Miranda, perched on a rooftop in the center of Georgetown, tried not to feel self-conscious that everyone was looking at her. Then she glanced at the big camera and ducked lower behind the roof edge. Everyone!
“Apparently a General Patrick,” the general continued happily, “he’s the director of the NRO by the way and a complete jerk, has targeted the two of you in a personal vendetta, thereby dangerously exposing your top secret-classified investigation for the highest levels of government—unnamed, but that’s me. It is so surprising that such information leaked in this day and age when secrets are so well kept.”
Was that sarcasm? It was one of her weakest areas. It sounded like Terence when he was teasing her so she’d assume that’s what it was.
“It seems that someone gave the local station an anonymous insider tip, which also might have been me but I’m not telling, that the raid is based on bad information illegally obtained and released by the aforementioned General Patrick with neither proper vetting nor due process. He’s going to be in a world of hurt before the day is out. Now look to your right.”
She spotted four black dots that rapidly resolved into helicopters racing in her direction. They were painted dark green with gold tops.
“Just a little QRF—that’s Quick Reaction Force to you—that we keep handy. The US Army’s 12th Aviation Battalion are tasked to evacuate senior political personnel in the event of a terrorist attack on DC, but I improvised.”
She could barely hear him over the roar of the slowing helicopters.
“Though you seem to enjoy semantics and as you are a significant intelligence source in an on-going investigation, who is falsely accused of being a terrorist, I think my use of the QRF is justified.”
Three of the helicopters slewed to a hover high above the tree-lined street. Right at eye level from her position atop the roof, she could see the pilots and the gunners who sat directly behind them. Their massive, six-barreled Gatling machine guns looked so close she felt she could reach out and touch them, but they were aimed down at the startled people in the street—even the SWAT team appeared to be paralyzed in their surprise. Ropes were kicked out either side of the hovering helicopters and Army Rangers began sliding down the ropes.
“I remanded a Ranger squadron to the 12th for this action. This really looks great on TV; I should have taped it for you. Though I’m sure it will be on the news for days. Tree-lined street. Just a block from the Speaker of the House’s home. You know the guys love a chance to do this kind of thing. If there’s an investigation, I’ll claim that it was a readiness training exercise. But I don’t see any problems.” The general was enjoying the situation far too much in her opinion.
He might be right about their enjoyment, but they were very effective at what they did. The Army Rangers were brandishing weapons and subduing the teams that had attacked Terence’s house with the casual ease of long practice.
Less than thirty seconds after their arrival, everyone was lying on the ground, including the SWAT team.
A black sedan tried to drive away, but the Rangers shot out its tires almost casually.
It tried to drive away on its rims.
Someone pumped a few rounds into the engine.
It lurched to stop close in front of the news van and a burst of steam came out around the edges of the hood.
A fourth helicopter came to hover beside her, moving in until it was almost resting on the other side of the roof’s peak, just a foot from her fingertips.
The copilot opened his door, but didn’t raise the visor that hid most of his face as he looked down at her. “Ms. Chase?”
“Yes?” She managed to shout.
“General Nason asks if you’d care to join him?”
“Say yes,” the phone still by her ear advised.
“What about my friend?”
“The Rangers already have him safe. Now say yes.”
“Yes,” she echoed, then the copilot waved her to open the back door and climb aboard.
As the big green-and-gold Black Hawk helicopter moved away from the roof and turned for the Pentagon, Miranda could see the Rangers pulling the driver from the broken sedan. Then they yanked a passenger out of the back seat.
A tall woman with long blonde hair in a disordered ponytail glared up at her.
Clarissa looked beyond furious as the camera and reporter moved in for a close-up.
42
“What the hell?” Mike looked around the snug hangar at the end of the totally Podunk-nowhere Tacoma Narrows Airport and wished he was anywhere else. “Why did Miranda send us here?”
Though it was definitely the right place, as the code she’d sent with no explanation had unlocked the door.
The sunrise sent a narrow beam of blinding light through the cracked-open outer door. Dust motes danced in the air, and not much else. The hangar was immaculately clean and just big enough for two planes: a sweet Mooney M20V Ultra—the fastest single-engine light plane out there—and a small jet plane made of shiny aluminum that he didn’t recognize.
There was a small work area and two old couches.
“She sent us here because no one in their right mind would look for us here. Can’t imagine anyone choosing to bomb this place.” Holly’s observation sent a shiver up his spine. He’d never come so close to death as that tumbling descent of the helicopter in the explosion’s wake.
“Will you look at that?” Jeremy sounded like he always did, delighted past all human possibility. He had rushed over to the shiny aluminum jet and looked at it as if he was going to drop to his knees and start to pray.
“What’s the big deal? Looks like it belongs in a museum. Maybe in a History of Flight display.” He looked at Holly, who for once didn’t have the answers to everything that happened under the sun.
“It does, that’s what so amazing about it. Don’t you recognize it?” Jeremy didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s a Canadair CL-13. In the US it was called the F-86 Sabrejet. It’s the single most produced military jet in history. Between the US and Canada, they built almost ten thousand of them for the Korean and early Vietnam Wars. Why it even…oh!” Jeremy sounded like he’d just died and gone to heaven.
“What?” He and Holly said in unison.
It really didn’t look like much. It was all rounded where modern fighter jets were angular. The skin was bright aluminum rather than gray or black, and instead of a nose cone, it just had the hole like a hungry maw for an air intake. The rear had a single exhaust port. It had swept-back wings and one of those bubble canopies. It wasn’t even very big, not much longer than the Chevy Suburban Holly had rented to drive them down from SeaTac airport—apparently such mundane things as a comfortable sedan weren’t proper for “normal folks with half a brain.”
“Guess!” Jeremy turned to face them.
“It came as a prize in a Cracker Jack box?”
“No. What are those?”
Holly clearly didn’t know either.
“Oh my god, I’m surrounded by heathens!”
“In 1952,” Jeremy couldn’t help himself and answered the question he himself had asked, “Jacqueline Cochran became the first woman to break the sound barrier. She did it in a Canadair Mark 3, which had been modified specifically for her and was the only one of its kind. Her wingman for the tests was Chuck Yeager. You do know that he was the guy who broke the sound barrier first ever, right? This plane,” he patted it like it was a puppy dog, “is the Mark 5! It’s the closest production plane there is to the one Jackie Cochran flew.”
“Which means?”
“Which means that this has to be Miranda Chase’s own personal jet. Jackie Cochran was the most accomplished female pilot of her day—actually, I guess she still is. She holds a ton of records that no one has broken yet. She was even in the first female astronaut program, which she helped organize—not that NASA would accept them even though they passed the same rigorous tests as the Mercury guys.”
“And that makes Miranda…”
“Too cool for words!” Jeremy sighed happily before disappearing behind it to inspect the plane further.
“You know what I need?” Mike turned to Holly.
“What?”
“A drink.”
“I need breakfast.”
“The two aren’t mutually exclusive; a bloody Mary sounds pretty good right now. Where the hell are we? Tacoma, Washington? Do you even know what’s near Tacoma, Washington?”
“Actually I do,” Holly stepped into the slice of sunlight, which made her appear to glow.
“Well, what?” Mike couldn’t help asking when she didn’t continue.
“Seattle-Tacoma airport, the busiest civilian field in the Pacific Northwest. JBLM, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, one of the largest military fields in the country and top ten in both area and personnel of all US military bases. Three airports—Boeing Field, Renton, and Paine Field not far north—are where all of the Boeing airplanes are built and tested. Plus a half dozen municipal fields like this one. And the NTSB office for all of the western US is just across town.”
“I’m from New Jersey.” Mike considered (because he was never admitting to his SoCal childhood).
The Denver office covered everything from Colorado to Ohio and Minnesota to Louisiana. The West Coast office covered Washington to California and Montana to…
“Does that include Hawaii?”
“It does. And don’t even think it, mate.”
“If you hadn’t said anything, I wouldn’t have.” Though Holly Harper in a bikini would be an amazing sight. But he’d been thinking about assignments to the lush pickings of Santa Monica, Waikiki, and Sun Valley, Idaho, ski bunnies. “Do you ski?”
Holly simply scoffed at him.
“Shouldn’t we be going to the NTSB offices?”
“Miranda said to come here.”
“Oh, hey!” Jeremy called out at some new discovery. “This is majorly serious.”
They moved over to join him. The cupboards around the small workbench opened to reveal a whole array of very high-tech equipment.
“Miranda Chase is so awesome! I thought we were going to have to wait to get to DC for this. Guess not.” He hauled over his equipment bag and began emptying it on the other end of the bench. Meters, saws, measuring instruments from micrometers to hundred-foot tapes, laser levels, and a vast array of other tools were unearthed.
“How much shit do you carry Jeremy?”
“Just the stuff I really need.”
Still more surfaced, drills, sample bottles and bags, and, at the very last, he pulled out a bright orange machine about eighteen inches long and less than a foot in the other two dimensions.
A large label on the side announced, “Do Not Open.”
“What the hell is that?”
Holly knew but was too surprised to rub it in. “You recovered the Black Box and didn’t think to tell us?”
“Well, it was weird. I mean, I was all over that tail section the first day. No recorder. Yesterday afternoon, just before they evacuated us, there it was. I put it at the bottom of my pack because I wanted access to my other tools. I was going to tell you, I really was, but then they rushed us off the site and confiscated all our data. They took out about half my gear, then stuffed it all back into the pack; never went deep enough.”
Mike handed him his things to reload his pack.
“I figured it was best to keep my mouth shut. But Miranda has all the gear here to read one. Only the lab in Washington, DC, is supposed to have that. But this investigation is so weird, I figure what the hell.” Even as he spoke, he was unscrewing plates and pulling out wires.
There was a low thrumming sound from outside that built until it seemed to rattle the nearly vacant hangar.
“Mike, go see what that is.”
“Yeah, yeah. That’s all I’m good for and don’t I know it.” Outside the narrow opening in the hangar door, he saw a helicopter coming in to land at their small civilian airport—except it was big, black, and looked very military. A nasty itch told him where they’d be landing.
“We got company! Unmarked military,” he called back into the hangar.
He heard a muffled, “Oh shit!” behind him. He turned and saw them stuffing the pieces of the bright-orange Black Box into one of the cargo spaces of the silver jet and closing cupboards as fast as they could.
Figuring Jeremy and Holly needed a moment, he stepped out to lean back against the door to buy them what little breathing space he could.
Another great day, Mike. Once again you’re the freaking decoy.
43
Mike surveyed the landscape as the helicopter flew the airport’s approach pattern, then came hovering down the length of the runway. He never understood why they did that since a helicopter could just land wherever it wanted to, but they always did.
Not sure what was coming, he did his normal routine of completely ignoring the situation until it arrived in front of him. All the worrying in the world never achieved anything. And clients could always tell.
Be casual.
Think about other things.
The sun was actually shining. He wondered if that was as unusual as he’d heard or if the Pacific Northwest inhabitants spread rumors of how awful the rain here was to keep the hordes away.
The view to the east was magnificent. Close beyond the airport, the graceful double span of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge arced high over the eponymous waterway lost to view far below. The island-dotted waters of Puget Sound stretched north and south off either end of the hidden Narrows. The city of Tacoma lay on the other side with a bright blue bubble of a sports dome visible at the far edge of the small city.
In the background, the Cascade Mountains rose in sharp peaks of abrupt icy edges reminiscent of the Colorado Rockies. There was definitely some good skiing up there. And then dominant over all of it towered the dormant volcanic pinnacle of Mount Rainier, at least twice as high as all other peaks. To the south he could see the blasted-out top, also snow-covered, of Mount St. Helens.
The temperatures here were mild. Sailboats cruised down on the island-dotted waters and planes of all sizes plied the air. Even as he watched, a small plane buzzed in to land on the airport’s runway. Overhead, commercial airliners were climbing up out of SeaTac and a big military jet burned all four engines hard as it climbed out to the south from what must be Joint Base Lewis-McChord.
Could do worse, Mike. Could definitely do worse. He was sure as hell never going back to New Jersey, where his advertising firm had been elevated, then killed by the FBI. Denver had been a nice assignment, even if it was damn cold in the winters. He decided it wasn’t a bad gamble to ride this situation out for a bit and see how well it paid off.
The unmarked black helo settled close in front of him. One of the pilots jumped down just as Holly joined him.
“One of you named Holly?” The pilot called out over the roar of the still-running engines and beating rotor.
Why did that make a horrible kind of sense? Here he was thinking that the future might finally be taking a turn for the better, yet suddenly Holly was in charge.
“Give you a clue, mate,” Holly hooked a thumb in Mike’s direction. “It’s not him. His name is Evelyn.”
Mike sighed.
“What can I do for the Night Stalkers?”
“Who are the Night Stalkers?” Mike really needed to learn when to keep his mouth shut.
Holly rolled her eyes at him just as Jeremy came up and answered. “They’re the Army’s secret helicopter regiment, the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, or SOAR. They fly around SEALs, Delta Force, and US Rangers into all kinds of places that no one else can go. The 4th Battalion is stationed right here at JBLM. They’re the ultimate in cool.”
The pilot gave Jeremy a friendly thump on the shoulder as if he was the second coolest person there after Holly. Crap!
“Are they cooler than Miranda Chase?” Mike teased him.
“Nobody’s cooler than she is.” At least the kid was
dedicated in his hero worship.
“How can I help you, chief warrant?” Mike wasn’t going to let Holly keep one-upping him forever. Learning rank insignias had been very useful on occasion. He’d made it one of the first things to memorize about the military. The pilot wore a silver bar almost completely covered by four green squares. Chief Warrant Four meant he was very senior and a particular specialist in rotorcraft.
“They found something and want you three to look at it.”
“Some thing?” Mike kept his tone amused and friendly.
“Hey, today I’m just the errand boy. All I know is that someone up the command tree wants you three taken to a little airport over that way. I’m to be at your disposal.”
“That doesn’t sound like a usual Night Stalkers’ mission,” he took a wild stab in the dark. Jeremy had made it sound as if these were awfully high-end guys.
“No shit, Sherlock. You coming, or can I get back to my real life?”
Mike waved him ahead, not even checking with Holly before climbing aboard the helo. She closed and locked the hangar door before following him.
Once they were in the back and the two crew chiefs had secured the side door before returning to sit by their side-mounted machine guns, Holly showed him a message on her phone.
Trust no one. It was from Miranda.
“Then why didn’t you stop me?” he whispered to her as softly as the whining engines and beating rotors allowed.
“Sometimes you just have to play out the scenario and see where it leads.”
She was right…which was exactly how he’d lost his advertising business to the whims of the FBI.
Maybe it wasn’t too late to transfer back to Denver.
44
Drake felt the blood drain from his face as he stared at his phone. There were some calls that were never supposed to happen.
His personal cell phone was a holdover from a happier time when he’d trade hot and heavy texts with his wife from wherever they each were. A Doctor Without Borders wasn’t supposed to be struck down by one of the diseases she was chasing, and she hadn’t been. Instead an Al-Qaeda murder squad had done it for vaccinating a bunch of kids. Both his boys were far more likely to reach out from their ever-changing selection of video face-to-face apps—he’d installed about a dozen and just answered any of them that buzzed at him.
Drone: an NTSB / military technothriller (Miranda Chase Book 1) Page 18
