Raider

by M. L. Buchman

  “I thought launch teams were assigned on the fly as needed.”

  “Not Miranda’s.”

  “But I don’t belong here,” she waved a hand that might have included the poker table or it might have indicated the wider world.

  “Talk to the lady in charge,” Mike nodded toward Miranda.

  “Miranda?” Andi’s voice was still barely louder than the very well-insulated roar of the 787’s engines as it raced east toward Turkey.

  “Your insights into factors beyond the scope of the S-97 Raider itself were as useful as any Jeremy might have made.”

  “Hey—” Jeremy scowled, then cut himself off.

  Something was definitely going on with him around Andi. Jeremy being defensive about anything or anyone, other than Taz Cortez, was unheard of. And even that had been a shocker. He simply didn’t think that way.

  “Additionally, your insightful management of the military hierarchy was…” Miranda pulled out her personal notebook and flipped through it for a moment before nodding and tucking it away again, “…appreciated.”

  Mike began laying down the next cards faceup. Five Card Stud was a good poker game to teach basics with.

  “Two of hearts for Holly. Power start, not. Seven of clubs for Miranda, not a big improvement. Jack of clubs for Jeremy, best card so far. Ten of diamonds for Andi. And—”

  “Helicopters.”

  “What about them?”

  Andi pointed at her card. “It’s not a diamond, it’s a helicopter.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “A diamond has four blade points, like a Black Hawk’s main rotor. That’s a ten of helicopters.”

  “Fine, what’s this?” He flopped down the trademark Ace of Spades in front of himself. Crap! After testing his shuffling skills, no one would believe he hadn’t done that on purpose.

  “That’s called cheating, mate,” Holly spoke first.

  “No, I—”

  “Jet fighter!” Jeremy spoke over him. “Pointy nose. Maybe Holly’s two of hearts could be bombers.”

  “There’s a piece of truth spoken by the innocent,” he muttered to her.

  Holly scoffed.

  “The heart shape still has a pointy end,” Jeremy again sounded defensive. “With broad wings like the B-2A Spirit flying wing bomber, or the B-1B Lancer.”

  “Now there’s a major waste of airspace,” Andi muttered.

  Even Mike knew there was truth in that. The Lancer program had been cancelled as an incredible boondoggle disaster until President Reagan had promised to reinvest in the military in a big way—part of which was resurrecting a plane that no one in their right mind wanted.

  “Maybe it’s worth negative points?” Miranda always made him laugh, especially when she didn’t mean to.

  “Perfect!” Mike swept the cards up once again. He ran a quick spread across the table, did a cascade flip to turn them all face up, then flipped them back. Gathering it back into a deck, he did a quick shuffle and spooled out the four aces face up.

  “So, diamonds are helicopters. Spades are fighters. Hearts are bombers. What about clubs?”

  “Clubs,” Holly thumped down a fist, “should be bombers, because they club things.”

  Then the seatbelt ping sounded through the cabin. The plane was so well sound insulated that it was easy to forget they were even flying. The ping meant that they were up to cruising altitude.

  Mike glanced over his shoulder toward the head of the plane. East. Toward a crash of Air Force Two. Alaska, the S-97 Raider, and now that.

  He’d keep the card nonsense going as long as he could if it would give the team a little mental break.

  He was just reaching for the Ace of Hearts when Holly popped her seatbelt.

  “Come on, Andi. Let’s rustle up some grub.”

  Miranda had pulled out one of her notebooks and begun making notes.

  Mike sighed and turned to Jeremy. Actually, with just the two of them caring anymore, maybe he could find out what was eating at the team’s youngest member.

  He scooped up the aces, riffled them into the deck, then dealt Jeremy and himself ten quick cards. Then he flipped the next card and dropped it face up on the table.

  “The Ace of Spades,” Jeremy was watching him with narrowed eyes.

  Crap!

  51

  “Spill, girl.”

  “Spill what? Cornflakes?” Andi held up the cereal box she’d just found.

  “We can do better than that,” Holly grabbed a larger service tray and started throwing random things at it. Crackers, cheese, a couple trays of frozen beef lasagna, a pack of licorice…

  Andi snagged the licorice and dug out a couple vines.

  “Look,” suddenly Holly was absolutely still.

  Even though she was now slouched against the counter, she was so tall it gave Andi a crick in her neck.

  “I don’t know what you’re spinning to Mike. That’s not the question I’m asking. This is Spec Ops to Spec Ops.” At the moment she had less trace of an Australian accent than even Nicole Kidman typically mustered.

  Not trusting herself, Andi merely crossed her arms over her chest to match Holly and nodded for her to continue.

  “Booted your ass?”

  Andi managed a nod.

  “You get blown up, or someone else?”

  “The second one.”

  Holly closed her eyes, and Andi was surprised to see the searing pain of sympathy there.

  “I don’t want—”

  “I know, mate. Trust me, I know. Sympathy, pity, condolences, all Mike’s kindness… None of it touches the core, does it.”

  Since it was a truth not a question, Andi didn’t bother agreeing.

  Holly stared at the plane’s ceiling for a while before looking back down.

  “I’ve got one mission now.”

  “Plane crashes.”

  Holly shook her head and waited.

  Oh perfect. A guessing game. She sucked at guessing games.

  Andi had seen Holly’s skills in the field. Not just scaling cliff faces, but there were items of crash-site shrapnel from the S-97 Raider’s structure that Holly had been able to identify with clues that weren’t even enough for Andi herself. She understood the physicality of an aircraft intimately.

  “You sure you’re not a pilot?”

  “Been a grunt all my days, mate. All I ever knew was how to hump a pack and shoot a gun. Oh, and blowing shit up, but that’s fun.”

  Holly’s mission now was none of that? Which meant…

  “You’re asking if Miranda is safe around me.”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” Miranda showed up at their elbows as if teleported.

  Even Holly jumped, which Andi found surprisingly satisfying. At least Andi herself wasn’t the only Special Operations Forces personnel whose system was on the blink. Unless Miranda had some sort of stealth mode.

  Andi sighed. “Just keep me away from a helicopter’s controls, and Holly away from shit that blows up, and I think you’ll be fine.”

  “Actually, I believe that Holly’s issue has far more to do with people being blown up, but she hasn’t spoken of it.”

  Holly steadied her.

  Or perhaps steadied herself, by grabbing Andi’s shoulder.

  “Whoa, girl!” Holly managed a mutter.

  They both took a moment and somehow kept their shit together once more. A constant struggle.

  Then Holly looked infinitely sad. “’Fraid that losing people’s one we’ve got in common.”

  Despite Holly’s pincer grip around her upper arm, Andi felt as if she was wavering in and out of an unlikely reality. Was she actually forty thousand feet in the air aboard a luxury gambling casino? Or locked up in some padded room somewhere?

  As unlikely as the former seemed, it was definitely behaving like reality.

  Maybe she’d accept that as a premise and just see what happened from here.

  Miranda had turned to Holly. “I think I’ve calculated the
best re-indexing methodology. Diamonds are indeed helicopters as Captain Andi Wu suggested. I debated clubs with the tail section, but three-bladed rotor systems have always bothered me as if they can never be in balance despite a consistent hundred-and-twenty-degree separation.”

  “At least they aren’t as horrifying as two-blade systems,” Andi shuddered. “Mast knock still creeps me out.”

  “And is typically fatal,” Miranda agreed completely deadpan.

  Fatal and helicopter were two words Andi never wanted to hear in the same sentence ever again.

  “Please check my metaphors,” Miranda held her notebook open for Holly to see. “I’ve never understood those. But if spades are bombers as Jeremy suggested and also fighters, then clubs could be transport aircraft with their distinct tail sections. That leaves hearts, which—”

  “Surely not something this girl is wasting her time having,” Holly’s thick Australian was back.

  “—could be the misfit aircraft,” Miranda continued without missing a beat.

  “Perfect!” Holly laughed aloud.

  “No!” Andi protested. “They’re hearts. They’re the old favorites.”

  “Ah,” Holly grinned. “We’ve got a romantic on board, Miranda.”

  Andi laughed. That was so not her. But she wanted to kiss Miranda’s feet for giving her something so ridiculous to focus on. She felt more human with each passing moment.

  “Hearts would be like the Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose. Or the RAH-66 Comanche helicopter—that really should have been built before the Pentagon and Congress screwed it up so much.”

  “I like it,” Holly was nodding, and began heating various dinners in the microwave.

  “Hearts are favorites from any category,” Miranda said slowly as if testing the idea. “I was worried about putting my F-86 in the combat category. Certainly an F/A-18F Super Hornet fighter shouldn’t be excluded to make room for an aircraft like my Sabrejet, but I worry that its feelings would be hurt if I were to leave it out of the card game.”

  “You have an F-86 Sabrejet?” Andi didn’t even know there were any still flying.

  “Well, technically—”

  “Don’t get her started,” Holly was smiling.

  “—it is no longer a pure example. It has elements of the E and F, as well as the Canadair Mk 5 and 6. Oh, and the new ejection seat that the President gave me last winter.”

  Andi was trying to think of the last time she’d so enjoyed just talking to women. Or even had simply talked to a group of women. She’d been one of the very few in the Night Stalkers and had never flown with one.

  Andi spotted a fold-down chair for the galley chef and dropped into it. She peeled off a couple more licorice vines before speaking.

  “You’re telling me that the President, the one of the United States, gave your fifty-year-old—”

  “Sixty-two-year-old.”

  “—fucking prehistoric fighter jet a new ejection seat? What’s that, a quarter of a million dollars?”

  Miranda nodded. “Two hundred and forty-three thousand, actually.”

  “But…why?”

  “Roy said it was the least he could do for my stopping the next major Asian war. All I really did was solve a series of misinterpreted crashes that appeared disconnected but ultimately weren’t.”

  Andi glanced at Holly, whose indulgent smile said that Miranda’s view was a vastly simplified one of a far more complex reality.

  Fishing for what factor was most surprising, Andi’s battered brain came up with, “You’re on a first-name basis with the Commander-in-Chief?”

  Miranda turned to Holly. “Why does that surprise everyone so much?”

  “Not a clue, Miranda. Got me stonkered worse than a rabbit at a hurdle-jumping contest.” Holly winked at her over Miranda’s head, then went back to heating up the food she’d scrounged.

  Miranda continued telling them about the aircraft she’d place on each playing card in each category.

  Holly listened as if it was the most important thing she could be doing with her time.

  It let Andi just sit quietly—and study Miranda in profile.

  A day and a half ago, her life had been a simple reality, with no real goal beyond survival. Then Director Terence Graham had bumped her behind the top secret curtain of Groom Lake just on the chance that she might be of use to this woman. Now, in under thirty-six hours, she’d gotten involved in two plane crashes, one the near-death of the Vice President of the United States, and—

  Just thirty-six hours?

  Somehow it all centered around this woman right in front of her. The one currently debating whether to restrict the categories exclusively to American aircraft, America and her allies, or global manufacturers.

  “And I don’t think we should include that Comanche, even in the Old Favorites category,” Holly dropped the last of the heated food dishes back on the trays. “That program was cancelled over fifteen years ago with only a couple of prototypes in the air.”

  Miranda dutifully crossed it out in her notebook.

  No thanks given for Holly’s suggestion. Actually, for nothing over the last thirty-six hours.

  Not from Miranda.

  Not for Miranda either. She’d helped Andi find her way back out at the hospital, and all she’d gotten for it was Andi clawing her.

  Just being accepted as even a temporary part of the team was all the thanks she’d probably ever get. Maybe it was also all that was needed.

  But for Miranda?

  Andi pushed to her feet, wiped off the slight stickiness that the licorice had left on her palm against her pants, and then held out her hand to Miranda.

  Miranda looked down at the hand, then up at her in some surprise—not quite looking at her face.

  When Miranda finally took her hand, Andi shook it firmly.

  “Thanks for having me on your team.”

  Miranda’s reply sounded practiced, “You’re welcome.” Then she let go and turned back to her list.

  Holly’s quiet nod was one any Spec Ops soldier would recognize, “Well done.”

  52

  “Why don’t you trust Andi? Because she’s got PTSD?” Mike had kept the conversation light through several hands until Miranda had left the table.

  Jeremy looked at him strangely. “Is that what happened to her in the field at lunch?” He dropped the damned Ace of Spades onto the discard.

  Mike nodded. Crap! He was sorry for revealing Andi’s secret—he’d figured it was so damn obvious that even Jeremy would get it. Nope.

  He didn’t need the ace. He didn’t have any other low spades, but he couldn’t resist picking it up, breaking up a perfectly legitimate two-card potential straight to do so. Five hands of Gin Rummy, Jeremy was winning, and he’d been stuck with the unmatched ace every single time. At least it was only one point.

  “Yeah. She’s got it. Probably kinder if you don’t mention it to her directly though.”

  “Oh, I didn’t think of that.” Jeremy nodded, swept up Mike’s discarded eight of hearts, and announced, “Big Gin.” He lay out all eleven cards.

  Mike couldn’t lay off even one point of his deadwood. Royally screwed. He tossed down the cards and leaned back.

  He watched Jeremy as he began gathering them up. The old Jeremy he might doubt, the one before Taz Cortez. But she’d done something to change him down in that lost canyon deep in the Baja desert. Something more than just screwing his brains out.

  And it bothered Mike that he had no idea what it was.

  “I don’t dislike her.” Jeremy tried a hard riffle and shot a third of the cards across the table. “But…” He stayed very focused on the cards as he regathered them.

  “But…” Mike looked around.

  The plane’s interior was dim with the night. The lights in the rear sections past the poker table had gone out automatically with no one occupying that area of the cabin. The only other light was from beyond the wall that masked the forward galley. Things were starting to smell goo
d and his stomach gurgled happily in anticipation.

  “But…” he played with the word and tried to imagine he was Jeremy.

  Your insights into factors beyond the scope of the S-97 Raider itself were as useful as any Jeremy might have made. Miranda had said that and Jeremy had been upset.

  And again, when Miranda had asked Jeremy to take photographs and samples from the sand ripples kicked up by the S-97 Raider’s last flight. A pattern identified by…Andi.

  He wasn’t acting like the Jeremy that Mike had always thought he was.

  No, like the Jeremy that he used to be.

  His emotions, formerly limited to the two prongs of general puppy-dog excitement and utter fascination with a problem, had now been cracked open.

  He must be feeling…as if Andi was sliding into his role.

  Jealousy? Could it be that simple?

  No. Whatever Taz Cortez had done to him that had motivated him to take a swing at Colonel Stimson was a part of it as well.

  What the hell had that woman done to him?

  He was no less competent, maybe more so because he was thinking about things more deeply rather than just being an insanely useful geek-gun. There’s a systems problem. Aim Jeremy. Fire!

  Whatever else he might be feeling, jealousy was part of it.

  “You know, Jeremy,” Mike scooped up the cards that Jeremy had dealt out and began rearranging his hand into groups.

  Neither of them wanted the face-up card, so he drew from the stockpile but didn’t pick it up yet.

  “You’re really growing into your team role. I mean, I’ve been watching you and it’s like you’re just settling into the traces of it—really solidly on the last few investigations.” Which was absolutely the truth.

  Jeremy was studying him across the pitch-black felt.

  Mike slid his face-down card back and forth across the dark surface. It really did look like it was floating in space.

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Miranda now gives you whole sections of an investigation to take care of. I haven’t seen her triple-check your work in a while.”