The passenger cabin of Flight 402 was bathed in a quiet twilight glow as the massive twin engine jet cut smoothly through the black skies over the northern ocean. A quiet hum vibrated through the floorboards, singing three hundred passengers into a deep, peaceful sleep.
I sat in seat 12A, resting my temple against the cold double paned window. I wore a heavy knit sweater and kept my dark hair tied back in a messy knot. To anyone passing down the aisle, I was thirty-eight year old Caroline, a widowed corporate consultant traveling to Madrid for a structural engineering summit. I looked entirely harmless, tired, and deeply uninteresting.
I watched the empty void outside, staring down at the ink black surface of the water miles below. Nobody looking at my pale face or the way my fingers clutched a lukewarm paper cup of tea would ever suspect the truth hidden beneath my peaceful surface.
Six years ago, my callsign was Phoenix.
I was not an engineer. I was a Major in the United States Air Force and one of the most decorated F-16 squadron commanders in modern military history. I had led combat sorties through non-existent airspace and delivered precision strikes with mathematical perfection.
I had buried that woman completely on the day my husband, Ronald, was killed over foreign soil. Ronald was my wingman and the father of my young son, Christopher. His jet was erased in a classified strike that the Defense Department dismissed as a mechanical accident during a training run. They covered up his sacrifice to protect international diplomatic negotiations.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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