29
Taz slammedopen the conference door without knocking. “You done playing your little games yet, Clarissa?”
Games?She’d been busting her ass, expending valuable resources around the world to try and find information on who had attacked theTheodore Roosevelt.She’d—
Rose’s single raised eyebrow was all that kept Clarissa from verbally attacking the little bitch.
Even her?She couldn’t help asking with an eyeroll.
Rose nodded.
Shit!This was going to be much harder than she’d thought.
“What’s up, Taz?” Clarissa couldn’t repress the snarl, but it was probably more productive than an otherwise satisfying attack.
“Do you want to know our progress or can I please get away from your field of contamination? They must have an emergency shower somewhere here.”
“What have you got so far? I really need some answers.”
Taz sighed and sat across from Rose, “Not much.”
“Well, give me what you’ve got.”
“Between the heat of the fire and being pummeled with several tons of concrete, the recovery from the flight recorders took time. Jeremy managed to access the flight data first, which proved it was no accident. There is almost no voice data from the pilot. Taxiing and tower clearance, nothing more. He’s combing the data now to see what else he can find, if anything. Any actions by the pilot that might have created another sound and so on. But we’re not betting on anything constructive.” Taz slumped in the chair.
Just as exhausted as she was?
Or perhaps equally frustrated.
Clarissa offered a piece of her own frustration. “Nothing from the Office of Special Investigations either. At least not that they’re willing to release to the CIA. Do you want to take a run at them?”
Taz shook her head. “Those folks were always a pain in the ass. Far harder to leverage than you were back in the day. You folded at the first threat. They wouldn’t even talk to my—” Taz’s voice stumbled “—my former commander until they were done with an investigation.”
Clarissa hadn’t connected before that they were three women who had each lost so much. She and Rose had lost their husbands and their shots at the White House, Taz had followed her commanding general for nineteen years only to have him betray his oath in the end. Maybe they were more alike than she’d thought…or would ever admit to Taz Cortez.
“Anything else?” Clarissa needed to prove the CIA’s usefulness. She had to prove to Drake and the President that they’d been underutilizing the agency for too long. But they approached their precious Miranda before calling the CIA. They treated her as if she was a rabid dog, not the director of the world’s most-feared spy agency. The CIA hadearnedthat reputation and she was not being allowed to leverage it to the max.
“We received a call from Miranda a few minutes ago.”
When Clarissa stood, her feet immediately set in to throbbing. Her boots might look stylish, but they hadn’t been made for hiking. She’d have taken them off, but she’d been afraid that her feet would swell and she’d never get them back on.
Taz patted her hands downward, indicating Clarissa should sit down. “She’s done. Apparently there was a delay, something about the Acting Captain not giving her permission to call earlier.”
“Acting Captain.” Clarissa absorbed that. She’d used her credentials to obtain access to the satellite imagery. But seeing a destroyed command superstructure on her phone’s screen and hearing it confirmed were two quite different sensations. Someone had managed to kill an aircraft carrier commander.
“What did she have to say?” Clarissa sat once more, then rubbed her forehead. She could feel the previous day and night’s sludge coating her the way fire char had coated everything at the George.
“Miranda and Jeremy had an intense discussion that was very difficult to follow. Even for me. She was being very cagey.”
“Can shebecagey?”
“Not in my past experience. I assume that she’s under a high security lockdown of some sort.”
“No surprise there. Someone crippled a four-billion-dollar aircraft carrier. Even my teams can’t get more information about that.”
“Perhaps,” Taz conceded as if it was physically painful to admit Clarissa was right about anything. “Anyway, they discussed something that I think you should be aware of, which is why I’m here.”
“And?” It was like pulling teeth.