25
At seventy-five seconds,the white hauled Miranda and Andi off the flight line and waved the others aside.
Susan did her best to appear patient through it all to keep the Acting Captain in check. Was that her role now? Smoothing the world for the strange Miranda Chase wasnothow she’d expected to be spending this day. Of course, neither had she expected to end up in the South China Sea aboard an aircraft carrier, in whatever condition.
It was actually her single favorite aspect of her job, she never knew what came next or where she and Sadie would be spending the night. Sadie was currently snoozing happily in her pouch, oblivious to all of the deck noise.
There were three more landings before Miranda and her team completed whatever they were doing. Twice, Miranda knelt and inspected the deck through a magnifying glass. She took a number of pictures.
Two more jets and a helo were aloft in the time it took the group to walk the football field length from the stern to the…command bridge. Susan didn’t know what else to call Brightman’s setup.
“What was that?” Brightman demanded the moment Miranda arrived. “We know what the hell happened. A pilot botched his landing, then tried to take off again, but botched that too.”
“Oh, then didyoufire the laser?” Miranda asked.
“What laser?”
Without answering, Miranda pushed aside a clipboard on Brightman’s center command table. Susan saw that it was a list of names and grabbed it before the clipboard could fall to the deck. She recognized a name near the top of the list. She’d known Admiral Jenkins quite well. They’d had a brief affair after his wife left him. They still traded birthday and Christmas calls. Or theyhad.
Some of the names had a single slash in front of them. His, like many others, had an X.
She turned the list to Brightman and pointed at the markings.
“One slash is missing, two is confirmed dead.”
Susan inspected the length of the list, recognized a few other names she’d met at conferences or trainings over the years.
In the meantime, Miranda had set up a computer on Brightman’s table. The others were tapping on their phones, sending her data. In moments, a diagram of the deck appeared. It showed the exact path each person had walked.
What had seemed random while watching their progress, now showed up as a clear shape on the screen. Two clear shapes.
Miranda spoke up as she kept typing. “The additional landings have blurred some of the features, but for the most part we can see two patterns. The more obvious marks are out here around the Number Four arresting wire. Hot jet exhaust washing across the deck at a thirty- to sixty-degree downward angle, I’m sorry I can’t be more specific. I hate to estimate, but it appears to be in keeping with a single Pratt & Whitney F135-PW-100 engine. I will have to make several tests on afterburner thrust profiles before I can confirm this.”
Brightman was staring at Miranda as if she’d been speaking Greek, or perhaps perfect English but had been an alien transported down from on high.
“The more intriguing pattern is the shape I’ve marked with the green line. I’d like to send a section of your deck back to the lab to be sure but—”
“You arenotcutting a hole in my deck.”
“I don’t need much, a half meter square should be more than sufficient. Right about here.” She marked an X several meters forward of the stern landing threshold on her diagram. “I’d also like a similar section of the deck, but forward of this line.” She placed a mark that ran from where they were standing at the Island, directly to the other side of the deck.
“Again, not going to happen,” Brightman spoke slowly. “But why don’t you tell me why you want them.”
“I don’t like to repeat myself. Are you having memory problems?” Miranda squinted at Brightman’s shoulder. “The laser.”
“And now I’m the one having to repeat myself.Whatlaser?”
Miranda looked to Susan, but she had no idea what was going on.
Miranda pointed up, straight up. “That one. Whichever one burned this section of your deck plating. It is lighter close to either side of the runway’s centerline and almost non-existent under the longer fuselage.”
“Why would that be?” Susan decided to take the hit for Brightman. She still didn’t know what Miranda was talking about.
An airborne laser? Unlikely that one could get within a hundred kilometers of an aircraft carrier group. Unless it was domestic. A terrorist attack from a US plane in the South China Sea? That didn’t fit.
A—
No! The next thought was too ridiculous. Or perhaps terrifying.