Alex stood near where David’s SUV had left the road and held his phone out in front of him. On the display was one of many photos taken by Gary Ambrose the morning after the crash, which showed the long-gone SUV where it impacted below the road.
Cathy was with her team on the other side of a ridge that rose from the below the road, scouring the area where the two drones had blown up after being struck by missiles from their pursuers.
When he was sure he was in the same spot where Gary took the photo, Alex used his own camera to take several pictures for comparison later. Aside from some burnt scrub on the ridge, he couldn’t see any significant effects from the blast.
He carefully worked his way down to the crash site, skirting around the cliffside David had flown over in his final seconds. The camera on his phone recorded the short trek as a movie from his open shirt pocket on the chance it might catch something useful.
As he arrived, Cathy appeared at the top of the ridge and called out, “Hello, partner!” She wore camouflage like the others, while Alex had chosen to wear casual hiking clothes with only a badge hanging from his belt as obvious identification.
“Anything new over there?” he asked when she joined him.
“Nothing, just like we expected. What about you?”
“The only thing of interest,” he said, taking pictures, “is that there’s nothing of interest.”
“What did it look like up there?” She nodded up toward the road.
He sighed. “The ridge seems to have protected all of it.”
“So we’re at a dead end. Now what?”
He casually looked up as though he was thinking. A glint of light in the sky confirmed that a drone he spotted earlier was watching them, and he assumed it was recording everything they said.
“Let’s go with what we think we know,” he answered, signaling that he was speaking to an audience. “I’ll take a look around the first place we met, and you search for any evidence of what we discussed. We’ll compare notes tomorrow morning at the base.” |