Prologue
The explosion was deafening, propelling a barrage of earth and clay chunks in every direction. Five thousand pounds of steel wrecking ball erupted through the cloud of red dust like a beast freed from its cage, eventually slowing and beginning a gradual swing back into the billowing haze.
Overhead, the top of a white crane rotated backward, pulling the giant ball with it, only to send it swinging back again with another devastating blow—this time demolishing an entire wall of the ancient adobe building—walls that had stood the test of time for well over a century.
Walls of the last remaining original structure in the tiny town of Alerta, Peru, perched just five miles inside the Peruvian-Bolivian border, one of thousands of isolated South American establishments fighting to survive under the relentless advancement of modernization. With tiny Alerta, still deeply rooted in a ramshackle existence of tradition and heritage, beneath what seemed like an ever-encroaching blanket of poverty.
But today was different.
Today, the destruction of the town’s only central building and ancient post office was cause for celebration after the government had allocated tens of thousands of Peruvian soles to build a new, modern administration building in its place. Officially delivering the town into an age of relevance within the great Republic of Peru.
The fourth blast from the giant, pear-shaped wrecking ball destroyed what was left of the north and west walls in one swing. In a shower of chunks, the impact caused the scarred, white-painted ball to twist slowly as it moved, before again pulling back from the arm of its overhead crane.
The last remaining section of wall was left wobbling before it tumbled inward, crashing onto the rammed earth foundation and what was left of the wooden flooring.
The ball was promptly dragged backward yet again when one of the nearby workers suddenly held up a hand and peered curiously through the red dust.
The crane’s arm was halted, and two green-vested men climbed forward into the field of rubble. Scrambling over piles of broken bricks until one of the men pointed forward and waved off the crane operator.
* * *
Three hours later, Andre Lopez raised a hand and absently wiped away a bead of sweat from his forehead, a consequence of the old squealing air conditioner in the next room, which strained to stave off the summer heat and humidity every time the office’s outside door was opened.
Puerto Maldonado was the capital of Peru’s Madre de Dios region. Located in the country’s southeastern corner, far from what most of the world would consider modern civilization, the city was still large enough to provide most of what Lopez ever needed growing up.
Now in his early thirties, Lopez worked for the local government as a freshly branded city planner, one of only three in the Department of General Services for the entire Madre de Dios region and currently responsible for distributing a round of several million soles in new government projects.
Under a thick head of dark black hair, he barely heard the outside door clang shut and only looked up when a figure appeared before his desk. The workman was dressed in dirty clothes and had his large hard hat tucked under one arm. Lopez remembered him as a foreman but struggled to recall the man’s name.
Without a word, the older man dropped a stack of envelopes onto Lopez’s desk, prompting him to glance at them curiously before spreading his hands in a questioning gesture.
“We found these in Alerta,” the man replied. “In the old post office.”
Lopez remembered now. The man’s last name was Burga. Part of the project in Alerta, replacing the city’s post office.
Lopez looked back at the envelopes. Perhaps two dozen, all stacked and bound with a single rubber band.
“What are they?”
“Letters.”
Lopez frowned and picked them up. “I can see that. Why are you giving them to me?”
“We weren’t sure what to do with them.”
“Where did you find them?”
“In the remains of the old post office. Beneath the original flooring.”
Lopez raised an eyebrow. “They were under the floor?”
The man nodded. “Looks like the place got a new floor a long time ago. These were scattered under the original subfloor. Probably fell between the gaps long before that.”
Andre Lopez picked up the stack and flipped through them, releasing a tiny plume of dust. He then removed the rubber band and examined each one separately. “They look pretty old.”
“Very.”
“Any idea how long they’ve been there?”
“Dunno. A long time. Probably too long for anyone waiting for them to still be alive.”
“Hmm.” Lopez leaned back in his chair.
“Throw them away?” Burga asked.
He shrugged and fingered through them again. “I don’t know. Leave them with me for now.”
Lopez remained still, thinking, long after the workman had left. One at a time, he studied each envelope. Twenty-three in all. Most were addressed to other towns in southern Peru. Four, however, were addressed to Bolivia. Three to Venezuela. And one, written in English, to the U.S.
Lopez briefly glanced at the steel wastebasket beside his desk. Burga was right. They were likely too old for any of the addressees to still be alive. He slowly lowered them into the mouth of the wastebasket but stopped when something occurred to him.
His mother.
Or rather, his mother’s attic. She had been gone for several years, but a fleeting memory caused him to pause. One of his own nieces, only five years old, standing in his mother’s dusty old attic barely a week after her death.
She had found a stack of envelopes written to his mother from Lopez’s father years earlier. Correspondence between the two before they were married. Nothing sultry that would have made him regret reading them. Quite the opposite. Dozens and dozens of letters from two young people in love and separated by several hundred kilometers, while one worked and the other finished school.
The romance was endearing, punctuated again and again by their longing to be together. But for Lopez, there was something more in those letters. Between the lines, he had discovered a surprising, real-time peek into his parents’ lives during those early years. An opportunity to see what their worlds were like as young adults. What they’d done, what they’d thought about, what they’d struggled with.
Lopez studied the letters in his hand. One never knew how history would reveal itself.
A trace of a grin crept around the corners of his mouth and he turned back to his desk, where he picked up a pen and began jotting down the addresses.
He remembered what one of his teachers had once said. History is anything but predictable. Who knew what surprises might be lying in wait, even for an addressee’s descendants.
What Andre Lopez could not possibly know…was that one of the letters in his hand would have the power to change the entire world.
Chapter 1
Two Months Later
Known as the Carnation City in the early 1900s, Wheat Ridge, Colorado, had grown from a single stop along a Gold Rush travel route to a full-size suburb just outside of Denver. After incorporation years later, the small city in present day served as a prime suburban location for young families with parents commuting into downtown Denver, all against a perfect backdrop of the great Rocky Mountains.
The mountains towering in the distance were covered in white snow. At night, they faded into darkness and were replaced by another version of Wheat Ridge visible only under the bright glow of thousands of city streetlamps. Currently, they highlighted a curtain of fresh snowflakes, twirling quietly to the ground and marking the third official snowfall of the season, and enough to blanket the sounds of the late evening traffic.
The very same blanketing that helped muffle the sound of a large window sliding open just minutes after eleven p.m., beneath a cold dark sky now. Most of the small town was either close to or had already turned in for the night.
The thick double-paned window made no discernible noise as it slid open along a white vinyl frame. Now open, gloved hands appeared on the sill from inside, struggling to support a raised foot and the larger body behind it.
The exit wasn’t smooth. Rather clumsy actually, considering it was the ground floor. When the figure reached the snow-covered earth, he briefly stumbled backward to regain his balance, leaving a wild scattering of footprints in the snow.
A large, dark blue duffel bag was then pulled out and dropped with a soft thud before the window was carefully closed again from the outside. The figure hefted the duffel bag back over his shoulder and scanned the street before ambling across the soft crunching blanket of snow and disappearing into the darkness.
Chapter 2
For those who thought all government offices looked the same, the National Transportation Safety Board in Denver stood as a glaring exception. Located downtown, the single-story brown building looked more like a medical group than the regional office of a well-known government agency.
Officially separated from the Department of Transportation agency by Congress in 1975, the NTSB was run by a five-member board and tasked with investigating and reporting on all civilian transportation accidents in the United States. They also provided recommendations for systems or process improvements where necessary in an ongoing mission to improve public safety throughout the nation.
Something far easier said than done.
Like any other government agency, the NTSB was not immune from scandal or controversy, leaving Assistant Director Kevin Wilkinsen thankful not to have been caught in the Federal Aviation Administration’s public relations nightmare over Boeing’s 737 MAX airliner accidents, including the painful revelations over the FAA’s own negligence in the matter.
He knew several of the directors caught up in the scandal, and it wasn’t something Wilkinsen would wish on his worst enemy.
The short and slightly overweight Wilkinsen hung up the phone and returned a pair of black-framed glasses to his nose, continuing through the report in front of him—one of several to be included in his weekly briefing to headquarters in D.C.
“Come in!” he barked, barely looking up at the knock on his door.
The door swung inward and one of his agents stepped in, along with a wave of loud chatter from those seated at the dozens of desks outside. “You wanted to see me?”
“Yes.” Wilkinsen nodded and motioned him to close the door.
Joseph Rickards was taller than his boss by almost a foot. Twelve years younger, in his forties, he wore a somber expression under a full head of hair.
“Need a limited investigation. Small aircraft about forty miles south of here. Block and a half from an elementary school. Take Gutierrez and get it cordoned off as quickly as you can.”
Silence filled the room, leaving the assistant director to glance up at Rickards when he didn’t respond.
“Problem?”
“You sure you want me?”
Wilkinsen’s reply was sarcastic. “It’s a small aircraft. I think you can handle it.” After a pause, he asked, “Can you?”
Rickards nodded. “Yeah.”
“Good.” Wilkinsen motioned him out and returned to his papers, adding his signature to the first report. When the door closed, he stopped and looked up again, watching through the glass as Rickards crossed the open area.
Finally, he sighed. The situation was beginning to feel hopeless.
* * *
Outside, Rickards retrieved a few things from his desk and glanced up to see Dana Gutierrez staring at him.
“I take it he already told you?”
The younger woman nodded and passed him a folder.
“You ready, then?”
“Yes,” Dana said, promptly rising from the desk and slinging a pack over her shoulder.
It took the agents over an hour—in complete silence—to reach the site through Denver’s morning traffic. The crash site was a field just beyond a new housing development where they spotted several patrol cars positioned between the wreckage and nearby school. The blackened pile still smoldered slightly, leaving a thin trail of smoke ascending like a black snake, twisting upward before finally dispersing into the frigid mountain breeze overhead.
Exiting the car, the two immediately detected the all-too-familiar odor--a combination of fuel, charred metal and burnt bodies. It was a sickly stench no investigator ever got used to, no matter how long at the job.
Together, they plodded through foot-high snow until reaching the first pieces on the ground. There they were met by an approaching deputy sheriff.
“You guys NTSB?”
Rickards nodded and presented his badge, as did Gutierrez. Their gazes scanned the pieces scattered around the bulk of the mangled wreckage.
“What do you have so far?”
The deputy turned and looked at the wreckage with them as he spoke, his breath visible in the morning air. “Still piecing things together, but we think it happened early this morning. Maybe two or three o’clock. Nobody heard the impact, but everyone noticed it on their way to work. We’re checking Flight Service to see if anyone filed a flight plan.”
Rickards frowned. “In the middle of the night?”
“Maybe they were passing through from somewhere else.”
He looked up at a sky of muted gray clouds. “Not through this weather. Unless they were stupid.”
Dana stepped forward. “We can take care of that. What else do you have?”
The deputy motioned forward and continued walking. “Only got a partial of the serial number, but it should be enough. We’re running it right now. Four-seater and two bodies. Both completely burned. Probably going to take some forensics.”
“Which means a lot of fuel.”
“So probably took off from somewhere close,” Dana finished. “Likely traveling south.” She looked at Rickards. “Only a few major destinations between us and New Mexico.”
“We’ll check those, too.”
The three reached the main pile of burnt aircraft, where two more deputies were examining pieces, careful not to accidentally touch or move anything.
“We’re not sure what kind of aircraft—”
“It’s a Cessna 182. Turbo,” Rickards said. “Max range with two people in this weather, a thousand miles, give or take. Baggage?”
The deputy nodded. “Over there.”
A chime sounded, and one of the other deputies several yards away pulled out his phone. “Looks like we have an ID on the plane. And the pilot.” He looked at his superior. “It is a 182.”
He stepped over a few pieces on the ground and approached, handing his phone to the senior deputy. He, along with Rickards and Gutierrez, squinted to see the tiny screen in the daylight.
After a moment of reading, Rickards and Gutierrez glanced at each other in surprise.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
Chapter 3
They all turned when the sound of a distant vehicle rumbled to a stop behind them, a nondescript white Dodge van. A man and woman climbed out on either side. Both dressed in dark blue uniforms and moved back to open the vehicle’s rear doors.
“Coroner.”
Rickards reached for the phone in the deputy’s hand and read the message again, more carefully this time. He then passed it to Dana, who read while Rickards wrote some things down on a palm-sized notepad.
“Pilot’s name was Jim Huston,” Gutierrez said. She peered closer at the screen. “Says the guy was eighty-six years old. What the hell is an eighty-six-year-old doing flying a plane?”
Rickards shook his head, watching the technicians approach toting a heavy duffel bag. “Don’t know. But something tells me he hasn’t flown in a long time.”
* * *
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