The Minotaur by Stephen Coonts

Hart’s initials? You’re no murder investigator.
Keadle has undoubtedly been through that cabin with a fine-tooth
comb. If there were clues he has them.
    Thoroughly disgruntled, Jake drove at forty miles an hour along
the two-lane highway toward Virginia. He didn’t want to see
Trooper Keadle in the rearview mirror with his red light flashing.
Not too likely, of course. The odds were that Keadle was sitting in
his cruiser right now in sight of Strong’s cabin, hoping against
hope that Jake would drop by and enter without using a key.
    Keadle was no hick cop, even if he liked to play the role- He
undoubtedly knew a murder when he tripped over one, and then
the very next morning a man appeared—by the Lord Harry a vice
admiral in the U.S. Navy—who wanted the investigation of the
very recent death of a captain in that very same navy put on the
back burner. And Keadle and the prosecutor went along. Or did
they? And how did the FBI get involved?
    But if it didn’t happen like that, why did Henry tell that fairy
story?
    He glanced at the map he had jammed over the passenger’s sun
visor. The report said the accident happened four miles west of
Capon Bridge, that little village Jake had stopped in this morning
to get gas. The Shell station.
    When he topped the mountain west of Capon Bridge he slowed
and looked for the scenic overlook. There. On a whim he parked
his car beside the trees so he could examine whatever marks re-
mained after two months. As he got out of his car and surveyed the
muddy gravel he knew it was hopeless. Two months of rain and
snow and traffic pulling off to look at the valley had totally obliter-
ated the marks that Keadle’s report said were here after Strong’s
wreck.
    He walked over to the edge. Some of the guardrails were obvi-
ously newer than the others. He looked down the embankment.
Beer cans, trash, bare dirt, washed-out furrows. Well, it sure
looked like a car might have been dragged up that slope some time
back. The ground was soft and no plants had yet had a chance to
hide the scars. No sense going down there and getting muddy.
    Harold Strong died here. Jake had lied to the office girl—he had
never met Strong. He stood now feeling foolishly morbid and half
listening to a car laboring up the grade from Capon Bridge. The
engine noise carried through the trees budding with spring green
and echoed off the mountainside.
    Henry had been telling the truth about one thing anyway: Har-
old Strong had been murdered. Not even a race car could come up
that grade and around that curve fast enough to skid completely
across this pullout and go over the edge. Not without help.
    Jake glanced up as the car climbing the mountain went by. It
was going about thirty miles per hour. The driver was watching the
road. And the driver was Smoke Judy.
    The commanding officer of Attack Squadron 128 (VA-128) nodded
at Rita Moravia and Toad Tarkington, then picked up his phone-.
A yeoman appeared almost immediately to collect their orders for
processing and a lieutenant commander was right behind. He led
them into another office and gave each of them a manual on the
A-6E and introduced them to their personal mentors, two lieuten-
ants. “These two gentlemen are going to teach you to be credible
A-6 crewmen in one week, starting right now. We’ll get your lug-
gage over to the BOQ and these guys will drop you there when
they get finished tonight.”
    Toad’s teacher was a prematurely bald extrovert from New En-
gland named Jenks, who began talking about the A-6E’s electronic
weapons system—radar, computers, inertial nav, forward-looking
infrared and laser ranger-designator—in the car on the three-block
trip to the building that housed the simulators. Toad listened si-
lently with growing dread.
    Jenks continued his monologue as he led Toad across the park-
ing lot, lectured on at the security desk while Toad filled out a form
to obtain a temporary visitor’s pass, and didn’t pause for breath as
they