White Top

by M. L. Buchman

  Drake sighed. “Sadly, I’m sure he did. The boy lacks tact.”

  But he couldn’t let the President get away with besmirching the family honor even more than Jon already had.

  Drake turned to him and asked in his nicest voice, “So, Clarissa Reese is your choice for VP.”

  “I’ll let the party leaders know,” Sarah chimed in.

  Roy Cole glared at them both as Sarah laughed in the President’s face.

  Drake tried to, but it struck him that just might be her plan.

  42

  By the time the cameras actually came back to her, Clarissa was past rage and into depression.

  Clark was dead, cutting off her path to the White House.

  She was out of the loop with the President.

  And now she was going to have to suck up to Miranda Chase of all people.

  When Major Jon Swift tried to return to her side, she considered punching his nose herself—as if he’d be an asset now that he’d made an idiot of himself on national television. She would have flattened him simply for the satisfaction of it—if she hadn’t been standing in the middle of the news pool.

  She’d been so angry at Clark for dying and Jon for walking away that she’d come close to declaring on national news that Clark’s death was an act of foreign terrorism. That would be beyond a faux pas and right over into disclosure of classified intelligence—an actionable offense. She’d been stopped only by Jon getting his face mashed in by one of Miranda’s little women.

  An act of terrorism…

  Of domestic terrorism?

  If so, the FBI and the Secret Service were all over the site already and had it covered. As the CIA Director, she had no role here except the pitiful widow—which was so beneath her.

  Her job was overseas security and intelligence.

  Like all that chatter last night and this morning.

  That chatter…hadn’t been domestic.

  She hadn’t slowed down enough to think about it.

  This wasn’t domestic terrorism. She needed to verify only one fact to be completely certain of that.

  “We’re back again with CIA Director Clarissa Reese and the widow of Vice President Clark Winston. The first thing I’d like to ask you…”

  Clarissa tuned the reporter out.

  All of that chatter had to mean that it was a foreign attack on US soil.

  That information should go to…who?

  Jon Swift had been a mistake, useless. But the lead on the investigation would be—

  Miranda!

  Figured. The woman might be irritating, but she was on a first-name basis with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the President, even her late husband.

  “Where’s Miranda?”

  “Who?” The reporter looked at her like she’d lost her mind.

  “Never mind.”

  She’d partner with Miranda and find out exactly who had murdered her path to the White House.

  And if that didn’t work, she’d drag Senator Hunter Ramson into a CIA interrogation site and see what she could learn that way.

  43

  “What are you doing?”

  Miranda ignored the Marine Corps colonel while she recorded the weather readings.

  “Musica universalis. Music of the spheres,” Terence saved her from taking the time to explain to the colonel. “You’re still using that investigation model, Miranda?”

  His question meant she did have to take the time. She forced her attention from the readings and noted that she also had General Macy’s attention.

  “It’s a method of logical approach to a crash investigation site that Director Terence Graham and I developed to form a methodology for me. Outer sphere of environmental conditions such as terrain and weather. Next, the edge of the debris field followed by inspection of the debris itself. Then the aircraft, and finally the human factors.” She turned back to Terence. “At my team’s suggestion, I’ve also added an outer causal meta-sphere to which we may attach conjecture and compare those to the facts discovered in the successive inner spheres.”

  “Now I’m lost,” Colonel McGrady complained.

  Miranda ignored him.

  “And you never skip a sphere?” the general asked.

  “I find it very confusing to do so, therefore I don’t do it often.” Then she considered. The nested spheres of an investigation had been a model that Terence had developed to help her during her academy training. It hadn’t been needed by other students.

  Did the other members of her team need it? Perhaps not.

  “That’s a fascinating thought, General.”

  “What is?”

  Miranda turned to Taz. “Take Jeremy and Holly. The three of you should proceed toward the center of the crash as fast as is safe. Based on the final words of the pilot, it’s a reasonable conjecture that she was accurate about that aspect of what was happening. Assume there was a poison, I think we can assume that the air has cleared, but don’t touch anything without gloves. Send Mike back to me.”

  Taz nodded once and sprinted away.

  “Colonel McGrady, as the commander of HMX-1, I assume you are a good enough pilot to assist Andi.”

  “To assist? I’m the President’s pilot. I’m—”

  “Andi,” she decided that ignoring him had been a good initial choice. “Please review every image you can find of the final flight from Camp David including the crash event itself. I expect there are now a wide variety of them posted online. I want you to particularly study any control issues. Also look for why the pilot engaged the emergency air system. That’s a very unusual action.”

  “Hold it,” the colonel spoke softly.

  She prepared herself to ignore him some more. It was exceedingly difficult as he kept pulling her attention from the task at hand.

  “You’re right. Why the hell would Tamatha have done that?”

  “That’s why I suggested it as a line of research.”

  “I’ll take care of that,” the colonel insisted.

  “No. Andi knows what I’m looking for.”

  “Who is she that—”

  Andi squared off in front of him. “Captain Andrea Wu of the 160th SOAR, Colonel. I’ve flown overwatch protection on your HMX-1 flights. And as I’m discharged from the armed forces, allow me to point out that I’m not above offering you the same inducement to cooperate that I just delivered to Major Swift. Every one of your interruptions is causing Miranda a great mental hardship.”

  The general smiled at her before turning to the colonel. “Yes, McGrady. Now would be a fine time to shut up. And if you doubt her, according to her commander, Captain Wu was SOAR’s absolute best pilot. A pleasure to meet you at last, Andrea.”

  “Andi.”

  He nodded. “Not another word, Colonel. Just go.”

  “Excuse me for disagreeing with you, General,” Mike hurried up to join the group, slightly out of breath.

  Miranda gasped out her own relief. Mike would take care of the troublesome colonel without hitting him in the nose.

  “I need to speak with the pilots of all of the related flights: the decoy aircraft, the overwatch, and the governors’ flight.”

  The colonel responded easily to Mike. “Except for the 160th’s overwatch team, you can find them all at the HMX-1 hangar in Quantico. But it’s on full security lockdown until we solve this.”

  Mike groaned.

  Miranda for once understood why. Quantico was over eighty miles away.

  Then she noticed that Andi was on the phone and listened in. “Hello, Colonel Stimson. This is Andi Wu and we’re at the site of the Vice President’s crash. … Yes sir. A great tragedy. Could you please have the overwatch pilots meet me at the site and bring any data and imaging from that flight? ... Yes, thank you, sir. And I can’t believe that you told the tall tale to General Macy about my being your top— Thank you, sir. Please let me just say with all due respect that I think you’re full of it, sir.”

  Then she laughed and hung up.

 
; “They’ll be here in under twenty minutes.” Then she turned to glare at the colonel. “Do you have any other dumbass ideas on how to stonewall this investigation, Colonel McGrady? Or are you going to get your pilots airborne right now?”

  McGrady stared down at Andi as if she might be a live grenade with the pin already pulled.

  “Wait!” Miranda took Andi’s arm. “Is that a metaphor? Thinking that you’re like a live grenade with the pin already pulled?”

  “Yes it is!” Andi smiled at her, then held up a hand. “Well done, you. High five, girlfriend.”

  Miranda slapped it.

  “What the hell?” Colonel McGrady muttered, but pulled out his cell phone and began arranging for his pilots to join them here.

  Terence also held up a hand.

  Miranda slapped that one as well. Maybe she finally was getting metaphors figured out.

  44

  Clarissa did her best to assess what the hell was going on. The colonel on the phone looked pissed. Some general she didn’t recognize looked amused. And the others were all high fiving each other like they’d just won at Bingo.

  Thankfully there was no sign of Holly or Taz.

  “Miranda,” Clarissa dragged her aside a few steps. “I have information for you. I don’t know what it means yet, my people are working on that, but I have reason to believe that it is relevant to this situation.”

  “Okay.”

  “We intercepted a cell phone message that said, Burn the fields. It was sent approximately ten minutes before Clark’s crash. We pinpointed the location to an area just northwest of here—that’s the direction of Camp David.” It wasn’t until she said it that she understood exactly how neatly it fit the crash scenario.

  Miranda just looked at her blankly. Or perhaps at her hair.

  Clarissa reached back to check her ponytail and discovered that her hair was loose and spread over her shoulders. Her clip was gone and she didn’t have another with her. No one except Clark ever saw her hair loose. And yet she’d just been on camera—

  Yet another piece of herself she’d lost today.

  Miranda still waited.

  “That’s all that I can tell someone at your level about. But I thought it might be useful.”

  Miranda simply held up her ID with her finger pointing to her security clearance.

  “Yankee White Category One? You can be armed in his presence? Why the hell are you cleared to that level? Even I don’t have that.”

  “Roy felt it was advisable. Feel free to tell me what other information you have.”

  It took Clarissa a moment to connect that Miranda meant the President. Roy?

  “Not with your goddamn shadow here,” she scowled at Andi.

  Andi reached for her own ID.

  “Oh fuck. Please don’t. Today’s already been enough of a nightmare. Okay, fine. We picked up massive amounts of chatter late yesterday. It originated somewhere in the Middle East—probably Saudi Arabia, but I can’t confirm that. It had all the earmarks of an attack on US soil. It took all night to narrow it down to the general DC area. Most of it was heavily encrypted, but that one piece was in the clear: Burn the fields. My cyber people tell me that it has all the indicators of being accidental rather than intentional that it was unencrypted—whatever the hell that means.”

  Miranda and Andi exchanged a look that Clarissa couldn’t interpret. Andi was the one who spoke first.

  “I would have to check with Jeremy, but I expect that there was a follow-on pulse of communication after that message was in the clear, to remonstrate the sender.”

  Clarissa wouldn’t know and didn’t care. She’d learned not to bother paying too much attention when Harry and Heidi started on one of their technical rambles. If she did, she’d lose the big picture, which was why the cyber twins worked for her and not the other way around.

  Miranda pulled out a notebook and wrote, Burn the fields. Directly above that was the windspeed and temperature. Above that was: Poison. Oxy. Generator. …Dying(?)

  “Poison? What the hell is that?”

  “The pilot’s final transmission.”

  “Why the hell would someone poison Clark?” And why hadn’t she known that herself?

  “Why comes later,” Miranda stated without so much as blinking.

  “Do you suppose that’s what they meant by burn the fields?” Clarissa couldn’t make sense of it.

  “Would that be a metaphor? I have a really hard time with metaphors.”

  Miranda turned to Andi before Clarissa could think how to answer such a simple question.

  “Do you see the fire chief anywhere?”

  Andi pulled out her phone and dialed. “Hello, Chief. Andi Wu of the NTSB here again. Would you happen to know if there was any sort of an agricultural or field fire in the area this morning?”

  She went through a series of uh-huh noises, then thanked him and hung up.

  “It was literal, not metaphorical. Just outside of Frederick, a few miles north of here, there was a large and unexplained fire. It spanned a number of fields in a box pattern roughly a mile square. His fire marshal found accelerants at the site.”

  “Accelerants?” Clarissa knew she should stop merely asking questions and regain power by issuing orders, but her thoughts were in a jumble worse than after a session with…Miranda.

  “Like gasoline and such, they accelerate the growth of a fire. It means that it was intentional arson. This was home heating fuel oil, which makes a particularly dense and black smoke.”

  Clarissa swallowed hard.

  “That implies,” Miranda spoke carefully, “—strictly on the conjectural sphere level—that burn the fields was a literal instruction to do so. Doing that in a large square pattern would make a Marine Corps pilot exercise caution by cutting off outside air flow and engaging the emergency internal air supply.”

  “But who?”

  “That comes second-to-last, Clarissa, just before why. However, it is a useful hypothesis of how if not who.”

  Clarissa felt a chill that she could guess.

  Last night’s chatter had come out of either Egypt or Saudi Arabia, ordering a fire to be set in Maryland.

  Rose Ramson had said that the senator had been terribly upset at reports of the President’s agenda regarding the Saudis.

  Had Senator Hunter Ramson done something that had gotten Clark killed?

  45

  “Any chance of getting out of here?”

  Danziger just shook his head at the President’s question. “I’m sorry, Mr. President. We’re keeping you in the PEOC until we know how, who, and that we can block them. The others are welcome to leave.”

  “Not a chance,” the President sighed. “If I’m stuck here, so are the two of you.”

  Drake had called Lizzy the moment he’d arrived safely. Though he’d asked if she wanted to join them, she’d gone to her office at the NRO to see if she could do anything to help.

  Danziger returned to his security console, which left just himself, the President, and Sarah at the main conference table. This being the White House, someone had rustled up a surprisingly delicious meal. Slow-braised beef in a thick mushroom gravy, over baked potatoes with a side of roasted Brussels sprouts shouldn’t be possible inside a bunker.

  “You have a PEOC chef?”

  The President grunted. “I have no idea. You’d have to ask Danziger how this got here. Not that I’m complaining.”

  Drake wasn’t either and decided it was best not to interrupt him with such trivia.

  There was a soft beep from the phone in the middle of the conference table. “We have a video call for General Drake Nason from General Elizabeth Gray,” an invisible operator announced.

  “On screen.” He waited until he could see her face on the central display screen. “Hi, honey. Why are you coming in on the secure line instead of my phone? Oh, never mind. Sorry, I think I’m still on Kiwi time.”

  Lizzy barely smiled. “I also have Miranda Chase on the line.” A small windo
w opened beside Lizzy.

  “Hi, Miranda. How is the investigation going?”

  “Busy.”

  Sarah laughed briefly. The President didn’t.

  “Why the call?” He knew that Miranda always liked going straight to business.

  “Miranda called me to see if we had any satellite imagery of the Vice President’s final flight. Specifically four miles northwest of the crash site. I felt that you all needed to see the video that I found.”

  Drake watched the nondescript farmland long enough for the satellite’s view angle to shift. Lizzy had once explained that low-earth orbit moved along at eight kilometers a second, so it didn’t take very long for the view to change, but this time it felt as if it was taking forever.

  “What are we looking for?”

  Then he saw.

  A line of black boiled up out of a field.

  As the satellite’s view continued to shift, he could see that it was a wall of smoke and fire.

  Identical fires burst to life to the right and left.

  “What’s our scale here?”

  “So far, a mile on a side.”

  He whistled. That meant the fires were throwing aloft fifty- to hundred-foot-thick smoke walls.

  Then a bright red circle appeared in the upper left, northwest corner of the three-sided box.

  “This is Marine Two,” Lizzy announced.

  The instant it entered the box, a fourth fire bloomed to life behind the aircraft.

  “They were boxed in.” Even as he said it, the helicopter flew a small circle as if looking for an escape. Then it once again aimed for the southeast corner and drove through the smoke wall.

  Now Miranda spoke up. “None of the other aircraft had a problem. Mike has started interviewing their pilots. None of them engaged their emergency air systems. It is unknown why the pilot of Marine Two did so.”

  “That’s easy, Miranda. The pilot didn’t want to risk that the fire itself was a gas attack on the Vice President.”

  “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.”