From the departing cart, Holly twisted around to face them. Jeremy didn’t know how to interpret whatever her sharp look was meant to communicate.
He turned his attention back to Taz as they strolled toward the house no faster than the family of deer now grazing along the far side of the runway.
“You could leave whenever you want to.”
“I don’t know how to fly.”
“I thought everyone in the Air Force could fly.”
Taz just shook her head. “It’s called being an administrative assistant. I spent a lot of time on planes as a passenger. I spent even more time talking about them—nineteen years’ worth. But I never learned to fly.”
“Well, if you need to leave, I’m sure Mike would be glad to fly you.”
“I bet not.”
Jeremy didn’t get why, but she seemed pretty certain of that.
“Well, there’s a boathouse down at that end of Miranda’s island,” he pointed past the main house just as the interior lights came on. “Not that I’ve ever been inside, but there must be something there. Knowing Miranda, it’s probably pretty nice.”
He gazed in that direction, but he knew less about boats than almost anything. Mike or Holly would know, of course. They were the sort of people who knew things like that. And Miranda, of course, because she knew about everything.
“I’d be glad to fly you, if I could fly.” If you wanted to leave. He kept the last thought to himself because it hurt too much to think she might want to.
“What? Mr. Super Geek doesn’t fly?”
“No. I might be able to fake it, I used to be good at several of the flying sim games but…” He looked more closely at her face. “You’re teasing me?”
Taz burst out laughing. “I’m sorry. There’s a name for what you are. It’s a Navy term rather than Air Force, so two apologies, but you’re a total gudgeon.”
“A…”
“It’s a small fish that will swallow almost anything with a hook through it.”
“Oh.” He could feel the heat on his cheeks. Why was she even wasting time talking to him if he was as useless as a small fish?
Taz sobered. “Sorry, I’ve never had many dealings with civilians. Air Force personnel and defense contractors were all I ever met before six months ago.”
“What changed?”
Taz just looked up at him. He’d forgotten how dark her wide eyes were. If there was an answer to his question, it was hidden in depths he didn’t begin to understand.
Finally she looked away. “Let’s talk about something else.”
“Okay, like what?”
“Like why you’re here and not in DC.”
“Why would I be in DC? I was there for the NTSB Academy. I went to college at MIT and Princeton. But I haven’t been back there much.”
“Then what were you doing on the Ghostrider at Andrews Air Force Base that day?”
Jeremy wondered how different his life would be if he hadn’t been there. Would he still be the naively excitable geek? The mascot kid of the team?
In the last six months, it felt as if he was a different person. He understood…he wasn’t sure what. But he understood whatever “it” was now, which old Jeremy wouldn’t have.
“We were trying to stop you from getting that plane.”
“Oh, how did that work out for you?” This time he was sure it was a tease.
“Pretty well, actually.”
“How’s that?”
He liked surprising her.
“I met you.”
Taz groaned as they circled around the garden.
“Jeremy, didn’t we already discuss that was probably the worst thing that could ever happen to you?”
“I’m sorry,” Jeremy held open the door for her.
“For what?” She stopped on the threshold and the evening shadows made her face even more mysterious.
“I’m still going to think that, other than working for Miranda, you’re the very best thing that ever happened to me.”
Taz stared at him with those fathomless eyes for another long moment.
Then she hung her head enough that her long hair covered her face and turned to step inside.
Why?
What had he said wrong this time?
“You okay, buddy? Or are you just gonna stand there all night holding open the door?”
Jeremy looked up at Mike. He had a wooden bowl full of produce fresh-picked from Miranda’s garden.
“The second one, I think.”
“Aw shit.” Mike looped an arm over his shoulders and led him inside.
The door shut solidly behind him.
Why did Taz see everything as a trap?
25
Zhang Ru always marveled at US airports.
Not the security, that made him want to laugh, but the airports themselves.
Like all of the others, SeaTac was spotlessly clean. The technology might be a couple generations behind China’s major airports, but the frequency and clarity of the information they posted for anyone to see was very impressive. Even finding the proper flight in all but the largest Chinese airports required the services of a Buddhist witch doctor and mystic charm amulets. The military bases were beyond arcane. No one trusted anyone, especially not the State.
“So few security cameras compared to home,” Chen Mei-Li whispered at his elbow.
“Yes, no one to notice that they just allowed a senior member of the Central Military Commission through Seattle customs.” Of course, his passport was under a completely different and scrupulously maintained name. A lowly Army sergeant, who looked enough like him to pass, traveled several times a year to give the identity a well-heeled tourist record in the world’s security systems.
Mei-Li, who never misplayed a role, slipped her hand about his elbow but she trailed behind by just a quarter-step as would be proper for a favored niece being led by her favorite uncle. The light touch evoked the memory of her lithe former-gymnast’s body. It gave him an arousal despite the two armed airport security who’d just walked by with M4 rifles.
But they continued on their way. By other people’s reactions, this was an unusual sight, causing many to flinch in surprise. The lack of an armed guard in easy sight would be unusual in China.
He looked at Mei-Li’s bright fresh face. Maybe he’d better refer to her as grandniece.
Ru hated getting old. He was careful to spend less time looking in the mirror than he once had. Though his new wife, Daiyu, just twelve years Mei-Li’s senior, did a fine job servicing him in ways that made him feel very youthful. She never fired his blood the way an artist like Mei-Li had, but that was a gate he was no longer allowed to plunder.
Without saying a word out of place, Mei-Li had made that one of the prices of aiding his advancement onto the CMC—a price he’d gladly have paid a thousand times. That didn’t mean he didn’t still fantasize about her whenever Daiyu was performing her duties.
His former mistress had soon made it clear that her own choices were going to be quite different—and surprising.
He’d considered having a video made of Mei-Li and her lover—the girls were both great beauties—but he didn’t dare cross Chang Mui’s grandfather. Ru knew that his every move was only at the sufferance of the CMC’s vice-chairmen. Li Zuocheng had placed him on the CMC and could sweep him aside any time he chose…for now.
But the thought of the two girls together…
He sighed. One day it would be their world, but not until he was done having his piece of it.
Sometimes it seemed that the power would never be his to wield. Of course, even the all-powerful President had to keep the seven members of the CMC happy—all power had a price. But, oh, what a seat to possess. It made him hard all over again just thinking about that.
This trip should bring it one step closer to that.
“To walk through an American airport, unnoted, that is a power, too.”
Mei-Li often read his thoughts. It was one of her gifts.
Yes, Mei-Li and her lover Mui had plans of their own. As long as they didn’t conflict with his, he’d allow them. Not that he knew what they were this time. That’s why he’d insisted on escorting her to the beginning of school himself, to see what he could uncover.
Of course, visiting the University of Washington was only one of his own many purposes for this trip.
26
“Am I good? Or am I good?”
Actually Drake was entirely too pleased with himself to be the four-star general Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Though he was amazingly good, but it wasn’t the sort of thing she’d be silly enough to admit to her already full-of-himself husband.
“Just look at it all!” he waved a hand toward the operations floor of the largest building in the world. This was where Boeing was building the last of the 747s, as well as the 767, 777, and the 787 Dreamliner—all under a single roof.
The largest building in the world was…breathtaking.
For their delayed honeymoon, he hadn’t taken her to some tropical beach and tried to convince her to wear a bikini. Which was so completely not her.
Instead, he’d led them on a whirlwind flight-tour of the country. They strolled through aviation museums, visited launch sites at Canaveral and Vandenberg (both of which she knew well but Drake didn’t), and visited Houston, JPL, and others. Along the way they’d visited the Big Five—the major satellite manufacturers of the nation—as well as several of the newer, edgier ones.
As she was the Director of the National Reconnaissance Office, and having come up through the launch side of NRO operations (rather than the analytic or political divisions), he couldn’t have picked a better itinerary.
Their two-week tour was ending but it wasn’t over yet.
“Let’s never stop.”
And Drake just grinned. “Works for me. I’m already past mandatory retirement if the President hadn’t extended my appointment.” Of course he knew he’d gotten her from the first day, no matter how she’d tried to pretend otherwise.
“My, you are old.”
“No, I just started young and—”
“Never grew up. I know, dear.” He’d completed his thirty-five years maximum service, then been extended as the chief of staff of the Army under one President, and as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs under President Roy Cole.
“There’s no way you can be blasé about this,” he was doing a much better job than she was ignoring the Boeing staffers who were hovering nearby. It had happened at every site they visited, and she still wasn’t used to it.
“You forget, I flew combat jets long before I joined the NRO. Now my job is space. These civilian things? Feh.” Not that she’d have given up a single second of the day. They’d first played civilian and done the public tour. Drake had also lined up the plant manager for the personal tour afterward, letting them actually walk each manufacturing line.
The last handful of 747s to ever be built were massive rivet projects. A million holes, literally, were drilled in aluminum, every tiny curl vacuumed up, and then a rivet slipped in and set. It began its life as little more than preformed panels and frames, thousands of components, and bundles built of mile upon mile of wire.
The building sprawled so wide that four complete jets could be lined up nose-to-tail. Doors on one side allowed the arrival of parts and subassemblies. At the far side, hangar-sized doors rolled aside, and newly manufactured jets rolled out ready for a paint job and their acceptance flight.
In the middle bays of the building, the 757s and 777s swept through with a studied ease—sliding along the assembly line as if it was the most natural thing in the world for three million parts to achieve final assembly in a matter of days.
At the far end of the massive operation, the silence was startling.
The 787 was the pinnacle of composite manufacturing. Large, pre-built sections arrived from all over the world. Inside the building, they were temperature equalized before liquid-cooled drills slipped almost silently through the overlaps of the fresh-joined sections. Bolts threaded cockpit, fuselage, tail, and wings securely into a single plane. It also had thirty percent fewer parts than the smaller 767 and a third as many as a 747.
The wiring harness was a single, massive snake that could be installed in two days.
Lizzy’s favorite aspect was that that the whole operation was constantly moving, just under two inches per minute. It moved a quarter of a plane length every eight hours along the assembly line. Everything moved in synchronized harmony. Not just the assemblies, but the machines to connect them, the walkways to enter the planes, even toolkits trundled along with the plane. Engineers sat at workstations to either side of the moving line to answer questions and carry out inspections on their phase of the operation.
An efficient and implacable pace that was amazing to see and produced a finished jet liner in the time it took to travel just four lengths across the width of the building.
Looking down from the high walkway, she could almost picture a more efficient methodology for procuring, launching, and controlling satellites. But she was too happy to focus on that right now.
“So, what are your master plans after this?”
He scooped her against him. He was only rarely demonstrative around DC, but she could get to like this freer, more relaxed version of Drake very much.
“We’re going to take a dinner cruise along the Seattle waterfront, then I’m going to take you to a lovely historic hotel and make wild passionate love to you.”
“I like that part of your agenda. And tomorrow?”
“And tomorrow?” He held a finger to his lips. “Secret. I’ve got a special treat for you.”
27
Taz didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or scream.
Nothing was making sense.
Mike, who she’d battered to the Ghostrider’s deck, then threatened to kill in order to force Jeremy’s hand, should be one of the most guarded about her. Instead, when he’d found out about her love of food, he’d recruited her as his sous-chef.
Taz had been peripherally aware of the others throughout the dinner prep.
Holly’s eyes were tracking her every time she looked up. The woman wore a serious case of pissed like a shearling coat on a hot summer’s day, ready to shed it all over Taz if she even breathed wrong around Jeremy.
Jeremy was sitting beside Miranda as they worked over details of the Chinook’s crash on a computer screen.
Andi and Jon appeared to be on the verge of battle about Army versus Air Force. Then she finally heard Black Knights and Falcons, and it began to make sense. They were arguing football. Army was finally beating Navy, but the Falcons were still a league above, even if Andi wouldn’t admit it.
That was aside from the bias instilled in every single Air Force officer, competing to be the most “up” on their service’s team. There would never be a major military operation scheduled by the Pentagon that would conflict with watching a Falcons game.
An Army-Air Force game was just an invitation for an enemy attack, because no one at the Pentagon would be paying attention to anything else.
And this year? She didn’t even know how the lineup had changed, never mind the preseason results. That was very strange.
Miranda and Jeremy were hunched over a computer the entire time.
When she went around, pouring what Mike called “a very respectable Oregon Pinot Noir,” they’d still been working on modeling the poor Chinook’s final flight. As she delivered plates of her contribution of bacon-wrapped Jalapeño poppers stuffed with smoked salmon cream cheese, they were working equally intensely on some card game.
But Mike was the master of the meal, and he chatted happily with her about favorite places to eat as they cooked.
He grilled a great slab of salmon in a butter-hazelnut-rosemary sauce. Enhanced that with fresh-dug new potato
es dressed with a simple sun-dried tomato pesto and an Asian cucumber-shallot salad. She threw together a peach-mint gelato and got it into the freezer in time to be ready for dessert.
The ingredients were so fresh—only the salmon had been frozen—that the flavors needed little additional work. She was in food heaven.
So, apparently, was everyone else by the amount they consumed around the big dinner table. It was late by the time they finished the meal.
But they didn’t all just drift off to bed.
Instead, they lingered long after the herbal teas and second helpings of gelato were consumed.
Jeremy pulled out a deck of cards and tossed it to Mike, “Let’s try these.”
Mike dropped it faceup on the table and did a very neat spread with a simple flick of his wrist.
Aircraft.
The suits were easy to spot. Spades were combat aircraft, clubs were transport planes, and diamonds as rotorcraft made sense due to their pointed rotor blades as viewed from above. The hearts bothered her for a moment until she realized they were all historical, and some of the coolest planes of all.
“What in the world is the Spruce Goose doing in here?” She plucked the card from the pack and held it up. “It’s one-and-only flight was just seven times longer than the Wright Flyer’s fourth flight. Super sad!” She spun it off into the fireplace. That it wasn’t lit on this warm summer evening took away some of the drama of the gesture.
“But it’s the largest plane of its era. It’s wingspan wasn’t superseded until the Stratolaunch in 2019. That’s six decades later!” Jeremy retrieved the card and dusted off a bit of ash.
“By wingspan, sure. But the Convair B-36 bomber is older, could carry more, and they built almost four hundred of those, not one.”
“But I always liked this plane. You know it’s in a museum just south of here in the middle of an Oregon hayfield.” Jeremy sighed, then tucked it carefully into his pocket rather than returning it to the pack.
Chinook Page 8
