Ghostrider - M. L. Buchman Page 0,54

Miranda’s side. “It did have the shit blown out of it when it crashed.”

Miranda shook her head. “First, such a simple impact, even at high speed, should not have ignited the entire bomb load. Second, look at the effects.”

Pierre felt like an automaton as both he and Holly turned to look at the plane, turned back to look at each other, then shrugged in unison.

Miranda continued without appearing to notice. “Look past the obvious blast damage from the bomb’s detonations. Note the liquefaction of the underlying materials. Even the metal shows fluid rather than brittle deformation—which is not typical in a blast explosion.”

That, at least, he could explain. “That was me.” At least he’d told that part to the investigators.

Both women turned to look at him, though Miranda kept staring at his chin until he had to rub it to make sure there was nothing there.

“I had an…altercation with the pilot. Basically, he tried to shoot me when I realized he was stealing the plane. I broke the final mirror off the—” No. That was classified.

“The HEL-A laser,” Miranda stated.

“But you aren’t supposed to know about that.”

Holly just smirked at him.

Miranda turned back to studying the aircraft. “Without the final mirror, a partially unfocused beam would have been directed at the rear of the aircraft. Is it still the hundred-kilowatt version, or did they manage to get the one-fifty configured in time for the Block 30 upgrade?”

“One-fifty,” slipped out before he could stop himself.

Holly looked impressed; Miranda just looked at the plane.

“Based on the varying degrees of damage, assuming you used the laser’s full output—”

“I did.”

“—and a minimum of atmospheric blooming effect due to short range down the length of the plane, I’d estimate that the laser was engaged for thirty to forty seconds.”

According to the jet skier, they’d retrieved him approximately two-point-seven miles from Avalon. At three hundred miles per hour, the Ghostrider had flown another thirty-two seconds.

“Who the hell are you, lady?”

Holly shushed him. “Don’t bother her when she’s thinking. Besides, I can tell you the only answer you’ll ever get to that question. ‘My name is Miranda Chase. I’m the investigator-in-charge for the NTSB.’ ”

“Well, that doesn’t tell me shit.”

“Right. And it doesn’t tell you shit that she knows more about your top-secret laser than you do?”

Pierre grunted. Another question he didn’t have a good answer to. He thought that he knew everyone on the inside of this project, because the circle was very small—they’d all been in his class at Lockheed Martin in Marietta, Georgia, as either students or engineering instructors.

And now this NTSB investigator, who should be looking after bunged up 737s, was pointing out effects of the HEL-A laser after he’d intentionally broken it? That implied a level of knowledge that even he didn’t have.

“Therefore,” Miranda turned to face Holly, but didn’t quite look at her either, “we have a plane crash that was due to sabotage of a hijacked flight. And we have an earlier crash that was completely intentional. Why am I here? Neither of these are pilot error or aeronautical failures.”

“Wait. What?” Pierre hadn’t heard anything about a second one.

“I said hush!” Holly turned back to Miranda. “Even Mike can’t get what’s happening.”

“Who’s Mike?”

Holly punched his arm hard enough to hurt.

36

Lizzy had been a fighter pilot for years. Then she’d shifted over to tactical training. First training other flight leaders, then ultimately their commanders.

But her first love had always been space. Her dreams of leaving orbit had died before she’d been born, with the demise of the Apollo program. She hadn’t even tried for the shuttle program—a female fighter pilot had enough hurdles to climb without having to live it down if she failed to make the grade. That a class of only a dozen astronauts was chosen from nearly twenty thousand applicants wouldn’t offset that worst of labels among pilots—“failure.”

Or so she’d thought at the time.

But when the chance came to jump over to the NRO satellite program, she’d leapt without a hesitation. Everything about it, tactically and technologically, just…fit.

The same way technology seemed to fit Jeremy.

Once aboard the Ghostrider at Andrews, he’d spent less than three minutes inspecting the laser—barely glancing at the big guns. Instead, the moment he’d sat down at the weapons console, it was as if the rest of the Ghostrider disappeared for him.

The depths of his concentration was revealed in his running commentary to Mike.

“Pretty cute, huh, Auntie Gray?” Jon whispered over her shoulder as they watched.

She could only nod. Mike might understand barely a