Condor

by M. L. Buchman

  Or her brother.

  Shit! She tamped that down hard.

  Remember the mantra of Special Operations: Focus on the mission!

  “Any plan has to get us all the way in. At least to the plane at Progress Rocket Space Centre in Samara.”

  “Antonov inspectors?” Jon suggested.

  “How’s your Ukrainian?”

  Jon’s grimace answered that; no better than her own.

  “Representatives of NASA, wanting to inspect the next space capsule?”

  “No,” Drake shot that down. “I’m not going to get NASA or any other agency snarled up in the middle of this.”

  “We need to contact Clarissa Reese.” Miranda was suddenly standing in the aisle.

  “No way!” Mike shouted in unison with herself.

  “No, Miranda,” Holly shuddered. “Just…no.”

  “Who?” Mr. Jon the Gull wasn’t being too swift on this one.

  “Total, dangerous, conniving snake,” Mike’s description was far kinder than her own would have been.

  “Sounds like just what we need, who is she?”

  Holly barely managed to grind out between clenched teeth, “The Director of the CIA.”

  43

  Clarissa rocked back in her chair. She needed an ottoman right here so that she could turn from her desk, put her feet up, and contemplate DC.

  “Hell of a first day, Ms. Reese,” she spoke to herself.

  Installed in her office. Clark departing her office very happy after they’d shared some sex and split a turkey sandwich. Her first department head meeting had also gone well.

  She’d borrowed a no-nonsense attitude from President Cole.

  Clark, when he was still director, had always chatted with each director, making them think he was their best friend.

  Not really her style.

  Instead, she’d waited less than two seconds after their butts hit their chairs. “Let’s go around the table. Two-minute précis of what’s happening in your department. Then we’ll circle back as needed.”

  Any uncertainty about her control had been banished when she cut off the Russian Directorate in mid-sentence about their President’s latest manipulation of the Syrian disaster. Two minutes to the second.

  In thirty minutes, she had a good handle on the hot topics for each area.

  Another half hour refocusing open discussion for five minutes on each of six topics. She intentionally hadn’t gotten back to Russia.

  But then she remembered a bit of how Clark managed a team and kept the head of the Russian desk afterward.

  “Sorry I was hard on you, Marvin, but I had to set an example. I really appreciate you taking it so well.” He’d fumed through the entire rest of the meeting and was caught off guard by her praise. “Now, if you have time, I’d like to hear the rest of what they’re up to.” By the end of another thirty minutes one-on-one, Marvin was completely on her side. Or at least no longer hoping that she’d die pithed on a burning stake.

  One down, at least partly, fourteen to go—most of whom were firmly convinced that her chair should have been theirs.

  She was exhausted and just needed a few minutes of peace to gear up for Clark tonight. He wanted to show off his new home. She wanted to show that she truly appreciated their future home. But she’d pay good money to have a quiet bath with a good book and a glass of wine.

  Of course, the reading that hit her tablet was daunting. And the three eyes-only reports that she really needed to have under her belt by first thing tomorrow were only the top-level cut of the pile.

  For just this one second, there was peace.

  The sunset was coming from behind her, highlighting the white marble of the Capitol Dome, the Washington Monument, and the top of the Lincoln Memorial in lush reds. Next month the cherry blossoms would be out around the Tidal Basin. She never tired of walking beneath them. She’d make a point of having Clark go with her—a good photo op for the media.

  Yes. She’d better dig deep and find the energy tonight. It was time for Vice President Clark Winston to propose to her.

  The jangle of her phone ruined the sunset calm.

  Not her desk phone.

  Personal cell, face down on the desk. Not all that many people had that number.

  She hoped it wasn’t Gregor Federov. She just wasn’t in the mood to soothe his ego.

  She groped around without turning from the view, locating her phone by feel near the last ring before voicemail.

  “Reese here.”

  “Good evening, Director.”

  Even worse than Gregor.

  She was actually surprised that General Drake Nason hadn’t managed to block her promotion and Senate confirmation—one of the reasons she’d had Ramson and Clark push it to vote so fast. It had been a nail-biting forty-eight hours as she wasn’t sure she had the votes lined up yet. She had, but the margin had been slim, and there were tromped-on toes she’d never be able to set right.

  But, as her CIA first trainer had drilled into her, if it works, fuck ’em!

  Drake hated her guts almost as much as she hated his.

  “We need your assistance.”

  Clarissa was so surprised that she missed the transition from sunset red to evening darkness on the distant marble edifices.

  “Wow, Drake. That must have been hard to say.”

  His silence was all she needed.

  Desperate.

  Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Drake Nason was desperate.

  She so loved desperate men.

  44

  The 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group was in charge of the world’s largest boneyard. Over three thousand aircraft were parked in the high Sonoran Desert just southeast of Tucson, Arizona.

  The dry air was parching after an evening in the wet San Juan Islands of Washington State and a warm spring day in Kentucky and Tennessee. It was also hot and had Jeremy stripping off his jacket and NTSB vest as soon as he landed.

  Colonel Campos had been waiting for him.

  Jeremy had only been aboard a C-5 Galaxy once before—out on the baking tarmac at the Joint Base Lewis-McChord biannual air show last year with one too many corndogs roiling in his stomach. They’d had it parked there, along with its two smaller transport brethren: C-17 Globemaster, C-130 Hercules.

  The show drew a hundred thousand people across two days. Massive lines of families, an undecipherable mix of military families and the merely curious, worked their way through each aircraft. All the while, the airshow constantly ripped apart the skies overhead.

  He’d spent a long time chatting with a trio of loadmasters who’d been looking bored out of their skulls along one side of the fuselage while the tourists mostly ignored them. He’d learned a lot about the shortcomings of the plane—like that the deck plates were integral to the structure, so a damaged deck plate meant she couldn’t fly without replacement, inspection, and certification.

  He’d also learned that they were crazy proud of flying the nation’s heaviest lifter. When he’d mentioned the 747-800F freighter, they’d scoffed. “Civilian, Little Dude. Won’t see them loading up a pair of M1 Abrams main battle tanks and winging them over to the dustbowl. Six Apache helos, with all their gear and crew, tuck in this baby slicker’n snot.”

  Meanwhile, the gawkers, in a line typically ten people wide, shuffled up the rear ramp and out the nose. Not one in a thousand knew they’d just walked farther inside the plane than Wilbur and Orville Wright’s first powered plane had flown outside.

  Now it was just him and Colonel Campos.

  The scale of the vast emptiness was a shock.

  “What’s Miranda up to?”

  “Crash investigations,” Jeremy answered carefully. He’d heard General Nason saying that Campos didn’t need to know.

  “No, I mean…” he trailed off, then tried again. “Is she seeing anyone?”

  Jeremy shrugged.

  Yesterday, he would have said no.

  Today? He was l
ess sure. While he’d been working on the FedEx 767 report, he’d kept an eye on everyone else discussing the new mission. He’d done it by putting a window on his tablet that was linked to his carefully positioned cell phone’s camera.

  He hadn’t missed Major Swift holding Miranda’s hand under the table. Neither general could have seen it. Mike and Holly had been looking at each other at that moment, but he’d seen it. Could count the seconds before Major Swift let go with what might have been a friendly squeeze.

  Jeremy was still kicking himself for not recording the stream so that he could reverse and be sure.

  Had Miranda smiled? Her back was to him so he didn’t know.

  It meant that he also didn’t know how to answer Colonel Campos’ question, so he kept his mouth shut and focused on the task at hand.

  The C-5’s cargo bay was an echoing cavern.

  Campos must have caught that Jeremy wasn’t going to talk about Miranda. He changed the subject.

  “What the hell are they going to be doing with my plane?”

  Jeremy knew that this time he wasn’t allowed to say, so he just shrugged. “I’m just here to make sure it gets to where it’s going.”

  “Which is?”

  “Seattle. That’s where I get off. After that—” He shrugged again, hoping that Campos would take the hint.

  He did, finally.

  “We have a flight crew and three engineers on board. We put together the remote-pilot gear with spit, bubblegum, and duct tape. As a test, your flight will be run completely by the remote pilots out of the drone center at Creech Air Force Base. The flight crew will act as a safety to Seattle, but mostly they’ll focus on fine tuning the remote-control system. It is absolutely not certified for flight in controlled airspace in any way.”

  Jeremy knew that the remote pilots were actually at Groom Lake—far higher security clearances required by everyone there than Creech. But someone had told Campos it was Creech to make it seem more normal as that’s where most of the nation’s smaller drones placed around the world were flown from.

  The C-5 felt so much bigger than the AN-124 Condor that he’d spent the whole morning crawling around. It didn’t matter that Jeremy knew the C-5 was slightly smaller.

  Cavernous didn’t begin to cover it.

  It was—

  “It’s too empty.”

  “Seems weird, doesn’t it.”

  “No, I mean that it’s too empty. We need to fill it up. At least partly.”

  “Any suggestions?” Campos’ tone was deeply condescending.

  The same tone he’d used when he’d upset Miranda—Jeremy’s phone mic had been plenty sensitive to pick out the conversation, after he applied a few enhancement filters on the fly.

  But Jeremy didn’t have time to deal with that now, not that he’d know how. He was pretty used to people dismissing him. At least people not on his team. Miranda and Mike never did, and Holly did only when she was protecting Miranda.

  He pulled out his tablet and flipped through the three thousand planes stored at the 309th AMARG’s boneyard.

  “There, that. Let’s get one of these.” He turned the tablet to Campos. “Just the fuselage.”

  The colonel just glanced at it, then stared at Jeremy as if he’d lost his mind.

  “Now!”

  Campos startled, then yanked out his phone with a curse and was already issuing orders as he hurried down the ramp.

  Jeremy would have to remember to tell Holly that pretending to be her worked wicked…at least when backed up by orders from a four-star general.

  45

  Clarissa definitely liked this.

  They’d come to her. Landed their helicopter in the green center of the executive parking lot on the northeast side of CIA headquarters. She’d been able to sit in her office and watch through the one-way glass as they landed three stories below her window.

  The heavy thump of the rotors through the thick glass had been positively sexual. She was definitely going to unleash all of that on Clark tonight. He’d never know what hit him.

  They were now seated in her office.

  Excellent. An even better high.

  Generals Nason and Gray—such an odd couple. The grizzled warrior past his prime and the new general in charge of the NRO. Clarissa reminded herself that the NRO’s budget was roughly the same size as hers. And that it wasn’t generally subject to Congressional approval like so much of hers was.

  Miranda, Mike, Holly, and a Major Jon Swift whom she knew nothing about. She didn’t like having a wild card in the room.

  “Did you lose little Jeremy?” She winced inside.

  Clark would never use such a condescending tone.

  “Sorry, it’s been a long first day.” And now she was apologizing? She was tired.

  “Jeremy is on a special assignment,” Drake said heavily. At least he was the one taking control of the meeting. The less she had to deal with Miranda Chase, the happier she’d be.

  “So, what can the CIA do for you?”

  “We need to get four people from Ramstein Air Force Base to the Bezymyanka Airport as fast as possible.”

  “Bezymyanka?” What? Was he trying to test her? Only one reason they’d be headed to that airport, on the north side of Samara, Russia. Fat chance she’d be caught lacking. “And from there to the Progress Rocket Space Centre?”

  If Drake was feeling put in his place, he didn’t show it. Maybe he assumed that she would simply know that was the public airport in Samara, Russia.

  She turned to stare out the window for a moment to think. So, her tip to General Lizzy Gray had led them somewhere interesting.

  “You want them aboard the transport flight.” They were actually going to try and grab the Persona spy satellite. That would be an amazing coup…if they could pull it off. “Do they kill the normal crew or merely incapacitate them?”

  “We’re not at war.”

  She turned back to Nason. “Your wars are different from mine, Drake. Or perhaps not so different if we’re talking about stealing a major military asset.”

  “We have no intention of killing anyone as a part of this operation. However, secrecy dictates would point toward not having any Russian crew aboard for the flight.”

  “They’re going to know that we took it if you leave the crew behind, even sedated.” Clarissa was still in favor of killing them. “It would help if I knew the whole plan.”

  “Need to know, Clarissa. I need four people, Ramstein to Samara.”

  “Film crew.” It was an almost autonomic response.

  Perhaps the greatest ever, publicized, CIA rescue had used just that as a cover. Actually, the work had been mostly Canadian, but the CIA had come up with the film part of the solution.

  When the Iranians took the US embassy in Tehran in 1979, six diplomats walked out the back door and hid in the Canadian Ambassador’s house. Six weeks later a pair of CIA agents landed in Tehran with fake passports. They assembled with the escapees as a Canadian film crew scouting a location for a fake science fiction film named Argo and flew out of Tehran together.

  And when Hollywood had made an Oscar-winner about it, Argo—Hollywood did so love to vote for movies about themselves—they’d written the Canadians out of the film and made it almost all CIA’s triumph. That movie had been screened even more at CIA parties than in Hollywood.

  “We need this in hours. We don’t have time to create a fake movie.” At least Drake knew his history, even if he had been born in the Stone Age.

  “Television. Cable. Streaming. It’s for a…brand-new channel. Not announced yet. The Space Channel. Is there a Space Channel?” She tapped her intercom. “Is there a Space Channel?”

  Her assistant answered in under fifteen seconds, “There’s Sci Fi spelled like you’d expect. SyFy. S-Y-F-Y. NASA’s is named NASA TV.”

  She hung up the line. “Perfect. Keep it simple. You can hide things in the cameras or their cases. Weapons, knock-out drugs, fake passports. Whatever.”

  �
��So, what are they doing there?”

  “Filming new material for the grand launch of the brand-new channel. You’ll pick up an escort, but they love showing TV people around—as long as you don’t go near that satellite. When you…shed the pilots and loadmasters, you can shed the escort as well.”

  Clarissa waited while they looked at each other.

  Miranda looked very unhappy, but that seemed to be her mode in life. Mike was worried, which seemed to be his main role on the team. Holly was the one to watch, and she was looking thoughtful.

  Clarissa knew nothing about Major Swift, so there was no way to read what he was thinking, except he’d sat very close to Miranda. That was interesting in itself.

  As if on cue, Holly sat up.

  “Could you arrange for four passports and the appropriate equipment to be awaiting us in Ramstein?”

  “Personally, I’d go with Warsaw. Fly in under your own names, fly out of Poland under Polish passports.”

  “Do you speak Polish?” Holly turned to Major Swift. Ah. He was part of the action team for some unknown reason.

  He shook his head.

  “Well, we can’t make you Ukrainian. How about German?”

  Major Swift rocked his hand, but Holly nodded.

  “Let’s go with being Germans then.” Clarissa tapped her fingernails on the cherrywood of her desk, right where she’d had sex with Clark the very first time, to help her think. “You were…just in Poland interviewing their space agency. Do they have one?”

  “POLSA. It’s new and they’re trying hard to get up to speed, at least on the industrial services side,” Miranda stated in the lackluster encyclopedic voice she always seemed to use.

  “You aren’t one of the four, are you?” Clarissa didn’t know why she cared. Let the woman get herself killed if she wanted to. Walk into the Progress Rocket Space Centre and steal a multi-billion-dollar asset?

  Crazy.

  Even by her CIA standards. That’s why she hadn’t offered one of her own teams. Her hold on this seat was still too tenuous and she couldn’t risk a massive failure on her first day in the chair.