Page 40 of Air Force One
“They already collected all the surface debris before we got here,” Andi pointed to the small pile on the lower deck. It was beside the first body bag that had been the only one when they arrived. “I went through it. Just what you’d expect, various personal effects. Nothing from the plane itself. That ROV we sent down didn’t spot anything on the ocean floor. So that’s the extent of your debris field.”
“No, that isn’t correct. Engine Number Four is still missing.”
Andi nodded. “You’re absolutely right. We’ll inspect that when it’s found.”
Miranda made a note of that. “What’s next?”
“The crash itself.”
“Should we suit up and go see it?”
“No,” Holly’s voice was rough as she came up to them. “You really don’t want to do that.” She leaned heavily against Mike as if she might collapse to the deck without his support. Her wet suit covered her from the waist down. A towel peeked out either end of the heavy USCG coat that someone had wrapped around her. Her eyes were bloodshot and her fair skin looked even paler than usual. Holly’s hood was up, making her look like a military street thug who was half human and half neoprene mermaid.
Miranda patted herself on the back. She wasn’t sure if it was a good metaphor, but it was certainly one of the most complex she’d ever managed to assemble.
“The plane isn’t embedded as hard into the mud as you might expect; it’s definitely reacting to the wing tanks being pumped dry. I swam down, only one window is out, at least in the aft two-thirds. Probably the one for the seat that first body had been in. Once we have the bodies out, we could close the rear stairs and have the Coasties fabricate a window patch—second from the rear on the port side. Then we could try pumping in air. She might refloat on her own if there are no bad surprises farther forward. Though towing her through this shit might take some serious doing.” She looked up at the sky.
Miranda did too. It didn’t take a degree in meteorology—Miranda had only taken it as a minor in college but she’d stayed abreast of innovations since then—to see how fast the weather was shifting. As much as she hated to remove a plane from its crash site, it would be far easier to inspect on land. That’s what they’d done with TWA 800. They’d spent months collecting parts from the ocean floor and then spent years reassembling it in a land-based hangar.
She and Andi exchanged looks. Without speaking, she could see that they agreed that was the right next step. “Let’s go talk to the captain.”
“Uh,” Mike glanced at Holly. “You two go ahead. We need to talk about something.”
Glad to once again have some understanding of the situation, Miranda tugged on Andi’s hand and they hurried inside and up the many stairs leading to the bridge.
32
Holly leaned her head against Mike’s shoulder. “Thanks. I still need a minute.”
“I wish I could give you that.” He pulled her phone out of his pocket. “You got a voice message while you were under. One of those voice-message-as-a-text things.”
“We have a great job offer. No previous experience required?” If it promised she could work from home, she didn’t care if it was a scam or not.
Having a place to really call home for the first time in decades had been Andi’s doing. After Miranda’s home had burned down on Spieden Island, along with half the trees, Miranda had been rootless. She’d never been happy in the team’s shared house in Gig Harbor. They were based in Washington State and it had been very convenient to a local airport, which had been their home base for several years. But as Miranda’s discomfort grew with the temporary setup, Andi had switched into some frantic new-home-search mode—in her utterly chill US Army / Chinese-Zen sort of way.
She’d come up with a pair of old missile silos on three hundred acres that backed up against thirteen-thousand acres of Tiger Mountain State Forest wilderness. Each had a surface house and a tunnel to their personal silos. The lower levels were flooded with groundwater but had been sealed off by the previous owner leaving two generous floors of living space. With other renovations and the addition of a hangar for Miranda’s planes and helicopter, they were surprisingly comfortable. The old command-and-control bunker between their two silos had been converted into the team office.
And right now she could empathize with Miranda’s joy of being able to shut herself underground behind a great big blast door. Closing out a world where people like Drake, Roy, Rose, and all the other innocents on that plane were murdered, sounded damned good at the moment.
“Sorry, no. A woman left it. Had one of those seriously lovely, deepish voices like Rose Cole’s…uh…did.”
“A call from the dead?” She wouldn’t be surprised by anything at this point.
Though Mike was. “How did you know?”
“Know what?”
“Her message was: Tell the woman with the Taser that I most urgently must die. And I wish to again meet my Little Sister. What does Taz have to do with this?”
Holly wanted to bury her face once more against Mike’s shoulder. “Nothing. Not a single…God…damn…thing.”
33
Mike and Holly tracked them down in the ship’s machine shop. Miranda was overseeing the construction of the necessary window plug to fill in the missing one. A simple steel sandwich held together with long bolts. Inside they had placed thick rubber gaskets and a fitting for an air hose run through both plates. The seal needed to be effective, not perfect.
Holly watched as the machinist used a bending press to apply a slight curve to each plate under Miranda’s direction. Once done, she recognized that the curve would precisely match the hull. Overkill, really, as the gaskets were more than thick enough to compensate, but that was Miranda.
“They have all but the last of the bodies,” Andi reported, “And they’re trying to suction out the last of the fuel that accumulated at the front of the tanks where there’s no drain.”
