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LOCAL HERO DIES IN IRAQ
The small town of Liberty in northwestern Ogden Valley is in mourning today as a native son, Air Force pilot Stephen Eardley, was put to rest at the Liberty Cemetery. Eardley, who played football and baseball at Weber High in Pleasant View, was killed in action on Friday, May 3, 2007, when his C-130 aircraft crashed thirty-six minutes after takeoff from Balad Air Base in northern Iraq.
An on-board flight fire that was speculated to have been caused by an electrical short circuit forced Eardley to attempt a crash landing. The pilot was trying to lose altitude quickly in a maneuver known as a side slip when the plane went out of control, inverted, and crashed in the desert. Eardley, a five-year veteran pilot attached to the elite Air Force Special Operations Command, was thirty-two years old.
Killed in action! I thought, as I sat there grabbing the sides of my head. How? How the heck could that be?
How could Eardley be killed in action in a plane crash in the Iraq desert in 2007, and then end up dead again in Midtown Manhattan?
Chapter 12
Early the next morning, I was sitting in the crowded business section of a southbound Acela Amtrak train, checking my email between sips of an iced Americano as southern New Jersey streaked past the window beside me.
The high-test coffee was entirely necessary. I’d been up half the night fielding calls as the lid officially blew sheer off the top of my case.
After several phone calls to three different FBI officials of increasing rank, I’d learned that the newspaper article on Eardley was correct. According to Air Force records, Stephen Eardley was KIA in a military plane crash in Iraq in 2007.
Which one would think was nuts enough. But it got more complicated.
Because Eardley had been supposedly killed in a military plane crash in Iraq in ’07 during a classified mission.
That was why I was heading down to Washington, DC, this rainy gray morning. Since I didn’t have intelligence clearance, I was told the best way to make headway into Eardley’s death was to contact military intelligence personnel in DC—off the record.
Though a so-called legal Chinese wall separates the intel community from domestic law enforcement, I’d learned that unofficial exceptions ar
e sometimes made for compelling reasons. Especially if there is anonymity and all parties are sufficiently discreet.
Classified intel and Chinese walls, I thought, putting away my phone to look out the train window at the wet trees and old brick factories blurring past. Deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole, I go.
Just after ten thirty I got off the train. I found myself smiling despite the rain when I saw the liaison the Bureau had sent to guide me around the Beltway. Waiting in a blue fed car for me, outside the magnificent dripping arches of Union Station, was none other than my good buddy FBI Special Agent Emily Parker.
Parker and I had been on several high-profile cases together, including a series of kidnappings of rich kids up in New York. We’d come close a few times to romantic involvement. It never worked out, yet amazingly, we still liked and talked to each other.
“No bag, I see. Just a briefcase. You pack light,” Emily said, after she gave me a hug of greeting.
“Yeah, well, with all the warnings about the stonewalling I’m about to receive from Washington officials, I figured this might be a brief trip.”
“Well, we’ll see about that, Mike. I’ve been asking around all morning. I actually have a few leads we can try.”
“Has there ever been something like this before, to your knowledge?” I asked as Parker pulled out and cruised us down a busy avenue past the nearby Capitol.
“Something like what?”
“Somebody faking being killed in action, ending up actually alive?”
“Not that I’ve ever heard of,” Emily said. “Desertions, sure, but walking away from a maybe deliberately downed fifty-million-dollar military aircraft? That’s a whole different ball of wax.”
Chapter 13
I thought we were going to the Pentagon, across the Potomac, but instead we crossed east over the Anacostia River and headed toward Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling.
Emily explained that our first visit would be with a senior officer in the Defense Intelligence Agency, Chris Milne, a former Marine. The DIA is the military’s version of the CIA. If anyone could help us figure out what the hell had happened on a classified Air Force mission, Emily said that Milne, who had done several tours in Iraq with Special Forces, was a pretty good place to start.
Off the highway, we drove along a street lined with beautiful red brick colonial buildings to the checkpoint at the Air Force base visitor’s gate.
“NYPD?” a young redheaded Air Force MP said when I flashed my shield. He was carrying an M4. “Let me guess. One of the generals racked himself up a whole lot of parking tickets again?”
“Sorry, soldier. That’s classified,” I said, cracking a smile.
