Ghostrider - M. L. Buchman Page 0,1

Mike’s amused smile. It was interesting that they always seemed to be ready to go three rounds in the verbal boxing ring, yet Mike was Miranda’s best gauge of Holly’s intentions.

“Ah, a joke.” Which she also should have noted based on Holly’s abruptly thick Australian accent—Strine, Holly always insisted on correcting her. As spoken in Oz, not Australia. Miranda set her phone back down without calling the President. Besides, it was early evening here in Tacoma, Washington.

“I don’t want to disturb him as it’s almost bedtime in DC. I also note that it’s dinnertime and you haven’t yet mentioned food, Holly. Are you feeling okay?”

Now that she’d thought of it, she could smell the burgers grilling at the midfield restaurant wafting into the hangar. Simple conclusion that the smell had made her think of dinner and then thoughts of dinner had made that awareness conscious. What other unconscious triggers was she responding to? Were the triggers short-term or across a longer framework of experience?

This time there was a bright screech of tires striking pavement and suddenly spinning from zero to eighty or a hundred miles an hour. It was hard to identify a small plane just by the sounds it made landing. The lack of a rear window in the hangar was more irritating the more time they spent here.

“I’d be good-o if Mike played this game faster that a sloth on Xanax. Food, Jeremy.”

“Oh, okay. You know, the 1983 version of the artificial horizon instrument was dependent on a gyro mount that should never have lasted as long as they did. The lack of wear is simply amazing considering the number of hours that were logged on that airframe. I was hoping to create a calibration of wear versus time for identifying instrument usage, but I’m having little luck.” He moved to a bench microscope.

“We’ll have to tell the Air Force that they need shoddier workmanship in the future.” Mike turned back to the board, rattled his dice briefly, and rolled a perfect three-five.

“Yank bastard,” Holly’s Australian drawl was thick, which Miranda reminded herself indicated Holly was enjoying herself no matter what her expression and tone said to the contrary.

He sealed up the home board, knocking one of Holly’s pieces back to the bar. Another three rolls allowed him to get all of his pieces safe, and still her lone piece was trapped on the bar.

“Hope you roll snake eyes.”

He rolled double fives and cleared the point.

Holly managed to escape and avoid being gammoned by getting off a single one of her pieces before Mike finished clearing the board.

Holly glared at the half empty board—his half. “Are you sure there aren’t any crashes, Miranda? Maybe if I dropped a plane on Mike’s head we could investigate the death of an American weasel.”

“Love you too, Harper.” Mike began stowing Holly’s pieces.

“Not even a little, Munroe.” She helped him.

“It wouldn’t work anyway.” He snapped the case shut and stowed it on top of the rolling tool case.

“Why’s that?” She kicked the upside-down wastebasket she’d been using as a seat. She hit it just right so that it flipped with a loud clang of metal, then a ringing wobble that echoed back and forth across the hangar before it settled upright.

Loud noises were so alarming. Miranda held her cringe for several moments longer.

Sure enough, Holly then slapped it sideways like a soccer ball, sending it skidding loudly over the concrete floor before finally settling beside Miranda’s feet.

“Only planes here are both Miranda’s. I know you wouldn’t risk damaging one of hers,” Mike explained.

“Not on your thick head,” Holly declared particularly emphatically.

Miranda’s Mooney M20V Ultra was the fastest single-propeller piston-engine production airplane there was. And her 1958 F-86 Sabrejet fighter plane was one of the last dozen still flying anywhere, out of over ten thousand built for the Korean War and the decade following.

She didn’t believe that either would be damaged by an impact with Mike’s head, especially since his skull was unlikely to be significantly thicker than the average human’s no matter what Holly said. But dropping one of her planes in such a way that it would impact Mike would imply that it would then hit the ground—and she’d rather not have that happen, notwithstanding the damage to her personnel specialist.

During her moment of inattention, Jeremy’s reconstruction project had consumed the last of the workbench; a line of engine gauges (N1 and N2 stage RPMs, exhaust gas temperature, fuel flow, and oil pressure) now separated her from her laptop.

She supposed that