Page 41 of Air Force One
Holly figured that was a good trick at thirty meters down. “Good engineers.”
Andi nodded.
Holly tipped her head toward Miranda’s back in question.
“We’re just waiting on the fabrication. Actually, not even that. The dive team is going overboard with it in a few minutes. Once they start pumping, we’ll back everyone away for safety. Nothing much for us to do until we see if she refloats or not.”
Holly tipped her head the other way, indicating a quiet corner of the shop—or as quiet as could be while the machinist was drilling a one-inch hole for the air fitting through a pair of thick aluminum plates.
“I’m standing right here, you know.” Miranda hadn’t turned, but Holly could see their reflection in the screen of the milling machine. So much for being subtle.
“You are, sorry.” Holly nodded toward the corner. “I have a question for you. Can we go talk somewhere quieter?”
Miranda simply turned and walked away from the machinist. “He’s very good. I am confident he’ll complete that task satisfactorily.”
When Holly tried to follow, her brief immobility had allowed her body to seize up from the battering it had taken. She wished for the old days. As a Spec Ops operator, she’d have had a pouch of emergency meds. Chewing on a couple of Vicodin might taste worse than dingo droppings, but it pumped the painkiller into the body plenty fast that way. Here in civilian-world, it was a Schedule-II narcotic, and she’d never thought to stock any. Maybe after this, she’d hit the infirmary and see how stiff-necked Coasties turned out their medics. She could use a handful.
Last moving, last to arrive, but she made it across the shop without begging for a stretcher.
“I’ve got a problem, Miranda, and I need your help to solve it. I need to kill someone.”
“The person who crashed Air Force One? But I haven’t determined the how. Do you already know the who and the why? And you can’t be judge, jury, and executioner. We’re bound by the same laws as?—”
Holly shook her head and her neck wished she hadn’t. “No, nothing to do with all this.”
Mike was watching her. She should have explained the message to him first, but she felt the clock inside her head ticking away far too fast.
Andi’s eyes had gone even narrower than usual.
“Seriously, nothing like that. I have a friend who needs to appear to have died. Very convincingly and very soon. At the same time, I have to get her out of the country.”
“What country?” Andi managed to get to the question first.
Holly closed her eyes, trying to picture a harder scenario, and she couldn’t. “She’s in Moscow.”
“Moscow isn’t a country.”
Holly managed a smile at Miranda. “Not the one in Maine or Idaho or wherever else they are. She’s in Moscow, Russia. I need to figure out how to create a plane crash without, you know, creating a plane crash.”
Miranda backpedaled into a rack of assorted pipes and tubing. Thankfully, they were secured against the ship’s motion at sea, but it made a loud enough racket to have the machinist twist around to see what they were up to.
Andi rolled her eyes. Holly mouthed, What? But Andi just shook her head sadly before turning to Miranda and taking both of her hands.
“It’s not like your parents, Miranda.”
Holly was such an idiot. She should go to the machinist and have him drill a couple holes in her head so that maybe some intelligence could leak in. Even a little would be better than what she had.
Miranda’s parents had been murdered by crashing a plane in 1996—a Russian plane. Then, to cover that up and hide that they were CIA agents deeply embedded in Russia, their bodies had been inserted into the near simultaneous wreckage of TWA 800 that had exploded off the Long Island coast in a completely unrelated event.
And she’d just thrown all that in Miranda’s face.
“It’s not?—”
But she could see there was no point. Miranda had slid down the pipe rack until she sat on the floor with her knees hugged against her chest and her breathing rapid. Meg had rushed over from watching the machinist and dove into Miranda’s lap. She didn’t even reach out to hug the furry little beast.
“I—” She tried to squat, but couldn’t without a major muscle transplant.
Andi blocked her view of Miranda. She looked as livid as Holly had ever seen her. “Get the fuck out of here.” Andi never swore.
