Havoc

by M. L. Buchman

  But even just watching Mike’s care for the rest of the team had slowly taught her that there were ways to do that without killing to protect.

  “Tricky,” she croaked at the dawn light.

  He’d definitely out-maneuvered her.

  Maybe himself, too.

  Like she’d told…someone.

  The thought made her smile against cracked lips.

  Quint was right—poor Quint.

  She and Mike. Against everything they’d ever said. Or denied. Or not said.

  She and Mike.

  And now…mirages.

  A great jet climbing into the sky above a whirlwind of brown dust. Pretty vortices of brown behind its twin engines.

  So close.

  She reached out a hand, but couldn’t seem to touch it.

  79

  “We need to turn back,” the C-40A Clipper jet continued to roar aloft.

  “Why, Miranda?” Mike leaned close to her.

  “Because,” she pointed back out the window, “I just saw the same hat I forgot to take.”

  “I can get you a new hat, Miranda.”

  “You don’t need to. My hat is on my mantle at home. I forgot it there.”

  “Then we don’t need to turn back.”

  Miranda opened her mouth, then closed it again. It was one of those strange circular conversations she always had such a challenging time finding her way out of.

  She tried again.

  “Mike, we need to turn back.”

  “For a hat?”

  “Yes, for Holly’s hat.”

  “But you said it’s on your mantle at home.”

  “Mine is.”

  “Then why—”

  “Because I just saw Holly’s hat down there.”

  “You mean like this one?” Mike tapped the bill of his own hat.

  “No. That’s your hat. I just saw Holly’s. Down there.”

  Mike’s eyes were slowly widening.

  Andi leaned in. “Okay, Miranda. What did you say to him this time?”

  “I said—”

  Mike grabbed her arm hard but didn’t appear to be able to speak.

  “All I said was, ‘I just saw Holly’s hat. Down there.’ It’s bright yellow. It’s quite easy to spot. That’s all I said. Honestly,” she turned to Andi. “I was being most careful.”

  Mike’s jaw was down and now Jeremy and Taz were listening in as well.

  “Miranda,” Andi asked calmly. “Was Holly wearing it?”

  “All I saw was the hat. They do all look alike. Unless you get close enough to inspect the individual size selections or staining, of course. I wasn’t able to do that as we took off. But if Holly wasn’t wearing it, then it wouldn’t be hers. Or would it?”

  In the frenzy that followed, no one answered her question.

  Keep reading for an excerpt from

  Miranda Chase #8: White Top

  White Top (excerpt)

  If you enjoyed that, be sure you don’t miss the next title in the Miranda Chase series!

  White Top (excerpt)

  Naval Air Station Anacostia

  Elevation: unlisted for security reasons

  Washington, DC

  6 days ago

  Major Tamatha Jones did her best to remember how to breathe. Marine Corps helicopter pilots were not supposed to have trouble breathing under any conditions, but today was proving to be the exception to the rule.

  She worked her way through the preflight walkaround—a wholly redundant activity here at HMX-1. The mechanics here were the best in the world and the squadrons birds reflected it; they had to. And none more so than her helo. When the President of the United States stepped aboard and it became Marine One, it had to be perfect.

  But she still did a full preflight inspection every time.

  Then she took one more circle around her brand-new VH-92A Superhawk just…because. Sixty-eight feet and six inches of executive transport muscle. Marine green below, white top above, and down the sides, block-lettered in white, “United States of America.” The only bright colors were also the ones that mattered most—the blue-and-yellow Presidential seals affixed below both pilots’ side windows.

  Inside for her passengers was luxury seating, including a full armchair for the President and a guest, couches alongside, and more seating to the rear. Less obvious were the armor, attack evasion gear (both passive and active), a fully isolatable air system, and a communications suite that could run a war.

  During the last two years of testing and certification of the VH-92A, she’d made the landing on the White House’s South Lawn over a hundred times in the simulator. She’d also made it in the real world seven times—always when the President was not in residence so that he wouldn’t be disturbed.

  But today was the first transport of President Roy Cole aboard the Marine’s newest bird. And unexpectedly, the first Presidential “lift” had fallen to her—carrying him from the White House for the ten-mile flight to Air Force One waiting at Andrews Air Force Base.

  Normally, HMX-1 commander Colonel McGrady was the President’s pilot. But he was already prepositioned at Tel Nof Airbase in Israel, the first stop of the President’s whirlwind global tour. The colonel would fly over twenty-seven hours—and many more without the President aboard—over the next six days. She’d be aloft for approximately six minutes and a half minutes.

  It didn’t matter. McGrady had tapped her for the Number Two slot, and she would be the first to fly the Commander-in-Chief aboard his new Marine One helo—which just might stop her heart along with her breathing at this rate.

  She trailed a hand over the shining paint job, after wiping her fingertips on the leg of her dress slacks to make sure she wouldn’t leave any smudges. The dark green paint was mirror-bright enough for her to check the set of her short-sleeved Service C—or more commonly Service Charlie—tan uniform shirt. Even the hubs of the wheels shone. Not a spec of grease would dare blemish a Marine One helo, not when it was prepared by the Marines.

  At the nose of the bird, Tamatha turned to face her helo directly and saluted sharply.

  “Seriously, Major?” Her copilot strolled over from the ready room. Vance Brown was from Texas, so there was no accounting for him. They’d flown together back in the VMM-265 out of Okinawa, and he knew full well that she always saluted any aircraft she was about to fly. She liked thanking her bird in advance for a safe ride.

  “Dragons rule!” he declared.

  “No longer a Dragon, Captain Brown. You’re a Nighthawk.”

  “Once a Dragon, always a Dragon,” Vance insisted. The emblem of the VMM-265 was very cool and she’d worn it with great pride—a green dragon wound through the heart of the Japanese kanji for dragon. But now she wore the crossed rotor blades of HMX-1 and there was no prouder patch in the Corps except for the Presidential Pilot patch she’d be cleared to wear after this flight.

  She ignored Vance and circled to the right forward stair. Unlike the VH-3D Sea King, the entry door was on the pilot’s side. Whenever one of the sixty-year-old Sea Kings landed on the White House lawn, the newsies were always photographing the copilot. Her big Superhawk would land facing the other way and she would be the one in the photographs.

  Because of that, she double-checked that the Presidential Seal below her window was perfectly clean. Crew Chief Mathieson caught her at it and just grinned. Not a chance he would have missed that. There was an entire special protocol for cleaning and maintenance of the right front corner of the VH-92A. It, along with Sergeant Mathieson, would be the two most photographed Marine Corps assets for the years to come. Times ten, as this was the first flight.

  It was only fitting that he was the one photographed as he awaited to salute the President at the base of the stairs. It was really his bird, she simply was allowed to fly it.

  They’d pre-staged at Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling at the juncture of the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers early this morning. A sea fog was rolling into their main base at Quantico near the mouth
of the Potomac, and she hadn’t wanted to risk being grounded.

  Most of the old Flying Field at Anacostia had long since been consumed by office buildings, primarily the headquarters of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The HMX-1 hangar and the sixty-thousand square feet that made up the squadron’s seven helipads were all that had withstood the tide of “improvements.” Give her a helo cockpit over a desk any day of the week.

  Once in and seated, she took that crucial moment to switch her brain over. The thousand worries from overseeing her section of the squadron, training new pilots, making sure every action and decision was properly logged—all of it went away.

  For the next hour or so, she was just a pilot and nothing else mattered.

  They buckled in and started down the checklists. She and Vance could do it by rote, but they followed every step in the standard call-and-response that had kept pilots alive since the beginning of flight.

  To her left and right, two identical birds were doing the same. HMX-1 always flew in flights of two or three—one designated primary and the others as decoy birds. In flight, the three of them would shuffle about the sky so that no one could guess which carried the President.

  “Package ready?” she keyed the mic.

  The two decoys acknowledged, then the two Night Stalkers’ gunships that were already aloft in guard position. The black helos of the 160th SOAR typically flew overwatch of the official “lift package” as the Marine Corps flight was known.

  Tiny wisps of fog that had wandered this far up the Potomac were blasted aside as the three big VH-92A’s took to the sky for their first-ever Presidential lift.

  Her world condensed even further. The key to flying at this level was to be completely present. And she was.

  Two hundred feet above Anacostia, she sliced over the golf course that divided the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers and turned upriver.

  The route was the most highly guarded air route in the world. Nothing and no one was allowed to fly it except the helicopters of HMX-1. Tucked underneath the incredibly restrictive approach to Reagan National Airport and the outright prohibited air space around the National Mall.

  Hard right past the Jefferson Memorial. Maintain altitude across the National Mall, well below the top of the Washington Monument. That perfect instant when everything lined up. The Washington Monument and the Capitol building to the right; the World War II Memorial, the Reflecting Pool, and Lincoln to the left.

  She always allowed herself a three-second glance to either side—to check that the airspace remained clear. Unable to take her hands from the controls to salute the marble President, she gave Lincoln a respectful nod.

  No one except an HMX-1 pilot, not even the President, was privileged to have such a view of the nation’s capital as she had from her high-visibility cockpit. She resisted the urge to whoop out a cheer—stay in the moment. She could cheer later when she watched herself on the news tonight; she’d been careful to set record to CNN for the next two hours and the nightly news.

  She and Vance did trade grins.

  Mathieson had left his seat directly behind her own to stand between the seats to watch the city with them. It wasn’t regulation, but no one deserved it more.

  One of the decoys slid in front of her and headed for the South Lawn. At the fifty-foot treetop level, he peeled up and to the right. The other decoy was close on her tail this time, until she began the final descent. He too peeled off to take up an overhead station. The two decoys and the two overwatch birds hung back far enough that rotor noise wouldn’t disturb the President’s departure.

  Ducking down between the trees, the approach always looked impossibly small. But practice had taught her that the helo fit, as long as the pilot was perfect. A deep breath prepared her for the final move.

  At twenty-five feet, she hovered over the three six-foot aluminum disks. The White House ground crew had pre-placed them in the proper layout for her bird, all she had to do was hit the marks.

  No ground crew, because HMX-1 Marine pilots didn’t need them.

  Instead, all she had were two six-inch-wide, twenty-foot-long strips of canvas tacked to the lawn.

  “L marks the spot,” Tamatha muttered to herself as she lined up the two strips, one dead ahead of her nose and the other at ninety degrees to the tip of the nose.

  If she twisted around, she’d be able to see some of the disk that had to end up beneath her right wheel, but practice had taught her that was a distraction.

  Head up, face front when flying. Colonel McGrady had made it clear what he expected of his Marine Corps pilots and she’d given everything she had to getting it right by the McGrady Bible.

  Must have worked; she was here.

  The wheels kissed down.

  Engines to idle, disengage and brake the rotors to a stop.

  She was here.

  On the White House South Lawn. She glanced right as Sergeant Mathieson lowered the door, descended, and moved to guard the stair.

  Tamatha checked the clock, precisely five minutes early.

  Exactly where she wanted to be.

  Though she could do without the news pool photographers who, for the next five minutes would have nothing to photograph except her aircraft, her crew chief, and herself.

  “You’re with me, Drake.”

  “Are you sure it’s not too late to resign, Mr. President?”

  President Roy Cole laughed, which had been the point. “Between you and Marian, I’ve got to find myself some better help.”

  “Hey, I’m Jewish,” National Security Adviser Marian Feldman protested, “whining is part of the heritage. I have no idea what his problem is.”

  The three of them had practically been in each other’s pockets all week in preparation for this trip; most vestiges of formality hadn’t survived such an effort. Drake Nason was actually looking forward to the trip. As a four-star general and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he rarely left the circuit of the Pentagon and the White House anymore. A chance to spend a week aloft aboard Air Force One was a welcome break—and possibly even fix some problems. The Middle East was always a nightmare. Hopefully this trip would dial it back some…maybe…not likely. But they had to try.

  “How did this become my life?” He teased the President as he picked up the Berluti leather satchel that Lizzy had bought him for their one-year anniversary—which had probably cost almost as much as the pearl necklace he’d bought for her. Both of them had been relieved from fears of extravagance. She’d married late in life, and he’d had a long gap since Patty’s death, which meant they had to make up for lost time.

  “You both made the same damn mistake, you said ‘Yes’ when I asked you to serve.”

  “Damn it! I knew it was something,” Marian gathered the final files off the Situation Room table and slipped them into her own briefcase. “How do I look?”

  “Like you’re about to be on national television…”

  “But what?” she glanced up at him as they followed the President up the stairs, then headed toward the Oval Office for the President to get his coat.

  “But don’t worry, all they’re going to care about is the new helicopter and him.”

  Roy glanced back. “The new one? About time. I was afraid they wouldn’t even be ready for the next President.”

  “The Marines seem to think that being careful means four years of testing.”

  “Well,” Marian commented, “I for one am in favor of that. Helicopters make me crazy.”

  Through the Oval Office’s bulletproof glass—so thick that everything outside looked like a watercolor that had been caught in the rain—Drake saw the VH-92A Superhawk sitting on the South Lawn. He loved helos. As a 75th Army Ranger, he’d ridden in a lot of them. Even some flown by Marines, God help him.

  The VH-92A had been a long time coming.

  It couldn’t have any real relation to this trip, but it gave him hope anyway. Hope that maybe they could turn some things around in the Middle East.

 
; Major Tamatha Jones kept her focus.

  President Cole was a creature of habit, which wasn’t always a good thing for security, but the Marine in her appreciated it.

  He exited the White House at precisely two minutes before scheduled departure. He took four questions from the gathered newsies. At thirty seconds to go, he waved goodbye. It was only after he turned his back on the newsies that she could see the deep exhaustion he’d been hiding from them. Seven years in office had definitely taken their toll. Yet he saluted Mathieson neatly before boarding. And was ready to lift precisely on schedule.

  She almost yelped when a fist thumped on her shoulder.

  “Damn sharp helo you’ve got here.”

  “Brand-new just for you, Mr. President.”

  “I see that you finally shoved McGrady aside. Well done, Major Jones.”

  “Thank you, sir.” She’d never actually met the President before and was shocked that he knew her name. She covered her own nerves, “He fought against it but it had to be done. I hope you won’t miss him too much, sir.”

  To the President’s left, Vance’s eyes went wide.

  “Not so’s I’d notice. Going to get me to the airport in one piece?”

  “That’s the plan, sir. Unless you had something else in mind.”

  He squinted at her. “What? Like in two pieces, delivered separately for later reassembly?”

  Vance rolled his eyes in what appeared to be panic.

  She should have kept her damn mouth shut.

  “I was thinking more along the lines of a sunny day on the Chincoteague shore.”

  “That suggestion, Major, just might get you made a colonel. You’re on…next time.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Go Marine,” he held out a hand and she shook it. That he also shook Vance’s was decent and would probably be the highlight of his Texan existence.

  “Semper Fi, Mr. President. Now, if you’ll sit down and buckle up, I’ll see what I can do about the in-one-piece part of that deal.”