There were only four other people who had his personal number rather than the one issued by the government. That the incoming number was blocked told him precisely who it was.
“Are you okay, sir?” Colonel Gray leaned forward in quick concern.
“Could you give me a minute?” They were both strung out on coffee and a box of Krispy Kreme donuts someone had left in the nearby break room and they’d wiped out hours ago.
He was too distracted to even pay attention to her cute ass as she stepped from his office and closed the door. For all their crash-footage review, including getting Harrington to send them the radar tracking records from Groom Lake, they’d learned little more. Drake had been on the verge of sending Gray home when they’d found the missing F-35 fighter jet in Washington State followed closely by his call reaching Chase during her panicked rooftop flight.
And Syria, as usual, after a whole night deciding whether or not to recommend launching a massive strike from a carrier, had turned out to be another Russian-manufactured fiasco that everyone was backing down from.
“Yes?” Drake answered the phone, but there was no need for names.
“I have a problem. I much need your best image analyst.” The voice spoke in thickly Mandarin-accented English.
“To do what?”
“There is a flight that you cannot be allowed to see, but I must know what went wrong. My people think it was plane or pilot. They are wrong. I know this. But I must explain what happen.”
Drake scrambled for a way to say no, but it was a chink in the armor of the Chinese military.
He’d met then military attaché Colonel Commandant Zhang Ru by chance almost twenty years ago at a Geneva shish kebab joint during a G-20 meeting. He was as aware of Zhang’s climb to power as Zhang was of his own.
It was impossible not to respect the man’s skills.
They were also both rabid patriots.
In the decade since the one time they’d met, it was only the fifth time they had been in contact. The last one had been to warn off the Chinese from interfering with a political takedown just beyond the Burmese border. The one before that had been from Zhang to warn off a US battle group from entering an area commanded by a Chinese general who wanted an excuse to start World War III. By delaying the group’s passage of the Taiwan Strait by a single week, Zhang had time to have the man disgraced.
But this time Drake was being asked to offer technical assistance. The question was, did this kind of help constitute a serious danger to the safety of the United States?
This was supposed to be CIA shit. No one trained Joint Chiefs on how to run a double agent without becoming a double agent yourself. Where was that line drawn? On the other hand, his job wasn’t only to win wars, but also to avoid them.
“You must not look at this,” Zhang repeated into Drake’s silence. “Only analyst. You may not read report. We must both be clear of this.”
Drake wondered at the “of.” Zhang’s English was poor enough that he may have meant “on” to confirm clarity. But perhaps his language skills were accurate and they both needed deniability, which meant this was an even more delicate request.
“That’s a hell of an ask.”
“Yes.” Zhang’s flat statement told Drake just how important this was.
Drake hoped that Zhang knew what the hell he was doing and didn’t end both of their careers. Or both of their lives.
“Why?” Drake needed something more.
“Because there are moments when even the most cautious person must gamble big. This is…”
Drake grunted. He hadn’t made Chairman of the Joint Chiefs by playing it safe. Zhang was a step away from the CDI. To have a connection, even one as tenuous as their own, into the Commission for Discipline Investigation was an unobtainable card, even if it was a wild card.
“This is my gamble. Are you remembering the name of the restaurant?” Zhang asked into his own silence.
Drake did. That must be the password. For the first time he regretted going anywhere near the place even if it had been damn good shish kebab. “Send it!”
His phone beeped with a message. It was a link to an online secure file transfer site, the kind meant for grandma’s dirty photos, not international military secrets. Maybe low profile was best in this case. Even as he glared at the address, he could see that the call had been ended from the other end.
At a soft knock, he snapped out, “Come!”
His assistant looked in. “Ms. Chase is here, sir.”
45
You’re going to love this! Holly’s text was followed by an overhead video of an F-35A Lightning II parked at a very small airfield surrounded by thick conifers.
Miranda recognized Crest Airpark right away. At least once a year someone misjudged how short a thousand-meter runway really was when surrounded by tall trees. Both landing and taking off at Crest required a higher-than-normal level of situational awareness.
No one heard it come in last night.
Really dead-stick? Miranda sent back. Accurately landing an F-35 without power on a field as short as Crest Airpark would require an exceptional pilot. Or one with a death wish.
Apparently. Jeremy opened the bomb bay and there are two empty hardpoints. Which confirmed that this was the jet that had bombed their C-130 out of existence.
Grab recorders.
Already got them aboard a Night Stalkers Black Hawk. As well as the QAR.
Good job. The quick access recorder in the cockpit often captured information not included in the data recorder. It was intended to be easily downloaded and reviewed, unlike the heavily protected voice and data recorders. And she supposed that trusting the Night Stalkers was a reasonable choice. Certainly better them than the CIA.
Cockpit clean. Too clean.
Miranda was puzzling at the meaning of that when she ran into the back of a woman her own height and size but wearing an Air Force uniform. The woman’s reaction was excessive, stumbling forward to land awkwardly in a heavy chair in Drake’s waiting area.
“Uh, sorry.”
“It’s okay,” the woman managed to turn and sit. “Asleep on my feet. Almost literally, I’m afraid. I didn’t see you coming.”
Miranda held up her cell phone in apology as it pinged again.
Nothing else to learn here, we’re gone back to TNA.
Good. Tacoma Narrows Airport should be well off the CIA’s radar.
“You’re her.”
Miranda looked up from her phone, trying to decide if there was some other instruction she should send, but couldn’t think of how to explain this morning. “I’m her who?”
“You’re the one…” she glanced around to make sure no one was near them, “…who spotted the flare off the wingtip.”
“I think flare may be a misnomer. There was an unquestionable light source. It didn’t follow the patterns I would expect if it was other interference on a camera’s lens.”
The officer smiled wryly, “Not on this camera. Trust me. It’s at the source.”
“We only know that horizontally. There could be a vertical displacement. A passing airliner or—”
“It wasn’t. I’ve already checked all of the air traffic and lower orbits.”
“Orbits.” It hadn’t really sunk in before, perhaps because she’d been so tired. They had looked down from space, yet the individual navigation lights on the plane had been very clear and distinct. “Your KH-11 cameras have exceptional resolution, sub-ten-centimeter from three hundred kilometers.”
The Air Force colonel nodded as if confirming something to herself. “They do. And you’re definitely her. I’m Colonel Elizabeth Gray from the NRO.”
Miranda shook the offered hand.
When Elizabeth released it, Miranda inspected her own hand. The ability to resolve that width from orbit.
“My hands are clean,” Elizabeth said in a strange tone.
“So are mine,” Miranda answered for lack of a better answer.
Drake’s ass
istant came out of Drake’s office. “The general is ready for you, Ms. Chase, Colonel Gray.” He waved them toward the door.
“Yet your KH-11,” Miranda continued looking at her hand, “which can see the width of my palm, was unable to clearly resolve a light source that might have measured as much as a meter in diameter. I find that very interesting.”
46
“Not yet,” Mike wasn’t ready to leave Crest Airpark just yet.
There was something happening here, even if neither Holly nor Jeremy seemed interested in anything other than the plane.
“Mike! I want out of here before they send over the replacement pilot.”
“Tell them they need to send an inspection team to make sure there’s no boobytraps.”
Holly narrowed her eyes at him in question.
“I’m not saying there are but it will slow them down. We weren’t blown to hell when we grabbed the flight recorders and checked the bomb bay. Luck, or is the plane clean? Do you know how many ways there must be to sabotage a plane that complex?” He didn’t, but she probably did.
This time she nodded sharply and, thank God, kept her mouth shut as she went to talk with the Night Stalker pilots. It seemed unlikely that there was a trap; it would have been easier to have blown up the plane before leaving. Or perhaps even ejected over the ocean after doing the bombing rather than leaving the plane to be discovered.
No, it wasn’t boobytrapped. Whoever had flown it had just needed it to be out of the way for a while.
It didn’t matter, Mike only needed a couple minutes with no distractions from Holly or Jeremy.
He started out striding toward the airport’s owner, but then caught on that the people around him seemed to have a Sunday picnic sense of time—there was curiosity, but no hurry. He slowed his walk and gait to match.
“Hey, Mel. How’s it going?” He eased up beside the airport owner who’d called in the find.
“You mean other than having a military jet parked in the middle of my runway? Are you sure I can’t tow this thing aside?”
“Well, I wouldn’t be the one to bill you for a hundred mil if the tow screws up. Do you even know where the parking brake is?”
Mel rocked back on his heels for a moment and gazed at the jet. “Maybe I can tow it and, if I screw something up, make it my brother’s fault.”
“Always worth a shot.” Danny Davis had already tried to hit on Holly twice, both times earning him a laugh right in his face. But it was clear that the guy was a total dog and Holly was very fine to look at.
Even as Mike glanced over at him, Danny set up on his third run at her while she was talking to the Night Stalker pilots.
Mike didn’t quite see what happened—Holly was too fast.
One moment Danny was walking toward her with an easy confident swagger more appropriate for a dive-bar dance floor than an hour past sunrise in the wilderness of the Pacific Northwest.
The next he was stumbling the other way, holding his nose as it gushed blood, yet Holly had barely appeared to move.
“Think he learned his lesson?” Mike asked Mel.
“Knowing my brother as well as I’m ashamed to say I do, no.” They shared a laugh.
“You could get some serious mileage on social media to more than make up for the inconvenience.” Mike nodded toward the jet, redirecting the conversation.
“Damn. I always forget that kind of stuff. The wife usually takes care of it for me.”
Mike took a picture of Mel smiling in front of the F-35 Lightning II. He captioned it with, “Come to Crest Airpark if you *really* want to learn to fly!” Mel posted it to Crest’s social media site.
“So, Mel, can you explain something to me?”
The guy shrugged.
“I’m no flier, but how can someone land a jet like that and have no one hear anything?”
“Hell if I know, I live down the road a piece. Hey, Tom,” he called out to a grizzled man with a scraggly beard. He wore a bathrobe that didn’t quite meet in the front of his big gut. “Come here and tell this guy how you slept through that jet landing. There had to be tire squeal and some seriously hard braking if he didn’t have power to the thrust reversers. He didn’t even use the whole runway.”
“Cold night so we all had our windows closed. If it came in just after sunset, I was watching one of the Star Wars movies. You know how I like my Star Wars, Mel.”
Mel nodded his confirmation, then explained to Mike. “Mel has a killer sound system that can really shake the place. He likes his star destroyers to rattle the building. Neighbors are farther down the runway and might have just thought Tom had his windows open.”
“If I heard it, I probably thought the noise fit the movie.” Tom gazed off into the distance for a moment. “Something odd though. I did hear a motorcycle.”
“No motorcycles in Star Wars movies,” Mike stuck his hands in his pockets to mimic Mel’s lazy thumbs-hooked-in-pockets stance.
“Nope,” Tom agreed. “The Star Trek reboot, but not Star Wars.”
“The new Kirk and the babe,” Mike acknowledged.
“Jaylah,” Tom sighed happily.
“Always more of a Beverly Crusher guy myself.” Mike had found that choice also earned him the most Trekkie creds in guy conversations. Especially in women Trekkie conversations. The coolly intellectual Next Generation doctor—who hadn’t been cast for her breast size or her kick-ass body. Long and sleek, like Holly without the muscles, with brains and red hair as a bonus—to go with Dana Scully. Beverly was the “thoughtful” choice.
He went silent and waited to see if Tom brought up the motorcycle sound again.
“Hey. Doesn’t Danny have a bike that he keeps here?”
Mel almost choked on a laugh. “If someone hijacked his Yamaha R6, he’s gonna have a coronary to go with that bloody nose. He loves that thing more than any woman.” He turned and yelled out to his brother. “Danny! Bet your bike has gone missing.”
He didn’t have to say anything else. Despite holding a bloody towel to his face, Danny sprinted over toward the hangars. His roar of anger sounding across the airfield moments later answered that question.
That told Mike what he’d been wondering about. Someone hadn’t been waiting for the pilot’s arrival. It was a single perpetrator—like those super-undercover guys sent out on a solo mission in a movie. It had that feel to it. One guy, one hundred-million-dollar jet, and a stolen motorcycle at the end. Untraceable and very cool.
Mel was laughing. “Bike is lipstick red. License is a custom one: ‘Magnet,’ as in a self-proclaimed ‘Babe Magnet’.”
“Thanks, buddy.” Before he turned to go, he glanced at Tom, trying to think of how to thank him without thanking him. “Bet you’re old school.”
Tom grinned in happy acknowledgement.
“Uhura all the way,” Mike guessed.
“Oh yeah. Nichelle Nichols? Hot stuff. You seen how that woman aged? That’s seriously fine.”
“Mighta noticed that,” Mike offered them a nod and an informal salute before he turned to the waiting helicopter. He gave Holly a let’s-get-going sign.
They were airborne before he had both feet inside.
He wondered if Miranda already knew that it was the CIA who’d blown up their plane.
“Hey Holly? I’ve got something new for you to send to Miranda.”
47
They’d had to remind Harvey three times to return to Groom Lake before dawn. It was still dark out over the Pacific, but Nevada would get the sunrise an hour earlier and he had to tuck the Casper drone in the hangar before then.
He’d picked up another submarine just departing Ecuador—estimates said that there was at least one en route to the US almost any day of the year. He didn’t want to risk losing it overnight, so he jammed their radios and tried a different tactic.
They must have thought they’d hit the worst storm ever as he ran close by them time after time in varying directions, chewing up the waves at full throttle in between
rolls, loops, and hard-banked turns. His Casper remote was even more fun than the F-18 Hornet from the front seat.
When the sub tried to submerge to get clear of the artificial turbulence he’d created, he dropped a nice little pair of two hundred and fifty-pound SDBs. The small diameter bombs had fallen to either side of the diving sub, squashing it flat like a pancake.
Sorry, guys. That’ll teach you to be asshole drug runners.
No Coast Guard. No expensive trials. No evidence except for some seriously stoned deep-sea critters.
Disconnecting from the Casper, all neatly parked and chocked in the hangar, was like…hell.
Like the morning after he’d tried to drink a whole bottle of Jack Daniels to celebrate graduating from the Air Force Academy. Eyes so scratchy, they must be bloodshot as the devil’s. The moment he sat up, he began barfing his guts out. The techs had clearly been expecting that: bucket, towel, and a glass of fresh water were all waiting. Even a breath mint.
He wanted to cry as they peeled off the interface contact—like they were extracting a long, thin thread of his soul. God damn the doctor to hell for being right about the post-flight reaction.
Helen wasn’t there, but Harrington was.
The general held out his hand.
Harvey managed to blink his eyes clear enough to shake it.
“That was some damn fine flying, son.”
Harvey gasped with relief. That gave him back a piece of himself. If the general was pleased, he’d get to fly again. The aftereffects were completely worth it.
“Most pilots have to rotate out every three hours. You were under for nine, but the techs assured me you were sufficiently well adapted. Glad you had the guts to ride it out.”
Drone: an NTSB / military technothriller (Miranda Chase Book 1) Page 19
