Gryphon, page 10
No idea of what she’d been about to say and not trusting herself to open her mouth in case it came spilling out, she gave him the finger.
Mike looked from her hand to Tad’s face and then her own as if he’d been struck by something very funny. She started to give Mike the same, but it didn’t feel right and she didn’t finish the gesture.
He raised his eyebrows in a silent question, which she ignored. All he said was, “It wasn’t me you were pissed at during breakfast.” He sounded surprised.
She had no idea what he was talking about. “Not only at you.” As far as she recalled she’d been pissed at everyone on the planet this morning. Not a whole lot of people had come off that list in the time since.
His smile said that he could think of several royally embarrassing statements. That finally gave her the motivation to give him the finger he deserved.
All it did was increase the size of his smile.
Tad spoke into the silence with only his head sticking in the door. “Miranda needs you, I think. Hard to tell with that woman, but she’s sounding pretty disjointed, then asked for you, Mike.”
Holly waved him ahead.
Waited until they were both gone and the cabin had chilled down to December-near-the-Arctic icebox levels. Mike had left the door open assuming she’d be on his heels.
She wasn’t.
She had some serious thinking to do first.
26
“Mike, you need to talk to her. She keeps crying and you know I don’t know what to do with that.” Then Miranda looked down her dog. “Good dog, Meg. Walkies.”
“Who?” Mike asked too late.
Miranda had already slipped on her noise-canceling headphones—set to high he’d wager. She and her dog headed out of the main building’s security entrance here at Uppsala Air Base. Out into the cold. Miranda’s newest avoidance tool; he hoped Meg’s paws held up for how often they went on extended walks.
He made a mental note to get Meg some leather booties for Christmas—even if he’d left the team and returned to Denver. Now there was an interesting idea; the first one he’d had in a while that made any sense.
He stared out the glass doors at the airplane, Holly’s head still visible through one of the small round windows. Not watching him, just staring straight ahead.
What had Andi said to Holly about him? And why had she assumed he was out to bed every woman he met? Who had she slept with since they’d been together?
She’d sure acted strange about that airline pilot in Australia a couple years back. Pretty clear something had happened there, though he’d never tried to find out what. She didn’t want to talk about it, that was her business.
He could corner her. Somewhere that Tad or Miranda or Jeremy or…any of them couldn’t intrude and get some straight answers out of her. Or maybe he already had them if he could find five minutes in a row to think?
For now, he had another weeping woman to deal with. Perfect, just perfect. How many weeping eyewitnesses and survivors had he been forced to coddle—his sole worth on the team. Let’s send Mike to talk to her. He’s always good with the ladies. He’d ruined enough shirts with running mascara to outfit a decent men’s store.
Other than that? He was less useful than stupid wads of Kleenex.
So he hadn’t studied engineering like Jeremy and Miranda, become a pilot like Andi or Tad, or a superwarrior like Holly. No JFK Special Warfare School diploma like Taz kept on her office wall along with her twenty-year Air Force career.
He had a lifetime’s training in the art of the con. Not a lot of prestigious diplomas or medals handed out for that particular education. He’d managed to avoid the law the whole way through, which ought to count for a gold star or something. He supposed it had, he’d passed his security check to work with the FBI and now Miranda’s classified military projects.
Steps to Denver: one last weeping witness, move there, and never, ever, for any reason on the planet have a need for a security clearance again.
That sounded just fine.
The only thing he’d ever been good at in this world had no place in his present life. How had he landed in a place where he was playing for the good guys instead of himself?
Then it slapped him hard in the gut.
He almost laughed, but was afraid he’d be sick if he did. He wasn’t running the con, they were. He was the dupe, getting all bent out of shape to run their game for them. If it was his game, where were all the cool side benefits and sweet women?
No! He wasn’t going to think about women right now.
Mike couldn’t get out of here fast enough.
“Down the hall, Interview Room Three,” the receptionist waved him through after checking his ID, away from her desk and down the long hall.
Miranda. He owed Miranda this one last-ever interview because she’d never done wrong by him. After that, he’d be gone faster than the Road Runner racing past Wile E. Coyote.
When he didn’t move, the receptionist eyed him in with a cool professionalism, probably considering whether to smack the button to call out the security team to take him down.
Mike nodded his appreciation; if she’d thrown herself at him, he didn’t know how far he’d race over the horizon without stopping. With the way his luck was running, he’d end up in…Wisconsin. No skiing in Wisconsin; their biggest ski area didn’t top seven hundred feet. Twice Fjällberget—twice puny was still puny. He missed Snowmass’ forty-four-hundred-foot vertical drop.
Four years. He hadn’t so much as put on skis in four years. How the hell had that happened?
Okay, fine. One more weeper, but then he was done.
He staggered down the hall, veering about like a drunk. He could feel the receptionist smirking at his back.
Maybe he’d restart his advertising firm. That had started out being legit. Being paid to sell people what they didn’t need had to be the perfect con—a hundred percent legal and very profitable.
At least until the FBI came along and insisted on screwing it up because he’d inadvertently signed on a money laundering front. For two years he’d raked in money from both sides, the clients and the FBI’s finder’s fees. He’d had the hot car, hotter women, and his own plane for flying them up for weekend to the Aspen ski slopes or mountain summer pastures with all kinds of splendid views.
Gave it up for what? Not much. He’d never imagined his life turning out this spectacularly lame.
Go interview a bunch of passengers. Get those pilots to tell you what they were really doing. And spend untold hours with thousands of eyewitnesses whose statements contradicted and had nothing to do with what Miranda unraveled from the plane and the flight recorders.
Death like last night’s 737 smeared over the snow and now some weeping woman? Not a lifestyle he’d ever signed up for. Well, he had, but it wasn’t on purpose. It had been like the universe dropped him on a narrow raceway over shark-infested waters, then loosed a lion behind him. One choice, one single glimmer of a way out, and he’d grabbed on.
Landing on Miranda Chase’s NTSB air-crash investigation team definitely counted as an improvement over winding up dead—missed getting gunned down by the Denver mafia by the hair on your chinny chin chin, didn’t you, Mike? And the FBI’s heavy clean-up squad, too, while they were tying up loose ends. With Sister Mary Pat gone, it wasn’t as if there was anyone alive to miss him.
Come on Room Three. Show up so I can get out of here. Who made these halls so long? All the charm of an insane asylum.
Working on plane crashes ranked as the weirdest place he’d ever been in his life. His previous record of stability since running away from the orphanage had been his two years operating his own advertising agency in Denver.
Four years with Miranda’s team now, three of those with retired SASR Sergeant Holly Harper in his bed. Perhaps the problem was his DNA lacked the genes or chromosomes or whatever for staying legit.
He glanced back up the hall, which he’d moved only a few doors along despite his walking forever along it, at the heavy door Miranda had exited through, leading outside. Would she climb on the plane and fly away, taking Holly with her? He wouldn’t put it past either of them.
No. There was a crash, a new one. Miranda would never leave without solving it first.
And the job did offer a few plusses—he’d never been with a warrior before. Soldiers and fliers had abounded in Denver bars—not a lot of sailors in the Mile-High City—but never a true warrior like Holly. And she was…
Well, she was coming through that door at any moment. And no matter how much Jeremy wanted him to, he wasn’t ready for whatever came next in his conversation with her. He headed down the hall painted a white as nondescript as any US military base. Fluorescents had given way to LEDs, but they managed to remain coldly institutional.
Yep, resurrecting his ad agency sounded fine. Keep the old Advanced Ads name? Sure. There were probably still rumors around Denver about the agency’s colorful demise—mafia gun battles and FBI cleanup squads. Good old PT Barnum knew what he was talking about: No such thing as bad publicity. Especially not in the ad business.
Whereas weeping women? Definitely some skills he’d rather not be known for.
The moment he stepped into Room Three, he realized this wasn’t his average weeper. She wasn’t some civilian so overwhelmed by events.
The woman waiting for him wore a green flight suit with the Finnish flag on her left arm in a Swedish military base. He didn’t know how to read her rank by the three horizontal stripes on her insignia patch. Jet pilot typically meant officer, he knew that much.
Despite the obvious helmet hair, and the seriously high-end pilot’s helmet on the bench that had given it to her, her thick dark-brown hair was lovely. Actually, it was all he saw of her as she leaned forward with her hands clasped and her elbows on her knees.
“Hi there. My name is Mike Munroe. I’m with the crash investigation team. They said you needed to talk to someone.” Not his smoothest opening.
“Right here,” she pointed between her thighs.
Mike groaned to himself. He didn’t need the come on right now.
“That’s where her ejection handle would be.”
He logged her as a question for later and reminded himself not to jump to conclusions. Neutral observer, that was the trick. Besides, he didn’t know squat. While locked in the plane with Holly, he’d missed any initial briefing that would have explained what was going on. “Uh-huh,” he tried to sound encouraging as he sat down on the bench with her helmet between them.
“She said it moved on its own.”
“They’re not supposed to do that, right?”
She raised her face and shoved aside a handful of hair. “Who are you?”
I’m the idiot they send to calm down distraught witnesses. He pulled out his NTSB ID and his CAC card. “Mike Munroe. Sorry, nobody briefed me on what’s happening. They called me in to assist but I, uh, wanted to hear what happened directly from the—” he made a wild guess and hoped it stuck “—only witness without the bias of any other, um, interference. So, if you don’t mind starting at the top, taking your time, I’d appreciate it. Your English is very good, by the way.”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s the second language of Finland. Third actually after Swedish. Most of us are at least trilingual.”
“That’s great. I’m trilingual in English and bad Russian. Of course, I do have trouble with things like counting sometimes.”
It didn’t even earn a crack of a smile. But, she did hand back his ID and his security clearance after reading both carefully and comparing each to his face. She had a face that wasn’t out in Klara Dahlberg territory, but didn’t disappoint for a second.
Then she started her account. Most of it sounded pretty routine, so he listened to the second part of the conversation, the part she wasn’t saying.
Kapten Liisa Salo may have never met Major Ingrid Eklund in person, but there’d been a deep affinity between the two. The kind of connection that sounded as if it went beyond sisters-in-arms; or would have.
Liisa became more and more precise as she neared the end of her story and he tuned back in to the primary thread.
“The Gripen is an amazing plane. I wish that we flew it in Finland. And I wish I flew half as well Ingrid.”
He felt the downward spiral that must be at the end of her story. Rather than letting her reach the end, probably when she had burst into tears in front of Miranda, he circled her back to Ingrid’s last few transmissions both before the ejection and during her descent.
Coming at them several ways—he even had her tell him every detail in reverse order—to check for every nuance he could uncover. He circled back to the self-raising ejection handle multiple times, eliciting every nuance she could recall.
Only then did he let her tell the end of Major Ingrid Eklund.
And again, he had a weeping woman on his shoulder.
Thankfully no mascara.
At least this was the last time.
27
Holly stood close behind the one-way glass on Interview Room Three. Her chest hurt, no matter how many times she rubbed the side of her hand up her breastbone.
Tad leaned against the back wall with his arms crossed over his chest—almost three feet away this time. But she’d bet he was watching her ass. The SHK crash investigator who’d accompanied them the whole way stood stiffly next to him.
Jeremy stood close to the one-way glass beside her. He kept wanting to talk about each detail the Finnish pilot told to Mike. Wanted to analyze aloud the maneuverability of the JAS 39E Grippen versus the F/A-18C Hornet. To—
She’d had to threaten bodily damage if he didn’t shut up.
The fact that he was more hyper than even his norm in her presence told her he was still worried about forcing her to talk to Mike.
Nope. Jeremy counted as one too many things to think about at the moment.
Holly ignored him and Jeremy finally fell silent.
Not once did Mike look toward the window. Not until the major was weeping on his shoulder. Not until he’d finally given her the permission to purge her pain. He’d gone far above and beyond his duty, making sure that the pilot fully understood from her own words that it wasn’t her fault in any manner, shape, or form before allowing her the release.
Only then did he look at the mirror. His face was complete…blank.
He’d know she was there, watching. Know that she’d heard and understood every word.
Two women who’d never physically met had cared that much about each other. Their connection ran that deep.
Her and Mike? Three years in each other’s arms almost every night. What did they have to show for it?
When Jeremy’s phone rang in the observation room, so loudly it might cause deafness at twenty meters, she still couldn’t look away.
Why was Mike’s blank look causing so much pressure in her chest?
28
Harry lay on his back with his left leg up on a stack of pillows as high as his thigh was long. The surgery on his ankle had been orthoscopic and required no cast. What it did require was immobilizing his leg between two side braces held in place by enough elastic bandage to hog-tie an elephant.
Doom.
Four days already felt like four weeks and he had ten more days to go. He wanted to be at the CIA, working on the latest cyber defense upgrades he’d designed. Or at Black Hat Europe with Heidi. Not kicking around the apartment going quietly insane.
He’d become pitiful. When had that happened?
Where was the hacker he’d been? Heidi too, once they’d e-met. Together they’d wreaked merry havoc on servers from Beijing to Belarus like there was no tomorrow, flouting everyone’s attempts to pin them down—until the CIA.
Caught, they’d been given a choice—entrust their future to the US justice system or take over the CIA’s cyber division. Not a bad deal, but he missed the old days where he chose his own targets and what to do to make them suffer for transgressing his definition of truth and justice. Now it was the US government’s game in the highly questionable form of Director Clarissa Reese.
That had all been back before he’d bunged up his ankle by merely stumbling while carrying a new computer.
He never asked if Heidi missed those days, too, for fear that the answer was yes.
Back then he’d never been pitiful.
What had the CIA done to him?
Well, one good thing, they’d finally met in person. That had turned out to be a very good thing. It still startled him that she’d agreed to marry him; not that he’d ever complain on that point.
He missed her even though the woman was only a couple tenths of a microsecond away electronically. Actually with the one-third slowdown in the speed of light over fiber optic cable and various computer switching delays, it was closer to a millisecond—irrelevant on all except the most extreme hacks. Still better than satellites and their heavy handshake latency in most conditions.
Because she wasn’t here to clock his opiate usage, Heidi had forbidden his taking any of the oxycodone painkillers without her express instructions. He hadn’t told her that he hadn’t needed or taken one since the first day. At least that way he had an excuse to talk to her every six hours. It broke up the utter tedium—now his big daily excitement was dinner and sponge-bath break. The drawback of stringing Heidi along about the drugs was the two a.m. wake-up calls to remind him to take his next pill—you have to stay ahead of the pain, Harry. There wasn’t any pain other than itching, but the extra chance to talk to Heidi was totally worth it.
Twice it had devolved into utterly spectacular phone sex that he eagerly awaited to try in person.
Eighteen hours since Jeremy had asked him about the mystery copilot. He wasn’t much farther along than he’d been eighteen hours before, but he called anyway, mostly to have someone to talk to. Except he’d never admit to that as it sounded even more pathetic.
