Lightning, p.12
Lightning, page 12
“Well, a girl’s got to have some fun.” She didn’t sound as if she was having much.
There was one more piece, and now that she could see through the chaff, she could make a good guess at what it was.
“Mike Munroe getting too close?”
Holly studied her hands again, flexing them, not in fists, but more as if she didn’t recognize them.
“I’ll keep my hands off him, though he is very pretty.” Susan tried to make it funny, but Holly didn’t react to that.
“He is.” She kept flexing her hands as if they hurt.
21
Miranda had known that she didn’t have to wait long.
By the time she’d uncovered her ears and opened her eyes, Commander Piazza and Holly were gone from the cabin. She’d managed to miss all of the chaos that ensued whenever anyone triggered one of her team into protective mode. She’d deemed that problem would spike the moment Commander Piazza had taken her tablet.
She’d been right.
By focusing on avoiding exposure to the results of that action, she also managed to not focus on the abrupt interruption to her own mental processes.
“They’re in back,” Mike nodded toward the stern of the aircraft when she looked his way. Which was better than Holly preparing to eject Susan at fifty thousand feet. That would be a remarkably dangerous action, as the C-37B had no airlock that would allow the retention of cabin pressure. She’d been able to hear Holly’s threat despite covering her ears.
Actually, as they were headed west of south, they were cruising at fifty-one thousand feet. Holly frequently rounded off numbers when she was upset. Now that she considered the matter, she understood that most people did, even when they weren’t upset, which struck Miranda as a decidedly lazy way of thinking.
So many things were changing so fast, but some were staying very much the same. Miranda had known what Holly was about to do. Not because she had understood what was happening when the commander grabbed her computer, but because she’d felt the internal slide down to places she’d never wanted to experience again.
Holly reliably rose to her defense when someone acted against Miranda herself. But she didn’t like the accompanying violence or chaos either. At least with Holly, it would be over quickly.
Andi was hovering. Her face was now familiar enough that Miranda could look at it for several seconds at a time. She could see the…wrongness?
“Are you upset?”
“I’m worried about you,” Andi rested a hand firmly on her shoulder. She’d always paid attention to Miranda’s aversion to light contact.
“I’m okay.” And she was, which was a pleasant surprise after any altercation or pending altercation. However, Andi’s face hadn’t changed. “But you still look worried.”
“I’m trying to do what is right. I’m…” Then she turned away to look at Mike. “…being stupid.”
Mike nodded firmly.
Before Miranda could ask why, Andi had wrapped her into a hug and held her tightly.
Miranda let herself be held, “You have great hugs.”
“Thanks,” Andi’s voice sounded shaky by her ear. She held on a moment longer, then released Miranda and turned to face away toward the rear of the cabin.
Miranda leaned out to glance aft, but the rear door was closed. Andi didn’t appear to be looking in quite that direction.
“Should I now be asking if you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” Andi’s voice was…not a good indicator for Miranda. So she took Andi at her word.
Andi eventually scooped up the dog and sat in Holly’s chair. Andi kept her face buried in Sadie’s fur.
Mike returned her tablet, actually Andi’s tablet. She tapped the screen awake and continued her editing. The text was far cleaner than she’d expected. The layout followed her preferred analysis methodology. There were a minimum of extraneous words that she always found so annoying in most other investigator’s reports.
It was…familiar.
That was illogical, because it was completely about the crash of the KC-46 Pegasus aerial tanker at JBER. Yet it was…
“You copied my report on the crash of the Embraer ERJ jet in Atlanta.”
“The format, not the details. Is it okay?” Andi finally looked up.
Miranda finished it with fewer edits than she might have made to one of Jeremy’s early reports. “I agree with your conclusions. Forward it to NTSB headquarters for Jeremy to verify against the data recorders.”
“High praise indeed,” Mike spoke up.
“Oh, was I supposed to praise her? I didn’t know.” She turned to Andi. “Well done.” Then back to Mike. “Was that appropriate?”
“It was very…appropriate, Miranda,” he had that smile she could never interpret.
“Good.” Now she could cross that off her mental list. Prior to that they’d been discussing the high diversity of dog species.
She looked down at her lap in surprise. When she’d handed the tablet to Andi, Andi’s arms had been full of the dog. So they’d exchanged the tablet for Sadie across the aisle.
Without thinking, Miranda had left a hand resting on the dog’s back after she had set it in her lap. Directly against her palm, its fur was so soft. The warmth, rapid heartbeat, and each breathing motion were not as alien as she’d anticipated. Perhaps classifying all dogs as dangerous carnivore attack animals had been overly generalized.
“Sadie definitely likes you,” Susan stopped by her seat to pet Sadie’s head before returning to her seat.
“I am…unconvinced as to whether or not I like it.”
“Her.”
“Is a dog always referred to by its gender? What am I supposed to do if I don’t know the animal’s gender?”
“Miranda,” Susan leaned forward after buckling her seatbelt and running a hand over her midriff. “The dog doesn’t understand human speech. And if the owner is offended, they’re an idiot.”
“In the qualitative sense of the word? How do you measure that without inquiring as to their IQ? I’ve never been comfortable with such classifications. And if they haven’t been tested, then—”
Holly, who stood in the aisle between herself and Andi, rested a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”
Holly squeezed her shoulder as Mike nodded. “But don’t worry about it, Miranda. Let’s see why Commander Piazza is escorting us to the opposite corner of the Pacific Ocean.”
For travel from the Gulf of Alaska to the South China Sea, that was a sufficiently accurate description.
Holly nodded to Susan, “You’re up, Squid”
Susan smiled at Holly, who was still standing in the aisle as all of the seats in the group were taken, “You’re still a bitch, boot.”
“Proud to be.”
Which was odd as Miranda understood the first to be an insult to all Navy personnel and the latter to imply Holly was fresh out of boot camp, which was wholly inaccurate.
Neither made any other comment, which Miranda took as good advice and kept her own mouth shut.
Susan then looked at her watch before turning to Miranda.
“Approximately thirteen hours ago there was an incident on CVN-71, the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt. An F-35C crashed badly during landing. The present casualty count is fifty-seven killed, another forty-seven injured, and fifty-two still unaccounted for.”
“Unaccounted for? How the hell did that happen?” Miranda needed no emoji chart to identify Holly’s fury.
Miranda didn’t want to listen, but couldn’t help herself. The snippets of information and conjecture that had been sent to Susan were often conflicting. What was clear was that something had gone terribly wrong during the landing of the nation’s most advanced jet on one of the world’s largest warships.
She heard the change in the C-37B’s engines, the descent had begun. Thirty minutes to landing. Another thirty to sixty minutes after that to reach the ship.
Susan had been right, she did need to be briefed prior to arriving on the scene of this accident. She needed six months notice, not sixty to ninety minutes.
She interrupted Susan but refused to feel bad about it. “I need everything you have on the design, construction, and performance characteristics of the F-35C Lightning II.”
“But that’s classified,” Susan protested.
Miranda lifted Sadie out of her lap and passed her to Holly. “I also will need operations manuals for Nimitz-class carriers, especially landing and deck procedures.”
“Also classified.”
Miranda pulled out her ID wallet, flipped past the NTSB identification to the CAC—military Common Access Card—and held it out.
Susan inspected it carefully. “Okay, I believe you, but I don’t have ready access to—”
Miranda pulled out her phone and dialed as Susan’s voice petered off.
“Miranda.”
“Drake,” she always appreciated that Drake didn’t waste time on frivolous niceties when there were important issues at hand. She quickly listed the documents she needed loaded immediately to her secure server.
“I’m glad you’re on this incident, Miranda. You’ll receive it all in ten minutes if I have to cut off someone’s head.”
“Won’t that make it harder for them to do the task?”
“Yes, but it will motivate whoever replaces them. Bye, Miranda.”
“Bye, Drake.”
Susan handed back her ID very slowly. “Why did you call the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to expedite the delivery of technical manuals?”
Miranda took her ID, tucked it into its proper pocket, then made sure none of the cards had been knocked askew by extracting the CAC for Susan’s inspection.
She pulled out her computer, tapped it awake, and opened her secure mail link.
“It seemed the most expeditious. Besides, I didn’t want to bother Roy.”
“Roy? You would have called the President about this?”
She didn’t bother answering as the first document appeared, F-35C Lightning II Pilot’s Operating Manual, Volume 1. She opened it and began reading quickly.
22
“I thought we had control of the area.”
Zhang Ru let Liú Zuocheng’s comment rest lightly on the warm evening breeze. He had to be careful in how he answered. He and Zuocheng might bear the same title, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, but General Liú had held the post for years. It was only Ru’s second year on the CMC and less than a year since he’d discredited General Chen Hua and ripped the co-Vice Chairman position from his dying clutches.
Ru had uncovered Hua’s weakness shortly after his own ascension to the CMC—a taste for brutally raping lesbian couples. He’d set a trap, using his wife Daiyu and the delectable young mistress he’d recently acquired. Hua had rammed his dick into the trap with absolute abandon.
Ru’s timing had been bad. By the time he’d unexpectedly returned, planning to catch Hua in the act, Hua had choked his mistress to death even as he’d taken her. Daiyu lay on the floor.
Grabbing the heavy scissor tongs from the fireplace, he’d clamped them around Hua’s neck and crushed his windpipe. He’d held it so until long after the girl’s eyes had bulged in death and Hua’s matched them.
Cào but he still missed driving himself into the girl’s exquisite ass.
The dead girl, Daiyu’s teary testimony, and a dead general had proved most efficient in opening up his seat for Ru’s ascendency to replace Hua as co-Vice Chairman. He’d also managed to choose his own man to take the vacated seventh seat on the CMC, now guaranteeing him four of the seven votes.
In retribution, he’d utterly destroyed General Chen Hua’s family, shredding it to the last soul. Hua’s ancestral burial grounds had been razed, his image had been purged from all state media present and past, and his fortune was now in Ru’s hidden accounts.
He had considered keeping a particularly comely granddaughter, a recent pageant winner, to replace his mistress, but decided it was best not to wake up some night with a knife in his heart. So he’d enjoyed her thoroughly, then altered her records to say she was an Uyghur terrorist and had her incarcerated in a Xinjiang reeducation camp. She hadn’t lasted long among the guards.
Ru and Zuocheng sat on the veranda of his new apartment in Opus Hong Kong. Ru appreciated General Chen Hua’s taste, the penthouse suite was remarkably luxurious. The exotic woods, the plush furniture, and the wall hangings of rare art created a mix of ancient wealth and modern perfection.
Well up the side of The Peak on Hong Kong Island, it commanded a sweeping view of the entire width of Victoria Harbour, Kowloon, and most of the New Territories. The air was fresh here. It didn’t smell of the city but rather of the dry oak and myrtle stonewall trees—so called because they were planted to stabilize the retaining walls and steep slopes of The Peak.
It also smelled of money. The wealth here was obscene, and it had been well past time for these people to be brought into line from their little democratic games. It had been his and Zuocheng’s first collaboration on the CMC.
Yet it was not so luxurious that Zuocheng might envy him the location, as he had acquired a house on Peak Road during the suppression of those misguided uprisings. That was an unimaginable luxury worth twenty times Ru’s apartment.
“Not bad for a pair of old pilots. Hard to believe that we started out flying Chengdu J-7s against Vietnam.” They’d been young jet jockeys who’d cut their teeth on the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War. A propaganda triumph…and a loss in every other measurable way. Over forty years later and the Vietnamese were still a tricky problem. Their alignment with Russia and growing alignment with the West would have to be dealt with someday.
Zuocheng nodded his agreement and sipped his glass of Crown Royal 18—General Chen Hua had excellent taste in whiskey, which Ru could now afford to continue at four hundred US a bottle. The man had stashed away immense symbols of wealth over the years.
Daiyu was overseeing the preparation of an elegant meal. She had learned to enjoy her power over the household and would often provide him with particularly delectable treats in his bed, joining in herself only when he requested her. Tonight she had promised him twins. She’d known how the anticipation would arouse him pleasantly all through the evening. But he’d have to wait until Liú Zuocheng was gone as he insisted on being true to his one wife.
Two serving women arrived with a plate of delicate har gao. The steamed shrimp dumplings looked perfect, as did the two women.
The twins! Daiyu was delightfully teasing him. So identical he couldn’t tell them apart.
Their semi-sheer high-neck white blouses hinted at their equally white underclothes and pale skin. One blouse was buttoned to the left and one to the right, the only discernable difference between them. A small nicety that added to the intrigue. Their unusual height, within centimeters of his own, and slender faces made them slightly exotic to his Beijing eyes. Yes, Daiyu had chosen very well.
Liú Zuocheng accepted the engraved narwhal-ivory chopsticks from the tray one held and selected the second-best har gao from the platter the other offered. Zhang Ru was careful to select the third best dumpling. I will not question your position, but don’t forget how closely I lurk.
Apparently lulled into believing that Ru was wholly his puppet, Zuocheng selected the most perfect one next. Yet he was sufficiently distracted by the twins’ beauty that he didn’t notice when he dribbled a spot of the dipping sauce on his pant leg. He then applied so much pressure to the har gao with his chopsticks that it burst even as he placed it in his teeth.
Ah, not so pure as you would have me think. Perhaps Zuocheng would be with the twins before the night was out, seeing as his wife had remained in Beijing after all—no one here to see. There was always Daiyu for his own satisfaction if needed.
Time to distract his superior and let the anticipation simmer within. He returned to Zuocheng’s prior comment.
“We do control the South China Sea. The surrounding countries barely dare contest this anymore. It is only the Americans who ignore our sovereign claim.”
“And the accident on their aircraft carrier?”
It was hard to know. Within minutes of it, the Americans had put up a no-fly zone. Any ship or plane approaching closer than a hundred kilometers had been sternly warned aside.
Two pilots, ordered to test the Americans’ resolve, had actual gunfire shot close by their aircraft at ninety-six kilometers out. Very close by.
It was terrifying how quickly the Americans had protected the zone. They had locked down thirty thousand square kilometers within minutes. And they’d done it over ten thousand kilometers from their own shores, yet only seven hundred from China’s mainland. Despite all of the PLAN’s boasting, he knew their own navy couldn’t do that more than a few hundred kilometers off their own shores. Past the reach of their own land bases, they would be easily overwhelmed. The effort required for the Americans to enforce such a large no-fly zone in unfriendly waters was beyond imagining.
The twins had moved to a discreet distance, preparing the veranda table for the meal in graceful unison. Zuocheng’s attention was most focused, watching their every move with a distracted half smile. Ru might well have to arrange a later night with them for himself.
“The Americans are like angry hornets at the moment. It is best not to stir the nest. Our satellites show that the ship’s damage is very significant. We don’t have images of the event, but we do of the aftermath.”
“They are sending two more carrier groups into the region,” Zuocheng sounded almost lazy.
Mā de! Shit! How had he not heard of this himself? He turned away to hide his emotions. Pretended to look south beyond the Peak of Hong Kong Island as if contemplating the distant wounded ship; his new apartment faced north and east. A mere nine months as co-Vice Chairman had simply not given him the time to make all of the connections he needed.
If the twins proved effective with Liú Zuocheng, he might have to requisition them on a permanent basis to see what information they could glean about the general’s intelligence network. That would have other advantages as well. He’d have Daiyu look into doing that if tonight was a success.
