White Top

by M. L. Buchman

  The clean air that Major Tamatha Jones had been breathing had cleared enough of the poison from her system that she blearily opened her eyes and stared at a pallet of Marie Callender’s frozen Cherry Crunch Pies.

  Thanksgiving! Mom always bought those for the holiday. She looked around for her mom.

  It was her final thought of any kind.

  Her remaining lifespan was most accurately measured in milliseconds.

  The superheated oxygen generator provided the ignition source for the excess hydrogen from the ammonia-methane reaction. For every molecule of hydrogen cyanide generated, there were also six molecules of hydrogen as a waste byproduct.

  Much like the famous Hindenburg disaster, the hydrogen burned in a single fireball, expanding rapidly. The initial shockwave traveled through the length of the six-meter-long cabin in the first one-point-five milliseconds.

  The up-armored Superhawk was stout enough that the pressure inside the cabin increased a hundredfold in the next fourteen-thousandths of a second. All of the occupants’ lungs collapsed from the onslaught.

  It didn’t matter, as they were burned past saving in the same time span.

  At twenty-three milliseconds, the windscreens in front of the two pilots blew outward—fired like acrylic mortars back into the store along their damage path.

  The fire shot out like twin dragons’ flames, igniting everything in its path.

  Jet-A fuel—that had been spilling out in a long trail since a pair of cash registers had punctured one of the tanks—fired off in a blast so near instantaneous that no one had time to shout in alarm.

  Because of the Walmart Supercenter’s lack of windows, the overpressure of this second-stage explosion was mostly contained within the building.

  In the next eight-tenths of second, a third of the store’s occupants had died and the remainder suffered burst eardrums. There was only one avenue of release for the expanding pressure wave. A stream of flame shot several hundred feet out the shattered front entrance like a flamethrower, incinerating most of the people and cars in its path.

  That only released the overpressure of the secondary blast.

  The thermite, burning forty-five hundred degrees hotter than a normal oxygen generator, finally melted free. Because of the angle at which the helicopter had come to rest, the still blazing thermite burned through the side of the hull and dribbled onto the second side sponson fuel tank, melting a large hole.

  Because the fuel was still in a liquid state, it didn’t burst into flame. Instead, the thermite, still burning, passed through the fuel, then spread and burned a larger hole in the bottom of the tank, releasing an additional three-hundred-and-eighty-three gallons of jet fuel into the store—enough to fill nine bathtubs (“Do It Yourself” section by Auto Care) to the rim.

  This fresh supply of highly flammable kerosene-based Jet A fuel flowed back along the helicopter’s damage path, flooding the garden center in a low tsunami.

  It had just reached the store’s supplies of fertilizer when it ignited.

  The third—and final—shock wave, erupting from the improvised fuel-and-fertilizer bomb, was many times more powerful than both of the first two explosions combined.

  The entire roof lifted several feet as the side walls were blown outward in a cloud of concrete-block shrapnel. The roof then collapsed to cover the whole store in twisted steel girders and metal roofing.

  There were no survivors inside the store.

  Outside, over eighty percent of the people in the parking lot were dead—before the wall of flame swept across the vast expanse of cars.

  The closest survivors of the blast were in a car at the outdoor line of a Starbuck’s takeout window five hundred and ten feet away. The rear of Hank and Margo Keller’s car—the trunk filled with their crib, stroller, and boy-blue paint and rollers from Walmart—faced the explosion. The rear windshield had shattered but, as their seatback headrests had limited the shrapnel’s carnage, they would live another six minutes. They died an hour and nine minutes before the search-and-rescue teams located them.

  The nearest unscathed survivors were the crews of the two decoy VH-92A Superhawks, hovering at seven hundred feet over the crater where moments before there had been a sale on pot-bound begonias and bags of weedkiller for that truly beautiful lawn.

  21

  Drake had always been amused that the most important meetings took place in the most unlikely settings. All yesterday had been packed with large meeting venues able to accommodate the members of the Group of Seven along with their legions of advisors and support staff. His own, military leader-to-military leader meetings had seemed little smaller.

  Canada was hosting them in the magnificent Empress hotel—deservedly rated top twenty-one iconic hotels by National Geographic—perched on the waterfront of Victoria Harbor. For over a century, in a city not yet two centuries old, it had dominated the waterfront with luxury and British-style high teas. Even with the G-7 in attendance, the vast three-story lobby had hummed along with a quiet dignity. He’d have to keep this in mind for his and Lizzy’s second anniversary.

  With France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, the US, and the EU in attendance, sixty percent of the world’s wealth sat around the room during the main meetings.

  And as far as he could tell, despite all of those trappings, nothing of any real import had been achieved beyond the President’s speech on the Middle East situation.

  The crux meeting had started as a quiet moment at the back table in the Empress’ library over a post-breakfast coffee. President Cole, he, and Sarah had gathered to talk strategy for the rest of the day’s meetings. The UK Prime Minister and the German Chancellor had each dropped by for a word, joining them with suspiciously little coaxing.

  They’d both waved off their entourages, but before President Cole could wave himself and Sarah off to the side, the questions had begun.

  NATO strategies against aggressor nations like Russia and Turkey. The next trade agreements they were each considering. And most importantly, the security agreements that might come with those trade agreements.

  Sarah was sharp enough to pick up on a tiny nod from President Cole. She broached the topic of Saudi Arabia as an aside. What had been treated as a mere “interesting idea” among world leaders until that moment became an intensely serious discussion.

  Would the US actually be willing to withdraw support from the wild card kingdom? And what would be the side effects across the region? While the UK and Germany were still dependent on Saudi oil, and very aware of the kingdom’s position along the Red Sea that could block the Suez trade route, they too had clearly thought hard about ending any favorable relations.

  The consensus was that the kingdom was a tangled mess that everyone wanted out of—if the US could be counted on to lead a way.

  Drake had been seated with his back to the corner—old 75th Rangers’ habit. To his left, he’d had a view of the harbor with its seaplanes and sailboats, but mostly he was well positioned to admire the high-vaulted room. It barely had enough books to be called a library, but it had stately, comfortable seating and more than enough elegance to fully compensate for the lack.

  It also let him see Agent Rick Danziger hurrying in their direction.

  The head of the Presidential Protection Detail never hurried unless—

  “Excuse me, Mr. President. We need to get you to a secure location immediately.”

  “More secure than this?”

  Other members of the PPD, who had been discreetly in the background, now gathered and lined up as a blockade to the outside view. They weren’t facing the President; they were searching through the glass for any possible threats.

  “Yes sir. Right now.”

  Roy Cole rose to his feet and buttoned his jacket. “Any threat to my fellow leaders?” he nodded toward the prime minister and the chancellor.

  “We…I’m sorry…we don’t know. Vice President Clark Winston’s helicopter went down between Camp David and Washington, DC. Foul
play is suspected.”

  “How is Clark—”

  At Danziger’s grim look, he bit off the question.

  “Morris. Helga.” They’d both pushed to their feet as their own security teams moved closer. He shook each of their hands. “If you’ll excuse me.”

  Drake grabbed Sarah’s arm and got her moving.

  “What?”

  “When the Secret Service is on the move, two steps behind can get you left in Kansas.”

  “Sorry, I’m the National Security Advisor; it’s my first personal security crisis.”

  “Wish I could say the same.” He’d been in the White House for three separate “crashes” as they called a full security clampdown. Once it had included a trip to the PEOC bunker—Presidential Emergency Operations Center—at closer to a run than a jog.

  They were rushed at a brisk walk through a service door in the northeast corner of the library and down a narrow set of stairs. The agents moved as if they’d traveled this way many times before, which perhaps they had in practice.

  At the bottom was a hallway several times warmer than the perfectly air-conditioned rooms above. It smelled of the moist heat of a laundry, the cooking of a variety of cuisines that didn’t mesh terribly well in the thick air, and a lot of human sweat.

  Halfway to the garage, Danziger signaled a halt and the Secret Service grouped so tightly around them that he couldn’t help rubbing shoulders with the President.

  “Shit,” Danziger muttered, then called over his radio, “Confirm that.” After a long pause he swore again.

  “Not exactly what I want to be hearing from the head of your protection detail, Mr. President,” Sarah was keeping her sense of humor, even if her voice cracked against a throat gone dry.

  “Me either,” the President’s voice was grim. “What’s the problem, Rick?”

  Danziger held up a hand for silence, finally responding to his radio before turning to address them.

  “We have a problem, Mr. President. The Marine Two pilot managed a brief transmission prior to going down. It seems that she—”

  “Major Tamatha Jones. God damn it!” The President looked beyond pissed and well into soldier-furious.

  Drake liked the President a great deal, but this side of him was something Drake appreciated down to the core of his being. The President cared about nothing more than his team—once a soldier, always a soldier.

  Sarah looked puzzled. She might be smart as hell, but she’d never served and wouldn’t—couldn’t—ever understand how important a team was to a soldier.

  “She had to engage the emergency oxygen generation system due to smoke from a suspicious fire. It is possible that the system had been tampered with and released a poison that killed everyone aboard.”

  “You still haven’t told me the problem.” He spoke with a snap of command.

  “The problem, Mr. President, is that particular emergency air system isn’t just on the HMX-1 helos. We use the same systems aboard the Beast limousine and Air Force One. Marine Two’s engagement of their system apparently killed them. I can’t take the same risk with you until we’ve pulled and vetted all of the systems.”

  “Then don’t use the emergency air systems.”

  “And if they attack with gas, we’ll have to. Right now I don’t have any vehicles I can trust. You’re at a known location with a possible terrorist attack against our highest levels of government.”

  There was a grim silence broken only by the rattling wheel on a laundry cart that someone was hustling along the far end of the hallway.

  Danziger held his wrist up to his mouth again and keyed his radio. “Come on people, work the problem. I need safe transport in sixty seconds.”

  All in all, Drake would much rather still be sitting upstairs in the library, enjoying the view out the window of—

  He turned to Danziger and couldn’t help smiling. “Is it okay if I find a solution before sixty seconds is up?”

  Sarah gave an exasperated laugh of confusion.

  Danziger’s look said it had better be damned good.

  President Cole only blinked once before he smiled.

  Pretty quick for a former Green Beret.

  22

  “This is your grand plan?” Sarah teased him when he explained it.

  Danziger had looked thoughtful for approximately five seconds, then he’d gotten them all on the move.

  “In a small way.”

  They proceeded to the lobby gift shop and bought a variety of ball caps and jackets—the Empress was not the sort of place that sold hoodies. It was warm enough to go without jackets, but the Secret Service had to cover their shoulder harnesses. Their suit jackets were given to housekeeping to include in their respective luggage whenever it was able to catch up with them, and replaced with tweeds and woolens from the Empress.

  The worst problem was the briefcase with the nuclear football. The colonel responsible for keeping it close to the President finally stuffed it in a plastic shopping bag that was suspiciously large and heavy, but that couldn’t be helped.

  Then Danziger led them out the front door of the Empress and straight down to the seaside quay. They gathered at the end of a floating pier where the next step would plunge them into Victoria Harbor.

  “Small, but in a fun way,” Drake joked.

  “You have a strange idea of fun.”

  “All work and no play makes Sarah a dull girl. My Lizzy taught me that.”

  “That I’m dull?” Sarah shot right back.

  “No, you’re doing that on your own,” he did his best to deliver that with a straight face. “It took the head of the National Reconnaissance Office to teach me how to have fun.”

  “Is that why you married her?”

  “Only one of many reasons.”

  “Lucky bastard,” Sarah muttered at him. He figured this wasn’t the best time to point out that she had lousy taste in men. Her file spoke to two ex-husbands, both complete jerks.

  At the end of the pier, a pocket-sized boat bobbed on the six-inch waves being kicked up by the spring breeze sweeping across the harbor. The boat looked like a miniature, double-ended tug. It was perhaps twenty feet long with U-shaped bench seats fore and aft under a low roof. In the middle, a taller glassed-in box had a steering wheel and a raised seat so that the pilot could look above everyone’s heads in any direction.

  There were twenty or so of these perky boats working the harbor waterfront. Some were painted in yellow with a black-and-white checkerboard stripe and a sign that declared “Water Taxi.” The one in front of them was painted a bright green and said “Tour Boat” in equally friendly lettering.

  “All aboard.”

  They clambered onto the boat.

  “My aren’t you a cheery lot! Welcome aboard my pickle boat.” The driver sounded happily Canadian. “Where are you all from?”

  “Colorado,” the President spoke quickly, then looped a casual arm across Sarah’s shoulders.

  “Maryland,” Drake spoke up, cutting off Sarah before she could react.

  “That’s a bit spread out. What brought you folks together?”

  Danziger and the four others looked far too clearly military, even if they’d tucked away their earpieces. As he probably did too, Drake made a riff of it.

  “We were in the Air Force together. The colonel here figured a reunion in Victoria sounded like fun. Ten years out and all. Good chance to meet his new lady while we were at it.”

  Sarah blushed. Or maybe flushed was the right word. Flushed with the heat of her I’m-going-to-kill-you-for-this look.

  “Christ, are we that old?” Roy played along, squeezing an arm around Sarah’s shoulders.

  “You are, sir. Not the rest of us.” Drake was actually a year older than he was. He threw in a teasing salute that made the boat’s pilot laugh.

  “And where would you folks like to go this afternoon?”

  Drake smiled. “When’s the next ballet?”

  23

  There was one rin
gtone on Miranda’s phone that never failed to wake her. She looked at the clock, ten a.m. She’d slept less than an hour of the last twenty-seven.

  It was only as Jeremy and Taz continued to run the Caravan investigation without any significant help on her part that the problem struck home.

  If Jeremy was ready to lead a team, then he’d no longer be on her team. The thought was almost too much to bear. Just when she thought everything was stable, it all changed again.

  She hated change.

  After she’d flown back to her island last night, she hadn’t been able to rest. It had been maddening to do so little on the Caravan crash investigation. She’d barely avoided a meltdown by racing back to her island last evening.

  She’d caught up with the garden, which had wanted a serious weeding, in the fading darkness—finally finishing by the light of a headlamp. Late April was not a convenient time to be so busy with crash investigations. It was as if all of the private pilots had forgotten how to fly over the winter and were going down faster than she’d ever seen before.

  The automatic watering system hooked up to the rainwater catchment barrels had made the garden bountiful in the growth of winter vegetables, flowers—and weeds.

  The vegetables that were past recovery she placed in feeders outside the garden fence for the island’s wild sheep and deer. She’d taken several vases of tulips and rhododendron flowers into the house, which were very colorful.

  When she was done with that, she’d cleaned the whole house but still been unable to settle.

  Catching up on the NTSB crash reports had left her too wound up to sleep.

  So she’d pulled out her current set of small notebooks.

  Three of them were related to fully resolved crashes, and she filed them on the bookcase.

  Her personal notebook had any number of questions, but she was on the island and had no one to discuss them with. Normally she was never happier than when she was alone in the grand house that her parents had left her, yet there was a…gap. She’d come to enjoy visitors. She could see Mike fussing in the kitchen. Holly teasing Jeremy and Taz teasing her right back on Jeremy’s behalf. The quiet presence of Andi…