Raider

by M. L. Buchman

  “I never said that. I didn’t say that.” But General Yazar’s sweaty brow and rapidly shifting gaze, from Drake over to Barry and back, told a different story.

  “All I said was that the Russians recently redeployed their Su-57 Felon fifth-generation fighters to Syria for combat testing. It’s our chance to trial our own newest systems. A real-world test of our F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lightning II fighters. We should be doing the same against China’s Chengdu J-20 and the Shenyang J-31 in the South China Sea. We’ve got to put these people in their places.”

  Barry’s look didn’t change in the slightest, but Drake could read him. He sat bolt upright in his chair, his fingers interlaced, except his forefingers, which he tapped lightly together.

  He was thinking.

  Then his fingers went still.

  “So, you fed information to the Turks about how to hack our aircraft.”

  “Never, sir. I wouldn’t do that.”

  And that’s when Drake saw it. If they weren’t hacking the aircraft… “Oh shit.”

  Both Barry and Yazar turned to look at him.

  He didn’t have all of the pieces yet. Far from it.

  But he’d just figured out where a couple of them definitely lay.

  72

  Miranda’s phone rang loudly. She didn’t recognize the number, but the 703 area code told her it was probably the Pentagon.

  “Miranda Chase. This is actually her, not a recording.” So many people paused and then were surprised that she wasn’t a recording of herself that she’d begun to say what she was up front.

  There was a pause, then a brief chuckle.

  That wasn’t a sufficient result to make it a permanent change in her phone answering technique.

  “Hello, Miranda-actual. This is Drake-actual. What’s your status?”

  “I’m sitting down.” Then she considered that might be an insufficient answer. “In the main conference area.” Probably still not enough. “As the Vice President is not aboard, this isn’t technically Air Force Two.”

  Again the pause before he continued in a different tone. “What did you learn about your present crash?”

  “That Boeing builds an exceptionally tough plane. That the USAF pilot assigned to fly the Vice President is remarkably skilled, despite having missed two possible clues revealing the hacker’s interference prior to the actual crash. That this plane will not be flying out of here under its own power.”

  “Well, we can’t leave that plane there. It has millions of dollars of highly classified electronics.”

  “There are EOD technicians standing by, sir,” Mike informed him.

  “We’re not blowing up an eighty-million-dollar airplane. Can’t we get some helicopters to carry it out?”

  Miranda didn’t know if that was meant to be a joke or not. She considered trying a laugh, but no one else was, so perhaps not. Instead, she answered it seriously.

  “It weighs a hundred and thirty thousand pounds, Drake. An MH-47G Chinook can barely lift twenty thousand. The Russians have the Mi-26, which can lift forty-four thousand.”

  “I definitely don’t want to have the Russians involved in this.”

  “Even if three could fly in such close formation, which they can’t, it would only be marginally possible.”

  “I said no Russians. Let it go, Miranda.”

  She tried considering various Y-harnesses, but nothing was going to work without adding significant weight to the total load. The 757 was a hundred and fifty-five feet long and an Mi-26’s rotors were a hundred and five in diameter. Two could theoretically be attached to either end of the fuselage, but there was no position to safely place the third. She’d have to agree with Drake that it was an idea not worth pursuing.

  “We need to get it out of there now.”

  “Why the big rush?” Mike leaned closer to the phone.

  73

  Drake hadn’t known why there was a reason to rush. But all those years kicking in doors for the 75th Rangers had taught him to not question the instinct.

  Now he had to back it up with reason.

  “Because…” he looked at Barry, who just raised his eyebrows in question. Then Yazar, who just sat there sweating and doing his best to look innocent.

  What if he actually was innocent? Nervous, but not in cahoots with the Turks.

  Or…not knowingly in cahoots with them.

  There it was.

  “The Turks have been feeding really bad ideas to one of our more hawkish generals. Between that and the hacker’s actions, I think they’re trying to create a war.”

  “Where?” Miranda asked.

  “Syria!” Yazar gasped out.

  Barry’s desk phone was still on speaker.

  “I swear to God I didn’t know. My old friends there, we’d just be chatting about the world at large and they’d talk about Syria. And how it could be a testing ground, a good place to show the Russians just who was who. I never would have—”

  “Shut up, Yazar.” Barry didn’t even raise his voice, but was nodding. “It passes the piss test, Drake.”

  Drake turned back to the phone.

  “I believe that you may be in great and immediate danger there, Miranda. You need to leave immediately.”

  “It isn’t safe to fly at the moment.”

  “Find a way and get clear. And bring my Vice President with you.”

  He hung up the phone. Miranda was suddenly the least of his problems.

  Barry finally broke the silence. “You need Yazar for anything else?”

  Drake shook his head.

  Barry dismissed him with admonishment to talk to no one about anything, especially not any of his Turkish friends.

  Then the two sat in silence.

  Barry kicked open a drawer, thunked a bottle and two glasses on the table. He poured a single finger of scotch for both of them—twelve-year-old, good scotch—then put the bottle away.

  “It’s almost five,” Barry shoved one glass across the table.

  Drake smiled at the memory. When Tadman had been the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he’d done that sometimes.

  He picked up the glass and rolled it back and forth between his palms, slow enough that the amber liquid barely swirled. The still pool before the storm.

  “They’re trying to yank us into a goddamn war.”

  Barry nodded, but he didn’t drink yet either. “That gives us two big problems at Incirlik.”

  “Air Force Two along with the Vice President.”

  “That’s one,” Barry agreed and picked up his glass.

  “And fifty B61 nuclear bombs.”

  “That’s the other.”

  They toasted each other and knocked back the alcohol.

  Drake set his glass on the desk. Just as he was about to push it back, he realized what was next. Maybe having a drink hadn’t been the best idea.

  Well, he wasn’t going to go this alone.

  “Get your goddamn coat, Barry.”

  Sizemore tucked away the glasses, but didn’t ask why.

  “I’m not going to the President alone with this one.”

  Barry sighed, but didn’t argue.

  74

  “It’s not as if there are any civilian flights out of here. This is a military base.” Jeremy was tapping away on his computer.

  Something was niggling at the back of Mike’s mind.

  He slouched in the chair and closed his eyes. He’d either think of it or get some sleep. And if he woke up dead, well, stranger things had happened. Waking up all wrapped up in Holly being a prime candidate.

  Shoving his hands in his jacket pockets, he ended up holding the deck of cards from the 787. It wasn’t like the new owner would want a used deck.

  Not really thinking about it, he began peeling off the cards as he’d left them, without pulling his hand out of his pocket.

  Miranda, the Queen. Still taking notes.

  Jeremy, the systems Ace. Convinced that if he looked hard enough, flights would magically appear
from Incirlik Air Base in Turkey to Tacoma Narrows Airport in Gig Harbor, Washington.

  Andi, the flying Raider Ace. The Spec Ops lady who could talk about nukes without triggering her own fragile PTSD.

  Holly, the structural Ace. Who’d said they could fix a 757 by cutting off its wings…

  “Holy shit!”

  He yanked out the cards and spun the queen and three aces down onto the table.

  “What?” Everyone was looking at him.

  He held the fourth ace, Mike the Ace of Spades, aloft but facing away from the others.

  “He’s lost his mind,” Holly scoffed, but she wasn’t looking away.

  “I don’t know,” Andi still trusted him, even when he wasn’t smart enough to trust himself.

  “What does it look like to lose Mike’s mind?” Miranda actually looked around, even under the table.

  There was a long second of silence around the table while everyone wondered if she was seriously asking something that ridiculous.

  Then Jeremy burst out laughing, and Miranda smiled at her joke.

  Hysteria would be a kind word for the laughter that followed.

  They were barely half recovered, when she spoke again.

  “I mean, we know what the team looks like when one of the rest of us loses our mind. But Mike’s? I don’t know what that looks like.”

  “Oh Christ. If I’m the steady one in this group, we’re all in trouble.”

  They all raised a high five and Mike slapped them around the table because he didn’t know what else to do.

  “Serious trouble,” Andi finally declared. “So what’s your idea?”

  He began tapping the cards.

  “Miranda solved the crashes. Andi thinks the nukes are a big issue here at Incirlik. Jeremy wants a flight out. And Holly thinks the only way to fix this plane is to chop of its wings.”

  “There are nukes here?” Jeremy looked suddenly interested.

  Mike ignored him and whapped down the Ace of Spades.

  “And here’s what we’re gonna do.”

  When he was done laying out his plan, Holly snagged him around the back of the neck with the same iron-hard clench she’d used on his throat.

  Dragging him half out of his chair, she kissed him even harder.

  Mike figured that meant she liked the idea.

  Now they just had to survive it.

  75

  Last night’s short sleep was taking its toll, and the silence from the Tweedle Twins was testing Clarissa’s patience.

  When she strode into their office, they were just sitting at their computers doing nothing. Exactly like the three other times she’d checked in on them through the day. Except now it was night.

  Nine p.m. last night, she’d been sliding into a hot bath and an empty bed.

  Tonight she was doing neither.

  “Well?”

  “Well, nothing,” Heidi snarled without looking up. It was hard to tell if she was snarling at the screen or at Clarissa herself.

  “She gets like that,” Harry looked far more relaxed. “She hates waiting. We only had tracers in place when he attacked Air Force Two. Not knowing where he’d be, we couldn’t have a full counterattack in place.”

  “You have one now, I assume?”

  “The moment that little shit sticks out his neck, I’m going to cut off his dick.” Heidi’s ire was definitely aimed at the screen.

  “Any chance of it happening soon?”

  Harry shrugged as if he hadn’t a care and took a slice from a half-empty pizza box she hadn’t even noticed.

  He wandered to a microwave, zapped it, and set it down beside Heidi, who ignored it.

  “Want one?”

  “Sure, what the hell.”

  He did the same for her and himself before lounging back in his chair.

  “Soon-ness depends. Anything interesting happening at Incirlik tonight?”

  Not that she knew of.

  Of course it was now probably five in the morning there.

  She sank down into a chair and bit into her pizza before noticing it was Canadian bacon and pineapple. Who thought these things up? Probably some West Coast weirdo.

  76

  Mike stood back and looked at his masterpiece. It had taken five exhausting hours, three calls to Drake in the Situation Room with the President, and a lot of local assistance from the base commander and the Vice President.

  Once they’d laid it out, VP Clark Winston had been glad to play his role.

  On Mike’s signal, three completely separate tasks had kicked into gear at once.

  Clark’s whirlwind tour of Incirlik Air Base was Mike’s priority.

  It began with a personal tour of the Control Tower.

  Then an unscheduled meeting with the Turkish base commander and a tour of their side of the field.

  He traveled to visit base housing units, bringing the Turkish leadership with him.

  Together, they all laughed their way through an impromptu late-night talent show held at a party that magically materialized in the base gym. The crews coming off the noon-to-midnight shift had been game.

  Everywhere he went, all attention focused on the Vice President and his growing entourage of distraction.

  Stars and Stripes had a reporter and camera crew following him everywhere, offering a through-the-night live news feed.

  In the quiet of the Vice-Presidential backwash, one very small area of the base was intensely busy.

  That was Jeremy and Miranda’s task.

  Their first step had been dragging the broken 757 inside the secure compound and rolling it into the very biggest hangar. So big that there was also room there for a C-5M Super Galaxy that had just completed getting a new set of tires and a brake job.

  Exactly as Holly suggested, they cut the wings and tail off the Vice President’s 757.

  The C-5’s cargo bay was only twenty-five feet shorter than a 757 and it was over a foot wider. With the tail removed, the 757’s fuselage had slid neatly into the cargo bay.

  Andi and Holly had taken on the third task.

  Together they’d shepherded the base’s emergency team running surprise fire drills. Part of those drills included towing the big, blue-and-yellow Crash Recovery trailer to hangar after hangar.

  At each one, the B61 nuclear bombs stored there were cranked up out of their secure underground vaults and loaded into the trailer.

  When it finally reached the main hangar, it was groaning under thirty-five thousand pounds of Armageddon.

  These were hand-loaded into the 757’s cargo hold that was now installed inside the C-5. The Galaxy’s loadmasters ordered the bombs’ placement, and the mechanics did whatever was necessary to the 757’s hull to anchor the bombs against any movement.

  By five a.m., just five hours from when he’d had the idea, his phone rang.

  Which was good, as he’d completely run out of ideas on how to keep the Vice President razzle-dazzling an entire air base.

  Now was the tricky moment.

  77

  Mike and Clark did a final “Thank! You! All!” followed by a hasty fade and retreat.

  The C-5M Galaxy was already spinning to life by the time they reached the hangar.

  They actually had to run—stagger arm-in-arm with exhaustion—to make it up the rear ramp before it folded upward and the clamshell doors closed around it. Clark’s Secret Service team was hot on their heels, and not in much better shape after the long night of whirlwind activity.

  Inside the C-5M’s cargo bay, they were faced by a sawed-off end-view of the 757. A giant donut of ragged steel. Great bundles of wires, air, water, and hydraulic conduits, and only Jeremy or Miranda would know what all, stuck out like a thorny thatch from the edges of the truncated fuselage. The amputation had been crude, but effective.

  A third of the way up the donut, the slab of the cabin’s floor cut across the twelve-foot diameter. Below, in the baggage area, long lines of bombs were attached to the hull’s frames.

  “Th
ey don’t look as scary as I expected,” Clark had squatted down for a clearer view.

  Each bomb was twelve feet long and a foot across. The tip was black, and the stern had four little fins; the rest was Air Force gray. It looked like any kid’s drawing of a science fiction rocket. The exceptional thing about them was how unexceptional they looked.

  “They look about ten times scarier than I expected,” and Mike never wanted to see one up-close again…ever.

  Clark’s brief bark of laughter acknowledged that might also be the truth.

  Several technicians were watching him and Clark closely. Mike assumed that in addition to tending the bombs, their job was to trust no one who came near them.

  “Let’s get out of their way.” Clark led them to a short ladder up into the 757’s cabin as the C-5M started to roll.

  They hurried up the aisle to join the others at the forward conference table. The Secret Service team dropped off into their familiar seats in the part of the rear section that was still attached to the plane. Only the press seats had been excised along with the tail.

  The Press Corps were probably all still asleep in their hotel. No matter how angry they were when they found out what they missed, Mike knew they wouldn’t want to be aboard.

  Now, Mike knew, was when it got interesting.

  78

  “C-5’s in the open,” one of the room’s Marine Corps attendees announced.

  Drake watched the Situation Room screen. He wanted to shed his jacket, but Barry hadn’t, so he resisted.

  In fact, Barry hadn’t shown any nerves except for the silent tapping together of his forefingers.

  The clearance-to-depart request echoed through the room.

  “This is Incirlik Tower. Cleared for immediate midfield departure Runway Zero-Five.”

  “Midfield?” President Roy Cole asked. He’d been in and out through the night.

  “Miranda Chase’s idea, sir. The 757 shed half its weight when we chopped off the wings and tail section. Even with the bombs aboard, it’s mostly empty air, barely a hundred thousand pounds. The C-5M can lift half a million. Rather than wasting time taxiing to the end of the runway, they’re just going to perform a short-field takeoff and fly away. Still have plenty of room for a safe abort if they need it.”