White Top

by M. L. Buchman

  For the last twenty-five years, she’d been the island’s queen and sole occupant. Other than her National Transportation Safety Board’s air-crash investigation team, visitors were rare as well.

  Yesterday, the team’s five other members had flown up to the island for a spring picnic. And though they’d stayed up late by the campfire, she’d woken with the sunrise and gone for her walk.

  The island was divided in half the long way. To the west was a long strip of meadowlands. To the east, an equally narrow strip of cool conifer forest. In between, along the narrow crest, was her house, airplane hangar, and grass runway.

  The perimeter trail ran six miles around it all and let her check in with her subjects. No throne room where they must come to vow allegiance. Instead they greeted her as she walked among them. Some special few had names, and often came to her looking for treats of an apple or a sugar cube, but most of them lived their own happy lives. Her favorites were the jesters—the myriad nameless Black-capped Chickadees who always perched on her fingertips whenever she dug a handful of black oil sunflower seeds out of her pocket.

  Today, of course, none of them would come to greet her. She wasn’t alone this morning.

  As she’d left the house, Holly had asked if she could join in. And since her return from nearly dying in a plane crash, wherever Holly went, Mike was sure to be close behind.

  Miranda liked them both, but would miss the company of her loyal subjects. They were so much less complicated than people. And usually happier.

  The three of them had walked the first mile in silence. Was it companionable? Awkward? Were they waiting for her as hostess to speak first?

  She did her best to set all that aside. She knew it was just her autism springing to the fore. Knowing that she couldn’t easily read social situations made her worry about them much more than was justified. Worse, the more she worried about them, the more her fears of not fitting in, because she was on the autism spectrum, rose. And that acted like a heterodyne in a negative feedback loop without an overload regulator. Where was a good capacitor for her thoughts when she needed one? If only—

  “This is such a beautiful place, Miranda.” Mike spoke up. “Thanks so much for letting us come up here as often as you do.”

  “You’re welcome.” Miranda latched onto the rote phrase to dial down her own inner whirlwind.

  “It’s not half bad,” Holly agreed. Her Australian accent was thick enough for Miranda to know that she was teasing. When her accent cleared, that’s when she was dead serious.

  “Not half bad at all,” Miranda matched her and received a smile, meaning she’d read it right.

  A few of the lambs popped their heads up out of the grass. The adults were tall enough to have seen them coming, but the newborns were hidden even in the lower grasses of spring. The herd favored the north end of the island where the growth was particularly lush.

  The lambs watched the human intruders for several seconds before letting out sharp, panicked bleats. As soon as the adults answered, the offspring bounded to their sides. The mothers knew her and went back to eating.

  “How long until they stop needing their moms?” Mike nodded back toward the lambs as they arced over the northern tip of the island and entered the cool woods.

  “They’ll stay close for two or three months. Then they’re off on their own.”

  “So Jeremy must be a late bloomer.”

  Miranda looked to Holly, but her accent was gone. “What’s he supposed to bloom into?”

  Holly looked…uncomfortable? She was suddenly very interested in the surrounding trees, which was something Miranda knew she did herself to avoid having to look directly at others. She looked around herself but couldn’t imagine what here would make a former Special Operations Forces soldier uncomfortable.

  “Holly?”

  It was Mike who answered. “We’ve been talking about it a bit between ourselves. It’s time for you to let Jeremy run an investigation.”

  “But he’s not an investigator-in-charge.”

  Holly took her arm and brought her to a stop. “No, but if he’s ever going measure up—”

  “He’s five-foot-eight; that’s four inches taller than I am.”

  Holly smiled, then started again without explaining her smile, “If he’s ever going to be an IIC, he needs to fail a few times.”

  “Fail? Why would he fail?”

  “Because he’s not ready.”

  Miranda couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Jeremy Trahn knew almost as much about aircraft as she did. His analyses were so detailed that she was often hard pressed to find suggestions for improvements. He—

  “Can you just trust me that he isn’t ready?”

  She looked most of the way up to Holly’s face. Finally stopped at her lips. Holly was six inches taller than her own five-four, so it was a comfortable angle—and she didn’t have to try the difficult challenge of looking at her eyes.

  Believe that Jeremy Trahn could be anything less than excellent?

  She shook her head.

  “I’m sorry, Holly. But he’s nearly as good as I am. And you are always telling me I’m the best.”

  “No, Miranda. Everyone, from the President of your United States of America on down, tells you that you’re the best—because it’s true. But think back to the day we met. What was happening the moment before I arrived?”

  “A one-star general was threatening to shoot me and appeared to be sincere in that declaration.”

  “What do you think would have happened if I hadn’t shown up?”

  Miranda thought back to the crashed C-130 Hercules cargo plane deep in the top-secret area of Groom Lake, Nevada. The heat had been oppressive and the general had been so angry that the gun barrel had actually been shaking less than a meter from her face.

  Holly had done…something. Something she’d never understood. Standing barehanded, she’d threatened the general with severe bodily harm and, curiously, an immense amount of paperwork if he shot either of them. She’d somehow made it okay. At least okay enough to have him put away his sidearm rather than shooting her.

  Mike had been there too. He’d taken the general aside and had even convinced him to cooperate—at least briefly.

  Miranda never understood people, but she knew that, as her Human Factors expert, Mike understood them better than anyone she’d ever met.

  “Mike?” Holly was a warrior, but he was the human factors specialist. He’d understand how skilled Jeremy was. “I can’t believe that Jeremy would fail if he’s put in charge of an investigation.”

  “He’d fail spectacularly!” Mike laughed aloud, eliciting more bleats from the lambs.

  She hadn’t meant it as a joke. They resumed their walk to get well clear of the herd.

  “Told ya, mate,” Holly’s Australian heritage sounded more clearly. She too thought this was funny.

  “But…why? He understands aircraft and crash-investigation methodologies very, very well.”

  “And, Miranda,” Mike spoke more gently, “he’s as clueless about people as you are.”

  “But…” Miranda actually looked up at his face for a moment, but he was serious. “But he’s not an ASD like me.”

  “No. No autism, but he’s an uber-nerd with as much understanding of people as… I can’t think of a good analogy. Unlike you, he has the ability, but zero skill. In that, he’s actually less skilled than you because you struggle so hard to learn it.”

  “That makes no sense. He has all of the skills needed to examine a crash.”

  “Because, gal-pal mine,” Holly’s Strine accent grew broader—a sure sign that she was very amused (an easily mapped correlative curve of accent thickness and humor), “because we don’t want some general shooting him in the arse.”

  She never thought about that aspect of an investigation. Then she looked up at Holly and Mike. And…they were the reason that she didn’t have to think about such things.

  Holly might be her structural specialist, bu
t she understood people’s motivations—at least those who wanted to attack her. Mike’s skills in human psychology let him keep everyone calm as well as digging out answers that people would prefer to keep hidden. She was safer for having both of them present at site investigations.

  But there was one more thing.

  “Why should I let him fail? We have a responsibility to investigate and solve every crash.”

  “We’ll all be his safety net,” Mike nodded to indicate the three of them. “He’ll find the answer, because he is that good. But we need to open his eyes about the necessary skills to run a team: interpersonal skills, delegation skills, and project management to name a few.”

  “What about me?”

  “Well, Miranda, you should play the slightly dumb assistant. Don’t do anything unless he directly asks you to.”

  “No, I mean shouldn’t I learn to run a team as well.”

  Mike opened his mouth, then closed it again, squinting at the ground.

  Miranda pulled out her personal notebook and checked the emoticon page Mike had given her. Not angry—his cheeks weren’t flushed. Maybe—

  Holly pointed at “puzzled,” which seemed to fit.

  “Thank you,” she tucked away her notebook.

  “Miranda,” Holly took both her shoulders and faced her directly.

  Miranda shifted her focus to Holly’s left ear just showing from under her long blonde hair.

  “You do great!”

  “But you said that General Harrington—”

  “You make us want to work with you. I can’t begin to tell you how rare a gift that is. We take care of managing strangers because you don’t have any skill at doing that.”

  Miranda huffed out a breath. “Well, why didn’t you say that’s what you meant? I knew that.”

  Holly laughed. “All of us do, except Jeremy. He thinks that you and he can run a team just fine on your own. He needs to learn that isn’t true.”

  Miranda understood now.

  She turned away and pulled out a handful of sunflower seeds, cupping them in her hand. In moments, the birds she’d heard singing their question at her came to eat. They took turns perching on her upcurved fingertips long enough to grab a seed and go.

  When she was alone, they’d often sit and eat several before spooking. But not with Holly and Mike so close by. Even briefly, their tiny claws gave such happy little squeezes on her fingertips as they dipped for seeds that she could do this for hours.

  She supposed that being a team leader was a skill that Jeremy should learn.

  It was hard to imagine that they shared an incompetence, but with the others’ insistence, she was forced to believe them.

  Maybe she’d watch and take notes, then she could try it herself.

  One of the bravest of the airborne subjects took the mad risk of remaining perched with its tiny claws clamped about one of her fingers while it ate one seed. As it reached for another, her phone began to sound like a jet engine spinning up.

  The chickadee didn’t waste an instant, even to look panicked—it was simply gone so fast that it might as well have evaporated. She tossed the remaining seeds widely around her, hoping that the spooked bird would get at least his second seed.

  Then she answered the phone. “This is Miranda Chase. This is actually her, not a recording of her.”

  At Jill’s laugh of greeting, she knew there was a crash.

  4

  Andi Wu was half awake, maybe even three-quarters.

  If she faceplanted in the bowl of oatmeal on the table, perhaps she’d hit seven-eighths. As usual, she was the last one up. Miranda, Mike, and Holly were nowhere to be found, but their walking boots were missing from the mudroom. Taz and Jeremy had just been leaving for a morning run as she’d stumbled down the stairs.

  What was wrong with morning people? For a decade as a helicopter pilot with the US Army’s Night Stalkers helicopter regiment, she’d lived in a flipped-clock world. “Death waits in the dark,” was one of their mottos for a reason; they lived and flew at night. Vampire jokes abounded inside the regiment. She could make up a rocking short-Chinese-woman-vampire story when she was in the mood.

  Though she’d been out for most of a year, being on Miranda’s team was still screwing with her circadian rhythm.

  And Miranda was messing with her mind.

  She finished her oatmeal, washed the bowl, and placed it precisely where Miranda liked bowls to be stacked. She was very particular about her kitchen layout and Andi did her best to accommodate that.

  Pulling on her own shoes and shrugging into a jacket, she walked up to the island’s midfield hangar. Circling around a pair of sheep that were almost as tall as her own five-two, she opened the people-sized door and went inside.

  The early morning light shone through a high window and illuminated the aircraft inside as if she was in some shadowy fairy tale.

  For months she’d been expecting to be shed from the team. Sure, she knew rotorcraft cold, but she wasn’t a mechanic. Between Jeremy and Miranda, they knew more about how helicopters were built than she’d realized there was to know.

  Only on the rare occasions when the team was investigating a helicopter crash did she feel as if she belonged. But most of their work was in fixed-wing aircraft. She knew almost nothing about those. Sure, she spoke “pilot” better than anyone else on the team, even Miranda, but it wasn’t that significant a role.

  Most of the time, she hung with Miranda, helping where she could—and waiting for the axe to fall.

  But it kept aloft.

  And now this!

  There was a brand-new aircraft in the hanger.

  Miranda’s old four-seater Mooney M20V prop plane and the Cessna M2 bizjet that the manufacturer had given Miranda were parked at the Tacoma office.

  This hangar currently held only two aircraft at the moment.

  Miranda’s Korean War era F-86 Sabrejet always drew the eye. Even with the guns and bombs removed, the silver jet still looked utterly lethal. Andi had always been a whirlybird gal, but to go winging around the country at almost the speed of sound in an antique solo jet did sound pretty freaking awesome.

  It was the other aircraft that had her stumped.

  It was an MD 902 Explorer helicopter.

  Six seats including the pilot.

  Seven million dollars of aircraft.

  And Miranda had simply bought it. That she was hugely wealthy was a given, so that wasn’t what was confusing Andi.

  It was that Miranda couldn’t fly it.

  Miranda insisted that she’d bought it because she wanted to learn more about rotorcraft and it was very convenient for transporting the team locally.

  She’d bought it the week after Andi had been recertified for flight—by FAA docs who obviously thought PTSD was some kind of…phase. She might test fine, but they weren’t inside her head.

  Miranda hadn’t leased it either, she’d bought it outright.

  And Andi was the team’s only rotorcraft pilot.

  Or so they’d thought until Holly had revealed she’d picked up a helo license when she was in the SASR—Australia’s elite special operations team.

  Miranda had bought it for Andi to use. As if Miranda expected her to have a long-term place on the team.

  Or had it been some sort of twisted present? A bribe to make her…what?

  Andi brushed a hand over its sleek silver-and-blue paint job.

  Trying to pin a nefarious motive on Miranda simply didn’t hold. Her concept of manipulation was very literal, like manipulating a wrench to loosen a bolt. Perhaps, just as she’d insisted, she hadn’t even thought of the gift aspect of it. Miranda’s autism kept her free from those kinds of games.

  Andi rested her forehead against the acrylic panel of the pilot-side door and stared at the seat—her seat.

  Miranda had given her back a piece of her soul and didn’t even know it.

  Was any woman ever that thoughtlessly kind? Certainly none of her past lovers had been. But th
en none of them had been Miranda either.

  She thumped her head against the acrylic.

  Did she finally have a home? A place she belonged…on Miranda’s team?

  Andi closed her eyes and rolled her cheek onto the window.

  Maybe, just maybe she did.

  Even if she didn’t understand why or how…maybe she did.

  The harsh rattle of the main hangar door sliding open startled her.

  The team came streaming in.

  “Let’s go, mate. Got a launch and we’re up.” Holly walked up and dropped Andi’s gear bag to the ground. Then she tugged a yellow Australian Matildas ball cap out of her back pocket and slapped it down onto Andi’s head. “You forgot this.” Then she strode around the bird to toss her own gear in the back, leaving Andi’s bag resting on her toes.

  Even when she’d been a decorated captain in the 160th Night Stalkers, she’d never exuded that kind of confidence.

  “Why are you crying?” Miranda was standing so close that her toes were touching the other side of Andi’s gear bag.

  Andi reached up to touch her fingers to her cheeks, and they came away wet. Hopefully no one else had noticed—which was a stupid thought as Holly had just shoved her favorite women’s soccer team’s hat on Andi’s head.

  “I was crying because...” She searched for some way to tell Miranda how she’d made Andi feel and couldn’t find the words.

  Holly stepped up and shoved the preflight checklist into her hands. “Not at some lazy Sunday barbie, mate.”

  But Miranda was still waiting.

  “They’re happy tears, Miranda. Don’t worry.” And she turned her attention to the checklist.

  At least she hoped that’s what they were. Happy sounded far better that utter, desperate, insurmountable bewilderment.

  5