for TechGen-One. They offered to double her wage as a lieutenant colonel in the air force—which was already a lot. She’d been assured that she’d still be serving her country, but just not in uniform and without the regulations and constraints that the military put on its service people.

So, she’d resigned her commission and accepted a job with the well-regarded military contractor. All her friends were jealous, and Casey was on cloud nine on her first day in their state-of-the-art offices in Washington, DC.

Except after the lunch she’d had with Mr. Danvers and the other VPs, she’d been taken to legal, shut in a room, and been given a nondisclosure agreement to sign. It wasn’t just any confidentiality contract. It took her seven and a half hours to read, initial, and sign every pertinent page. It covered company patents, products, clients, advancements and services, memos, reports, and anything discussed by TGO employees.

It had felt overwhelming when she’d seen the stack of papers. And then she felt pride that they trusted her with their business—which they clearly took so seriously—and that she’d finally landed a position where she could take her career as far as she wanted.

Now, however, as she waited for her call back, doubt prickled her thoughts. Had she signed all those pieces of paper so she couldn’t talk to anyone about product failures?

She straightened her spine and tried to find the confidence in TGO she’d had before Red Flag. She could do this.

She swiped her phone again. Why wasn’t Malcom calling her back? He was the closest thing to a friend she’d had at the company. He’d been assigned as her buddy her first week there to show her around the campus, and they’d been tight ever since.

The thought of the rambling voice mail she’d left him made her wince. But she was sure he’d forgive her moment of panic.

Casey was able to apply her knowledge as a pilot to help the research and development department fine-tune their concept for new products. The software they were testing here at Red Flag had gone through a number of iterations before she joined the company, and like the good employee she was, she’d taken all the files home and read up on the notes from inception to prototype in her spare time. She liked to be on top of her game, and extracurricular work never fazed her.

PreCall had been designed to give allied pilots a split-second advantage over their enemies. It was designed to learn a pilot’s unique way of flying. To detect shifts in physical movement and to predict what the pilot would do in any given situation. All it took was a few hours on an exercise, and the device could align to a pilot’s way of flying, his or her intentions, and trigger the aircraft systems a fraction of a second before the pilot reacted to a situation.

Gaining just that extra second in reflex time would make a world of difference in combat. As long as only your side had the technology.

But the static over the radio that she’d heard in the control room and the sudden uncontrollability of the aircraft that the pilots had called in just before the accident were exactly the same as the problems they’d had with the prototype a year previously. She thought they’d fixed that. All she could think was that they’d either installed an earlier model of PreCall on the aircraft accidentally, or the newer version was reverting to old issues.

Either way, she needed answers. She was not going to sell these to the U.S. military if they had problems. Whatever the pressure.

She swiped her phone again—yes, she still had perfect reception—and headed outside to thaw the air-conditioned chill out of her bones.

The desert air should have been oppressive, but instead it relaxed her. She was all about the sun on her skin. She shrugged off her business jacket and stood for second, face to the sun, in her high-necked, sleeveless sweater and her black jeans.

She put on her sunglasses and looked around. It was definitely not business as usual. After the crashes, any remaining exercises had been canceled. Airmen stood around in huddles, all obviously devastated about the loss of the two pilots. She swallowed hard. She’d never lost a crew member in her whole military career, and the fact that she’d met Major Eleanor Daniels just before the accident hit her hard.

Her phone suddenly rang, and she juggled it in surprise. It was Malcolm. Thank God.

“Hey, babe,” he said.

How could he sound so unconcerned? “Did you get my message? We’ve lost two aircraft in what looks like—”

“Casey,” he said, his voice sharp in response. “Whatever you’re about to say, can it until you get back to the office.”

She couldn’t believe he wasn’t as devastated as she was. “I recognize the issue. I was in the control room as the news came in. There was static, and then—”

“I’m warning you, Casey. Drop it. Those confidentiality papers you signed when you started working? They will result in you losing everything. When TGO senses disloyalty, they’re…resolute in their response. And it’s not a good response, trust me.” He suddenly sounded a little shaky.

She said nothing, just looked at the photo of Malcolm on her phone. “You’ve got to be kidding. I won’t let them get away with it, if it is our product that—”

“Jesus, Casey. I wouldn’t kid about something like this. You think you’re still working for the military, but you’re not. Simmer down, have a drink, and forget this conversation. Think about what I’m saying.” His voice sounded as if a certain weight was put behind his words. She paused. Could they be monitoring her calls? Maybe everyone’s calls? Or was Malcolm just paranoid?

Well, shit. Now she was paranoid too. She put on a light tone. “Sure. You’re right. It’s just the heat getting to me. I’ll get some water and lie down. Al Chile’s when I get home?”

He sighed with what sounded like relief. “Sure. Guac’s on me.”

She forced a laugh. “Sounds good.”

He hung up. She shoved the phone in her skirt’s side pocket and took a breath. What just happened? What was she going to—

Her phone beeped. It was an email from Malcolm. Hurriedly she opened it, wondering if he was explaining on email something he couldn’t say over the phone. But he hadn’t written anything except “Wilcom = TGO.” He’d attached a link to the Connecticut Daily News.

She clicked on it.

Casey’s breath became shaky as she reread the short article over and over. According to Malcolm, Wilcom was TGO? She took a deep breath. She knew that a lot of companies changed their name and “relaunched” when something had happened that could put a dent in their public reputation. Hell, she’d known one contractor to change its name to an unpronounceable series of letters, presumably to stop people talking about them.

Well, at least she knew what the penalty would be for talking to anyone about her suspicions.

The phone rang, startling her again. She looked at the screen. It was Colonel Duke Cameron. Her heart sped up, and she didn’t know if it was because of the stupid crush she’d had on him when she was in a neighboring squadron or if it was about all the PreCall problems she suspected but couldn’t reveal.

“Hi. This is Duke. Can you spare me a few minutes and come up to my office?”

Oh God. She looked at her phone screen again as if it may have the answer to all her problems. She hesitated. She couldn’t tell him anything. She had to be really careful.

“Sure! I can be there in five?”

“Perfect. See you in a minute,” his said in his smooth, low-toned voice.

She stood on the tarmac, wondering if anything could happen that would prevent her from having to face Colonel Cameron. A lightning strike? A heart attack? Nothing.

If only she didn’t have suspicions that her company had caused the crash. If this were any other day, any other place, finally out of uniform, she could have set about getting him out on a date. She had crushed on him from afar for over three years while she was a pilot in the air force. It wasn’t one of those crazy fixations that she taken with her everywhere she went, but every time she had seen him while they were both officers, she had always entertained the “what-if.”

But today wasn’t the day to pursue that. She took a deep breath and a long blink against the sunlight, steeling herself for the meeting. She was going to have to lie to him, and she wasn’t looking forward to that.

She strode into the office building again, put her jacket back on, and turned her phone off. Malcolm had given her the idea that TGO could be listening to her, or tracking her, or something. Cameron’s executive assistant, Captain Moss, opened his office door for her.

“It’s been a long time,” Duke said with a smile, gesturing to the seat in front of his desk.

“I can’t believe how excited I was when I heard I’d be coming back to Red Flag, but now…I just don’t know.”

“I feel the same,” he said. “But right now, I really need an update on how your search and rescue is going. Do you have any new information?”

“They’ve sent a lot of people out there, eight sorties in total I believe. No sign yet.”

“That’s what I can’t believe. We had the location of at least one aircraft, but nobody’s found the pilots?”

“It seems not. They would have told us, obviously, if they had.”

“And you don’t think that’s strange? Why is TGO so determined to do search and rescue today when we have a unit of pararescuers on-site?” Cameron leaned forward and put his elbows on his desk, spreading out his hands in appeal. “Wouldn’t you want the pararescuers to come for you?”

She hesitated, trying to figure out a response that wouldn’t get her into trouble, either with her company or with Duke. She watched as he picked up a pen and started tapping it furiously on his desk. That wasn’t a good sign either.

“TGO has the best SAR in the industry, and we have the best technology.” She tried to speak confidently, because she was speaking the truth. But still, she had a thought stuck in the back of her mind that if it had been their technology that had caused the planes to crash, they might also be looking to destroy the evidence.

He stared at her for a long time before saying anything, and she struggled not to fill the silence with any kind of blabber that might give her away.

“Let’s get together later at the officers’ club. We can catch up, maybe grab some nachos,” he said, thankfully before she let anything slip.

Her heart leapt in her chest. Did she have a date? Or was he going to grill her about TGO? If only he’d asked yesterday, under totally different circumstances. “I’d like that. What time?”

“Seven?” he suggested.

“It’s a date.” She’d be optimistic.

They shook hands, and she left, passing another colonel who was asking Duke’s exec to make time to see him on an urgent matter. She swiveled her head as she passed, wondering what his urgent matter was. Could it be something to do with the crash?

Maybe he’d tell her tonight. Maybe she could trust him with what she knew or what she thought she knew. But was it worth her career, and maybe every cent she earned from that day onward?

Was TGO really that vindictive? Or was Malcolm just being dramatic?