Cyclops One by Jim DeFelice Read Free Book Online Page A

reasons.”
    Fisher shrugged. Bonham couldn’t tell whether he was blowing smoke—literally—about the accident not being an accident or not.
    “How do you know the metal piece isn’t from the plane?” asked Bonham.
    “Oh, it is. It definitely is,” said Fisher. “I just think somebody put it out here for you to find.”
    “Why would they do that?”
    “Look at it: It’s not banged up enough to have fallen from, what, thirty thousand feet? Forty?”
    “Try three or four hundred over the mountain,” said Bonham, now fairly sure the FBI agent was an idiot. “And you can’t go by how banged up something is in a crash.”
    “True. I’ve seen weird things.” Fisher shrugged. “I think it’s bullshit.”
    “How many crashes have you investigated?”
    “A couple.” The agent took a very long drag on his cigarette, bringing it down to his fingertips. “Maybe a few more than that. I don’t really like crashes, though. Pretty much the technical people run the show.”
    “Well, we have plenty of technical people,” said Bonham. “Why aren’t you back at the base?”
    “This is more interesting than staring at Jemma Gorman’s tight ass all day.” Fisher took a long draw and then threw away the cigarette.
    “Thank you for your opinion,” said Bonham sarcastically. Gorman actually wasn’t that bad-looking, but she was definitely a tight-ass.
    “Hey, it’s free,” he said, walking back down the hill.
    “Sir?” asked the sergeant who had been following Fisher.
    “Stick with him,” said Bonham. “Make sure he gets the hell back where he belongs.”
    “Yes, sir.” The sergeant scrambled down to follow.
    “Double the search assets in this sector. Use this point as a starting point and assume the plane broke up as it went north,” Bonham told the major when he returned to where he was standing.
    “Sir, uh, with respect, Colonel Gorman is in charge.”
    Bonham glared at him.
    “Yes, sir,” said the major.
    One of the crew members from the Pave Hawk came hustling down the hill toward them. “General! Search teams are reporting a find about a hundred and fifty miles from here, due east.”
    “A hundred and fifty miles?”
    “Yes, sir. They think it’s the F/A-22V.”
    “Let’s go,” said Bonham, starting back toward the landing area.
     

    One of the other helicopters had just brought in a small ATV with a plow on it, and a pair of airmen were using it to cut a narrow zigzag trail down to the mountain crevice where the airplane had been found. The trail looked to be about wide enough for a shopping cart, but the two men certainly seemed to be having a hell of a time running the vehicle, and Fisher saw no reason to tell them their effort was probably a waste of time, since a heavy-duty lift helicopter was already en route from the base. Crushing personal initiative was a military job, and besides, one of the airmen had lent him a lighter.
    Fisher also saw no need to go down and look at the wreck; it would be fairly jumbled, and his naked eye wasn’t going to tell him anything the technical people couldn’t. Besides, the one person worth talking to about it wasn’t going to answer any more questions in this lifetime.
    What was interesting, however, was watching Bonham direct the response teams down toward the wreckage. Though well into his fifties, the ex-general hustled around as if he were in his mid-twenties. He wasn’t a stay-on-the-top administrator: The arms of the denim shirt were covered with grime, and his work shoes were well scuffed. Fisher had had a boss like that once, a real pain in the ass who basically wanted to solve every case himself. Had it ended there, it wouldn’t have been bad, but he was such a control freak that he had informants in every diner in the city, making it difficult to cop a cup and a smoke on Bureau time. And as far as he was concerned, every minute you breathed was Bureau time.
    A doctor had gone down to check on the pilot’s body before it was