“Ehhhh!” Holly made a rude sound like a plane’s stall-warning buzzer. “So not on, Miranda.” Holly’s Australian accent was even thicker than usual as she sipped her second beer of the evening.
Before Miranda could respond that she knew her own mind—which she wasn’t always sure of, though she was this time—Jeremy raised his hand.
“Wait! I know. I know!”
“Don’t have to raise your hand, buddy.” Mike winked at Miranda from his armchair near the fire. He sat as neatly as ever—a slim, elegant man with short dark hair, a dress shirt, and custom-tailored slacks.
She sat on the sofa with Holly. Actually, Miranda sat on the sofa whereas Holly slouched so low she was almost horizontal—her feet on the coffee table, sticking her toes out toward the fire in the big beach-cobble stone hearth. Her socks didn’t match.
“It’s any plane that hasn’t crashed,” Jeremy proudly announced his answer.
While the others laughed and nodded, Miranda considered. The four of them were the lead crash investigation team for the National Transportation Safety Board. Yes, any plane that was fully functional was a very good thing.
But still, she liked her old Sabrejet very much.
“Jeremy’s favorite site investigation tool?” Mike called out.
Holly giggled.
Miranda had no idea why.
Holly whispered to her, “Can you imagine him picking out a single favorite tool?”
“Oh,” Miranda understood the joke now.
Jeremy had a bigger field pack than the other three of them combined.
“His hammer,” Holly suggested. “The one he actually offered to that colonel who wanted to bust up his phone for constantly giving him bad news.”
Though the event occurred several months in the past, Jeremy blushed brightly enough to be seen by the firelight despite his Vietnamese tan complexion.
“No, his program for reading Cockpit Voice and Data Recorders, even if he isn’t supposed to have one. He secretly wishes he was James Bond,” Mike teased him.
“No,” Holly shook her head hard enough to flutter her rough-cut blonde hair over her shoulders. “He wishes he was Q, Bond’s equipment geek.”
“No,” Jeremy spoke up a little hotly, “but he wishes you both had fallen into the ocean and been eaten by orcas on the way here.”
“You’d have been whale food right along with us.” Mike accurately pointed out. He had flown the three of them out to her island in Washington State’s northern Puget Sound for the weekend. Holly was the one who’d suggested the Spring solstice was a good excuse for a party.
“Would have been worth it,” Jeremy mumbled.
There was a brief silence in which the only sound was logs shifting in the fireplace.
“What is your favorite tool, Jeremy?” Because now Miranda was curious.
He looked down, and she was afraid that she’d somehow embarrassed him even further than Mike and Holly had.
Then he reached for his shirt pocket and pulled out a pen.
“A pen, mate? Really?” Holly turned to Mike. “Have you ever seen him even use a pen? Everything in the world is on his tablet.”
Mike just shook his head.
Miranda could remember three instances. They’d been together as a team for almost six months, yet three was all she could recall.
“You gave it to me on the first day I joined your team. It’s everything I ever dreamed of.”
“Miranda’s pen?” Mike scoffed.
“Being on Miranda’s team,” Jeremy said softly.
Holly, who never looked touched, looked touched. She turned to Miranda.
“He’s so damn sweet,” she whispered, but loudly enough for everyone to hear. “Can we keep him?”
Miranda didn’t know why she wouldn’t. He was an exceptional airplane systems specialist.
“Holly’s favorite soccer team?” Mike asked.
“The Australian Matildas,” they all called out in unison. Their four Matildas hats were all lined up on the mantle.
This time Miranda was fairly sure it was right that she joined in on the laughter.
Captain Dimitri Voskov hunched against the March chill while he watched the loading process, and wished he was anywhere else.
His plane was the heavyweight champ for cargo hauling. Known as “Condor” in the west, his Ukrainian Antonov AN-124-150 Ruslan could carry up to a hundred and sixty tons in a single load. Its lone big brother, the An-224 Mriya “Cossack” didn’t really count as there had only ever been one in existence.
He’d gone to the restaurant along the Helsinki airport cargo road for a change of pace from their own on-board cooking. The meat soup could have been century-old reindeer hide—it had certainly tasted like it—and the waitress had been a dour battleax. Not even any fun flirting to break up the monotony.
At least there was no deadhead this time. As a specialized cargo hauler, too often they flew empty from a delivery to the next pickup.
Here in Finland, they’d dropped off a geothermal power generator built by the Brits and were picking up a load of Russian helicopters—helicopters that defecting Russian pilots had delivered into Finnish hands. No surprise, they were now getting handed over to the Americans—so greedy for examples of Russian technology.
His real mistake was delaying at the restaurant too long over scorched coffee and the last slice of Kakku pie which was even worse than it sounded. The loadmasters had started the loading while he’d been at dinner. Now, it was three in the morning, the terminal was closed, his gut was roiling with the heavy meal, and he couldn’t get to the cockpit.
Much of the Condor’s design had been taken from the American’s C-5 Galaxy, and just made bigger. Voskov rubbed his hands together to no effect then tucked them back into his pockets—he just wished they’d provided flight deck access during loading.
The four-engine cargo jet was a massive open tube with a rear ramp behind clamshell doors. The front nose swung up like a king-sized garage door to expose the front ramp. The Condor could even kneel—lowering its front landing gear to facilitate drive-on loading.
However, during loading, the stair up to his cockpit home was cut off. That left him to stand in the biting cold and watch his loadmasters do all the work.
All he could do was look longingly up at the nice warm living area four stories above him. He should be kicked back on his bunk, sleeping or watching a Scarlett Johansson movie (he had every one of them, at least all the ones she was blonde in, and most of Jennifer Lawrence’s, even The Hunger Games when she wasn’t blonde).
“How much longer, Portnov?”
“You whine too much, Captain.”
“Fine. I’ll just leave you here to freeze your ass off.”
“Then who would unload your helicopters in America?” Portnov slapped him on the back and returned to loading the next helo into the Condor. A painfully slow process.
Of course, the least gouge in his hull could ground them for a week. And if everything wasn’t perfectly balanced fore and aft, he’d crash on takeoff.
Voskov paced back and forth, because it was that or die cold in Helsinki which sounded like a bad movie that he wanted no role in. He was always amazed at the volume Portnov managed to move in and out of their plane. Somehow it looked so effortless when Portnov was the loadmaster.
Damn but this took longer than a Ukrainian spring.
It looked like a whale’s maw gobbling up anything they fed it.
He glared across the field at the now darkened restaurant in the terminal. She was long gone, but right now even that dour battleax looked like a good option.
Elayne Kasprak had watched the whole operation since the Antonov AN-124 had landed before she’d decided on her approach. It was the arrival of the captain—conveniently unable to retreat to his flight deck—that gave her the solution to boarding the aircraft.
It had taken less than five minutes to liberate an airport security car from the Helsinki motor pool. Acquiring a unifor
m had been harder. Finding a real guard who was small enough that she wouldn’t look ridiculous in his uniform had taken almost twenty minutes. She hoped that the guard woke up before he froze to death in just his long underwear. The one bit of attire she hadn’t needed—it would only get in the way.
On her return, the captain was still there, trying to huddle out of the wind and not even pretending he was in charge. Time to prove that he truly wasn’t.
She parked her clearly marked vehicle close, but not too close. Visible, but in the shadows. Elayne planned her walk carefully. Casual, friendly. Not some sexy slink.
Just a cop on patrol…and just as bored as you.
“Hyvää iltaa,” she wished him a good evening in Finnish.
“Tak?” Ukrainian.
She was fluent in Ukrainian, and six other languages, but he’d know that her accent was too Russian. “Good evening?” she asked in intentionally awkward English.
“Ah! Good evening.” He finally focused on her face and most of his shivering went away.
Elayne knew why she’d originally been recruited by the SVR. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service needed beautiful spies. But she was also the daughter of a Spetznaz colonel and could outfight nine out of ten men, despite her stature. It hadn’t taken her long to ascend to the operations department of Directorate S. Then from S to Zaslon—the most secret and elite black ops team in the entire Russian Federation—in just two more years.
“Good evening,” he said in a much warmer tone as he stood straight and squared his shoulders.
“Slow loadings?” She nodded toward his plane.
“Damned slow. Made the mistake of going to the café rather than hiding in my bunk.”
“Tell that you did not the eating of Madame’s meat soup?” She had watched him do precisely that.
At his expected groan, she laughed sympathetically.
“If you walk three more blocks, there very good steak.”
He groaned more dramatically, “I didn’t need to know that.” His English was almost as good as hers actually was. Better to let him think she was struggling to keep up with him.
She removed her hat. After all, Helsinki was tropical compared to where she’d grown up in Polyarny submarine base near the Arctic Circle. That let her long white-blonde hair fall loose over her stolen parka’s shoulders. Truth be told, she was missing the guard’s long underwear at the moment as the wind was quite bitter.
Elayne paid attention to the six helicopters being loaded. It gave the captain time to look his fill.
She was glad that it wasn’t her job to hunt down the pilots who had betrayed the motherland by delivering these to the West. She’d castrate them slowly then make them cook and eat their own balls before she cauterized the excision point with a blowtorch.
There was a hard metal-on-metal bang from inside the Condor. By the lights inside the cargo bay she could see that it was just one of the loaders cursing at a freezing cold pry bar he’d dropped on the deck. The sound had been echoed and reinforced as it blasted out into the darkness. Her own breath was clouding so thickly that it was blurring her vision.
But not enough to hide what was in the cargo bay.
A Kamov Helix that looked to have all of its Airborne Early Warning system’s electronics still intact. Two Kamov Alligator attack helos and a fully-armed Mil Havoc as well. One of the brand-new Kazan Ansat multi-role birds. The last one was a monstrous Mi-17 gunship that shouldn’t fit inside any aircraft—at least nothing less than the Antonov.
It was an incredible intelligence haul.
“Sorry, Captain.”
“What?”
Elayne remembered herself. “Sorry that you must stand out in such colds.”
And sorry for you that you were assigned to carry the wrong cargo. Not your fault, but that doesn’t change anything.
“Would you like to warm up in my car?”
“That would be very good. Thank you.”
Very nice, she corrected him in her thoughts.
She’d left the heater on high, they both soon shed their jackets. He wasn’t the handsomest man, but he clearly worked hard to stay in shape. Seducing him there in the shadows of her stolen but warm car was laughably easy.
And surprisingly good, once his hands warmed up.
He was a skilled lover, better than any she’d had in a long time. Best of all, there would be no loose ends to worry about—ever.
Dimtri Voskov set up on final approach into Fort Campbell and daydreamed of what wonders awaited him in Kentucky.
The load of Russian helicopters would go to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment—SOAR was the US Army’s secret helicopter regiment and no concern of his.
Kentucky though…
It wasn’t the land of petite Scandinavian white-blondes, but he’d been in the American South enough to appreciate the seriously built gold-blondes as well—even when it was dyed.
No one would match the Helsinki Airport security officer who wore nothing under her uniform. That would be asking too much. But she left him to dream. She’d also left him a phone number and first name—Valery. Valery, a female name in the West and a male name in Russia; it fit her strength well. She had the finest body he’d been invited to plunder since a fiery Irish redhead on a layover in Shannon three years before.
While finishing the tie-downs and doublechecks, Portnov had lowered the cockpit stairway and he’d given Valery a tour upstairs.
Bunks near the back of the compartment—just ahead of the wings. Enough for the three loadmasters and the four-man flight crew. A small lounge, bathroom, and a decent kitchen.
She hadn’t looked very impressed until they reached the cockpit. He gave her the full tour and grabbed a couple of nice feels.
“May I use bathing room?”
“You know the way.”
On her return, Valery had asked in that charming mangled-English of hers as she closed the cockpit door, “Does these doors lock?”
He’d reached across her, latched it, and tried to take her right up against the door.
Instead, she’d guided him to the pilot’s chair. Sliding it to the back of the stops, there was just room for her to straddle him.
Over Valery’s bare shoulder and out the windshield, he’d caught Portnov looking up in surprise, then grinning.
Plenty to grin about here.
The only thing more amazing than her hair, face, and breasts had been what she could do with her hips.
She would start a motion somewhere deep inside that built in a slow gyration to—
The radio hauled him back to the present. “Antonov, this is Campbell Army Airfield. You’re cleared to land Runway 23. Winds light and variable.”
“Roger, Tower.” Everything looked good.
Everything.
Including the updated schedule from the home office that said they’d be back in Helsinki in just three weeks.
He rode the big plane down the glideslope. He had plenty of runway, but still got the main gear on the pavement in the first five hundred feet. Nose gear down at a thousand.
It would be good to get out of the cockpit and stretch. He might not even go barhopping. Maybe he’d just hit his bunk, think about Valery, and count the days until they were back in Finland.
When Captain Dimitri Voskov pulled back to engage the thrust reversers on the four brand-new GE CF-6 engines, a small switch was engaged. It had been placed by SVR Zaslon Major Elayne Kasprak as Voskov had buried his face in her breasts—so skilled with his tongue that she’d almost missed the proper placement.
The small switch sent a signal to a receiver she’d placed fifty feet behind the cockpit. She’d hidden it beneath the rearmost bunk while ducking out of the cockpit to use the bathroom.
The receiver was attached to a detonator.
The detonator had been rammed into the heart of a shaped charge.
The C4 plastique explosive detonated, punching through the crew cabin’s rear pressure wall and the central win
g tank close behind it.
It also incinerated Loadmaster Portnov and the Swedish Aktuell Rapport skin magazine he’d been using as a visual aid while he imagined Voskov’s blonde going down on him in the last bunk.
In the cockpit, the sound was no louder than a blown tire on the main gear.
“Shit!” Voskov checked the indicators, but no red warning lights. Hopefully not a brake fire, or a broken wheel axle. Please let it just be the rubber.
The central wing tank had been run mostly dry during flight. Now it was filled with fuel vapors and nitrogen that had been pumped in as the tank emptied to decrease the chance of fire.
The hole punched by the shaped charged not only heated the remaining fuel above the ignition point, but allowed oxygen to rush into the breached tank.
Four seconds after the thump sound in the cockpit, their speed was down to a hundred knots. The plane wasn’t pulling to either side, so Voskov decided the problem might not be too terrible.
Two thousand feet of runway gone, eight thousand still clear ahead. Under normal operations, the Antonov would need only a thousand more feet before turning off onto a taxiway—for all their size, helicopters didn’t weigh much, less than a third of the Condor’s load limit.
At that same moment, a fireball followed the stream of oxygen and flashed back through the original penetration in the tank and the cabin’s rear bulkhead.
It ignited the entire crew cabin and killed the other two loadmasters.
Other than a sudden inward bulging of the closed cockpit door, the active flight crew, including Captain Dimitri Voskov, remained unaware of what was happening behind them. The copilot had opened his small side window to smell the fresh Kentucky air—splendidly warm and lush in mid-March—so their ears didn’t even pop at the sudden overpressure.
Five seconds after the initial blast, the building explosion inside the fuel tank exceeded critical rupture.
Both of the central tanks’ side seams failed at a hundred and thirty-seven percent of design maximum.
The shrapnel blew through the wing tanks to either side, spilling the three thousand remaining gallons of reserve Jet-A fuel into the wing structure. From there, it cascaded down onto the runway through mechanical openings for flaps and landing gear.
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