Chinook

by M. L. Buchman

  “Colonel Vicki Taser Cortez,” a voice whispered by her elbow.

  Who had recognized her now? A female MP with a shotgun?

  Taz turned, and blinked in surprise.

  The woman standing quietly behind her was beyond elegant in designer clothes, straight hair almost down to her waist, and a face from some ancient Chinese myth of artistic perfection. Women like her didn’t occur outside the movies, nor even inside them.

  Taz wore her backup jeans, fire boots, and a red t-shirt that declared, “I rang the bell on the Echo Mountain Fire Complex.” It was from a nasty wildfire her hotshot team had helped fight into the ground just a few hundred meters before it wiped out an Oregon Coast resort town.

  “That’s not a name I use anymore. Nor a rank I deserve.” Which hurt less than she’d expected.

  “But it is you.”

  Taz sighed. It was.

  42

  Mei-Li considered.

  The two generals were again seated to either side of Zhang Ru at their table. Observing or talking—for her purposes, it didn’t matter. She’d hesitated at the wrong moment, allowing General Gray to walk away. She wouldn’t be getting either one aside again easily.

  Or perhaps that she’d missed the chance, meant that not speaking was “right action” at the moment. Ru would grow very suspicious if she spoke at length with General Gray. Would he even notice that she spoke to this tiny woman in civilian clothes?

  Was it wise for her to do so herself?

  Mei-Li had briefly considered approaching Jon, the angry Air Force major. But he was cut from a military cloth she was entirely too familiar with. She didn’t need a man of rules.

  But Colonel Cortez…

  Among so many others, Mei-Li had profiled Lieutenant General JJ Martinez along with all of the other three- and four-star generals for Ru shortly before the general’s death. And she’d become curious about the tiny woman who’d appeared close by his side in so many photographs. No mention of marriage, and only a rare reference to her at all—his aide. Invisible in most media.

  Yet the more she’d searched, the more prominent the woman became.

  A stealthy enforcer? Ru might discount both herself and this woman for their size, but it was a mistake Mei-Li knew not to make.

  The Colonel’s apology to General Gray implied that she’d done things the hard way, yet still remained in the military until her supposed death.

  “I wonder if we might speak, Colonel Cortez?”

  “Only if you stop calling me that. Taz or Vicki.”

  “Taz,” it was a strange word, “are you needed at the crash?”

  The woman snorted out a laugh. “I don’t know crap about helos. Jeremy will take care of it.”

  She was…astonishing. Everything Mei-Li wasn’t.

  Even at the pinnacle of her own gymnast’s strength when she’d taken silver at the Olympics, she had always been very slight.

  Taz’s shoulders looked strong, and she was so…brashly American.

  “Is there somewhere private we can talk?”

  “Doesn’t get any better than this,” Taz waved a hand as if she owned the airfield. But she had a point.

  At the crash fifty meters away, emergency teams were helping the crew members into ambulances. There was one pilot still in a flightsuit and helmet who refused their help. Instead, she too stood like an American, glaring at the helicopter with her fists on her hips.

  The people Taz had arrived with were beginning their own inspection of the wreck. Taz’s Jeremy, they’d stood as close as only a couple would, was gesturing sharply at the front rotor.

  The three generals drinking beer together were nearly obscured by the return of the crowd, which had surged up to the fence—smartphone cameras to the fore.

  A line of heavily armed soldiers had manned the fence. Unlike such an event in China, their weapons were slung over shoulders, not clasped in fisted hands.

  And the craziest part of all was the announcer apologizing for the delay in the airshow. Then he went on to announce that other than a broken arm and a number of bruises, the crew was going to be fine.

  By some miracle, no one in the crowd had been killed by the flying debris. Medics were moving through the crowd, dealing with cuts and bruises.

  And the two of them stood alone on the fresh-mown grass a few meters past the security line. They were the only ones.

  “You do a lot of thinking for someone who said she wants to talk. The old man is your uncle? Granduncle?”

  “He is my owner.”

  Taz’s face went dark.

  “He is immensely powerful. When the Chinese Olympic Committee dismissed me for being too old and only winning silver,” she rubbed her cheek where her coach’s fist had smashed her to the floor for that failure, “he took over my care from the State.”

  “He didn’t…”

  Mei-Li was almost amused. American’s had such a high opinion of their rights. Didn’t they look at their own statistics? One in five hundred women in America were sex trafficked. Up to fifty thousand immigrants were sent into the trade in their “free” country every year.

  “Shit!” Taz glared toward Ru’s place back in the crowd. “Are you asking me to help you seek asylum? I should warn you that I’m technically dead and probably will be jailed soon enough. Or to kill him?”

  “No. Not either of those. I have blackmailed him into stopping that. And I am already coming to your country; I and my girlfriend start at the University of Washington next week. But I am hoping that a woman who has dodged death and who can make your General Nason shudder, can help me with what I need to do.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I have all the evidence I need to destroy Zhang Ru.”

  “So do it! Do it before he figures that out and kills you.”

  “He doesn’t dare. He knows that my death will release everything to ruin him.”

  “Ru knows about your girlfriend?” Taz made it sound as if she didn’t think much of Mei-Li’s intelligence.

  “Mui is not the holder of this information. It is a member of your government. I do not trust her, but she knows I can ruin her too if she acts prematurely.” CIA Director Clarissa Reese was almost as avaricious as Uncle Ru, but she was no more invincible than Zhang Ru was—just extremely dangerous.

  “Great, so Ru goes after your girlfriend to control you.”

  “Again, I know he won’t. He still needs the support of her grandfather. He is one of the vice-chairmen of the CMC.”

  Taz whistled in what Mei-Li took to be a Western sound of surprise. “You are crazy connected, girl. Why in the world would you need my help? Sounds as if you have it wired.”

  “I am also very close to having the information to ruin the entire Chinese Military Commission, but I cannot do this myself. That is the help I need.”

  Then Colonel Vicki Cortez did the strangest thing; she laughed. “Is that all?”

  “Yes. Can you help me?”

  She sobered, then looked away. Her gaze sought upward until she was looking at Jeremy, standing atop the battered helicopter. He was photographing something there.

  “What is he looking at?” Mei-Li knew so little about helicopters.

  “The rotor head. Maybe the pins that hold the rotor blade root to the head.”

  Mei-Li knew she must trust someone. Her entire reason for manipulating Ru to being here at this moment was because Mei-Li knew she needed someone in the US military to help with her plans.

  Taz was still gazing at the helicopter.

  “Would there be something there called the centrifugal droop stop or a pitch link?”

  “Could be. Weird question. Why?”

  Mei-Li just shook her head. They were words Ru had used last night in speaking to the helicopter mechanic. Now she understood both what had happened to crash the helicopter, and that it was being uncovered.

  Mei-Li watched Taz watching the man on top of the helicopter. As strange as this American was, Mei-Li might never have ano
ther opportunity as good. There were times to gamble. Her last play had freed her from Ru’s servitude. Now…

  “I might have information on those for you.”

  Taz turned back to face her very slowly. “What information?”

  “Only after you help me.”

  Taz’s face had become unreadable.

  Mei-Li felt nervousness surge into her stomach worse than the moment before she’d stepped onto the gymnastics floor at the Olympics. But she didn’t blink or look away. Not even when she’d stood on the podium to accept her medal had anyone been able to read the fury building inside her.

  No one except Clarissa Reese, who had witnessed her coach’s blow. Then arranged for the man who had beaten and raped her since she was nine to die most painfully.

  Only now that she’d offered Ru’s secret did she realize that if she gave that last piece of information to destroy Zhang Ru, she would destroy herself as well. She’d been witness to a sabotage of a US helicopter of war. Had taken part in the blackmail of an American military personnel.

  Taz could ruin her entire year of work preparing for a moment like this. The moment Ru was destroyed, all of her own protections would disappear as well. And all of her power as well.

  No!

  She wouldn’t give up that detail until the CMC itself was destroyed. Not until her country lay in smoldering ruins would she give up that secret of Ru’s sabotage.

  Mei-Li took a careful breath.

  She resented that the last was beyond her reach, but the seven old men of the CMC would suffer horribly for taking General Zhang Ru into their bosom.

  Also, if she herself was exposed, Chang Mui would be exposed as well. Her sweet lover and co-conspirator wouldn’t survive the purge of the CMC unless they all went down together. And that is why the two of them were coming to America, to have the best chance of survival.

  But she couldn’t think how to take it all back.

  Before her thoughts were ordered at all, before—

  Taz turned and pointed at a tall blonde at the wreck. For some reason, the woman noticed her immediately. Taz then sliced a hand at an equally tall man, before making a “come here” gesture. The blonde grabbed the man roughly by the arm, then hurried over.

  “What the hell trouble be you causing now, corpse?” The woman addressed Taz with an Australian accent so thick that Mei-Li could barely understand it. Taz’s fast, soft American had been difficult enough.

  “Holly, Mike, this is Chen Mei-Li. Mei-Li, tell them what you told me.”

  This was too many people. She needed a scalpel, not a hammer.

  Taz, rather than encouraging her, said, “You tell ’em or I do. Your call.”

  Was she trapped, or was this her best chance? She had decided to trust Taz, and now she must. Mei-Li repeated what she’d said, leaving out any reference to the crashed helicopter.

  43

  “You said something about Taiwan.” Drake wished he was at the crash, but he could hear what practical Lizzy would say, What do you know about helicopter crashes?

  Not a damned thing.

  He’d never actually seen Miranda’s team work in the field before, but all the wishing that he could even observe now wasn’t going to make Ru go away.

  His duty and his problem was sitting across from him.

  Their table was encapsulated in a strange, living bubble of privacy as the first wave of people drifted away from the fence line and a second wave pushed forward, all flowing around them in a constantly moving stream.

  “With Hong Kong managed—” Ru forced Drake’s attention away from the crash.

  “Repressed and trapped behind your abusive national security laws that fully violate the ‘one country, two systems’ principle that was agreed to—”

  “By men now dead,” Ru put in.

  “Because your present leaders permanently and aggressively retired them all.”

  “Deng himself was old and died of Parkinson’s. Others?” Ru shrugged and laughed. “I like you, Drake. I always like you.”

  “For fuck’s sake, why?”

  “For that. You and Ru,” he tapped his own chest. “We both patriots. Both fighters. Damn diplomacy! Bring out the guns!” He thumped a fist on the table that threatened to topple their beers. Ru had finished his own and swept up Mei-Li’s untouched one.

  If Drake had a gun at the moment, he’d…start an international crisis by murdering a member of the CMC on American soil. He knew that Ru was playing some game, but he’d be damned if he was going to play along.

  “Focus. Taiwan.” Drake was unsure which of them he was lecturing.

  “Yes. We own Taiwan. Everyone agrees.”

  “Except for twenty-four million Taiwanese.”

  “Even they do not dare deny our unity openly.”

  “Only by staging the kind of protests that you people are experts at suppressing everywhere else.”

  Lizzy placed a hand on his arm, as lightly as he’d touched Miranda—before Holly slapped him for it. Whatever Miranda’s strange reaction had been, Drake found the touch calming. Lizzy’s touch was always soothing, and it seemed to sap enough of his anger that he could think clearly.

  He was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Losing his temper wasn’t an option. Yet there was something about Ru that burrowed under his skin every time. Miranda’s team and the US Air Force were dealing with the crash. Which meant it was left to him to deal with Ru.

  “So, let us two warriors make world peace. But don’t hurry too much. I enjoy much staring at your lovely general. She is much better for looking at than you. Or me.” Ru laughed aloud at his own joke.

  Drake could see by the set of Lizzy’s jaw that he himself wasn’t the only one Ru pissed off.

  Maybe he should step out of the way, and see what happened when Lizzy went off the leash on the cocky bastard.

  44

  “What the hell is going on up there?”

  Jeremy looked up. A team of ten parachutists had deployed Air Force blue-and-white chutes and were presently creating interlocking spirals of red, white, and blue smoke in the sky.

  He looked down toward whoever had shouted up at him.

  Mike had suggested the rescue team park the line of emergency vehicles between the shattered helicopter and the crowd, mostly blocking their view as the injured were tended. The officer in charge had liked the idea.

  From Jeremy’s vantage atop the fuselage, he was the only one who could see over the tops of the Oshkosh 3000 Striker fire trucks. Service trucks were also pulled up close because, while the Chinook’s landing gear had survived the hard use, all three of the left-side tires had blown. A team was already replacing them, then the chassis could be towed out of sight.

  He could see Miranda rushing around with the others below, attempting to photograph and catalog everything before it was removed.

  It took him a moment to spot the woman glaring up at him from the crowd below. She wore a flightsuit and had captain’s bars.

  “I think they’re doing a parachute show,” he pointed up at them soaring above the field.

  “I know they’re doing a goddamn parachute show. What are you doing?”

  Oh, right. Mr. Literal strikes again. “I’m trying to understand how your helicopter was sabotaged.”

  “How it was—what?”

  In moments, the woman had ascended the kick-in steps just forward of the rear-mounted engines and hurried along the length of the fuselage’s battered top to him. She crowded so close that he almost stepped backward off the narrow, flat inspection spot.

  She grabbed his arm until she was sure he was stable. He glanced at her name badge. Captain Smithey.

  Thankfully, Miranda had overheard and come up as well.

  “We haven’t even defined the debris perimeter yet,” she protested as soon as she arrived.

  He knew that Miranda liked to approach her investigations in stepwise fashion from the outside in but—

  “I saw it, Miranda. While we were eating. I sa
w the rotor blade drop abruptly, then slam into the fuselage. Because of centrifugal stiffening, that shouldn’t have happened. The only thing I could think of was that the pitch link had failed.”

  “That would allow the blade to free float.”

  “Precisely. And since the helicopter was backing up at the time—”

  “There would be just enough impetus to down-pitch the blade. And because it was spinning, the droop stops would have been retracted.”

  “And from there, the result was inevitable. It does fit with the—”

  “—forces necessary to induce the roll without destroying the—”

  “Wait. Stop!” The captain held out her hands palm up. “You two sound like the same person debating with each other.”

  “No,” Jeremy glanced at the name stitched on the pilots flightsuit. “No, Captain Smithey. I’m male. She’s female.”

  “Right,” Miranda agreed.

  “Oh my God! Look…” the captain took a deep breath and let it out slowly “…why did you—” she pointed at Jeremy’s own chest “—say sabotage?”

  Jeremy pointed at the pitch link. It was still attached—at least half of it was—atop the waist-high turret of the forward rotor.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “The pitch link. It’s basically a glorified turnbuckle that allows the swash plate to shift the rotor blade’s angle of attack. That in turn—”

  “I know what a goddamn pitch link does.”

  Of course she would.

  Miranda hadn’t been wearing her vest, it was back in the van along with all the tools in his field pack. But she still reached into her slacks pocket and pulled out a small jeweler’s loop magnifying glass.

  Jeremy definitely had to do that himself in the future—a few critical tools that were never off his person. Maybe cargo pants…or a hip pouch.

  Miranda inspected the stub of the pitch link carefully through the magnifying glass, then nodded.

  “Let me see that.” The captain took the magnifier from Miranda and did her own inspection.