Condor

by M. L. Buchman

  That Persona satellite dropping into her lap on the first day was a wonderful start. She’d been informed of it because of calculated choices in the past that simply bore fruit today, but she’d take it as a good sign of things to come anyway.

  She hadn’t fucked Gregor for his massive penis; she’d done it on the off chance that one of the senior design engineers at the Progress factory would call her some day with precisely this kind of information. Though she had no complaints about servicing that delectable piece of man-flesh when she’d had the opportunity.

  Clark was now in place as the Vice President.

  Her own entry onto the public stage had begun with the Senate’s quick approval and Clark’s swearing-in.

  She must decide soon when Clark could propose to her. Perhaps tonight on the stairs. Perhaps in the Vice-Presidential bed. Now that they were both Senate confirmed, it was time to move to the next step.

  Clark.

  Yes, he was exactly where she wanted him.

  And she was clearly where he wanted her as he used the arm about her waist to press more firmly against her from behind.

  Many of her plans required keeping him happy, but that wasn’t a burden at all. Sex, which had always been just that, was actually becoming good with him. Very good. That was an interesting change she hadn’t noticed happening. She’d never particularly looked forward to sex before—just enjoyed it when it did happen.

  Clark offered more.

  Clarissa guided his hand down from her breast, down, until he was cupping her through her skirt, then leaned forward to brace both of her hands on her desk.

  He no longer needed more guidance than that.

  Clark had needed only minimal tutoring, and had her well-aroused before he even lifted up her skirt. Next he took the time to appreciate the results of all the work she did on the elliptical.

  Yes, she would add at least that to her new office, maybe do some steps during her phone calls and do some reading there. A private bathroom with shower was one of the Director’s many perks.

  Clark also deeply enjoyed that she wore no underwear—something she’d always done at the office specifically for him.

  With strong and skilled fingers, he showed his appreciation and soon had her body very highly charged. He was so good at that now that she had to hang her head just to breathe as she strained to press harder against his hands.

  Ready for what came next.

  So ready.

  She looked once more out her windows.

  No reflection in the glass. Not on this side. Not at midday.

  The perfect faceless lover continued coaxing her up. Past speech. Finally past even the ability to groan.

  At long last he undid his pants, slipped into her from behind, and found his favorite rhythm.

  Even as he did, Clarissa let herself imagine that, after President Cole’s second term, the distant sunlit buildings of Washington, DC, would be hers.

  There was the true power.

  Hers and Clark’s…but hers.

  18

  “Just as I suspected,” Miranda pointed down.

  Jon let himself admire the firm certainty of her fine fingers for a moment before looking where she indicated.

  Exactly as she’d predicted, the bottom of the inverted crew section they’d just climbed onto had two distinct burn patterns on it. The scorch pattern of a raging fire and the blast overlay of a hard explosion that had buckled the floor into the shape of a long, shallow crater. It would have been a smooth dome shape when the section was still attached to the plane. Now it looked like a broad crater exposed to the midday sun, absorbing it due to all of the char on the surface.

  Miranda laced those expressive fingers of hers together and held them up in an inverted cup shape.

  “See how that would even further refocus the explosion’s energy into a lifting force. That curvature was the missing element to explain the force necessary to break loose this section and flip it over despite its size. Also, as it bowed in,” she pointed to the far edge of the structure, “it would have ripped the connections of the rear bulkhead to the central wingbox, weakening its attachment to the rest of the structure. That explains the distorted metal we saw along the edges.”

  Jon decided not to point out that, despite his three years as a crash investigator, he hadn’t seen it at all until she’d pointed it out.

  “I don’t see any hull penetrations except for where the stair entered in the middle.” The stair itself dangled by a single bolt, but the hatch was open.

  Miranda moved directly toward the entry, climbing over girder after girder that had once supported the floor but now pointed toward the sky.

  Jon could only follow in bemusement. It might have taken him days to understand the burn patterns without her assistance. And how much math had she run in her head to determine that there’d been an extra, unexplained force component to the destruction?

  It had taken Miranda the duration of an eyeblink.

  He’d been a crash inspector ever since he’d shattered his hip due to a shifting load aboard his C-5 Galaxy jet transport. He’d been the off-shift pilot on a long haul and he’d gone below to stretch his legs. When it came time to land, he’d strapped into a cargo bay seat…and had been attacked by a busted pallet of MREs. He could walk fine now, but maybe one shattered hip in a lifetime was enough.

  The AIB had been the answer.

  He kept current doing ferry flights and the like, when there was no crash to investigate. No longer combat-qualified—some combat maneuvers took constant practice—he was still cleared for standard flight as copilot on the C-5. She was a well-behaved and gentle bird despite her size.

  He’d been offered full re-ups, but he liked working for the AIB. Sometimes the crash sites were gruesome, but he’d probably saved others from a lot worse than a shattered hip and that was a hell of a nice payoff.

  Miranda was so easily dismissed—he’d seen that blonde from Antonov doing just that. But he’d noticed that the others on the NTSB team worshipped her.

  He now knew why.

  She didn’t have the slap-in-your-face beauty of the Antonov engineer, or the outdoorsy devil-may-care of the exuberantly healthy and fit Holly. Instead, she was…herself. Short and slender, but he wouldn’t think to call her petite. Hair pulled back from her face without any care of how it looked, just because she needed it out of her way.

  Miranda Chase made absolutely no airs about being anything other than exactly who she was.

  There was a quietness and a focus to her.

  Pure business, but also a kindness.

  She hadn’t just told him what the burn pattern meant. In the middle of a high-priority investigation, with pressures from everyone—including himself—to hurry, she’d taken the time to teach him how to see it. Without condescension. Without judgment.

  Yes, her reputation was well deserved. Actually pretty damn understated. General Nason had said she was the best. Did he have any idea just how good that was?

  Miranda awaited him at the open hatch and they looked down together.

  “I’ll go first,” he volunteered. It was at least an eight-foot drop. He found a smooth edge that hadn’t been damaged and lowered himself down, then dropped the last foot or so. No twinge in his hip. “Okay, you next.”

  Miranda was agile and was dangling by her hands a moment later.

  He wrapped his hands around her waist. “I’ve got you.”

  She let go and he settled her on her feet. It took a conscious effort to release her.

  His ex had been a solid woman, not heavy, just solid. An Army nurse he’d married before his shattered hip, who had moved on to women a few years after. They got together for drinks and a meal when their billets overlapped, which wasn’t often. No animosity, and only the slightest lingering heat. He’d married her because he liked her so much; still did.

  Compared to her, Miranda felt almost magical or mythic or one of those m-words. Maybe some crazy cross between the kindergarten
teacher that every kid had a crush on and a supercomputer.

  Jon felt slightly giddy in her presence and followed to see what she’d unravel next.

  The ceiling of the crew compartment, now their floor, was a jumble of detritus.

  Forward in the cockpit, the debris lay light enough for the ceiling to be well exposed. Manuals and checklists. A couple of plastic coffee mugs that didn’t smell of alcohol, but Miranda bagged them anyway.

  A few random items, the type of collectibles that pilots who served primarily in a single aircraft accumulated. A snow globe of the Australian Outback that had a red rock planted into the bottom sand and fine red dust when it was shaken. A Hawaiian hula skirt, leaving him to wonder what the woman who’d worn it onto the plane had been wearing when she left. But generally the cockpit was orderly.

  Much of the glass had broken out of the windows.

  “It doesn’t appear to have been blown outward. Some of it landed inside the cockpit.” Miranda shone a flashlight on a small pile of it spilled across the ceiling.

  He looked up at the chairs.

  Notes recorded where each of the four bodies had been removed by the search-and-rescue teams.

  Jon read out the tags. Each had some version of “Beat to death by the crash.” Snapped neck, complete blood loss due to severed arm, another snapped neck, and face caved in by hitting the engineer’s console with immense force—he could still see the brown smear of dried blood there.

  “That’s four of her six.” Jon finished reading the details of the last one.

  “Who said six?”

  “Elayne Kasprak. She said there were six crewmembers on this flight.”

  Miranda just looked at him blankly.

  “The cute little blonde?”

  Still nothing.

  “The Antonov representative?”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  Apparently that was the only thing Miranda had decided that she needed to know about the woman and hadn’t retained anything else about her.

  Gods but she was funny.

  19

  Mike and Elayne were having problems reaching the voice and data black boxes through the tangle of wreckage, so Holly sent Jeremy to help.

  With the three of them safely occupied back at the tail, Holly clambered out of the wreck and hurried forward to where the crew section lay on the runway.

  The smashed-out windshield was at eye level. She arrived just in time to see Miranda and Major Swift moving out of the cockpit toward the plane’s crew quarters. His hand on the small of her back as if guiding or steadying her.

  Holly knew from experience that Miranda was very surefooted and didn’t need either. But Swift was doing it anyway.

  She found a spot clear of glass and vaulted up into the cockpit.

  Landing with her back on both the circuit breaker panel and the sharp knobs of the radios, which would have been above the pilots’ heads, hurt. She lay there for a moment, gazing up at the engine throttles of the control cluster wondering if she’d broken anything or if it was just pain.

  The latter.

  She rolled and clambered to her feet just as Miranda remarked, “The cockpit door is strongly bowed from rear to front—but evenly. And it still swings properly. Evidence that it was closed and latched during the explosion. The door held, supported by the frame all around. The pilots may not have even known about the disaster unfolding behind them.”

  “I see that,” Swift was taking notes.

  It suddenly all looked so innocent and Holly felt like a fool for worrying. What was so goddamn wrong with Miranda liking someone anyway? It wasn’t as if he was coming onto Holly herself?

  Swift acknowledged her presence with a friendly wave; Miranda didn’t at all. Which was no surprise. She was in investigation mode.

  Their dialog continued as they probed back into the crew section.

  This was completely different.

  Where the cockpit had been disorderly and a little bloody, there hadn’t been any major damage. The instruments were mostly intact in the console, the crew seats and the carpet were still seat- and carpet-colored.

  In the crew compartment, the air was so thick that she had to sneeze.

  Carbon and…cooked meat. Probably human.

  She sneezed again but couldn’t quite clear the stench.

  Everything was blackened. The soot—she scraped at it with the toe of her boot to no effect—the char covered every surface.

  “What a devo!” As they moved away from the front windshield, they had to rely completely on their flashlights.

  “Dev-o?”

  “Dev-o-station.”

  “Oh. Yep,” Jon agreed. “It’s the black pit. Like entering the Mines of Moria.” Their flashlights seemed to illuminate nothing.

  “Balrog, anybody?” Holly asked.

  Jon laughed briefly. Miranda simply looked puzzled for a moment.

  “Oh, Tolkien. Book One. The Fellowship of the Ring. Chapter Five. Is that an analogy for this space and the fall of Gandalf at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm? This space is hardly large enough to contain a hidden monster of fire and darkness.”

  “Forget I said anything.”

  “Okay,” and that simply, Miranda apparently did.

  So why couldn’t she forget about her question to Holly about Mike? Worse, why couldn’t Holly forget it herself?

  “A lot of debris here,” Swift read into a pocket recorder, though he appeared to be laughing at her.

  She gave him the finger and he returned the gesture with an easy smile as he continued narrating.

  Damn it! She didn’t want to like him.

  “The kitchen stayed surprisingly secure, but past that there are seat cushions, luggage, and so on. As there were four flight crew bodies up forward, we should find two loadmasters back here. The Antonov cargo bay is unpressurized during flight, so they should be here.”

  Holly moved past Miranda, past the lounge area, and back into the rearmost area where the bunks were.

  A numbered yellow card was glaringly bright against the infinite black. She read the details.

  “Severe burns. To the point of major flesh loss.”

  “That’s one,” apparently Major Swift wasn’t squeamish, which earned him another point. “Where’s the other?”

  “The other what?” Miranda was squatting at the sole source of outside light, a half-meter hole in the rear bulkhead.

  “The other body, Miranda,” Holly said softly. “We’re expecting to find two corpses somewhere in this space.”

  “Oh, it’s right there. I saw it when we first arrived.” She pointed behind her without bothering to turn to inspect it.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” Jon moved up beside Holly. With the power of both of their flashlights, they were able to make out the smashed remains of a skeleton—bits of white bone showing through the char. The rescue teams had missed it.

  Miranda didn’t answer, so Holly did for her. Partly to see how he’d react, partly so that he didn’t distract Miranda from whatever she was inspecting so carefully.

  “She thinks of a crash in spheres, layers. Outside to in. Weather, terrain, outer edge of debris, the debris itself, and so on. Her final layer is people. Don’t mix up the layers, it confuses her.”

  “But she skipped the debris field this time. How did she do that?”

  He didn’t ask why, but how.

  Holly wished she could see more of Swift’s face without shining a flashlight directly into his eyes. He’d gotten it exactly right.

  “Partly because you and Drake pushed. And partly because she and I talked it through and, for reasons I can’t begin to understand, she decided to trust Mike.”

  “And you don’t?”

  Holly could really do without the hard questions.

  20

  Miranda waited to hear the answer.

  But Holly didn’t speak.

  Was there a reason she didn’t trust Mike?

  Was it because of the sleeping together ques
tion? Or something else? She’d said something about the engineer from Antonov. Miranda had very little impression of that person. She would be a source of information when Miranda was ready for that—but she wasn’t yet. Until then, Miranda had seen no point in further analysis of the engineer’s information.

  Closing her eyes to block out the damage that was before her, she tried to picture the woman.

  Elayne.

  Her own height.

  Blonde?

  Walking arm-in-arm with Mike.

  Oh. That’s what Holly had said about Mike. Any bets on how long it takes him to get her in bed? The answer is: not long. I won’t be another notch on his belt. I want my lovers to at least pretend I’m human. Maybe even special.

  Yes. Holly was very smart. Miranda wanted to feel special too.

  A hand rested on her shoulder. She knew it was Holly’s by the firmness of the contact.

  “What have we got here, boss?”

  Miranda opened her eyes and the jagged hole through the rear bulkhead was once again before her.

  “This is point of origin.”

  “It’s what? That can’t be right.” Jon pushed in beside Holly with none of the reserve she’d expect from an Air Force major.

  “You don’t believe me? What evidence do you have supporting an alternate point of origin?”

  Holly smirked at Jon for reasons that were unclear. “Need evidence, mate. Not just some theory.”

  “There was an explosion of the armament at one of the helicopters.” Jon stated it as if it was an answer unto itself.

  Miranda had already been over this with him. Would she have to repeat herself?

  “Hold it. That explosion was caused by a preceding fire.”

  Miranda nodded for him to continue.

  “For that fire to be big enough, it wasn’t electrical. It had to be fuel-driven.”

  Holly was watching him with an odd look on her face. As much as Miranda hated conjecture, she had little choice when attempting to interpret human expression. Perhaps…surprise?

  “And for there to be a fuel fire, a major one, there had to be a major fuel leak—inside the plane. If it was from the wings, most of the heat would have been outside. It must have been a rupture in the central fuel tank. But what could cause that?”