Page 76 of Air Force One (Miranda Chase #16)

Miranda didn’t even try to follow the conversation that swirled around her. Andi, Clarissa, and Inessa all made suggestions. Sarah also called in Felicia, her Chief of Staff.

The phone in front of her rang.

All conversation stopped and everyone turned to face her.

It rang again.

She picked it up and turned so that the phone hid most of her face.

But that placed her facing the corner of the room, something her mother did to her as a child each time the world overtook her with too much sensory input.

It was actually the right thing to do as it limited her overwhelm.

Only now as an adult did she understand that Olivia Chase had probably meant it as punishment for a child she couldn’t control.

“This is Miranda Chase. This is actually her and not a recording of her.” She twisted herself further around, but then the phone cord brushed against her neck.

Spinning back the other way, she faced Inessa.

But Inessa had kept trying to talk to her until she’d had to pretend to be on the edge of a meltdown to make her stop.

Luckily, Inessa didn’t know to check on Meg’s attitude to indicate if her panic was real or not.

“Hey, Miranda.”

“Jeremy!” She liked talking to Jeremy.

“I’m with Heidi and Harry. We just uncovered some code updates to the software on SAM 28000. They’re root cause, designed to destroy the plane only if the President was aboard and too far offshore to make it back.”

“That is bad.” No one in the Situation Room was speaking. Which meant they were listening to the conversation, her conversation. Or at least her half of it. “Jeremy has confirmed that it was sabotage.”

She waited.

Rather than getting her less attention, now they were all watching her even more intently.

“It was added to the plane’s software.”

They still didn’t look away.

She turned back to facing the corner. But the phone cord… She reached behind her, without looking, and moved the phone enough that the cord no longer touched her neck. That was better.

“Yes,” Jeremy agreed. They rarely disagreed, which was also very nice. “But there’s something that seems important, though I can’t pin down why. It was done on November 11th.”

“Oh. Well, that predates anything in my investigation timeline.”

“What does?” Sarah asked from somewhere behind her.

Andi leaned close. “Use the speakerphone, Miranda.”

“Will everyone stop looking at me and start looking at the phone then?”

“More of them will.”

Miranda turned and selected speakerphone. But Sarah had asked a question. “The sabotage of the VC-25A aircraft occurred on November 11th. The earliest date on my investigation timeline up until this moment has been the initiation of planning for Roy’s trip on December 9th.”

Again nobody spoke.

She leaned over to whisper to Andi. “No one is looking at the phone.”

“Just wait.”

To distract herself, she coaxed Meg from the chair she’d chosen, over into her lap. She liked petting Meg. Meg’s happy sigh and collapse across her legs was nice too.

“Why is that relevant?”

Miranda shrugged. “I can only confirm what and how. You know I can never answer Why or Who kinds of questions.”

“Your death, Madam President.” Clarissa and the Russian said in unison. With Elizabeth close behind. Andi was nodding as well.

“But Roy was the one on the plane.” Miranda protested.

It was Andi who explained. “First, there was the election. Then the plane was sabotaged. It was after that when Roy planned his final trip.”

“But,” Felicia spoke, “President Cole would have used the plane for his final trip home.”

“The failure parameters…” Jeremy spoke from the phone.

Finally, everyone’s attention shifted there. Andi was right, as usual; she just had to give it enough time.

“…the ones set in the software to disable the engines, required both an unrecoverably dangerous distance from shore and that the plane was flying using the Air Force One ID over the radio. Without that, say once he retired, President Cole could have flown anywhere.”

“But that means…” Sarah’s skin had turned a surprisingly pale shade.

“Oh, yes,” Mirand understood now. “That means that you were the target. If Roy hadn’t spontaneously added that trip, you would have been the first to fly internationally aboard the plane using the Air Force One call sign.”

Sarah’s skin didn’t return to her normal coloring. Miranda had no references in her notebooks about the meaning of skin tone changes.

“Is that a Why?” Miranda asked Andi. “Did I actually figure out a Why?”

Andi wiggled her head in neither a shake or a nod that Miranda could interpret. “Why they sabotaged the plane, yes. Why they wanted to kill President Feldman, no.”

Miranda looked at Sarah. “All that leaves is who wants you dead badly enough to kill a whole airplane.”

Sarah spoke very softly, as if talking to herself. “Well, isn’t that just too perfect?”