Gryphon, page 1
GRYPHON
A MIRANDA CHASE ACTION-ADVENTURE TECHNOTHRILLER
M. L. BUCHMAN
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ABOUT THIS BOOK
With the rising threat of Russia, Sweden joins NATO for its own protection. But someone wants to make them pay—in blood.
Sweden’s home-built, world-class jet fighters, the Saab JAS 39E Gripen—named for the mythological half-eagle / half-lion Gryphon—are falling out of the skies. The stability, the very existence of NATO could be shredded, as if torn by the Gryphon’s mighty eagle claws.
Can Miranda’s team of air-crash investigators solve the crisis before the lion’s deadly power tears them asunder?
A list of characters and aircraft may be found at:
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Scroll down to: People, Places, & Planes
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and a recipe from the book.
1
DECEMBER 13TH
Rolm Lindgren hung up the phone without quite slamming it down, though he wanted to drive it straight through the top of his desk.
He’d spent the last two hours on the phone while dictating press releases, checking in with key personnel, and trying to control the disaster. Every time he hung up, there’d been two more calls waiting. Finally, it had quieted for three whole minutes—before it gut-shot him again. He’d managed it all smoothly until now, but this had been one phone call too many.
In the echoing silence, without any more calls to make, he could finally start to think.
He glared at the calendar. He remained old-fashioned enough to keep a paper one by his desk for quick reference. Right now, it irritated him almost past reason.
With only eight days until its final retirement, the last Boeing 737-700 in Rolm’s fleet had gone down—hard.
He’d purposely planned his own retirement to follow the day after that of the 737’s. The way he felt, he might well be dead by tomorrow—from sorrow, if nothing else.
A hundred and thirty-seven passengers (only four empty seats), two flight crew, and four cabin crew had boarded the LuftSvenska flight under their own power. They would all be departing the flight, or at least the rolling hillside of the Fjällberget ski area, very differently. He’d been told that DNA testing would be required to straighten out who some of the parts belonged to. There was also the matter of eleven skiers still unaccounted for on the ground.
Rolm shifted his glare from the calendar to the cold sky outside his window and did his best not to read anything into today’s date. Easier said than done.
December 13th.
He considered himself to be no more superstitious than the next Swede, but it was the precise seventieth anniversary of the airline’s first disaster.
Not that he could do a damn thing about it from here, not until he knew what had happened. As if. President of the airline never did a damn thing anyway except PR—and suffer a thousand headaches.
His desk offered a sweeping view from the top floor of the headquarters building. Stories below, the waterfront of northern Stockholm inspired guests in his office to exclamations of pleasure. But all he’d ever really cared about was looking up. There, he caught glimpses of their LuftSvenska planes headed in and out of Arlanda Airport thirty kilometers to the north. As the country’s flagship airline, the King had granted permission to paint the planes flag blue with wide yellow stripes down the window line and diagonally up the tail. Distinctively Swedish from miles away.
Rolm’s service boss had been one of the many calls, assuring him that the bird had passed all safety checks and the maintenance was fully current. There’d been no slacking off as the aircraft approached end-of-service.
Then why had the 737 gone down?
Had it looked at a calendar? His wife, Gertrude, had suggested that when he’d called to let her know. Unlike him but like so many of his fellow countryman, she was deeply superstitious about the number thirteen.
The press was sure to make a heyday of that and the seventieth anniversary of that first disaster combined. LuftSvenska’s first crash, a midair collision over London that had killed all the crew and passengers, thirty-four in all, had almost killed the airline. Always remembered as the second-worst disaster in the airline’s history. Would it now be remembered as the third or finally relegated to the chronicles of the past? No, the newsies would make sure it was prominently remembered for a good while yet.
Yet another call: the PR department asking goddamn questions about the rework of the diamond jubilee of the airline’s founding campaign. Intended to kick off in two weeks—the Seventy-five Years of Happy Customers campaign would require a complete and horridly expensive rebuild.
The one other great tragedy in the airline’s history, the newly demoted to second-worst disaster, had been the nine days after he’d taken over the airline twenty-five years ago. This one nine days before he left it.
That wasn’t a coincidence, that was some cosmic joke on his career. The media would probably label him as the President of Crashes. Like that headline could possibly be more important than all the people who’d died.
The first crash of his presidency—and the only one until today—had been a collision in fog between a departing LuftSvenska passenger jet and a bizjet crossing the runway it shouldn’t have been anywhere near. The Italian airport management and ground traffic controllers had been found guilty of that one, served jail time (when they should have been run through with a sword), which hadn’t mitigated the disaster.
And now…
Rolm stared at the garment bag hanging on the back of his office door. Tonight was supposed to be the first of a series of retirement dinners. How the hell to put a good face on that? Besides, he hated wearing suits. He’d told Gertrude that in ten days, the day after he left the airline, they were going to have a suit-burning celebration. Her look said that wouldn’t be occurring, she had a penchant for fancy restaurants he didn’t much share. He hadn’t conceded the win on that one yet.
That damned Boeing plane.
In the early decades, until Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas, LuftSvenska flew the MD aircraft. After Boeing purchased MD, everything began slipping sideways. MD aircraft were being phased out, but not fast enough. Boeing jets were brought onboard, but MD parts and Boeing parts didn’t match. Machinery, engines, pilots, service people, service methodologies, none of it. Then the former management had picked up a couple of Airbus jets. And yet other makes for short-haul connectors: Fokkers, Bombardiers, a couple of BAEs, even a lone, home-grown Saab fifty-seater.
And the idiots wondered why it had all spun out of control.
Holding the fractured mess together made for hard years, compounded with each bad decision. Rolm thanked the gods that he hadn’t been around to see them, at least not on the front lines. Not until he’d been elevated from the rank and file to clean up the mess. For his entire first year he’d raced from fire to fire, plugging holes as fast as possible. Including the ripples of the worst crash in the airline’s history—up until two hours ago.
Had he even seen his Gertrude in those first months? Probably not. Blessedly more tolerant than he deserved, which meant he would be keeping a dinner-out suit.
Knew that battle was lost before you even started it, Rolm. Acknowledging it didn’t make him any happier.
Despite the appearances his presidency required, he sat far more comfortably around a half-rebuilt engine with his team, sharing falu sausage sliced with a greasy mechanic’s knife and eaten on black bread with mustard.
Why had he left the line?
Because it hurt him to see what others were doing to the airline. Even as a kid fresh out of airframe and powerplant school, he could see it. He’d joined, led, then left behind the mechanics.
But he hadn’t forgotten his roots. Not long after he’d solved the worst of the messes from the prior administration, Airbus had come around with an offer of quality planes and massive EU-subsidized discounts. Locally-sourced parts, a single primary platform, and a focus down to only two brands for the short-haul connectors. It was heaven. The bottom line cleaned up as parts and training had harmonized around fewer and fewer variables.
It had taken twenty-five years.
And in nine days it would have been done. He’d planned to retire the day after the Boeing 737 and hand off the reins to a clean-running thoroughbred. He’d led LuftSvenska through the great pandemic intact—not furloughing a single crewmember or team lead. They’d come out healthier than they’d gone in.
LuftSvenska had picked up routes that others couldn’t service. In addition to all of Scandinavia and much of Europe, they now flew nine prime US routes connecting Oslo, Copenhagen, and Stockholm to New York, Chicago, and Denver.
Perhaps the old 737 hated him on principle.
He had been the one to make sure it was the last of its kind at the airline. A poor service job on the last rare bird?
No, the line guys wouldn’t have let him down. The first thing he’d done on taking over was a salary bump and double the training budget for the line staff. Every minute a plane wasn’t aloft cost a small fortune. Investing in keeping the aircraft aloft, and simplifying the workload to make it happen, had paid bigger dividends than any other single action he’d taken in twenty-five years.
An d this was his reward.
It wasn’t enough that the 737 had gone down in the largest single loss-of-life event in LuftSvenska’s history. That had been the first awful call.
This wasn’t only the first moment he’d had a chance to sit and think in the last two hours. It was the moment he could finally feel! All those dead, by his airline’s hands. All he’d really achieved in his hours on the phone was to delay imaging the dead.
And this final call had been one too many in a day of horrid news.
He’d hoped for a rapid, unbiased investigation. Maybe even one that could be done before he left office so that he wouldn’t be dumping this on the next president.
But rather than wrapping it up nicely and putting a neat bow on it in proper Swedish fashion, the SHK—Swedish Accident Investigation Authority in English, the “Breakdown Commission” Haverikommission in Swedish—had already declared the crash as problematic. They’d at least had the courtesy to inform him before they called in the US National Transportation Safety Board.
The bloody Americans.
The only good news was that they had a team attending the International Society of Air Safety Investigators conference in Reykjavik. Only two hours away once they were on a plane.
He’d been a keynote speaker for the ISASI a couple years back, on a panel with United, Delta, Quantas, and Lufthansa. The other airline presidents had warned him not to stick around for the rest of the conference, but he’d ignored the advice.
It was the scariest four days of his life.
These people listened to lectures on every topic from atypical structural failures to improper software behavior to patterns of CFITs, controlled flights into terrain (known among his old mechanic’s crowd as PFUs, pilot fuck-ups). Each conference session had been about ten times as horrific as it sounded. And now LuftSvenska Flight 1308 would become another presentation at a future ISASI conference.
For ages after attending that conference, he’d had waking nightmares every time a flight took to the air. He could picture fifty new and horrifyingly spectacular ways a plane might come back down: wet runways, bird strikes, FOD (foreign object debris) ingestion by an engine at takeoff… The list had been unending.
But calling in the Americans? They were so brash. They certainly didn’t need paparazzi over there; Yanks were their own most vocal selves. Still, he understood SHK’s reasons. With LuftSvenska phasing out Boeing aircraft over the last twenty-five years, very few of the Swedish investigators had deep experience with them. Hardly anyone in Scandinavia did anymore. And even less experience with them crashing.
Maybe it was a sign he hadn’t retired soon enough.
He should have stepped away when Gertrude had wanted to do that knitting cruise last spring. He’d have kicked back and read a book or drunk himself blind in the ship’s bar.
No, instead he’d decided to stay on until the last step of standardizing the fleet and operations was complete.
The old 737 was already sold to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where they’d fly it until it either lost the ability to take off or dropped out of the sky. Which wouldn’t take long to happen down there. They didn’t believe in maintenance; just use it until it broke, then move on. It was an ignominious ending for such a fine plane—it had performed flawlessly throughout his entire career as airline president—but a typical end in today’s market.
Not anymore. Today the 737 once again counted as his problem, not the DRC’s.
Nine days until his retirement.
There existed no chance that this mess be done in time for Hanna Berg’s takeover.
He could dump the whole thing in her lap and go get drunk now. Or at least hide out in his country place in Västerås. The cross-country skiing in the woods out his back door was supposed to be very good, not that he visited there much. Gertrude had chosen it, the former biathlete Olympian who had swept him off his feet forty years ago, and still skied with a grace like she’d been born for no other purpose.
It was very un-Swedish of him but, other than the joy of watching Gertrude, he hated cross-country skiing.
The winter sky shimmered outside his office window. It looked as if it had been carved from blue sapphire. His last time to look out this window? See his planes soaring aloft?
Only one plane was in sight as a tiny black speck climbing aloft out of Arlanda. He grabbed the big binoculars, the finish worn smooth with that precise gesture repeated thousands of times over the years, to check the paint job.
It wasn’t one of his.
Stockholm to Fjällberget. Fourteen minutes in the air. Driving time of three hours. Anything would be an improvement over sitting in his office, achieving nothing for the next three hours except feeling heartsick. And if he went, there would be no possibility of being back in time for tonight’s retirement dinner; the first good news of the day.
Ten minutes later, he was in his car and driving northwest along the E4.
Why had the damn thing gone down?
2
“Ms. Chase?”
Mike looked up at the man who’d approached their table at the conference luncheon. And kept looking up. Not that he stood particularly tall. But it felt as if he did.
Not even on Mike’s best days, when he was skiing every weekend and hitting the gym most weekdays to keep himself in a steady supply of Denver ski bunnies, had he looked like this guy. Not quite six feet but a chest you could land a 747 on. Well, maybe only a Gulfstream 550 bizjet, but it was still ready for prime time.
Bald, black, and built. He didn’t know that guys looked like that outside of the movies.
He’d addressed the question to Holly, who pointed at Miranda.
Miranda had retreated in many ways over the last few months. She wore top-of-the-line Bose noise-canceling headphones and gold-mirrored Randolph Engineering sunglasses that she probably wished were mirrored on the inside too—so that she didn’t have to look at people at all.
Meg, the autism therapy dog she’d been given after Andi Wu’s abrupt departure, lay on the floor between her feet, snoozing off the small plate of raw ground meat that the conference chef had thoughtfully provided.
It was his first ISASI conference and it felt like being battered in a wind tunnel test. The International Society of Air Safety Investigators conference in Reykjavik made international the key word.
Jeremy was chattering away with the three delegates from the Japan Transport Safety Board in a rapid patter that wholly eluded Mike’s own konnichiwa and arigatou command of the language.
The thick Indian-accented English from the AAIB guys at the table behind him sounded almost as foreign as the group at the next table the other direction from the French BEA laconically discussing the first morning’s lectures in their native tongue.
Miranda’s attention remained riveted on her plate of grilled langoustine and lemon fettuccini. She’d been staring at it without touching her fork; Miranda wasn’t a big fan of foods touching each other, especially unfamiliar foods. Mike separated the two on his own plate and dumped all the mushrooms onto a side plate; she didn’t like their squidgy texture.
Holly tapped Miranda’s arm, then pointed at the newcomer.
While her attention was diverted, Mike switched their plates, giving her the prepared one.
Holly, who always noticed everything, typically nodded her approval when he did something like that. But she hadn’t noticed while too busy admiring Mr. Chest.
He tried to ignore the letdown. Since when did he need her approval? Or anyone else’s? For his entire life before joining this team he’d never needed anyone. Never trusted anyone. And now he felt hurt because Holly hadn’t acknowledged him taking care of Miranda? Since when had pathetic become a line in his team job description?
Miranda tapped the button on her left earmuff, turning down the noise-cancellation on her headset without removing it.
“Ms. Chase?” Mr. Chest had a bass voice low enough to make Vin Diesel sound like a tenor.
“I’m Miranda Chase,” her sunglasses focused on the man’s left elbow.
