Page 31 of Air Force One (Miranda Chase #16)

Heidi Geller slouched low enough in her chair to stare hard at their office ceiling. Not that there was a whole lot to see on the ceiling of the basement of the CIA’s New Headquarters Building, but she’d count it as a vast improvement over what they’d been finding on the screens.

Harry was still at it, but the whole damn thing was a dry hole.

They’d found the Air Force’s conversation with the senior pilot, General Owen, which provided little insight beyond a lot of technical questions about engines and computer systems. Neither of them had ever tried to hack Air Force One—there’d been no reason before this.

Now one was gone and the other remained powered down, so there was no access until they started it up, not that they’d learn much that way.

Then Heidi had stumbled on Miranda’s call. They’d both stopped working to listen to that conversation.

“Man, she is one chill technical lady.”

Heidi could only nod in agreement with Harry’s assessment. She hadn’t understood half of what Miranda had told the pilot, but she’d really tried to save them. Too bad none of that had worked either.

The patch through for her to say goodbye to the President had Heidi reaching for tissues.

She knew Harry was equally touched by how hard he pounded on his keyboard as soon as the playback of the call ended.

He even left his half slice of pepperoni-and-mushroom pizza on the plate by his station. Harry never left unfinished pizza.

“You asleep on the job, Geller?”

“Can’t you go fuck with someone else, Reese? Anyone else?”

Clarissa didn’t snarl. Didn’t even complain. Where was the fun in that?

Instead, she grabbed a paper plate and a slice of pizza before plummeting into the chair Heidi often used as a footstool. Clarissa said that she only ate junk food when she decided to hang out down here in Cyber Division.

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.”

He glanced over at Clarissa, but it was too late. She’d already opened her eyes and turned to look at him.

He sighed and tried to delay by getting another slice of pizza.

Heidi knew his ways and saw his plan die as he discovered the half still sitting on the plate by his station.

“I, uh, set up this ultra-secure phone call a couple years back. Single use. At least I thought so. I never erased it. It, uh, just rang through, but in the other direction.”

“Who does it connect?”

“I don’t know who is calling.”

That had both Heidi and Clarissa sitting up, though Heidi managed to get the first word in. “How can you not know?”

“Hello, ultra-secure. My instructions were to make it so that even I couldn’t crack the call.”

“And you actually built that?”

“I did.”

Heidi smacked her forehead. Any decent hacker knew that information was power. Clarrisa had taught her that it was a weapon as well. Harry hadn’t learned that yet.

“Can you stop it?”

He shook his head. “A single text message by the duration. Already done and disconnected.”

“Who had you set it up?” Clarissa had now turned her full attention on Harry.

A slice of pepperoni teetered on the tip of Clarissa’s pizza slice, but it refused to fall and blemish her clothing perfection.

Heidi resisted the urge to reach out and give it a little nudge.

If she did it just right, it might tumble down into Clarissa’s impressive cleavage.

Not that she was one of those women who flashed it about, but the top of her blouse was open as if she’d yanked it wide.

It was the only part of her that looked disheveled.

“Uh…” Harry did his best to disappear behind his screen. But his glance up at the news gave him away.

“Someone on the plane?”

Harry shook his head.

“Someone…” Then she remembered the swearing-in ceremony. “…Miranda?”

He shook his head.

“Stop with the damned twenty questions already. Who?” Clarissa’s sudden outburst and the slight jerk of her hand was enough to break the pepperoni’s adhesion to the tomato sauce. It plopped down—on her sleeve. It would leave a stain, but it was hardly worth a laugh.

Besides, Heidi knew. “Holly Harper.”

“No fucking way.” Clarissa turned on her like a rabid rottweiler. Okay, maybe a rabid poodle that had just missed out on being named Best in Show. But she still had kick-ass blonde hair to the middle of her back instead of Heidi’s curly brunette disaster—in other words, still plenty dangerous.

Relieved to be out from under the gun, Harry nodded from behind Clarissa.

Because she loved him, and he hadn’t given in to Jeremy’s pressure about wanting to have a kid right away, she took the hit for him and told Clarissa, “Way.”