Thunderbolt

by M. L. Buchman

  “Mr. Pilot,” she called out.

  “You have a lot of pilots online at the moment,” Kiley remarked.

  “The one who flew into Syria.”

  Billy swallowed hard. “That would be me. Lieutenant William ‘Poet’ Blake, ma’am. I’m an A-10 pilot.”

  “Yes, I knew that. You also flew the RQ-170 Sentinel over the Gulf of Mexico.”

  “Yes ma’am. Even if I can never take it back.”

  “You didn’t know. Why would you take it back? Everyone who saw it said you were very good.”

  He opened his mouth, closed it. How was he supposed to answer that?

  Command never wanted a real answer, they just wanted… Damned if he knew.

  “How can I be of service, ma’am?” Hopefully no more talk about interacting spherical concept spaces or whatever the hell mysticism she was into. This was really the woman that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said to trust?

  “Lieutenant Poet, you took over an aircraft and flew it yourself from the simulator.”

  “Yes ma’am. I did.” Lieutenant Poet? Well, he’d certainly never live down the Poet call sign after that. He’d be lucky if anyone used his last name ever again.

  “Jeremy?”

  “Oh, I get it. Hang on.” He continued, sounding as if he was talking to himself. “How did they do that? Oh, I see. If they hacked the code like that, then I should be able to clip this section and— Oh, that’s bad. That really, really shouldn’t have worked. Seriously, someone needs to talk to the engineers of the GPS systems. I just walked right into the Nav system backwards from the satellites. Oh, that’s a pretty code stack. Whoever did this is really awesomely good. Now, if I—”

  Billy the Poet didn’t get what was happening until his screen cleared and suddenly he was looking at the cockpit of an F-35 Lightning II. He’d fooled around with them in the simulator so it wasn’t completely alien.

  “All sim pilots,” Jeremy spoke up. “You now have direct control of the Japanese F-35s as well as the flight leads on ten F-15 and F-16 squadrons. The latter are technically Mitsubishi F-2s, but they’re basically F-16 Falcons.”

  “Get them turned around and back to base,” the Australian woman ordered.

  “If the pilot starts yelling at you in Japanese, just ignore him,” General Drake announced.

  Billy didn’t just turn the plane around. He slammed the throttles to the wall and pulled up into an Immelmann. The F-35 Lightning climbed abruptly and kept going until it was flat on its back and headed once more toward Japan.

  Then, instead of the simple half roll that would bring the plane right-side up, he did a three-and-a-half times-around snap roll. What did the pilot think as his plane spun in a straight-line wing-over-wing—completely out of his control?

  Yeah. That’s about how I feel, buddy.

  Totally out of control.

  He did a double snap roll the other way.

  He had to admit that the F-35 was a fun plane.

  Almost as fun as an A-10 Thunderbolt.

  87

  “Navy next, Jeremy.”

  “What was that?” Drake spun to face Miranda.

  She didn’t even look up from her screen.

  “Do you have any Navy captains here?”

  Drake was glad he’d called in the other Joint Chiefs of Staff as he’d rushed over from the White House. Being in the Pentagon, there were a number of their aides there as well. He directed anyone from the Navy or Coast Guard into ship simulators.

  “Okay,” Drake could hear Jeremy over the intercom. “Thankfully the Naval Support Activity Orlando shares this computer and the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force uses it for simulations as well. Okay, here are the helms of the lead ships linked into the Pentagon simulators.”

  “Turn ’em around boys,” Drake could get to like this. “Or at least shut down their engines.” Then he pictured someone doing this to his armed forces and felt sick. Think about it later.

  The Japanese Chief of Staff, Joint Staff was much more cooperative when Drake called him back this time.

  “No, General Yagi, I will not be telling you how we did that. In the future, please remember that when we say it’s a false alarm and to not attack, we mean it.”

  He ignored the man’s screeching for a while and finally, reluctantly, agreed to return control of the ships and aircraft to the Japanese.

  He signaled Miranda, who whispered over the headset to Jeremy, then listened for a moment.

  When she nodded, he informed General Yagi that he once more had control of his forces, then he hung up on him. It was indecently satisfying.

  The pilots and ship captains in the room were cheering and applauding their success.

  The few who really understood what was happening were collapsed in their seats.

  Miranda Chase appeared unaffected by it all.

  Once he assured himself that everything had returned to normal, or was at least starting to, he returned the nation’s defense status to DEFCON 5.

  Then he slapped his forehead and turned to the screen where he’d had an open line to the President.

  He switched his headset so that they had a private circuit. “You’re safe to leave the PEOC now, sir.”

  “I was wondering when you’d remember me.”

  “Sorry, sir.”

  “What are we going to do about Chase?”

  “What do you mean, sir?” Drake glanced over to where she was still talking to Jeremy over her headset.

  “I know she’s got Top Secret clearance, but she was doing things even I didn’t know about.”

  “Me either, sir. I don’t think anyone did, maybe not even her. Should we give her a medal?”

  “Very quietly. For that whole damn team. Then maybe lock her up so that nothing leaks out.”

  “I’m pretty sure that nothing could leak with that strange way she thinks.”

  Cole sighed. “Perhaps someday she’ll give us clearance to know what she is thinking.”

  Drake laughed, “You don’t really want to know, do you?”

  The President sighed. “No, probably not. But at least buy her that damned new ejection seat she wanted as a thanks for saving the nation.”

  “You know that’s like a quarter of a million dollars, right?”

  The President didn’t even blink. “Do it. Then get this cleaned up, Drake. I want full honors for every pilot who went down in this fiasco. Find a good cover story because that many ‘training accidents’ wouldn’t sound good at all. I want to speak to any widows or parents personally.”

  “I’ll get you a call sheet before sunrise, Mr. President.”

  “Thanks, Drake. Now shut this down. Lock it up as tight as you did the MQ-45 Casper fiasco and I’ll give you a raise.”

  “You mean that you’ll finally let me retire?” Drake had been on the verge of retirement when the newly elected President Cole had asked him to continue to serve.

  “Only if I get to go first.”

  “Yes sir. And sir?”

  “What?”

  “At least your Wagyu beef is cheaper than her seat, Mr. President.”

  “Not by enough, Nason. Not by near enough,” the President cut the connection.

  88

  Senator Hunter Ramson sat back in the luxurious armchair across the desk from Vice President Ricky Mulroney. It was one of the advantages to flying with the VP, traveling in Air Force Two on a beautifully sunny day.

  He’d never been aboard any of the presidential aircraft. While it wasn’t the grand 747, he had no complaints about the amenities aboard the modified 757.

  Mulroney’s onboard office was smaller than the pictures he’d seen of the President’s office on the 747. A couch / daybed, two armchairs, and a desk. It had to be small enough to leave an aisle around the soundproof walls for people to travel the length of the aircraft.

  Still…he idly wondered what it would be like to make love to Rose on that couch, with all of the business going on around them—aides, protection de
tails, and the like. But she still insisted he’d never be running for the White House.

  Too bad. He liked this plane and he would bet that he’d like the 747 even better.

  The Secret Service hadn’t appreciated the short notice on the trip, but they’d done Rio just last year with the President, so, much of the groundwork had already been done.

  Mulroney was good company at least. They’d just finished a delicious, if not fancy, lunch. He’d never been a French restaurant kind of guy anyway.

  “Feels good to get out of DC,” Mulroney toasted him beer to beer, a Pacific Northwest microbrew that he’d have to get more of—Walking Man Black Cherry Stout. “What’s on the agenda?”

  “Nothing tonight. I planned on taking it easy and then we’ll start meetings tomorrow. Brazil is looking to expand their naval and air force purchase contracts. We’ll tour some bases in the morning, then get down to real meetings tomorrow afternoon, see what they have in mind for force projections over the next decade or so. They’ve been buying Eurocopters, now Airbus, over Sikorskys, Swedish Gripens for their fighters instead of ours. Maybe we can tempt them with the Raptor or Lightning II.”

  “If they can afford it.”

  “If they can afford it,” Hunter conceded the point. “Maybe we’ll unload some F-18s on them. We do well with the Army. For the Navy, they buy from the Brits or build it themselves. We want them under our care but I doubt we’ll get in there.”

  Mulroney shook his head. It was unlikely.

  “But for tonight, I just want to relax and have a good time.” Rose had been very clear on what he could and couldn’t say on this trip.

  And even if I don’t get to touch, I want to see just how pretty a sex trap Clarissa Reese has found for you, Mulroney. Knowing her, the bait would be a ten in any beauty contest, and would be—or at least have proof—that she was far younger than she looked.

  If it was as neat a trap as the one that had taken out Senator Clint Howards, it was going to be a doozy.

  Clint hadn’t failed in his campaign launch—Clint had been driven out of the Senate entirely in under forty-eight hours.

  The Chairmanship of the Senate Armed Services Committee was already his.

  Reese might be as dangerous as a shark but—despite the failure of the A-10 ploy—it was the kind of shark Rose said he needed on his side.

  And Rose was always right.

  89

  Daemon spent five hours making sure that her equipment was fully scrubbed of any data and then buried five feet under the Oklahoma sod. Then she bleached the apartment.

  At sunrise, she drove south from her place close by Tinker Air Force Base in a nondescript Ford F-150 pickup. It was old enough that it couldn’t be hacked.

  She left the Tesla Model S in the garage just in case she came back this way someday. The truck she could dump and would never care.

  It was registered to a bloodsucking televangelist named Steph Right—properly named herself that because she’d stepped right into the money. SR’s credit cards had also paid for Daemon’s Tesla, which was not registered in Steph’s name, as well as several other toys. If Steph stole from her followers in the name of God, Daemon had no problem stealing from her in the name of fun.

  Fifteen miles south, at Max Westheimer Airport, Daemon parked the F-150 illegally in a handicap spot. As she walked around to the private aviation hangars, she tossed the keys in the garbage.

  A ticket and a tow for you, Steph dear. She wished she’d thought to buy a couple kilos of cocaine to stash under the seat, but too late now.

  Daemon forgot about SR and the pickup.

  She decided that it probably would have been better if she hadn’t promised to ruin the entire A-10 fleet’s reputation in just twenty-four hours. Turned out to be more of a stretch than she’d expected. She’d know better on the next job.

  Those five events in twenty-four hours would have done it, if not for that woman in the Sabrejet. Daemon hadn’t accounted for the unexpected variable.

  Definitely time to move on.

  And she wasn’t going to get tripped up by some lousy airline delay like Mum.

  She’d fly her own, thank you very much.

  Daemon had done a little project for the Bolivian President and taken her pay in flying lessons. She’d worked her way through their tiny air force from the Piper trainer to Beech King Air. She’d finished her lessons in the President’s own Falcon 50 ten-seater trijet. The autopilot and the luxurious bed in the back had made for a splendid final flight twenty thousand feet above the Andes’ Cordillera Central. The President had demonstrated exceptional prowess between the sheets.

  Waiting for her at the University of Oklahoma’s Max Westheimer Airport was a pretty little—and delightfully rare as there were only eight of them so far—SyberJet SJ30.

  Sabrejet to SyberJet, she hadn’t even made the connection. That primitive piece of Korean War crap to the very cutting edge of light business jet development. Choice was easy.

  The SJ30 was a gift from Client F that he’d probably take back if he could.

  Or maybe not, as it was also the price of her silence. She’d count herself well paid for her trouble, even if it hadn’t worked as planned. As always, she’d arranged a little extra insurance for herself—set to deliver if she ever failed to log in for twenty-four hours.

  As if.

  She’d been practically hard-wired since birth. Actually, with Mum’s going “freelance” after she left Compaq about when Daemon was born, she’d been born hacking.

  The eight-million-dollar SyberJet had come with five passenger seats in the cozy cabin. Taking a hint from the lovely flights with the Bolivian President, she’d had it redone with a comfortable bed and a micro kitchen. It couldn’t reach across the ocean in one hop, but it would serve very nicely.

  The flight from Oklahoma City to Los Angeles was uneventful.

  Due to flying west, it was still sunrise when she landed at Santa Monica Airport.

  While she waited for the fuel to be topped up, she debated Haggador II’s invitation. That was what had tipped her decision from flying east to Oslo over to west for Macau.

  She’d pinged him before she’d shut down her station at Tinker.

  He’d offered to meet her at the Spitfire Grill close by the airport—to check out each other’s vibe in the neutral territory of breakfastland.

  Daemon had sent back a “What the hell, why not.”

  As they fueled her plane, she could just make out the restaurant between the terminal building and general aviation hangars.

  He was probably there right now.

  Maybe even watching her and wondering.

  She turned her back on the place.

  Sadly, it would be better to keep moving—Wizard Boy would still be pissed about her remote-hijacking his car. A pity as she had the bed right here in the plane for a proper post-breakfast feast.

  Nope, wouldn’t make Mum’s mistake of waiting too long.

  Daemon could get plenty of attention later, somewhere safe. Maybe she’d dye her hair from her born blah-brown or normal midnight-blue to red like Mum and Nicole Kidman. They’d go nuts for that in Macau.

  She was also exhausted. But if stopping for sex was dangerous, stopping for sleep was worse.

  Daemon filed her last flight plan under her current name—out to Honolulu, then Hilo.

  Except once clear of Honolulu, a pre-scheduled block of computer code would finish wiping her current name from all records. Then Jenny Curtiss—for the old Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny” biplane—would turn south and arrive in Samoa rather than her filed plan for Hilo.

  Maybe she’d hang with the Samoans awhile, or check out Fiji, before working her way up to Macau.

  Once aloft and up to cruising altitude, she set the autopilot for Honolulu and the alarm clock for an hour. The last thirty-six hours were really catching up with her.

  She tried for a few Haggador II fantasies as she lay alone in the cabin’s bed, but could feel his now-dista
nt disappointment. The Bolivian President wandered through the cabin of her memory briefly but she fell asleep before the action got at all memorable.

  90

  Daemon woke with a jolt.

  Not to any alarm. Somehow she’d slept through that.

  The low thrum of smooth-running turbine engines lulled her for a moment, but she dragged herself up to check on the plane.

  The clock said she’d been out for four hours. No big crisis, Honolulu was five hours from California.

  She tried shaking her head. Just made her dizzy.

  She knocked back half a Red Bull and a bag of gummy worms. Sugar and caffeine, that was the ticket.

  Not much better, she was still weaving by the time she returned to the pilot’s seat.

  The first thing she noticed was the cabin’s internal altimeter was falling. Falling?

  The SyberJet had a sea-level cabin, the pressure wasn’t supposed to ease as it did in most planes. It was falling, down through fifteen thousand feet, headed back to sea level?

  How high had it been?

  That would explain her not hearing the alarm and her fuzzy thinking.

  But her head was clearing now.

  More oxygen, more caffeine, and…

  And the compass. There was something about the compass. The compass heading from Santa Monica to Honolulu should be two-six-zero, right where she’d left it.

  It was now reading one-eight-two. Nothing out there except the Pacific Ocean and maybe bloody Pitcairn Island where the mutineers of the HMS Bounty had landed.

  Squinting out at the ocean, all she saw was lots and lots of water. The sun was high—far higher than it should be if she was still racing west with the sunrise.

  Her fingers felt leaden as she fooled with the GPS map.

  One-eight-two.

  Dead on Pitcairn Island.

  Woo-hoo! Girl was good. She’d totally nailed it.

  But wait…