Chapter 5 - The Flight from Landstuhl
Four days after the blackout on Whispering Pines Lane, the weather over the Rhine-Palatinate had turned into a freezing, gray drizzle that coated the tarmac of Ramstein Air Base in Germany in a vast, unreflective sheet of liquid slate.
Inside the cavernous cargo bay of a C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft, the four massive Pratt & Whitney turbofan engines hummed with a low, vibrating roar that resonated directly through the aluminum floorboards into the marrow of my bones.
I was sitting in the forward troop seats, wearing my clean, unadorned Army Combat Uniform, my assault pack stowed between my combat boots, my dark hair pulled back into a severe, regulation bun beneath my patrol cap.
On my lap rested my medical clipboard, displaying the final discharge summaries for twelve wounded soldiers being transferred from the combat hospital at Landstuhl to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda.
Among them was the nineteen-year-old private from Bay Four.
He was sleeping three litters down, his right leg secured in a modern external fixation brace, his color healthy, his vital signs stable, breathing peacefully beneath two heavy wool military blankets.
Sitting across the narrow cargo aisle from me, strapped into his jump seat with his laptop open on his knees, was Major Marcus Sterling.
He had received his movement orders six hours after me—reassigned directly from the tactical operations center in Afghanistan to the Middle Tennessee Financial Crimes Task Force as the Department of Defense’s lead forensic investigator.
The loadmaster stepped into the cargo bay, securing the heavy steel pins on the aft ramp with three concussive, echoing clanks:
CLACK. CLACK. CLACK.
The aircraft began to taxi, the tires rumbling across the German concrete, accelerating toward the runway with seventy thousand pounds of thrust that pressed our spines back against the nylon troop webbing.
Marcus looked up from his screen. He leaned across the aisle, his voice cutting through the roar of the engines via our wired tactical headsets:
"The Montgomery County grand jury convened at zero-nine-hundred hours yesterday, Nola," Marcus reported, his tone as crisp and diagnostic as an artillery fire mission.
"What did they return, Marcus?" I asked, my voice calm, level, and completely steady.
Marcus opened an encrypted PDF on his terminal:
"A true bill of indictment charging Tristan Edward Dalton with thirty-six felony counts:
Counts One through Eight: Aggravated Bank Fraud under Title 18, Section 1344.
Counts Nine through Twenty: Identity Theft in the Furtherance of Commercial Larceny.
Counts Twenty-One through Thirty: Forgery of a Federal Financial Instrument.
And Counts Thirty-One through Thirty-Six: Embezzlement of Military Allotment Funds under the Uniform Code of Military Justice Cross-Jurisdiction Act."
Marcus turned the screen toward me:
"Furthermore, Nola... the United States District Court entered an immediate Writ of Extraordinary Sequestration freezing every asset connected to Dalton Artisan Goods LLC and the vintage Camaro."
"And the Dalton family?" I asked softly, looking out through the small, round porthole window as the aircraft lifted through the low European clouds into the blinding, brilliant sapphire sunlight above thirty thousand feet:
"What did Cora have to say about the 'roommate who works eighty hours a week'?"
Marcus let out a short, dry, humorless chuckle that sounded like dry gravel sliding through a chute:
"Cora spent Monday afternoon in the office of the regional district attorney, Nola. She tried to claim that the Callaway golf clubs and the thirty-thousand-dollar wedding jewelry were 'family gifts' that couldn't be reclaimed under civil bankruptcy."
Marcus’s eyes flashed with sharp, cold, predatory amusement:
"The federal prosecutor showed her the invoice from First Federal Bank showing that the down payment for her husband’s commercial trailer was drawn directly from your deployment hazard account. She has forty-eight hours to surrender the titles to their vehicles, or the federal marshals will be executing an asset attachment on their home in Brentwood."
I sat back against the nylon webbing.
The hum of the four engines filled the cabin with an unvarying, powerful vibration.
I looked down at my hands.
My knuckles were clean. The dried blood of the battlefield had been washed away, replaced by the clean, hard, and unshakeable strength of an officer who had survived the worst the world could throw at her and was now flying home to take back her ground.
"How long until we touch down at Campbell, Marcus?" I asked.
Marcus checked the flight avionics display on his terminal:
"Nine hours and forty-two minutes, Doc."
He looked at me, his hazel eyes locking onto mine with an intensity of absolute, unreserved respect:
"The base commander, Colonel Vance, will be waiting at the flightline with the provost marshal."
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"Good," I said softly, closing my eyes, letting the steady roar of the aircraft rock me into the first real, unbroken sleep I had known in eight months:
"Tell Colonel Vance... that the doctor is back on call."
