Chapter Three – They're looking for us… in the wrong place!
By: recon228

General Grant hadn't even been at his desk for more than thirty seconds when his secretary paged him. The 52-year-old base commander leaned forward in his chair and let out a sigh before picking up the phone receiver.

As soon as the line was open, the young female voice of his secretary spoke-up through the speaker. "General Grant?"

"Yes, Karen?" he replied, his voice deep and raspy as a result of thirty-five years spent smoking close to one pack of cigarettes per day.

"Sir, you have a call on line one; it's General Hughes."

"Thank you," Grant replied.

General Hughes was Grant's counterpart over at Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona, as well as a close personal friend for many years. Punching the red flashing button on the phone, the General connected with his former academy roommate. "Good morning, Jack, to what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Pleasure?" General Hughes snapped in a voice that held an uncanny resemblance to that of Full Metal Jacket's R. Lee Ermey. "Pleasure Do you know how many strings I had to pull to get that old T-bird of yours onto the May decommission list? Do you remember that conversation, Steve?"

Steve leaned back in his chair and let out his second aggravated sigh of the morning. It always amazed him how his old friend could make running the Air Force's Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center sound like a matter of national security. All General Hughes was was a glorified junkyard supervisor. He didn't have wacko super-villains trying to steal next-generation stealth prototypes.

"Why yes, Jack," Grant replied in a patronizing tone. "Yes I do–"

"Then you remember I told you I wanted it wheels-down on my tarmac by 22:00 hours last night!" the hotheaded general interrupted.

"Look, we had an incident here yesterday," Steve snapped, quickly tiring of his friend's 24/7 hostile attitude. "Some blue-skinned freak showed up and tried to steal our X-43 prototype! Fortunately Kim Possible managed to stop them from escaping before they used the thing for who knows what! So as a professional courtesy, I offered her and her partner a ride back home to Colorado. And since Lieutenant Steeves was the only one flying out, I told him to make a stopover on his way. So I apologize if he was a little late but–"

"Late? Steve, he didn't show up at all!"

The base commander bolted forward in his chair. "What are you talking about? I watched them depart shortly after 18:40 hours yesterday!"

"Steve," Hughes replied in an ominously quiet tone. "Your T-33 never got here."

General Grant placed the phone against his shoulder and swore under his breath before placing it back against his ear. "Listen, Jack, I gotta call you back."

"Yeah, good luck Steve…"

Dropping the call, General Grant paged his secretary and placed the phone on speaker while he dug Lt. Steeves' flight plan out of his desk drawer.

"Karen?"

"Yes, General?" his secretary responded in a casual tone of voice.

"Karen, I've got a priority-one assignment for you here."

"Go ahead, Sir," Karen replied.

Grant could hear her preparing a pen and pad of paper. "I want you to contact the Tri-city International Airport's Air Traffic Control Center in Middleton, Colorado and check if an Air Force Lockheed T-33 tail number…" he glanced down at the flight plan on his desk, "tail number 52-9232 landed there at any point in the last twelve hours. If it did, I want to know if it's still there. If it left, I want to know when. If it didn't arrive, I want you to contact Nellis Air Force Base and check if that same aircraft requested a transition into their airspace, same time frame. I need all that info ASAP!"

"You got it, Sir," Karen replied as she broke the transmission.

As his secretary made the required calls, General Grant examined Lt. Steeves' flight path, which showed him flying over the northern corner of Death Valley National Park before turning east into Arizona and Nevada. From what he could tell, it looked like the only place they could have gone down unnoticed would have to be in Death Valley.

After what seemed like hours, Karen finally paged him back. "Sir?" she announced in an ominously somber tone, "neither Tri-city International nor Nellis Approach have any record of Air Force 52-9232 entering their airspace."

The General took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Thank you, Karen, could you come in here please?"

The General barely had a chance to hang up the phone before the petite middle-aged brunette woman came rushing into his office with an emergency contact roster tucked under her arm. If there was one thing he could always rely on, it was Karen's constant awareness of the situation around her.

As she saluted and sat down across the desk from him, he leaned forward and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. "Alright," he began, spinning the map around for her to see, "we've got one pilot and two teenaged civilians down, most likely somewhere in the northern end of Death Valley National Park. I want you to contact the Inyo County Sheriff's Department and the National Parks Service and have them send out every SAR (Search and Rescue) team within fifty miles. We also need to inform the local CAP (Civil Air Patrol) squadrons and get them in the air ASAP."

"Yes, Sir," Karen affirmed as she jotted more notes onto her legal pad.

Grant then scribbled a name and number onto the back of a business card and slid it across the table toward her. "I also want you to contact this man over at the Lemoore Naval Air Station. He's in charge of their Air Rescue and owes me a few favors. Tell him I'm cashing them in… all of them."

"Yes, Sir. Is there anyone else we need to contact?"

The General leaned back in his chair and drew a deep breath in through his nose. "Yes… but I'll handle it. Just get to work on what I've given you."

"Yes, Sir!" The woman did an about-face and exited the room as quickly as she had entered it.

Alone again, General Grant picked up the phone's receiver and dialed information. When the operator answered he spoke in a slow and tired voice. "Yes in Middleton, Colorado. I need the number for the Middleton Police Department." He waited as the operator connected him.

The call rang through two times before it was picked up. "Middleton Police Department," a male voice announced on the other end.

"Yes, this is General Steven Grant, United States Air Force; I'm Base Commander at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California. We've had an aircraft go down somewhere near Death Valley and I need you to make a notification for the families of two civilians on board. Yes, we're sending SAR teams out now. No, we don't know what their status is at this point. We're not sure yet, but we think they went down last night sometime."

As the officer on the other end began to copy down the information Grant had given him, the General picked up the flight roster off of his desk and examined the personnel log.

"Their full names are Kimberly Ann Possible and Ronald Dean Stoppable… yes, the Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable."

---

"Hon, have you seen Kimmie this morning?" Dr. Andrea Possible asked her husband as he walked into the kitchen to make breakfast.

"No, not since yesterday when she left on her mission," Dr. James Possible responded, glancing at his watch which read 6:02am. "Maybe she's still on her way home." He walked over to the sink and glanced out the window. "Or maybe she spent the night at Ronald's house."

It was kind of ironic, but as strict as Kim's father was in regards to his daughter's love life––or mandated lack there-of––Ron was one of the few people, male or female, whose house he was comfortable allowing his 'Kimmie-cub' to spend the night at. He saw the goofy blond teen as more of a stepson than a potential suitor.

Both parents exchanged apprehensive glances when the wall-mounted phone next to the sink began to ring.

Since she was closest to the phone, Andrea walked over and picked it up. "Possible Residence," she announced cheerfully. After a few seconds of silence, she heard someone softly crying on the other end. "Hello?"

"Ann…"

The surgeon's stomach suddenly tightened. It was Margaret Stoppable, Ron's mother. "Margaret… what's wrong?"

"It's Ron… he… he's missing…" the woman managed to choke out before breaking down into uncontrollable sobs.

Andrea opened her mouth to respond, but froze as she glanced out the kitchen window. She dropped the receiver into the sink and gasped as she watched a black-and-white Middleton police cruiser pull to a stop against the curb.

The last thing she saw before sinking to the ground was the sight of a uniformed police officer and a department-appointed chaplain walking up the path to her front door.

To be continued...