White Top: a political technothriller (Miranda Chase Book 8)

by M. L. Buchman

  “I always forget about the people. Sorry.”

  “Or maybe…” Sarah looked puzzled, then shrugged. “Maybe the pilot just didn’t want the smoky fire to stink up the cabin for the Vice President’s ride.”

  Someone spoke off to Miranda’s side. She nodded before explaining.

  “Colonel McGrady said that either scenario would fit within standard HMX-1 practices. He said that for either reason, it was guaranteed that the pilot of the primary aircraft would switch to internal air.”

  “Good work, Miranda. Anything else?”

  “No.” And the picture disappeared from the screen as she hung up.

  “What the…” Sarah gave a half laugh of surprise.

  “You get used to her ways.” Drake remembered just how strange and irritating he’d found her at first. Now he wouldn’t change her.

  “Do you have more for us, General Gray?”

  His wife rolled her eyes at his sudden formality. “Yes, but I wanted to wait until Miranda was off the line as this doesn’t relate directly to her investigation. You know the trouble she has with distractions.”

  “You’re the best, Lizzy.” Damn but Drake loved this woman. “No matter what Sarah says about you.”

  This time it was Lizzy who laughed in his face rather than Sarah. She continued before Sarah could get in her jab.

  “We’ve tracked the entire flight path end-to-end—sheer chance that there were no gaps in our coverage over Maryland during the time window. There were no surprises along Marine Two’s entire flight path other than the fire.”

  “I think one surprise of that scale was plenty.”

  “I agree. Each side of the box was laid down by fuel trucks for home heating oil. We were also able to track the fuel trucks backward. It was a coordinated strike. Each truck belonged to a different supplier. Three of the original drivers have been found, dead at the point of the carjacking…or truck-jacking. The police are still looking for the fourth one.”

  The President and Sarah looked as ill as he felt.

  “A lot of planning went into this,” Lizzy continued. “One more thing. After each truck spilled several thousand gallons of heating oil down those four lines to form the box, each was parked at the middle of the line. And,” Lizzy herself swallowed hard, “the drivers were still sitting in the trucks when they burned.”

  “Brainwashed jihadis?” Drake wanted Lizzy to deny it.

  But she didn’t.

  46

  Miranda had been interrupted so many times that she hardly knew what was happening anymore.

  There were so many people and pieces, and every one of them seemed to be in motion like…like…the molecules in a superheated gas.

  Another metaphor.

  That made her feel enough better that she could open her eyes once more.

  Andi was standing so closely in front of her that Miranda could barely see the wreckage.

  “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “I wish.”

  Andi held her hand for a moment, then slipped away Miranda’s phone. “I’ll take care of any more calls, okay?”

  Miranda could only nod in relief. A whole cluster of connections were snipped off with that simple act.

  “I need…”

  Andi didn’t ask what, she just waited.

  Miranda knew that she’d stretched herself nearly to the limits of her autism. The only place she’d ever found to recharge after too much interaction was on her island.

  “I need,” she tried again at the cost of repeating herself, “you to stay close beside me.”

  Andi’s eyes shot wide. “Me?”

  “Remember, you’re the calm one. I need,” again a careful breath, “to be able to trust that right now.”

  “The calm one! I punched out Jon. I threatened to attack Colonel McGrady, a bird colonel.”

  Miranda nodded. “Exactly. You create a calm space around me. Holly tries, but she’s so much harder for me to understand. All her…bravado. I constantly have to think around her.”

  “Whereas I don’t make you think at all?” Andi had a half smile.

  “Yes.”

  Andi laughed outright. “Perfect. Just perfect.”

  “No,” Miranda rested a hand on Andi’s arm and didn’t mind making the contact. “Holly’s…the safe one. I know I’m always safe around her. You’re the calm one. I don’t have to think around you. You’re just…Andi. Like the earlier tautology that Jeremy is Jeremy. It’s a good thing, Andi.”

  Andi rested her hand briefly over Miranda’s. “When all this is done, Miranda, we’re going to have a long talk.”

  “A good one or a bad one?”

  “Not a bad one,” but Andi’s shrug suggested that it might not be a good one either. What other option was there?

  “Okay.” Miranda couldn’t think of one more thing right now. Not even enough of it to make a note in her notebook.

  She turned to face the wreckage.

  They were at the leading edge of the debris field, mere feet inside the store’s main entrance.

  In the lead, sniffer dogs patrolled the edges seeking any signs of human remains. After creating a path across the parking lot and finding no survivors there, no hope remained for those inside. But she supposed they still had to look.

  After the cranes lifted away sections of the steel roof and beams, Jeremy, Holly, and Taz forged as far ahead as they dared.

  Next, the body removal teams worked among the rubble.

  Then, finally, she and her debris team moved in to look through stacks of boxed sneakers, scattered high heels, and twisted mounds of t-shirts, women’s dresses, and boy’s undies.

  It was quite difficult to follow the primary path at first. She could see a section of rotor blade protruding from Subway’s sandwich bread oven. Another portion, that had flown in the opposite direction, had speared an ATM, scattering twenty-dollar bills like…like…twenty-dollar bills on the floor.

  Metaphors were tricky.

  Once they were inside the entrance, tracing the debris path became easier the farther they penetrated into the store. With only minor exceptions, the helo had remained intact as it raced deeper into the building. The path was also easy to trace—once the roof cladding and beams were lifted aside—by the long-running scars that had been scraped into the concrete floor.

  There was also an overlay of soot that was wider than the damage path, but not by much.

  She and Andi kept the lead of the debris team so that she could see everything as undisturbed as possible.

  Terence might have retired from the field, but he’d personally created whole sections of crash-investigation methodology and he followed close behind. Clarissa, rather than being a distraction, had begun taking notes for Terence as they moved ahead. She also had an adept hand for diagraming.

  General Macy led the AIB because he’d been an investigator for years and was working close beside Terence. Jon was helping him, under the sole condition that he was only allowed to speak to the general.

  As Mike finished with interviewing each of the pilots, they formed a muscle team along with Colonel McGrady and his crew chief. They did the heavy lifting that was too small for the big cranes but too heavy for the NTSB team.

  Miranda allowed herself to act as guide and Andi as photographer. Every scrap of the helicopter was GPS located and imaged, then labeled and gathered by McGrady’s team.

  It took three long hours to forge a path through the wreckage until the trail led to the helicopter itself.

  When they finally did reach it, there was the strangest sight. Several large sections of the roof had been lifted away to reveal the nose of the helicopter.

  “That’s crazy!” Andi exclaimed and the others stopped as well.

  The big VH-92A Superhawk was mostly intact, parked among the melted frozen foods of the big walk-in freezer. Inside and out, the helicopter had been scorched black, but it looked intact except for a hard list to the right. And the missing rotors.

&
nbsp; “The freezer’s walls must have protected it from the brunt of the explosion that ripped apart the store.” While it was conjecture, it was obvious enough that Miranda was tempted to move it directly to the “crash” sphere of information.

  Jeremy, who must have slipped ahead of even the search team, stood up inside the cockpit and looked out at her through the missing windscreen. There was soot smeared across his face in a number of directions, but he was smiling.

  “Hey, Miranda. Isn’t this fascinating? As far as I can tell, there were multiple explosions. The first would have killed any survivors still inside the helicopter,” he waved a hand to indicate the corpses of the pilots charred in either seat. “The doctors will have to do autopsies to see if anyone inhaled fire or if they’d already stopped breathing before it happened. Did you see that windshield over in garden hoses? The scorch marks on the inside but not the outside? First blast. Pow!” He slapped the palm of one hand against the other held at face height as if driving it out through the windshield.

  Then he climbed out the window, slid down the nose to land on his feet, leaving a cleaner streak on the crumpled nose metal.

  “The second blast looks like a conventional fire.” He turned to face the helicopter and made as if he was throwing two fistfuls of fire at the nose. “Did you see the signs of the fuel leakage all of the way from the entrance? It must have been spilling fuel the whole way. I can’t quite prove it yet, but I’m close, and I kinda think that the first explosion from inside the helicopter must have fired off the second fire. Then came the third one. Wow! Just wow! Come see. Come see.”

  He headed toward the still blocked side door into the helicopter.

  As soon as they were out of the way, the corpse team moved in.

  Miranda followed Jeremy.

  47

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Sarah whispered as she watched the screen.

  The incident commander had finally allowed one news team into the crash site, provided they shared the images with everyone present. CNN had the best gear and led the way—which had apparently so pissed off Fox News that they’d refused to broadcast any of it.

  They’d kept the camera team at the very rear, well away from the NTSB team.

  Drake simply looked over at the President.

  They might not have seen this much carnage on American soil since 9/11, but they’d certainly seen more than their share during their military service.

  “That woman is a little scary,” Sarah apparently wasn’t commenting on the wreckage. The camera had followed the cleared path into the center of the destruction and was filming the team.

  “Which one?” Drake had watched Miranda as she forged in the lead of the group that included the camera, but it was Andi who’d been keeping them updated on findings.

  “All of them!”

  Drake laughed…then groaned.

  Clarissa must have realized the power of the first view of the helicopter. She had drifted back from lead team and now stood front and center.

  “Ms. Reese, we didn’t expect to find the CIA’s director here,” the reporter greeted her.

  Drake was actually impressed. Her red jacket was gone. There were several tears in her black blouse and red skirt. Who knew what kind of stains her black boots hid. She looked human—almost.

  “I,” Clarissa cleared her throat and wiped vainly at her hair, instead leaving a smear of soot across her cheek.

  Or was that intentional?

  “I’m not here as the Director of the CIA. I’m here for Clark. I hope that by assisting the team in discovering how this could possibly happen to my poor husband, I can appease some of my own personal grief. Perhaps I’m still in shock.”

  President Cole offered a thoughtful grunt on the last point.

  “Altruism, my ass.” Drake felt no need to restrain himself on the subject of the CIA director.

  “She’s there, Drake,” Sarah pointed out.

  “If it’s selfless, it will be a historic first-time-ever event.”

  “If that isn’t what’s happening,” the President spoke softly, “what does it tell us that she is there?”

  “Other than bidding for the Vice Presidency?”

  “Yes, other than that.”

  Drake watched as Clarissa apologized, saying she was needed, and returned to the older NTSB agent’s side to resume taking notes.

  What was Clarissa Reese up to?

  Drake recalled the first time he’d met her. It was during the Caspar aerial drone debacle—a secret search-and-destroy project she’d developed. Secret, including from himself and the President.

  She’d almost started a war with the damn thing.

  So, why had she insinuated herself into the very front of the site investigation team?

  “She either…suspects something or, even worse, knows something.” Drake considered. “If it’s the latter, she’s there to keep it from being found. No, that can’t be it. She’s got to know that she could never hide anything with Miranda on site.”

  “Ms. Chase is that good?” Sarah asked.

  “Yes,” he and the President said in unison.

  “Which means,” Drake continued, “that Clarissa, in addition to wanting to be Roy Cole’s new best friend, suspects something and is hoping that Miranda can prove or disprove it.”

  “Poison,” Sarah stated flatly. “So we already know it’s an act of terrorism. Domestic or foreign?”

  “Assuming the latter, Ms. National Security Advisor, what are your thoughts on who might be behind it?” President Cole began tapping that giveaway left forefinger on the desk. He was thinking extremely hard, though Drake couldn’t read quite what.

  “Give me a minute,” Sarah pulled over her tablet.

  Drake made a show of looking at his watch.

  If Sarah noticed, she ignored him.

  48

  Jeremy waved for Miranda to kneel beside him near the starboard sponson. The fuel tanks for the VH-92A Superhawk were outboard of the main passenger cabin. The streamlined extensions to either side were fifteen feet long, and both two feet wide and high. The landing gear folded up into the very rear of the sponson. The rest was fuel, four hundred gallons per side.

  “The other side was gouged open by a cash register. I found nine dollars and thirty-seven cents in assorted change caught in the wheel well. That’s what caused the spill all along the fire path that we followed in.”

  Miranda nodded. It made sense; the scarred and scorched line across the concrete was undeniable.

  “But look at this side. I found it just before you arrived.”

  The helicopter leaned heavily above them and the floodlights didn’t reach in here.

  Jeremy aimed a flashlight at the front end of the sponson. The outer aluminum skin had been pierced by numerous holes, the largest nearly the size of her fist. She lay down on the floor to look at the underside. Equally large holes had been melted through the bottom of the tank.

  “Whatever it was melted all of the way through, dropping right through the fuel in the tank without being extinguished.”

  Miranda looked, but all of the concrete in this area was so badly scarred that no obvious patterns showed. “The location of these holes implies that the fuel would have poured out…that way.”

  They both rose to their feet and looked to the south.

  “But see,” Jeremy led the way. “It would have deflected off these cases of soda and poured in that direction.”

  And sure enough, fifteen meters away was a massive crater punched down into the concrete. Rather than any of the roof collapsing into the crater, it had been blown up and outward in a circular spread.

  “Have you determined—” Miranda started.

  “There’s a few garden supplies scattered around the crater’s edges and a few melted riding lawnmowers over there. I think we got a jet fuel-fertilizer mixture. Under the right conditions…”

  “…an ANFO.”

  “Exactly. Ammonium nitrate from the fertiliz
er and fuel oil, or in this case kerosene jet fuel. That actually makes it an ANKJF. Oh, that’s awkward. ANFO is much easier to say.”

  Miranda nodded, it all fit. A shipload of ammonium nitrate had degraded and destroyed much of the harbor of Beirut, Lebanon. Mixed with nitromethane as a fuel, making it ANNM, it had been used in the 1995 Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing.

  “How about ANJF? Then you can pronounce it an-jeff.”

  Jeremy nodded rapidly. “I like that. That’s good. I’ll use that in the report.”

  Miranda felt the stab in her gut. In the past he’d have said We’ll use that… or You can use that… But he’d already moved on to think like a team leader, even if this was technically her investigation.

  To distract herself from the painful line of thought, Miranda turned back to the helicopter, but couldn’t see the full scenario yet.

  The wall between the front and back of the store and the freezer wall, supported from behind by the thirteen-ton helicopter, had protected the Superhawk from the worst of the blast.

  The teams were now swarming the wrecked helicopter. With a clear path, some were extracting the bodies. Others were struggling to clear the debris along either side.

  It took everything she had to walk back into the crowd and return to the damaged sponson. It was still a quiet haven tucked into the debris, which let her think again.

  “But what caused the initial holes?”

  Jeremy shrugged. “I only had a moment to look at the materials in the tank, the hull material, and the crash-proofing lining inside the tanks. Nothing seems wrong other than the holes themselves.”

  A circle of light briefly strobed by them.

  “Do that again.”

  Jeremy shook his head, “I didn’t do anything.”

  Miranda just waited.

  After half a minute, Jeremy whispered, “What are we waiting for?”

  Fifteen seconds later, another light strobed by. This time she was able to trace the path.

  “Who’s inside the helo?” she called out.

  “Just about the whole freaking population of Virginia,” Taz called back.