Drone: an NTSB / military technothriller (Miranda Chase Book 1)

by M. L. Buchman

  With a degree of control possible to only the most exceptional pilot, he balanced nearly a full minute, more than halfway to space. He hovered at thirty-one-point-six miles up, but an astronaut badge lay at sixty-two—still far out of his reach.

  Helen couldn’t tell if the plane finally tumbled or Harvey simply gave up.

  He let the nose swing vertically until it was pointed straight down.

  Doing nothing to abate the engines, he gained speed quickly.

  At a hundred thousand feet he once more crossed Mach 2.

  At fifty he punched through Mach 3.

  The wings sheared off at Mach 4.5.

  Now, little more than a fuselage with an engine, Harvey continued his downward dive at full power.

  He hit the water at Mach 5.8.

  If there was anything left to sink, it would settle in the depths of the Alaska trench. In a half million years, the motion of the tectonic plates would drag those scraps down into the mantle. Maybe another quarter million years after that, some few atoms would resurface in the Alaskan volcanoes.

  Helen went around shutting off the equipment.

  If they didn’t jail her along with Harrington, she would hang up her uniform as soon as a replacement could be named to command Groom Lake.

  She stood last at the med station.

  His affinity for the mind-link must have made him more susceptible to The Rip than any other pilot. Or perhaps he simply refused to keep living without flight.

  She watched the last beat of his heart, the last hint of a brainwave fade away before shutting it down.

  She’d go back to her family and see if she could salvage anything of her own life. Of her own heart.

  “You really flew, Harvey. Gods but you really flew.”

  83

  Chen Mei-Li sat close beside Chang Mui—General Li Zuocheng’s favorite granddaughter—as they shared a coconut ice cream upon the grassy bank of the Shunyi Water Park in Beijing. The Duanwu Dragon Boat Festival races were being battled out before enormous crowds who had flooded into the former Olympic Park.

  The clusters of the smallest three-meter boats, each with a dragon’s eye painted on the prow, made for a colorful and joyous race, all jostling together, and everyone simply glad to be there on a warm, sunny June day.

  The ten-paddler class were more serious, but still were clearly enjoying themselves. These had small carved dragon heads at the front.

  The great dragon boats of twenty paddlers, a steerer at the stern, and a drummer in the front to keep time were splendid to watch, especially where the longer races required the teams to turn their boats through long sweeping arcs to race back down the course.

  An incautious turn caused a boat to capsize and toss its paddlers into the water. The crowd sighed with disappointment, then cheered them as they waved their paddles over their heads even as they tread water.

  Mei-Li’s favorites were the traditional boats. These were far longer than the “twenty” boats.

  She and Mui shared a friendly debate over which boat was prettiest. Which paddlers were the strongest. Which drummer had the best flourishes.

  Unlike the fiberglass and even composite-built racers, these boats were built of traditional woods. Teak shone, mahogany shimmered.

  As many as fifty rowers wore brightly traditional clothes rather than a team shirt. Gold shirts matched one boat’s gold detail work and red matched another’s.

  Flags fluttered fore and aft—red with golden calligraphy—announcing the dragon’s name or calling for blessings from the gods.

  The drummer didn’t beat upon some tom-tom, but rather a vast drum over a meter wide that boomed across the water like the footsteps of the Jade Emperor himself, coming down from heaven to watch the show.

  Their ornate dragon heads reached high out of the water, far above the paddlers’ heads, seeming to strive forward even when they sat still. Everyone hushed as Daoist priests “awakened the dragons” by dotting their eyes with a fine paintbrush moments before their first race.

  They looked perfect as they slid along the water, ready to fly from the water and soar freely to the heavens.

  In the short time since that bastard Wang Fan’s death, Mei-Li had begun to glimpse a new life—to look beyond just surviving each day. Listening to Li Zuocheng speak of his granddaughter with love and admiration had shifted her worldview in the course of a single meal.

  Yes, it was time she became a dragon herself and raised her own head high. Until now, petty revenge had been sufficient, but her new-born eyes saw that so much more was possible.

  Mui giggled at a particularly flamboyant drummer who danced and twirled as he beat a paddler’s rhythm against his big drum.

  Mei-Li let herself join in the giggle.

  Giggling was not permitted at her first Youth Amateur Athletic School. Instead, poise, grace, and perfect control had been the watchwords of her youth. She’d never discovered any reason to laugh.

  Until now.

  Ever since the moment she’d shared her first kiss with Mui she’d felt it might be possible to laugh. And now it was easy. Mui, just a year younger, was so splendidly unspoiled. Not cynical, not abused, not bitter despite also being a great beauty. Mei-Li was drawn to her in surprising ways.

  How little “Dear Uncle Ru” and “Beloved Grandfather Zuocheng” knew of what modern girls did. How easy it was to slip their very loose leash and make their own rules. She and Mui were anonymous in the crowds and no one paid attention to them. If they had walked arm in arm, the boys might bother them. But they walked holding hands in the modern, Western way that said they were a couple with no interest in penises and the boys left them alone.

  To Mei-Li, sex was simply sex.

  But Mui had made it very clear what her preferences were from the first moment they’d met. Mei-Li had thought that her experience and bitter disappointments would make her the dominant one. But Mui treated her as if she was the one who needed nurturing. Their first full night together—dining, dancing, then making love until dawn—had shown Mei-Li how much she had to learn.

  She did matter. As much as she was teaching Mui about navigating the political and military world, Mui was teaching her—about the idea of hope.

  Now that she had started, Mei-Li couldn’t stop giggling. How little their precious guardians understood. Mui’s burning desire to throw off the realm of their patriarchy and become truly Western arced through her like a shining light.

  They were so perfect together.

  Time would be needed. But Mei-Li would do as Mui’s grandfather Zuocheng hoped and teach her how to be mature, sophisticated, and, most of all, to observe.

  Between her role as her newly-elevated uncle’s assistant and Mui’s own insights from her grandfather, there was so much more they could gather for the Americans than a plane’s flight schedule or the next design change. That was as high as she’d ever looked while under Uncle Ru’s thumb.

  Now she would look so much higher.

  And someday, after they had destroyed their ancestors and everyone associated with them, she would get them both out and they’d be free in the West.

  Yes, Mui had opened Mei-Li’s eyes to finding joyfulness.

  It came wrapped like a spring roll in a thin sheet of hope she’d never had before.

  Adorned with a coconut-ice-cream-flavored kiss.

  84

  Miranda’s nerves wouldn’t let her sit still.

  As it was a lovely September morning, she went for a long walk on the island to pass the time. Spieden was two miles long, less than a half mile across, and lay on the northwest edge of the lovely San Juan Islands of Washington State.

  The San Juans were actually the remaining peaks of a drowned mountain range, sticking up steep rocky heads, crowned in thick conifers.

  In the 1970s, Spieden had been stocked for big game hunting—none of the predators, but gnu, zebra, several breeds of deer, and over two thousand exotic birds had abounded. The park had collapsed under the pressure o
f animal cruelty protests and complaints from nearby San Juan Island where stray bullets had been known to cross the half-mile channel.

  John Wayne had enjoyed hunting here, and for that reason, Miranda could never bring herself to watch any of his movies.

  Long after the park’s collapse, the “Great Roundup” of the 1980s had gathered most of the animals, but not quite all. Her family had bought the island a few years after that. Corsican mouflon sheep and Asian sika deer were among the most successful remainder species.

  As a little girl, she’d wandered among them happily. With no natural predators—now that John Wayne and his ilk were gone—they were quite fearless. She’d often been able to hold a newborn kid or pet a fawn.

  The family home had once been the grand hunting lodge. Indoor pool, sauna, a kitchen and dining room capable of seating twenty that now only rarely held more than one.

  Today, Tante Daniels—after pushing at her for a month, practically forcing her into an action that was the root of all her nerves—had declined to come to the island at the last minute.

  “You’ll be fine, Mirrie,” she’d said over the phone this morning.

  “But—”

  “Enough already, Mirrie. We buried them over twenty years ago. You’re no longer thirteen. Move on.”

  “I’m—”

  “Yes, you’re ready. It will be amazing. You’ll see. I’ll send you good energy, but you won’t need it.” And she’d been gone.

  Miranda sat for a while at her father’s Kryptos garden sculpture. She couldn’t lose herself in the contemplation of its hidden code, but it was a comfortable place to sit.

  Director Winston had been true to his word and in the last month she’d twice visited the real sculpture at the CIA when she’d had to return to NTSB’s headquarters. Terence had a new front door and roof gutter.

  She’d tried inviting him out to the island.

  “Not my dance, Mirrie. I’m fine here in DC. You just keep on a doin’ that dance you’re doin’. It looks damn fine on you, Mirrie.”

  There was a bright buzz overhead, distant but growing.

  A lot of planes buzzed the island, curiosity seekers trying to spot game or the island’s residents…resident. Spieden was a closed, private island and landings were prohibited. It didn’t stop the tour boats from circling close, but at least they respected the landing prohibition. The boathouse and cottage were down by the water, but the main house was up in the center of the island, well shielded by towering conifers in most directions, except for a long view to the east across the length of the island.

  She knew most of the plane sounds.

  The Cessna’s Lycoming four cylinder—a flat four in the 152 and 172 produced a distinct note from the McCauley 69” or Sensenich 72” propellers, respectively.

  The Piper Tomahawk also ran the flat-four, but sounded more like an irritated mosquito. The Piper Cherokee sounded a little more practical with the deeper note of its Sensenich 74” prop.

  The Mooney’s Continental flat-six with the three-bladed Hartzell Scimitar prop had an aggressive, “I’m fast, get out of my way” tone that she’d always liked.

  Forcing herself to her feet, she walked up the path to the field just as her Mooney M20V turned from the crosswind leg onto final.

  Mike had gotten better at flying it over the few months.

  She could see Jeremy waving at her through the windshield.

  Holly was easy to imagine, slouched casually in the back seat, teasing Mike and keeping some handle on Jeremy’s flights of fancy.

  Since joining her, they’d handled two commercial aviation crashes: a severe taxiing error that had cost two lives and over a hundred thousand dollars of damage to two aircraft, and the complete hull loss of an Embraer ERJ135 killing the two pilots and all thirty-seven passengers. Yet the one flight attendant, sitting in the broken-away tail section, had walked away with her hair barely mussed. There had also been at least a dozen general aviation mishaps of varying severity involving small, general aviation planes.

  Through it all, they’d been a staunch and reliable team. There was something more. They were also… Miranda wasn’t exactly sure what.

  The plane landed cleanly on the grass-strip runway that she’d mowed yesterday especially for their visit. Mike rolled it easily into the hangar she’d left open for him. She arrived as he shut it down close beside her Sabrejet.

  “Miranda!” Holly hopped down. “You can not ever do that to me again. Next time, just girls on the island. Men are way more trouble than they’re worth.”

  “That’s not fair,” Mike came over and gave Miranda a surprising hug. “If I wasn’t here, who would you be complaining about?”

  Miranda gave him the t-shirt she’d had made. As soon as he unrolled it, he yanked off his own shirt and pulled the new on. She noticed that Holly didn’t look away for a single instant until Mike was done with the change.

  He looked down at it again with a huge smile, then hugged her hard. It said, I went to Groom Lake and all I got was a rectal probe, just as he’d demanded during the investigation of the C-130 wreck.

  Good. She’d been fairly sure that it was funny.

  Jeremy came around from the other side of the plane. He, like Mike and herself, wore the Matildas women’s soccer team hats that Holly had given them and insisted they all wear.

  “If she wasn’t complaining about you, Mike, she’d be complaining about:” Jeremy began ticking them off on his fingers, “the miserable season that the Australian Matildas are having. The quality or lack of pizza available at remote crash sites. The men—”

  Holly punched his arm.

  “Hey! Ow! You’re always complaining about men.”

  “Don’t worry, Jeremy, I don’t count you among them.”

  “That’s good,” then he squinted his eyes at her in a way that Miranda now knew was a mixture of surprise and puzzlement. “Now hold on just a minute!”

  Holly belly laughed at his consternation and Mike was definitely smiling.

  Miranda marveled that Tante Daniels was right after all. The first visitors she’d allowed on the island since her parents’ funeral absolutely belonged.

  They weren’t just her team.

  They were her friends.

  It was going to be a good day.

  If you enjoyed this, keep reading for an excerpt from a book you’re going to love.

  ..and a review is always welcome (it really helps)…

  Miranda Chase returns

  Coming soon!

  Thunderbolt (excerpt)

  Miranda Chase #2

  Spieden Island, Washington, USA

  Elevation: 137’

  Miranda Chase shooed a couple of sika deer off the runway. It was a chill December morning only a few degrees above freezing, so she didn’t spend long about it.

  A slow wave of sea fog was rolling in from Vancouver and the Canadian Gulf Islands, adding a thick dampness to the chill. The first of the US San Juan islands, Stuart and Johns, were disappearing fast. If she didn’t get aloft in the next fifteen minutes, she’d be trapped here on Spieden Island until the weak December sun burned it off.

  The call from the National Transportation Safety Board said that a new crash had been classified as urgent.

  As if she would lag when there was a crash to investigate.

  She opened the hangar door and began her pre-flight checklist at the pilot’s ladder and circling the plane counter-clockwise. Tires inflated and clear of obstructions. No leakage from the shock absorbers, brakes, or gear handling systems. No dings on the leading edge of the wing. All rote by now, but she never missed a step. She was her own ground crew, so it was up to her to make everything perfect.

  Because of the frequent fog, she’d thought about installing an instrument landing system on her island. She liked that it would make Spieden one of the only grass strips in the world to have an ILS. The problem was that the outer and inner markers would have to be placed offshore in the deep waters of Puget Sound
because, at two miles long and a half-mile wide, her island was too small to support the four-mile long system. Besides, her plane couldn’t handle the Cat III equipment that would allow her to land in the exasperating near-zero visibility.

  Her F-86 Sabrejet was neither pure North American F-86 Sabrejet nor the Canadair CL-13 Sabre Mk.5 variant anymore. One of the last ever produced before the line ended in 1958, she had tinkered with it over the years, including upgrading to the Mk.6’s more powerful Orenda 14 engine. She’d also had to make a few modifications so that she could start the plane herself.

  But even with the upgrades it was still all authentically a Sabrejet, and old jet fighters didn’t boast modern electronic suites. To shoehorn them in, she’d have to get a custom-designed cockpit—which was never going to happen. She loved the feel and familiarity of the old “steam” dial gauges mounted in the classic cockpit.

  The preflight checks only took minutes. She rolled out onto the winter-dead grass as the first tendrils of fog began slipping across the field. Her time was shorter than she’d anticipated. She taxied ahead and punched the garage controller to close the hangar door. Normally, even though she lived alone on the island, she’d get down and padlock it from the outside. But this morning the fog was moving in fast.

  Isolate.

  Focus.

  The island would be uninhabited by humans as soon as she was aloft.

  You’re taxiing the airplane. Work the checklist.

  Fuel tanks full.

  Canopy Unsafe alarm dark.

  Speed brakes retracted.

  The sika deer were back, grazing along the runway as if antique fighter jets rolled by them all the time. They’d never yet run across the runway during a takeoff or landing, but she did hate disturbing their quiet island existence. They were always startled by the full-throttle roar of her turbojet engine.