Page 36 of Air Force One
Heidi wished she’d thought to walk through mud this morning so her footprints would be walking all over the D/CIA’s perfectly toned ass. She’d never grown past lean. And while Harry definitely appreciated it, she wouldn’t mind having an ass that good.
“I’ve got no one else to fuck with.” It didn’t sound like her normal level of acid.
“You checked your pH level lately?”
Still no response.
Heidi looked sideways at her without lifting her head from the chair back. Reese looked as tired and frustrated as she sounded. Some of the sheen had come off the woman. She was still perfectly dressed in that power-sexy-executive mode that Heidi couldn’t emulate even if the success of her next hack depended on it. Reese might not be Superwoman but she was definitely the Woman of Steel.
“What dented your adamantine carapace?”
Clarissa took a bite of her pizza and slouched down until her position matched Heidi’s. CIA Director Clarissa Reese never slouched, not with that steel rod up that well-toned ass.
“You okay?”
Clarissa closed her eye and shook her head as she chewed.
Heidi knew that she’d lost Kurt Grice last year. She’d thought they were actually a good match—Woman of Steel and the uber-creepy head of the Special Operations Group, the CIA’s black ops and assassination squad. Both utterly ruthless. Reese had been thrown badly when the man went down hard in North Korea. Harry had dug the footage of his execution out of DPRK’s systems. It was an ugly piece of work, though they’d told Reese they’d only found the barest details—certainly not giving her the high-def video.
But she hadn’t been thrown like this.
Heidi stared at the newsfeed on one of her side screens. The death scroll continued, with a section for new bodies recovered and identified—no names, that would come after next of kin notifications, but they kept the count. With no explosion or fiery crash, the bodies were surprisingly intact. Every ten minutes or so, a news anchor re-explained that maneuvering body bags underwater was next to impossible, and drastically slowed the recovery process. Instead, each victim had a bight of rope looped under the armpits. A big, rope-conveyor loop reached to the surface from a pulley anchored deep down inside the plane somewhere. It hauled people to the surface to be extracted before the simple one-rope harness went back under.
It was a gruesome show, so, of course it had crazy-level viewership here in the US. Probably elsewhere, though Heidi hadn’t bothered checking. One of the anchors with too-perfect looks explained that most corpses still wore their security ID badges. Few were disfigured. They also write each person’s seating location on the individual’s palm with an underwater pen. Those will be cross checked with the seating rosters.
“Oh, shit!” Heidi finally connected the pieces.
Reese nodded without opening her eyes. Her piece of pizza still had only the one bite out of it.
Rose Cole, the President’s wife…widow…fellow deceased, had chosen Clarissa as her Maid of Honor at her own wedding and as her one guest to Miranda’s. They’d actually been friends, as hard as it was to imagine Clarissa having one. DC leading social queen—who had the reputation for being the quintessential definition of old-world manners and kindness—and her Woman of Steel utter-bitch boss. They’d been BFFs. How weird was that?
Heidi pushed up in her chair and really looked at Clarissa. Worn. Almost haggard? “Is there anything I can do for you, Clarissa?”
Clarissa opened one eye. “Did you find the bastards who did this yet?” Her tone was mild, almost…friendly. She must be crazy stressed.
Heidi shook her head and Clarissa closed the eye. “Do that for me.”
Heidi looked at Harry. As he wasn’t pretending to be busy or deep in a hack, he sensed her attention and looked up. A slight shake of his head said that he’d learned nothing new.
“We’ve dug into all the likely suspects and a lot of the unlikely ones. Nobody is claiming it except the usual whack-jobs. Nobody, prior to the crash itself, was talking about it.”
“How unusual did you get so far?”
“Russia, China, Korea, every Middle East player. India just for the hell of it, Pakis…everyone we could think of.”
Harry never wanted to antagonize Clarissa, so he spoke little louder than the cooling fans on their jacked-up machines. “I’ve also run through most of the allies: Canada, Mexico, Europe, and Australia. I’m working my way through the Africans, going from most advanced to least. Still not a peep.” Then, like a turtle withdrawing back into his shell, he hit his keyboard again, but not with the harsh buzz of avoidance—or being hot on someone’s trail.
Clarissa had nodded once, taken a second bite of pizza, and might be sleeping if not for her slow chewing.
Heidi slouched down to once again study the ceiling. White. Lots of white inside the CIA. She should paint a night sky up there so that she could pretend she was looking at the stars and not locked away in some ultra-secure basement hideaway. About the only place more secure than the Cyber Division was the Director’s Personal Archive, handed down from one director to the next. Heidi still hadn’t found a way in on that. First, it was physical, actual printed stuff; neither her nor Harry’s forte. Second, it was rabidly guarded by the CIA librarian, and she was a woman no one wanted to mess with.
“That’s weird.”
“What’s weird?”
Harry pointed at his screen.
“Not being helpful there, Wizard Boy.”
