Page 44 of Air Force One
She stood alone in the now-silent shop. She enjoyed working with her NTSB team because they were all competent people. All different, but skilled at what they did.
Andi Wu was good with helicopters and Miranda herself when she became flustered.
Mike Munroe was good with people.
Holly Harper was?—
Mike was good with people!
“Mike, is Holly right about planning a plane crash?” Except he wasn’t here to ask.
However, Mike had come with Holly when she’d asked that horrid question. Why would anyone crash a plane that had done nothing bad to anyone? But Mike hadn’t turned Holly aside before asking her question.
“You understand people. I don’t.” She continued her one-sided conversation with Mike.
She pretended that Mike stood there with that patient smile of his, waiting for her to find the answer.
“But…” Miranda stopped. With no idea regarding what came next, she knew that she never would understand people.
“What are you thinking so hard about?” Andi came back down the ladder.
“I don’t understand how to decide if Holly’s question was more important than the life of an airplane.”
Andi came up and took her hand. “Miranda, I think you may be the most thoughtful woman ever born.”
“But I don’t understand my own thoughts.”
“That’s okay. You wouldn’t be who you are otherwise. And do you want to know a little secret?”
Miranda unlocked her phone. Yes still showed as the final screen she’d had open.
Andi understood. She nodded and smiled.
“I wouldn’t worry too much. We neurotypicals don’t understand our own thoughts and reactions a lot of the time either.”
“But that’s…” Miranda searched for a word but ridiculous didn’t quite fit.
“Nonsensical?” Andi suggested. “It is.”
It was. “Should I go and try to help Holly?”
Andi gazed up at the shop’s ceiling.
Miranda didn’t see anything there except the overhead cables and service pipes that traced through so much of the ship’s structure. Despite being deep inside the ship, she did hear the sound of a departing helicopter.
Andi nodded upward, apparently indicating the departing helicopter. “I’d say that she’s past where either of us can help her. But don’t worry, Mike went with her.”
Miranda slipped out her notebook to check. But once she did, Miranda couldn’t bring herself to point out that Andi’s expression exactly matched the worried emoji on her emotional reference page.
36
Liú Zuocheng knew in the first five seconds that the President of China had not set up the American President’s death. But it had taken him an hour to pacify the man before he could get away. He’d barraged Zuocheng with questions.
Does this change our trade relations?
It wasn’t relevant, because the woman would have become President in two weeks anyway if Roy Cole had lived. His own leader had clearly not thought anything through ahead of time. And the longer they spoke, the clearer it became that he wasn’t evading or pretending; he was deeply concerned about things he didn’t understand at all.
Zuocheng went from there to his office for the emergency meeting of the Central Military Commission that he’d called. Their concerns were better formulated but equally lacking in premeditation of consequences. Anyone who had planned this would have answered several of his many questions themselves or at least couched them differently.
