Chapter 6 - Ghost Rider’s Final Mission
The fuel-pressure warning pulsed red.
Walker’s aircraft descended toward Hangar 7.
Below us, spectators scattered across the concrete while emergency crews struggled to clear the area. The fighter’s locked controls kept it aligned with the center of the crowd.
“Walker, shut down your engine,” I ordered.
“No response.”
“Use the manual cutoff.”
“It’s electronically blocked.”
Modern aircraft depended on computers for survival. At that moment, those same computers had become a prison.
The Talon shook as pressure fell through the damaged fuel system. I had minutes at most before the engine flamed out.
“Bennett,” I said, “track Grant’s command vehicle.”
“He’s heading toward the eastern service gate.”
“Can you isolate the override frequency?”
“Rebecca is trying.”
Collins entered the channel.
“Grant has locked us out of Aegis.”
“Then unlock it.”
“My credentials were revoked.”
I heard desperation behind his controlled voice.
“What about the encrypted drive?” I asked.
Rebecca answered.
“The final directory includes an administrator key, but it requires Collins’s biometric confirmation.”
“Do it.”
There was a pause.
Then Collins said, “The confirmation will also release my confession.”
“Are you hesitating?”
“No.”
A second later, every screen at Red Valley changed.
Collins appeared in a recorded video.
“My name is Robert Collins,” the recording began. “Eleven years ago, I blocked a warning that could have prevented the losses during Operation Night Lantern.”
The confession continued while Rebecca accessed the Aegis system.
Grant’s people tried to stop the transmission, but it had already spread beyond Red Valley. Reporters were recording the screens. Spectators streamed the footage live. The truth was no longer trapped inside a sealed envelope.
“Administrator key accepted,” Rebecca said. “I’m attempting to release Walker’s controls.”
His aircraft was less than a mile from the hangar.
“Not enough time,” Walker said.
“There’s always time,” I replied.
I pushed the Talon into a steep dive.
The aircraft vibrated violently as I accelerated toward him. I aligned my wing beneath his right stabilizer.
“What are you doing?” Walker asked.
“Giving you a new direction.”
“If you make contact—”
“I know.”
I eased closer until the Talon’s wingtip pressed beneath his aircraft.
Metal screamed.
The impact threw me against my harness. Warning lights filled the cockpit, but the pressure was enough to shift Walker’s nose several degrees away from the hangar.
Not enough.
I pushed again.
The Talon’s wing began to tear.
Walker’s aircraft changed course slowly, moving toward an empty section of desert beyond the runway.
“Controls released!” Rebecca shouted.
Walker seized them.
The fighter leveled briefly.
“Ejection system?”
“Still locked.”
“Land it.”
“My approach is too fast.”
“Follow me.”
“My flight computer is fighting every correction.”
“Stop fighting like it’s a new aircraft. Fly it like the machine it is.”
I pulled ahead and reduced speed.
Walker formed behind me.
The crowd had disappeared from his path, but we were still losing altitude. My fuel pressure dropped again.
I guided him into a wide turn toward the runway.
“Watch my wings,” I said. “Match every movement.”
The procedure reminded me of Night Lantern, when damaged pilots had followed my navigation lights through a corridor they could not see.
One by one, I had brought them home.
Now Walker followed the wounded Talon.
At five hundred feet, his aircraft drifted left.
“Correct two degrees.”
“I’m trying.”
“Don’t try. Do it.”
He corrected.
At three hundred feet, his landing gear refused to deploy.
“Manual release,” Hayes said over the radio.
“Nothing.”
“Strike the hydraulic override twice.”
Walker hit it.
The gear dropped but did not lock.
“Keep the nose up when you touch down,” I instructed. “Let the rear gear take the weight.”
“What about you?”
My engine coughed.
“I’ll be behind you.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting.”
Walker crossed the runway threshold.
His rear wheels struck hard. The damaged gear collapsed, sending the aircraft sliding sideways in a shower of sparks.
Emergency vehicles followed.
The fighter spun once and stopped beyond the runway.
For several seconds, there was no movement.
Then the canopy opened.
Walker climbed out.
A cheer rose from the crowd.
My engine failed.
Silence filled the cockpit.
The Talon became a glider over unforgiving desert terrain.
“Ghost Rider, runway remains clear,” Bennett said.
“I won’t reach it.”
There was an access road beneath me and rocky ground beyond it. I adjusted my angle, searching for a survivable landing path.
Then a familiar voice entered the channel.
“Mara, turn northwest.”
Adrian.
“Where are you?”
“Two miles ahead. Dry lake bed.”
I looked toward the horizon and saw a pale strip between the ridges.
“I don’t have enough altitude.”
“Yes, you do.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I know you.”
My eyes burned.
“Guide me.”
He gave me wind direction, distance, and descent angle exactly as he had eleven years before. His voice remained calm while the ground rose toward me.
The Talon cleared the final ridge by less than twenty feet.
The dry lake bed opened ahead.
I lowered the landing gear manually. Only two wheels locked.
“Adrian, the right gear is unsecured.”
“Keep the right wing high.”
The Talon touched down.
The left wheel struck first, then the nose gear. I held the damaged wing above the ground as long as possible.
Speed dropped.
The right side collapsed.
The aircraft spun across the lake bed, throwing dust around the canopy.
When it stopped, I was hanging against my harness, breathless but alive.
For several seconds, I heard only ticking metal.
Then someone pounded on the canopy.
I looked up.
A man stood outside wearing a faded flight jacket. He was thinner than I remembered. A scar ran from his temple to his jaw, and silver threaded through his dark hair.
But his eyes were the same.
Adrian Cole opened the canopy.
“You always did make dramatic entrances,” he said.
I stared at him.
Eleven years of grief, anger, guilt, and impossible hope collided inside me.
I climbed from the cockpit and struck him in the chest.
He accepted it without protest.
Then I wrapped my arms around him.
For the first time since Night Lantern, I allowed myself to cry.
“You let me think you were dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That isn’t enough.”
“I know.”
“You should have called.”
“I wanted to every day.”
I stepped back and studied his face.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because Grant monitored everyone you loved. As long as you believed I was gone, he believed you had nothing to expose.”
“You decided that for me.”
“Yes.”
“It was the wrong decision.”
“Yes.”
His willingness to agree only made me angrier.
In the distance, emergency vehicles approached across the lake bed.
Adrian looked toward the sky.
“Grant still has the command archive.”
“I thought Rebecca uploaded everything.”
“Enough to expose Night Lantern, not enough to prove Aegis executives paid him. The financial records are stored in his vehicle.”
“Where is he?”
“Headed toward a private airstrip east of Red Valley.”
My radio crackled.
Bennett spoke quickly.
“Grant passed the service gate. Local deputies are pursuing, but an Aegis helicopter is waiting at the airstrip.”
Adrian helped me down from the wing.
“We can still stop him.”
“You have an aircraft?”
He pointed toward the far side of the lake bed.
A weathered two-seat training plane rested beside a small maintenance shelter.
I looked at him.
“That thing flies?”
“Usually.”
The emergency vehicles were still minutes away.
We ran.
Adrian took the rear seat while I started the old engine. The plane rattled down the lake bed and climbed reluctantly into the morning sky.
Grant’s helicopter appeared ahead, lifting from the private airstrip.
“We can’t catch him,” Adrian said.
“We don’t have to.”
I opened the radio.
“Bennett, can Rebecca access Grant’s vehicle system?”
“She’s trying.”
“The archive must have a wireless transfer function.”
“It does, but he shut it down.”
“Then turn on every Aegis receiver at once. Make his system think it’s surrounded by authorized stations.”
Silence followed.
Then Rebecca understood.
“Flood authentication,” she said. “It could force an emergency synchronization.”
“Do it.”
Grant’s helicopter turned east.
A progress indicator appeared on the trainer’s borrowed navigation tablet.
The archive was transferring.
Ten percent.
Twenty-three.
Grant must have realized what was happening because the helicopter banked sharply.
The transfer stopped at sixty-one percent.
“We lost him,” Bennett said.
“Not yet.”
I flew toward the helicopter.
Adrian leaned forward.
“Mara, this plane was built for training.”
“So was I.”
We climbed above Grant’s flight path, forcing his pilot to descend away from controlled airspace.
The synchronization resumed.
Seventy-two percent.
Eighty-eight.
The helicopter accelerated toward the mountains.
At ninety-six percent, Grant opened its side door.
He held a black archive unit in both hands.
“He’s going to drop it,” Adrian said.
Grant threw the device into the desert.
The transfer reached ninety-eight percent and failed.
Two percent of the archive remained with the shattered unit somewhere below.
“Is it enough?” I asked.
Rebecca did not answer immediately.
Then she said, “We have the payments, the altered orders, and his communications with Aegis.”
“Then it’s enough.”
Military aircraft appeared ahead and ordered Grant’s helicopter to land.
This time, he had nowhere to run.
I turned the trainer back toward Red Valley.
Adrian was alive behind me.
Walker was alive on the runway.
The truth was moving across every national news network.
For the first time in eleven years, the sky did not feel like a graveyard.
But when we landed, Rebecca was waiting with an expression that warned me the final battle had not ended.
“Grant transmitted one last file before his arrest,” she said.
“To whom?”
“The Justice Department.”
“What was in it?”
“A signed confession claiming you planned the entire sabotage to restore your reputation.”
Reporters gathered beyond the security line.
Cameras turned toward me.
Grant had lost control of his aircraft, his records, and his escape.
May you like
Now he intended to destroy the only thing I had left.
My name.
