Havoc

by M. L. Buchman

  A lightning bolt? She was more like fulgurite—lightning sand. The lumpy, hollow tubes of fused silica glass sometimes formed when lightning struck and superheated the sand. Yet she remembered the stick-figure girl who loved to run beneath the burning sun. She could almost see her racing ahead of the pack to be the first out into the bush.

  When she’d been away, the main thing she’d remembered about Tennant Creek was her disaster of a homelife.

  Now that she stood on the familiar soil, Mum, Dad, and the house seemed more mirage than real. The bush. That had been what was real. The kids, even Quint—so eager to please, so happy to be there—they had been the real family.

  “Maybe it’s not the road behind that’s bothering me so much.” Though her family’s two grave markers still called horseshit on her for that.

  “The phone call that bad?”

  Holly could only nod.

  “Okay. I’ll get rid of the place for you.”

  She nodded her thanks.

  Then she fished Stevie’s truck key out of her pocket and studied it carefully. It had been her ticket out, her ticket away. Freedom…chopped off by stupidity as Stevie had shouted not to drive into the running wash and her wild younger self had taken it as a dare.

  She’d thought to carry this one memory out into the world with her.

  But maybe it was better if it was left as a memory.

  She knelt down and buried the key in the dusty soil against the raw concrete gravestone bearing her and Stevie’s names. Kissing her brother’s name seemed too little, too late, but it was all she had to offer.

  “I’ll get them to change the grave marker. Take your name off.”

  “No, Quint,” she brushed a hand over her own name. “I think maybe it’s time I left the sixteen-year-old they buried here in…peace.”

  She pushed back to her feet.

  “And thanks for my birthday flowers.”

  Quint spoke after a long silence filled only with the soft wind rattling the acacia leaves.

  “Pretty dead now.”

  “But they were alive.” Just as she’d been back then. What would it feel like to be that way again?

  “You’ve got an hour and fifty-five to flight. What do you want to do?”

  41

  Holly lay in Quint’s bed and wasn’t sure who she hated more, herself or…herself.

  Quint was in the shower being pretty damn pleased with life.

  Her body was all sappy happy as well.

  Yet somehow—without once committing to anything more than sleeping with Mike when they were both in the mood, which she had to admit had been far more often than not lately—she’d just cheated on him.

  No words of exclusivity, monogamy, or any of that crap had ever passed between them.

  But still…

  She’d just cheated on him.

  Telling herself to shut up didn’t help.

  Telling her body to stop being so damned liquid and content didn’t seem to bother it for a moment.

  For one lousy hour Quint had helped her forget everything. But now she was—

  “That’s not a real happy look for such a fine-looking woman to be wearing.” Quint was still naked, except now he was naked and wet. A right nice look on him. All big and solid. Nothing like Mike’s lean and smooth…

  “Someone should just feed me to a saltie and put me out of my misery. Why do I feel like such a shit?”

  Quint finished drying off and wrapped a towel around his waist. “Never told you about my ex, Darlene.”

  And she really didn’t want to hear it now. She’d meant the question for herself, not for Quint.

  He sat on the foot of the bed and waited.

  “Shit! Okay. What about her?”

  “For two years after she left me, every time I had me a little naughty, I felt like you look right now. You are in a relationship.”

  “No!” She never had been and never wanted to be. Not one long enough to ever be counted as a relationship anyway.

  “Sorry, Holl. I saw, but I maybe didn’t let myself see. Not saying I didn’t enjoy it, just saying maybe I should have said no when I said yes.”

  “I’m not—”

  Quint held up his hand to stop her, resting his fingers on her lips. “The more you protest, the more it hurts. Just the voice of experience here trying to save you some pain.”

  “I’m not anyway. Definitely not with Mike,” she mumbled around his fingers. And there was Quint’s shot of pain. Damn him for being right. She yanked the sheet up over her head.

  “Aw, crap. I’d have seen how deep it was if I hadn’t been so busy thinking these kind of thoughts. It sucks for me that he’s a nice guy. So I don’t get to begrudge you even that. I liked him.”

  “Everyone likes him!” Holly bolted to sitting upright and knew she was shouting, but couldn’t seem to stop. “Even me! And you know what that’s going to get him? It’s going to get him fucking killed because I didn’t have the balls to off a Russian assassin bitch when I had the chance. I should have dumped her into the goddamn Siberian Taiga from thirty thousand feet when I had the chance.”

  Quint waited out her rant.

  “Okay, tell me you didn’t just hear that. Because it was one hundred percent classified.”

  “Not a word, Holl. Not a word. Once you sat up and that sheet fell into your lap, I wasn’t thinking about anything so dumb as words. I’m just sitting here congratulating myself on being smart enough to have a crush on you when I was twelve. You shaped up damn fine.”

  Holly looked down at her breasts. “They’re just—”

  “The finest pair of bazoomas this boy has ever handled.”

  “Christ! You are still twelve.” She so didn’t feel like laughing.

  “No, I’m Australian.”

  “Next you’ll want to tit-fuck me.”

  “You offering?” He said it with a twelve-year-old’s excitement as he clasped his hands together like a kid at Christmas. “Please say yes.”

  She sighed…and pulled up the sheet.

  “I guess that’s a no,” and he plastered on an overdramatic sad face.

  “That’s a no.” She knew that he was just trying to cheer her up, but it wasn’t working.

  “What is it, Holl? We crashed out of the sky on the only piece of land for a thousand klicks in any direction and most of us survived. In the middle of that, you were on your toes and kicking sass the whole way. Never mind that we’d have all been dead without you.”

  Holly realized she was crumpling the sheet into a thousand tiny folds of worry in her hands.

  She tossed it aside, climbed to her feet naked, and headed to shower before her flight. At the door jamb, she hung on with both hands to keep from just collapsing to the cool tile as her head spun with vertigo.

  “Quint?” She called out without turning.

  “Yeah?”

  “Once I’m gone, never mention my name. Not to anyone.”

  “Jesus, Holl. You kidding?”

  “No one, Quint!” She spun around to face him.

  His look said she was as crackers as a Melbournian riding a roo—which wasn’t even close to how screwed up she was.

  “I mean it. Everyone I’ve ever cared about, I’ve killed. If this bitch knew I liked you, she’d kill you just for the fun of it. And she’s not the worst I’ve faced over the years. Well, maybe, but well within a cooee of some others.”

  “But—”

  “Everyone, Quint! My brother, my SASR team, and now I have to figure out how to save Miranda’s team before someone gets them, too. They’re in danger because of me. For the sake of your life, you’ve never seen me. They interview you about the crash, I was just some blonde bimbo you got to fuck afterward—can’t remember her name. The air marshal is bound to back up the bimbo part of that story.”

  “Well, shit, Holl. That’s a whole swagman’s bundle of unload.”

  “Yeah, sorry. But it doesn’t make it any less true.”

  “I just don’
t believe it.”

  “Well, for your own sake, you’d better, Quint.”

  “I mean after all these years; you actually like me?”

  He finally earned her laugh. It didn’t even last until she reached the shower, but she did like him. Maybe not as much as Mike, but she could definitely do with a few more Quints in her life.

  42

  “It’s weird not having Holly here,” Mike wouldn’t stop fussing with the television remote, and it was giving Miranda a headache. The remote for the big screen television was usually in Holly’s control. During an investigation, it was filled with data. During these rare slow times between investigations, she’d put on a movie. When it was some exciting thriller, Miranda was more comfortable turning her back but didn’t mind listening in.

  Unless it had planes. Very few of those passed any grade of reliable accuracy. However, Holly had gotten her hooked on science-based futures. Star Trek, Star Wars, though her favorite was WALL-E.

  Mike was flicking from CNN to a movie, then over to a sitcom. He stopped to watch a car tire commercial, then—

  Andi finally yanked it from his hand and turned the television off.

  Miranda felt as if she could breathe again.

  Her team’s secure office was in the back of her airplane hangar at Tacoma Narrows Airport. Jeremy was busy at his workbench, running a chemical analysis on the false shear pins they’d extracted from the crashed Airbus 300 engine pylons.

  Taz was reading out instructions to the new spectrum analyzer for him.

  Miranda sat on the sofa with her laptop and was trying extremely hard to concentrate on the data collected during the long flight. There should be some clue to what kind of alteration had been made to the lost engine to cause the breakaway.

  The Flight Data Recorder was useless. It was designed to track accident information and to survive the crash. It only stored the last two hours of the flight. Any stress data from the Seattle takeoff and climb to altitude had been overwritten three times prior to the crash, which had finally cut off the recording.

  The QAR had a longer buffer and more detailed data, but she still wasn’t finding any useful indicators regarding the type of sabotage to the engine or what had caused the fatal hydraulic overpressure pulse.

  Perhaps a study of other flight equipment on the Blue Loop of the hydraulic system would—

  “I mean why is she in Australia anyway?”

  Miranda had learned that listening to Mike was immensely helpful in most circumstances, so she’d trained herself to listen when he spoke. But—

  “Mike.”

  He turned to look at her.

  “That is the twenty-third time you’ve asked that question today. You already know that all she ever said to any of us was that it was personal business. What else are you anticipating learning by repeating your question?”

  “I…” he shrugged, “…nothing. She wouldn’t let me go with her. She barely let me interview her after the crash. I spoke more with that big Australian pilot she was so buddy-buddy with than I did with her. He was fine being interviewed about the crash. So was the captain when we caught up with her in Hawaii. They were glad to tell me everything. But Holly? She’s the one I’m sleeping with, and I couldn’t get her to say two words to me. Worse than a clam.”

  “You know how to talk to a clam?” Miranda had never considered that as even being a possibility.

  “Sure, with a steamer, a butter-garlic sauce, and a small, sharp fork.”

  “I don’t think that would be a very useful interview technique to—”

  “Bloody hell, Miranda. I was making a joke.” He thumped his head against the back of his leather armchair. “Sorry, Miranda. Now I’m sounding like Holly. I’m totally losing my shit.”

  “The bathroom is over there,” Miranda pointed.

  “Thanks.” Rather than heading there, Mike kept thumping his head against the chair. At least the padding was thick so she didn’t have to worry about him hurting himself.

  “It’s okay, Miranda.” Andi sat down next to her. “He’s just worried.”

  “I would think that he’d be more worried when she was crashing rather than merely visiting Australia.”

  “Sometimes we worry about people we care about no matter where they are. Especially the ones we love.”

  Mike jerked upright in his armchair as if he’d been electrocuted. “I never said I loved her.”

  Andi rolled her eyes at him; which Miranda had learned meant something to others but never meant anything to her. Whatever it did mean had Mike slouching. Mike never slouched.

  43

  Miranda tried thinking about how she felt about people she herself cared about who weren’t here. Like…Jon. It had been twenty-five hours since she’d last seen Jon on Johnston Atoll. Because of how they’d parted, should she have expected to hear from him?

  It was the sort of question she typically asked Holly. She’d learned to ask Holly about her relationship questions. Her advice had proven to be more helpful and measurably more comprehensible than Mike’s on the subject.

  But now she wasn’t here.

  Mike jumped to his feet and stalked away to the kitchenette to fuss with his espresso machine.

  “Andi? Should I be hearing from Jon? We did not part amicably.”

  Andi almost laughed. “That is putting it mildly. It wouldn’t surprise me if Holly threatened to castrate him if he ever contacted you again.”

  “Oh. So that is a disincentive for him.”

  “Absolutely. Are you okay with that?”

  Miranda studied the bright red tips of Andi’s hair. “Feelings are difficult for me to assess. My own as much as in others.”

  Andi nodded, setting up an interesting swirl pattern in the tips that dampened as the hairs’ colors transitioned to gold, yellow, and finally flame blue before fading into the true black of her natural colors. Miranda didn’t think that the pattern was related to the weight or stiffness variations of the coloring products, but it was an interesting phenomenon nevertheless.

  Mike served her a mug of hot chocolate and Andi an espresso—exactly like the ones he’d given them each less than an hour before. She dutifully took a sip, the proper thing to do when someone offered you a hot beverage, but she didn’t want more than that.

  “It just nerves,” Andi whispered as soon as Mike was out of earshot. “About your feelings for Jon…” Andi looked puzzled for a moment. Then she turned to Jeremy and called out his name.

  “Uh-huh,” he didn’t even look up from his equipment.

  “Do you have that card deck of yours handy?”

  He barely turned to toss it over before he and Taz were making some new calibration.

  Andi spread out the deck. “Wow! Jeremy’s really been working on this. These look great!” she called out the last to him.

  “Uh-huh,” Jeremy didn’t sound as if he even understood.

  She and Andi inspected the cards shoulder-to-shoulder. Jeremy had added several categories of cards in varied sizes. She had no idea how they all fit together, and she was worried about how much she was supposed to already understand.

  “Okay, let’s ignore the game dynamics for a moment,” Andi split them into the different decks. “He’ll have to tell us later how they work together.”

  That was a relief. Miranda always felt like she was so far behind in new games.

  “Twenty-four map cards of time zones around the world.” She began laying them out from the International Date Line.

  “Why didn’t he lay them out from GMT 0 in London?”

  “Well, this way, the entire world is functioning on the same day.”

  “Oh,” Miranda herself had always preferred to think of time zones from 0 to +24—she’d never been comfortable with the implications of negative time such as when her present Pacific Time Zone was designated GMT -8 when it was really GMT +16 but not because it was the same day for nineteen hours out of every twenty-four. Of course, what really needed to happen was that
0 needed to be jumped to the International Date Line. But, on consideration, she doubted that would ever happen and dismissed the entire framework.

  It was a good thing that she had bought such a large coffee table when she’d furnished the office—twenty-four cards across took up a lot of room.

  Andi called out again. “Jeremy, for the map, you need to make twelve cards with two time zones each. This is crazy.”

  “Oh,” he looked up, “that’s good! Thanks.” He looked back down.

  “So,” Andi shuffled through the aircraft cards. “Here, you’re the Sabrejet, right?”

  “Right.” Mike sat down to Miranda’s other side.

  Andi set the F-86 Sabrejet card down on the GMT -8 map card, which was their own time zone here in Tacoma.

  She recognized the other cards that Andi plucked from the deck as the ones Mike had used to describe each of them once over dinner. Holly was the Russian Havoc helicopter, a metaphor she still didn’t understand except that they were both warriors. Andi was the experimental S-97 Raider helicopter that she used to fly—easy to remember. Taz was the F-35 stealth fighter always thinking like an attack plane, and Jeremy the reliable Chinook helicopter.

  When Andi pulled the Mooney M20V for Mike, Taz spoke up from where she was now leaning on the back of the couch.

  “No. Mike’s the A-10C Thunderbolt close air support attack jet.”

  “But—” Miranda understood the association of Mike with the Mooney he so often flew, “—he’s not a combat jet pilot.”

  “Trust me,” Taz insisted. “He may fly way below the radar, but he’s dangerous as hell in the role of close support for the team, just like the Warthog.”

  Mike sighed, “This is when Holly is supposed to say, ‘But he’s so pretty’ in my defense.”

  “She would,” Andi laughed as she found and laid down the A-10C Thunderbolt. Then she spread out the rest of the cards. “So that’s all of us. Which one of these others seems like Jon?”