Condor

Chapter 2

2

“I swear to God, I thought they were messin’ with me, ma’am, when you turned on those lights. Telling me to land here? Look at me, I’m still shaking.” The pilot said as they ascended the plane’s rear cargo ramp.

He held out his left hand with the fingers spread wide and shook it like a leaf.

Then he raised a rock-steady right hand, “Thank God this is my flying hand.”

“I thought it took two hands to fly a C-130?”

“I’m so good I only need one.” He winked at her for some unfathomable reason.

Miranda tried to understand how someone could control both the wheel and the throttles simultaneously with only one hand.

Before she could ask, Holly had tugged her away from the pilot and led her up the ramp.

“What’s with the yellow hats, you all on the same team?” he called out after them.

“Yes,” Holly called back over her shoulder.

“No,” Miranda stopped. “Well, we are, but the hats aren’t relevant to that. The Matildas are the Australian women’s national soccer team and—”

Holly towed her out of earshot as the pilot turned to Mike and repeated his line about how he’d made the landing one-handed.

If he was untrustworthy in his speech, was he also untrustworthy as a pilot?

Miranda considered the landing to have been good work, but turning around a plane with a hundred and thirty-two-foot wingspan between massive Douglas firs only two-hundred feet apart had been even more impressive to watch. The C-130 did have a published turning ability within a hundred and eighty feet; she’d just never seen it demonstrated before.

Her own jet had a wingspan of a mere thirty-seven feet and still it felt cramped to make a full turn. The Hercules transport was by far the largest plane to ever land on Spieden Island. It was a pity that it was so dark, it would have been nice to have a picture of that.

For now, she would trust the pilot of the Hercules, if not the man who was the pilot.

She sighed.

That particular incongruity was going to bother her for a long while.

Inside, the Hercules transport’s cargo bay was nine feet high, ten wide, and long enough to carry three Humvees. The four of them and their packs took up very little of the space.

As soon as they were aloft, Holly scrounged up some blankets and ear plugs from the loadmasters. “Get shut-eye while you can.”

It was good advice. Miranda had stayed up far past her bedtime to play a game she didn’t understand.

And the game wasn’t over. She could picture the little glass timer still lying on its side by Mike’s armchair. The game was merely suspended.

A niggling piece of her brain wanted to suggest they go back and finish it first, so that it would be complete and she wouldn’t be thinking about it until they did. But Holly tossed a folded blanket on the steel deck, shoved two more into her hands, and pushed Miranda down onto the first one as the plane reached its cruise altitude and headed east.

Holly lay down close beside her. The guys were up forward looking over the pilots’ shoulders and asking questions about the plane—Mike about the piloting and Jeremy about how absolutely everything on the plane worked.

Miranda lay back and pictured the game.

“Holly, who is Ewan McGregor?” They were close enough that she didn’t have to shout too loudly over the engine’s roar to be heard, despite the earplugs.

Holly didn’t bother opening her eyes. “Actor. Best known for being a Jedi master. Fights with a light saber. Becomes the second greatest Jedi master ever, Obi-wan Kenobi. At least until Luke. Nah, Obi-wan is better than Luke. Ewan’s way cuter, too. Though my brother was always a fan of Luke’s. Wanted to be just like him…” Holly’s voice trailed away strangely.

“There are so many things that I don’t understand about that explanation that I don’t know where to begin.” Luke, light saber, Obi-wan, that Holly had a brother…

“You don’t watch movies.”

“Not space movies. And most of the action movies are so technically inaccurate that I simply can’t bring myself to continue when I do start one.” Which in itself was decidedly irritating. All of the incomplete movie watchings in her life were a real annoyance. “They’re just…wrong. Did you ever see a movie called Airplane?”

At that Holly opened her eyes and looked at her. “That’s s’posed to be a laugh, Miranda.”

“Oh. Well, it’s still wrong.”

She thought about it a while.

Holly didn’t say anything.

“Air Force One and Flightplan weren’t much more accurate and those aren’t comedies.”

“Sure, but Harrison Ford and Jodi Foster sure kicked ass. He was seriously cute when he was younger. So was she for that matter—just not my type.”

Miranda wondered what type of man was Holly’s type. “Are you going to sleep with Mike?”

“Jesus, Miranda!” Holly jerked up to a sitting position as if she’d been electrocuted. She twisted around until she spotted Mike still standing behind the pilots’ seats and released a hard puff of relief.

“What?”

“That’s a hell of question.”

“Why?”

Holly just sputtered.

Mike and Jeremy came back into the cargo bay and began spreading out their blankets. Miranda could hear them talking about flight characteristics and control systems. She liked that they’d been studying that. One never knew when such information would be useful during an investigation.

Holly probably already knew the plane from her deep military experience—the Australians had a number of the C-130s in their inventory.

“You still haven’t answered the question.” Miranda didn’t like unanswered questions any better than incomplete sentences or unfinished games. They were all starting to pile up on her and were cluttering her mind.

“What question?” Jeremy chimed in.

“I just wanted to know if—”

“Nick off, all of you.” Holly made a show of jamming in her earplugs before lying on her side facing the hull.

Miranda knew Holly was right. Getting some sleep was a good idea. Tomorrow would start in less than five hours and it was bound to be a busy day.