Condor

by M. L. Buchman

  Miranda walked slowly forward, looking for the leading edge of the debris.

  “Why you in particular?” Mike asked Jon as they followed close behind her.

  “I’m with the US Air Force Air Combat Command Accident Investigation Board. Now there’s a mouthful. Normally you’d have a colonel heading an investigation, but it wasn’t one of our airframes, so you only get a lowly major.”

  “You don’t seem very bothered about having us treading on your turf.”

  “Are you kidding? I’ve been waiting years to work with Miranda Chase. She’s something of a legend, you know. All the way back to…”

  Miranda blocked them out when she spotted a sheared 12 mm bolt lying on the pavement. She pointed, and Jeremy lay a flag beside it.

  She looked up and had to stumble backward. Jagged shards of metal, which hung on the back of the cockpit module’s rear bulkhead, stood out mere inches from her face. The surface stretched a story high and twice as wide. It was curiously devoid of features.

  She flickered a flashlight into the large hole. The only one in the rear bulkhead, but there wasn’t much to see from outside. A few bits of white, but mostly scorched debris.

  Beyond this bulkhead lay the crew compartments. To this side would have been the wing structure and central fuel tanks. Other than control connections—now little more than sheared steel wires and electrical cables—there was only one other significant penetration of the surface. A small access door bent beyond any possibility of opening.

  The structural connections along the hull edge, now lying at her feet, were badly deformed by the accident.

  “Jeremy?”

  “Here!”

  “I want both a still and video record of everything. Start right here. The rest of us will do the perimeter walk.”

  “Team Chase! I’m on it!” He pulled out his tablet and selected an image-mapping application. Each photograph would have its precise GPS position stored as a part of its metadata. “Want to give me a hand, Major Swift?”

  “Jon. Sure.” And Jeremy handed him a compact video camera.

  “Holly? Mike? Let’s go.”

  Usually Miranda took the outside end of the line so that she could assure herself that nothing lay further afield, but this time Holly and Mike lined up on either side of her.

  Miranda was about to ask Holly to switch positions with her but Holly shook her head—short and sharp.

  Miranda guessed that meant she was supposed to stay where she was. She didn’t like it, but Holly was often right about things that Miranda didn’t perceive at first, so she stayed in the middle as they began the walk.

  9

  Elayne’s ID as an Antonov engineer let her slip through Fort Campbell’s security. She knew it was standard for a specialist from the manufacturer to be at any major crash investigation. Apparently the gate guards knew the same thing.

  Normally, of course, they’d be there to make sure that the minimum of blame was attached to their aircraft, but she didn’t give a damn about that. She simply needed to verify the extent of the destruction, and make sure that the investigation didn’t point any blame toward Russia.

  Her role also earned her an armed escort, with her rental left at the gate.

  Fine with her.

  She did her best to kick back and act casual, but it was hard. It was the first time she’d been on a US military base, at least inside the US.

  Aviano Airbase in Italy had been a delightful storehouse of interesting information. It was amazing how dense guys were. Her Italian wasn’t even particularly good, but her clothes and her cleavage had been the top of Milan-casual and opened many interesting doors. A very successful intelligence gathering mission for her superiors, including numerous selfies with the over-friendly pilot, which showed very interesting equipment in the backgrounds.

  Fort Campbell’s Morgan Road—better paved than most roads in Russia—slid past whole sections of housing. What had to be officers’ homes, bigger than anything she’d ever lived in, gave way to smaller homes that were still ridiculously luxurious. There wasn’t a single one under two hundred square meters. Two thousand square feet sounded even larger—maybe that’s why Americans kept the English measurement system.

  Each house had a yard and at least a two-car garage. Each group of them had a playground for their families. What did they do with so much space?

  A few turns and they were going past nondescript office buildings, training centers, and a gym. A Burger King commanded a major intersection.

  A grove of thick trees to the right, a hospital to the left—good to know in case there actually was a survivor that the radio report hadn’t known about. If there was, she’d have to find a way in there to make sure their survival was brief. Not impossible, now that she was inside the security perimeter, but not easy. It would probably include killing her escort driver, which wouldn’t be much of a waste. If he was a typical specimen of “America’s Finest,” Russia had little to worry about—lean and gawky.

  They drove past a helicopter parking area.

  All black!

  The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (airborne). She must contrive a way to inspect these. Some of them were so specialized and rare that there were under twenty of them anywhere—and they were all for the Night Stalkers. If she could get aboard a DAP Hawk and take good pictures, they’d make her a polkovnik—jumping straight from major to colonel.

  Even as she watched, a Black Hawk lifted clear of the field before shooting away to the south where she knew they had a large training range.

  Then everything else dropped away.

  Past the hospital, the view of the runway opened out before them.

  They’d arrived at midfield, and dead ahead was the most magnificent wreck she’d ever seen.

  Like a dissected frog, the plane was opened up and spread out with all of its insides showing. The twisted, melted masses of the helicopters—which took her a moment to even identify as such—were among the highest points remaining.

  She’d make sure that everything, and everyone, was accounted for, but she could already see that her work here was done.

  Most of the people she could see were close by the wreck, still dressed in firefighting outfits.

  Most, but not all.

  A small group of three people were well away from the aircraft. They were walking parallel to it rather than toward it. Every twenty steps or so they did a curious sideways shift, sometimes inward, sometimes outward.

  Locating the debris perimeter.

  The site investigation team.

  “Take me over to them,” she ordered the geek. They’d have the most information on personnel and salvageable information.

  Without even asking a question, he drove in their direction.

  10

  Miranda appeared to be oblivious to the approaching vehicle.

  After more than an hour staring at the ground for every stray nut and bolt, Holly was feeling a little oblivious herself.

  The vehicle was coming far too close for Holly’s comfort. Most of the explosion’s force had been dissipated upward, but enough had been lateral to scatter pieces far and wide.

  They were following a distinct bulge in the shape of the debris field that was wider than at any other point.

  The white Ford Explorer, with a bright-green Fort Campbell Military Police decal, showed no signs of stopping short of the possible debris area. Holly finally gave up any pretense of searching the ground and starting walking toward the vehicle to stop it with her palm facing out.

  “Holly? Where are you going?” Miranda called after her.

  She’d learned that Miranda would flounder with such an unexplained change, but she didn’t have time to explain. Instead, she needed something to occupy Miranda’s attention for the moment.

  Still, the car kept heading toward them.

  “Why is there such a big bulge in the debris field here, Miranda? Wider than a billabong.” She hated to do it. Forcing Miranda’s focus
to shift from inspection to conjecture would be hard for her to recover from.

  Nothing but silence behind her. It had worked, she just hoped it wouldn’t take her too long to recover.

  Holly accelerated her pace until she finally came to a standstill directly in front of the vehicle’s path.

  She could see bits of debris to either side. Inconsequential bits, but the field did reach this far. Probably more that the vehicle was driving over.

  Miranda would be upset.

  Holly was livid.

  The MP jerked to halt close enough that she could bang the hood, so she did. Hard enough to dent the metal.

  “Hey!” the driver shouted.

  “Back it up!”

  The driver climbed out of the car with a hand on his sidearm but was looking at the hood of his car. “Why did you do that? I have to report that, you know.”

  She got right up in his face. “I. Said. To. Back. Up. You fuck knuckle. What part of that didn’t you understand?” Fury beyond any reason roiled in her gut.

  The patrolman jerked out his sidearm.

  She double slapped his wrist. Her left hand took control of his weapon as her right broke his wrist. She then unleashed a right elbow into his solar plexus. Rather than letting him collapse, she jammed his gun up under his chin hard enough to have him rising on his toes to ease the pressure despite wheezing for breath.

  The passenger door swung open.

  Holly shifted her grip. Her right fingers, wrapped around his windpipe, kept him on his toes as she aimed the Beretta M9 pistol at his fellow patrol officer with her left.

  The small woman, with white-blonde hair and civilian clothes, slapped for a weapon.

  It took all of Holly’s training to not put a round through her forehead.

  She was unarmed—and froze in place with her hand slapped against her hip.

  The patrolman gurgled as Holly kept him suspended by his windpipe. She let him go and he collapsed to the ground. A slap on the small of his back as he went down revealed no backup piece. She kicked his ankle and he grunted as her boot connected with steel.

  Keeping the M9 aimed at the woman’s face, Holly knelt down and found a Colt M1911 inside his right ankle by feel—ridiculous monster for a backup, heavier and half the number of rounds of his official issue. She slipped it into her waistband.

  “Real slow. Hands on the hood.”

  The woman was exceptionally careful to make no extraneous movements as she complied.

  Holly edged over to the door and glanced in. Everything in the car was oriented for the driver—laptop computer, shotgun holder, even a lone coffee cup rather than two.

  Shifting the other way around the hood, Holly moved until she had a clear view of the woman, but didn’t approach her. The SASR had trained her not to make that typical mistake of letting herself get within grappling range. A lesson the groaning cop probably still hadn’t learned.

  Designer boots. Skinny jeans that had never seen a Gap. A silk blouse and a leather jacket tailored tightly enough to reveal any but the slimmest weapon. It didn’t.

  “What’s going on here?” Major Swift sounded as if he’d come on the run; actually, some part of her had heard him doing just that but not cataloged him as a threat.

  “Jesus, Holly,” Mike was close behind him though he’d started out closer than Swift.

  A quick glance revealed Miranda was with him.

  She began speaking directly to Holly immediately on arrival. “Based on the wings having broken free, and as they are presently lying along either side of the fuselage, it implies that the expanded debris field was most likely due to an explosion occurring in the forward section of the plane.”

  The white-blonde made some move that drew Holly’s attention fully back to her. But her position was unchanged—other than her gaze had shifted from Holly’s weapon to Miranda.

  “Further, as you’ve asked me to create a meta-sphere of potential for testing conjecture, I would estimate that the explosion was centered under the aft third of the cockpit section. This would shear it from the wing box assembly and blow it upward. For that to occur with sufficient force to flip the entire cockpit section end-for-end, it would have to be an explosive in the thirty-to-fifty kilo range, I think. That’s taking into consideration the hull surviving intact long enough to maximize explosive overpressure. Perhaps a hundred kilos, but that doesn’t fit the damage profiles we’ve seen on the debris so far. Perhaps less if something else had already weakened the structure. But thirty-to-fifty is a good first-level approximation.”

  Then Miranda looked from Holly’s arms to the gun in her hand to the unknown woman leaning against the car hood as if noticing it for the first time.

  “What’s going on here?”

  “Precisely my question,” Major Swift was kneeling by his downed patrolman.

  “That…no-hoper,” Holly resisted the urge to kick him just as hard as she’d punched Mike, “drove into an uninspected debris area despite my signaling him to stop. Then he drew on me when I stopped him.”

  The anger hadn’t abated. It had been churning there in her gut just as it had when Mike had attacked with his question.

  “He did what?” Miranda immediately circled the vehicle, repeatedly squatting to look underneath the vehicle. She crossed within a foot of the unknown woman putting herself in easy range as a hostage. Miranda had all the survival instincts of…Holly couldn’t come up with a decent analogy. No animal walked knowingly into danger, yet Miranda had done that several times over the last six months. And now she was simply being oblivious.

  Apparently satisfied that there was nothing under the vehicle, she began backtracking along its line of arrival, looking for damaged evidence.

  Holly forced herself to reassess.

  “I may have bunged his Ford’s hood a bit first,” she had to admit.

  “I didn’t stop,” the patrolman croaked after Major Swift helped him sit up, “because I didn’t see you. I almost ran you over.”

  “I was right in front of you. What the hell were you looking at?”

  He glanced behind her as he cradled his wrist. “I didn’t even know we had a crash. I just came on shift and they told me to escort Ms. Kasprak to the airfield. Then I saw that.”

  The blonde looked chagrined. Apparently she was used to being the center of any male’s attention.

  “And who are you?” Holly reset the weapon’s safety but didn’t lower it just yet.

  “Elayne Kasprak. Antonov engineer. That. It is one of our planes and I was sent to assist in inspection of it.” Her English was heavily Russian and only a little awkward.

  “You arrived quickly.” Holly handed the weapon back to the patrolman.

  He reached out with his broken wrist and yelped. Holly took pity on him and tucked the M9 back in his holster for him.

  “I was in your Military City, San Anne Tonio? Meeting with clients. Yes. We have only one hull loss since 1996 and that, it is not our fault—they shelled our poor plane on the ground at Libya airport in June 2019. We’re very upset over this new loss and wish to help solve it quickly for our reputation.”

  Holly untucked the Colt M1911 from her belt and shoved it back into the patrolman’s ankle holster as Major Swift helped him to his feet and led him to the back seat of the car.

  “You might find a better driver next time.”

  “Not my choosings. May I lift my hands now?”

  Holly nodded and half a second later Mike slimed in with his hand extended.

  “Welcome, Elayne. Mike Munroe, NTSB. Sorry for the greeting. We’re glad of any help; this one’s a mess.”

  So predictable.

  As the Major drove the car and the patrolman toward the nearby clinic, Miranda returned to look under where the tires had been at rest.

  “Nothing important. It’s okay.”

  So totally predictable.

  11

  She should never, ever have slapped for her weapon. Elayne hadn’t been expecting to face a
soldier on an accident team, but she should have. It was a military team.

  And fast!

  Hopefully, like didn’t recognize like. Of course, Elayne had been given more to observe. The takedown of the patrolman hadn’t been textbook; it had been reflex. That was a very deep level of training. Ex-Special Forces. Perhaps even ex-Special Operations?

  Yes, she must be very careful not to reveal more of herself to the team’s enforcer.

  And here was the perfect distraction.

  “Mike Munroe. A pleasure to be meeting you.” She shook his hand with a warm gentle grip that men liked, but not so light that they’d think she wouldn’t be fun in bed.

  She made a point of looking him in the eyes, a pleasant if unremarkable brown. But his face was so handsome they were of little consequence.

  “What has your team learned so far?” Elayne asked him. The blonde woman was clearly his team’s security officer and could be ignored.

  “We were just finishing up the edge patrol of the debris field. The fire crews appear to have extinguished the last of the fires, so we’ll be moving to inspect the wreck now. How long have you been working for Antonov?” She let Mike lead her away from the others.

  “Not for so very long.” She must remember to keep her English rough. And her answer must give her an excuse for not knowing more about the Antonov than she did. “I was flight…specialist. Yes?”

  “Flight attendant?”

  “Yes!”

  And she could tell that this Mike knew just exactly what reputation most flight attendants had—whether or not they deserved it.

  “I work for Aeroflot while I make my engineering degree. I leave when they invade Ukraine and take Crimea from us. At Antonov, I use my new degree, my flight experience, and my very good skills with customers for Antonov cargo operations. I also help negotiate new parts. We can no longer use Russian parts and must make new contracts with Americans and British for what we do not make ourselves.”