Sailors began crawling over the helicopter to prepare it for flight, and Brian turned back into the hangar to get dressed in his gear. As the HAC, or Helicopter Aircraft Commander, he was responsible for ensuring both his bird and his crew were ready for the mission. He spotted Lieutenant junior grade Dillon Bush, his H2P, or Helicopter Second Pilot, and walked up to him.

“I told Rose to go ahead and load the fifties anyway,” Brian said. “If the SAR mission goes nowhere, we might as well get some training out of it.”

Dillon ignored the comment. “So, they’re actually going to send us after some missing hikers?”

“Isn’t this what you signed up for?”

“Honestly, I thought I’d be doing something more exciting.”

Brian slapped him on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get suited up. I’m sure we can find some excitement before the night is over.”

32

Santa Maria Valley, California

Almost an hour into their flight, Colt followed Punky’s guidance and steered the Carbon Cub toward the vast and multi-hued green agricultural fields of the Santa Maria valley. Their flight up the coast had been quicker than he expected, and he thought there was still a chance they could make it back to Camarillo before Jug returned from his flight.

“What’s that?” Punky asked, grounding him in the reality of what was at stake.

He looked at her over his shoulder and saw where she was pointing. On a rural highway just left of their nose, he spotted what looked like a car flipped onto its back with a large semitruck sitting idle on the shoulder nearby.

“Let’s take a closer look,” he said, pulling power and dipping the bush plane’s nose to descend from fifteen hundred feet. They jostled through the up drafts and down drafts of the turbulent air sweeping across the crops, and he angled his approach to parallel the road, then reached up to add a notch of flaps.

He slowed to sixty-five knots, then added a second notch as he picked a freshly plowed field and aligned his nose with the orderly rows. Aside from the flashing red and blue lights of police cars surrounding the scene of the accident, the ground beneath them was deserted.

Colt slowed another ten knots, then added the final notch of flaps. He hadn’t touched the throttle since setting the power to begin their descent, but his eyes never stopped scanning his intended landing area, and his mind never stopped processing the dozens of changing variables that went into an off-field landing. If he flew fourth- and fifth-generation fighters like they were an extension of his body, he flew the Carbon Cub like it was his body.

At forty-five knots, he pulled back slightly on the stick and rounded out the approach to slow further and positioned the bush plane for a three-point landing, setting both thirty-five-inch Alaska Bushwheel tires and tail Baby Bushwheel on the ground at the same time. The heavy-duty suspension absorbed most of the impact, but still the plane bucked when he applied brakes and raised the tailwheel off the ground to bleed off the rest of his speed. He came to a stop alongside the inverted car.

“Is that…” Punky’s voice was faint.

Colt could hear her anguish. “What kind of car was Rick driving?” he asked.

She let out a little sob that confirmed his fear. “A silver BMW,” she said.

The police officers on the scene appraised them with professional skepticism. Colt was sure they hadn’t expected an experimental airplane to descend out of the sky and were probably wondering what the newcomers planned on doing. He answered that question by turning off the engine and opening his window.

When a uniformed sheriff's deputy saw him unstrapping, he walked over and raised a hand to stop him. “Whoa,” he said. “You can’t just land that here. This is a crime scene.”

Colt heard him but didn’t care. He climbed down from the front seat and approached the deputy. “What happened?”

“Who are you?” The deputy looked over his shoulder when Punky climbed out of the airplane behind him, then back to Colt. “Who’s she?”

Colt had to admire Punky’s grit. He knew Rick’s phone call had shaken her and seeing the overturned car had only confirmed her fears, but she walked right past Colt and held her credentials up to the deputy. “Special Agent King with NCIS.”

“This is our jurisdiction—”

“And that’s my partner,” she replied, pointing a finger at the wrecked BMW.

The deputy dropped his chin to his chest in a universal sign of respect, then quietly shook his head. “I’m sorry, ma’am. He was gone before we got here.”

“Is he…”

Colt heard the tremor in her voice. “I don’t think this is a good idea, Punky.”

“I need to see,” she said, her voice vibrating with fear and grief. But the look of determination on her face hadn’t changed even after being presented with concrete evidence that Rick had fallen victim to foul play.

“Ma’am,” the deputy said, holding out his hands to stop her. “You really don’t want to see this.”