The nurse said, “I wasn’t here when they brought Lieutenant Conza in last night, but I’m told he was in pain. They gave him a pretty good dose of sedatives.”
“And today?”
“I’d say it’s worn off. He’s been hitting on me all morning.”
Katie smiled. “Yeah, that’s JC. Sounds like he’s feeling better.”
“Definitely. And he is kinda cute.”
“He is that.”
The nurse stopped in front of a room with an open door. “I’ll leave you to it, Lieutenant Commander. If you need backup just ring the front desk.”
Katie laughed and went inside.
The relief she’d felt from her conversation with the nurse dissolved when she got her first look at Conza. He was propped up on a bed and covered in bandages. There was no gown on his upper body, and his chest was a black-and-blue map of pain. His right shoulder had been immobilized and there were contusions on his face and arms.
His eyes blinked open and he seemed to focus, although his head barely moved. “Dang,” he said in a raspy voice. “I was hoping for that hot O-2.”
Katie forced a smile. “Good to see you, too, JC.”
“Aw, nothing personal, boss. It’s just that she’s—”
“Yeah, I saw what she is.” She went to his bedside. “You took some hits, my friend.”
“You should see the other guys.”
Katie began to relax again. JC might look like crap, but there was nothing post-traumatic in his mood. She supposed it made sense. After losing a leg in combat, taking a beating under interrogation and surviving an air crash would be a walk in the park.
“How’d you get here so fast?” he asked.
“The Turks had a logistics flight scheduled to come here from Bodrum this morning. I asked Colonel Demir if I could ride along and he was very accommodating.”
“I heard about the helo crew. Stinks about the pilots, but at least the crew chief made it.”
“Yeah, the nurse told me he’s down the hall. They expect him to make a full recovery.”
“Good to know.” Conza shifted to sit up a bit higher and his face tensed. The pain seemed to subside quickly. “How goes the investigation?”
“We’re making headway. Colonel Carter’s techs have been digging into the data from the black boxes. It’s pretty much as we feared, an electronic attack—the airplane’s navigation system was being fed bad information.”
“How does that happen?” he asked.
“It’s pretty technical, but Carter gave me a quick and dirty rundown. The navigation data from the downed jet showed a sudden change in both position channels as it was preparing to land. There’s supposed to be a warning if the positions disagree, but that didn’t happen initially because of the simultaneous shift. Bottom line, the airplane was twelve miles off course in heavy cloud cover. The instruments told the pilots they were descending to the runway when they were actually sinking into mountainous terrain.”
“Sounds like this spoofing system created errors at the worst possible moment.”
“There’s no other explanation—and that was probably the intention. Carter also showed me a transcript of the cockpit voice recorder. At the last moment, the right-seater called out a navigation warning flag. But by then it was too late.”
“Damn.”
“Thanks to you and John Clark’s team, we now have the device that was used in the attack. A group of technicians from Wright-Patterson are flying in to tear it apart and figure out how it works. If they can determine where it came from, we’ll have a clue as to who’s responsible.”
“Have you IDed that missing passenger?”
“I heard from Kyle this morning. He knows who it is and is trying to track the guy down.”
“Ronald Hauptman?” Conza speculated.
