Frozen Fire by Bill Evans, Marianna Jameson Page B

cabin at the rear of the plane was closed. It wasn’t unusual for him to retreat there to take phone calls, so Wendy didn’t think twice about it. The senior flight attendant assured her the head count was complete. As the crew continued its well-rehearsed program of making everyone comfortable, Wendy excused herself to return to the cockpit. She contacted the tower for a departure time for what everyone expected would be a quick trip to Taino.
    They had a long wait for a break in the heavy outbound traffic from Miami International, so it was forty-five minutes later that Wendy noted with a distinct surge of pride that her hands were steady and dry as the plane began its initial descent to the lush, low-key Caribbean paradise called Taino.
    The sea below them was mottled, the sapphire blues and tropical greens demarking reefs and sand spits and sheer drops into the abysses of the ocean. It was a sight that would be familiar to everyone in the world within an hour or two.
    In three minutes they would exit American airspace and transit Bahamian territory for a few minutes before turning into Taino’s airspace, where the flight would terminate, albeit differently and earlier than anyone save Wendy and Garner Blaylock anticipated.
    Harboring the same fear-tinged thrill that had marked every dangerous mission she’d ever flown, Wendy was unable to keep a smile completely off her face as she looked over at her copilot. “He’s been awfully quiet.”
    Jason looked up from his greasy breakfast burrito and hastily swallowed his mouthful. “Who?”
    “Dennis.” The loathing in her voice was barely perceptible to Wendy’s ears, and she knew Jason would never pick up on it. “He’s usually poked his head in here at least once by this time.”
    “Gee, Wendy, that might be because he’s not on board,” he said with a roll of his eyes. Then, losing what little interest he’d had in the conversation, Jason returned his attention to the disgusting tangle of eggs and cheese and tortillas in his hands.
    Doing so, he missed what would be his only chance to see a crack in the legendary composure of Lieutenant Colonel Wendy Watson. Nausea punched her hard and fast, filling every recess in her gut with panic and something even more foreign to her: the certainty of failure.
    “What do you mean?” she demanded, her voice held low and steady only through the forceful application of the lessons learned over a lifetime. “He boarded the aircraft with the other passengers. I heard him talking with the crew.”
    Jason glanced up again, wiping a slash of grease from his chin with a wadded paper napkin. “No you didn’t. Cavendish headed back a few hours ago on the Lear. Four in the morning or something. I thought you knew.” He shrugged. “Anyway, what’s the big deal?”
    Wendy shook her head and unbuckled her seat belt. “Take the controls. I’ll be back in a minute.”
    Ignoring his annoyed curses and the startled expressions on the faces of the crew members she passed, Wendy barged into the crew’s head, locked the door, and slumped against the wall. She believed too completely in fate to consider this a coincidence.
    This failure will be my legacy
.
    She swallowed against the bile rising in her throat. No one inside or outside of GAIA would suspect her of complicity. She was certain of that. Her loyalty had never been questioned by anyone, nor would it ever be. But this failure would leave the organization—now her only family—with the mistaken notion that they had a traitor in their midst. Searching for a traitor who did not exist would fracture the bonds of trust that Garner had tempered and strengthened carefully over many years, beginning long before she had joined him. Wendy knew, from her years in the military, that misplaced suspicions led to carelessness, to indiscretions, to real leaks, which inevitably led to discovery.
    Two decades of Garner’s effort would be jeopardized. Millions of dollars in investments