Raider

Chapter 3

3

Mike dragged himself out of the office, through the security door, and into the hangar. He really didn’t feel up to flying. Miranda’s Mooney was fast, but it was still a four-hour slog of a flight to Las Vegas. And the landing would be after dark.

Despite sleeping in and having lunch, he just didn’t feel up to it.

Last night’s flight from Alaska to Gig Harbor, Washington, had been a tricky six-hour haul, and he’d only recently earned his instrument rating. There hadn’t even been a convenient road to follow from Anchorage to Juneau, for refueling, then southward to Washington State. Just a dark, jagged shoreline lost in low clouds for most of the route.

Still, he’d flown the Mooney a lot over the last year since Miranda had lent it to him. He’d come to love the tough little plane.

It was the height of cool after all.

The fastest single-engine, piston-powered production plane had spooked him at first. But as their investigation team had been launched time and again throughout the western US, he’d grown accustomed to its immense power.

The only other plane in the hangar was Miranda’s 1958 Sabrejet. The old, solo-pilot fighter jet was her own usual form of transport, capable of briefly cracking Mach 1. At just under the speed of sound, it moved her around the country at three times the speed he could manage.

His six-hour flight last night had taken her barely two.

He’d envy her the extra four hours’ sleep she’d gotten on her private island in northern Washington if he didn’t know better. She’d probably gotten four hours less than anyone else. By the time the three of them managed to drag themselves into the hangar office, her jet had been neatly parked in the hangar beside the Mooney. The engine was fully cool when he’d come in. She’d probably arrived with the dawn and they found her working hard at her teak rolltop desk.

Her zippy jet always left him feeling a step behind.

The thing he really wasn’t up for today was having Holly and Jeremy in the Mooney’s tiny cabin for the next four hours badgering him to declare the cause of the Alaska collision as pilot error.

Miranda crossed to the Sabrejet. But rather than starting the preflight, she opened a small service hatch and withdrew her investigation field pack and her personal go-bag. Then she caressed the jet along the side of its smooth aluminum nose like she was petting it goodbye.

She might think it was a pet, but it had always looked a little vicious to him. The brushed aluminum plane looked like an artillery shell with wings and a tail—shining, even in the hangar’s shadows. The jet engine’s air intake made the nose a black hole rather than an arrow point. Six machine gun ports around the inlet, patched over with oval plates, were still a clear reminder that this had been a major weapon of war in both Korea and the early days of Vietnam.

But if she was petting it goodbye, maybe she was coming with them in the Mooney.

That would be awesome.

At a knock on the hangar’s closed door, he turned and opened the personnel door beside the big slider.

“I have a delivery for a Ms. Miranda Chase.” The man didn’t look like a FedEx guy, but what did he know.

Miranda came over and signed some paperwork, then accepted a key.

She thanked him and the man was gone.

“New car?”

Miranda peeked outside through the door. “No.”

Intrigued, he followed her when she stepped through carrying her gear.

And stopped dead in his tracks.

A Cessna Citation M2 business jet was parked immediately outside their main hangar door. A high T-tail with a jet engine low to either side. Low wing. Four windows ran along the cabin in addition to the sweeping cockpit windows. It looked like it was racing madly rather than sitting still. The long sleek aspect was emphasized by the red-and-gold racing stripes down the length of the charcoal fuselage. It even had those cute little up-turned tips on its wings as if it was smiling at him.

“Miranda! What the hell?”

“What?” She opened a rear cargo door and placed her packs inside.

“You bought a new jet?”

“I was going to, because it would be more convenient if our whole team could move together. But Citation wanted me to consult on design and safety procedures for their next series of aircraft. They gave me this jet as a familiarization and test bed.”

“Like a loan?”

She handed him the piece of paper from the delivery agent. It was a certificate of title, with her name as sole owner.

Mike grabbed her and gave her a big hug.

He kept it brief and wasn’t surprised when Miranda didn’t return it. Her autism didn’t make that likely. A year ago he’d never even have been able to hug her at all. He did let her go quickly but he’d been unable to stop himself.

“What?” She looked up at him in surprise. She was the most unassuming woman. Miranda might barely weigh a hundred pounds and have the fashion sense of a field hand, but it didn’t make her any less amazing.

“You are not only an absolutely brilliant boss but you absolutely have the best toys.”

“It’s not a toy. It’s a jet,” she answered with her perfect logic.

“Trust me, it’s both.”

When she squinted at him, he could only laugh. “Need a copilot?”

“No. It’s certified for a single pilot. I have the CE-525 Type Rating, which covers the 525 series of Citation jets, including the M2.”

“Okay,” he often forgot to keep his questions very precise for Miranda. “Would it be okay if I flew in the right seat with you?”

“Of course.”

“Wonderful. Thanks so much.” Copilot seat on a jet was something he’d always wanted to try. As a complete—and major—bonus, it would spare him riding in the main cabin with Holly and Jeremy, and being harangued for the whole flight. He slipped his own pack in the rear cargo hold.

Holly was next out the door. It was hard to tell if she was unimpressed or just had chill down to a science.

“Nice,” was her only comment before she moved to stow her pack and go-bag in the nose section’s forward cargo hold.

While Jeremy went through a dozen stages of geeky enthusiasm, Mike followed Miranda around the plane, reading off the preflight checklist for her.

When they continued inside, it definitely had that new car smell.

Seriously amazing.