Raider

by M. L. Buchman

  “Arkin. As the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, I have no command authority. But you damned well better put Campos on suspension pending investigation. It would look better for you if you did it before my call to the JAG Corps goes through, which will be as soon as your asses are out of my office. Get a goddamn grip on your people. Now leave.”

  Barry didn’t show any sign of moving until the other two were gone and his office door was once again closed. Then he nodded toward the order on Drake’s screen.

  “Who’s this Miranda Chase, anyway?”

  “NTSB.”

  “Civvy girl. Seems I mighta heard something about that, though not her name. Little woman with major personality issues? That’s how I heard it. Told them to send in the AIB. Let our boys handle it.”

  “The loss of nine A-10s last year. The Russian Persona satellite the NRO is busy reverse engineering. JJ’s little excursion south of the border.”

  Barry’s eyebrows raised with each one. He was one of the few who would know about even those. Drake didn’t mention any of the others that Barry wouldn’t know about.

  “And yes, they were all her ‘civvy’ team with very little help from us. Even a lawn darter like you has to admit that’s a serious track record.”

  Barry had come up during the F-16s. The early ones tended to plant themselves in the ground—hard. His grimace acknowledged the payback for the ‘Chairborne Ranger’ remark.

  “AIB keeps trying to recruit her—lately at full specialty-hazard contractor rates—and she shuts them down flat every time.”

  “Shit! For that kind of money, they should damn well try to recruit me. I’d be out of this game in a heartbeat. She’s nuts.”

  “Sure she is. But so brilliantly nuts, she makes the rest of us look like Neanderthals.”

  “Or squids?” Barry suggested with a smile.

  “Not that bad,” Drake returned the smile. Because, even to a chairborne-Ranger grunt and a lawn-darter zoomie, nobody was as low as the members of the Navy.

  “Do me a favor, Barry?”

  His look said he might if it suited him.

  “Follow this a bit. The channel that came up to you—and how it shuffled back down?”

  “Second I’m out of here,” his growl said it wasn’t even a question.

  Drake rose and came around the desk. They traded handshakes rather than salutes.

  Barry was halfway to the door when Drake became aware of the itch between his shoulder blades. That itch had been very useful in his career, even if it sometimes took him a long time to scratch it.

  “And General Sizemore?”

  “Sir?”

  “Do it on the QT.”

  Barry’s look was speculative, but his nod agreed before he headed out the door.

  Campos had too much to lose in this. Even if it was personal, there had to be something more. Something beyond just ego and vengeance.

  37

  Miranda had very little experience with hospitals.

  Much like the rest of the buildings at Groom Lake, this one showed its age of construction, yet was immaculately clean. The white tile had yellowed, or perhaps it had been a faded yellow to begin with and parts of it had slowly bleached white.

  The doctors had shooed them back and were hovering over Andi, the lone patient, lost in the midst of the small ward.

  Perhaps this would be called an infirmary because of its size. There were just twenty beds, two operating theaters, and a pharmacy.

  What were the defining lines between infirmary and hospital? Should she add sick house and clinic to her considerations? Jeremy would suggest adding sickbay from Star Trek if she were to ask. Holly would—

  “What do you call a hospital?” Miranda asked her.

  Holly didn’t even blink. “A hospital.”

  “I meant in Australia.” Then she noted Holly’s teasing smile and held up a hand to stop her before she could repeat herself.

  When Holly’s smile quirked sideways—a habit Miranda had long since added to her emojis page but still couldn’t react to before she fell into one of Holly’s teases—she definitely knew what Miranda meant. When Holly spoke in a heavy Australian accent, that was a much better indicator that she was enjoying herself at someone else’s expense.

  That had warned Miranda to step well clear before Holly had kicked Colonel Stimson back into the dirt a second time.

  “If you’re talkin’ broad-Strine, we call her a hossie.”

  “Okay.”

  Perhaps the specific naming of the structure wasn’t essential. If not, then what was?

  Oh, Andi.

  She’d collapsed in midsentence without notice, pulling herself into a ball as small as Miranda used to strive for as a child. If she just made herself small enough, then the world left her alone. Taking no notice of her, it would just slide by.

  The doctors came over to their group and began to herd them out into the waiting area. She heard them say Andi was “just fine.” Which seemed unlikely given their current location.

  Miranda “faded” from the group.

  It had never worked on Mom or Tante Daniels. But if she imagined that she wasn’t more than a soft sea breeze on the Chase’s island, she could float past Dad and most of the frequent houseguests.

  The members of her team might track her, but she didn’t care about leaving them behind. As everyone was ushered out through the swinging doors with large wire-mesh windows set in the yellowed steel, she “breezed” (zephyred?) her way to Andi’s bedside.

  Is this what she had looked like when she’d been struck down by some terror? So small and helpless.

  She rested a hand, firmly, on Andi’s hands clenched tight against her chest.

  Andi flinched in surprise, but showed no other sign she was conscious.

  “It gets easier, you know.”

  Nothing.

  “You won’t believe it now. But it does.”

  One of Andi’s pinkie fingers—the left one—slipped out and wrapped over the back of Miranda’s hand. It was clenched tightly enough to pinch the tendons between Miranda’s ring and pinkie fingers. Better that than a light touch.

  She’d asked Mike if Andi was autistic, but he’d insisted she wasn’t. If anyone would know, it would be Mike.

  Andi’s breathing.

  “Your breathing is too fast for feigned sleep. If you wish others to leave you alone, you need to learn how to regulate that.”

  “I wasn’t—” Andi croaked between gasps, softer than a newborn chickadee. “Where?”

  Miranda tried to think of how to answer that without sounding scary. Miranda had found too much time to inspect the operating suite while the doctors had been with Andi on the empty ward. It hadn’t looked at all comforting.

  “In the hossie, mate,” she did her best to imitate Holly’s accent, and was fairly pleased with the result. It did sound less scary that way.

  Andi cracked open one eye—again the left one. Was she left-handed as well? Miranda pictured her staking and measuring the tiny sand dunes beneath the helicopter’s final flight path. Yes, left-handed.

  “You aren’t Holly,” took five separate breaths, adding two spare syllables.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Your accent sucks, Miranda.”

  “I never tried it before.”

  “Special for me?”

  “It sounded less scary.”

  “Less scary than what?” Andi opened her other eye.

  “United States Air Force emergency hospital at Groom Lake Airfield.”

  Andi shuddered. “Okay. Hossie it is.”

  When Miranda went to pull her hand free, Andi didn’t let it go.

  “What happened?” It was the first whole phrase to fit between adjacent breaths.

  Another familiar question from her own past. Tante Daniels had always convinced her to follow the threads and figure it out for herself. Mom usually broke ranks and just told her, the few times she was there.

  “What’s the last thing you r
ecall?”

  She clamped her eyes shut and for a moment Miranda was afraid that she’d chased Andi back into whatever dark place she’d just been.

  “I was…describing their final flight. The juxtaposition of the global terrain map. I could see it so clearly—except it was wrong. It reminded me too much of being in a similar cockpit where things were equally clear, yet equally wrong.”

  Miranda finally extracted her hand and inspected the back of it. Despite Andi keeping her nails short, there was a distinct arc impressed into Miranda’s skin. Flexing her hand didn’t make it go away.

  She tried differential flexing. First, alternating her ring and pinkie fingers, raised and not raised. Then stretching and unstretching the skin by making a fist and releasing it. She was about to try plucking at the impression with the finger pads on her other hand when she noticed Andi watching her intently.

  Miranda folded one hand over the other so that she couldn’t see the small arc that Andi had carved with her pinkie nail. It was less distracting that way. Though she did note that she couldn’t feel the slight impression that she was sure still remained.

  When she checked, it had filled in about halfway.

  “See,” she turned her hand to face Andi. “It gets better with time.”

  “Okay,” Andi nodded in agreement.

  At least Miranda assumed that’s what it was, even though she still lay horizontally on the bed, so her head had technically shifted side to side with the flexion-extension spinal motion.

  “What were you asking?” Andi slowly unwound from her tight ball.

  “I had asked what the last thing you recalled was,” she found a starting point.

  “And I told you,” Andi aided her in retracing the conversation, which was very helpful.

  “Yes. That something was wrong. This is a crash investigation. Wrong is the exact thing that we’re searching for.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” Andi pushed herself upright, then closed her eyes and braced herself as if the world was still a little uncertain.

  “What was wrong?”

  Andi didn’t open her eyes, but she spoke. “The impossible.”

  38

  “The test proceeded exactly as planned.” General Ersin Firat stood at attention. He still hadn’t decided whether to ride on Major General Kaan’s coattails…or tromp on them.

  Kaan’s office walls were veneered in rare mahogany, and his furniture fine-carved Madagascar ebony. Yes, this office would suit himself very well when Kaan moved up—or out.

  “You trust your people?”

  “I’ve taken precautions, General Kaan.” He wasn’t some newborn flea. Firat’s cousin in MİT—the National Intelligence Organization—had bought the maidservant of an unimportant little noisemaker named Asli. She’d report everything Asli did, if she valued her parents’ lives. Should either of his programmers misbehave, this Asli would die most painfully. He hadn’t yet had cause to inform them of this, but he was prepared.

  Yes, he would replace Kaan before this operation was over.

  It was his idea, after all.

  Mostly.

  “Excellent!” Kaan waved him to one of the heavy chairs and pressed the intercom to call for coffee. That was unprecedented. He must be very pleased.

  Once they’d been served, Kaan asked after his wife and son. His tone was perfectly pleasant and sociable as it should be over coffee. After a time he dropped just the lightest comment about his pleasure at Firat’s son’s advancement to his soccer team’s co-captaincy—supposedly only Firat himself and the coach knew about that. Not even his son yet.

  His gonads practically shriveled into his throat.

  It took everything he had to not rudely sputter his coffee.

  Kaan smiled benignly, stating clearly that he too had taken precautions.

  “Now, shall we speak of the next steps.”

  Firat thanked General Kaan for his interest in a humble servant’s family before agreeing.

  “My pleasure, Firat. My pleasure. I was young and proud once as well. If you practice patience,” Kaan set down his cup, “we can go far.”

  The “we” wasn’t emphasized, it didn’t need to be after the prior threat. I can kill your son just as easily.

  “That sounds excellent, General Kaan. I believe that we are ready for Final Phase on the present…endeavor.” Firat recalled the private tour his cousin had once given him of the MİT’s private Museum of Espionage.

  Only once, seven years before, had a tiny section of the museum been opened to the public. The displayed arcanery would be of interest only to Cold War historians. His cousin had led him through the first two of the three decades of advancements since then. And they were terrifying.

  Sometimes he lay awake at night staring at the back of his wife’s head, wondering if one of her hairs had been replaced by a fiber optic camera. He could feel it watching him on the nights when he took her from behind.

  While he did his best to shrug off what he couldn’t change, it worked less well with each passing year.

  “I think one more test would be in order.”

  Firat knew he must agree. He didn’t think it was necessary, but it was not a major risk.

  No one would catch them.

  39

  Once Andi was on her feet again, Miranda led the team, with the sole addition of Night Stalkers Colonel Stimson, back to General Helen Thomas’ office.

  The moment Stimson entered, Helen stopped him hard with a barked out, “Tench-hut!”

  It made Miranda nearly jump out of her own skin. She noticed that Andi and Holly, who’d just sat down, both leapt back to their feet, sending their metal chairs skittering loudly across the hard floor.

  Miranda covered her ears against all the noise and harsh sound splashing about the reverberant space. A linoleum tile floor and 1960s fake wood paneling didn’t buffer the jarring echoes at all.

  Colonel Stimson snapped to attention.

  Helen stalked out from behind her desk until they were an arm’s length apart.

  Miranda wanted one of her tape measures to see if it was his arm-length or hers. Or did the Air Force have a regulation distance for such confrontations? Instead, she backed behind Holly, who was easing back down onto her own seat.

  Miranda wasn’t sure if she’d ever seen Holly’s hand shake before.

  Holly spotted her attention. “Old habits,” she whispered, then shook it a few times and blew out a hard breath. “Bad adrenaline.”

  Still, Miranda would trust that she’d be safer behind Holly, with or without the shakes, than near whatever was happening with Helen. Was she now going to throw Colonel Stimson to the floor?

  Helen’s voice snapped out far harsher than Miranda had ever heard it. “Next goddamn time you want to countermand one of my orders, you goddamn come to me first.”

  “Not my doing, ma’am.” Stimson stood at sharp attention and spoke quickly. “Something happened way above my pay grade. Not per my request. I was pissed at your order, and I reported it. But I’m not the one who backdoored you, ma’am, or ordered Ms. Chase’s team off the site.”

  Helen bounced on her toes for a moment as if preparing for battle. “I’m not amused, Colonel. Not even a little.”

  “Nobody is, ma’am.”

  “I am,” Holly was slouched in her chair as if she was in a pub, not moments away from a shaking hand. Miranda admired the speed of her transition, even if she had no idea how to replicate it. Instead, Miranda braced, ready to cover her ears again.

  “Too bad no one cares about you,” Mike teased Holly as he sat to Miranda’s left.

  Holly gave him the finger, but Mike’s assessment appeared to be accurate. Helen and the colonel were still facing off.

  “Goddamn it. At ease, Colonel,” Helen returned his earlier salute before returning to her desk with a very firm step.

  Miranda whispered to Mike, “Was that a walk, a stride, a—”

  “It was a stalk, Miranda. A very pissed-off stalk.”


  “Oh.” She tried to think of how to record that properly in her notebook, but couldn’t.

  “Let’s get cracking before we all go mental.”

  Miranda knew Holly’s proposal was already too late for her. But she didn’t know if Andi’s condition was long-term or an isolated event. And how was she to judge the state of everyone else’s mental…

  Holly wasn’t looking around to inspect everyone’s state of mind. Instead, she waved to Jeremy, who began loading images onto Helen’s screens.

  Oh. Not clinically “mental.”

  The first image up on the screens of General Helen Thomas’ office was a close-up of the scars on the face of the rock pillar.

  Miranda sat down between Holly and Mike. Andi and Stimson took seats off Mike’s left, Jeremy circled around to sit beyond Holly. Helen was scowling from behind her desk.

  Holly flashed a laser pointer at the center. “Mike and I saw no unusual directional scarring on the rock. If the Raider did skid to either side on impact, or up or down, it didn’t leave any obvious mark to indicate that. By everything we saw, it hit—” she drove the fingers of her right hand directly into the vertical palm of her left, crumpling her fingers much as the helicopter’s nose must have done, “—then it dropped.” She thumped her right fist down onto the table.

  “That’s commensurate with what I found on the ground,” Jeremy began flashing up other photos. “The debris field was spread very symmetrically. The rear pusher-propeller would have continued to drive the S-97 along the angle of impact for another eight-hundredths of a second after the nose hit—the length of the helicopter divided by its speed. It’s just an approximation, but it’s close enough until I can model the crash itself and integrate the likely effect of airframe collapse over time and its relation to speed of…”

  He blushed for a moment, then continued hurriedly.

  Miranda was unsure why he blushed. Perhaps he felt embarrassed at explaining the obvious.

  “Even with the driveshaft’s Mohs hardness being one below the quartzite, we still should have seen some sort of bending in the shaft material itself—unless it struck the face perfectly perpendicularly. So, the driveshaft was driven end-on into the rock. Rather than bending from a sideways force, it sheared and fractured from compression stress.”